by Jack Martin
The tall man did not react. His eyes glinted humorlessly.
Then Challis was flying through the air.
This is absurd! he thought, a microsecond before he struck the bookcase and flopped to the floor.
The man in gray came after him.
Challis ignored the pain in his ribs and launched himself from the floor in a full tackle.
That took the tall man off his feet. Challis rode him down like an animal.
You felt that, didn’t you? he thought savagely. Didn’t you!
“You son of a bitch!” he choked. “Where is she? What did you—?”
The black glove snapped onto his face.
With sudden lucidity, Challis understood how Grimbridge had been murdered. See? he thought, part of him observing as if it were happening to someone else. The way the fingers spread, going for my eyes, the way the thumb is hooking under . . .
Like a vise. Squeezing, pressing deeper.
The fingers contracted, closing into a claw.
No, thought Challis, with absolute, untouchable calm. No! Not this way. I will not have it.
He gathered every ounce of strength he had left. His body arched and became a knotted muscle, his bones hardened, his heart pumped to the limit and the last reserve of adrenaline coursed into his veins. He felt his kidneys ache in readiness as the gloved fingers groped for his eye sockets.
He waited another heartbeat, another, another, stretching it as far as he dared.
It must be timed perfectly. He would have but one blow. It would be his last. But it would contain his whole being.
He freed one arm, raised it high, clenched his fist until it was a rock, and drove it down into the assassin’s vest, at the same instant contracting his body in a single spasm of energy.
He struck a soft spot below the ribcage. He had aimed well. He felt the cloth give way, the shirt tear, the flesh sink in and in to receive his hand. A jet of warm wetness sprayed over his arm. He grabbed at the softness inside and twisted, then ripped his hand out.
The claw relaxed.
He dropped out of the grip and rolled free.
He opened his eyes.
He saw a blur of whiteness pumping out of the abdomen, and in his own hand a mass of wires dripping with milky fluid.
It was liquid silicone.
The tall man writhed spasmodically, one arm lashing out, fingers clamping the air. The sharp smell of burning plastic stung the air.
Challis lay there, his chest heaving. His hand felt broken. He let got of the torn wires and tried to stand.
Before he could rise, a door crashed open and more gray-suited guards were on him.
This time there was no way to fight them.
Cochran followed them in.
“Clumsy,” he said, going first to the old woman.
He hefted her mechanical head and looked into her face with sadness. He clucked.
“This was a rare piece. German, the best. Made in Munich in 1685. I must try to get a replacement. My European agent, perhaps.”
Then, like a host who has been hurt irreparably by the unseemly behavior of a guest, he said, “Mr. Challis. It’s been such a long night for all of us.”
“Where’s Ellie?”
“ ‘Mrs. Smith’?” Cochran’s ire gave way to amusement. “Why, I believe she’s resting just now. Yes. Resting.”
Challis lunged for him.
Black-gloved hands threw him back to the floor.
Cochran consulted his pocket watch.
“It didn’t take you long to get here, Mr. Challis. Doctor Challis, I should say. It will be morning soon. Halloween morning. It promises to be a busy day . . .”
He stood over Challis, about to impart some paternal advice.
“Being a medical man, you’ll probably find some of it quite interesting.”
From the table he lifted an ornamented black box. He flapped its lip open and held it out.
“Do you smoke, Doctor?” He stroked the intricately carved lid of the humidor. “These are the very finest, you can believe me. Bog oak. From the bogs of Ireland.”
The yard was a cold gunmetal blue in the morning light.
Throughout the factory grounds work had come to a halt. Truck bodies were jacked apart from cabs, forklifts had been run to ground and abandoned, their lifting bars pointed like spears at the sky.
“Ah, but there’s no smoking inside,” said Conal Cochran. Regretfully he removed the long cheroot from his mouth and handed it to one of his bodyguards for disposal. “Has to do with dust in the machinery. I very nearly forgot my own rules, what do you say to that?”
Challis had nothing to say as the gray-suited guard crushed out the ember between his flesh-colored fingers and pocketed the remains.
“Now then,” said Cochran, “I think everything is in order. This way, please . . .”
Challis was led roughly across the loading platform to a door marked NO ADMITTANCE.
Cochran ceremoniously unlocked it and beckoned his troupe inside.
The way was old and rickety. Except for the yardmen lined up at rigid attention, the interior would have passed for an abandoned warehouse.
“ ’Twould be nice to work them around the clock,” said Cochran, going to an anteroom. “But alas, the night is bad for them. Rust. And corrosion. The salt air, you know.”
“They’re all machines,” said Challis. “Every one of them.”
“Every one but you and me, Doctor. But you figured that out last night, didn’t you?”
The graysuits forced Challis down a long flight of stairs.
“The surprising thing is that the internal components are quite simple to produce, really. We get most of them from Korea and Taiwan. The outer features took much longer to perfect, but in the end it’s essentially another form of maskmaking.”
The stairs fed into a bunker, chilly with fluorescent light. An incongruously modern door slid into the wall, revealing an elevator.
Challis was pressed forward.
Cochran nodded and one of the graysuits pushed a button on the control panel.
“Going down,” said a sensuous female voice. It came from the speaker grille above their heads.
The elevator dropped for a very long time. Chains swallowed to unblock his ears.
One of the graysuits sneezed.
“Bless you,” said Cochran. His thin lips drew back wryly. “Convincing, aren’t they? Loyal and obedient. Unlike most of humankind.”
The graysuit released Challis long enough to hand Cochran a set of folded white garments. Then the graysuit began to wrench an identical set of protective clothing over Challis’s arms and feet.
“Just like a hospital, eh?” said Challis.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Cochran dressed himself like a surgeon prepping for the operating room. “I must admit the comparison had escaped me until now.”
“And do you save lives here? Marge Guttman, for instance. Did you save her?”
Cochran wagged his head woefully. “Poor Miss Guttman. But death is curiously productive, Dr. Challis. There’s a kind of concentration of the life forces at the moment of truth. The ancient Celts studied it, but couldn’t make use of it. Lacked the technology.”
“Dust-free area,” said the female voice. “No smoking, please . . .”
“Would you mind taking off your shoes?” said Cochran. “My men will take good care of them for you.” He put on the last of his outer garments and faced forward expectantly.
The elevator thumped to a halt.
At that signal the ceiling panel went red and a ventilation blower whirred on, filtering the air.
Challis noticed the androids on either side of him. In the purifying light their eyes shone blood-red.
“Ellie’s father,” he said. “You sent one of these out to kill him. Then it destroyed itself. No evidence to lead anyone back here.”
Cochran clapped his hands, which were now stained red like everything else in the compartment. The skin around his pin
k eyes crinkled up. With his snowy hair, he looked like a monstrous white rabbit!
“Very good, Doctor! That Grimbridge, he was a terribly inquisitive man. Downright nosey, you might say.”
The red light went out and the doors hissed open. Darkness ahead. Challis was given over into the waiting hands of two more graysuits. Cochran joined them and the door hissed shut behind them.
“Come,” said Cochran. “I promised you a look at the whole process, didn’t I? My ancestors never dreamed of this . . . !”
Cochran guided them to a dim railing.
Below, on the final level, an immense room the size of a soundstage came into view.
The ringing of hammers reverberated off the high ceiling.
A huge stone megalith several times the height of a man had been erected in one area of the chamber. It rose up from the floor like the primitive gravemarker for an entire nation. Around the base a wooden scaffold with ladders and platforms had been rigged. At the moment a canvas cover of mammoth proportions was draped over the uppermost edge of the rectangular stone. The undraped surface held blue shadows in its coarse, hand-sculpted contours.
“Your ancestors never dreamed of what, Cochran? What is this place?”
“A portion of the Salisbury plain, transported to the New World. Ahh, there we are . . .”
Cochran walked Challis around the railing to afford a view of the other end of the chamber. There a dozen technicians were busy in a circle of high-intensity tungsten light, making adjustments to a bank of video monitor screens.
“How to explain?” Cochran continued. “It would seem like magic to you. Advanced technology is always magic to one who doesn’t understand it. Rather like your own profession, Doctor, wouldn’t you agree? But come along. You’ve still time to figure it out on your own. Your scientific curiosity will not be disappointed, I assure you.”
They descended to the lowest level.
Now Challis saw a team of workers chipping away at the front of the stone with hammers and precision chisels. Blue-gray chalkiness coated their tunics, their hands.
Their inhuman hands.
“From a prehistoric shrine,” said Cochran reverently. “I imagine even you have heard of it.”
Challis gazed up and up at the monolith and the rain of flintlike chips which were being extracted from the stone. Already a sizable chunk had been carved out, but tons of it were left. Enough to tag every face on earth, even generations yet unborn.
If there would be another generation.
“Stonehenge . . .” murmured Challis.
Cochran picked up a sample chip and smoothed it on his sleeve before returning it cautiously to the conveyor belt. “Devil of a time getting it here. But it had to be done.”
The conveyor belt carried the chips to an assembly area, where hands quick and sure as surgical instruments shaped them and attached them with tweezers and calipers to the backs of Silver Shamrock trade seals.
“It has a power in it, you see. A force. Even the tiniest particle of it can be devastating, given the right circumstances.”
He scooped out a handful of finished seals and inspected them approvingly. He sprinkled them back into the box and applied a jeweler’s loupe to his eye. He picked out a finished skull mask and examined the back of it for the adhesion of its silver nameplate.
“Consider the miniaturization, if nothing else,” he went on proudly. “Those Orientals are simply wonderful with their small hands. Who would have dreamed? As I say, my forebears would have been delighted. To be able to reduce an object to the size of a pinhead. Even their alchemy couldn’t do this.”
“Alchemy, Cochran? Is that what you’re up to?”
“You would call it that. But surely you don’t doubt it now. Not after you’ve seen what it can do.”
“What did it do to Marge Guttman?”
“A magician guards his secrets jealously, Doctor. Don’t all specialists? And a great magus never, but never reveals anything. Soon, of course, it will no longer matter . . .”
They entered the circle of electronic equipment. Cochran motioned a technician away from one of the video screens and made a further adjustment.
“You asked about the girl,” he said casually.
“Where is she?”
The image on the screen stopped rolling and stabilized.
And there was Ellie.
She was lying on a stainless-steel table in an antiseptic, windowless room somewhere in the complex. A figure in a gray suit was close by, tending to her needs. But she was doing nothing. Only staring blankly at the acoustic tiles above her.
Drugged, thought Challis. Or worse.
“Why, she’s right there, Dr. Challis. Quite comfortable, as you can plainly see. At least for the duration.”
He wanted to rip Cochran’s wattled throat out with his bare hands.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Cochran. “Come closer. Talk is cheap, isn’t it? What you really want to see is a demonstration.”
He selected another channel.
“What good timing we’re blessed with! There’s one coming up right now . . .”
With the untroubled capriciousness of a master calling for domestic service, he pressed a button on the console.
C H A P T E R
12
“Are you sure about this?” said Betty Kupfer. “There’s nobody here!”
She took Little Buddy by the hand and followed her husband across the office.
One of the graysuits held another door open for her.
TESTING ROOM A.
“Where’s Mr. Cochran?” she asked.
“He said eight o’clock,” Buddy reminded her.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Little Buddy.
She let go of her son’s hand and accosted the graysuit. “Hey, where is everybody?”
The graysuit said nothing.
The door opened not into a laboratory but into a spacious living room. Wordlessly the Kupfers were ushered inside.
Betty relaxed a notch.
The room was a gaily-decorated version of the living quarters found in any typical mail-order catalogue of home furnishings in America. Shag carpeting. A plush sofa upholstered in an extravagant floral design of distinctive taste. An overstuffed chair to match. Color-coordinated drapes of a complementary tropical fruit print. And lemon-yellow walls to boost the spirits of any family gathering.
And, of course, the reassuring eye of a console television set, positioned conveniently for communal after-dinner viewing pleasure.
Both adults were handed pencils, paper and clipboards.
Betty flounced down on the sofa.
Buddy took up the position most familiar to him, which was the easy chair.
Little Buddy explored the room with blasé restlessness, tweaking the lampshade, testing the legs of the end table with a playful kick, handling the plastic knickknacks and kitsch figurines set out to complete the decor.
None of them noticed the graysuit outside, his emotionless eyes noting their responses with perfect impartiality through the chickenwire-glass observation inset in the heavy door.
Buddy was grateful for the momentary comfort. He loosened his ventilated shoes and took a load off.
“Well, I guess Mr. Cochran will be along,” he said resignedly, as he said most everything when no one else was around to hear.
Betty plumped up a decorator pillow and leaned across the virgules of the upholstery. “I don’t like those guys,” she confided. “They give me the creeps.”
She tucked her legs up under her full skirt and draped herself as gracefully as possible against the armrest.
“I have to go to the bathroom!” whined Little Buddy.
He gave up on the model locomotive atop the TV set. He scampered to the door, all the while playing at stamping down the pile of the carpet. It was the latest synthetic blend and bounced back fresh and erect with hardly any lag time. He gave the doorknob an impatient yank.
It would not open.
&nbs
p; “Mom-my!”
“Relax a minute, willya?” Here in this reassuring setting, Buddy Senior reverted to the role he had practiced to perfection, that of the put-upon breadwinner who is seldom granted a moment’s peace. “Mr. Cochran’s gonna come and everything will be just fine!”
His hand opened and closed on the floral print armrest as his autonomic nervous system sought a cold one to go with his after-dinner TV.
Betty unsnagged the bra strap under her Butterick blouse. “You think he’s going to give you some more money?” She sounded hopeful and dubious in the same breath, not an insignificant feat.
“Naw. He just wants my opinion about some commericals or something.”
“I’m bored,” declared Little Buddy. He slithered behind the sofa and drew back the curtains.
There was no exit through the mock window, only a ribbed backdrop of gray steel plating.
Buddy sank into reflection. “I still can’t figure out why they won’t take my orders for next year.”
Little Buddy slouched over to the TV set. He twisted the ON control.
It didn’t work.
“You know how I like to plan ahead,” said Buddy. “It just seems like they’re not interested at all.”
“Maybe they’re not gonna have Halloween next year,” suggested Betty.
“Haw haw haw,” said Buddy sarcastically. “Very funny.” He checked his watch, re-centered his buttocks with some discomfort on the cushion. “Where is he?”
Outside the door, the graysuit received a signal.
He exposed a control panel in the wall and touched a switch.
The TV set popped on.
Little Buddy homed in to a spot on the shag carpet.
The screen snowed over with static, then rolled through a blizzard before locking on a close-up of three ecstatic, apple-cheeked children.
“HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN . . . !”
Buddy picked up his pencil without enthusiasm. He winced. “Aw, this is the same old stuff . . .”
“HAP-PY HAP-PY HAL-LO-WEEN, SIL-VER SHAM-ROCK!”
Betty sat forward. “No, this one’s different.”
“No, it’s not, it’s not . . .”
He rolled his eyes melodramatically as the same Silver Shamrock version of “London Bridge” played out a second chorus. Thus diverted, his eyes were snared by something high in the corner, mounted against the ceiling.
