“Whaa yaa awahhh?”
“And to do what I have to do, I need your help. Things may get pretty hairy, but I promise you, Althea, I won’t hurt you unless I absolutely have to.”
“Huh? Ih-hee, ah owah ahh?!l”
“Shh—save your strength.”
He interfaced the holocube with the phone, and the robo-clerk appeared, sporting its mustache.
“Get me,” Nick said, “394-674-340.”
“Hunh! hunh! hunh!” She shook her head frantically.
The circuit was connected and static snow gave way to a slow play of kaleidoscopic patterns. A voice said, “I’m sorry, Police Chief Clinger and his wife have already gone to bed. Please call again in the morning. If this is an emergency, remain on the line; in forty-five seconds an alarm will ring and your call will be answered.”
The forty-five seconds seemed like an hour; then he heard a click and a groggy voice (still no visual):
“Yeah?”
“Chief Clinger? This is Nick Harmon. I’ve got something to show you.”
“What is this, a joke? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Definitely not a joke, sir.”
“Call me in the morning.”
“Before you disconnect, look in your night table—I think you’ll find your nerve gun missing.”
A grunt, a mutter, a sliding of a drawer. An exclamation.
“Yeah, it’s missing. What’s it got to do with you, Harmon?”
“If you’ll turn on the visual, you’ll see.”
A sigh. Clinger’s head appeared within the cube, a pale, horsy face with dark rings under the eyes. He slept with a hair press; he’d neglected to take it off before answering the phone. Nick repressed an urge to giggle.
“All right,” Clinger grumbled, "what is it?”
Nick slid Althea into view. He held the nerve gun to her temple and said, "If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll burn her out.”
Chief Clinger’s mouth fell open. Funny noises came from deep in his throat. Regaining his speech, he said, “If this is a joke . . .”
“Try me and see,” Nick said coolly.
"Take that damn thing out of her mouth and let her speak to me!”
Nick obliged. Althea gasped and coughed and spit defiantly in his face.
"Are you all right, baby?” Chief Clinger asked.
“He forced me into this, he made me steal the gun. I didn’t want to do it but he forced me. Don’t let him hurt me, Daddy . . .”
Nick eased the ball gag back in her mouth.
Now Clinger’s tone changed. “Harmon, how can you do this to me? I’m nobody, a minor functionary on an out-of-the-way planet. What have I got? Nothing but my little girl. If anything happens to her, I’ll—”
“Do what I say, Mr. Clinger, and nothing will happen to her.”
“Robert,” a sleepy woman’s voice demanded, “who are you talking to at this hour?”
Chief Clinger scowled to his left. “Go back to sleep, Abby.”
The face of a plump, white-haired woman peered curiously into the corner of the cube. Her eyes took in Nick, her daughter, the nerve gun; the next moment she was hysterical and her husband was ordering her to shut up.
“Now listen to me,” Nick said, when she had finally been quieted down and dispatched to the kitchen for stimu-caff. “Hali Hasannah did not murder Sir Etherium or Lex Largesse. Somebody else did—and they did it in order to silence them. I don’t know what they had to say that was so important, but I’ll bet some of the other Lifestylers do. So here’s my first demand: I want an hour alone with as many of the Lifestylers as you can contact tonight.”
“That means an hour by yourself, Harmon. After the second murder the Lifestylers all went over to the other side. They’ve sealed the transdimensional windows and cut off communications. They’re scared for their lives, and I don’t blame them.”
“Shit,” Nick said. “Let me think for a minute. Scolpes. That’s it, I want to see Scolpes. Call him up right now and tell him to meet me at his laboratory in half an hour. Then I want a MagLev wagon with a robo-chauff to take Althea and me to Mutagen. And I’m warning you, Mr. Clinger, try anything and I’ll brain-wipe your daughter.”
“We’d snuff you so fast, Harmon . .
Oddly enough, the threat didn’t bother him. If he did nothing to save Hali, his life was worthless; if he died saving her, his life took on immense value. And if he succeeded in saving her, well, that would be best of all. He realized with surprise what men sometimes learn in times of crises; that dying nobly can be preferable to living inanely.
III
None of his crimes thus far caused Nick the chagrin he experienced entering Scolpes’ lab at Mutagen without a sterile suit (donning one would have left him defenseless). Actually the sterile suits were part of a multi-redundant system and he knew it would do no harm to go without it this once. But the habit had been so deeply ingrained, he felt as though he were appearing naked in public.
Scolpes gazed in amazement from within the fishbowl helmet of his own suit as Nick slid in Althea, all pink skin and black undies, leather belts and shiny chrome handcuffs. She became doubly incongruous juxtaposed against the cool photon microscopes, the impassive computer consoles.
“What in the world?”
“I’ve taken her hostage,” Nick explained, “until I can clear Hali of this crime.”
“You’re mad.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I feel great.”
"Nicholas, you cannot jeopardize this girl’s life. She’s not responsible for what happened to Ms. Hasannah. And think of the anguish you must be causing her parents.”
“I have to do what I have to do.” Nick said, “and I need your help.”
Nick held his breath while the old man thought it over. Presently Scolpes nodded.
“What can I do?”
"I want you to alter me with transdimensional replicon. The Lifestylers have holed up on the other side, and that’s the only way I’m going to get to talk to them.”
“Do you know what that entails?” Scolpes voice took on new gravity. “It’s more than a simple vaccination. The entire chemistry of the brain is altered, and after that’s done it takes time to learn to activate the dormant sections of the cerebrum—rather like learning to wiggle one’s ears. You may be able to open the transdimensional window immediately, then again it may take you weeks or months. There will be unpleasant side effects, headaches, swelling of the glands. Skin rashes. When and if you do reach the other side, laws of motion will be reversed: objects will growr more distant as you move toward them and closer when you move away. Left and right are transposed and time becomes a simultaneity. The senses are in constant confusion. // you lose sight of the window from which you entered, you may never find your way back to the real world. Are you sure you want this? Does the alien mean so much to you?”
“It’s not just her.” Nick said. “I’ve got a feeling a lot more is at stake.”
Scolpes kept arguing. His affection for Nick, his unwillingness to jeopardize the young man’s life for what he thought a futile cause, was obvious; but Nick was adamant. Eventually Scolpes dialed for a robo-courier to bring up a vial of transdimensional replicon from one of the coldroom “libraries.” and also some special growth factor to speed the change.
They waited uneasily. Ten minutes later a bell chimed and a blue light flashed on the door control.
“Identify yourself,” Scolpes called.
A sequence of integers appeared below the light. Scolpes relaxed slightly.
“That’s the code for our robo-courier,” he told Nick. “Admit to shower."
A yellow light flashed alongside the blue, signaling that the radiation shower was in use.
“Admit to room.”
A green light flashed, the third in the row, and the door began to open. Involuntarily, Nick swung the barrel of the nerve gun away from Althea’s head and aimed it at the opening.