He was appalled, more shaken by her deeds than by anything he had ever experienced. But he did not hate her. Though she had committed the greatest sin in the world, the irrevocable and unforgivable sin, he could not hate that demented sufferer. He pitied her. Grieved for her, in fact. But he would have to kill her. No one would be safe until she was dead, and he would be doing her the greatest kindness by putting her out of her wretchedness.
He was sure that she planned to end herself eventually but not until after everyone left in the tower was dead. She would, he supposed, have liked to dispose of all in The Valley, too, but that she could not do. She would have to be satisfied knowing that they would finally pass away.
35
“Nonsense!”
“What?” Alice said.
“We don’t have the slightest idea of what’s really going on in that twisted mind. It doesn’t matter if we do or don’t. What does is that she must be stopped.”
A loud pinging began. Burton started, though he had been expecting the noise, and he went to the console. The screen was displaying a diagram of a tower level section and a tiny but bright orange light was moving along one of the-corridors. In the corner of the screen was: level 4, corridor 10.
The others had crowded behind him. Frigate said, “What now?”
“She must have just left the room in which she was resurrected,” Burton said. “The room would have been painted, of course, so that her past-display would not be visible to her, and I suppose that the Computer shows it only when it can be seen by the subject. What I did, I told the Computer to show me where her past-display is. Star Spoon has undoubtedly commanded the Computer not to reveal her presence by allowing us to scan the halls near where she is. But one thing she cannot do is to prevent the past-display from accompanying her as soon as she leaves her room.”
“She’s intelligent,” Li Po said. “She’ll soon realize that you may be tracking her through the display. What we can do, she can do. She’ll ask the Computer to show her our displays.”
“Yes,” Burton said, “but the thing about the Computer is that whoever gets ahead of the other with his command can forestall the other. I told it not to show her where ours are.”
“She’ll know that when the Computer doesn’t show them to her,” Li Po said. “That’ll make her very cautious.”
“She would be anyway,” Burton said. “Pete, go burn off Gull’s sealant. Tell him what’s happened, give him a beamer. We need everyone we can get.”
Frigate looked reluctant to leave, but he did so at once.
“We can’t stay in this place,” Burton said. “She can’t seal up the door as long as it’s open, but she could set up something—a robot machine that would automatically beam us the moment we stuck our heads through the doorway, for instance—so we won’t stay here.”
The orange light had stopped at a shaft, VC-A3-2.
“That leads up our corridor,” Burton said. “We haven’t much time.”
He got up from the console chair and went through the doorway leading to the bedroom corridor. Frigate had just finished melting off the sealant and was waiting for the smoke to clear away. The door to Gull’s room had swung open. Burton shouted, “Tell him to hold his breath and get right out here!”
The others went to their bedrooms and got their weapons and extra powerpacks. Burton watched the screen while the others were busy. When they were all in the main room, he told them what they must do. Gull was confused and did not know all that had happened, since Frigate had only had time to give him a few facts. Nevertheless, he nodded when Burton rapid-fired instructions at him, and he ran off.
All left the apartment then, and Burton had the Computer close the door. The apartment was halfway on the corridor between two lift shafts. Star Spoon was by the fourth-floor entrance to the shaft to their right as they left their place. They sped down the corridor toward the shaft, Alice dropping behind them to enter an apartment on the right side. She would station herself in the darkened area by the door, which would be left half-open. From there she could cover the shaft entrance, about four hundred and fifty feet away.