Logan's Search (3 page)

Logan awakened to the smiling female on the flowbed beside him. In the rich spill of moonlight from an open skyvent her body was flushed ivory. She wore a sheergold loverobe, accenting the peaks and hollows of her soft flesh. Her beauty was flawless.

“Remember me?” she asked in a voice of velvet. “I’m Phedra 12…from Arcade.” She frowned, studying his face. “You look strange. Are you lifted?”

Her question supplied Logan with an answer to mask his obvious confusion: “I took some Y-16 earlier tonight.”

“Y-16?”

“New formula,” Logan improvised. “Not in the ‘mills yet.”

She smiled again, relaxing against him, melding her body to his. “You DS have the best.always.” 

He kissed her pouting lips. “How’d you get in?”

“With this,” she said, holding up a thin slotkey. “Remember? You gave it to me at the firegallery last week…I dance there.”

Young Logan had been attracted to her, had made contact, had invited her here. “I remember now,” said Logan, taking her firmly into his arms.

She was here for sex, and he’d oblige. Any other reaction would appear perverted; a young Sandman was expected to fulfill his natural urges with many women. But as Logan reached out to caress her face he flinched, jaw muscles tightening.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

His hand glowed crimson against her cheek; the time-crystal in his palm was alive again! He smiled, shaking his head. “Nothing…nothing’s wrong.” “It’s the Y-16,” she said. “Can you—I mean, are you able to—”

In answer, he tongue-kissed her deeply, fitting himself into the heated curve of her waiting body. He thrust into her, bringing a soft cat-cry from her arching throat.

But as Logan made love to Phedra 12 he felt a sense of dread building darkly within him. His glowing hand was a terrible reminder of the world he thought he had escaped forever. It was back, now, all around him—as real as the cry of passion he wrung from her trembling lips…

He did not sleep after Phedra left. In a loose velvrobe, he prowled the lifeunit, probing, analyzing, examining the artifacts of young Logan’s life—as an ancient anthropologist might sift through the habitat of a lost tribesman.

He was trying to understand this other self, this dedicated young Sandman who homered runners with cool dispatch, who wore the death-black uniform of DS with pride, who guiltlessly helped perpetuate a system of mass murder.

Logan stared at him, at this trim-bodied young fighting machine of a man, carefully studying the sharp reflection in the wall mirror. Me, more than a decade ago. Me, still on red, well short of twenty-one, still on the hunt, still able to coldly track a fellow human, corner him, rip and unravel him with a homer. But me with something inside that cried: No!

And that was the difference.

From the beginning, in his own world, buried deep in his psyche, Logan had experienced a sense of wrongness; a faint, insistent pulsebeat of rebellion had existed beyond his conscious awareness. With Jessica’s entry into his life that rebellion had burst forth; her love had nurtured and encouraged it. She had been the bridge that took him from Sandman to runner.

Could it happen again, here on this Earth? Could young Logan have changed, given the love of a woman like Jessica? Could he, too, have broken free of the system? From all the evidence here in this unit, and from what he already knew of this world, it seemed unlikely.

Each world was different; each man must form his own personal code of morality. Young Logan was one kind of man; he was another.

Turning his back on this reflection of a darker self, Logan walked to the plexwindow. He stood, unmoving, more than a mile above the city, watching the sun lay its thin morning fire across the eastern sky.

Then a timebird stirred the air around his head, reminding him that he must report for duty. He drew the bird from his shoulder, clicking it off; he cleared his mind, steeled himself for what lay ahead.

Time to report to DS. Time to put on the black uniform of a Sandman once more.

Time to live another man’s life.

,,,Areturn to your yesterdays.

As the aliens had promised him it would be, this world beyond the lifeunit was an instant relive: the moving tide of young citizens, many with fear-haunted eyes (already anticipating Lastday); the black-garbed DS men, seeded darkly through the crowd, always separate from those around them (Give a Sandman space, never crowd him, keep your proper distance, he may be on the hunt!); the festive children with their flushed, excited faces, pleasure-bent and as yet untroubled by thought of Sleep; the police paravanes, hovering like predatory metal insects above the crowd, patrolling the upper levels of the Complex. All of it, painfully familiar.

And now the dropway, leading down to the maze platform.

Riding the car to DS Headquarters, Logan stared at his right palm, at the unblinking red glow of the flower-shaped crystal imbedded in the flesh of his hand. The aliens were brilliant; no one on Earth had ever been able to reprogram a timeflower—yet Logan’s crystal was alive again, ticking off the hours of life.Even for a Sandman, at twenty-one, when his palmflower blinks red-black, red-black, red-black, Lastday begins and there is no escape from Deep Sleep.

Except here, thought Logan, in this world, where a select few could achieve Godbirth, that mysterious ritual promising life, salvation, a higher existence.

Was it real?

When would it begin?

“Where’s your Gun?”

Startled, Logan turned toward the back of the mazecar. The question had come from an eager-eyed blond youngster in a splitsleeve recsuit. He wore red hikeboots, and he smiled at Logan, obviously unafraid of Sandmen.

“I’m reporting in,” said Logan. “My weapon’s at DS.”

“Then how come you’re suited up?” asked the boy. “Off-duty Sandmen are required to wear—” 

“I know the rules,” cut in Logan. “So I’m bending one.”

“You could be fined. It could go on your Statsheet. You could be blackmarked, and that would lower your unit average.”

“You know a lot about DS.”

“I’m going to be a Sandman when I’m old enough,” declared the boy, eyes shining. “My name’s Timson 4.”

“How old are you, Timson?”

“Seven.” He held up his right hand, palm out. “I just went to blue. Released from Nursery last month.” He slapped his left boot. “I’ve already climbed the Matterhorn. Not many blues make it all the way. Three others in our group were killed trying it, and they were all older.”

“Congratulations,” said Logan.

“I even helped a Sandman Gun a runner! Along the Mississippi, near the Orleans Complex. He tried to get across in a small boat. I saw him steal it and I dived in and tipped the boat over. The Sandman who’d been after him used a ripper on him as he was swimming for shore. Cut him in half! The water was all red. It was exciting!”

“Why do you want to be a Sandman?”

“To kill runners. Somebody has to kill them.” The boy’s eyes grew cold. “They’re scum. They have to die.”

“For all you know, your mother might have been a runner,” Logan found himself saying. “Or your father.”

The boy was shocked. His face clouded with anger. “Whoever they were, they wouldn’t run! Not ever!” 

“You never know who might run,” said Logan. “You get surprised sometimes.” 

Now the boy was staring at him with cool distrust. “Just who are you, anyway? What’s your name?” 

“Logan 3.”

Timson’s eyes popped wide. “Have you heard of me?’

The boy gulped breath, spilling out a rapid stream of words: “You work with Francis and your killscore next to his is highest in the Complex and I’m sorry I said that about your uniform and about getting fined for breaking a rule and—” He broke off abruptly and extended a trembling hand. “Will you shake hands with me, Logan?”

Logan shook his hand. He wanted to tell this boy, Don’t worship me! Don’t try to become like me. Killing runners is wrong. Joining DS is wrong. The system is wrong. It will destroy you as you destroy others.

But he remained silent. Saying these things would be useless; the boy was beyond moral logic. The tapes had done their work. Timson 4 was a product of the system, as carefully manufactured as a robot, programmed to hate, to kill. Thus, Logan said nothing more as the silver car slotted into its destination platform.

He could feel the boy’s eyes on him as he left the maze.

DS Headquarters.

Unchanged, timeless, grimly austere—a windowless gray monolith rising starkly into the sky of the Angeles Complex, set apart from its surrounding buildings as a DS man is set apart from the crowd, a structure designed to strike fear into the heart of any citizen wavering between accepting Sleep or becoming a runner.

Logan mounted the steps as two men exited the building. He immediately recognized the taller: Evans 9! The childhood friend who had betrayed him at Crazy Horse, who had lured him into a deathtrap on his own world.

“Logan!” Smiling broadly, Evans walked toward him. “We were just talking about you.”

The man with Evans was nervous, raw-looking, a DS trainee on the verge of Sandman status.

“This is Marak 9. I’ve been working with him, showing him a few things…learns fast…bright…you know, he’s really—”

As Evans rambled on, Logan barely heard the words; in his mind, he had the image of this man at Crazy Horse, at the Thinker’s Central Core, a Gun in his hand, smiling as Jonath died…Logan was using all his willpower to keep from smashing his fist into Evans’s face.

“…to meet you at last…heard so much about you…”

Marak was babbling uncertain praise. Logan glared at Evans, ignoring Marak, then suddenly pushed past them into the building.

Behind him, he heard Evans shout his name in startled anger. Then the heavy DS entrance door slid closed, cutting off the sound.

Just inside, Logan paused, drew a long breath telling himself, fiercely, that he must never react this way again, that he must rigorously keep the two worlds separate in his mind. He must never allow emotions relating to his world to dictate present behavior in this one. If you do, you’ll ruin it all, he warned himself, you’ll lose Godbirth, lose your chance to succeed in this mission, lose Jess and Jaq forever. Damn you, never again!
Never!

And, breathing deeply, he moved toward the readyroom.

It was crowded with DS on shiftchange, suiting up for duty. Already uniformed, Logan had only to check out a Follower and an ammopac. As he did this, his name was called by the talkboard. Message for him.

“Logan 3,” he said, facing the board, “Message?”

“From Francis,” the board told him. “Waiting in the Huntarea. You are to join him there.” 

“Acknowledged,” Logan said.

He faced a challenge. Logan was standing before the Gunwall at the end of the weapons corridor. If the skin-pattern alterations on his palm were less than perfect, an alarm would sound the moment he touched the wall—and before he could attempt an explanation he’d be Gunned to ash.

“Identity,” repeated the metallic voice. It had already challenged him once; Logan knew he
must
respond.

He pressed the palm of his left hand firmly into the wall’s identiplate. No alarm! Accepted. A panel gleamed back to reveal the Gun, nested in its black-velvet alcove.

But the challenge was not over. Now, another critical stage. The alteration on his palm had been properly matched to young Logan’s—but if the more complex pore configuration on his thumb and forgers was even microscopically incorrect, the Gun would detonate upon skin contact, since each DS weapon was pore-coded to the individual operative to whom it was issued.

Logan could feel the sweat beading his upper lip as he slowly reached in to curl his fingers around the cool pearl handle of the Gun.

Full contact. Perfect.

The corridor lights glinted along the dark blue barrel as Logan checked the weapon for full load: tangler, ripper, needler, nitro, vapor—and the deadly, body-tracking, nerve-destroying homer.

There was no denying the power of the Gun. Logan had fought his way to the Keys with such a weapon; he had used a Sandman’s Gun to win back Jessica from the Borgia Riders. Now he felt the power radiating through his fingers and arm, firing his flesh. Power and killing force.

To use as chosen—for good or for evil.

Logan had never liked simkill workouts in the Huntarea, but they were required for all DS, designed (as the manual phrased it) “to tune the reflexes and sharpen an operative’s reaction time to situations not normally encountered in the course of a standard outside hunt.”

Francis held the highest simkill score at Angeles. All his simulated kills were clean; he never wounded. He was deadly accurate at almost any range, no matter how difficult the situation or the terrain. Francis was exactly what his record indicated: the ideal DS operative—keen-minded, inventive, emotionless, precise. Francis did not make mistakes, and when a runner made one, he was there, a tireless force, to take advantage of it, of any weakness.

And eventually, Logan thought, I must kill him, just as the aliens said. He will have to be stopped.

But not today. No, today I’ll hunt with him, match my skill against his, giving him no reason to mistrust me.

Because, at this moment, to Logan, Francis was the most important man alive on this death-haunted planet.

Logan crossed the yard, a reserve area for DS trainees. A dozen of them, wearing opaque headshields, were engaged in Blind Combat, led by a flat faced instructor who displayed open disgust as he slammed one young trainee after another into the dirt.

“Concentrate!” he lashed at them. “Determine my approach angle from the sound of my boots. Runner at night won’t give you warning. Cut your throat from behind. Strangle on your own blood! No second chance then—so concentrate now!”

As he watched, Logan was suddenly aware of a faint scraping sound behind him, but before he could turn he was dumped into the yard, belly down.

A dry chuckle above him. “Concentrate, Logan, concentrate!”

“Damn you, Francis!”

Logan stood up, brushing sand from his tunic. He glared at the tall, thin man in black. The eyes were darker than midnight, mocking and steady in the narrow, lean-cheeked face. These eyes missed nothing. Unblinking, penetrating, they measured Logan with a glint of cold humor.