Six Blind Men & an Alien Read Online Free PDF Page B

poorly-constructed dwellings. He stood in an alley between two rows of shanties in desperate need of repair, and pressed one of his thumbs against the chip that had been embedded in his neck.
        "Yes?" said a voice inside his head.
        "I regret to report that I was seen tonight."
        "That is not good, Zhond Matoka," said the voiceless voice from the mother ship.
        "I require instructions," said Matoka. "I am in a city of perhaps six million. The two men who saw me have decided not to report the incident. Shall I remain here?"
        "No."
        "Where shall I go next?"
        "There is a large city a little more than 400 miles south of you. And since you started at the north end of the continent, it makes sense to keep moving south."
        "Understood and acknowledged," said Matoka, ending the pressure on the chip and breaking the connection.
        He began walking south again. A few people saw him, or at least saw his outline, but it was very dark, and the people who lived in these slums were not inclined to call the authorities for any reason. About an hour later he came upon a bicycle that was not locked and chained, and after a moment’s hesitation-he had never ridden one, though he’d watched others-he appropriated it. Areas like this, he knew, did not report theft any more than they reported strangers wandering the streets in the middle of the night. The owner would probably just go out and steal another.
        He knew that he couldn’t ride along the roads or anywhere near them, not in the daylight, and he couldn’t make much progress riding it over bumpy and frequently-fenced fields, so he abandoned it when he reached the southernmost end of town an hour before daylight.
        He looked around, and saw a large building with a number of trucks backed up to it. He approached it carefully and studied it. It seemed to be a factory of some kind, but he couldn’t tell what it manufactured because all he could see from his vantage point was the shipping dock, filled with hundreds of huge wooden and cardboard boxes.
        The backs of the trucks were open. One old man operated a forklift, loading the boxes into the trucks. There was no one else to be seen. Matoka’s problem was how to determine which of the trucks would be going south, and finally he figured it out. Each of the trucks bore license plates. There were sixteen trucks. Thirteen had license plates of one type or color. Two more had a second color, and a single one had a third.
        Logic dictated that the thirteen trucks were all from Nairobi, or at least from Nairobi’s country, which was spelled K-e-n-y-a. Nairobi was in the southern part of the country, so it was likely (but not certain) that the two trucks with similar plates belonged to the adjacent southern country, and the other one to a country to the north or west.
        He looked at the sky. It would be light in another half hour, at least light enough that he couldn’t climb into one of the trucks unseen, so he approached them, waited patiently until the forklift driver was busy loading boxes into a truck thirteen vehicles removed from the one he’d chosen, and he quickly climbed into it. He moved some of the boxes to leave himself room to sit and even lie down if it was an exceptionally long or wearing trip, made sure that no one standing behind the truck could spot him, and settled in for the ride.
        As if on cue, the driver arrived at sunrise, closed the back of the truck, climbed into the driver’s seat, and began speeding down the road. The whole time the truck was in motion Matoka was considering all his alternatives for when the truck stopped, because he was only hidden from view as long as the boxes remained where they were.
        The truck slowed and came to a stop in two hours, but no one opened the back, and it began moving again in twenty minutes. Matoka couldn’t know it, of course, but it had merely stopped for the