Assignment to Disaster (20 page)

There was a black, unyielding barrier beyond.

He lost his balance and fell heavily to the floor inside the room. Light bloomed behind him and then he saw there was a double wooden shutter on the window and it was closed and bolted from the outside. It explained the darkness, the fact that day had seemed to become night. He wanted to shout his relief at the reprieve of time.

Durell climbed slowly to his feet. Franz stood in the doorway, enormous, a looming silhouette against the light behind him.

"You son-of-a-bitch," Franz said softly.

Durell stood still as the giant cat-footed toward him.

When Franz was through with him, the tides of darkness moved back and forth while he fought to remain on the surface, awake and aware of himself. For a time he seemed to float high in space, and he heard Deirdre calling from the infinite starry darkness all around him. He tried to reach for her, and found he could not move. His hands and feet were tied to the cot.

He tried to get up. It was quiet in the room. He heard only the muted, inexorable tick of his watch. He wanted to look at it, but for a long time he was afraid to do so. Finally he twisted around to look at his wrist, tied to one of the legs of the cot, and he saw it was ten o'clock. His effort to see his watch seemed to loosen the knots that held his right arm, and he began to work at these knots patiently as the minutes passed away…

He remembered a time when he was a boy. He was trapping in a swamp, and he had been careless when climbing over a wind drift. With no warning, several of the cypress logs gave way and plunged him into a deadfall. The heavy cypress boles pinned his legs, trapping him there in the isolated wilderness. The terror he had felt as a twelve-year-old boy came back sharply; he felt again the pain, the sounds of the bayou, the awful loneliness of the trapped. He remembered watching a coral snake move over the dead cypress knees; he remembered his frantic breathing, his efforts to lift the enormous weight from his legs. Panic held him. His teeth chattered. Sometimes he wept or shouted. Nobody came to help. The day waned, the sunlight died in the swamp. The insects came, humming, clicking, hungry. Once in the late night he saw distant lights and heard the halloos of searching men, like the voices of agonized ghosts. He had tried to shout, but it was as if a hand seized his throat and only a hoarse whisper came from him. Nobody came. Nobody would ever come. He would die unless he helped himself.

Finally he began scooping away the wet earth from under the logs, digging with his fingers until they bled. All sensation was gone from his legs. At dawn he was still digging at the hollow he had shaped under him. When at last he freed one leg, he could not move it, and he dragged at it with his hands, as if it were dead. Minutes later he got the other leg free and pulled himself away on his elbows. He had sobbed, because he thought his legs were paralyzed. But after a few minutes, just before he reached tie
chenière,
pain came to them in fine tinglings and then in hot spasms of cramp that made him scream. He fainted when he finally dragged himself onto the road.

Later he remembered his grandfather on the hulk of the old side-wheeler, talking to him, saying things that made him feel proud. But those words and that time were gone now…

Durell kept working on the knots that kept his right hand tied to the cot. He could make the line slip a little now, and he made a single effort, wrenching at the ropes. His skin tore on the back of his hand and blood oozed warmly over his fingers. The line slipped more easily because of the blood. He tried again. The rope slid almost to his knuckles and tightened again. He sweated. He could free himself no further. When he tried again, he knew his effort had grown more feeble.

He relaxed, gasping. Nobody came into the room. He twisted his head to look at his watch.

Eleven o'clock.

He thought of Deirdre and wondered where she was and why she had deserted him. He thought of Las Tiengas and the great, sprawling base in the hot desert, the unearthly machines and cranes and towers that lifted huge needle-shaped bulks to point toward the heavens. Up toward the stars! Someday it would happen; but not today. Today the wild power unleashed would fall back upon mankind, spreading destruction, death. He thought of John Padgett. What made a man feed on hate, relentless and unforgiving, shaking his fist at the silent, wheeling stars that had brought tragedy to his childhood? He understood Weederman, ex-Nazi, with no humility, no respite in defeat, setting former enemies at each other's throats, hoping for the world holocaust to avenge the fall of his own bloody tyranny. But for John Padgett to allow this catastrophe, to plan for it and strive and kill for it…

In the darkness of the room he heard the ping of his watch, the sound magnified by his taut senses; he visualized the tiny mainspring, the small hammer, the fine wheels and cogs and jeweled mechanism that marked the inexorable progress of life and death. He sensed the slow revolution of the earth on its axis in black space, turning seas and continents from shadow into light and into shadow again.

He worked at the knots on his wrist.

Now he was afraid to look at his watch again.

Much later, John Padgett came into the room, bringing yellow light that fell on Durell as he lay on the cot. Padgett limped to the cot and sat on a chair, his movements heavy. His bony shoulders and knees were all large, awkward angles.

"I am sorry we had to get rough, Durell. You are a stubborn man. For a time, I had the feeling I could not stop you." Padgett paused. "It's getting late now."

"I've been wondering," Durell said. "What happens if some of the fall-out covers this part of the coast? You go under along with everyone else."

"I will not be here. I am leaving soon for South America."

"For exile, you mean," Durell said. "And you have no pity for your victims?"

"They are merely statistics, and even as statistics, I hold hate and contempt for them. Man deserves a new Stone Age." Padgett's voice was harsh. "I had great promise once. I was a child prodigy, a mathematical wizard. It was like carrying an electronic computer around in my head. But because my father and mother died penniless, nothing much came of it. I hated my torn and crippled leg, the poverty, the struggle, the times I was put on display at various universities and exhibited as if I were a freak. Do you understand? But Cyclops will make it all even."

"Did you work on the scheme with Weederman?"

"Of course. We understood each other. But I kept what I knew to myself. He would have preferred blueprints, naturally, and schematic diagrams. I gave him nothing."

"You killed him," Durell said.

"He became obsessed with the thought that I was not keeping my part of the bargain. He upbraided me for leaving the fold, knowing my early record, knowing how I had joined various organizations under Calvin's name. I would not tolerate him or his words. He repelled me. What I did was solely for myself, do you understand?"

"No," Durell said.

"He had no reason to kill Calvin," Padgett said.

"So you avenged him?"

"Call it that. He was interfering with me."

"And now you insist on finishing what you've started?"

"I must."

Durell said, "I'm sorry for you, John. Do you know that?"

"Sorry?" Padgett's voice sharpened. "I did not come in here for your maudlin sympathy. What have you got to be smug about, as you are?"

"I'm not smug. I'm afraid. I've never been so afraid before. And yet I'm sorry for you."

Padgett was suddenly in a deep rage. He lurched up from the chair, knocking it over with a crash, and turned as if to leave the room. Then he limped back, cane in hand, and towered enormously over the cot Durell could not move. Reaching down, Padgett covered Durell's mouth with a trembling hand, fingers digging lightly, then with cruel strength into Durell's flesh. Abruptly he slapped Durell. Durell made no sound. Padgett lifted the cane and hit his body again and again, and the worst of it for Durell was that it was all done in silence except for the shock and sound of the blows. It was a silence that screamed of perverted hatreds.

When Padgett stepped back, gasping, Durell still had not made a sound.

"Damn you," the man whispered, and left the room.

His watch had stopped. He could not remember when he had wound it last, and now it was silent, marking the hour of noon. Time and space held him in sluggish suspension, in which the lightning of pain slowly grew dim.

Because of the shuttered window, the room was still dark when he began working again at the ropes on his wrist. The blood from his torn skin had clotted on the line, and his first efforts tore the clots loose with a single shriek of pain. Sweating, he felt fresh blood ooze from the back of his hand. But now the rope slid easily over the lubrication provided by the wound. On the third try, the rope slid over one knuckle and the widest part of his twisted palm.

And suddenly his hand was free.

He lay still. A pattering sound filled the darkness, and he could not identify it. Then he knew it was rain. The rain became a sudden downpour, and its thunder and beat provided a cover for his next moves. His fingers were stiff, hampered by pain. He tore at the stubborn braids with his teeth until he had to stop and rest. He could hear nothing above the rattle and beat of summer rain on the roof. A leak began in the opposite corner of the room.

Now both hands were free. But he was shaking and spent when he finally sat up and swung his legs off the cot and tried to stand.

His legs collapsed. They would not support him. He pulled himself up and massaged them. The cot creaked with his movements. A chair thumped suddenly in the next room and Durell was still, listening to the guttural sound of Franz's voice, hating it with every fiber of his being. After another moment, he tried to stand again.

This time he succeeded, but he swayed like a drunken man. He wanted to let it all go. He wanted to stop punishing himself, to sleep and forget. But he could not sleep and he could not forget.

There was a cunning in him like that of an animal, and his thoughts did not move in fully rational channels. Breathing quietly, he tried to sense through the darkness the position of chairs and table. When he shuffled forward, he immediately felt the wooden chair that John Padgett had overturned. He knew there was no hope beyond the door where Franz waited. Yet his mind pursued one path, surely and directly.

He remembered the oil lantern hanging on the wall.

He went for it slowly, testing the floor so it would not creak with his weight. Once he stood frozen as he heard another spate of talk from beyond the door. The rain drummed hard on the roof. Thunder muttered, and he shivered in the clammy air that filled the room. Finally he reached the opposite wall and found the oil lantern hanging from its nail, as he had remembered it.

Briefly, as he held it by the wire handle, he suffered a terrible fear that the oil reservoir was empty. But when he shook it, he heard the soft splash of fuel inside.

Now he worked faster, at the window, feeling for the glass he had smashed earlier. His fingers were clumsy at the job of unscrewing the oil cap, and then, reaching through the broken window, he splashed the oil carefully on the wooden shutter that barred him from freedom. There was not much oil. He saved some to form a pool on the window sill, and then he put down the lantern and searched his clothing for a match.

He had no match.

He stood still in dark defeat. His mind refused to function further. He could not move. Thunder rolled and the rain came down with new intensity. He heard Franz talking again. At last he turned and moved back to the wall where he had found the lantern. He could see nothing. He groped on the shelf, fumbled around the contours of several cans, a glass bottle, more cans. His fingers closed around a box of wooden matches.

Back at the window, the smell of spilled kerosene stung his nostrils. His hands shook as he struck a match and watched it sputter and burst into flame like a tiny bomb.

The kerosene caught with a hiss and crackle and the room suddenly glowed with the fire that leaped up the wooden shutter. Durell stepped back. Smoke curled and lifted through the room. The hungry flames ate at the tinder-dry sill and the shutter that barred his way. The smoke made his eyes smart. He wondered how long it would be before Franz noticed the smoke, and he picked up the wooden chair John Padgett had used and held it ready in his hands.

An impatience seized him as he watched the growing flames, but he waited until the last possible moment. When he heard Franz's sudden shout of alarm as the smoke finally reached the other room, Durell smashed the chair with all his strength against the burning barrier. The chair shattered in his grip. From behind him came another shout, and then the sound of bolts being withdrawn from the door. Durell slammed the chair remnants against the shutter again. This time the burning wood burst open and fell in flaming brands inside and out of the room. The heat seared Durell's face as the fire was blown inward. Smoke blinded him.

"Durell! Stay where you are!"

It was Franz, roaring in exasperation. Durell hurled the burning, broken chair at the doorway and, without waiting to see the result, gathered himself and dived headlong through the burning window.

Broken glass ripped at his arms and hands and then he was through, rolling over and over in the thick marsh grass outside, stumbling and splashing through ankle-deep salt water. He stood up, drawing in great breaths of cool, fresh air. The rain beat heavily on his head. He saw that the bay and the shore all around him were bathed in the gray, rain-swept light of early afternoon.

He ran. Someone shouted, and he looked back and saw the whole side of the shack in flames. It was a tumbledown affair on stilts at the water's edge. There was a small inlet where the crab boat was moored, and a dirt road that curved through a wilderness of swamp and scrub woods. The heavy foliage drooped forlornly in the pounding rain. To the south the beach was open, a wide vista of salt-water flats; northward, the swamp was a thickly matted growth that crowded to the water's edge.