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Macroscope

by Piers Anthony

The author wishes to express his appreciation for the kind assistance given in aspects of the research and drafting of this novel to Alfred Jacob, Joseph Green, Marion McIntosh and Glen Brock. Without their diligence the scope would have been less macro. And special thanks to Marc Edmund Jones for permission to quote from his texts on astrology, though the treatment of that subject in this novel should not be taken as in any way official or definitive.

CHAPTER 1

Ivo did not realize at first that he was being followed. A little experimentation verified it, however: where Ivo went, so did this stranger.

He had seen the man, pale, fleshy and sweaty, in a snack shop, and thought nothing of it until repetition brought the matter to consciousness. Now it alarmed him.

Ivo was a slim young man of twenty-five with short black hair, brown eyes and bronzed skin. He could have merged without particular notice into the populace of almost any large city of the world. At the moment he was trying valiantly to do so — but the pursuer did not relent.

There was less of this type of thing today than there had been, but Ivo knew that people like himself still disappeared mysteriously in certain areas of the nation. So far he had personally experienced nothing worse than unexplained price increases at particular restaurants and sudden paucities of accommodations at motels. There had been disapproving frowns, of course, and loud remarks, but those hardly counted. He had learned to control his fury and even, after a time, to dismiss it.

But actually to be followed — that prompted more than mere annoyance. It brought an unpleasant sensation to his stomach. Ivo did not regard himself as a brave man, and even one experience of this nature made him long for the comparatively secure days of the project. That was a decade gone, though, and there could be no return.

His imagination pictured the stout Caucasian approaching, laying a clammy hand upon his arm, and saying: “Mister Archer? Please come with me,” and showing momentarily the illegal firearm that translated the feigned politeness into flat command. Then a helpless trip to a secluded spot — perhaps a rat-infested cellar — where…

Better to challenge the man immediately, here in the street where citizens congregated. To say to him: “Are you following me, sir?” with a significant emphasis on the “sir. ” And when the man denied it, to walk away, temporarily free from molestation. Around the corner, a short hop in a rental car, somewhere, anywhere, so long as he lost himself quickly.

Ivo entered a drugstore and ducked behind the towering displays of trivia, temporizing while he covertly watched the man. Would a direct challenge work — or would the bystanders merely stand by, afraid to get involved or just plain out of sympathy? Outside the glass he saw a harried white woman with two rambunctious little boys, and after her a Negro teenager in tattered tennis shoes, and after him the follower dawdling beside the entrance and mopping the sweat from his pallid complexion. A plainclothes policeman? Unlikely; there would have been none of this furtiveness.