Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Okay, Mr. Murdock?” he asked.

“Okay,” Murdock echoed, stumbling to the ground.

The ground. He realized it was okay. He was here. Safe, sound, and in one piece. He felt a rush of fondness for the smiling, competent pilot who’d managed this miracle.

“Punta Gorda,” the pilot said. “Ain’t changed a bit since I was here last.”

“I’ve got to take care of some business,” Murdock said. “Can you wait for me?”

“Depends. How long you gonna be?”

“Only an hour or two, I hope.”

“I reckon I can hang around that long. Till five maybe. Gotta head back then. Mom hates it when I’m late for supper.”

“If I can’t get back by then, how can I get in touch with you?”

“You just call the airport at Fort Myers, Mr. Murdock. We’ll be havin’ supper right there in our own little hangar. You’d be downright amazed what Mom can cook up on that hot plate. If you need me, I’ll fly back down here after we eat.”

“Wait,” Murdock said. “I’ll be here.”

A sign with the wreathed-dragon symbol of TPC hung from a post in front of the candy-striped hangar. Inside, Murdock found that the office was a lot like the one he’d just left back in Fort Myers. Except that this one wasn’t cobwebby. In fact, it looked like it had just been uncrated and set to cool. The public phone booth beside the door was empty.

“It ain’t workin’,” a twanging nasal whine informed him.

A redheaded kid with no eyebrows and a huge adam’s apple. He leaned against the frame of the office door.

“I’m not surprised,” Murdock said with a sigh. “I need a taxi.”

The kid shook his head. “They don’t come out this way.”

“How are people supposed to get to town from here?”

The kid shrugged. “We hardly ever see anybody. Me, I ride a bi-sickle. Gonna get a motor-sickle next year, though.” He twisted his hand in the air in front of him. “Vroom, vroom, vroom.”

“How far are we from the Loshun Mall?” Murdock asked.

“ ‘Bout two miles or so. More or less. Vroom. Maybe.”

“And I can’t get a taxi?”

“Looks like.”

“I can’t walk it.”

The kid stared at Murdock’s legs. His eyes narrowed. “Wanna rent my bike?”

Murdock considered it. The idea wasn’t very appealing. But it would be better than walking. It had been a long time since he had ridden one, though. Well, they said once you’d learned to swim or ride a bike you never completely lost the ability.

“How much?” he asked.

The unbrowed eyes narrowed further. The lips pursed. “How long?”

“Till five.”

“Ten bucks,” the kid said.

“I’ll walk.”

“Five bucks. I ain’t gonna go no lower. Take it or leave it.”

It would have been worth five. There was a lot more than that at stake. But a principle was at stake, too.

Murdock said, “Two fifty, and you’re robbing me blind at that.”

The kid held out his hand. “In advance, mister. I gotta have a deposit, too. Gotta be sure you’ll come back.”

Murdock stared at the hand. It was filthy. “You should try washing that once in a while,” he said.

“Hell, spit and crud’s the only things holding it together.”

Murdock doled out the two fifty.

“And twenty-five dollars deposit.”

“Come on.”

“Take it or leave it,” the kid said, stuffing the two fifty into his pocket.

Murdock peeled out two tens and a five. “I want a receipt for that.”

The kid shrugged again. “Watch third gear. Slips on hills.”

“A receipt,” Murdock insisted, not sure whether he should feel silly about it or not. But sure that he wanted the receipt. Business was business. He waited while the kid scrawled something illegible on a dirty scrap of paper with a burnt match.

The bicycle had a low narrow seat and high handlebars. A three-speed shift and a handbrake. He leaned it away from the wall of the hangar, got gingerly aboard, and pedaled off, wobbling badly.

The afternoon was getting warmer.

Loshun Mall sprawled in the midst of a vast parking lot. It was a squat white concrete block structure with one single glass and plastic office tower rising upward from it like an obscenity finger. The tower was the pride of Punta Gorda. Originally it had been twenty-eight stories high. Then it had blown over. They built it up again, this time five stories less. It blew over again. Three rebuildings later, it was twelve stories high and hopeful. It rose directly from the center of the Mall building.

There were rows of racks for bicycles outside the Mall entrance. They were all full. Murdock leaned his bike against a wall and joined the teeming throng of shoppers that flowed through the open doorways.

It was like walking through a waterfall. A curtain of cold air boxing in a solid block of artificial atmosphere. The Mall was a frigid tropical paradise. Its high acoustic ceiling was speckled with colored lights. Plush plastic birds of every hue sang recorded songs as they hung suspended from almost invisible wires or perched in the Styraflex palms that lined the walks. Planters carved from mahogany-stained coquina were filled to overflowing with large-leafed machine-made foliage. Cast concrete benches nestled among them, lit by incandescent cressets, lined with exhausted shoppers.

The stores fronting into the Mall beckoned with open doors and brilliant window displays. Swords, sterling silver, lava lamps, patent medicines, shoes, puppies and boa constrictors, suits and dresses and garden implements, toys, guns, religious statuary.

An insurance company display showed a beautifully ornate casket with a sign above it saying:

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY!

DON’T MAKE IT HARD ON YOUR LOVED ONES!

PASS AWAY HAPPILY—CHAT

A WHILE WITH OUR FRIENDLY

HELPFUL STAFF.

Murdock finally found the directory. Loshun Tower wasn’t listed. Evidently it couldn’t be reached from this particular passageway. He backtracked to the outside and tried a different entrance. It, too, failed to get him to the Tower.

Outside again, he surveyed the parking lot and wondered just how one got from here to the office building. A boy of about ten bounced by on a pogo stick. A poodle in sunglasses led a woman in sunglasses past on the end of a leash. The dog stopped and watered a plastic palm. A policeman ambled slowly along, swinging his stunstick. Murdock walked toward him.

“Excuse me, officer.”

The cop halted and turned on him. “Don’t come too close, mister.”

“I just want directions.”

“Stand back a little there. Okay, what’s the problem?”

“I’m looking for the entrance to Loshun Tower.”

“That way,” the cop said, pointing with the stunstick. “Back off now.”

Murdock backed, restraining the impulse to cut and run.

In the cool that leaked through the air curtain, a man in a long white robe with a deep cowl marched back and forth, his sandals slapping softly on the maroon indoor-outdoor carpeting. He shouldered a sign that said:

LISTEN, CHILDREN!

He confronted Murdock.

Murdock tried to edge past him.

The man’s impossibly thick black beard bristled out from the shadow that half-hid his face. As he sidestepped to block Murdock’s way, he said, “The spawning rivers are running dry! Prepare yourself, for the days of wrath are at hand!”

Murdock tried to go around. The man moved with him, holding out a folded slip of pink paper. Murdock took it. The robed figure didn’t move.

“Get out of my way or I’ll call a cop,” Murdock said.

“ I am a cop,” Blackbeard intoned. “I only do this during my off-duty time.” He jutted his beard at Murdock again and added, “Prepare yourself, for the days of wrath are at hand! The spawning rivers are running dry!”