I hesitated. He was saying insistently that he was just as anxious to get away from the goddam Greenies as I was-untie me!
What I did next is matched in folly only by Lot’s wife. I grabbed the knife at my belt, cut the tape at his wrists, at his ankles-dived through my scuttle hole and started to run. I didn’t wait to see whether or not he came through, too.
There was one of the rare stands of trees about half a kilometer north of me; I headed that way at a new record speed. That heavy tool belt impeded me; I shucked it without slowing. A moment later I brushed that cap off and “Hannah Jensen” went back to NeverNever Land, as torch, gloves, and repair links were still in the Imperium. All that was left of her was a wallet I would jettison when I was not so busy.
I got well inside the trees, then circled back and found a place to observe my back track, as I was uncomfortably aware that I was wearing a tail.
My late prisoner was about halfway from fence to trees . . . and two APVs were homing in on him. The one closer to him carried the big Maple Leaf of British Canada. I could not see the insigne on the other as it was headed right toward me, coming across the international boundary.
The BritCan police car grounded; my quondam guest appeared to surrender without argument-reasonable, as the APV from the Imperium grounded immediately thereafter, at least two hundred meters inside British Canada-and, yes, Imperial Police-possibly the car that had stopped me.
I’m not an international lawyer but I’m sure wars have started over less. I held my breath, extended my hearing to the limit, and listened.
There were no international lawyers among those two sorts of police, either; the argument was noisy but not coherent. The Imperials were demanding surrender of the refugee under the doctrine of hot pursuit and a Mountie corporal was maintaining (correctly, it seemed to me) that hot pursuit applied only to criminals caught in
the act, but the only “crime” here was entering British Canada not at a port of entry, a matter not lying in the jurisdiction of the Imperial Police. “Now get that crock off BritCan soil!”
The Greenie gave a monosyllabic nonresponse that annoyed the Mountie. He slammed the lid and spoke through his loudspeaker: “I arrest you for violation of British Canadian air and ground space. Get out and surrender. Do not attempt to take off.”
Whereupon the Greenies’ car took off at once and retreated across the international border-then went elsewhere. Which may have been exactly what the Mountie intended to accomplish. I held very still, as now they would have time to give their attention to me.
I assume conclusively that my companion escapee now paid me for his ticket through the fence: No search was made for me. Certainly he saw me run into the woods. But it is unlikely that the RCMP saw me. No doubt cutting the fence sounded alarms in police stations on both sides of the border; this would be a routine installation for electronics people-even to pinpointing the break- and so I had assumed in planning to do it fast.
But counting the number of warm bodies that passed through a gap would be a separate electronics problem-not impossible but an added expense that might not be considered worthwhile. As may be, my nameless companion did not snitch on me; no one came looking for me. After a time a BritCan car fetched a repair crew; I saw them pick up the tool belt I had discarded near the fence. After they left another repair crew showed up on the Imperium side; they inspected the repair and went away.
I wondered a bit about tool belts. On thinking back I could not recall seeing such a belt on my erstwhile prisoner when he surrendered. I concluded that he had had to shed his belt to go through the fence; that hole was just barely big enough for Friday; for him it must have been a jam fit.
Reconstruction: The BritCans saw one belt, on their side; the Greenies saw one belt, on their side. Neither side had any reason to assume that more than one wetback had passed through the hole as long as my late prisoner kept mum.