Assassins Have Starry Eyes (12 page)

“That’s silly,” she said. “It’s seven or eight pounds more weight to carry. There’s nothing in these mountains that’ll hurt you.”

I glanced at the sick boy, and said, “You’ve got a short memory, Spanish. I might meet a jeep. I always wanted a nice stuffed jeep head over the mantelpiece. You’d better load up that thirty-thirty when I’m gone.” I pocketed the sandwiches, drank the coffee, and gave the cup back. “Well, be good,” I said, and went out.

The wind was still blowing, but it was coming down the canyon so I had it with me. The visibility wasn’t as bad as it had been the day before. I passed the cars; snow had drifted up against them until you could hardly see them from windward. I was glad I had plenty of anti-freeze in the Pontiac. Then I was in the timber again and there was nothing to remind me of the place except a whiff of wood-smoke carried by the wind.

It took me an hour to reach the first bridge, which was no better than par for the course. The hour entitled me to five minutes’ rest—if you don’t put yourself on some kind of schedule, you’ll find yourself sitting on every stump along the road—so I set the gun against a tree and went down to the creek for water. It was hard to get at for the ice along the bank, but I managed to crack this without getting wet. The water was too cold to drink fast. I squatted on the bank, sipping it cautiously and listening to the noise of the creek and thinking about nothing in particular except the various aches that were developing in my thighs from lifting each foot out of one hole in the snow and setting it down in another a small distance ahead. Then I heard a sound. It was no more than a break in the rippling sound of the creek; I could not identify it. I got up slowly; after you’ve hunted a while, you get out of the habit of making quick motions. I emptied the cup, collapsed it, put it back into its case, and dropped it into my pocket, listening all the while. I moved deliberately back to the rifle and picked it up, but did not sling it on my shoulder. I listened some more. Then I pulled the bolt out of the gun and looked down the bore to make sure no snow had blocked the muzzle. I replaced the bolt, feeding the top cartridge from the magazine to the chamber. I set the safety and put my gloves back on.

I waited a while longer. Nothing happened. My heart started beating normally again. I shrugged, and started down the road; and stopped abruptly, hearing, from ahead, three faint shots in rapid succession, the universal wilderness cry for help.

SEVENTEEN

THERE WERE TWO of them. Their scoutmaster would have been proud of them; they had managed to build a fire in the lee of a big granite boulder. They weren’t dressed for the country or the weather. They seemed to be wearing ordinary low shoes, and pants that had probably been nicely creased yesterday but were frozen shapeless about their legs today. The taller of the two was wearing one of those green waist-length airforce jackets that are warm enough as far as they go but leave the seat of your pants hanging out to freeze. He had either come out without a hat or it had blown away; he had a white handkerchief tied about his head like a bandage, covering his ears.

The shorter man was wearing a light topcoat, and a Stetson that I thought looked familiar. As I came closer, I recognized the amiable features of Paul Edward Van Horn, bearded, and blue with cold. Both men were cold and tired enough to have little interest in looking around them, particularly if it involved facing the wind, and the snow that had ceased falling in big flakes and was now coming down in small, hard grains that, windborne, seemed to have a cutting edge. I was almost on top of them before they saw me.

“Hi, Van,” I said, stopping by the fire.

He said, “Well, I’m glad to see you alive, Dr. Gregory. We’ve been looking for you.”

“Who’s shooting at what?” I asked.

“We weren’t quite sure you’d come this way; the tracks were pretty well drifted over when we started up in here last night. As a matter of fact we were about to turn back, but decided to stop and thaw out a little first. I just fired a few shots in case you might be somewhere within hearing.”

“Where’s your car?”

“About three miles back, stuck tight. We didn’t have chains, only snow tires. We spent the night there. The engine quit around three this morning. It got a little chilly after that.”

I said, “If you didn’t follow people around, you wouldn’t get into trouble. Well, we’ve got a sick man a couple of miles up the canyon. How are you boys with shovels?”

“A sick man? Who?”

“Give your profession a rest, Van. We’ve also got a nice warm cabin and plenty of food. You can ask the questions when we get there.”

Uphill and against the wind, it took considerably longer to go back than it had to come down. When we got there, the cabin was still where I had left it, and smoke was still coming from the stove-pipe. The tall young fellow, whose name I never learned, was pretty cold and miserable: he started running clumsily when he saw it, like a thirsting man heading for an oasis. I called him back.

“Whoa, there,” I said. “Just hold it a minute. She’s got a loaded Winchester in there, and she isn’t expecting me back before dark.” I took the .270 off my shoulder, worked the bolt, aimed at the sky, and pulled the trigger. Even in the wind and snow, the big gun crashed loudly enough to hurt your ears. “Yo, Spanish!” I shouted. “Reinforcements coming in.”

There was a little pause. I had time for a sickening sense of apprehension; time to know that the door wasn’t going to open, that we were going to go inside and find something terrible—or, worse, nothing at all. Other people had turned up missing in more civilized places than this. I shouldn’t have left her here with only a sick and helpless kid for company… Then the door swung open, and she looked out at us with the carbine over her arm. Van and his companion started forward again. I paused to throw the empty out of my rifle, and unload. There were plenty of firearms around if we should need them, and I was taught never to bring a loaded gun into the house.

I looked up to see her coming down the path toward me, half running. She stopped in front of me, a little out of breath. She was bareheaded and kind of tousled-looking, and a light application of lipstick wouldn’t have ruined her appearance, but you operate on somewhat different standards of personal cleanliness and adornment when you get out into the back country in winter. She looked all right to me.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I was kind of worried about you.”

“Sure,” I said. “How’s Tony?”

“He’s starting to cough. It sounds as if he’ll tear himself apart inside.”

“Well, as soon as everybody gets warmed and fed, we’ll have him out of here.” I slung the empty rifle on my shoulder. “I’ll go make sure the car’s going to start while you see that our guests are well supplied with energy-building foods.” I started to turn away.

“Jim,” she said.

I turned back. “Yes?”

We faced each other for a moment. Suddenly she was in my arms and I was kissing her with the snow blowing around us and the two rifles getting mixed up together—I remember hoping vaguely that the hammer of the carbine wasn’t cocked. It was an odd experience on all counts. I had not had any girl but Natalie in my arms for better than three years; and I’d never had a great deal of time for girls before that, so I wasn’t quite sure what was expected of me. We had too many clothes on for any serious display of affection; it was a very innocent kiss. At last Nina turned her face aside and buried it in the damp fur of my hunting-coat collar. I said, “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you, Spanish. At the moment, I’ve already got one wife.”

“I know.” Her voice was muffled. Presently she straightened up, stepped back, and put her hands to her hair, pushing it back from her face against the wind. “I know. I just… if anything had happened to you, after I’d sent you out in all that snow and wind, I’d have died, Jim!”

I looked at her for a moment longer; and she looked back at me steadily. It was like coming to an unmarked fork in a trail. I could not quite see which was the proper direction to take. Well, it did not have to be decided in the middle of a blizzard.

“This could develop into quite a problem,” I said. “Let’s shelve it temporarily, shall we?”

She laughed quickly. “You’re a funny person. Don’t be so farsighted, my dear; it doesn’t pay. Maybe I just kissed you because I was glad to see you. Maybe I just go around kissing all sorts of men. There’s no problem unless… unless you want to make one.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s just the problem, whether to make a problem or not. Well, let’s pass it for the time being. Tell those guys to hurry up and eat while I see just how big a job we’re going to have getting out of here.”

The rear of the Pontiac was pretty well covered with snow. I set the rifle aside, took out my heavy hunting knife, and chopped a pine branch to use for a broom—a big hunting knife is generally considered to be the mark of a tenderfoot, but I don’t go along with that theory. I’ve got a pocket knife for fine whittling; I see no point in wearing a toothpick on my belt, too. I pushed and swept the snow off the trunk lid and opened it up. I wiped off the rifle and put it back into its case. Then I got the shovel out and dug around the car, and cleaned off the radiator and windshield. Finally I got inside and started the motor, relieved and pleased to have it start right away. I nursed it along until it was idling smoothly—they’ve taken the old manual choke and throttle away from us and replaced them with an unpredictable thermostatic gadget, so now you can’t warm up a car properly without staying with it every second of the time.

I left it running, climbed out into the snow, and waded over to Tony’s car to look for another shovel. They are practically standard equipment for anyone who does much back-road driving in this part of the country, and I found one in the trunk. Then I looked in front to see if Nina had brought out everything of value, since the car might be standing there some time, and the local Indians were probably no less averse to stripping a deserted car than white men would be in similar circumstances. The smell of exhaust gas was still noticeable. There was nothing inside except some magazines on the seat; apparently Tony had stocked up with reading matter before heading for his hide-out.

I removed the rubber hose and closed the window. Climbing out, I knocked the magazines to the floor. One slid forward and blocked the door. I shoved it back, and noticed the blurb for the lead article;
Is Fallout Threatening Your Future?
It was hardly the time for reading, but I picked up the magazine and glanced through it. The guy was on the old mutation pitch. If so and so many genes were irradiated by so and so many roentgens we would breed so and so many little monsters, one of which might be yours. I don’t know why they always assume that a mutation necessarily has to be bad. As I recall my biology, mutations are why we’re not still swinging from the trees by our tails with the other monkeys.

According to the writer, however, nuclear physicists were callous fellows gaily tossing radioactive poisons into the atmosphere without a thought to the possible effects on the human race. I had, of course, heard that theory expressed before; Nina herself had hurled similar accusations at me the day she came to the hospital to avenge Paul Hagen. It was fairly clear where she had got the notion; in fact Tony had blamed himself for shooting off his mouth around the house when he came to apologize later.

Standing there in the snow, I frowned at the magazine, tossed it in back, and picked up another. It wasn’t on the cover, this time, but I found it in the table of contents:
The Growing Menace of Radioactivity.
The third had an article explaining just how many cities the size of New York could be wiped out by one of the latest X-bombs, as it was called: something too secret to describe, but terrible. The fourth contained a piece entitled:
The Atom—Pandora’s Box?
The thesis, at a glance, seemed to be that splitting the atom had been a big mistake and we should glue the damn thing back together again quick like a bunny.

Anyone who has read the history of science will give a rueful little laugh when he comes across this sort of crap. There hasn’t been a scientific advance yet that wasn’t going to ruin the human race if we didn’t quick stuff it back where it came from and forget all about it. When you have a little time, look up what they said about the steam engine, which was going to do all kinds of dreadful things to the people reckless enough to allow themselves to be snatched through space in a railroad car at the unthinkable speed of twenty miles per hour…

When I came back to the Pontiac, Van was coming along the path with an armload of gear. I helped him load it into the trunk.

“You really travel equipped,” he said. “We could have used some of this stuff last night.”

“I hope you had a nice miserable time,” I said.

“Still mad, eh?” he said.

“I haven’t heard any apologies,” I said.

He grinned. “If I went around apologizing to everybody whose feelings I had to hurt in the line of duty, I’d never have time for anything else. What’s the dope on the kid in there? Did he try to kill himself or was it somebody else’s idea?”

I shrugged. “He still hasn’t said. But when we found him there was a fresh bump on his head; and a jeep had come out of the canyon shortly before we started in.”

“How do you figure the motive?”

“My guess is that somebody doesn’t like keeping failures on the payroll, particularly when they lose their nerve and take to the hills. Somebody was afraid the boy was scared enough to talk. Anyway, that was my hunch, which was why I thought we’d better come after him when we discovered he’d run away.”

Van nodded slowly. He looked around at the rock and snow of the canyon. “I guess I’m just a city boy at heart,” he said. “This kind of country scares hell out of me.”

“It scares me, too,” I said. “That’s why I like it. What’s the fun of tackling something easy?”

“For a respected scientist,” he said, “you have some very juvenile attitudes. Well, let’s get out of here before my feet freeze up again.”

We brought the boy down last of all. The cold air set him coughing badly; I was glad the heater had been running long enough to warm up the interior of the car thoroughly. Nina got in back with him; Van and his stooge joined me in front, each with a shovel. I gunned the engine, backed up as far as she would go, and took a running start across the brief clear space where the car had been standing. It was the first time that I really appreciated those two hundred horsepower. We hit the deep stuff hard, swerved, straightened out, and kept on moving. It was downhill, which helped; and the weight of five passengers and the gear in the trunk also helped.