Time Thieves

to the window beside the dresser. Pressing his face to the glass, he looked down, thirty feet, onto a flagstone patio. He might be able to make the jump without breaking or twisting an ankle. But he didn't want to have to try it.
        
        “Are you thinking, Mr. Mullion?”
        
        Pressure, pressure, boring, leaning, grinding down on him…
        
        “Yes,” he said. “Look, will you make me a promise?” \
        
        “What is that?”
        
        “Don't hurt me?”
        
        “We promised that quite some time ago, Mr. Mullion. It has never been our intention to cause you pain.”
        
        He only half listened to the reply as he rounded the bed and made his way to the second window in the room. Just beyond the window, there was a large elm tree. Its branches thrust within inches of the glass.
        
        “Mr. Mullion?”
        
        He took his hand away from his wounded shoulder, winced at the new rush of pain, unlatched the window and opened it. He went out feet first, squirming beneath the half-raised sill until his head and shoulders were out He was precariously perched on the window ledge.
        
        “Mr. Mullion?” the robot asked from beyond the door, growing wary now.
        
        Holding the bottom of the sill with his bad arm, he reached for the elm branch nearest him. It was just a bit too far for comfort.
        
        Behind, the door slammed open, torn from its hinges
        
        He leaped for the branch and caught it with his bleeding arm, almost blacking out. He scrabbled for the security of the rough bark and swung his good arm over it, In a moment, he was perched upon it, looking back at the bedroom and the confused figures of the two robots as they looked under the bed and in the closet. Before they could notice the open window, he worked his way to the main trunk of the tree and went down, from branch to branch, until he dropped easily to the flagstones out of which the elm grew.
        
        He looked up at the bedroom window.
        
        A mechanical man was standing there, looking down at him.
        
        He ran.
        
        The houses in this part of the city were all large, set on small but thickly treed lots which afforded a sense of privacy. They also offered good cover for a man who was running for his life. He tried not to cross any open ground, staying with the trees and the shrubs, the shadows and the fragrant lilac bushes, houses and garden walls.
        
        When he paused for breath, he realized the white, spherical sentience of the robot was keeping touch with him. He thought of thrusting it out but knew he couldn't get rid of it for very long. Yet, if he could not get rid of it, he was foolish for running. He did not have much strength left; his legs felt as if they were made of cardboard that had suddenly gotten wet; the mechanicals would dog him until he collapsed.
        
        With the chances of escape constantly diminishing, he realized what he must do.
        
        He slid to the ground, his back against the wall of a three-car garage. Summoning up all his energy, he touched the white sphere with a telepathic probe and found the thread that would lead him back to the distant inhuman master of the machines. Without hesitation, he coursed along that filament, moving faster than the speed of light, slammed head on into the alien consciousness on the other end, and felt their minds melt through each other.
        
        A world where the sky is orange, shading toward yellow at the horizons, with clouds that are tinted a soft green, with a sun that is only a white dot in the sky …
        
         Buildings of glass…
        
         Yellow trees, turning black in autumn…
        
         Flowers that pull up their roots and walk,.. .
        
        One after another, the shatered fragments of the other-worldly visions flowed through his mind, sharp but not unpleasant.
        
        He stabbed into the deepest regions of that mind, looked at the eyeless creature's innermost desires and hopes, understood only a fraction of them, whirled, twisted, and looked elsewhere.
        
        As he had hoped, his sudden atack and attempt at intimacy had disconcerted the eyeless creature on the other end. The white sphere went black as it momentarily lost control of its mechanical servants.
        
        An