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13

 

I left the next afternoon, briefed to the ears, armed with a neat little watch-pocket blaster, and feeling better than anybody had a right to, two weeks after having new insides installed. I rode an elevator that dropped so fast my stomach was ready to climb out and have a look by the time the door opened and palmed me out onto a pavement halfway between a street and a corridor. A cold light like a winter afternoon was filtering down from a high glass roof. There were lots of people, pushing along on important business; the grim looks on their faces were normal, but the clothes they wore were like something from Westercon II. A tired-looking fellow in bulbous, color-slashed bloomers pushed past me using his elbow like an experienced commuter. A fellow in baggy-kneed tights and floppy sleeves jostled a woman in pink ruffs out of his way; she passed it on to a young kid in a tight coverall with dummy laces at the wrists and shins. Nobody looked at me. I felt like I was back home.

I moved off along the walk, mingled with men in capes and three-cornered hats, women in all-over ruffles and stand-up lace collars and some stripped to the waist and painted like barber poles, and a few of both sexes wrapped in old bed-sheets. They looked like survivors of a three-day fancy-dress ball.

There were signs plastered over the walls in screaming pink and electroshock blue and agony yellow. I picked one that read DRINK in purple script and turned in at what seemed to be an open doorway, but something banged me on the nose like a glass wall, and something else went bzapp! and I was back out on the pavement. To hell with it. I didn't need a drink anyway.

Up ahead, there was a big TV screen ten feet square sticking out over the walk, with words and pictures flickering across it. Letters across the top said "THRVEE MALL WEST-OFCL." I watched it for a minute while quick flashes of strange faces and factory smokestacks and desert landscapes and explosions came and went over subtitles in condensed headline prose.

A little farther along I came to what Minka had told me to look for: A wide frosted-glass front over blank doors with cryptic signs that said things like "PVR SLD II (9)" and "OUT—Z99-over."

I went through one of the doors and was in a narrow chute like the bull comes out of, with a turnstile blocking it. There was a slot at one side about the right size for a silver dollar, but I didn't have a silver dollar. I leaned on it and it leaned back. There was nobody around to ask questions of, even if I'd been in the mood to attract attention that way. I braced a foot against the crossbar and tried again. Something inside made little tinkly sounds and it spun free.

Ten feet beyond it, the passage right-angled and I was looking at a blank screen dazzling with little points of light. There were a lot of buttons beside it. I pushed a couple of them, as instructed, and said: "Routing for West Bore."

The screen blipped red and white and blanked. So much for the kind of cooperation I get out of inanimate objects. I opened my mouth to ask the question again, louder, and something clacked behind me and I did a fast turn and a female came out of a doorway. She had a hard, good-looking face with no paint except a green dot on her right cheek and dull silver on her lips. Her figure looked good enough, what I could see of it under a gray overall.

"Passengers are restricted—" she started her pitch.

"I'll bet they are, gorgeous," I cut it off. "I asked it a question and it gave me a smart answer. Maybe you can do better." Her expression slid sideways a little, not quite as cocky now, but ready to be, as soon as she got the lie of the land. "The entry monitor indicates an all-categories tag," she said in a tone that had shifted a couple of points toward civil. That would be a reference to the sounds of breaking metal that had come out of the turnstile when I leaned on it.

"Right," I gave her a significant look. "You know what that means."

She didn't meet my eye. "You're with the Commission?" she tried to sound brisk but there was just a hint of a quaver in her voice.

"Would I be here if I wasn't?"

"If I may record your credentials—as a matter of routine—"

"We're dispensing with the routine, Miss—what was that name?"

"Gerda. I. L. Gerda, nine-three, Second, provisional."

"All right, Gerda, let's not waste the Commission's time."

"If you'll give me your authority reference—"

"This is hush-hush," I said. "Off the record. If it wasn't I wouldn't need you, would I, Gerda?" I sweetened it with the sort of smile her turnkey personality seemed to call for.

She twitched a couple of cheek muscles at me and said, "If you'll come this way. . . ."

I followed a nice hip action along the corridor to an iron gate, and about then I noticed a bell dinging somewhere in the distance.

"What is it, Gerda, a cross?" I grabbed her arm and she tried to kick me. She was looking mean enough to bite, now.

"You entered on a forged tag," she'd gone shrill on me. "Don't try to leave!" I pushed her out of the way and she went for my eyes, and I slapped her, hard. Her nose started to bleed. Something clanged back of the grill and a red light went on. Another bell racketed, nearby.

"Don't dare leave here," Miss Gerda squalled. "You're under criminal arrest!"

"Sorry," I said. "As it happens, I'm late for a Ping-Pong date at the YW. Better open it, Gerda."

Her eyes hated me, but she pushed the right spot and the gate snapped back. There was a sound from back the way I'd come and the girl twisted and threw herself down and something went ssstt! and a gnat's wing brushed my cheek and kicked a chip out of the wall. I got a quick flash of two men in tight black coming through the door twenty yards back along the passage. I cleared the gate just as a second shot whanged off, kicked it shut, and ran like hell.

 

 

 

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Framed