CB said, “Creepy.”
Setsuko said, “Perhaps I should look at your papinium sample now, Christopher.”
The boy plucked it from his ear and tossed it over the platter of hash browns in the middle of the table.
Setsuko examined it thoughtfully and said, “I see now why they were so anxious to prevent you from bringing this sample to the attention of scientists.” “Why?” Tomoko asked her.
“It is not the normal papinium ... it appears to be a different isotope.” She pulled a small instrument out of the obi of her geisha’s costume. She held it over the papinium sample; Tomoko heard it clicking, and saw a digital readout on a small LCD panel.
“Radical!” CB said. “She carries a geiger counter in her obi!”
“In being both a geisha and a scientist, I am forced to make compromises in both directions,” Setsuko said, bowing. “And what is it your American boy scouts say? ‘Be prepared’?” She continued her measurements as the others ate in silence. “Just as I thought; this is papinium-2010. It has two more neutrons than—”
“But what does that -mean?”
“I don’t know yet. But I think that we can discover some way of making it useful. Thank you so much, Matt Jones, Tomoko-san, and CB-chan, for making it possible.”
“Can I go and talk to Nadia now?” CB said. “Sure,” Tomoko said. As he sprang up, she whispered to him, “Don’t do anything Matt wouldn’t do.”
He laughed and sprinted upstairs.
They continued their breakfast for a while, and
Andrescu talked some more about vampires. Then they talked about the opening of the new shopping mall, which was scheduled for next Saturday.
“It’s a pretty big deal,” Setsuko was saying. “They are saying that it heralds a new era of economic prosperity, and that it shows that the free states are ready for reconstruction . . . that we can live with the lizards.”
“I can’t believe it.” Matt swallowed half a cup of coffee. “We’ve come so far and fought so much, only to find you guys compromising with the aliens!”
“It’s not the way you think,” Andrescu said. “True, there’s been some saurian technology applied to the new mall, but . . . well, I don’t believe that any lizards have tried to exert control over us through it. They seem happy with what parts of the world they control. I, for one, will be happy to go to the opening, and to have my ears stretched by the alien music that our heroic young conductor will perform.”
“I’m suspicious,” Matt said.
Tomoko said, “Don’t, Matt. We’ve got to shore up our strength. They’re not going to be held off forever . . . especially not by treaties. Look at what the Americans did to the Indians ... or the Nazis to Poland. We should keep cool, and we should plan. Fighting doesn’t always work.”
“Oh hell, I guess you’re right,” Matt said.
Just then CB and the butler’s daughter, clarinet case under her arm, bounded into the room. How cute they looked together, Tomoko thought. Well, he was getting to that age. What was adolescence going to be like for a kid who had already grown up too fast in some ways?
CB said, “Mr. Tedescu says he’s gonna drop us off at the Alden Theater. I thought I’d go along and see Nadia rehearsing.”
“Sure,” said Tomoko. “But don’t offend Mr. Tedescu. Okay?”
“No way, definitely not,” said CB. “Hey, I can’t wait to meet this Dingwall dude. He sounds really weird!”
And he ran off; Tomoko heard a car starting outside.
“Wait a minute. Come back!” Matt shouted suddenly.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tomoko said.
He said, “That name . . . Dingwall . . . where have we heard it before?”
The ambassador said, “Ah, did I not say it before? That is the name of the brave young conductor, the man who parleyed with the lizards.” “There can’t be two Dingwalls,” Matt said. “Stop that car, somebody!”
Tomoko remembered suddenly—
Of course! Standing outside the cavern mouth that led into the papinium labyrinth, she had heard the name Dingwall mentioned . . . Dingwall’s plan was what they’d been discussing! CB was about to meet one of the deadliest members of the secret alien hierarchy!
“We’ve got to stop him!”
“But surely he is a good man, on our side . . .” said the ambassador. But he saw the look in Tomoko’s eye, and something convinced him. “In my own house,” he whispered angrily. “Treachery . . . treachery! It is evil, I tell you—”
“No time for that,” Matt said, springing up. “Do you have another car?”
“No. But the theater is five miles away.”
“I’m getting my running shoes,” Matt said, and dashed upstairs to fetch them as Tomoko, Schwabauer, and Setsuko stared at each other in consternation.
Chapter 19
As CB walked into the theater with Nadia, he saw the conductor—still improbably attired in a tuxedo, though his crimson bowtie had been replaced by a turquoise one—waving his baton furiously. Strange sounds assailed his ears: whinings, scratchings, moanings, percussive tinklings. “It’s kind of like a science fiction movie,” Nadia told him.
“Sounds more like horror to me,” CB said. “Like maybe the soundtrack to Friday the Thirteenth or something.”
“You get movies out in lizardland?”
“Hey, you think we’re uncivilized or something?” Then he admitted, “Matt has a videotape machine. We found an abandoned tape library once. The movie industry in L.A.’s pretty much shot . . . except for, like, those gross-o-rama lizard propaganda movies. And definitely no Godzilla movies! They catch you with one, it’s totally instant karma.”
“Wow,” Nadia said, as she unpacked her clarinet
and started to snake and sidle through the orchestra to reach her seat.
CB sat in the auditorium for a while; he was getting bored pretty quickly, though. This music didn’t seem to make much sense. There was one part where the violinists were scraping the wood of their bows across the strings, another part where the wind players were blowing in the wrong end of their instruments or hitting them with xylophone mallets.
It sounded okay, but it wasn’t what you’d call New Wave.
He decided to leave the auditorium and go exploring.
He skipped up the steps onto the stage and slipped past the flats. Backstage there were control panels and other things hanging in the flies, clouds and stuff. They must have been doing a play. A stage throne leaned against the wall. He sat on it. It had what looked like buttons in its arms, the sort of thing you might find in an airplane seat to make it lean back. He wondered what would happen if he pushed one in and—
Too late!
The throne was tilting, turning—
And he was sealed in a room ... a bare closet of a room without any doors or windows! How had he gotten in? Where was the throne?
He started banging against the walls.
He could hear the music clearly—so clearly that he knew it must be close. It was coming from overhead. He had to be beneath the stage floor, then, behind the orchestra pit.
“Let me outa here!” he screamed.
He pounded for several moments. He tried some of his most powerful karate chops, but they were useless. But there had to be some kind of lever, some kind of control switch, somewhere . . . but where? The walls seemed completely featureless, gray, metallic.
After a brief while the music (if you could call it that) ceased, and the sounds became more random. They must be on break, CB decided. He started pounding louder.
A voice: cold, iron-edged, robotlike. “Don’t try to escape, my little resistance fighter! It’s the end of the road for you.”
A face appeared projected on the wall in front of him. It was that conductor! He glowered. His eyes were crimson and seemed to bum.
“Lemme out of here, you jerk!”
“Ha, ha, ha. Don’t make me laugh. You’ve given us plenty of trouble already, but you won’t anymore. No
t after tonight. By the way, would you care to dine with me tonight? Dinner’s on me. Bring your own booze. Ha, ha, ha!”
The face vanished.
Jesus ... it had happened to his Mom and Dad, and now it was going to happen to him ... all he could think of was the horrifying vision of his mother being torn apart and eaten.
And what about Matt and Tomoko? How could he warn them? He was going to die on a lizard’s dining-room table, and he couldn’t even tell them where he was—
* * *
Dingwall returned to his rehearsal just in time. One down, he thought, and two to go! Or four . . . he might as well count in that meddlesome Schwabauer and his friend Setsuko, who might actually figure out a way of hurting him if she were allowed to continue living.
And what about the man in the blue suit whom he’d seen with them? The material of the ninja outfit had looked suspiciously like papinium!
Impossible.
Only a Visitor would need papinium protection here. And only one who did not have the benefit of the antidote, stolen or otherwise.
A Visitor with no antidote would have to be a renegade.
There were no Visitor renegades. Fifth columnists, yes; but they were all identified and in many cases were unwitting double agents for the true cause, what with the miniaturized electronic bugs that had been planted on them by the ever-vigilant espionage teams.
There’d never been a Visitor renegade except one, and that one was very, very dead.
Still, if Fieh Chan or Kenzo Sugihara or whatever he was calling himself this week was still at large, that was yet another person he had to hunt down and kill.
His mood of elation was rapidly changing to one of depression. All this petty drudgery to think of, he mused, when the great plan was about to bear fruit.
At that moment Matt Jones burst into the theater and rushed toward the podium where Dingwall was standing. The fellow was cursing and screaming imprecations. Doubtless he knew something.
“1 want my boy, do you hear?” Matt shouted. He came up to Dingwall, seized him by the shoulder, and began to shake him. “What have you done to my kid, you lizard scum?”
“Wait a minute. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dingwall stated in the most pacific-sounding tones he could muster. “Your boy? What boy . . . whoa, you’re the famous Matt Jones, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Matt said, momentarily disarmed.
“I’m glad we’ve met at last, after the chaos of yesterday. We freedom fighters should become acquainted with one another, shouldn’t we?”
Matt looked at him dubiously and began searching through the rows of children, who all stared curiously at this wild-eyed man storming through their ranks.
Finally he spotted Nadia and pulled her out. “Where is he?” he shouted. “Where’s CB?” Dingwall looked coolly in the young girl’s face. He transfixed her with his gaze, and began to broadcast the mental patterns that would awaken her conditioning.
The girl said, “Matt, CB never came with me. We got to the car, but he decided he didn’t want to come after all. Something about the music not being New Wave enough? He said he wanted to explore the house some more.”
Dingwall turned to Matt with an I-told-you-so sort of shrug.
The kids all crowded around him, pressing for his autograph. Dingwall was pleased with how all the conversions were going; he’d been working on them in groups of two or three all week under the guise of giving them individual attention in his home. How easily the parents had been taken in!
“You’re quite a celebrity,” Dingwall said smoothly. “Everyone seems to have heard of your Tokyo caper last year.”
He could see Matt’s confusion. How gullible these humans were! A little flattery, a little mild deception, and—
“There’s something fishy about all this,” Matt said. “I’d better phone the ambassador’s house.” “Ah, the telephone service around here has been most irregular since the troubles began, I’m afraid,” Dingwall said. “I don’t think any of the ones here work properly . . . the nearest working one is at the 7-11 store down the road.”
Matt looked around. The kids were still jamming around him, clamoring for his views and for a ninjitsu demonstration. It was wonderful, Dingwall thought, to hide under the putative innocence of children . . . especially when they were all converts, all in his power. Telepathically, he commanded them to act as cloyingly cute as they could, knowing that this would disable the poor man’s ability to think straight.
“I still think he’s here somewhere,” Matt said suspiciously.
“Maybe he did come here,” Dingwall said, chuckling inwardly as he tried to maintain his human expression of serene composure. “Children,
help Mr. Jones look for his boy, will you?”
The children separated and began to run gleefully around the auditorium and hallways. The chaos was astonishing. In the confusion, Dingwall slipped behind one of the stage flats, slid down a trapdoor, and disappeared. He found the underground passageway that led to CB’s prison, murmured a few code words for its cybernetically controlled doorway, grabbed the boy from behind—the odor of fresh meat was so overpowering that he wanted to bite into the child’s tender muscle tissue immediately as the creature struggled and bit—muttering a few more code words, Dingwall conveyed the boy down a deep tunnel into a storeroom that opened out onto the papinium labyrinth itself, and then began to gag him and tie him up, all the while humming a melodic fragment from the Galactic Symphony. Then he swiftly went back up by another back way and returned to the auditorium. “Ah, there you are, Matt,” he said affably. “I had to go to the bathroom, I’m afraid. Ah, look, there’s Tedescu. Perhaps he knows where the boy is. What a nuisance those young charges can be, eh? I have over forty of them to contend with, but at least it’s only once a week.”
Tedescu ran up to them, huffing.
“Ah, Domnul Jones, your boy, your boy—” “Where is he?” Matt shouted.
“I just saw him—” Tedescu looked into Dingwall’s eyes for clues. Dingwall provided them by means of the conditioning. “I saw him running outside ... by the woods . . . worry about him,
being chased maybe, I don’t know, Visitors.”
Matt hurried after him.
When he had gone, Dingwall bellowed with laughter.
Chapter 20
Darkness. Complete silence. He could hear his own heart beating: thump, thump, thump . . . just like the soundtrack of a mad slasher movie. He couldn’t move. Where was he? It wasn’t the same place where that conductor guy had dragged him and tied in up. No. Someone had come in earlier and given him an injection. He’d resisted, but it hurt too much. The drug burned his arm. He wondered what it was ... he couldn’t think straight. Why was he here? The last thing he’d known was the auditorium, but—
The music: that had stopped.
He tried to talk but couldn’t. He was still gagged, then.
He tried shifting his body. He wasn’t exactly tied hand and foot, but there were restraints on his arms and legs. He seemed to be chained to a wall. Cold. Metallic. He must be somewhere in the papinium labyrinth . . . which meant he could be anywhere at all, anywhere from Alexandria to Raleigh.
He had to see—
He strained. Dark. Dark. He tried to widen his pupils, but it was too great a strain. Probably that drug. Whatever it was.
He tried to scream. The gag was choking him. He couldn’t breathe. He had to have help.
The free zone! What a joke, he thought.
He thought about all they’d done, all they’d given up . . . and here he was in a lizard prison. He was going to get eaten after all. It was all so useless. He wanted to cry, but that was for babies. He waited. Time passed, agonizingly slowly.
A noise.
CB looked up; he still couldn’t see anything. And then, a small hand fiddling with his gag. A light. The soft skin of a young girl against his face—
“Nadia!” he stuttered.
“I’ve brought you milk and
cookies.”
“Like, where is this anyway? You’re one of them, aren’t you? A convert. Get out of here, I just want to be alone.”
“You can’t fight them, you know,” Nadia said softly. An infinite sadness seemed to emanate from her.
“I can get us out of here,” CB said, “if only you’ll help. Jesus, I’m a human being, and you’ve been hypnotized by him . . .”
A small patch of light. There was an opening. A faint blue glow from outside. It was very cold. As he looked around he could see other kids, too—all of them tied up or chained to the wall. “Feeding time, I guess,” CB said bitterly. “You’re fattening us up for the pot, huh? I feel like I’m in the middle
of Hansel and Gretel or something.”
Nadia burst into tears.
“Come on now, you don’t have feelings. Man, I’ve seen converts. They’re zombies. When you fight them they just keep coming and coming. They don’t feel pain, they don’t even feel any pleasure in hurting you, they’re total brainwipes, you know? If you’re crying, it’s only because you’ve been ordered to. I know about you converted dudes.”
She didn’t answer him, but stuffed something into his mouth: a chocolate chip cookie. Then she started pouring a glass of milk down his throat. “I can feed myself,” CB said, “if you untie me!”
If only he could get just one hand free, he thought he could jimmy the rest of it. Nadia moved on to the other captives. He shouted after her, “You’re a traitor, you know that? Do you know what they’ll do to you when you’re no more use to them? They’ll eat you, that’s what! And there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it . . . you’ll be helpless. Shit, if they tell you to enjoy yourself while you’re being sliced into sushi, you’ll enjoy yourself —brainwipe.”
V 16 - Symphony of Terror Page 12
