Alternities Read Online Free Page A

booklet bearing the title the 1—A’S HANDBOOK. The booklet contained a single page bearing two rules. The first was, Don’t Get Caught . The second was, See Rule #1 .
    No official document put it that bluntly, but the truth was that the Guard expected its runners to slip in and out from Home to their destinations and back with minimum exposure. Most of the danger to runners was considered to be in the maze itself, where haste or carelessness or, sometimes, simple bad luck could make yours the one in every two hundred or so transits that came up on the board as OVERDUE, RU (Reason Unknown).
    Beyond that, there was exposure on any run that went beyond the gate-house walls, and Wallace had a cover in all three alternities for which he was qualified. In Red Philadelphia, he was Robert Wallace, a salesman for an out-of-town food distributor. In Yellow Britain, he carried credentials as a construction inspector for the City of London. In Blue Indianapolis, he passed as a legal courier—on those rare occasions when he was allowed outside the gate house.
    But unlike what the Guard set up for a full-time mole, Wallace’s covers were tissue-thin, consisting of little more than the contents of his wallet. It was Wallace who had to make the cover real, to give it dimension. Only by projecting credibility could he head off the telephoned query, prevent the background check. He was the first and only line of defense, and the papers he carried were mere props.
    He had gotten good advice on covers, thankyouverymuchJason. Every time he came to Red, every minute spent softening, he was Robert Wallace. He knew him, knew that young, glib, hard-drinking salesman well enough to know that he would be terrified by the violence, intimidated by the brush with Authority.
    “Jesus Christ, sweet Jesus Christ,” he began to babble as he lay on the floor. “What’s going on? You shot Terry. I don’t understand what’s happening—”
    As he spoke, the first officer, a hard-faced white man with thinning black hair, was moving cautiously around the end of the bar to make certain that O’Brien was no longer a threat.
    “Shut up, you,” the second officer snapped.
    Twisting his head toward the voice, Wallace received a jolt. Advancing on him was the boogeyman from an Indiana boy’s nightmare—a nigger with a gun. The officer was short for a badge but well-muscled, a charcoal troll in uniform. The namestrip above his pocket read CHAMBERS.
    Wallace had seen the mixed couples passing unnoticed in Yellow London, knew that in Red something called an equal access law was eliminating the Negro schools, had heard that in Blue the Indianapolis hospitals allowed Negro doctors to treat patients of any race. Far more important, he understood from talking with Jason, who had made some thirty runs to Alternity White, that it was the closed doors of racism which had turned America’s major cities into war zones and brought General Betts’ martial-law government to power.
    But Wallace had also grown up with a mother who explained to her son that there were no blacks in town “because they wouldn’t be happy here,” with a father who worried aloud about the wisdom of teaching black soldiers to kill and then letting them loose in society. The mixed signals—new and old, information and programming—had left him not knowing what he thought was right, and preserved childhood fears intact.
    “ID and pass,” Chambers demanded. “Where are they?”
    “In—in my wallet.” Wallace’s voice was trembling; the line between feigned terror and the genuine article had blurred. “In my pants pocket. On the left.”
    “This one’s dead,” announced the first officer.
    Chambers grunted in answer. Letting Wallace look down the barrel of his pistol close enough to catch the stink. Chambers fumbled for the leatherette wallet and extracted the Guard-manufactured identity card and travel pass.
    Those ought to buy me about four minutes , Wallace thought, watching