“Too much,” he said.
“For your trouble,” she answered. “Now get in. I’ll drive you back to town.”
“Hey, Marysue,” Jennifer said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Beauford said as she jumped into the car. “I’ll be back before you know it. You want to come? See how she runs?”
“No. I’ll—I guess I’ll wait.”
“Okay,” Marysue said, barely able to contain her pleasure at having her car back. “Look, I’ll—I’ll see if I can give the boys a lift. With Conrad’s heap all smashed up, he’ll have to walk or hitch or ride on the back of Lee’s bicycle. I’ll probably see them on the way.”
Jennifer wanted to protest, to remind Marysue of what they were supposed to be doing, but Chuck was listening, and all she could do was nod glumly.
“Don’t worry,” Beauford said then. “Another half an hour isn’t going to make all that much difference.”
“Sure. Okay.”
She backed quickly out of the way as Marysue shot forward, barely giving the mechanic a chance to close the door. And with the horn honking and the sound of Marysue’s delighted laughter fading away, Jennifer puffed up her cheeks, blew out a breath, and decided just then to check the library on her own.
The odds of her finding anything, she knew, were small to nonexistent, but until Lee and Conrad showed up for their afternoon classes, there wasn’t much she could do alone, and she was too impatient simply to wait.
The library took up the entire second floor of the Student Union. Jennifer stood on the landing outside the open doors, looking in at the students drifting among the stacks, jockeying for places at the tables in the center of the room.
Jennifer waited almost a full minute before going in, and upon entering she was immediately struck by the silence that greeted her. There were whispers, of course, the snap of pages turning, the scuffing of feet, and the occasional shriek of a chair being pushed back, but other than that the place could have been deserted. To her right was a small horseshoe-shaped desk, and behind it sat a dark-skinned girl whose name she knew but couldn’t recall. A senior. From someplace out west. Became a student librarian not for the money but for the chance of putting it on her record, for college.
Then she remembered and walked over.
“Hi, Tami.”
Tami Nells looked up at her from under a row of thick, black bangs. “Hi.”
“Looks busy.”
Nells grimaced and looked away pointedly. There was a book open in front of her, and, Jennifer saw, keys lying beside it.
“You ought to take a break,” she said, as sincerely as she could. “You must’ve been here all day, what with Klopher gone and all.”
Nells, still scowling, looked up. “Yeah. And no one would cover for me at lunch. Fine had a class, so she said.”
Jennifer pretended to think for a minute before saying, “Well, I’ll cover for you if you want to run downstairs for something to eat.”
Suspicion instantly clouded the girl’s face, but Jennifer maintained her expression—the innocence of a newcomer who wanted to make points with the seniors. A moment later Nells nodded her decision, slammed her book closed, and walked around to the front of the desk.
“Just don’t do anything, okay?” she ordered. “You screw something up, it’s my fault, got it?”
“Hey, no problem,” Jennifer said, taking Tami’s place on the tall stool and folding her hands on the desk. She narrowed her eyes in a glower. “I’ll just pretend I’m Klopher.”
She almost received a smile, got a grunt instead, and, as soon as Nells was out the door, Jennifer started opening drawers. Slowly. As though she knew what she was looking for.
There were four on either side of her and one in the center. The center one contained nothing but rubber stamps, paper clips, and other supplies. The drawers on the left, all of them unlocked, held papers and forms, a few books, and file folders.
The two top drawers on the righthand side were the same.
A pair of freshmen approached her, and she apologized when she was unable to answer their questions. “Just filling in for a while,” she said, assuring them that the regular girl would be back any minute.
The third drawer was locked, and she quietly picked up the keys and opened it. Nothing but a metal box. She glanced around the room, smiled absently in case anyone was watching, and reached down to open the box. There was money inside. Fines, she concluded, for overdue books.
The bottom drawer had a label on it, so worn she had to lean down to read it: PRIVATE.
Bingo, she thought. She crossed her fingers and tried three keys before locating the right one.
Then she sat up, checked the room and doors again, and reminded herself that there was probably nothing in there she could use. Surely the aliens had already searched the desk, and if there had been anything in there before it would be gone now.
She turned the key, pulled it out, and replaced the keys on the desktop where she had found them.
And someone spoke her name.
Hoping she didn’t look as guilty as she felt, she saw Barbara O’Malley standing in front of her, a pair of books cradled in one arm.
“Hi, Field. I want to take these out.”
Jennifer explained a second time that she was only sitting in for Nells, and O’Malley rolled her eyes.
“You know, this is a royal pain in the—”
“Wait a minute,” Jennifer said, forestalling what she knew would be a long string of inventive curses, for which O’Malley was well known. The girl had tried them out on an instructor once and had spent most of the previous spring term on probation.
Barbara closed her mouth and sighed. “Okay, I’ll wait.” And when she looked as if she were going to wait right at the desk, Jennifer smiled apologetically at her and opened the book Nells had left behind, making a great show of studying the first page she came to.
At last O’Malley took the hint and stomped off, muttering loudly.
Jennifer grinned to herself but didn’t look down at the drawer. Too many people were drifting across the front of the room right then, and she began to worry that Nells would return before she had a chance to check the last one.
Stupid, she told herself. This is stupid. If you get caught, what are you going to say?
The room finally settled down.
And after taking a deep breath, she slid the drawer open.
It was empty.
She pulled it out as far as it would go, tugging once when it got stuck, and closed her eyes briefly in disappointment. No miracles here, Field, she told herself. She started to close it, frowning when it got stuck a second time.
It was probably nothing.
But with nothing to lose, she slipped off the stool and knelt beside it. When she leaned over to peer into the back, she saw nothing that could have caused the obstruction, but when she pulled the drawer toward her again she was positive she felt and heard paper crumpling. Feeling as if everyone in the library was watching her, she felt along the underside of the drawer until, with a gasp she couldn’t contain, her fingers brushed across the unmistakable bulk of an envelope.
Oh, no, she thought and yanked at it several times before the tape pulled free.
She turned it over once, starting to look at it, but changed her mind and closed the drawer. Once back on the stool, she slipped the envelope into the pocket of her jacket, which she had never removed, and began looking at her watch.
In fifteen minutes she would have to be back outside. Until then, or until Nells returned, she didn’t dare open the envelope in case someone saw her do it.
Time dropped to a maddening crawl.
And ten minutes later, just as she was about to get up and look out the door for Tami, Dean Dramon walked into the library. Jennifer couldn’t help but stare. He was a tall, darkly handsome man who had a fair percentage of the student body lusting after him, dreaming about him, and deathly afraid of him because of his strict insistence on their obeying not
only the letter but also the spirit of the academy’s rules.
He was wearing a black suit, a blue open-neck shirt, and a burgundy cashmere muffler draped casually around his neck.
Jennifer hoped he wouldn’t look at her, and when he did it was all she could do not to leap up from her stool and bolt for the door.
“Miss Field,” he said with a smile.
“Dean Dramon.”
“I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Just sitting in for a while,” she said and nervously rubbed her palms against her knees once. “TamiNells ought to be back—”
But the dean had already turned away, beckoned to Barbara O’Malley, and stood waiting with his hands clasped behind his back. Jennifer ignored the frantic look the girl gave her. All she wanted now was to get out of there. But the dean didn’t move away when O’Malley joined him; he only leaned forward and whispered something in her ear. Barbara’s eyes widened, and she nodded quickly, then dumped the books she was carrying onto the desk and ran for the stairs.
The dean turned to watch her go.
Then he looked at Jennifer and said, “When you’re through playing games, Miss Field, I’ll see you in my office.”
Six
DRAMON SMOOTHED THE BURGUNDY MUFFLER along his chest as if he were adjusting his lapels. A last glance at the library, and he left without looking back.
The noise level in the room rose perceptibly.
The temperature appeared to drop.
Jennifer didn’t know what to do. She did clamp an arm against her side to feel the bulk of the envelope in her pocket. The urge to open it was over-whelming now, but as long as the dean was still around, she didn’t dare.
For weeks she had known, without tangible proof, that the man was somehow connected with the aliens. Whether he was actually one of them or simply working with them she hadn’t been able to determine, but she had received ample clues and enough veiled threats not to be mistaken about her supposition.
She forced herself not to look at the doors in case he was standing off in the shadows watching her.
The expression on his face reminded her of the alien that had confronted her in the pool.
Her breathing grew shallow and rapid, and she leaned forward on her elbows, covering her eyes with her hands, praying for an earthquake, a tornado, any disaster to save her from having to see the man again, alone.
Marysue, she thought, please hurry back!
And when Tami returned, complaining bitterly about the food in the vending machines, Jennifer smiled quickly at her and hurried to the landing, where she braced herself against the metal railing to look down into the Union foyer. Dramon was nowhere to be seen, and she took the stairs down slowly, cautiously. At the bottom she froze.
The dean was standing just outside the main door, chatting with a group of girls.
She couldn’t go out that way. She just couldn’t meet him and go to his office. Had he mentioned something about her grades, or her spending too much time off campus lately, then she would have obeyed. Reluctantly, but she would have gone.
But he had said, “When you’re through playing games,” and to her that could mean only one thing.
Keeping a careful eye on the man’s back, she moved toward the double swinging doors to her left just beyond the dining hall. Beyond the doors lay the clinic, some storerooms, and the bookstore. At the end of that hall was an exit to the lawn behind the crescent, and if she could get there without being spotted, she might be able to make her way around to her dorm to find Marysue and Lee.
Just then, a large group of chattering students burst out of the gameroom and headed for the front doors. She moved swiftly into the hallway, using them for cover. As soon as the doors swung shut behind her, she slowed down, put a hand to her chest to keep her heart from leaping out, and tried to appear as if she knew where she was going and didn’t have time to stop and chat.
On the right, the bookstore was open, but no one saw her pass. Farther down, the door to the clinic was open, and there were two girls sitting in the molded plastic chairs, waiting for someone to take care of them. It wasn’t unusual—the twenty-four-hour flu managed to strike with remarkable regularity.
A nervous glance over her shoulder only a few yards from the exit made her stop. The dean had come to look for her. Through the glass in the top half of the hall door, Jennifer could see his profile. He was slowly turning to look down the hall, and he’d see her as soon as he turned all the way around.
Looking around in near panic, she saw a half open door on her left and, without thinking, lunged through it and pulled it closed.
It was dark.
She groped along the near walls until she found a light switch, flicked it on, and, startled, saw that she was standing at the head of a flight of metal stairs. Below she could hear the faint rumbling of the furnace.
She gnawed on her lower lip and decided she should stay there for a while if the dean decided to check for her—assuming he was really after her this time. So she took the stairs down to the basement’s concrete floor and stared in amazement at the size of the heating system, the massive pipes and ducts, and the empty cartons and crates stacked against the walls.
I could get lost down here, she thought as she moved to her right. It’s like a secret kingdom or something. For a brief moment fascination replaced her feeling of unease.
She remembered Borden Overbrook telling her once that he’d been down there—though why, he hadn’t said—and he had laughed about finding nothing more interesting than some rather ugly spiders.
Steam hissed somewhere in the back of the huge room.
Pipes clanked.
With a glance back up at the door, she moved toward the rear, knowing there had to be another way out. The custodians would have to have an outside exit; that was only common sense.
But the lights, naked bulbs caged in wire mesh, were widely spaced and dim, and as she moved along an aisle formed by pieces of what looked like discarded machinery and boxes of cleaning materials, she couldn’t help thinking that someone else was down there.
There were no windows that she could see.
The air was uncomfortably warm and filled with the smell of fuel oil and dust.
And above her she could hear the muffled tramping of feet as the school went about its business.
“Dumb, Field,” she muttered, running a finger along the top of an empty crate. “You’ve really done it this time.”
She was committed now to finding another exit, because if she used the upstairs hall door, and if the dean was still there, she couldn’t very well tell him she’d gotten lost on her way to the administration building.
The way ahead was blocked by a man-high pile of old newspapers bound together with wire. She turned left and squeezed between a bucket of slimy water with a mop beside it and some upended planks whose tops rested against the highway of heating ducts that ran along the ceiling. The aisle she found herself in was flanked by metal shelves nearly seven feet high. Tools, rags, and boxes and bottles of cleaning powders and fluids filled up the spaces not occupied with cartons.
It was darker.
When she looked over her shoulder, she could no longer see the stairs.
When she looked ahead, she saw only the dull metal sides of a pair of huge boilers.
And she froze when she heard something moving behind them.
Her first thought was to forget about the dean and getting caught and just make her way to the stairs and leave. If he was there, she would think of something; if he wasn’t, she’d just run out as fast as she could.
But as she started to retreat, she heard another sound—a groan.
She shook her head.
It was her imagination.
She shook her head again, more vigorously.
It was the middle of the day, but down there among the shadows and machinery, with the muffled roar and grumblings of the boilers, she couldn’t trust what she thought she had heard. Everything was working o
n her imagination. A groan could only mean that someone was down there with her, and he might be hurt.
Or it might be an alien, pretending to be hurt.
Reaching blindly behind her, she grabbed the mop and held it defensively across her chest.
The envelope in her pocket grew heavy when she became aware of it, and she decided that as soon as she discovered what was or wasn’t in the cellar, she’d open it and see what she had found.
A sound—something, someone, shifting.
Another groan, quieter, as if someone was trying not to be heard.
Go back, she told herself.
And cocked her head as she moved slowly forward, sidling to her left in order to get around the nearest boiler, large and square and with a bit of paint that showed it might have been green when new.
Steam hissed from a leaky valve.
A sudden belch of roaring as the other boiler blasted on and set the pipes ringing.
Jennifer swallowed, readjusted her grip on the mop, and hurried down the aisle now formed from stacks of varying lengths of discarded splintered lumber. When she reached the end, she found herself at a cinderblock wall, and she squeezed around the wood to the right and saw the far corner directly ahead, hidden in deep shadow because the bulb there was out and because it was partially blocked by a screen of tall cartons.
The first boiler was now directly on her right, its back wall blackened, its great arms reaching upward and out to connect with the ducts that either stretched to other parts of the cavernous room or vanished into the ceiling.
Condensation dripped into a pail.
There was a stool beside the boiler’s door, a shovel lying beside it.
She held her breath and listened.
The dripping water sounded like coins being dropped on a hollow drum.
Keeping her eye on the corner, she edged toward the boiler, the wood at her back. Grit crunched beneath her feet. A strand of cobweb spun slowly across her face. The mop grew heavy, and she held it closer, a feeble weapon but better than nothing at all.
The boiler rambled at her.
She knew from the undisturbed layers of dust that the custodians seldom went back there. The system was automatic and probably needed tending only when something was wrong. She was straining, however, to hear the noise again.
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