A last, dry-eyed, cold, and empty, he turned back along the route he'd taken in fear and panic. There was a different urgency in him now, prompted by the feeling that he had somehow forged an unbreakable link between his life and the fate of the drunken Freeman. As if he were—responsible. The concept was quite new to him, foreign to anything he had known in the automated world of the Organization, but he could not deny it.
Weary, aching, disturbed by the strangeness of his emotions, Hendley searched for the quiet street where he had followed the Freeman. He rode past it once, retraced his steps, and at length found an inclined road which seemed familiar. The narrow, dark passage appeared where he remembered it. Cautiously he stepped through the opening.
The way was empty.
Frantically Hendley searched the area. Had he found the wrong street—the wrong passage? The dwelling units were so completely identical that it would be easy to mistake them, but he was sure that he'd identified the street correctly. There must be some mark of his presence in the passageway, some trace of the fight. His right hand probed the wall. There—could that gash have been made by the Freeman's metal weapon? The man had fallen here—yes!
Relief washed away Hendley's consternation. A single white chip had fallen into a drift of dust at the edge of the wall. Such a find, even though it lay half-buried, would not have remained through a half hour of daylight. The fresh imprint of a hand had been made in the dust. And at Hendley's eye level as he knelt, a raw gouge was visible in one wall, recently made by a sharp, heavy blow. This was the right place. It was doubtful that anyone finding the drunken Freeman there would have bothered to carry him away. The length of metal pipe was gone. The drunken man must have recovered enough to leave under his own power.
Hendley emerged from the darkness of the passageway. The street was still quiet and empty. A thinning trickle of traffic rode the moving walk at the bottom of the long incline. Beyond, bright concentrations of light identified the pleasure centers. And in the farther distance, a deeper black against the sky, the camp's fringe of trees was visible. How moved he had been by his first glimpse of those trees as he came through the gate in the wall!
Now he wanted only one thing: to be outside that wall.
Slowly he dug the cluster of chips from his pocket. He stared at them wonderingly. In a sudden spasm of disgust he drew back his arm and hurled the white chips far down the street, where they bounced and skittered and rolled, making a thin clatter in the silence. As Hendley started down the inclined street, one of the chips, still rolling on its edge, crossed his path, wheeled, lost momentum and tipped over. Deliberately he ground it under his heel.
10
The early morning mist which blanketed the park was already burning off when Hendley made his way toward the concrete beige shells of the administration buildings at the east end of the Freeman Camp. Detouring across a stretch of lawn, he quickly found his shoes soaked through from the heavy dew. The wet grass was a vivid green. Leaves and bushes glistened in the hazy sunshine. Singing birds made a cheerful din high among the trees.