The Steps of the Sun by Walter Tevis

Author:Walter Tevis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780020298656
Publisher: Collier Books
Published: 1990-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

There was a chance Baynes was back at the stadium, but I didn’t think it likely. If I was right he’d be at home and in touch with them by phone. It was his house I was headed for.

I stopped running at the far end of New Mall, across the street from the Mendoza Monument, and sat on the grass for a while to get my breath. It was a warm night; the ground was faintly damp and had that good Earth-grass smell. This grass was not going to say it loved me or feed me, but right now silence was all I wanted. The monument was lit and I lay on my elbow in the quiet for a while panting heavily and contemplated the heroic bronze of Guadelupe Mendoza, the first woman Chief Justice and one of my favorite people in history. When I was a kid I saved bubble-gum cards with her picture; I had always liked her motherly ways and her liberal decisions.

Baynes’s house was three blocks from Lupe, a fairly modest mansion—considering its owner’s wealth and power—at the eastern edge of the Congressional Compound. I was wary of guards, but there was no need to be; none were around. The place was lit up with the kind of candlepower only a senator could command; even the pair of metal deer on the front lawn had a spotlight.

I considered climbing through a bedroom window but rejected the idea. I hadn’t been reborn on Belson to get shot as a burglar. So I walked up the brickwork path and climbed the stairs to the broad porch. I knocked loudly on the door and then checked my watch. It was two-thirty. I knocked again.

The door opened and a young man was standing there blinking at me. I recognized him from a visit I’d paid Baynes a few years before. I gave him my steely, no-nonsense look. “Good evening,” I said. “I’m Ben Belson and I’m here to see the Senator.” I paused a second and then pushed past him into the enormous living room. On the floor at one end of the room a couple of small black boys wearing pajamas were playing with a modern rarity, an electric train. At the other end, half lying on a Chesterfield sofa, was a thin, elderly black man. He was smiling warmly at me. “Son of a bitch!” he said with a grin. He rose sleepily to his feet, jammed his hands into his bathrobe pockets, and looked at me as friendly as you please. “If it isn’t Benjamin Belson!” he said.

“Hello, L’Ouverture,” I said, not smiling. I have to admit that he’s a charming bastard. And nobody is going to outpoise him.

“They called me a few hours ago, Ben, when they found your ship on the radar.” He gestured toward the children and yawned. “Woke up my grandchildren too.”

There was a blue viddiphone on the table by the sofa. Just then it began to hum. “L’Ouverture,” I said. “Turn the video off and don’t tell them I’m here.

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