"Yes?"
"This is your office, Dr. Smith."
"I know who you are, Mrs. Mikulka."
The woman's voice was cheerier than it had been the previous day. "I just wanted you to know that. . . I think the problem was discussed ... I mean . . ."
"I'm sure you have everything under control, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said.
"Oh, it wasn't me. It was all very mysterious and then I got this telegram and-"
"Mrs. Mikulka, I really have to be on about my business," Smith said. "Perhaps this conversation will wait."
"I understand, Dr. Smith. About my resignation . . ."
"You're not resigning," Smith said flatly.
"I thought you'd want me to," she said.
"I don't know where you got that idea," Smith said.
"Well, it . . . uh, well . . ." she sputtered.
"Carry on, Mrs. Mikulka."
When he replaced the phone, Barry Schweid asked, "Can I get you some Kool-Aid, Harold?"
"No, Barry."
"Here. I already poured it." He handed Smith a glass of something vaguely green.
Smith took it. "It's not cold," he said.
"The ice melted. I poured it yesterday just after you left. I really missed you, Harold."
Smith cleared his throat.
"I tried to fill up my time, though. I collected rocks and worked on cosmic refractions that store all your files and talked to your friend Remo on the telephone."
"What?" Smith glared at the butterball little man. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? When did he call?"
"This morning. He said something about a man named Perriweather."
"What about him?" Smith said angrily.
"He didn't know. He wanted you to find out who he was." As Schweid spoke, he opened Smith's attache case and began to speak aloud as he typed onto the keyboard:
"Waldron Perriweather the Third, Address . . ." Smith went into the kitchen, poured out the Kool-Aid and drew a glass of cold water from the faucet. When he reentered the living room, Schweid handed him a long sheet of paper. Smith glanced at it, then nodded.
"Did I do good, Harold? Are you happy with me?"
"You did fine, Barry," Smith said. He called Remo at the IHAEO labs but was told they were out of town in Massachusetts.
Reading from Barry Schweid's computer printout, Smith dialed Perriweather's telephone number. "Speak," came a familiar voice.
"Smith here. What's on your mind, Remo?"
"What's on my mind is that last night we had to get rid of an atomic bomb. And now we've got three bodies here and a goddamn bone zoo. You think you could cut short the island madness and come lend a hand?"
"Who are the three bodies?" Smith asked. "Don't know."
"Who killed them?"
"We did. Well, two of them," Remo said. "Listen, Smitty, there's too much to explain over the phone. Speaking of which, who's the dork you have answering the phone? I didn't think anybody was allowed to answer your phone."
"That's usually correct," Smith said. "But these were extraordinary circumstances."
"What's that mean?"
"I was called away on business," Smith said.
"What'd you do, find a store that was giving bigger discounts on paper clips? Come on, Smitty, let's get on the ball. Things are cooking around here."
"I'd rather not stay on this open line too long," Smith said.
"All right, one thing more," Remo said. "A name. Dexter Morley. I think he's a professor or something."
"What about him?"
"He's the one we didn't kill."
"How did he die?"
"If he's the one I think, in a puddle."
"A puddle of what?"
"A puddle of himself. That's all that was left of him except for some papers we can't make out, scientific stuff. That is, if he's even the corpse. We don't know."
"I'll be back in a few hours," Smith said as he replaced the receiver.
Barry sat back down in the corner, wrapped the sliver of blanket around him like a silk scarf and stuck the end of it in his mouth and stared glassily, pouting ahead.
"Now, Barry, stop that," Smith said. He frowned to cover his embarrassment at seeing a grown man and the smartest man he'd ever met acting like an infant.
"You're the only friend Blankey and I ever had," the fat man whimpered, still staring straight ahead. "And now you're going away."
"Blankey has no feelings," Smith said. "It's an inanimate object. Blankey . . ." He stopped, annoyed with himself for referring to a blanket as if it were a person. "You've just got to learn to get along without me sometimes. After all, you got along before you met me, didn't you?"
"Wasn't the same," Barry sniffed.
Unable to deal with irrationality, Smith left the room to pack his things.
It was inexplicable, Smith thought as he placed his extra three-piece gray suit, identical to the one he was wearing, in a plastic garment bag that he had gotten free from a clothing store fifteen years earlier. He was the farthest thing from a father image that he could think of, and yet the computer genius had grabbed onto him as if he were Smith's little boy.
It was ridiculous. Even Smith's own natural daughter had never been dandled on his knee or told a bedtime story. His wife, Irma, always took care of those things, and like a sensible woman, Irma had understood that her husband was not the type of man one clung to for emotional comfort. Harold Smith did not believe in emotion.
He had spent his entire life looking for truth, and truth was not emotional. It was neither good nor bad, happy nor distressing. It was just true. If Smith was a cold man, it was because facts were cold. It didn't mean that he wasn't human. He just wasn't a slobbering fool. At least Irma had had the intelligence always to realize that.
Now why couldn't Barry Schweid understand that? If Smith wanted to play father in some misguided moment of maudlinism, he hardly would have picked an emotional cripple whose only solace in life was a ratty old blanket. It embarrassed Smith even to think of him. Fat, homely Barry Schweid with the gumption of a hamster.
What complicated it all was that the sniveling wreck possessed the brain of an Einstein, and genius had to be forgiven some shortcomings.
But not this. No, Smith decided. He would not take Barry Schweid back to the United States. He would not be manipulated by childish tears into living out the rest of his life with an overweight albatross wrapped around his neck, clutching onto a spittle-covered blanket. No.
He zipped up the plastic garment bag to the spot halfway where the zipper no longer worked, then taped the rest of it together with pieces of masking tape. He carried the bag out into the living room.
"I think we've come up with something," Barry said without turning around. He was kneeling on the floor near the coffee table and Smith's attache case. His blanket was on his shoulder.
"What do you mean?" Smith said.
"That name you wrote down. Dexter Morley. He's a prominent entomologist from the University of Toronto. In earlier years, he was an associate of Dr. Ravits, the one who was killed. He helped Ravits to isolate pheromones, the substances that attract animals to each other. Then two years ago, he disappeared."
"Interesting," Smith said blandly. It was interesting. Ravits had been killed by terrorists, and now Remo may have found the body of Dr. Dexter Morley, a former Ravits associate, also dead. And he had been killed in the home of Waldron Perriweather III, who was a well-known spokesman for animal groups. Was it possible that Perriweather was behind all the violence?
"I looked it up in the computer," Barry said. "Actually, I knew that part already. Most scientists know about Morley's disappearance a couple of years ago. But I found out something even more interesting."
"What's that?"
"Will you take me with you?" Barry said. He turned tearful eyes toward Smith.
"No, Barry," Smith said. "I will not."