The agent nodded. “Come on. Let’s check out my people.”
It took some time to sound them up. Hartman had them in a semi-military formation, and he knew his count. He had only one name from Braden, but it was the right one.
“All right, people!” he called to them. “Now, we can go through processing, or ugly shootouts, or like that—but why not make it simple? Agent Alton, why not just step forward and save us a lot of trouble?”
Alton, several rows back, felt a shock go through him at the mention of his name. Everything seemed to just drain out of him; it was all over now. There was no more use.
He pushed through the crowd and walked to Bob Hartman. “I’m Alton,” he said softly.
“Who’d you work for, Alton?” Hartman asked him, an almost casual tone in his voice.
The renegade agent shrugged. “We never knew. Somebody big. Somebody who had access to all the computer files. Somebody who knew where all the bodies were buried on people like me.”
Hartman nodded. “Blackmail, huh? Well, Alton, it’s all over now.” He turned to the Coast Guardsmen. “Take him.”
Sandra O’Connell awoke and looked around. She knew the feelings she had now; she’d awakened much like this once before.
It took considerable effort to get up and sit on the edge of the bed. Yes, it was a bed. It was a little efficiency apartment, old, with a lot of roaches and bad smells. Outside, all around, came the sounds of people, children mostly.
She tried to clear her head, to think. It was hard. The pictures were there but the words wouldn’t come.
She was nude, but some clothing lay draped over a chair near her. It looked familiar.
There was a small table in front of the chair, and on it was a ty—ty—she couldn’t think of the word “typewriter” to save her life. She stared at it.
She got up, dizzily, unsteadily, and made her way over to the chair. There was paper in the machine, and some words had been typed on it. At least she thought they were words.
She couldn’t read the words. Even the letters, the symbols, made no sense to her now. Just so many funny lines. Several balled-up sheets of paper were around on the floor. She ignored them, sat down on the chair, and tried to get hold of herself.
That bad man, what was his name? He gave her some stuff to make her dumb. For always, they said.
But they also gave her stuff to make people sick.
She tried to get dressed. It was a simple pair of underpants, a simple bra, a simple button-type flowered shirt and zip-up skirt.
It took her over half an hour to get it on right. She kept getting the shirt sleeves on wrong, and she couldn’t fasten the bra and finally gave up on it. It took a long time to figure out how the buttons worked, and she misbuttoned them time and again, finally giving up and leaving them that way. The skirt was on backwards, but she didn’t care.
The sneakers were a challenge, too. Try as she might, they wouldn’t fit, and it was some time before she realized that she was trying to put the right one on the left foot and vice-versa. When she did get them right, the laces were beyond her, and she finally gave up in frustration.
There was a basin there, and she went over to it, turning handles until the water came on. She grasped an old ceramic cup with both hands and filled it with water to overflowing, then drank from it. It spilled and dribbled all over.
In the cracked mirror above the basin she looked at herself. It was hard to see close-up, and she backed away a little.
It was a drooling, misdressed idiot she saw. The sight frightened and fascinated her at the same time. That’s me, she told herself. That’s me for always. She sat down on the floor and started crying, and for the longest time she couldn’t stop. Finally she wiped her face on the pillowcase and looked around.
There was some money on the table, too, she noticed. She reached up for it, pulled it down to her, and at the same time knocked another object off. It fell to the floor with a clatter and she stared at it.
It was a big, long, sharp knife.
She looked back at the money. Except for it being green, it made no sense to her. She couldn’t tell one bill from another, nor recognize any of the portraits or place them with their proper denominations.
She tried to count how many there were, but she got lost after “five.”
She was hungry, and there was nothing to eat here. She knew she was in a city, a place with a lot of people. Out there she could get something to eat. There was this money.
But—she would make people real sick if she did, she remembered. Anybody she saw or touched. She didn’t like that. She wanted to make people feel good, not sick.
They said they would make her dumb and they had. They said she’d be so dumb she’d go out and make people sick. Well, she’d fool them. She remembered that much. She wasn’t all dumb. She would fool them. She would sit right here, that’s what she would do.
It didn’t take very long at all for her to get bored sitting there, and she finally got up and made her way unsteadily to the window, which was open. She almost tripped over her own feet doing so.
She looked out. It was day time, and there were lots of buildings and lots more people. Lots of shops and stores and people walking all over. Music was coming from somewhere, and it sounded nice. She started trying to hum it, but even as it continued to play she got all mixed up.
She’d drank more water. A lot more. She was soaking wet now, and the water was going through her like a sieve. She had to go to the bathroom and there was no place to do that.
Her eyes went back to that knife. If she wasn’t going to make other people sick, she couldn’t stay in the room forever. She sank down on the floor, tears welling up in her, eyes on that knife, wishing she knew what to do.
Bob Hartman beat Jake Edelman to New York; a swift Air Force executive jet had sped him from Whiteoaks in under an hour and a quarter, getting him in about 10:00 A.M. He hadn’t slept a wink in almost three days and looked it, but he was running on adrenalin. After being frustrated by this case for so long, things were finally breaking all over and he couldn’t rest.
Jake came in by shuttle at 10:20; New York police and the local Bureau office had prepared for him He bounced off the plane and hurried to a waiting black car.
“Hello, Bob!” He greeted his associate and they got in with a quick handshake. The car took off, ant Edelman looked over at the younger man.
“You look like hell,” he said.
Hartman smiled. “Well, I take after my teacher.’ The Chief Inspector got down to business. “She’ in there? You’re sure?”
Hartman shrugged. “Who knows? We’ve had units around the place for a couple of hours. The neighbors know nothing, of course, except that the apartment was rented a couple weeks ago, furnished, but as far as they knew never lived in. They have one john to the floor up there in that project, and nobody’s run into anybody else taking a crap. Our sensors heard someone moving in there, but we decided not to move until you got here. Considering Braden, we’d all be the enemy to her.”
Edelman nodded. “I checked with Dr. Romans at Bethesda about mitoricine. It’s an ugly drug but it can be treated. The real question is whether or not she really was infected with the Wilderness Organism.”
“No way,” the younger agent assured him, grinning a bit evilly. “Braden died on the operating table, but we had Alton and probed him—and it was simple to pick up the other two who brought her here. None of them would touch the germ with a ten-foot pole. They’re scared to death of it.”
Edelman seemed satisfied. They sped through streets clogged with pedestrians but strangely devoid of cars. Soldiers were everywhere, along with a lot of New York police cars. When the emergency had cracked down, this city was one of the few with real resistance, and it still wasn’t completely under control. The rioting and arson had been pretty well stopped, though; they had simply shot the legs off anybody violating the curfew. Still, there was more potential for trouble here than almost anywhere else in the country; you could almost smell the seething resentment.