It wasn't only his musicianship that kept Dr. Zorn's surroundings pest-free. There was also something about his personality; for some reason, people didn't seem to warm to him, not even truly scuzzy people of the sort who might break into a deconsecrated church late at night in hopes of finding some leftover religious artifact they could pawn for drug money. And beyond that, there was his work for the UN.
Famine relief. Let others concentrate on moving food around the world from where it is to where it's needed. Let others do long-term planning, with crop rotation, flood control, population density, and all that. Dr.
Zorn had set himself a simpler and more basic question to answer: What could people eat, if there wasn't any food?
The apse, and apsidal chapels, of the former church, arched and rounded stone recesses in.the final wall beyond the altar, had been converted now to something that was a cross between a kitchen and a laboratory, with beakers and retorts steaming away, foul liquids bubbling, electric arcs coursing between points, strings of lights flashing on and off, great coils of tubing that arced and swooped like carnival rides for roaches, plus high shelves full of glass jars containing strangely warped items that might have been--and sometimes were--diseased tennis balls. Here Dr. Zorn experimented with the food potential of things not usually though of as edible: socks, grass, riling cabinets, fingernail clippings. (To solve the problems of human hunger and waste management at one fell swoop; wouldn't that be a coup, worthy of the Nobel Prize!) Of course, the other indispensable element in all this experimentation was some actual humans. Someone had to eat all these outpourings from Dr. Zorn's kitchen. In the early days, the neighborhood provided a sufficiency of laboratory humans for the purpose, people who entered the church with agendas of their own but stayed to assist the good doctor in his Nobel work. (Various traps and pitfalls he'd installed around the narthex, assisted by tranquilizer darts and other mood-altering devices, ensured that his guests did not make untimely departures.) More recently, however, as the doctor's reputation had spread among the underclass, pickings had become rather more slim, and he was beginning to contemplate the idea of placing some sort of ad in the less prestigious public prints, if only he could figure out the precise wording. So difficult to describe scientific undertakings to the layman.
What made the setup here so perfect for Dr. Zorn's work, in addition to the church itself and the nearby supply of experimental persons, was the block on which the structure stood. Everything else had been reduced to a pink rubble, its color prettily tinged by brick dust, and then the entire block had been sheathed in an eight-foot-high chain-link fence.
Originally meant to keep people out, it worked just as well to keep people in, particularly once Dr. Zorn had electrified it. Oh, not with a lethal jolt, certainly not; just enough to discourage premature departure.
How pleasant it could be, on a moonlit night, to climb into the belfry and gaze down at the current herd, moving slowly about on the rubble below. It was even fun sometimes to take the BB gun up there and do a little plinking into the herd down below, keep them moving; good for the digestion.
At the moment, though, unfortunately, there was no herd. He having as yet found no really adequate substitute for food, Dr. Zorn's assistants tended to reach a point of emaciation at which their responses to stimuli were no longer adequate to his purpose, at which time he would permit them to crawl away (or would wheelbarrow them away on foggy nights, if it came to that).
Also Sfracht Zamthustm rolled on, magnificent in its awfulness. Dr. Zorn was so caught up in the sheer mass and complexity of what he was creating here, the volume of it, the rich confusion of cascading chords, that he barely noticed the white light mounted high on the stone column to his left when it began to blink.
He'd installed that light some time ago, since he couldn't hear anything else while playing the organ and so wouldn't know when the narthex had snared another customer. The blinking light meant something had just entered one of the traps; good. There were a number of nonfoods he was eager to try out on fresh subjects.
But there was no hurry. The visitor or visitors--the equipment in the narthex could capture and hold up to four newcomers at a time--would wait. He could finish his playing.
And did. And sighed with satisfaction as the last sprung chord clanged about the upper reaches of the structure. And turned about on the organ bench to gaze into the eyes of eight grim-looking individuals.
Oh, dear. They'd never shown up in this quantity before. The narrhex would have snared the first four, but then the next four would have released them while the good doctor had all unknowingly played on.
And now all eight were here, in the chancel, gazing at him without love.
From afar came the sound of slow dripping, a leak in the columbarium he'd never bothered to do anything about. Other than that, there was not a sound as they stood and gazed at him, apparently waiting for the final echoes of Zamthustm to fade inside their skulls before trying to move or to speak.
What now? These would be simple creatures. Negotiate with them, find out what they want, either send them on their way or somehow turn the tables on them. Dr. Zorn pondered, in the few seconds of silence he had for planning, on the arsenal of medicines and laboratory equipment at his command, and he tried to think how he might turn the tables on eight people all by himself, and while musing on that question he suddenly realized that one of those grim faces was somehow familiar.
Diddums! John Diddums, from the Votskojek mission!
Dr. Zorn was lithe and fast. He was off the organ bench like a shot, and halfway around the ambulatory before they laid hands on him. Many hands.
Many hard hands.
The person who sat on Dr. Zorn was immense. In a different context, the doctor would have been happy to have this fellow as a research assistant out there in the rubble; such a monster would survive on nonfoods for months. Unfortunately, this was not a different context, this was this context, and in this context the many hands had grabbed Dr. Zorn and picked him up and carried him back to the chancel and stretched him facedown on one of the remaining side pews originally meant for the choir. Then this huge one had sat upon him, quite effectively holding him in place while the others searched the church.
For what? What did Diddums want, beyond simple revenge? Clearly it wasn't merely simple revenge the man had in mind, or he wouldn't have shown up with seven friends. In fact, if Did dums was here because he wanted something, that was more or less good news for Dr. Zorn, because it meant there was some probability he would survive this encounter.
Whatever it was Diddums wanted, Zorn decided, he would give to the man, at once and without equivocation. Betray Hradec Kralowc? Done. Assist in some new scheme of Diddums' own? No problem. Provide poisons or a weapon or an alibi or anything at all? Just ask. Thy will, as they used to say in this building, be done.
From some distance away, some large, heavy wooden object was dragged across the stone floor of the nave with a sound that even Dr. Zorn could tell was unpleasant. The sound continued, at first advancing and then retreating, and at last it came to a stop, leaving once again only that irregular drip, drip, drip from the columbarium.
Were they merely here to rob him? To pry through his delicate experiments with their unlettered fingers? Though breathing was difficult, though movement was virtually impossible, the eternal verities of science called, and Dr. Zorn struggled to lift his head, to warn them to leave his laboratory alone! "Don't--!"
The man monster seated on the doctor's back whomped him across the top of his head. "Sharrap," he said, and shifted position.
Oh! No! Don't do that! Dr. Zorn sharrapped; he lowered his aching head; he remained very still and obedient; he did absolutely nothing that might cause this huge creature on top of him to shift position any more.
Don't shift position!
"Okay," said Diddums's voice from somewhere, and the monster climbed off, leaving a somewhat-pressed Dr. Zorn prone on the pew. Did they want him to go somewher
e? He didn't think he could move; certainly couldn't stand; beyond possibility to walk.
But that didn't matter. Hard hands gripped him by the elbows and knees, he was lifted from the pew, and he was carried in that prone position across the chancel and nave, head drooping, eyes Wearily watching the movement of the stone floor beneath him and the scissoring of legs all around.
Into the columbarium. The recesses for the ashes of the dead were empty now, and Dr. Zorn had found no other use for the high-ceilinged, bare stone room. The sound of the drip was louder here, echoing faintly against the stone. There was a pause, with Dr. Zorn continuing to hang like a canopy in the middle of them all, seeing nothing, smelling damp stone, tasting dinner--he personally still ate food--and then he was flipped like a pancake, dropped onto a long wooden bench-- that's what they'd been dragging!--and tied with many ropes and extension cords.
Off to the side, Diddums watched with gloomy satisfaction. Ask me, Dr.
Zorn telepathed at that bony brow, ask me anything and I'll do it. Just ask!
But, no. The bench was picked up with him on it, now supine and strapped. It was carried across the room and put down, then shifted this way and that until it was just so. With his forehead under the leak.
Drip, went a drop of cold water on his pale brow. Drip.
Diddums came over and looked down at him. "See you later," he said.
It took Dr. Zorn, distracted by the dripping water, a second too long to realize what was happening. They were all going away! "Wait!" he cried.
"I'll do it! Whatever it is, I'll do it!"
But they were gone. Drip.
Oh, this is ridiculous, he thought, struggling against his bonds, twisting his head back and forth. I'm just going to get wet here, cold and wet, the Chinese water torture doesn't--drip--actually work, you're wasting your time, Diddums, you could-- drip -- merely ask me.
The drips are not--drip--rhythmic, they do not fall--drip -- to any pattern, you can never guess when the next one will land.
Drip.
Daylight stained the stained-glass windows, and still he was alone. Dr.
Zorn had yelled himself hoarse, and then grown silent, and then yelled again, and then grown quiet again, merely whimpering from time to time.
He'd turned his head this way and that, filling his ears with water, to no effect. He'd struggled against the ropes and extension cords. He'd grown convinced this was the revenge; they would never come back.
Capillary action is what makes water spread from where it is to where you are. Dr. Zorn was soaked. His clothing was soaked. His head seemed to burn with an ice-cold burn wherever the drips touched. The squish of water when it struck his flesh sounded through his brain, dissolved his brain, dropped his brain into an acid bath. He shivered, his breathing was irregular, he was exhausted but couldn't--drip--sleep.
And you never knew when it would drip again; you'd wait and tense and wait and nothing and then drip and you'd think at last and drip immediately and you'd be even more tense than before, and on and on and on…
"How you doing, Doctor?"
This was one of the periods when the doctor's eyes were squeezed tight shut, because water spraying in them had made them ache with cold. Now his eyes popped open--DRIP!--and there was Diddums. "Please," the doctor whispered.
"What we want you to do," Diddums said.
"Yes, I will."
"Isn't gonna be that hard."
"I'll do it." 'The hypodermic needle full of stuff you shot into me that time--"
"I'm sorry, Diddums, I'm heartily sorry."
"I want you to make up some more hypodermic needles just like that."
"I will. Absolutely."
"Don't do anything different." "No, no."
"Just do like you did before."
"Yes! Yes!"
"And a couple other little tasks along the way. Easy ones."
"Anything! Anything!"
Diddums stood there, frowning down at the wide-eyed Dr. Zorn, and another droplet of water came and went, shattering the doctor's brain, permitting him just time enough to gather again the shattered pieces when another droplet-- A second person came and stood beside Diddums and looked down at the doctor. This was a sharp-nosed fellow with a bright and amiable eye. "You know, John," he said, "I think he's ready." My benefactor! Dr. Zorn loved this person; he admired and esteemed and trusted him; he would follow this person to the gates of hell; he would never never fail this godlike person. "Oh, yes," he whispered. Drip.
"I'm ready."
CONTINENTAL
it said, on the side of the blue-gray van driven by stout ex-cop Joe Mulligan and containing the rest of the seven-man guard team: Fenton, the wiry little old head of the crew, perched on the only good seat in the van, next to the driver; Garfield and Morrison in the row behind that; Block and Fox next; and Dresner spreading out (but taking the bumps) at the rear.They were the graveyard shift, midnight to eight, on yet another miserable, insulting third-rate assignment; when, oh when, would the perfectly understandable lapses of the past be forgotten so they could relax into thcgood life again, out on Long Island? The construction company owner weddings, the rock impresario's daughter's high school graduation party, the shopping center openings, the accountancy firm cruises on the Great South Bay.
Jobs a man could be proud of, jobs completely free of peril or complication, jobs with some meat and potatoes to them.
But, no. The seven bouncing down Second Avenue in this van, on their way to some kind of kooky Eastern European embassy on a boat, if you could believe it, these seven able men, all ex-cops or ex-MPs, all perfectly qualified for a job of contented ease amid the good citizens of Long Island--far from the Boschian hell of New York City--had run into a string of bad luck, that's all, could have happened to anybody, and now look. Siberia.
They used, to work on Long Island, this same crew of seven. But then, one night, they lost a bank. Well, nobodyM ever found it, not the combined police forces of Nassau and Suffolk counties, not the feds, not anybody, so why did opprobrium have to land so heavily and exclusively on Sergeant Fenton's team, from the Continental?
Well, it did, that's all. And life hadn't been improved a couple of years after that, either, when the team had been guarding a rich man's party at a town house on the East Side--the wealthy East Side--and the place was broken into by a whole lot of robbers, extremely armed robbers, who took everything in sight, locked the guards in closets, and got away clean. (The party host, some nasty snob named Chauncey, had refused to pay the agency for the guards; can you believe it?) So here they were, still at the bottom of the bottom. Working Manhattan, dangerous, crummy Manhattan, where a fellow in a uniform could get hurt real bad real fast, instead of being out in the lush Eden of Long Island. And, working graveyard shifts.
Saturday night; the hairiest night of the week. At least it wasn't the full moon. They were taking over for the original crew on this shift, who would be off now till Wednesday, so tonight they were to arrive a few minutes early for orientation from the four-to midnight guys.
According to the clock on the van's dash, they'd make it in plenty of time, even though Second Avenue was littered with traffic pouring in on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and through the Midtown Tunnel from Queens and Brooklyn and (admit it) Long Island. (Traffic outbound to those calmer climes clogged the cross streets.) Stately, plump Joe Mulligan steered the com pany van carefully through the cluttered traffic, and took it easy. No more screwups.
He made the turn onto East Twenty-eighth Street with no trouble, proceeded eastward according to directions all the way to the FDR Drive and on under the Drive and beyond, and there, on its far side, was the chain-link fence he was to park beside. He did, and said, "Here we are."
"All out, boys," Fenton said, unnecessarily, since everybody was already clambering toward the sliding door in the van's side. But Fenton liked being the fellow in charge, and kept making little fellow-in-charge noises, which were generally ignored. He would have liked it,
too, if the crew were to call him Chief, but they never did.
The guys from the four-to-midnight shift were there, inside the fence, waiting. The two groups were dressed alike, in dark blue policelike uniforms, with the triangular badge on the left shoulder echoing the one on the van door. Policelike shields over their hearts were embossed GDI, plus a number, and to complete the look they all wore gun belts and holsters containing.38caliber Smith Wesson Police Positive revolvers.
The sergeant of the earlier shift was a comfortable fat man named Edwards, who unlocked the gate for them, locked it again behind them, and said, "Well, boys, it's a piece of cake."
"Good," Fenton said. "I like a quiet tour myself. Leave the excitement to the paratroops, that's what I say."
"Amen to that," Edwards agreed. "Come along, let me show you what we've got."
All seven crew members went along, and what Edwards showed them did indeed look like a piece of cake. A ship and an old ferry slip. Access through the gate in the chain-link fence on the landward side.
Theoretical access by boat from the East River. The crew would divide into three pairs, one at the gate, one out at the river end of the slip, and one inside the access door in the hull. Comfortable-looking folding chairs were set out for them at all three locations so they wouldn't have to spend the entire eight hour shift on their feet. Fenton, in charge, would move among the three groups, seeing to it that everything remained calm.
Edwards turned over to Fenton his clipboard, saying, "Nothing to it.
Don't Ask Page 23
