the strength to do as the other asked. He tried to burrow into the angle of the seat, drawing the blanket around him more tightly, trying to cocoon himself in its folds.
A current of warm air was beginning to flow from a vent under the front seat, and gradually grew in force. He tried to catch it in the flap of the blanket and draw it in toward his body. His teeth chattered briefly and he had to clamp his jaw to hold them still.
The car cornered twice, sending him lurching first one way and then the other. The back wheels skidded, but the driver turned into the skid and kept control. The glare of street-lights cast sporadic haloes of light on the window, and the stroboscopic frequency suggested to Paul that they were moving very rapidly. The windows were already steaming up with condensation.
“Do you know your name?” asked the voice, trying to provoke some response.
“Paul,” he replied, very weakly.
“Good. You’ll feel sick for some time, and it might be difficult to remember, but it will all come back eventually. The cold doesn’t help. You timed your return rather badly.”
The words echoed in Paul’s head. He had no difficulty in understanding the immediate meaning, but the implications were quite unfathomable. He had no idea what had happened to him. His mind seemed to be seized up—frozen. He could not thaw it and force his thoughts to flow. He felt lonely, and very frightened, unable to remember how he came to be where he was—if, indeed, there was any memory that could tell him. He knew his name, but he could only wonder, for the moment, whether he knew anything else.
The steady current of warm air eddying over the contours of the blanket fought the cold, and began to expel the icy sensation from his flesh, except for the three stripes of pain across his back where he had collapsed against the bars of his cage. He found the power of movement, and was able to stretch his arms and test the muscles of his feet.
Above the ridge of the front seat he could see the silhouette of the driver’s head. It was rounded, and seemed quite featureless. The head half-turned to glance down at him, and by the light of a glaring street-lamp he saw that it was masked, partly by a balaclava helmet and partly by a plastic face-mask, molded to the contours of a human face. The only holes in the mask were the eye-holes, and the eyes were hidden in pits of shadow.
“Put the clothes on,” said the smooth, sexless voice. “Please. There isn’t much time.”
Paul tried to sit up, and as he did so he was struck by dizziness and the sudden sense that the perceived world was dissolving into another, sharper image of reality. He was aware of....
jagged rocks....
caustic sand blown by a terrible wind....
the pain of lacerated fingers....
the sensation of something slithering against his skin....
a current dragging at his sense of time, his sense of self....
He gasped. Then, as suddenly as it had been born within him, it died, and was gone.
He raised his hand to catch the dim light. It was whole and unscarred. He flexed the fingers to reassure himself. The dream was quite gone, washed away like footprints in sand erased by the returning tide.
He plucked at the clothing, trying to bring it out from beneath the blanket, where it was trapped by the weight of his body. Slowly, he began to dress himself, almost amazed by the fact that he could remember how. There was a thick shirt and a woolen pullover, underpants and denim trousers.
“I don’t want to take you to any place Diehl’s likely to raid before morning,” said the driver. “Somewhere out of the way will be best, in order to give me time to find some way of getting you out. I don’t want you to tell them who you are. Hopefully, they might not recognize you. They’re used to looking after awakeners. Trust me.”
The words flowed over and around Paul, who could find nothing in them to which to connect himself. It was all incomprehensible.
“There’s no time to explain,” said the other. “I’m sorry. If only that policeman hadn’t....”
The voice broke off. The car swung around a tight bend, skidded, and stopped. Paul tried to push his feet into a pair of elastic-sided shoes, and had just accomplished the unreasonably-difficult task when the door at his shoulder was wrenched open and a gloved hand reached in to help him out. As he climbed out, he realized that he was terribly weak and sluggish, but he was now feeling a great deal better in himself. He felt alive, and ready to begin the business of living.
A street of tall terraced houses stretched for about a hundred meters either way. There were street-lamps every twenty meters or so, but only one in three was operative. He looked up at the tall buildings but he could only see two windows where light shone behind heavy blinds. One house revealed by a street-lamp had its windows boarded up and its door battered down, but he could not tell how many other dwellings had suffered similar dereliction. All the brickwork looked very old.
Beside the car, which had stopped in one of the darkened regions of the street, there was a low wall and a set of rotted iron railings. There was a gateway without a gate, and a flight of steps leading down into a deep well of shadow. Paul had to make a grab for the railings as he stumbled on the pavement. His companion caught him, and allowed him to pull away from the burning touch, supporting his weight effortlessly.
“Easy,” breathed the voice.
They paused, but only for a moment, while Paul collected himself. Then he felt himself hustled through the gateway and down into Stygian darkness.
At the bottom, when they stopped again, Paul had to lean on the shoulder of his companion, his head resting gently against the edge of the plastic mask. He heard the ringing of a bell inside the house, loud and continual, as the other pressed the doorbell intermittently and insistently.
The door opened, spilling the light of an electric torch out into the well. Paul blinked, aware only of a vague humanoid shadow.
He heard the familiar voice speak rapidly, without waiting for a question or a challenge: “Awakener. Came out less than half an hour ago. Look after him until morning. I’ll try to collect him then.” Then the support was gone, and Paul had to lean against the door-jamb. Though he heard no sound, he knew that the man in the mask was disappearing into the night.
“Wait! “ said a female voice, low and urgent. “Who are you? Wait!”
There was no answer.
A new hand reached out to take his arm and draw him into the corridor beyond the door. She didn’t ask any questions of him, but simply said: “Come on. It’ll be all right.”
He managed to get inside, so that she could close the door. Somewhere up above, sounding strangely remote, the engine of the car growled into life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ricardo Marcangelo dropped his overcoat over the back of a chair, and then moved across the room to sit in another. There was only one other man in the room: Nicholas Diehl, the chief of security. He was standing by the window, still wearing his coat.
“Lindenbaum’s on his way,” said Marcangelo, softly. He was a man of medium height, with a rounded face that might once have borne a permanent look of innocence, but which was now too lined and hardened. Marcangelo’s official
