33
Though covered with blood, the Englishman was uninjured except for a bump on the back of his head.
“I was knocked out, and some of those killed fell on top of me. The androids did not see me.”
He gingerly touched his head and grimaced.
“You were very fortunate,” Burton said dully. “I think you were the only one who went down who escaped beheading.”
Why did Gull have the good luck? Why couldn’t Nur or de Marbot or Behn have been spared?
No, that did not matter, he told himself. They can be resurrected.
And then he knew that the murderer would have insured that they would stay dead. Why bother to kill them if they could be brought back? It made no sense.
He would have to find out about that. Just now, they must recover from their exhaustion and shock. Then the dead must be converted into ashes; the horrible mess cleaned up.
“Let’s go to the house,” he said. “There’s nothing to be gained by staying here.”
First, though, he must take precautions to guard himself and the others. He picked up the two beamers and said, “Star Spoon, were there any androids in the house when you got these?”
“I didn’t see any,” she said. Her voice was empty of expression as her face.
“We’ll have to do everything for ourselves,” he said. “We can’t trust the androids.”
He stopped walking. The beamers seemed rather light. He opened the bottom of the beamer butts and looked into the receptacles for the powerpacks. He swore. They were empty.
He showed them to Star Spoon and said, “These would have been useless.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was too excited to notice.”
She shuddered. “It’s a good thing I didn’t have to use them.”
“Yes. But whoever did this is very clever. Only …”
They were trudging up the hill, every step forward seeming to be in a thick and heavy substance, as if they were walking at the bottom of a treacle well.
“What?” she said.
“Why didn’t the killer have the androids take the beamers from the house and kill us with them? It would have been very easy. We wouldn’t have had a chance.”
Li Po had been listening in. He said, “Perhaps the killer likes the sight of blood. Or it may be that he wanted us to suffer or to think that we might survive. As it turned out …”
“He won’t stop,” Burton said.
“He failed,” the Chinese said. “All we have to do is raise our friends, and he will be …”
His mouth fell open. “Ah! What if he has inhibited their resurrection?”
“Exactly,” Burton said. “Well, we’ll soon find out.”
Frigate caught up with them. He looked behind, and Burton turned to see what he was staring at. Gull was far behind them, moving slowly up the slope.
“I could be overly suspicious,” the American said, “but don’t you think it’s funny that he wasn’t killed after he fell? I have no evidence for my suspicions, but, after all, he was Jack the Ripper. Maybe he played it safe, programmed the androids to spare him. He might even have fixed it so that one would knock him out or tap him lightly on the head if it looked as if we’d win. I hate to say these things, but we can’t take any chances now.”
“I’ve thought of the same thing,” Burton said. “However, his story could be true.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. The sky was still blue, and the sun was about where it would be at six o’clock. He thought of what the Mad Hatter had said. “It’s always six o’clock here.”
The birds were singing again in the woods, and an angry squirrel was scolding something, probably one of Alice’s cats. The wild animals must have been frightened into silence by the uproar, but now that that had ceased, they had resumed normal life. All the noise and the babel meant nothing to them after they had passed. Those innocent creatures lived only in the present; the past was forgotten.
He envied them their innocence and unawareness of time.
They paused to catch their breaths in the large and beautiful garden of flowers at the top of the hill. Burton scanned the sky, wondering if the chairs were pressing against the blue wall somewhere out there. They would keep doing that until their power supply weakened, and then they would settle down slowly into the trees.
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