In the midst of the shadows a silent, gray-uniformed figure stood with his back to the log, a hand-gun gleaming at his hip, his heavyset body, shaven head and bull-like neck giving him an aspect of primitive brutishness.
Security guards, whether airborne or not, were specialists of an unusual sort, with a biogenetic heritage of brutal callousness which made them unique. Callous from birth, they were under compulsion to exercise restraint, killing only when necessary. They were dangerous and deadly at all times, accurate in the use of weapons and completely sure of themselves. But the deadliness had to be triggered by a Monitor's command, set in motion by desperate men and women in flight.
Pity was alien to their nature, for compassion of any kind seemed monstrous and abnormal to them and human frailty they could not even understand. And yet ... there was something quiet, dark and inwardly tormented about them, a restlessness, an unease, as if they could not quite bring themselves to believe that they were not as other men.
The figure did not move as Teleman stared, did not even change the position of his head. There was a small gleaming instrument in his right hand and the hand was half raised and he seemed to be listening. Teleman knew that the instrument was a small, portable scanner and that he was using his eyes alone. Sound did not interest him, and there was no need for him to listen with his ears.
In a sense, though he was listening, with his entire body, standing tense and alert, and watching a tiny needle oscillate and vibration frequencies register on the scanner's luminous dial.
It had to mean that he was overstimulated in a deep, preoccupied way, caught up in such a trancelike intensity of concentration that it would take a shout to arouse him or the crash of a falling branch. He would be unlikely to hear small sounds. The splintering of wood even—although rotting wood does not splinter and it can be peeled away in damp fragments or torn loose with a violent wrench.
It wasn't the first time that Teleman had watched a para-guard stand immobilized and entranced and abnormally on edge, but in an almost infantile way. The brutish simplicity of their natures predisposed them to devote all of their energies to one thing at a time, to make progress slowly and in step-by-step fashion. Now luck—blind luck perhaps—was making that limitation play directly into his hands. The para-guard was abnormally preoccupied, and he was facing away from the log. He was facing away, his back was turned.
Teleman used both hands to tear a wide gap in the rotting wood. The decay was not uniform and the outer bark remained firm here and there. But he managed to rip apart enough of the soggy, flaking wood to clear a space for his head and shoulders. He widened the gap further by swaying vigorously from side to side, half propelling, half dragging himself from the log to the forest floor.
The leaves directly beneath the log cushioned his descent, but did not crackle as he rose swiftly and agilely to his feet. He turned just as swiftly, his eyes darting to Alicia's white face framed in the gap, and pressed a finger to his lips. There was a look of wild startlement in her eyes but she managed to nod in quick understanding, answering his look of reassurance with a thin, tight smile.