SIX

   THE seminar had gone well. On Friday evening Mary Fabriano, one of the students, gave an end-of-class cocktail party at her apartment in Catania. Gideon was forced to accept, inasmuch as he was more or less the guest of honor. As it was, he had a good time. Mary, a young nurse with wildly provocative buttocks, went out of her way to make it clear that she found him attractive and that she was unengaged for the rest of the night. He flirted with her for a while, enjoying himself. As usual, however, when it came down to brass tacks he retreated, as he had been doing since Nora’s death.

He left the party at eleven o’clock, depressed and angry with himself and the world. He had wanted to go to bed with Mary, all right. Of course he had. Why shouldn’t he? He needed sex like anybody else. He didn’t just need it; he liked it—he liked it a lot. At least he thought he did. It had been so damn long, maybe he was forgetting.

When he turned off the highway onto the Dump Road, he was deep in his thoughts. He barely noticed the dark young man watching him so intently from the passenger seat of the car slowly going the other way. Probably he wouldn’t have noticed him in any case. His few days of Sicilian driving had inured him to the scrutiny that occupants of passing cars accorded each other. What should have caught his attention, however, was the peculiar fact that anyone at all was emerging from the Dump Road after midnight. The Dump Road—no one seemed to know its real name, but the nickname was apt—was a narrow, back-country route between Sigonella and the Catania highway, used mainly as a route to work by base employees.

The night was clear, the road deserted and straight. Gideon plunged ahead at Sicilian speed, sunk in gloom. He could have been back at that cocktail party right now, damn it, going through all the delicious rigamarole of the Western pre-mating ritual. Instead, he was zooming down this black, godforsaken road, speeding toward another empty night.

He really had to have a heart-to-heart talk with himself one of these days. It wasn’t that he was trying to be faithful to Nora. That would be morbid, and she wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. It was just that he needed something— something he couldn’t identify—that he hadn’t found in anyone since Nora.

There was no shortage of sexy, available women around—that certainly wasn’t the problem—but they wanted either one-night quickies or Meaningful Relationships. For him, the one would have been tawdry, the other …well, he just wasn’t ready. It was funny, really. In his Social Institutions seminar, he separated them neatly into two concepts: the sexual drive was an ancient biological imperative, rooted in the pre-human past, whereas romance was merely a recent artifact, and a dying one at that; a twelfth-century French response to the non-ethics of feudalism. He really believed all that, or thought he did. Yet here he was tied up in knots and going without either sex or romance, horny and love-starved at the same time. Maybe what he needed most—

He saw the dark shape of the car blocking the middle of the road a split second before its headlights went on, blinding him utterly. His foot clamped to the brake pedal, the wheels locked, and he went slipping and sliding toward the stopped car as if he were on ice. Except for the screeching of the tires, it was strangely like floating in a dream.

He was, to his dismay, on a low one-lane bridge with no possibility of turning off the roadway. For the second time in a week, he was sure he was about to die, but with teeth clenched and muscles straining, he stepped on the brake and foolishly pulled back on the wheel. And somehow the weaving vehicle stayed on the bridge and slowed enough so that it finally slid into the stopped car at three or four miles an hour. There was a soft clunk, like a beer can crumpling, and then a gentle, tinkling shower of headlight shards to the ground. Then silence and darkness.

Acting by instinct, Gideon fumbled free from his seat belt, flung open the door, scrambled out, and leaped over the side of the bridge to the gully a few feet below. He landed on his feet somehow, and floundered his way through underbrush and muck, back toward the end of the bridge from which he’d come. Then the flashlights went on and the shouting started, and he ducked back under the bridge and threw himself down into the foul-smelling mud behind a concrete bridge support. He lay on his stomach in the slime, panting and wet. By working his chin a little deeper into it, he was able to look back toward the center of the bridge, where the shouting was coming from.

It sounded like Italian. They were angry, perhaps swearing at each other. His eyes had adapted to the night, and he could see that there were three men. Two of them were gesticulating, appealing to the third: a tall, slender man who stood silent and immobile. The beams from the flashlights darted down from the bridge, playing over the land near where he had jumped. He would be hard to find, Gideon thought. The ground was rough and strewn with rocks, with a lot of bushes big enough to shield him. Unless they happened to search in the right place, he might be able to keep away from them until he made it back to the bank of the gully only twenty feet behind him. Once he scrambled up that, the ground would be flat and easy to run on, with trees to block him from sight until he could get to the little village a mile down the road.

There were, however, two problems, both major. First, the terrain between himself and the bank, lying as it did in the shadow of the bridge, had no protective bushes; moreover, the ground was swampy, full of litter, and difficult to traverse, particularly in the dark. Second, he was crouched in one of the first places they would look once they climbed down from the bridge and saw that the supports at either end provided obvious cover. That is, if they climbed down. For the moment his best bet was to stay where he was until he had a better idea of what they had in mind.

There was a sudden clattering on the pebbles a few feet behind him. Gideon twitched violently, banging his head hard enough against the concrete to see stars. Between the stars he caught a glimpse of a large hare that contemplated him with wide, shining eyes for a fraction of a second and then skittered away. At the same moment the beams swung down to where the hare had been, and there was a flurry of shots—Gideon could hear some of them thunk into the earth—while the lights played frantically over the area. They were shooting from almost directly above him. Gideon could see their pistols, three of them, held out over the side of the bridge, bouncing with the repercussions of the shots.

They were trying to kill him. He had been reacting, not thinking, since the headlights had blinded him, and the thought came as a surprise. They weren’t trying to rob him, and they had no questions about "it," no silken cord to force information from him. They weren’t shouting at him to stop or to come out with his hands up. They weren’t shouting at all; they were just shooting at what they thought was him with guns that made very loud bangs.

Gideon had never been around guns much—not at all, actually—and their loudness stunned him. He jumped at every shot, as he did in a theater when an actor fired a gun. When they stopped at last, after what could have been no more than half a minute, he found that he had his eyes screwed shut.

He opened them to see the light beams sweeping over the gully and along the banks. The hare had apparently gotten away. That’s good, he thought. They had been shooting wildly, without ever focusing on or possibly even seeing their target. Now they were back to shouting at each other. He might just possibly have a chance.

Except that he couldn’t think of anything to do. As soon as they had started firing, he had changed his mind about waiting them out. He wasn’t about to lie there meekly and let them kill him. But without a weapon, or even with one, he was no match for three armed assassins. As for escaping, the moment he moved from behind the support, they’d catch him with their flashlights and mow him down. All he could think of was to toss a rock or a rusty can as far as he could, to engage their attention, and then to run for the bank behind him.

It was hard to get terribly enthusiastic about the idea. A rock or a can bouncing over the ground wasn’t likely to fool anyone. It would sound just like what it was, and they would have their beams on him and their bullets into him before he got three steps. But he didn’t have any other ideas.

Near his right hand he saw a plastic sack of garbage that was tied at the neck; that, at least, would sound more like a body if he threw it. He reached for it and twisted his head around to assess the run he would have to make. The land was rough and ran slightly uphill, but there were no large bushes or rocks in the way. With all the litter, though, and puddles of ooze, he’d have to watch carefully where he was going. He’d have to get into a runner’s starting crouch—there wasn’t room under the bridge to stand up— facing the bank a few feet downstream. Then he’d throw the garbage behind him and a little upstream. The moment it hit, he’d run. If they went for the bait, they’d be on the upstream side of the bridge, and the bridge itself would shield him. He’d have to crouch as he ran four, maybe five steps, Groucho-Marx-style. Another two strides would take him over the bank. Then, if they hadn’t yet seen him, he’d drop flat on his belly and inch away toward the stand of trees. If they had seen him, however, he’d just run like hell.

Some plan: Option A, crawl like a snake; Option B, run like a rabbit. Still, the rabbit had made it.

There seemed to be some purposeful activity on the bridge now. Gideon could see from the flashlight beams that the men were separating. Chances were, they were splitting up to search for him. Now was the time.

He pushed himself into a kneeling position and grabbed the bag of garbage. It was good to move, to contract his muscles. He could almost feel his autonomic nervous system go smoothly to work, pumping out the adrenalin. More exhilarated than frightened, he was optimistic now about making it, and anxious to give it a try. He longed in fact for a physical encounter, a showdown, but he knew he’d be crazy to try it.

As he shifted his hand to a throwing grasp around the neck of the bag, someone lowered a flashlight an arm’s length over the side at the far end of the bridge, where he had jumped off, and swept the beam in a circle. Gideon had to drop flat again, his eye to the space between bridge support and brace. Just before the beam reached him, he realized with a start of horror that he hadn’t let go of the bag, that his right arm was out in the open, not behind the support. He had no time to move it, however, before the beam was on him, lighting up his wet and glistening forearm, it seemed to him, like a multi-faceted diamond, throwing reflections and rays in every direction. As the beam hovered for a moment, an icy sweat jumped to the surface of his skin below the warmer layer of muck. He lay, breathless and tight-chested, waiting for the bullets, exerting all his control not to pull his arm out of the light and get up and make his run right then.

And the beam moved on; somehow they had failed to see him. He lay trembling in the slime. His autonomic nervous system seemed to have changed its mind; a physical encounter was the last thing in the world he wanted.

When he raised his head to look toward the far end of the bridge, he saw a pair of legs dangling from where the flashlight had been shining. The man sat on the edge of the bridge for a second and then dropped to the muddy stream bed with a soft plop. Gideon was surprised to see that the drop was a good six feet. He had been lucky not to break a leg when he had plunged blindly over the side. The first man then helped a second down—the tall, slender one— and they both moved toward the support at the far end, pistols and flashlights in hand. Gideon felt an absurd flash of relief that he had made for this support instead of that one; it gave him perhaps another minute before he was discovered.

He remembered seeing a broom handle nearby when he had reached for the garbage bag. Now, without taking his eyes from the two men, he moved his hands through the filth until he found it. It was only a two-foot length, cracked and splintered at one end; not much protection against two guns.

As he slid it toward him, another pair of legs swung suddenly over the side almost directly above him. Without moving from his place, he could have swatted them with the broomstick, had he wanted to. He quickly gathered himself into a crouch as his nervous system switched on again with a click that was nearly perceptible.

The man above him shone his flashlight down to check the surface. Gideon noted that it was in his left hand. If he had a gun, and Gideon was sure he did, it would be in the right. The dangling legs wriggled a little as the buttocks above them sought a better grip on the edge of the bridge. Gideon could see that the pants were tightly cut and the shoes had high, stylish heels. Finally, the body pushed off with a wriggle of the legs, and the man came down.

Gideon uncoiled and launched himself at the dark figure a fraction of a second before the feet touched earth. He wanted to hit him at the precise moment he landed, when he would, for the barest instant, be concentrating on his equilibrium. Coming at him from behind, Gideon whipped the broom handle down at the back of the man’s right hand.

Three things went wrong. First, Gideon’s left ankle seemed to give way under him as he came out of his crouch, and he slipped. Second, the bulging, slippery garbage bag somehow got in his way and nearly overturned him. Third, the man landed awkwardly and twisted his body around to try to keep his balance. Thus Gideon’s blow was tardy by about a third of a second; the figure was nearly facing him instead of landing with his back to him; and the target—the gun-holding right hand—was flailing around on Gideon’s left instead of hanging motionlessly on the right, where it belonged.

The broom handle, as a result, came down on the side of the man’s neck, sloppily but hard. The look on his face was so innocently astounded that for a preposterous second, Gideon wanted to apologize. He was only about twenty, lean and powerfully built but smaller than Gideon. Even in the dark, Gideon could see that he was badly shaken.

They stood looking at each other for a ridiculously long time. Then Gideon said suddenly, "Look, this is crazy. I don’t want to hurt you—"

The boy leaped back and pointed the gun directly at Gideon’s face. Gideon ducked and grabbed for his wrist with his left hand. Instead, he caught the barrel of the pistol. He held it off to the side, pointing away from them and, off balance, tried to twist it free. Somehow, the boy held on to it and managed to fire a shot. Immediately there was a shout from the other end of the bridge.

"Marco!"

Marco, his wrist bent nearly double, but still hanging onto the gun, gave a panicky gasp and hit Gideon weakly on the forehead with the flashlight in his left hand. Gideon sent it spinning to the ground with a backhanded swipe of the stick just as they were both lit up in the glare of the others’ powerful flashlights. He knew he had only a few seconds. The other men were no more than a hundred feet away and would not be much deterred by the uneven ground. He had to get the gun away from Marco, and he had to stay close enough to him so they wouldn’t dare shoot.

He twisted the pistol barrel with all his strength. Marco’s wrist seemed to turn a full, boneless circle, but still he held on and clawed at Gideon’s face with his other hand. Gideon hit him in the face with the broom handle. Marco made a dreadful mewing noise but held on and kept clawing. He had gotten his fingers inside Gideon’s lower lip and was twisting hard. Gideon felt something give, and hot blood gushed onto his chin. Tears jumped to his eyes with the sudden pain.

"Drop it!" he shouted thickly through the ripping fingers. His cheek flapped hideously. He clubbed Marco again and then again.

The boy’s fingers held rigidly onto the gun, although his face was suddenly smeared with blood and weirdly awry. Gideon kept smashing with the broom handle. He was wild-nearly hysterical—with pain and horror.

"Drop it, damn you!" he screamed. "Drop it, drop it, please, God, drop it!" Then he heard himself shrieking wordlessly to drown out the rising scream from Marco’s mangled, bloody face.

Finally, Marco sagged and Gideon wrenched the gun out of his hand just as the two others got to them. Gideon brushed off a grasping hand and swung the semiconscious Marco around, getting his arms through the boy’s armpits so that he supported the limp, moaning form between himself and them. He pressed the end of the gun barrel under Marco’s heart and glared crazily at the two men. He tried to speak but couldn’t. Marco’s damp, greasy hair was against his nose; he could smell sweat and cheap hair oil.

In all his life, Gideon had never been so wildly out of control. He couldn’t stop gasping, or maybe it was sobbing, and he was full of an awesome rage. To be hunted down by maniacs with guns; to be standing there in the dark, covered with blood and slime, his lip torn off for all he knew; to be pressing a gun into a boy’s abdomen; to be forced to club that juvenile face into a gory…

One of the men addressed him in a lazy, arrogant drawl. "Oliver, if I were you—"

Gideon shouted at him to shut up, only what burst from him was not words but an inarticulate, savage bellow that seemed to come from some beast—some literal, material beast inside him.

So ferocious was it that both men jumped back. Even Gideon was shocked by its violence; stupidly, he patted Marco reassuringly.

While the two men stared at him with pistols leveled at his chest—at Marco’s head, to be more exact—Gideon tried to review his situation. He knew he was hurt and weakened and that his thinking was fuzzy. He wasn’t sure how much of the slop on him was blood, nor how much of the blood was his own. He couldn’t free a hand to explore his mouth, but he was sure it was terribly lacerated. He thought his face was cut in other places, too. Most important, there had been a sharp pain in his ankle when he had swung Marco around and propped him up. He had done something serious to it, and he knew he couldn’t run on it or even drag himself and Marco away on the threat of killing the boy if they followed. Moreover, he wasn’t sure that Marco’s life would carry any weight with them anyway; they were older than the boy—harder, a different breed. And when it came down to it, he knew he couldn’t fire into that helpless, battered body. The other two, he thought, would know he was bluffing.

The older of the two men, the one who had spoken before, appeared to know what he was thinking.

"Oliver," he drawled again, "this really won’t do any good, you know. I’d rather not endanger our poor friend there, but if it can’t be helped, I assure you I’ve no qualms about it, none whatever." His speech was English public school, self-assured and superior, with strong Italian overtones.

Gideon didn’t answer, but kept the gun pressed to Marco’s belly. He had less reluctance about shooting the two others, but he knew he could never get them both. He doubted he could hit even one. He didn’t even know whether you had to push back the hammer or simply pull the trigger. From the way they held their weapons, it was clear that the other two were on intimate terms with them.

Marco stirred and tried to plant himself more firmly on his feet. His hands came up to Gideon’s forearms and then explored his own face. He groaned; Gideon shuddered, but tightened his hold and braced himself against the boy’s body.

"Oliver," the older man said once more, "do let’s be reasonable. We’d simply like to talk to you, you see. I’m not really sure how we’ve arrived at this ridiculous juncture, and I’d be a great deal happier if we weren’t pointing these things at one another, wouldn’t you?"

He smiled, and it wasn’t a bad smile. Gideon said nothing, but kept watching him. He had a lined, high-nosed face, aristocratic in the Italian way, and his smile lent warmth to his eyes. Standing in a Sicilian mud puddle in the middle of the night seemed no more plausible for him than for Gideon.

"I’ll tell you what," he went on. "Why don’t I put mine away, then?" He did so, slipping it into a shoulder holster underneath a well-cut suit jacket. Then he held up his empty palms.

"Take the light out of my eyes," Gideon said.

The man lowered his flashlight and gestured at the other one to do the same. "There," he said, "is that better? Now suppose that on the count of three, you and my friend here, who is really much more sympathetic than he looks, both lower your weapons until they’re pointing at the ground. Then you can both drop them at the same time and we’ll have our chat. Now, how does that sound?"

From the way he spoke—slowly and reassuringly, as if he were talking to a child—Gideon knew his own rapidly dimming faculties were apparent. As patently deceptive as his instructions were, Gideon longed to follow them. The pain in his face and his ankle was excruciating, his mind was growing more cloudy each second—he must have lost a lot of blood—and the world was beginning to tilt and slowly spin. He wanted terribly to sit down, but he held on and kept the gun pressed into Marco’s ribs, though he swayed on his feet.

"How tiresome," said the cool voice. "Well, old boy, you know perfectly well you’re not really going to shoot."

Gideon was having a hard time seeing. He blinked, trying to focus his vision. Suddenly the gun was no longer in his hand. The world turned entirely upside down, and he found himself sitting on the ground at last. He couldn’t imagine where Marco had gone.

The slender man was no longer smiling. He said a few quick words to the other one, who moved toward Gideon, stony-faced. Dimly, Gideon understood he was going to be shot. He sighed and waited, his mind empty.

A light, much more powerful than a flashlight, flicked on from the bridge, capturing them all in its fierce glare.

"Drop the gun! Quick!"

The older man spun and flashed his light at the voice. Gideon saw a familiar face lit up. Now who was it? Let’s see…it wasn’t anyone in his family, not Dad or Saul. Was it one of the kids he played around with?… Um, no, because it was a man, and his friends were only kids. Or maybe it was himself? He giggled. How did his face get so wet?

There was more shouting, and other noises too, but they were a long way off, booming and slow, like a record played at the wrong speed. He giggled again. What was Mom going to say about his dirty clothes?…And how did his face get so wet?