The pilot's eyes flew open. He pulled back on the collective. Just in time. The helicopter swooped up and over the Rumpp Tower, a fly's-eye panorama of repeated helicopter reflections chasing it along every mirrored surface.
When the chopper had flattened out into a lazy circle and everyone's stomach had climbed down out of their throat, Remo asked the Master of Sinanju a question.
"What is it, Little Father? What did you see?"
"The building has found its proper vibration."
"Huh?"
"He means it's solid again," Cheeta offered. "Right, Grandfather?"
Chiun nodded somberly. "I do."
Everyone looked. The Rumpp Tower looked no different. The last hot, purplish-orange rays of the sun were streaking its sawtooth top, but otherwise it had become a kind of stalagmite of obsidian, with a subtle bronze underhue.
"Looks the same to me," Remo muttered.
"Now look with your eyes," spat Chiun, pointing down with one spindly finger.
Everyone looked downward.
Several floors up from the RUMPP TOWER sign over the Fifth Avenue entrance, a balloon was swirling in the eddies and currents surrounding the Tower. It was Halloween-orange and had a pumpkin face. Evidently, someone from the crowd behind the distant barbed wire had released it.
As they watched, a gust of wind swept it up. It skidded close to the Tower facade and, as it rose, bounced off.
"It bounced!" Cheeta breathed.
"I saw this happen before," Chiun offered.
"Praise Diana, Goddess of the Moon!" Delpha cried, closing her eyes and lifting empty palms to the moon. "My womanly magic proved true."
"My ass," said Remo, quickly pinching his nose shut.
"You did this?" Cheeta asked, dumbfounded.
"Indeed," said Delpha calmly. "You may interview me now. I suggest a two-shot."
"And I suggest we land before I throw up," Remo said.
Cheeta said, "Later. I want to see what's going on in the Tower. You! Cameraman! Let's get some footage."
The cameraman got his video up and running.
"Make a circle of the building," Cheeta told the pilot.
Delpha chimed in. "Good. Circles are good. They represent femaleness. If we create enough of them, they will dispel the Horned One forever."
"Shouldn't we be landing, to let the people know it's okay to come out now?" Remo suggested.
"No," Cheeta said sharply, "Later. If we set them free now, we can't interview them."
"Since when does a story come before people?"
"Since before Edward Z. Murrow," said Cheeta solemnly.
"Can I quote you on that?" Remo asked.
Before Cheeta could answer, Delpha cried, "Look, I see an otherworldly apparition!"
Cheeta's glossy head snapped about, like that of a confused Mako shark. "Where? Where?"
Delpha pointed. "There! In that corner office."
The cameraman was trying to position his lens, saying, "Where? Which corner? I don't see anything."
Delpha reached back and yanked the camcorder lens toward the southwestern corner of the building and held it.
"Do you see it now?" she asked.
"I don't know," the cameraman said. "I think you bruised my eye."
"Just keep taping," Cheeta said. "The network will gladly buy you a glass eye."
They swept past the corner and around to the other side, where the Spiffany Building, as solid as the granite it was built of, lay bathed in cold moonlight.
Cheeta asked, "What did you see?"
"It looked like an evil spirit," Delpha said, more pale-faced than usual. "I think it was a night-gaunt."
"What's a 'night-gaunt'?" Remo asked.
"It is a creature normally seen only in dreams," Delpha explained. "They have rubbery skin, long forked tails, and no face at all."
"This thing you saw had no face?"
Delpha nodded. "No more than an egg does."
"Sounds like a night-gaunt to me," Remo said dryly.
"If night-gaunts are breaking into the waking world, I fear for humanity. None are female."
Cheeta frowned. "God. What is this world coming to?"
"There is only one odd thing," Delpha said slowly.
"What's that?" asked Cheeta.
"Night-gaunts are usually black-skinned. This one was completely white. I will have to consult the Necronomicon about them."
To Remo's surprise, she pulled a dog-eared paperback book from under her skirt and consulted it.
"This is strange," she said thoughtfully. "There's no mention of white night-gaunts. Not even in the demonology concordance."
"It doesn't matter," Cheeta put in. "We got it on tape, whatever it was." She glared back at her wincing cameraman. "At least, we'd better have gotten it on tape."
"But the Necronomicon should list it if it exists," Delpha said worriedly.
"Maybe you got the abridged edition by mistake," Remo suggested helpfully.
"Remo," Chiun flared, "you are behaving like an idiot. "
"I've been dragged down by the company I'm forced to keep. Look, can we just land this thing?"
"An excellent idea," Chiun said sternly. "We will land and rescue the persons formerly trapped within this glittering monstrosity, thus earning the eternal gratitude of this country and whoever may rule it."
"Why would we do that?" Remo wanted to know.
"Contract negotiations," Chiun whispered.
"Oh."
This half-overheard conversation made Cheeta Ching think of something.
"You know, it's quite a coincidence."
Remo made his face blank. "What is?"
"Bumping into you two again like this. Clear across the country."
Remo looked away. "It's a free country. We travel a lot."
"Whose campaign are you with this time?"
"Nobody's. We're in a new line of work," Remo explained, blank-voiced. "We're insurance adjusters. We're out here because Randal Rumpp needed extra fire insurance."
"That's ridiculous!"
To which, Remo offered a business card that identified him as Remo Wausau, with Apolitical Life and Casualty.
"This is awfully unlikely," Cheeta said.
"Tell her, Little Father."
Chiun thinned papery lips. "It is as Remo says," he said with obvious distaste. "We are adjusters of insurance. Temporarily."
"Okay, I believe you," Cheeta said, returning Remo's card.
Remo blinked. He had to will his face still to keep it from dissolving into incredulous lines. The blunt-faced barracuda had bought his lame story on no more strength than Chiun's word. What the hell? he thought. Anything to get us through the night.
Remo settled back as the helicopter pilot wrestled his craft into a soft landing on Fifth Avenue. Maybe when they got into the building, he and Chiun could figure out what was really going on, waste anyone who needed wasting, and split before Delpha decided to flash somebody into asphyxiation.
Remo didn't think his sinuses could stand another high-speed scouring.
Chapter 16
At first, Randal T. Rumpp thought his executive assistant had broken down. She was babbling again. Worse, she was raving.
"It-it's a ghost! A real ghost!" Dorma Wormser cried.
"What's a ghost?" Rumpp asked calmly. It was important to be calm when dealing with the unstable.
Dorma grabbed his arm. "The thing in the trophy room. Come see, come see. You'll see. It's real."
Randal Rumpp looked out the window. The BCN helicopter was fluttering around aimlessly. He wasn't finished being quoted yet, but the chopper didn't seem interested in coming back for more pearls of Rumpp wisdom.
He let his executive secretary tug him to the trophy room, thinking this had better be worth his time.
Randal Rumpp saw right away that it wasn't a ghost. Even though it was white and floated just under the ceiling like a ghost probably would float, it was no ghost.
It looked vaguely humanoid. There were two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head. The head was not like a human head. It was too big, too smooth, too white, and too hairless, and where its face should have been there was a kind of puffy balloon.