The Walking Shadow. Brian Stableford

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      Boulton walked with the precisely measured stride of an old army man. He should have retired when the last state of emergency passed peacefully away, but instead he had come to the capital and joined the police force. He was twenty years older than Sheehan, but he hardly seemed to feel the cold.

      Sheehan came forward out of the tunnel to meet Boulton, and the other paused. For a moment they didn’t speak, but glanced instead at the concrete pedestal supporting the cage that enclosed the glittering statue.

      The pedestal had been built so that Paul’s feet were resting on its surface, but it would not have mattered had it been an inch or two shorter; he would simply have remained suspended there, locked into Earth’s gravitational field: immutable, immovable, unreachable.

      Boulton inclined his head slightly toward the gleaming statue. “Be a fool to come back tonight,” he observed. “Freeze to death inside the cage.”

      Sheehan laughed, dutifully but uneasily.

      “They should put some clothes on him,” he said.

      “They used to. Made him look like a scarecrow. Can’t keep them all clothed, anyhow. A third of all the jumpers in the country are in this city. More jumpers here than living people, I reckon. Anyhow, clothes’d spoil that pretty glow.”

      There were no electric lights out in the open expanse of the stadium, but there were dozens of wax candles that people had brought and lit early the previous evening. There were no people about now, but well over half the candles burned on, and some were long enough to last until the dawn. The perfectly reflective surface of Paul Heisenberg’s body reflected the candlelight as if it were itself a faintly glowing object: a human body, limned in fire. The effect was rather eerie.

      Paul was not alone—there were more than a hundred similar static figures scattered over the flat surface of the arena, and a couple of hundred more in the derelict stands—but it was to see him that the crowds came, and they stationed their candles to illuminate him, not his companions.

      “Hope there’s no trouble,” said Sheehan. “If I had to draw, my hand would freeze to the butt.”

      “No trouble tonight,” said Boulton confidently. “Too cold.”

      “I hate this place,” muttered Sheehan. “Standing guard over hundreds of statues. I’ve never been here when one of them came out of it, but I’m not looking forward to it. Who cares, anyhow? Let the bastards freeze to death, teach them to think before they jump.”

      “They don’t matter,” said Boulton, waving an arm in a horizontal arc. “Just him.” He pointed up at Paul, though there was no mistaking his meaning.

      “There’s an alarm system in the cage,” said Sheehan.

      “If you only knew how often that alarm’s been triggered falsely, or jiggered so that it couldn’t sound even if he did come out....”

      “Yeah,” agreed Sheehan, morosely, “but you said there’d be no one out tonight.”

      Boulton shrugged. Then he stepped out from the wall, raised his arm in a cursory salute, and went on his way around the arc of the low wall. Sheehan stepped back into the tunnel, seeking the shelter of its black pit of shadow. Cold like this, he thought, is enough to make anyone turn jumper. But who can guarantee he’ll come out in summer?

      He listened to the sound of Boulton’s footsteps as the other policeman paced away. Subconsciously, he must have been counting the steps, because when they stopped he knew immediately that something was wrong. Boulton had not had time to cross the concrete apron and step out on to the turf which would muffle his further steps.

      Sheehan reached inside his greatcoat to pick out the walkie-talkie lodged in his breast pocket. It was already in his hand when he stepped out of the tunnel again.

      He saw the body slumped on the frost-glittered concrete, and looked about wildly, already pressing the call button on the radio. He gave his call-sign twice before his eyes caught a glimpse of the black shadow that paused on the barrier enclosing the rusty seats before leaping at him. He let loose a wordless cry of alarm, not knowing whether his call had been heard, and then was bowled over by the shadow.

      He had to meet the attack hand-to-hand; there was no time now to go for his gun.

      The hands that gripped his arms seemed unnaturally strong, and despite his attempt to kick the other below the knee he felt himself whirled around and clasped in a secure hold. Something was clamped over the lower part of his face and he felt something heavy and sickly fill his nasal passages as he inhaled. One more startled breath was all it took before he tumbled into dizzy oblivion. The one fugitive image captured by his eyes was a sight of a candlelit plastic mask, which hid every feature of his assailant’s face.

      * * * * * * *

      He seemed to have been unconscious for bare seconds when cold air blew away the sickly sleep. The readiness with which he had succumbed to the drug had prevented him from inhaling too much, and the first thing that his bleary eyes showed him when he awoke was Boulton, still inert on the concrete some fifteen meters away.

      Sheehan was lying on his belly, and he found something hard beneath his left hip. It was the walkie-talkie, and he snatched it up immediately, but it had broken when he dropped it, and he could get no life from it. His head reeled as he lifted himself from the ground.

      His gaze was drawn to the summit of the pillar supporting the steel cage enclosing Paul Heisenberg’s inert form. An eerie blue light was dancing around the lower part of the bars on the near side, partly blocked out by the silhouette of a kneeling human figure. It took several seconds for Sheehan’s head to clear sufficiently for him to make sense of what he saw.

      Someone was using a cutting tool to slice through the bars of the cage.

      Sheehan groaned. It had happened before and it would no doubt happen again. The cult members resented the fact that a cage had been built to trap their messiah if ever he should return—whenever he should return. There was constant sabotage of the cage and its environs. The alarm system must have been short-circuited, for no alarm bells were ringing. His one thought was: Why did it have to happen to me?

      He drew the gun from the belt that gathered in the waist of his greatcoat. The butt was cold, and his joke about freezing his hand to the weapon drifted back into his mind.

      He pointed at the figure bent over the cutting tool, and yelled: “Stop that!”

      The other looked round, but the tool continued to do its work.

      “Stop or I shoot!” threatened Sheehan.

      The other grabbed one of the bars and wrenched it out, having cut through it at the top and all-but severed it at the base. For a moment, Sheehan thought the saboteur was going to hurl the steel bar at him, and he fired in immediate response.

      The shot missed, but the man in the mask didn’t hurl the bar. Instead, he dropped it to the concrete and jumped. The cage was a long way up—all of six meters—and Sheehan expected the other to buckle up on landing, probably with a broken leg. That wasn’t what happened, though.

      Instead, the masked man landed on his feet, as lightly as if he’d vaulted a low gate, and he ran at Sheehan without so much as a СКАЧАТЬ