Far down the tunnel, the darkness had opened like a fist to let light out. Two Lilliputian figures were climbing over a box. He watched as they got down from the box and started trotting.

He was tired and desperate, but so were they. He climbed over the box, got down on the other side, and trotted. Sooner or later, he would pa.s.s SCC workers. If he had been alone, he would, probably, be reported. The workers would a.s.sume, however, that the two organics had reported to HQ that they were chasing the criminal. Those who asked the two officers if they wanted help would be told that none was needed. The immers did not want other organics involved.

When he saw an envelope of light in the darkness ahead, he forced himself to run faster, and to climb over the boxes more DAY WOR LI).

vigorously. Fortunately, there were only three td get over before he got to the light. This came from an office in a recess at the intersection of north-south and east-west belts.

He leaped out when he approached the steps and grabbed the railing. His chest heaving, breath sawing, he ran up the steps. The light accompanying him would merge with the light from the office windows. But that would not keep the pursuers from seeing him leave the belt.

He went past the windows. A man was sitting at a desk and watching a strip show while he drank from an unlabeled bottle.

If there was another worker around, he or she could be in the toilet or sleeping in the back room. Caird did not hesitate to take his chances. He ran around the corner, through the door, and at the man behind the desk. The man had just put the bottle down when Caird charged in, and he did not see Caird until he was almost on him. The man rose from the chair, saying, "What the. . . ?" Caird grabbed the bottle by the neck and brought it down on the man's forehead. He just wanted to stun him, not severely injure or kill him. The man fell backward over the chair and sprawled out, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. Whiskey fumes rose from it.

Caird glanced at the half-closed door to the back room. A woman's head and the cot on which she lay were visible. Her mouth was open, and she was snoring as heavily as the unconscious man. He a.s.sumed that she had also been drinking the bootleg whiskey.

The man on the floor groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Caird groaned, too, though not for the same reason. He had to make sure that the man was unconscious for at least five minutes.

Gritting his teeth, disliking what he had to do, Caird lifted the man, propped him against the desk, and hit him on the jaw with the bottle. The man fell over on his side.

Caird dragged the body by the feet through the doorway. Forty feet eastward was one of the huge mechanical arms that removed boxes from one belt to another. He dropped the man's legs and switched the controls on the panel at its base to MANUAL. He slipped his hand into a metal-mesh glove and moved it as he wished the arm and its "fingers" to move.

The man, his waist gripped by the "fingers," his body arched, head and arms and legs dangling, was placed in front of a box on the east-going belt.

Caird brought the arm back to the upright position-it would not do for the immers to notice it sticking out over the belts-and he ran back to the office. By then, his heavy breathing had become light. He went back into the office and got behind the door of the back room. The woman was still snoring. Caird pushed the door so that it was an inch open, and he turned the back room light off. He put his shoulderbag on the floor and took out the screwdriver and hammer.

A few seconds later, he heard the rasping breathing of the two men. Through the opening, he saw one enter the office, gun in hand, stop and look around. The other walked past the windows and out of sight. The first man waited until his partner came back.

"He's on the east belt," the second man said. "I saw his light."

"Where in h.e.l.l're the workers?" the man who had entered first said. His thick eyebrows made his face even tougher-looking.

The second man had a very short and upturned nose. He looked like a picture of the ancient extinct bulldog. Pointing at the open whiskey bottle which Caird had put back on the desk, he said, "They're probably pa.s.sed out in the back room."

"I'd sure like to turn those slobs in!" Eyebrows said.

Bulldog walked to the fountain and drank deeply. Still gasping, he straightened up. "Drink up. We can't just stand here while he's riding away from us. He can see there's no light following him. He'll be resting."

Eyebrows drank deeply, too. When he had his fill, he wiped the sweat from his eyes with his arm and said, "You think we should call in for help?"

"I sure wish we could," Bulldog said. "But it's too risky. We got to get that son of a b.i.t.c.h soon."

"What happens if we don't?"

Bulldog looked disgustedly at Eyebrows. "You know what'll happen."

"If I could just get in range!"

"You won't standing here. Come on."

As soon as they left, Caird went to the fountain, which he had been too pressed to use before then. He drank more sparingly than the immers, though he wanted more. Before going out of the door, he got down on his knees and stuck his head out just far enough to see his pursuers. Who were now the pursued. They were not trotting, just walking fast. They a.s.sumed that, since they could not see Caird, he was hidden behind a box. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that he was so exhausted that he would rest long enough for them to catch up with him.

He had to take the chance that they might look back. He rose and ran from the door, the screwdriver and the handle of the hammer in his belt. He went up the steps to the walkway over the east-west belts, climbed over the railing, and dropped onto a box. He got down quickly from it and crouched between two boxes. Now, if they looked back, they would think that his light was theirs unless they noticed that their light was much longer than it should be. He prayed that they would not.

When he stuck his head up over the edge of the box, he saw them climbing over a box. He waited until they had gotten off it and then went over his box. He ran while they walked. He overtook them when they were going over another box. His hammer and screwdriver were in his hands when he slid off the edge of the box.

Just as he came up behind the man in the rear, Eyebrows, the man started to turn his head to look behind him. Caird brought the hammer down on the side of his head harder than he had intended. He dropped the hammer and the screwdriver, not caring how much noise he made now. Bulldog, on getting ready to slide off the box, had turned his head when he heard the thud of the hammer. Caird caught Eyebrows' body with one hand. With the other, he s.n.a.t.c.hed Eyebrows' weapon from his holster.

"Hold it!" Caird said, and he let Eyebrows fall. The gun was set for full power. Bulldog knew 'that.

"I don't want to kill you," Caird said, "though I should. You were going to kill me."

("Take them out, anyway," Repp said. "They're vermin, and a dead enemy is one less enemy.") ("Don't!" Isharashvili cried.) "Your left hand up in the air. High. OK. Now, slowly, very slowly, ease the gun out with the right hand. Drop it on the box by you. Turn your head away; don't look at me. Hold it until I tell you different."

Bulldog's neck quivered, but he looked straight ahead. After a slight hesitation, he took the b.u.t.t of the weapon by two fingers and placed it on the box by him. His right hand joined the left one above his head.

"Now slide off the box and walk about twenty feet away. Keep your hands high. Don't turn around. I know how to use this. I'm a crack shot."

Bulldog obeyed. Caird got swiftly onto the box and stuck the gun into his shoulderbag. He got down off the box, walked to Bulldog, reversed the weapon, and struck the man hard on the crown of his head. Bulldog crumpled.

("Don't!" Isharashvili cried again.) "Go back where you came from," Caird muttered. He removed the ID disc-star from Bulldog's neck and put it in his shoulderbag. He might be able to use it, though he doubted it. He rolled the body onto the west-going belt and climbed back over the box. After putting Eyebrows' ID in the bag, Caird rolled the body onto the west-going belt. Since there might be a use for the hammer and screwdriver, he placed them in the bag. It was bulging and was very heavy, but he did not plan to carry it for some time. He stood watching the light and the two unconscious men in it for a minute. Then he lay down. He did not think he had closed his eyes, but a man shouting at him woke him up.

The man's eyes were level with the belt. Caird shouted, "Surprise inspection! You should be glad I found you awake!"

Caird sat up and grinned at him until the man turned and walked into the office. Caird did not have time to worry about what the worker meant to do. He had to change belts soon. If he kept going much longer, he would be under the East River and on his way to Brooklyn.

By the time that he had gotten to his goal, he had switched belts nine times. A few times, he had been forced to travel for a while in the opposite direction. He had stolen a worker's lunch. He had gotten off four times to drink from a fountain and had twice had to go down an access ladder to the lower level. He had washed off the tissue from his cheek wound and the dirt from his face and hands.

When he got out of an elevator in an access tube, he was tired. The events of today and the six days before, the tension, the uncertainty, the battles, the running, and the warring voices within him had punished him. He had been stretched to his outer limits on a rack and squeezed to his inner limits in a compacter.

Nevertheless, when he stepped out into Central Park near the Alice in Wonderland statue, he at once felt stronger and more hopeful. Alice, after falling down a hole, had survived her many perils. He hoped that there was no mirror he had to pa.s.s through in his future.

He planned to hole up somewhere in the park over night. As a ranger, that is, drawing on Isharashvili's memory, he knew several good hiding places. Tomorrow, he would try for the wilds of New Jersey. The great forest that covered most of the state's eastern part sheltered some outlaws. They might accept him. If he was rejected, he would starve. He knew nothing of noncity survival. Even if he was taken in, he would live hunted and harried.

At least, he would be living. Someday, he might get back into a city and there insert a new ID into the data bank. That idea, at the moment, tasted like he imagined c.o.c.kroach droppings would taste.

The sight of Central Park cleansed him of such thoughts. Amazingly, the storm had pa.s.sed and was now only low black clouds in the west. The air was exhilarating; the wind, a mere five miles an hour. The world looked as it always does after a good rain. It seemed to have been remade by G.o.d to His better liking. A male cardinal's Toowheert-Toowheert----Toowheert- Twock-Twock-Twock-Twock rang from an oak branch. A squirrel was scold-barking from an Osage orange tree branch at a big black cat that had braved the wet gra.s.s.

The clear sky also meant that the satellites had their eyes o Central Park.

This did not bother Caird. He walked along a winding, uj and-down flower-lined path past bushes and trees, past statue of Frodo and Smaug, Lenin, the Cowardly Lion and Dorothi Gandhi, Don Quixote, Spinoza, Rip van Winkle, Woody Allen and John Henry. He went by a few people who had taken she ter from the storm and were out again. So far, no rangers or oi ganics, but they would be somewhere near.

After going for several hundred feet on a path covered by ir terlocking tree branches, he left it. He plunged into an are that was not off-limits to the public but was seldom venture into. It stood out like a green thumb, a patch of bright an poisonous-looking vegetation. The stone statues of the animal crouching in the very thick ranks of fronds and huge el phant's-ear plants looked slightly misshapen. He was walkin in a landscaper's reproduction of an Amazon jungle by the am cient French painter Henri Rousseau. Yellow eyes framed i spotted faces gleamed from behind heavy nightmarish bushe: A proboscis monkey, resembling a politician whom the lanc scaper disliked, stared down foolishly from a branch.

Caird pushed through the forbidding growth, struggled ur hill, skirted a black-painted granite G.o.d, squat, ma.s.siv crouching on frog legs, its half-human, half-jaguar face snarl ing, and came to the ridge of the hill. He crossed into the veg tation on the other side, descending abruptly into a land c pines and birches. The statues here were of folk-tale monsters c the far north, baba-yagas, cern.o.bogs, chudo-yudos, hiisis, kosF cheis, lyeshies, and vesht.i.tzes. At the bottom of the hill, h walked, ankle-deep in mud, around a swamp from which prc truded the heads of rusalkas, female water-spirits with lon wavy green hair.

This was a fenced area the public could visit only dunn guided tours. Between the fence and a creek flowing under into the swamp was a gap of two feet. He got down on his knee in the water, pushed the fence up, and, bent over, went beneath the fence. Trees growing thickly along the creek banks shielded him from the sky-eyes.

Another half-mile would get him to a small cave well-hidden by bushes near the foot of a hill.

After wading for several hundred yards in the winding stream, he came to a bridge. All had gone well so far. He needed only a few more minutes to get to his haven.

He froze.

There, like a troll under a bridge, was an organic.

She was standing, half-hidden behind a bush, on the right bank. The only good thing about the situation was that she was facing away from him.

("Hide!" Ohm said.) ("Go for it!" Repp said fiercely. "Take her! Don't pay any attention to that cowardly coyote! ") ("You don't know that she's looking for you," Tingle said. "Maybe she's waiting there for her lover.") ("True," Dunski said. "She could be here for any of a dozen reasons. Maybe she just took a pee.") Caird paid as little attention as possible to the voices whispering inside him. He turned and slowly climbed onto the bank and pushed gently through the bushes and high gra.s.ses on the slope. Once, he startled a dragonfly. He became motionless until it was long gone, then went on. He came up on the walk that led to the bridge. For a moment, he would be exposed to the sky-eyes, but he would cross the path quickly into the dense vegetation on the other side. Unless the organic had by now come up from under the bridge, he would be safe.

Before leaving the bushes, he looked both ways down the path. No one was in sight.

He started to walk across the path.

A voice rang out, "Hold it!"

He whirled around to his right. A male organic with a ho!

stered gun had just come around the bend inthe path. The weapon told him that the two officers were looking for a fugitive and that the fugitive was probably Isharashvili.

Not wanting to lead the organic into the woods and straight to his hiding place, desperate, panicky, he turned and ran down the path. He crossed the bridge, hearing the man shouting to his partner to come up and help him. A glance behind showed Caird that the organic had not yet drawn his weapon. But he soon would.

He pa.s.sed something lying in the path, a reminder of what seemed to be the far distant past. The name a.s.sociated with it flashed through his mind and was forgotten.

Just as he had decided to leap into the bushes, he heard another shout behind him. It was not the stern command or warning he had expected. It was a yell of surprise. He turned just in time to see the organic stretched out a few feet above and parallel with the ground. His legs were spread wide; his arms were flailing. Then he struck the path hard on his back, and he was silent and unmoving.

Just beyond the man's head was a banana peel.

"Rootenbeak!"

That was the name that had darted across his mind.

The peel had probably not been dropped by Rootenbeak- what would he be doing so far north of Washington Square?- but it had certainly been dropped by someone like him.

And that inconsiderate s...o...b..shness was helping him escape. He ran into the woods. Looking to one side, he saw the conical helmet and auburn hair of the female organic who had been under the bridge. Then the heavy bushes and trees screened her. He slowed down, not wanting her to hear him, until he was several hundred feet from the path. Zigzagging through the growth, he headed for the creek. When he was close to it, he got down on all fours and looked from behind a bush that grew close to the bank of the stream. At first, he could hear loud voices but could see no one. Then a man appeared in a break between two trees. He was an organic and had a large green pack on his back. A thick wire ran from the pack to a small square plate he held in one hand. Another wire ran to a long tube with a disc at its end that he held in the other hand. This was being moved from side to side and then up and down.

Caird groaned quietly. The tube held equipment that would probe for the heat of his body, sniff for his odor, and listen for his breathing and the beating of his heart.

If only he could have crossed the stream and gotten to the cave. If only he could have gotten here before the rain.

("If only, h.e.l.l!" Repp said. "You got two guns! Fight, man, fight! Go down with guns blazing!") ("No! No!" Isharashvili said.) Light suddenly appeared in him and swept across, followed by a shadow. The light seemed to spill out of his eyes, blinding him, and then the blindness was made even darker by the shadow. He shook. What was happening? Was he at last falling apart, taking refuge in disintegration?

("I am back," a voice said.) Caird bit his lip to keep quiet.

("You?" Ohm said.) ("I was taken up by G.o.d, and He weighed me in the balance and found me wanting.") ("Father Tom!" Dunski said.) ("How in h.e.l.l can a fictional G.o.d reject a fictional soul?" Ohm said.) ("He told me to go back to my maker," Zurvan said. His voice was as deep and m.u.f.fled as the bell of a sunken ship swayed by a current. "He hurled me out of the kingdom of glory back into the nothingness from which I came.") Caird wanted to yell at the voices. If he did so, he would be located immediately, and he would be done for. But what dif ference did it make if he was silent, or screamed? He was going to be caught. The only question just now was whether he would surrender quietly or shoot to kill until he was killed.

("Killing is not the right path," Isharashvili said. "You ... I we, I mean, have taken many wrong paths. Don't take this most evil of all.") ("Hypocrite!" Ohm screamed. "Hypocrite! Hypocrites all! But just this once, Isharashvili, you're right!") The voices babbled on while he lay p.r.o.ne, his chin on his arm. The blindness had pa.s.sed, but he seemed to be seeing through a veil of heat. The tall gra.s.s before him wavered.

A gra.s.shopper ended its leap upon the stem of a weed. It swayed back and forth with the weed, clinging to it. It was a brightly colored metronome, back and forth, back and forth.

And in and out. His eyes focused, then unfocused. The insect became clear, then fuzzy. But he could make out the purplepainted antennae, the Kelly-green head, the golden eyes, the orange legs, and the green-and-black-checked body.

He groaned, "Ozma!"

He began weeping, and the gra.s.shopper dissolved in the tears.

He had turned into a river of tears shaken by an earthquake. He could not control himself even if he had wanted to. He sobbed and stretched his arms out and clawed at the earth.

He had betrayed the state, the immers, his lovers, his friends, and himself.

The voices within him screamed, roared, and tore at him. He rolled over to look up into the trees. He was dimly aware that two men were looking down at him.

Tuesday-World FREEDOM, Seventh Month of the Year D6-W4 (Day-Six, Week-Four) Today was Tuesday's Christmas.

Jeff Caird looked out the window down at the huge yard surrounding the inst.i.tution. It was on West 121st Street, near the junction of Frederick Dougla.s.s and St. Nicholas avenues. A light snow, which was quickly melting, formed patches of white and green. It was the first of the winter and might be the last. There were no holiday decorations in the yard or on the trees, but many of the windows of the apartment building across the street displayed holly or figures of Santa Claus and his reindeer.

"Saint Nicholas," Caird said. "The great giver of gifts. The state."

He turned and walked across the large room past the desk of the psychicist and sat down in an easy chair.

"Frederick Dougla.s.s, the slave who led his people out of bondage. Me."

"Your people are dead," the psychicist said.

"The immers?" Caird said, looking startled.

"No," the psychicist said, smiling. "I didn't mean the immers, and you know it. I referred to the others. Your personae."

Caird was silent. The psychicist said, "You still feel a sense of great loss?"

Caird nodded and said, "The big wringout. The gra.s.shopper was the key, the stimulus, the trigger, the catalyst."

"The funny thing, the peculiar phenomenon, I mean," the psychicist said, "is that you grew new nerve paths when you grew your personae. They should be dying, you know, since you no longer use them. There's no sign of shrinkage in the neural circuits. Yet, you've been cured. Cured, I mean, of your multiple personality disorder."

"You know that for sure?"

"Don't you? Of course, you do. Just as we know. That is, unless you've found some way of cheating the truth mist. if you have, you're the first, and I'm one hundred percent sure that you haven't."

"You even know that I haven't once, not once, thought of an escape plan."

The psychicist frowned. She said, "That's an even more puzzling phenomenon, I don't mind telling you. Even though you had no desire to escape, you still should think about it now and then. You should at least fantasize about it. Fantasizing is part of your nature. I don't understand it."

"Maybe I'm completely cured. The state finally has its perfect citizen."

The psychicist smiled again. "There is no such creature, any more than there is or ever will be a perfect state. Our society is as close to perfection as it can be. It's a benevolent despotism, but that has to be. You know something of history. You know that no other government has provided plenty of food, good housing, luxuries, free education, free medical treatment . .

"Spare me," Caird said, lifting his hand. "What I want to hear is that someday I'll walk out of this place and take my place in society again."