The tests and your records also show you to be excessively individualistic, tenaciously stubborn, and impulsively disrespectful of authority. Your father would have approved.
But the Space Service today is not what it was twenty years ago. The individuals who explored the planets and proved the equipment and techniques are being replaced by the teams that are taming the planets.
The key word in that last paragraph is teams. The Space Service isn’t looking for star players any more.
If your father applied to the Service today I think he would be turned down. I think—I rather hope—I would also.
I’m sorry.
Gordon Garrett
Lt. General, USAFSS
COMMANDING
Had Robert not been fully as stubborn and impulsive as the Space Service assumed, he might have taken the hint and searched for some honorable civilian profession. But, in a fit of some emotion he had never been able to recapture, he had joined the Navy. At the time they were still running two-manned orbital satellites and it looked like a possible alternate way into space. Two years later the satellites were handed over to civilian companies. Which, according to a well-known physical law, is the way the cookie crumbles.
Chapter Four
Our Lady of the Eternal Simplification Hospital on West 103rd Street was run by the Sisters of Magdalene, a nondenominational sect. The outer corridors were painted a brilliant green with gay red-orange candy stripes. “It dispels gloom,” the sister who led Robert confided, seeing his startled look. “We don’t believe in gloom.”
“It makes me dizzy,” Robert said.
“We don’t believe in visitors, either,” the sister told him. “The patients use an inner corridor.”
“What color is that?”
“White,” she said. “Eternal white. Our patients get so few visitors, you see. This is such an unfriendly city, it has always seemed to me. Of course, I was friendly. People used to remark—ah, here we are.”
A candy-striped curtain covered the doorway. Robert pushed it aside and walked into the hospital room. The skinny girl lay motionless under the white coverlet, her eyes closed, and looked to be at peace. A glucose bottle hung from a ceiling hook, its tube disappearing under the coverlet. “Can I wake her up,” he asked the sister, “or should I let her sleep?”
“I’m not a nurse,” the sister said. “Let me go call her nurse and—oh my God!”
“What?” Burrows looked down at where the sister was staring. The tube from the hanging glucose bottle went under the coverlet by the girl’s right forearm. And a large moist stain was growing on the coverlet where the tube disappeared.
“That can’t be right!” the sister said, an edge to her voice. She headed for the inner door which led to the service oval, her sandals flapping on the tile. “I’ll get the nurse.”
Burrows flipped the coverlet aside and examined the girl’s arm. The plastic tube had been neatly pulled away from the needle, which was still neatly taped to the girl’s arm. Something caught his eye, and he bent over to examine the needle. “Get a doctor!” he told her firmly, “and quickly—this is an emergency!”
To the everlasting credit of Our Lady of the Eternal Simplification, the floor doctor was there in less than a minute. “What’s this?” he asked, glancing from the girl to Burrows and back to the girl. “Tube’s off. Nurse can handle it. Your wife? Have to learn to trust nurses, son. They do all this routine stuff better than doctors. Leaves us free for the important stuff. I’ll call the nurse.”
“I’m Lieutenant Burrows, Naval Intelligence,” Robert said. “This girl’s been poisoned.” He held up the plastic tube. “This was pulled off and some substance, undoubtedly a poison, was inserted through the IV needle. Then whoever did it probably tried to slip the tube back on again, but it came back off under the cover.”
“How do you know that?” the doctor asked, looking at Burrows with that particular annoyed expression that doctors reserve for laymen who talk back.
“Because the glucose solution is colorless,” Burrows said, “but there’s a slight blue stain by the base of that needle.”
“What’s that?” The doctor leaned over and squinted at the girl’s arm. Then he grabbed for her wrist and felt her pulse. “Who would have—why didn’t someone warn us that this might . . .”
“Nobody knew,” Robert said. “Can you save her? Do you know what it is?”
“We can try damn hard,” the doctor said. He poked his lapel mike. “Doctor Steadman,” he said into it. “Code blue. Ready the OR Complete blood replacement. Patient,”—he looked at the chart—“Jane Doe. Match the blood to as many places as possible with whatever we’ve got at hand. No time to send out. Have it up there waiting.” He stuck his head through the door to the inner oval. “A couple of you get a gurney in here quick,” he yelled.
A few seconds later a gurney came through the doorway, pulled by a husky young male nurse and pushed by a frail-looking young female nurse. They quickly transferred the girl to the gurney and trundled her out the door. The doctor followed right behind. “In about twenty minutes we’ll know,” he told Robert as he ran out.
Lieutenant Burrows used the time to question the nurses and aides on duty in the oval. Had they seen anyone entering or leaving the girl’s room?
Nobody had noticed. But then, nobody had been watching. If they had any reason to think—if anyone had told them—not so much as a flying ant would have gotten into the room without being logged, searched, and watched. They were all very distressed.
One of the ward nurses, a harried man with a pinched face, remembered a serviceman from the holo rental company who was going from room to room. “He probably entered the girl’s room,” the nurse said. “I’m not sure.”
“Was he the regular serviceman?” Robert asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” the nurse said.
“Was there anything unusual about him—anything you remember?”
“Well—” the nurse considered. “He was Chinese.”
“Of Oriental heritage?”
“No—Chinese. He spoke with an accent.”
“Thank you,” Robert said. He would leave it for the police to find out whether the pinched-faced nurse could really tell the difference between English as accented by a Chinese and—say—a Korean. And to see whether the holo rental company employed such a person.
A little over half an hour later Dr. Steadman found Burrows in the Doctors and Nurses Lounge. He looked tired but pleased. “She’ll live,” he said.
“When can I talk to her?” Robert asked.
“You can talk to her anytime you like,” Dr. Steadman said. “As to when she’ll be able to answer, that’s another question. According to the girl’s chart, she hasn’t said a word to anyone since she got here two days ago.”
“I didn’t know that was the sort of information that got on a chart,” Robert said.
“If she does talk,” Steadman said, “that doesn’t get on the chart. But if she doesn’t—at all—there’ll be an entry. Something like, ‘not responsive to verbal stimuli.’ Tell me,” he said, tapping Robert on the shoulder, “why would anyone want to kill this girl? Who is she?”
“By now you know more about her than I do,” Robert said. “She was found naked in a hotel room, strapped to a bed, with a strange gizmo attached to her arm. She was heard to mutter a few things at that time, but nothing that made sense. What was wrong with her—physically, I mean?”
“Malnutrition,” Steadman said. “Dehydration. Neither very serious. She was all doped up on something.”
“Couldn’t you tell what?”
“No chance. It was one of those picogram-dose drugs that doesn’t leave any trace even if you know what you’re looking for. Almost certainly a mind-drug.”
“Well, Doctor,” Robert said, “thank you for saving the girl’s life.”
Steadman shrugged. “My job,” he said. “She shouldn’t have come so close to losing it. Not in my hospital. I’m going to have
the security precautions here gone over. There’s something wrong with a hospital where there are triple-locks on the drug cabinets, but anyone can get in to poison a patient. It’s a matter of perspective.”
“You have a point,” Robert said. “I’ve arranged for a police guard for the girl.”
“Good,” Steadman said.
Robert pulled out a card with his name and phone number on it. Naval Intelligence still tried to keep up appearances as a secret organization—or an organization with secrets—by not giving out their address. “Call me,” Robert said, “when the girl’s condition changes. Please.”
“I shall, Lieutenant,” Steadman said. “My word.”
Chapter Five
The marble front of Astral Emprise stretched the block from Seventy-ninth to Eightieth Street on the west side of Park Avenue. Five stories high, it was unmodified, unadorned, and unbroken save for the three-story semicircular bronze door in the center. The door was normally closed but when someone approached during business hours, it smoothly lifted about seven meters, the top disappearing into the marble above, leaving a wide gap to pass through. It was very impressive, but it gave Robert Burrows the uncomfortable feeling that he was entering a clam.
The entrance room was a perfect circle a hundred meters in diameter with a red marble floor. At duodenary points around the circumference were great bronze statues representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac, done with classical Greek love of detail and lack of shame. The floor was writ with a golden inlay of cabbalistic symbols and arcane scribbles and signs. In the exact center of the room, resting in an inscribed pentagram was a platform raised three steps off the floor. Floating in the air over the platform, in letters of gold, was the sign:
ASTRAL EMPRISE
Reception
The five young women standing on the platform were just able to handle comfortably the continuing influx of clients without a line forming. The one closest to Robert smiled at him as he approached. “Good day, sir.” She had dark brown hair that reached to below the small of her back and an oval face that framed two lively dark eyes. The badge pinned to the fabric of her mesh blouse over her left breast read:
Naomi: Libra: Empath: ASTRAL EMPRISE
“I have an appointment,” he told her.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed. “Capricorn?”
“Excuse me?”
“Capricorn, of course,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to help you. Please follow the violet roli.”
“I have an appointment,” he repeated. “How did you know I’m a Carpricorn?”
“It’s my job, sir. Please follow the violet roli.”
“Addison Friendly is expecting me at eleven o’clock.”
“Then the violet roli will take you to him.” The girl pointed to the floor, where a ⊕ was glowing in violet light, seemingly set into the red marble floor. “Cardinal—Earth,” she said. “The symbol is the substance. The sign is yours; self and future. Follow it.” Her slender arm pointed insistently, and the Earth-sign gleamed brighter for an instant and slowly began moving across the red marble floor.
“That’s a good trick.” Robert said, watching the ⊕ move away from him.
“It is merely a sign,” the girl said, “an indicator. Follow it!”
Robert smiled up at the girl and nodded, to show that he was fully in command of the situation, and then headed hastily after his moving sign. He tried to keep up with the latest tricks of twenty-first century technology, but a glowing sign moving through a marble floor was a new one. Of course he had the option of believing in what Astral Emprise sold: metaphysics, mysticism, the occult, paranormal phenomena, psychic forces, astrology, ghosts, ghoulies, vampires, and things wha’ go bump in the night. But, popular as such beliefs were these days, something deep-rooted in Robert convinced him that there were no things that Man was Not Meant to Know. There were, perhaps, some things that man was too dumb to figure out, but that was a different problem.
Most of the other people leaving the platform were also following various glowing signs which scuttled across the floor—in the floor—as though imbued with life and purpose. It was indeed a good trick, however it was done.
The roli took Robert across the great hall to the far side. A door cunningly concealed in the wall opened as he approached revealing a suite of private offices. They were furnished in the chunky, angular style known as “functional realism,” developed by a group of young designers in response to the “classical formalism” that had been so popular last year. It was large, and bulky, and not particularly functional to Robert’s eye. Whether it was realistic or not, Robert couldn’t decide, having no idea of what would constitute realism in a desk.
The roli continued through the offices; around partitions and along short corridors, until it brought Robert to an unprepossessing wooden door, where it stopped. Robert paused there, unsure what to do. After a few seconds the door opened.
She was young and small and slender, with large, brown eyes and thick, dark brown hair which fell across the back of the high-necked vikki and ended in a trim line just below her waist. The vikki’s well-starched blouse rounded the youthful breasts, twin peaks leading to the wasp-waist valley where a wide leather belt served as a terminator between blouse and full, red, dustcatcher skirt. Her body moved beneath the Victorian barrier like the promise of spring behind an April storm. She was barefoot.
She smiled. “You must be Lieutenant Burrows.” Her teeth were white and not quite perfect and her lips promised—promised—
Robert shook his head. “I must,” he said.
“I’m Addison Friendly’s secretary. Please come in.” She took his hand in a firm, warm grasp.
Now wait a minute! Robert said to himself, taking a grip on his id and shaking it. He had as much experience with women as the average bachelor: about four times that of a married man his age. He hadn’t had this kind of initial reaction to a human female since he was sixteen and infatuated with every swelling bosom in class. He would watch his step. Which, if experience served, would do damn little good.
He pulled his attention from the lovely girl in front of him and how the vikki skirt swished back and forth with the motion of her hips as she led him into the office, and how her . . . He examined the office.
Walls. Four of them, paneled in dark wood. Deep red carpet on the floor. Nothing of the functional realism in here.
Her hair smelled like—
Well! Was that a dart board? Yes. A tournament dart board on the far wall. And books. A bookcase four feet high ran around all the walls, and books of all sorts, shapes, and sizes filled and erupted from its shelves, forming random piles on top of and on the floor next to the bookcase.
The room held a jumble of furniture, mostly wood and all thoroughly used: a large desk with a foot-high detritus of papers, books, magazines, tapes, film, microfiche cards, small bits from precision instruments, and other potsherds and flint-chips of Technological Man; a smaller desk with nothing but an appointment scroll on its polished surface; a flat-screen typer; a complex telecom console; an old-fashioned five-drawer file cabinet; a few battered tables; a variety of unmatched floor and table lamps, a couch and an assortment of chairs.
“Please sit down,” the lovely secretary said. “Mr. Friendly will be back in a few minutes.”
Robert sat, dropping into a leather-covered office chair, easily a hundred years old, which squealed in protest at his weight. The girl left him alone in the room, and he stared morosely at a chart of the human nervous system on the wall and wondered what he was doing there.
Admiral William Dennison, his boss’s boss, had told Robert to go see a man named Addison Friendly. “Rely on his judgment,” he said. “Enlist his aid. Tell him all. I have made an appointment.”
He did not tell Robert that Addison Friendly was the head of Astral Emprise, one of the largest corporations catering to the needs of Those Who Would Believe. Could Admiral Dennison be a secret psychic? Robert could only sincerely hope not.
&
nbsp; He waited.
Chapter Six
Hing got off the downtown subway at Mott Street and hurried along the crowded platform, pushing through the mass of home-ward-bound office workers. He was the only one on the up escalator, and he paused for a minute at the top, studying the moving light patterns of the direction guide. When he was certain that all the traffic was going the other way, and that none of it was in the least interested in him, he left the station. Once on the street he paused in a doorway to breathe, straighten the edges of his bow tie, and look around.
His reflection in the shop window showed a short Oriental gentleman whose rotund body was encased in a conservative costume suitable for business: pastel red knickers and collarless jacket over a white turtleneck and wide red-and-gray striped bow tie. He stared at this reflection, smoothed down his thinning black hair, and realized that after all these months the clothes still looked like a costume to him. They seemed designed to emphasize his shortness and display the layer of fat he carried around the waist. He would be glad when this assignment was over, if that happy day ever arrived, and he could return to the monastic military life and its simple virtues. The great advantage of a uniform was that nobody could blame you for what you looked like in it.
Hing stepped back into the flow of people and allowed it to carry him toward Canal Street. As he walked he mentally composed a short section for the handbook he planned to write when he retired: Thoughts and Reflections on the Conduct of a Secret Agent. A few paragraphs formed themselves in his head for the chapter on cities:
“Attention to small details of nuance and attitude is the mark of the successful agent. The major cities of the world all suffer from the same problems; the result of three-quarters of a century of overcrowding and underemployment in almost every urban area. One universal sympton, for example, is the great, tightly-packed crowd of workers from the industrial core, the so-called ‘inner city,’ hurrying to get home after work before the Unpeople take over the streets.
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