"I think you want to be alone for a while, Jeff."
She rose, and he got up from his chair. She preceded him, since her rank was higher. When she stopped so the data clerk could put the bill into her ID star, he went on, saying softly, "I'll see you, Tony."
"Don't forget to report," she called after him.
He asked through his wrist radio for an organic-car ride back to the station. Told he would have to wait twenty minutes for one, he flagged down a cab. So it would cost him a few credits. After he got in, though, he wished that he had waited. He was losing the battle to hold back more tears; he could have let loose in the unchauffeured vehicle.
By the time he arrived at the station, he was dry-eyed. He went to his office and reported to Wallenquist, who was curious about his meeting with Horn but did not dare ask too many questions.
Gril had disappeared as completely as if he had slipped down into the ancient abandoned subway-sewer system. Which he might have done. Ten patrollers and a sergeant were searching for him now in the deepest known area beneath Yeshiva University. So far, they had found only a bashed-in human skull, which did not look fresh, some huge rats, and two almost unreadable lines in twenty-first-century spelling on a wall.
I HATE GRAFFITI
I DO TOO AND HIS BROTHER LUIGI IS A REAL PRICK.
Rootenbeak had escaped like a rabbit into a briar patch.
His relief, Detective-Inspector Barnewolt, came in at three. Caird brought her up to date, and they talked for a while about the efforts by the young to bring back into fashion the wearing of trousers.
"I don't like them," Barnewolt said. "The kind of pants they're wearing, they're too tight, too form-fitting. I tried on some, and they made me feel embarrassed. I don't know. There's something immoral about them."
Caird laughed, and he said, "Wednesday, I hear, has been wearing pants for some time now, both young and old."
Barnewolt shrugged. "Well, you know how those people are."
Chapter 6
Caird rode his bicycle home, checked in on Ozma at her studio, found her painting a wasp, and went into the house. After watching a news report-nothing new-he went into the basement and worked out on the exerciser. He showered and put on a white sheer blouse, an orange waistband, a removable white neck-ruff, and an emerald-green kilt. When Ozma came in, he had her paint his legs yellow. His curled-toe ankle-high shoes were crimson. After they ate, he put on some lipstick and selected a wide-brimmed hat with a high conical top sporting a crimson artificial feather.
Ozma wore a white cap with a long red bill, factory-grown eagle feathers dangling from holders in her earlobes, green eye makeup, green lipstick, rouged cheeks, a 1oose sheer blouse, a shimmering green hooped skirt that reached to her ankles, sequined red stockings, and Kelly-green high-heeled shoes. Many finger rings and a scarlet umbrella completed her ensemble.
"Where's yours?" she said.
"My what?"
"Your umbrella."
"The weathercaster said it wasn't going to rain."
"You know what I mean," she said. "Umbrellas are obligatory for evening wear."
"I suppose it'll make you unhappy if I don't take one."
"Not unhappy. I'll just feel embarrassed."
"And you're the wild unconventional artist," he said. "Very well."
At seven, they left the house, each carrying a big shoulderbag, and they got into a taxi. By the time they arrived, the huge museum lobby was packed with guests, all holding cocktails or stronger drinks, standing in close groups and chattering or wandering from group to group. The phatic lines of communion, as a twentieth-century anthropologist had called them, were functioning well. Everybody was talking and nobody was listening.
After greeting their hosts, Caird and Wang joined a gaggle of Goalists. Bored by them, Caird went to a pride of Pressurists and Ozma to a soup of Supernaturalists. The latter group was not painters interested in the hereafter but a new school which insisted that its subjects had to be shown realistically not only on the exterior but also on the interior. Thus, one side of the faces of their human subjects would show what the eye saw. The other half was slices of the deeps, as they called it, the skin removed, the skull removed, the brain shown, the inside of the brain shown, and the back-brain a shadowy presence.
Caird could not see any merit or value in Supernaturalism, but he did not argue with Ozma about it. What did he know of art? Besides, it made her happy, though there were times when he got tired of her talking about it.
At ten-thirty, the party was just reaching its climax. Ozma had been induced to paint her host. He stood nude in the middle of the lobby while she improvised the designs. Caird, far back in the crowd, wondered if she would somehow make the host look like a grasshopper.
"There's a call for you, Inspector," a waiter said. "The strip near the door as you go into the Absolute Zero Room."
Caird thanked him and went through the doorway indicated into a vast dark-blue and very cold room containing many stoned ice-sculptures. The strip just around the corner showed the face and torso of CommissiQner-General Anthony Horn.
"I'm sorry to pull you away from the party, Jeff." "Don't be. What is it?"
She swallowed and said, "Naomi Atlas has been murdered."
Lightning seemed to leap within his brain. He wanted to say, "Castor did it?" but there was always the possibility that the line was being monitored.
"Her body, what was left of it, was found fifteen minutes ago in the bushes in the yard outside the apartment section of the building. I want you ... " She swallowed again, her face spasmed, and she said, "I want you to come up here and take charge. At once. Find out all you can before midnight, and report your findings to me. I've put you in charge because you're the murder expert in Manhattan. Colonel Topenski isn't too happy about it, but he'll cooperate or I'll have his ass. I told him so."
"I'm leaving now," Caird said.
"A patroller car will be waiting for you at the main entrance. I'll give you more details on your way up."
Caird went into the lobby, forced his way, though apologizing, through the crowd, and said, "Ozma! Hold it a minute."
She stopped applying yellow paint to the host's buttocks and said, "What's the matter, Jeff?"
"I've been called in on a case. It's very urgent."
He spoke to the host. "My sincere regrets, but duty calls."
"Of course. What is this about?"
"That's organic business, though you may see it on the news."
He walked to Ozma, kissed her cheek, and said, "I'm sorry. You'll have to go home without me. I may be kept so long I'll have to use an institute stoner. I'll be home in the morning."
She smiled and said, "A policeman's wife is not a happy one."
In the car, he called Horn. There was a delay of two minutes before her face appeared on the screen on the back of the front seat. He said, "Fill me in."
There were no suspects as yet, and neither he nor Horn could mention Castor. She had at the moment no facts to add to what she had told him in the museum. He knew from her tone that she might have more to tell him when they were alone.
The yard was bright with the big lamps the organics had set up. Caird muscled through the spectators, showed his badge and ID star, and was admitted into the work party area. He saw Horn at the same time she saw him. She gestured for him to come to her under the big sycamore. She rose from the folding chair as he approached and held out her hand to him. She gripped his strongly and said, softly, "She's over there."
Over there was understatement. Atlas was all over, her head under a bush, a leg nearby, and the other leg stuck into a bush, an arm hanging over a branch, and the limbless torso propped up against a tree trunk. Entrails festooned another bush. Blood had stained the grass and soaked into the earth in the area marked off by string.