“You call, Luther,” Kim said, “if you don’t mind. Talk to them first. Prepare them. I don’t want to cause any more people to faint.”
Lying in yet another bed, in yet another room, this time with the brightness of Brisbane beyond the curtain over the one window, Kim felt very strange. It had been a weird rollercoaster day, being chased by those people, losing George, finding Jerry and Luther, talking on the phone with Mom and Dad, and then having dinner with Jerry and Luther as though they were all three equals together, in a way that had never been true on the ship.
She’d also made another batch of the same small purchases: toothbrush, toothpaste, lipstick, all the usual. And more clothing, outer and under, enough to carry her for a few days, all bought with money borrowed from Jerry. And a new cotton shoulder bag to put it all in. And by now Mom would have phoned Aunt Ellen in Chicago to go over to the house, pack up Kim’s passport and wallet, which had just arrived there today, and air express it all back to Sydney, to arrive on Monday. So, except for George, things seemed to be going pretty well.
George. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep, here in this strange new bed, all alone. Every time she moved, the sheets above and below her felt rough and cold. When she lay still, the big flat hard-mattressed bed seemed immense, as big as a football field. If she put her left arm out to the side, that other unused pillow over there was a big cold mound, an alien that didn’t belong with her.
Last night had just been the beginning with George, and yet already being here without him seemed unnatural. She wanted the feel of him, the solidity of him, the knowledge that he was there. To have had it just begin, and then stop like this, was terrible.
She needed to sleep, because tomorrow would be another crowded day, but she remained awake, her mind skittering around recent events, and always coming back to George. To remember how he had been last night, so gentle and then so strong, did not lead her toward sleep at all, but she couldn’t help the thoughts, they just kept swirling around and around, constantly there.
Is he all right? Where is he? What’s happened to him?
13
There was a knock at the door.
Manville looked at it more in irritation than surprise. “You’re the ones who locked it,” he called. “What do you want me to do?”
The key was already turning in the lock, with a loud snick, before he was finished speaking, and then the door opened and a young woman entered, in a tan pantsuit, smiling apologetically, saying, “I did not want to startle you.” A pile of clothing was over her arm. “If I may?”
He stepped to the side. She’d left the door open, and the hall looked empty from where he stood, but he didn’t doubt one of the men who’d brought him here was out there, or some other goon of Curtis’s, leaning against the wall, casual but making damn sure Manville stayed where they wanted him.
The young woman laid the clothing on the bed, neatening it, smoothing out wrinkles, then turned to smile at Manville again and say, “Mr. Curtis asks you to come to dinner in thirty minutes. You may refresh yourself in the bathroom there, and here are garments that we hope will fit you. The door will not be locked now, sir. In thirty minutes, if you would go out and to your right, and at the end of the hall turn left, that is the dining room. Thank you.”
She dipped her head and left, closing the door behind her. There was no sound of the key turning in the lock.
Manville guessed he’d been in this room now no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn’t looked at his watch when he’d first come in, assuming they’d be leaving him in here overnight.
They’d driven directly into the garage inside this building, and as they’d gotten out of the Daimler, all of them stiff, stretching, a young man in the same kind of tan pantsuit as this woman had opened an interior door at the left end of the garage, stepped forward through it, and called, “This way, please.”
Manville had paused to note the other two vehicles parked there, a tan Land Rover and a kind of dune buggy made mostly out of chrome pipe, and then he’d followed the man, while the leader of the thugs who’d captured him — Morgan, he’d called himself — had followed Manville into that broad low-ceilinged hall outside, with what looked like Navajo carpets on the red tile floor and framed aboriginal art on both walls. At the first open door on the right the man in the pantsuit had turned and made a please-enter gesture.
“That means you,” Morgan had said, and Manville had stepped into this room, and the door had shut behind him, with the unmistakable scrape of the key being turned in the lock.
This was normally a guestroom, apparently, with only the vertical bars outside the one window to suggest a prison; but probably all the ground floor windows were barred in a building as remote as this. The room contained a double bed, more native-looking throw rugs on the floor, a dresser and an easy chair beside a round table bearing a reading lamp. The compact bathroom next to it had an extremely small window, not barred, a telephone-booth-type shower, and more than enough towels.
Manville had expected to be left here by himself, locked in, to brood and worry and be the subject of psychological warfare. But now, to be suddenly presented with a change of clothes and a dinner invitation, threw him off; which might have been the idea.
Still, he should take what comfort he could. The shower was fine, with a clear lucite door and plenty of hot water and a big white bar of soap. Standing in there, letting the spray roll over him, easing the stiffness in his joints, he wondered again, for the thousandth time, what had happened to Kim. Those three had seen her — accidentally? somehow on purpose, following them? — and she’d escaped, and then they’d come back to the cafe to pick him up, and he’d walked right into it. So what would Kim have done next?
She might have gone to the police. Presumably there was a report somewhere that she was dead, so when she turned up alive, even without identification, it might force the authorities to take notice; though not necessarily to believe her fantastic accusations against a rich and respectable businessman.
Or she might have called the Planetwatch people, that guy Jerry Diedrich she’d mentioned a number of times.
He turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower.
The clothing he’d been given provided everything but shoes, and it all fit very well. Underwear, socks, dark gray slacks, pale blue buttoned shirt but no necktie, light gray sports jacket. The left pocket of the sports jacket contained two three-year-old tickets to La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House, suggesting this jacket had been left behind, forgotten by some houseguest, and never retrieved.
At the appointed time, Manville left his no-longer prison and followed the woman’s directions. Down the hall he went to the right, then a left, and there was the dining room.
Low ceilings seemed to be the norm here, but otherwise the place was lavish. The dining room was actually one end of a very long room that was a parlor at the farther end, all deep sofas and chairs on animal skin rugs, with a broad gray-stone fireplace taking up much of the far wall. There was no fire lit at the moment, but the room was comfortably warm. A pair of refectory tables, dark wood, bearing muted lamps, stacks of magazines, framed photos, marked the dividing line between parlor and dining room.
Four people were seated, very low, in the sofas down there; Richard Curtis, and three others Manville didn’t recognize, two women and a man. One of the women saw Manville enter and said something to Curtis, who immediately looked over, waved a hand over his head, and called, “There you are! Be right there.”