The echoes of his own bubbling, gasping breath filled the shaft, and he could hear nothing else. The damned android could be playing an accordion up there, he thought, and he wouldn't be able to tell. While he waited, his twisted arms grew numb from lack of circulation and blood trickled into his hair. How truly awful this is, he reflected.
When a good measure of time had passed, and he felt the android must certainly have returned to the alley, Thomas began to think dizzily about extricating himself from the chimney. No hope of climbing back out, he told himself—his arms were as numb as if they belonged to someone else. All he could move were his legs, and even they had only a few centimeters of space to twitch in.
Like an electric shock, claustrophobia seized every nerve of him. I'll never get out, his mind gibbered. I'll die and rot jammed up in here. He began screaming and thrashing about as much as he could in the confined space; his head was being twisted even worse as more of his weight shifted onto it, but he wasn't even aware of it. He was nothing now but a mindless, trapped, screaming animal, absolutely dominated by pure fear.
CHAPTER 10: "With this Memory Bank ..."
Gladhand was unhappily sipping a glass of port in the greenroom when the screaming abruptly began. They were wild, ragged shrieks that suddenly disrupted the evening's calm, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
Lambert and Jeff, pale and wild-eyed, leaped out of the chairs they'd been slouched in. "What the hell is that?" they both yelled at once.
"I don't know!" shouted Gladhand, dabbing at the port he'd spilled on himself. "Go find out! Hurry!" The two young men ran out of the room as the screaming continued. Several terrified actors and actresses dashed by in the hallway.
Pat ran into the greenroom, her blouse dusted with brown powder and fear in her eyes. "Do you hear that?" she yelled.
"Yes," Gladhand said loudly in order to be heard over the shrieking.
"Thank God," Pat gasped, and left the room.
Gladhand leaned back in his wheelchair, his hands clenched on the arms, and stared at the cracked ceiling until, an eternal, deafening four minutes later, the hoarse yells ceased. Slow footsteps sounded in the hall a minute or so later, and then Jeff and Lambert edged into the greenroom, carrying between them a bleeding, shirtless wretch, shivering and powdered thickly with soot.
"What is this?" Gladhand demanded.
"Rufus," Lambert answered as he and Jeff laid the twitching body on the couch. "He was jammed upside down in that little chimney behind the upstairs stove. Had to pull that old blower out of the wall to get him."
"He apparently became hysterical in there," Jeff added.
"Apparently. Rufus? Here, Jeff, give him some port. Lock the door, will you, Lambert?"
Jeff pried open Thomas's jaws and poured a dribble of the fortified wine into his mouth. Thomas swallowed it. "More," he croaked. Jeff obligingly tipped up the bottle to let Thomas drink as much as he wanted to. Finally Thomas shivered, opened his eyes, and slowly sat up. His hair was matted with blood, and his face was wet with blood, tears and port. His arms and chest were cut and scraped everywhere, as if he'd fallen from a racing horse.
"Uh, hi," he rasped hoarsely.
"Hi," said Gladhand. "How in the devil's own name did you wind up in the chimney?"
Thomas leaned his head back and sighed. "Spencer's dead," he whispered. Gladhand stiffened. "He apparently," Thomas went on, "caught a sword in the belly. He was far gone when I found him—when he found me. He was waiting by the side of the road to tell me that the police… know who I am, and have the theater staked out."
"I don't get it," Lambert said. "Who are you?"
"Tell you later. Listen, now. Turned out to be true. Cops in the alley. I climbed up on top of the Castello Bank and then jumped across onto the roof here. One of 'em thought it heard something, and climbed up the fire escape to our roof. The stairway door was locked and it was about to step onto the roof, so I dove down the chimney."
Gladhand picked up his glass from the carpet and held it out for Jeff to refill. "Jeff," he said, "have somebody go explain to the android who will shortly be knocking at our door, that the screams he heard were part of a rehearsal. Uh… Celia's grief at Rosalind's exile, tell him."
Jeff poked his head out the doorway and relayed the order to Alice, who was walking past; she nodded acknowledgement, and he closed the door and sat down.
"I found a letter," Thomas continued wearily, pulling the battered envelope out of his pocket and handing it to the theater manager. "It was written ten years ago by Strogoff the android-maker, and he says that the assassination attempt of '79 was successful, and that Majordomo Hancock replaced the dead, genuine Pelias with an android. So a week ago your bombs blew up only an android copy. Somebody killed the real Pelias ten years ago."
Jeff and Lambert were astonished, but Gladhand only nodded sadly. "A fairly accurate statement," he said.
"And Spencer told me why the police are after me—they think I found an android's memory bank last Friday morning when I was sky-fishing. I didn't, but they think I might have." He sighed. "Now here's my theory: I think your Thursday morning bombs damaged the padmu of this Pelias android, and a bird-man flew in while technicians were repairing the mayor, and flew away with the memory bank. That's why they say Pelias had a stroke. Now if there was—and clearly there must have been—something very important in that memory bank, that would explain why the police have been searching for me so desperately."
"There was something important in it," Gladhand said. He took a sip of port before resuming. "Do you recall McGregor, Jeff?"
"Yeah," Jeff answered. "I haven't seen him around within the last week, though."
"Nor will you ever. I had Spencer kill him at the same time you and Negri were planting the bombs in the mayor's chambers. McGregor was a spy, and managed—by a really respectable program of research and inspired guesswork—to learn quite a bit about the guerrilla side of our operation. He even found out who it is that I plan to appoint as mayor when we overthrow the present government. He relayed all this information to the android Pelias before we could stop him, and that's why we had to kill both of them immediately."
"Ah," Thomas nodded. "And that's why they want his memory bank—because it contains the location and strengths of the resistance force."
"That, yes, but the most important thing is the name and location of this proposed successor. The present government would be much safer if that man were dead."
"Oh, come on," Lambert said skeptically; "a lot of people have more-or-less valid claims to the mayor's office, and the city manages to squelch them pretty well. What's so different about this boy of yours?"
Gladhand smiled. " 'My boy,' " he said, "is Mayor Pelias himself. The real one."
"I thought," Jeff said, dizzied by these rapid-fire revelations, "I thought you just finished saying the real Pelias was killed ten years ago."
"No. He was injured by that grenade, quite severely injured, and he was replaced by an android that the treacherous swine Hancock happened to have on hand. As a matter of fact, I think Hancock ordered the grenade attack. But no, Pelias didn't die. He's alive today, and in this city—and Tabasco would give anything to have him killed once and for all."
There came a knock at the greenroom door. "Who is it?" barked Gladhand.
"It's me—Pat."
"Come in." The door opened and Pat wandered in. She looked very startled when she saw Thomas on the couch.