Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (6 page)

The train set off, hit up a fast clip. People piled in and out at intermediate stations. Pigface contemptuously ignored Mowry, watched the passing landscape with lordly disdain, finally fell asleep and let his mouth hang open. He was twice as hoglike in his slumbers and would have attained near-perfection with a lemon between his teeth.

Thirty miles from Radine the door from the coach ahead slammed open, a civilian policeman entered. He was accompanied by two burly, hard-faced characters in plain clothes. This trio halted by the nearest passenger.

“Your ticket,” demanded the cop.

The passenger handed it over, his expression scared. The policeman examined it front and back, passed it to his companions who studied it in turn.

“Your identity-card.”

That got the same treatment, the cop looking it over as if doing a routine chore, the other two surveying it more critically and with concealed suspicion.

“Your movement permit.”

It passed the triple scrutiny, was given back along with the ticket and identity-card. The recipient’s face showed vast relief. The cop picked on the passenger sitting next to him.

“Your ticket.”

Mowry, seated two-thirds of the way along the coach, observed this performance with much curiosity and a little apprehension. His feelings boosted to alarm when they reached the seventh passenger.

For some reason best known to themselves the tough-looking pair in plain clothes gazed longer and more intently at this one’s documents. Meanwhile, the passenger developed visible signs of agitation. They stared at his strained face, weighing him up. Their own features wore the hungry expressions of predatory animals about to tear down a victim.

“Stand up!” barked one of them.

The passenger shot to his feet and stood quivering. He swayed slightly and it was not due to the rocking of the train. While the cop looked on, the two frisked the passenger with speed and professional thoroughness. They took things out of his pockets, pawed them around, shoved them back. They patted his clothes all over, showing no respect for his person.

Finding nothing of significance, one of them muttered an oath, then yelled at the victim, “Well, what’s giving you the shakes?”

“I don’t feel so good,” said the passenger, feebly.

“Is that so? What’s the matter with you?”

“Travel sickness. I always get this way in trains.”

“It’s a story, anyway.” He glowered at the other, lost patience and made a careless gesture. “All right, you can sit.”

At that the passenger collapsed into his seat and breathed heavily. He had the mottled complexion of one almost sick from fear and relief. The cop eyed him a moment, let go a sniff and turned attention to number eight.

“Ticket.”

There were ten more to be chivvied before these inquisitors reached Mowry. He was willing to take a chance on his documents passing muster but he dared not risk a search. The cop was just a plain, ordinary cop. The other two were members of the all-powerful Kaitempi; if
they
dipped into his pockets the balloon would go up once and for all. And in due time, when on Terra it was realized that his silence was the silence of the grave, a cold-blooded specimen named Wolf would give with the sales talk to another sucker.

“Turn around. Walk bow-legged. We want you to become a wasp.”

By now most of the passengers were directing their full attention along the aisle, watching what was going on and meanwhile trying to ooze an aura of patriotic rectitude. Mowry slid a surreptitious look at Pigface who was still lolling opposite with head hanging on chest and mouth wide open. Were those sunken little eyes really closed or were they watching him between narrowed lids?

Short of pushing his face right up against the other’s unpleasant countenance he couldn’t tell for certain. But it made no difference, the trio were edging nearer every moment and he had to take a risk. Furtively he felt behind him, found a tight but deep gap in the upholstery where the bottom of the backrest met the rear of the seat. Keeping his attention riveted upon Pigface, he edged a pack of stickers and two crayons out of his pocket, crammed them into the gap, poking them well out of sight. The sleeper opposite did not stir or blink an eyelid.

Two minutes later the cop gave Pigface an irritable shove on the shoulder and that worthy woke up with a snort. He glared at the cop, then at the pair in plain clothes.

“So! What is this?”

“Your ticket,” said the cop.

“A traffic check,
hi
?”responded Pigface, showing sudden understanding. “Oh, well—” Inserting fat fingers in a vest pocket he took out an ornate card embedded in a slice of transparent plastic. This he exhibited to the trio as if it were the equivalent of the keys to the kingdom. The cop stared at it and became servile. The two toughies stiffened like raw recruits caught dozing on parade.

“Your pardon, Major,” apologized the cop.

“It is granted,” assured Pigface, showing a well-practiced mixture of arrogance and condescension. “You are only doing your duty.” He favored the rest of the coach with a beam of triumph born of petty power, openly enjoying the situation and advertising himself as being several grades above the common herd.

Eyeing him with concealed dislike, Mowry became obsessed with the notion that some buttocks have been designed by Nature specifically to be kicked good and hard and that such a target was within foot-reach right now. His right shoe got the fidgets at the thought of it but he kept it firmly on the floor.

Leery and embarrassed, the cop switched to Mowry, said, “Ticket.”

Mowry handed it over, striving to look innocent and bored. Pseudo-nonchalance didn’t come easy because now he was the focal point of the coach’s battery of eyes. Almost all the other passengers were looking his way, Pigface was surveying him speculatively and the two Kaitempi agents were giving him the granite-hard stare.

“Identity-card.”

That got passed across.

“Movement permit.”

He surrendered it, braced himself for the half-expected command of, “Stand up!”

It did not come. Anxious to get away from the fat Major’s cold, official gaze, the three examined the papers, handed them back without comment and moved on. Mowry shoved the documents into his pocket, tried to keep a great relief out of his voice as he spoke to the other.

“I wonder what they’re after.”

“It is no business of yours,” said Pigface, as insultingly as possible.

“No, of course not,” agreed Mowry.

There was silence between them. Pigface sat mooning through the window and showed no inclination to resume his slumbers. Damn the fellow, thought Mowry, retrieving the hidden stickers was going to prove difficult with that slob awake and alert.

A door crashed shut as the cop and Kaitempi agents finished with that coach and went through to the following one. A minute later the train pulled up with such suddenness that a couple of passengers were thrown from their seats. Outside the train and farther back toward the rear end voices started shouting.

Heaving himself to his feet, Pigface opened the window’s top half, stuck his head out and looked back toward the source of the noise. Then with speed surprising in one so cumbersome he whipped a gun from his pocket, ran along the aisle and through the end door. Outside the bawling grew louder.

Mowry got up and had a look through the window. Near the tail of the train a small bunch of figures were running alongside the track, the cop and the Kaitempi slightly in the lead. As he watched, the latter swung up their right arms and several sharp cracks rang through the morning air. It was impossible to see at whom they were shooting.

Also beside the train, gun in hand, Pigface was pounding heavily along in pursuit of the pursuers. Curious faces popped out of windows all along the line of coaches. Mowry called to the nearest face.

“What happened?”

“Those three came in to check papers. Some fellow saw them, made a wild dash to the opposite door and jumped out. They stopped the train and went after him.”

“Was he hurt when he jumped?”

“Not by the looks of it. Last I saw of him he was diminishing in the distance like a champion
meika.
He got a pretty good start. They’ll be lucky to catch him.”

“Who was he, anyway?”

“No idea. Some wanted criminal, I suppose.”

“Well,” offered Mowry, “if the Kaitempi came after me I’d hotfoot it like a scared Spakum.”

“Who wouldn’t?” said the other.

Withdrawing, Mowry took his seat. All the other travelers were at the windows, their full attention directed outside. This was an opportune moment. He dug a hand into the hiding-place, extracted the stickers and crayons, pocketed them.

The train stayed put for half an hour during which there was no more excitement within hearing. Finally it jerked into motion and at the same time Pigface reappeared and dumped himself into his seat. His face was thunderous. He looked sour enough to pickle his own hams.

“Did you catch him?” asked Mowry, lending his manner all the politeness and respect he could muster.

Pigface bestowed a dirty look. “It is no business of yours.”

“No, of course not,” confirmed Mowry for the second time.

The previous silence came back and remained until the train pulled into Radine. This being the terminus, everybody got out. Mowry padded along with the mob through the station exit but did not make a beeline for punishable windows and walls.

Instead he followed Pigface.

Shadowing presented no great difficulty. Pigface behaved as though the likelihood of being trailed would be the last thing ever to enter his mind. He went his way with the arrogant assurance of one who has the law in his pocket, all ordinary persons being less than the dust beneath his chariot wheel. In this respect his strength was his weakness, a fatal weakness as he had yet to discover.

Immediately outside the station’s arched entrance Pigface turned right, plodded a hundred yards along the approach-road to the parking lot at the farther end. Here he stopped by a long, green dynocar, felt in his pocket for keys.

Lingering in the shadow of a projecting buttress, Mowry watched the quarry unlock the door and squeeze inside. He hustled across the road to a taxi-stand, climbed into the leading vehicle. The move was perfectly timed; he sank into the seat just as the green dynocar whined past.

“Where to?” asked the taxi-driver.

“Can’t tell you exactly,” said Mowry, evasively. “I’ve been here only once before and that was years ago. But I know the way. Just follow my instructions.”

The taxi’s dynamo set up a rising hum as the machine sped down the road while its passenger kept attention on the car ahead and gave curt orders from time to time. It would have been lots easier, he knew, to have pointed and said, “Follow that green car.” But that would have linked him in the driver’s mind with Pigface or at least with Pigface’s green dyno. The Kaitempi were experts at ferreting out such links and following them to the bitter end. As it was, the taxi-driver had no idea that he was shadowing anyone.

Swiftly the chaser and the chased threaded their way through the center of Radine until eventually the leader made a sharp turn to the left and rolled down a ramp into the basement of a large apartment building. Mowry let the taxi run a couple of hundred yards farther on before he called a halt.

“This will do me.” He got out, felt for money. “Nice to have a good, dependable memory, isn’t it?”

“Yar,” said the driver. “One guilder six-tenths.”

Mowry gave him two guilders, watched him cruise away. Hastening back to the apartment building, he entered, took an inconspicuous seat in its huge foyer, lay back and pretended to be enjoying a semi-doze while waiting for someone. There were several others sitting around none of whom took the slightest notice of him.

Sure enough he’d not been there half a minute when Pigface came into the other end of the foyer from a door leading to the basement garage. Without so much as a glance around he stepped into one of a bank of small automatic elevators. The door slid shut. The illuminated telltale on the lintel winked a succession of numbers, stopped at seven, held it awhile, then winked downward to zero. The door glided open, showing the box now empty.

After another five minutes Mowry yawned, stretched, consulted his watch and went out. He paced along the street until he found a phone booth. From it he called the apartment building, got its switchboard operator.

“I was supposed to meet somebody in your foyer nearly an hour ago,” he explained. “I can’t make it. If he’s still waiting I’d like him to be told I can’t get along.”

“Who is he?” asked the operator. “A resident?”

“Yes—but I’ve clean forgotten his name. Nobody is more stupid than me about names. He is plump, got heavy features, lives on the seventh floor. Major . . . major . . . what a
soko
of a memory I’ve got!”

“That would be Major Sallana,” the operator said.

“Correct,” agreed Mowry. “Major Sallana—I had it at the back of my mind all the time.”

“Hold on. I’ll see if he’s still waiting.” There followed a minute’s silence before the operator returned with, “No, he isn’t. I’ve just called his apartment and there’s no reply. Do you wish to leave a message for him?”

“It won’t be necessary—he must have given me up. It’s not of great importance, anyway, live long!”

“Live long!” said the operator.

So there was no reply from the apartment. Looked as if Pigface had gone straight in and straight out again. Unless he was lying in his bath and not inclined to answer the phone. That didn’t seem likely; he’d hardly had time to fill a tub, undress and get into it. If he really was absent from his rooms it meant that opportunity had presented itself so far as Mowry was concerned and it was up to him to grab it while it was there.

Despite an inward sense of urgency, Mowry paused long enough to cope with other work. He looked through the booth’s glass, found himself unobserved. Then he slapped a sticker on the facing window exactly where tireless talkers could contemplate it while holding the phone.