The doorbell was ringing now without stopping. People were banging at the door itself. It was supposed to be break-in-proof, but you couldn’t be sure. Mom pressed a couple of keys and spoke into the mouthpiece of her control.
“This is Mrs. Adamson. We are not giving any interviews. Will you please go away? You are trespassing on private property.”
Nothing happened. Perhaps they hadn’t heard through the racket they were making, hammering and calling and swearing at one another and pressing the bell. Even from right inside the apartment the noise was loud enough to feel dangerous. More people came out of the elevator. Mom repeated her message. And again and again. The doorbell stopped. Now they were shouting at one another not to shout at one another, and making shushing gestures. Then silence. You could see they could hear the message because half a dozen microphones poked up toward the speaker to record Mom’s voice. It didn’t do any good. The bell started again at once, and the shouting and knocking.
Now the door on the other side of the landing opened, and little Mr. Koo came out to complain about the racket. The Koos never watched the shaper, so he couldn’t have understood what was happening, but the moment they saw him the reporters closed around him like wasps attacking a caterpillar, yelling questions and thrusting microphones and cameras at him. He retreated, but before he could close the door they surged in around him, leaving room on the landing for the elevator to disgorge another load, and these newcomers, seeing their rivals streaming through an open door, must have thought the Adamsons lived on that side and pressed in after them while the poor old elevator went down for yet another load.
White and shuddering, Mom plugged the commo in. It immediately started to bleep, but after several tries she hit a clear space and got a channel out. She called the police, but whoever she spoke to said they couldn’t help. Then she tried the home number of a man she knew in the police department, because of her job, and he said the same, explaining privately that the police never interfered with shaper people if they could help it, because the shaper people always got their own back by putting on programs that made that department look like crooks’ or idiots.
The moment she put it down the commo began to beep again, till she switched to auto. The doorbell was getting on Eva’s nerves, so she went out into the hallway to see if she could turn it off. The sound came from a box up by the ceiling. She opened the door of the coat closet, jumped, grasped, and swung herself up. Crouching on top of the door, clutching it with her feet, she inspected the box. There wasn’t a switch, but there was a grill in front through which the sound came, so she swung down and got a box of rice from the kitchen. Using the lid of the box as a sort of chute, she eased a stream of rice into the grill until the noise stopped.
She didn’t come down at once. She felt safer crouched up there away from the floor. The voices from beyond the door made her pelt prickle, and her throat and lips worked involuntarily, wanting to shout back. Though she couldn’t hear any words, the voices still had a meaning—they were hunting cries, the calls of a pack baying outside the lair of its prey. Of course, if they’d been let in the people out there wouldn’t have hurt her, only asked stupid questions. That was what her mind told her. But her body told her they were enemy. It was an effort to climb down and go back into the living room.
Mom was still white and shivering.
“Hadn’t we better call Dad?” said Eva, using the tone control on her keyboard to sound calm.
“The program’s still on. He’ll be at the studio.”
“You better warn him. He’ll never get in.”
Again it took several tries to get a channel out, but in the end Mom managed to find someone who said they’d tell Dad as soon as they could.
“I never dreamed it would be as bad as this,” said Mom. “I realized they’d be interested, but honestly! They’re mad!”
No, they’re just people, thought Eva. Time went by. The riot on the landing calmed. The onslaught became a siege. Some of the attackers settled onto the floor and waited; others leaned against walls; a few spoke into pocket commos.
“Let’s watch something else,” said Eva, taking the control and beginning to flick through the channels. The second one she came to was showing an old tape of chimps. She watched for a while until she realized from the voice-over that it was a news program about her, only they didn’t have anything to show the viewers except that tape. Three channels farther on she found another news program, live, with a reporter talking into a camera in the street outside this very apartment house. Almost at once the shot switched to another angle from far higher, this building still, against the evening sky, with the city spreading on beyond it until it was lost in its own man-made dusky mist. The focus zoomed in to a particular window. The lights were on in the room, so you could just make out a woman sitting in a chair, with a large dark something on her lap.
Mom sighed and pressed keys to lower the blind. In the imaged window in the zone the blind came down.
“Someone in one of the other buildings must have let them use their apartment,” said Mom. “Honestly, people will do anything.”
People, people, people—even Mom talked as if they were enemy, and she was people too. She switched the shaper off, just leaving the VCR running so that Dad could watch his big moment tomorrow.
More than an hour later they were halfheartedly playing chess when Eva felt her pelt prickle with wariness. Something had changed. Though she hadn’t been aware of hearing the crowd on the landing, now that she listened for them she knew that they had stopped muttering among themselves and become very quiet. She switched the closed circuit on and saw that they were all standing up, facing the elevator. She could hear the whine of its ascent.
“Dad,” said Mom. “But he’ll . . . how did they know?”
They had friends with commos below, of course, thought Eva, but she didn’t have time to say so before the elevator stopped and the door opened. Two huge men in gray uniforms faced the crowd, which had begun to surge forward. They lowered their shoulders and charged out. Now Eva could see that there were four other people in the elevator, Dad, a woman, and two more huge men in uniform. The crowd gave way before the charge but then surged in from the side as the second two guards tried to hustle Dad and the woman on through the gap. Dad looked terrified, though often you could hardly see him for outthrust microphones. The woman held herself very erect and spoke in a loud voice, clearly saying the same few words over and over. The guards elbow-jabbed the crowd aside. Eva saw at least one bleeding nose, and several people fell right over. When they reached the door the guards regrouped and kept the crowd at bay while Dad bent down to operate the voice lock, but either because of the racket or because he was so scared his voice came out funny and the lock didn’t work at once, so Eva got there first and opened the door.
The crowd could barely have glimpsed her, but they let out a baying roar and surged forward as Dad and the woman slipped through. The guards just managed to hold them while Eva got the door shut.
Dad stood in the hall, shaking his head while the baying dwindled into shouts of pleading and frustration. He scuffed his toe at some of the rice Eva had spilled while she was silencing the bell.
“I didn’t believe it,” he said. “I just didn’t believe it.”
“It is certainly far worse than anyone had expected,” said the woman, as calm as if she were discussing the weather. She was a bit over thirty, blond, with fluffy hair and neat features. At first glance she looked rather fragile, despite her dark business suit, but she spoke and carried herself as though she weren’t afraid of anyone. She turned to Mom, who had come out into the hallway.