Norm took an aisle seat. He thumbed open the latch and pressed the power button apprehensively. He couldn’t remember ever using one of these. Assuming he figured that out, would its contents have any meaning for him?
A screen prompt asked for his password. He unclipped the stylus and moved it to the pressure strip. Almost by itself, the stylus began to write.
TRICKY DICK.
Staves filled with syncopated chords glowed to life on the screen, as the notebook recognized the unique interplay of pressures that was his handwriting. Delight rushed through him as Norm recognized his own composition, traced the development of themes, experienced the growing tension as Nixon was pushed ever closer to the edge. He scrolled quickly to the section Manny had indicated. It was just after the chorus of the conspirators, what he had been dreaming about just before waking. Woodward and Bernstein had been doing their Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bit, having no idea how cleverly they were being manipulated by Deep Throat. Notes flowed from his fingers. There would be no difficulty at all in giving Manny the extra ninety seconds the stage hands needed to shift the scenery. Just extend the recapitulation of the previous themes, modulating into a minor key just before the cadence.
Margery, sitting beside him, was smiling. Well, why shouldn’t his enthusiasm be infectious? When a mere mortal could do something as godlike as snipping out pieces of harmony out of the air (and it did almost seem that he was listening to music and merely rearranging it rather than actually creating it) why shouldn’t everyone be—
His tracy chimed, discordant with the music in his head. Norm was about to refuse the call, when he noticed that the caller was claiming emergency importance. Such a claim was tortious if false. Reluctantly, he pressed the Accept button.
Steele’s metallic visage peered out at him. “Thank goodness I got through to you. Mr. Richards, you are in grave danger.”
Manny had been talking to the Nixon baritone. Together they turned and walked toward Norm.
“The only danger I have been in recently has been from you,” Norm said sharply.
“My core was infiltrated by an attack virus,” Steele explained. “It attempted to kill you through my robotic peripherals. I was forced to shut down until my anti-viral programs could eliminate it.
“Mr. Richards, have you downloaded your data ferret recently? Someone appears to believe you have access to extremely sensitive information.”
Manny and the Nixon baritone had come over to stand beside him. As the Nixon bent over to examine the score on the notebook screen, his face seemed to explode. Norm grabbed Margery and threw himself on the floor. Scalding blood ran over his face and soaked into his shirt. The chairs shook with a rapid succession of blows. Waves of heat rolled off them. The cushions seemed to melt into themselves, releasing clouds of noxious fumes.
“There’s an exit near the end of this row,” Norm said to Margery, trying to keep his voice low. For an instant, he wondered how he knew. “Move as quickly as you can but keep low!”
They scutded quickly along the uneven floor on hands and knees. The sound of the stutter laser seemed to rattle from various corners of the hall. There were also shouts, but the words were incomprehensible. One of the voices sounded like Manny’s.
“I’m at the end,” Margery said.
“Can you see the exit?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone out there?”
Margery extended her head cautiously and looked left and right. “No.”
“Then let’s go for it!”
Margery gathered her feet beneath her and seemed to leap across the aisle to the exit. Norm sprinted after her. As he dived through the doorway, the stutter laser washed over the wall with a sound like being on the inside of a popcorn popper.
Down to a landing and then down another stairway should take them to the parking garage. From there, he would be able to call their car with his tracy and get away from this madness.
Margery stopped suddenly and Norm just barely avoided running into her and knocking her the rest of the way down the stairs. There was a figure on the landing. Seeing them, he raised the stutter laser he was holding.
Norm turned. A woman had just come to the top of the stairs above them, holding her own stutter laser. Its target acquisition sensor was on. No matter how quickly they moved, it would shift the mirror at the end of the barrel to make sure the next packets of ravening energy found them.
“Why?” Margery gasped, looking from one to the other. “Why are you doing this to us?”
“Because you know too much, both of you,” the man said, advancing slowly up the stairs.
“That clever little ferret of yours was just too successful in breaking codes and evading lockouts. It got a complete listing, even including the vice president’s name. That should have been impossible. I suppose you are to be congratulated.”
“That’s crazy!” Norm protested. “That ferret was supposed to put together information on the Watergate conspiracy. We’re talking twentieth-century history, for God’s sake!”
“Then it’s a shame your wife’s creation was more powerful than precise,” the woman said bitterly. “It keyed on ‘conspiracy’ and ‘president’ and associated concepts. Maybe you didn’t want to go beyond Watergate, but that’s irrelevant now.”
It was true, Norm realized. The ferret had been going ever further afield. He had meant to ask Margery to correct the code, but it had been coming up with such fascinating data that he had put it off.
Then, two days ago, the download revealed that it had triggered powerful protection programs, and these would almost certainly be able to trace the ferret home. The shock had unnerved him so much that he had forgotten his daily dosage of Vita Minds, and with that his various personality strands had begun to twist loose, as he had shut out knowledge of the approaching danger.
The laser barrels steadied on them. He could see, with astonishing clarity, muscles tense as the man began to squeeze the trigger.
And the Other flooded into him, calm and majestic and utterly certain.
“Remove your shoes,” Norm commanded.
“The hell,” the man said, and fired directly at Norm.
The thunder, confined to the stairwell, was deafening. The blast knocked Margery backwards onto the stairs. The lightning temporarily blinded her. When she regained her sight, all that remained of the man was a smear of greasy ashes five steps below her.
Norm turned to the other assailant. “Remove your shoes,” he repeated.
The woman looked at the remains of her partner. The stutterlaser fell from nerveless hands. She kicked off her flats without shifting her eyes from Norm.
“Why?” she asked, her voice little more than a squeak.
“You stand upon holy ground,” Norm said.
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“I am the Lord, your God,” the Other replied, speaking through Norm, “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Hear my word. Trouble my servants no longer. Too long have you shut your minds against me. Tell your princes to repent of the evil they have planned. If they repent, even now they may be saved. But if they do not repent, then the strength of my right arm shall destroy them even as Nineveh.”
The woman nodded slowly, then turned and fled up the stairs.
The Other receded. Norm was himself again, along with Philip and Richard and all the other distant voices clamoring for their share of existence.
“I wonder what Steele will make of that,” Margery wondered, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria.
“He will be gratified to learn that he got it at least partly right,” Norm answered, helping Margery to her feet. “I don’t know how he’ll deal with the lightning bolt, though.”