1000 Worlds - The Runners

The Runners

There were times, between cases, when Colmer grew strangely restless. He could never quite put his finger on the reason. Most of the time he chalked it up to boredom, but somewhere in the back of his head he knew it was more than that.

Colmer was man of resources, though. He had his remedies when the moods came upon him. The best thing, he’d found, was just to get into action. There was always a demand for his services. He was a Master Probe, one of less than a hundred in all of known space. Sometimes, if they wouldn’t meet his standard fee, he’d take a smaller one. If the case was interesting enough, and he was bored.

Colmer had other pursuits for the times when he couldn’t find a case. He would often occupy himself with games and friends and sports and sex. And food, frequently with food. He was a small, quiet chipmunk of a man, and he loved to eat, especially when the moods came upon him and there was nothing else to do. It was all part of the full life, Colmer felt.

He was sitting in the Old Lady, waiting for his dinner in a lull between cases, when Bryl found him.

The Old Lady had been a schooner once. Now it floated off Sullivan’s Wharf, in the heart of the fisherman’s district of Old Poseidon. Nereby, the sleek silver boats came and went daily, harvesting the wealth of Poseidon’s Big Sea. They dragged great newts full of bluespawn and tiny silver winkles. Others packed their holds with salt-rich hunter crabs. And the smaller ships oddly, brought back the giant spikefins and the vampire eels, whose meat was black and buttery.

The whole district smelled of fish and salt and sea, and Colmer loved it. Whenever time lay heavy on his lands, he’d take a day off to walk the twisting wood-plank streets. He’s watch the fisherships set out at dawn, then drink till noon in the wharfside bars, then hunt for curios in the mustiest ships he could find. By late afternoon, he’d usually have worked up an appetite. Then he’d head for the Old Lady. There were dozens of seafood places in the district, but the Old Lady was best.

He’d just finished his appetizer that day when Bryl pulled up a chair and sat down at his table. “I need your help,” he said, quickly and simply.

Colmer wanted dinner, not company. He frowned a little. “I have an office,” he said. “You keep records of every client?”

“Of course,” said Colmer.

“I don’t want any records kept. That’s why I hung out around this place. Then told me Adrian Colmer always eats at the Old Lady, that I’d find you here if I waited long enough. I didn’t know if I could wait long enough. But I got lucky. Please help me.”

Colmer was suddenly interested, his curiosity aroused. He studied the stranger across from him. He saw a tall, thin man, a dark face framed by shoulder-length black hair and dominated by a hawk nose, nondescript dress that a thousand men might have worn. But the face was oddly ageless, the man fidgeted a lot, and his eyes moved constantly. That was all Colmer could tell from a glance. He could have probed, of course. Some Talents would have done that, professional ethics notwithstanding. But Colmer only opened for a fee.

He poured Bryl a glass of wine from the bottle on the table. “All right,” he said. “Eat, if you like. And tell me why you want help.”

Bryl took the wine, sipped at it. His eyes never stopped moving. “My name is Ted Bryl. I want you to probe me. There are some people after me, you see. They’ve been hunting me for years. I’m sure they want to kill me, but I don’t know why. As far back as I can remember, they’ve been following me, and I’ve been running.”

Colmer wove his hands together and set his chin upon them. “You sound paranoid,” he said. He didn’t believe in wasting words.

Bryl laughed. “It sounds like that. But I’m not. I’ve gone to the police, you know. They’ve probed me, they know it’s real. Something they’ve even arrested some of the people after me. But then they always let them go. They won’t do anything to help me.”

“Very paranoid.”

“The police have probed me, I tell you.”

Colmer smiled tolerantly. “Police probes,” he said. Like a doctor saying ‘chiropractor’

“All right,” Bryl said. “Probe me. See for yourself.”

“Don’t get upset. If you’re paranoid, I can probably help you. A Master Probe is a qualified psipsych, among other things. However, you haven’t mentioned a fee.”

“I can’t afford your fee. I don’t have much money. I get jobs, but I don’t keep them long. I have to run. They are never far behind me.”

“I see.” Colmer studied him a minute. “Well, I’ve got nothing else going on at the moment. I might as well see what your problem is. But if you tell anyone I worked without a fee, I’ll deny it. Of course.”

“Of course,” Bryl agreed. Colmer probed him.

It was over in less than a minute; a quick opening of Colmer’s mind, a drinking, a draining. To an outsider, just a long vacant stare.

Then Colmer sat back and stroked his chin and reached for the wine. “It’s real,” he said. “How very strange.”

Bryl smiled. “That’s what the police probes said. But why? Why are they after me?”

“You don’t know. So I can’t know, unless I probe one of them. You have a barrier, by the way.” “A barrier?”

 “A mind block. Your memory goes back five years and a few months, then skips to you adolescence. Which was quite a long time ago, by the way. Undoubtedly you’ve had rejuves. There’s a big hole in your head. Someone’s shielded you good up there, for some reason.”

Bryl suddenly looked afraid. “I know,” he said. “I think they did it. I must know something, something important. So they took away my memory. Bu they’re afraid I’ll get it back. So they want to kill me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Colmer. “It can’t be that simple. If they were just criminals, the police wouldn’t keep letting them go. That happens over and over again, remember. On Newholme, on Baldur, on Silversky. You’re really been around. I envy your travels.” He smiled.

Bryl did not smile. “My running, you mean. I don’t think you’d envy it if you had to live it. Look, Colmer, I live in constant fear. Every time I look over a shoulder, I wonder if they’ll be behind me. Sometimes they are.”

“Agreed, I saw those moments. The time the fat girl was sitting in your apartment when you entered. The man waiting at the spaceport, when you returned from that stint on the orbital docks. The blonde following you through the carnival. Very vivid memories. Very chilling.”

Bryl was staring at him, shock written on his face. “God! How can you talk like that? You’re a cold fish, Colmer.”

“I have to be. I’m a Probe.” “What else can you tell me?”

“The three of them are working together. But you know that, don’t you? The blonde is a telepath. That’s how she follows you. The man is her protection. The fat girl—I don’t know. She’s very strange. She smiles like an idiot. I don’t understand her function. But she seems to terrify you.”

Bryl shivered. “Yes. You’d understand if you’d seen her. She’s gross. Huge and white, like a fat maggot. And always smiling, dammit, always smiling at me. I never know where’s she’s going to turn up. That time on Newholme, when I opened the door and she was sitting there, smiling at me—it was like—like finding a cockroach in a bowl of cereal you’ve half eaten. God!”

“You’re convinced that she’s going to kill you,” Colmer said. “I don’t know why. If any killing was to be done, the man is the logical one to do it. He’s bigger, looks very strong. You’ve seen the gun he carries.”

Bryl nodded. “I know. But it won’t be him. She’ll do it. I know it. That’s why she’s always smiling.” “You could buy a gun and kill them, you know,” Colmer said.

Bryl looked at him. “I—I never thought of that.”

“True. Yet it’s that you haven’t. Don’t you think?”

“Yes, But, somehow, I couldn’t do that. I’m not a violent man.”

 “You’re a very violent man,” Colmer said. “But I agree. You will not use force against them, for some reason even you don’t know.”

Bryl fidgeted. “Can you help me? Before they find me?”

“Perhaps I can help you. However, they’re already found you. The blonde just entered the restaurant. They’re giving her a table.”

Bryl gasped and whirled about in his seat. Across the width of the base plank floor, the maître d’ was escorting a shapely fair-haired young woman to a seat. Bryl looked at her, his mouth hanging open. “God,” he said. “They won’t leave me alone.” Then suddenly he was on his feet, running, literally running, from the Old Lady. The blonde never even looked at him.

Colmer watched him go, then glanced out the porthole. Bryl would be even more terrified when he reached the wharf. Down aways, an immense fat girl with an idiot grin was sitting on the edge of the pier, watching the fisherships spill their catch.

“Very dramatic,” Colmer said. His meal arrived just then, a plate of fat bluespawn cooked in cheese. But he stood up. “I’ll be joining that young lady,” he told the waiter, pointing. “Bring it over there.”

He walked across he restaurant and sat down. The waiter followed and put the fish in front of him. The blonde looked up. “Adrian Colmer,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”

Colmer tsk-ed. “Probing without permission. Very unprofessional, young lady. But I’ll forgive you. I’m sure you didn’t get much. My defenses are very good.”

She smiled. “True. I suppose it was inevitable that he’d go to a private Probe eventually. How much do you know?”

“Everything he knows. Enough to have you arrested, unless you explain things to me.”

“He’s had us arrested from time to time. The police always let us go. But go ahead, probe. It’s all right.”

“You won’t resist?”

“No. I’m honored.”

Colmer probed.

He didn’t go very deep. After all, she was a Talent. Just a quick skim, but it was enough. Afterward, he say back, blinked rapidly in confusion. “Curiouser and curiouser. He hired you?”

“He doesn’t remember it, of course. Part of the deal. But we have all the papers. Enough documentation to convince the police whenever they haul us in. They can’t tell him. That’s in the papers too. It would break the barrier, and there’d be a lawsuit you wouldn’t believe.”

“Edward Bryllanti,” Colmer mused. “Yes, the name rings a bell. Very wealthy. He could do it. But why would he want to? A life of constant fear, constant running...”

“It’s his idea,” the woman said. “He even picked Freda. She’s a moron, of course. A brain-wipe. We have to lead her around by the hand, put here where he can see her. But something about her terrifies him. So he wanted her in on it. To keep him running.”

Colmer began eating his dinner. He chewed it slowly, thoughtfully. “I don’t understand,” he finally admitted, between bites.

The woman smiled. “You didn’t go deep enough. I understand. Didn’t you find it? Tell me, haven’t you ever had moments when you wondered whether it was all worthwhile? When it suddenly hit you that it was meaningless, all empty?”

Colmer stared, chewing.

“Bryllanti had more of those than most. He had psi-psychs in, saw Probes. Got him nowhere. Finally he did this. Now he doesn’t wonder any more. He lives every day to the fullest, because he thinks it might be his last. He’s got constant excitement, constant fear, and he never has time to think whether life is worth living. He’s too busy just staying alive. You see?”

Colmer stared on, suddenly feeling very cold. The fish in his mouth tasted like damp sawdust. “But, he runs,” he said finally. “His life is empty. Just running, meaningless running, on a treadmill of his own creation.”

The woman sighed. “You disappoint me. I expected more insight from a Master Probe. Don’t you see? We all run.”

After that, Colmer lowered his fees, to get himself more cases. But still the moods come often.