by Farris, John
"Hester," he said softly, "what are we talking about here? I never owned a white horse. I was never in a fair fight in my life. I never gave the other guy a chance to draw first. It is a very ugly thing to die by shotgun. It's probably worse than being blown up by a bomb ten thousand feet over deep blue water. I would have run over him, Hester. I would have mangled him. But they were monitoring or observing visually from somewhere, and they filled the area with cars in a hell of a hurry. I got out alive because I had clouted some kid's Roadrunner with a big mag mill in it, and because I had less to lose than the man driving the chase car; speed and desperation gave me the necessary edge."
Hester's stomach was churning. Her right cheek stung where one of his fingernails had gouged her.
"Please . . ."
Peter released her. He turned his head away as if he felt contempt for her, for unpardonable weakness. His contempt hurt worse than a beating.
She had said: "It could be—the one reason why he won't give up, why he's still after you."
And Peter had said: "Revenge isn't that dear to Childermass. No, he's hunting me out of fear. He's afraid I'll take Robin away from him. And Robin has become more important to him than MORG itself."
Hester watched Peter scrape the underside of his jaw with the old-fashioned straight razor which he'd stropped to a delicate edge. He had good steady hands today. He'd slept soundly two nights in a row, so he wasn't sick to his stomach half the time from sheer nervous fatigue. He could hold on to his meals and he'd put on four or five pounds since she'd been cooking for him, he didn't look quite so gaunt any more. In another week . . . Hester's eyes stung with sudden tears. She wished now she had lied about the girl poor Raymond Dunwoodie had mentioned, the psychic. "I checked all the hospitals, Peter. I couldn't find a trace of the girl. Maybe she wasn't treated—you know, she might have been feeling okay and they just sent her home." But it wasn't so easy to lie to him. Not when he sat very close and still, his eyes motionless like a chilly kind of waking death, with those metal-hazy glints that made you mindful of the savage potential of the smaller jungle cats, the ones even the best of the cat keepers and trainers don't try to work into the act.
So she'd told him all she had learned about Gillian Bellaver. Those Bellavers. He praised her detective work. There was a tremor of excitement in him, a renewed sense of purpose. Hester couldn't shake the feeling that she had made a disastrous mistake.
Peter finished his shave and rinsed. Hester got up and went back to the ironing board and pressed the priestly suit of clothes he had stolen the day before, along with a clerical collar and a plain black homburg and a black satchel like the satchel doctors carried in that remote era when doctors made house calls. No one looked too closely at a priest in a hospital, no matter what time of the day or night he was seen there. No one asked for credentials.
When Peter had it all together Hester studied him critically from across the room.
"If I'd walked in the door just now I wouldn't have known you," she admitted.
"I feel about as authentic as a two-dollar hairpiece," he grumbled. "I was never big on disguises."
"You'll be great, Father, um—"
"Van Bergen."
"But the timing?"
"Couldn't be better. New Year's Eve, the hospital's half empty. Reduced staff, and by ten o'clock tonight there'll be at least one discreet but swinging party for those nurses stuck with floor duty. I'll have plenty of time to talk to the Bellaver girl. And if she's all Raymond claimed she was—"
"Then somebody else could be interested," Hester said. "The ones Raymond talked to before you met him in the park. He had to be talking to MORG, Peter. There was no call from Raymond Dunwoodie logged at the Institute on that day. I checked."
Peter studied her. "Maybe you're taking too many chances lately."
"Oh, Peter, anybody can get a look at the telephone log!"
"That place is heavily miked, Hester! And I tried to explain to you how the Psychological Stress Evaluator works: they'll have random print-outs on every employee. It's a long-distance device that evaluates physiological tremors under stress, you don't have to be hooked up to it to give yourself—"
"Okay, okay."
"So you spent a few minutes bashing with their computer and got away with it, but maybe you've done something else that strikes Paragon security as a little odd, and they don't need much to make them suspicious. One slip and you'll be another in a fairly long line of people who have passed through Paragon Institute on their way to a cloudy corner of limbo."
"You have to get scary, don't you? I'm fine! Nobody's after me. You're the one who keeps disappearing and, and, God, I don't see you, days at a time, weeks, all I can do is call and call that fucking subway number, and maybe once in a while some wino answers—"
It astonished Hester that she would so easily go off on a tear, perversely showing him even more weakness; she'd planned to be as stoic about Peter's leave-taking as he was. But once she got started, the flicker of concern in Peter's eyes might have prompted genuine hysteria if he hadn't held her so soothingly close.
"Just don't get hurt," she begged him. "And don't stay gone so long this time."
"Hester, I couldn't keep going without you," Peter assured her, and although Hester was basically too sensible to entirely believe him, there was nothing she wanted to hear more.
Chapter Ten
With his wife in Minneapolis for the birth of a grandchild, Dr. Irving Roth, director of Paragon Institute, found himself with nothing better to do on New Year's Eve than attend a party of the Hudson Valley Medical Association for some globe-trotting Russians. It was a big, formal, and dull affair in Riverdale, the kind of thing where you had to wear a name tag on your tuxedo. The buffet wasn't bad. Roth over-ate, as he'd done throughout the holiday season. Pounds and pounds he didn't need. He was already wide, like a wrestler, but he had short arms and no air of aggression—his smile was too smooth and appealing; All in all, a bit of a charmer. His hair was fading from the top of his head like grass on a drought-stricken lawn.
Roth spoke to men he hadn't seen much of since med school, and he spoke to a disconcerting number of colleagues who thought he'd retired and moved to a more leisurely part of the world.
"I'm doing basic research," he said, when the question inevitably came up. No one pressed for details, but several with research projects of their own were interested in the numbers.
"Well funded, I hope," said a physiologist with a goatee who was looking for a sponsor. Roth smiled the comfortable smile of a man up to his elbows in the public trough. He told the physiologist he needed to make a phone call, helped himself to a third martini, vowing to drink only half of it, and went wandering. It was a depressing house: drafty, with slate floors and dark wainscoting high as a man's head.
"Irv? Irving Roth?"
Roth turned, smiling automatically.
"Oh, hello, doctor, uh—"
"Tofany," the man said. He had a kind of cheerful, old-fashioned, turn-of-the-century look: Teddy Roosevelt glasses and strawberry-pink coloring, topped by a confection of pure-white, billowy hair. "Hubert Tofany."
"Let's see, tropical medicine, isn't it? And you're at Columbia."
Tofany nodded. "I saw you come in. I was hoping I'd have the chance to talk to you tonight—I've meant to look you up. Do you have a minute, Irv?"
"I was looking for a telephone, but it's nothing urgent. Grandchild due out in Minnesota."
"I have six grandchildren myself. The oldest will be ready for medical school in a couple of years."
Roth chuckled and shook his head as if to say Time sure gets away from you, and then he decided to finish the third martini after all. Every damn drop.
"What piqued my interest, Irv, I recalled hearing you were heavily into psychic phenomena these days."
"As an adjunct to noetics and transpersonal psychology, yes. I suppose you might say I'm interested in psi."
"I mention it because of a patient, unusual case. I
was brought in as a consultant when it seemed there was a good possibility she was infected with one of the really hot viruses that slip into the country from time to time. We had her in isolation at Columbia until we were certain it was nothing more than a particularly vicious flu mutation, similar to the one that was so devastating in Recife last summer."
"Uh-huh."
"The patient is a young lady of fourteen. She was stricken suddenly, and ran a high temperature. It peaked at one hundred six and two tenths."
"Wow."
"Apparently without doing any real damage; they can stand a lot at that age. She convulsed at least once before we saw her, but an EEG two days ago showed normal wave patterns. Now she's almost completely recovered, in fact we may let her go home tomorrow. It can't be too soon for Gillian. She's had some interesting paranormal experiences these past few days."
"Paranormal?"
"I'm not sure what you'd call them. Visions, perhaps."
"She saw herself standing before the gates of Heaven, that sort of thing?"
"Nothing so comfortably rooted in mysticism. She was able to describe to me, in great detail, a malpractice suit I was familiar with, because it involved my son-in-law. The case was settled two years ago."
"She remembered reading about it in the papers."
"The case was tried in Texas, and even then it rated only a couple of paragraphs."
"Hospital gossip, then."
"Gossip about a two-year-old case at Houston Medical Center? I don't think so. And Gillian knew too much to have casually pieced it together from idle chatter. For instance, she could describe accurately General Robert E. Lee's aide-de-camp for whom my son-in-law Josiah was named. There's a portrait of Captain Brakestone hanging in the den down there in Houston, but Gillian couldn't possibly have seen it. I think the whole thing is rather remarkable."
"What else has she done?"
"Before it began to trouble her and she stopped talking altogether, she kept the floor nurses entertained . . . and, I think, a little apprehensive. She was like a, a mental magnet, picking up items of personal information. By that I mean the sort of thing you might not even discuss with your closest friend. Everyone was talking about Gillian on the floor, and I suppose all the attention, plus a certain amount of notoriety, made her cautious."
"But it could have been a short-lived phenomenon. That isn't unusual. We're a long way from understanding how the human mind works. The high fever, well, that could have resulted, in view of the essentially passive condition of the recuperating patient, in some sort of biocommunication, perhaps a veridical hallucination or two . . ."
"Oh, yes, I see."
"It would be more significant if the girl had been aware of definite Psi experiences before she came ill."
"Well, one of the reasons she fainted at the skating rink—"
Roth said alertly, "Skating rink? Are you talking about Wollman Rink in Central Park?"
"Yes."
"She fainted there, and was taken to the hospital?"
"Roosevelt. Then that evening I had her moved uptown to Washington Heights."
"Do you remember what day it was?"
"Before Christmas. Tuesday, I think, the twenty-first, because we were due at the Amerdeens at eight, and I—"
"Doctor, I'm sorry, you were saying, weren't you, that the girl had some sort of paranormal experience at the rink—"
"That's what Gillian told me, two days after her fever broke and she was able to piece together what had happened to her just before she collapsed. Gillian and her girl friend had been aware of a, some sort of bum, derelict, the park is full of them as you know, he may have been making a nuisance of himself. Asking for handouts. For some reason Gillian felt as if she knew him. At least she knew his name, and his background; he was from some little place in New Jersey. It all, she said, just popped into her mind."
"His name was—?"
"Raymond. Dun something. Dunkirk, perhaps."
"Please go on."
"Gillian remembers feeling a little woozy, out on the rink. She already had a touch of fever, and she was looking forward to a long nap when she got home. It was when she made a turn on the ice that she was severely jolted by the sight of the bum, Raymond, lying on his back, a gunshot wound in his head."
"Gunshot-wound!"
"It was dreadful and gory, and that's what precipitated her faint."
"But he wasn't there, it was just a, call it a hallucination."
"Of course."
"Gunshot wound, she's definite about that."
"Oh, yes," Dr. Tofany said.
Roth had finished his third martini without tasting it, and he was feeling rather nastily on edge, a little worm of a blood vessel prowling in his left temple, usually an unfailing commandment: thou shalt lay off the hard stuff, take deep breaths in a well-ventilated room, and think benign thoughts about the human condition.
"He said, "With your permission, doctor, I think I'd like to talk to the girl. Gillian?"
"Bellaver."
"Oh. Those Bellavers?"
"Her father is Avery Bellaver."
"The family oddball?"
"I found him cultivated and sensitive, although not very . . . accessible, which may account for his reputation. His wife is a raving beauty." Roth consulted his watch.
"Let's see, nine forty-six, the hospital's just a few minutes from here—"
"You wanted to see her tonight?"
"Clairvoyance, or precognition, is neither rare nor a sign of abnormality, but Gillian has no way of knowing that. She could be one very badly confused girl. Frightened. I think she'll confide in me, however. And it would be far easier tonight than after she's discharged, at home with the family."
"Yes, I understand that."
"New Year's Eve, my wife's in Minneapolis—" Roth spread his hands and grinned wryly. "And I'm here, surrounded by two hundred doctors talking shop, I might as well be working. At least I won't wake up tomorrow with a hangover."
Dr. Tofany also smiled.
"She's in 809 Herlands North, and I do appreciate your taking an interest. Why don't you give me a ring in a day or two?"
The only phone line in the house not tied up by other doctors was a pay phone that had been installed for the convenience of the household staff. It was located in an alcove between the busy kitchen and the butler's pantry. Roth made a credit-card call to Minneapolis, and was so brusque with his wife she had to ask him if he was feeling well. The baby hadn't come yet. Roth told Grace-Ann that he would be at home in Pelham in about an hour and a half, she could reach him there after the blessed event. He managed to sound cheerful saying goodbye to her, but she was out of his mind even before he hung up.
Roth was thinking about the dazzling day before Christmas when Raymond Dunwoodie called him from Central Park, and he had a serious attack of the guilts again; he would feel everlastingly guilty about Raymond. They should never have let him try to send from inside the high-frequency electrical field, an experiment that for unknown reasons always has a terrible effect on the organism. A promising young psychic had been reduced to fumbling in trashcans because of a directive Roth should have been sufficiently cautious to ignore. That's why he always tried to be patient when Raymond was desperate, and shamming, and inventing stories in hopes of cadging a few bucks. (They could have taken care of him, for God's sake, put him on some kind of pension. The ethical poverty of his employer, the essential lack of respect for human life, shamed Roth.) The story about the girl at the ice rink was too good to be true, of course, but Raymond's voice sounded different that afternoon. He wasn't whining. He was excited but not overwrought. There was a suggestion of forcefulness that surprised Roth, so he took time off on a busy day to taxi to the park, expecting almost anything but the sight of Raymond so pathetically dead on a high rock overlooking the rink.
He'd reported it the same day, and later the startling explanation came back to him. Raymond had been seen with Peter Sandza. The decision was made by the MORG team to
take out Sandza, because opportunities had been scarce and Childermass was having fits. Unfortunately the attempted assassination went wrong, a grotesque climax to the downhill life of Raymond Dunwoodie.
Roth had his opportunity then to explain about the psychic girl of Raymond's, but the more he thought about it the more it seemed a terminal fantasy. If she did exist, with Raymond dead how could she be located? So Roth kept the story to himself.
Now, purely by chance, he knew that Raymond had been telling the truth, and Roth quickly had to do something about the girl. It was time to make another phone call—suspiciously past time, depending on how they cared to look at it. He could be in trouble.
The vein in his temple was acting up again. He was standing, and his right leg was going numb from the pressure of the garters he wore only with his formal threads. He ignored the black maid who was prowling around hoping to get possession of the telephone, wiped oily palms on a paper napkin, turned his back, hunched over the receiver and placed a second call.
As usual, once he reached the primary number, there was waiting involved. He was uneasy, thinking of the girl in the hospital, wondering if somehow she might get away from them again; but this time he had her name. Gillian. Just fourteen. Robin Sandza's age. . . .
The phone rang and Roth picked up the receiver.
"Hello, Doctor," Childermass said pleasantly. "How's tricks?"
Her last night in Washington Heights Hospital, Gillian, for sheer lack of anything else to do, considered throwing a tantrum.
She was in a ludicrous state of frustration; hollow, but not hungry; despairing, but not quite enough to support a good soul-cleansing cry. She had taken her sleeping pill, but she remained starey-eyed awake. Television was contemptible, all music bored or annoyed her, and there was nothing to see through her windows except another part of the sprawling hospital. She had a mysterious rash on her bottom that made it difficult to sit still for any length of time. She had bitten her nails to the bleeding quick. She didn't feel attractive enough to go to bed and try to get some pleasure from her body; she couldn't be horny even when she concentrated on an image of Robert Redford at the tennis club, the heart-stopping way his eyes gleamed in his sweaty overheated face when he smashed back a powerful serve. It was hard to have erotic fantasies when your hair needed washing. She knew if Bob could see her now he wouldn't smile that great cheeky morale-building smile that was especially hers; he would probably throw up instead.
