A flicker of hope, the realization that maybe he wouldn't have to sacrifice himself after all-The corner of Fourteenth Avenue and Roe Street- And suddenly Warfield spun around, his brain apparently catching, as well. God damn it, he snarled viciously, hand jabbing at Gordy. Billy-take him out. Now, damn it.
Here it comes, Gordy said, and there was no longer any tension in his tone. Just a quiet acceptance.
Goodbye. Tell Colleen that I love her- And then a shadow swung at his head, and the image was gone.
I don't know how long I stood there, staring at nothing and listening to the silence where Gordy had been. Gradually, I became aware that there was a hand on my arm. Blinking my eyes against a painful dryness, I found Rob gazing at me, his thoughts highly worried. "I'm all right," I told him. Even to myself my voice sounded dead.
He didn't believe it, of course. "Anything I can do to help?"
I shook my head. Calvin?
Here, Dale. I've got through to the Regina police, and they're sending a car. He hesitated. I also told them about Colleen's car, and hinted that we suspected suicide.
Yeah. It felt wrong, somehow, to maintain the lie; but if we didn't, then Gordy's sacrifice would have been for nothing. You think they realized he was lying?
I'm sure they didn't, Calvin assured me. I think it just suddenly penetrated that with the shield supposedly destroyed he could get through to us again. They couldn't afford that.
It made sense. The game was lost, as far as they knew, and their first priority now would be to cover their tracks. What the hell's keeping those cops?
Take it easy, Dale-it's only been a couple of minutes.
I sighed. I'm sorry. I just....
Dale? The police have arrived on the scene, but there's no one there. Just the garbage truck.
Of course there's no one there, I said savagely. They wouldn't just leave him there for the cops to- I don't know why it clicked just then. But it did... and suddenly my grief vanished into a surge of adrenaline. He's not dead, I told Calvin. Of course he's not-what kind of an idiot am I?
Dale, I know it's hard- No, listen! I cut him off. Listen! They wouldn't just kill him like that-Fagin would have their heads on poles. He'd want to question Gordy and make sure he was telling them the truth about Colleen.
For a long moment Calvin thought about that, and despite his determination not to build up false hope I could sense a growing excitement. You may be right, he agreed. In which case we should send the police to the airport, try and head them off.
Yes-no. Wait a minute, let me think. Something Fagin had said... He knew Nelson, I told Calvin.
Probably pretty well-he mentioned once that Nelson had done some experiments for him. Maybe the Las Vegas stuff that Amos caught onto.
Maybe, Calvin allowed cautiously, wondering with a distinct undercurrent of uneasiness just where I was headed with this. So what does that tell us?
I grinned humorlessly, my lips tight enough to hurt. It tells us, I told him, that for the first time since Nelson tried to kill me, he's going to do something useful.
Calvin said something cautionary sounding, but I didn't wait to hear it. All my thoughts and senses were turned inward as I searched out that part of my personality which had come from my close-approach with Nelson. It was all still there, of course: the greed, the arrogance, the deception, the contempt for mankind in general and his fellow telepaths in particular. Everything I'd fought so hard and for so long to bury was right there, just waiting against the barriers I'd painfully erected against it.
I thought about Gordy and Colleen... and let the barriers fall.
And nothing happened. Nothing at all. The Nelson part didn't surge out like poison gas under pressure; didn't flow out like an attacking army bent on destruction; didn't gloat, didn't cheer, didn't rage. It was just there, like nothing more or less than a memory. A dark memory, to be sure, full of pain and anger and terror; but a memory nonetheless.
It was perhaps the greatest surprise of a long day of surprises, that the very thing I'd feared so much for so many months would in fact turn out to be so utterly powerless. Perhaps it was just the healing effects of time; perhaps that deadly confrontation at Rathbun Lake had been the killing blow, only I hadn't realized it.
I was whole again.
And there it was. Calvin? I got it. Fagin's name is Lawrence Barringer, and he's based somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
Got it, Calvin said. His emotions were masked, but it wasn't hard to guess that he was wondering what that information had cost me. You want to call the LA police, or should I?
No one's calling any police. Not yet, anyway.
What? Dale, he's got Gordy, remember?
No, he doesn't-and that's the whole point, I told him. His goons have Gordy; and they're hardly likely to drag him to Barringer's house and dump him on the living room rug. They'll take him to some out-of-the way place and question him there.
I felt Calvin's shiver. You think they'll... torture him?
My stomach turned, and for a long moment I dug again into Nelson's memories, searching for more details of Barringer's personality. They were there, all right; but even as I sifted through them it suddenly occurred to me that nothing I found here could be taken at face value. Colored as it all had been by Nelson's own warped mentality, there was no way for me to sort out objective fact from wishful or even malicious fantasy.
But I had to try. Okay, here it is. From what Nelson knew about Barringer he was an absolute fanatic for secrecy in his activities. He'd rather take extra time and make sure he's not being watched or monitored than rush into something and find out later that the whole thing's been captured on tape. Given that-and given that they'll assume we'll call the cops in-my guess is that they'll sedate Gordy and drive him out of town, contacting Barringer from someplace reasonably distant. He'll send a private plane for them, again rendezvousing somewhere away from Regina, and fly them leisurely down to some quiet spot near Los Angeles where they hopefully won't be disturbed. That make any sense to you?
Calvin pondered it. I suppose so, he agreed, almost reluctantly. There really isn't any rush, after all-if Colleen's alive he's got eight months to track her down. You think Barringer will want to be in on the questioning?
Yes. On that score I had no doubt at all. Absolutely. He wouldn't trust it to anyone else, for one thing.
And that's where we're going to nail him.
Wonderful-except for one small problem, Calvin pointed out heavily. Namely, we don't know where this quiet spot is that they're going to take him. Unless, he interrupted himself with a sudden surge of excitement, your friend Bob can put Amos's old telepath-detector back together. If he can- Sorry. I'd already had that idea, and found the flaw in it. The kernels he would need for that are already being used.
In the second shield; right, Calvin said, the excitement evaporating. In that case, I don't see that we have any choices left, Dale. We have to call in the police and ask them to put a tail on Barringer.
If we don't, he snarled with uncharacteristic harshness, we lose him to Barringer. Or don't you think he'll be able to make Gordy talk?
Yes, I'm sure he will. I took a deep breath. As a matter of fact... I'm rather counting on it.
It took Calvin nearly an hour of phoning to track down Jean Forster, Gordy's pilot friend, and ask for her help. Five hours later, just after midnight, she called me to announce that she and her twin-engine Beechcraft were at the Des Moines airport. An hour after that, we were airborne.
In many ways it was yet another echo of that desperate race to Regina only a few days earlier, and I found many of the same black thoughts swirling around and through my mind as we flew westward.
Suspended between land and sky, the occasional concentration of town and city lights below clumping like distorted fun-house mirror images of the stars above, the sense of unreality was even stronger than it had been then.