“I’ll try to help,” he said aloud. “Tell me where to meet you.”
When they had finished speaking and the screen had gone dead, he stood for a moment staring into its spurious grey infinities. His first reaction was one of childish elation, but the very intensity of the emotion inspired a sobering query. Why have I allowed Esther to nail me down?
It came to him that the most escape-proof gaol of all was one in which the door was always unlocked—provided the prisoner had not the guts to push it open and walk out. His responsibility for her blindness was hinged on the fact that he had forgotten there was a spare key to his laboratory, but if one adult warns another in clear terms…
“So you’re going to Augusta,” Esther said from behind him.
He turned to face her. “I couldn’t very well refuse.”
“I know, darling. I heard what Mr. Pobjoy said.”
Garrod was surprised at the calmness of his wife’s voice. “You don’t mind?”
“Not as long as you take me with you.”
“That’s out of the question,” he said stiffly. “I’m going to be working and travelling all the…”
“I realize I’d be in the way—if I went in person.” Esther smiled and held out her hand.
“But what other…?” Garrod’s voice trailed away as he saw that Esther was offering him one of the flat cases containing her spare sets of eyes.
He would not be alone, after all.
Chapter Eleven
Garrod’s plan took off early in the morning, twisting and skidding in the clear but turbulent air over Portston, and climbed towards the East.
“Have to fly low this morning,” Lou Nash reminded him over the intercom. “We’re still barred from the commercial lanes.”
“You’ve mentioned that before now, Lou,” Garrod said comfortably, recalling the penalty the air traffic tribunal had meted out for his crazy dash to Macon an eternity ago. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s costing you money, this flying low and slow.”
“I said, don’t worry about it.” Garrod smiled, aware that Nash’s concern was not with the economics of the flight, but with the fact that he was prevented from giving the plush-lined projectile its head. He settled back in his chair and watched the miniaturized world drift by below. After a moment he noticed that Esther’s eye discs, in the small plastic holder in his lapel, were below the level of the window. He undipped the device which incorporated a sound recorder and set it on the lower rim of the window, with the watchful black circles facing outwards. Enjoy the view, he thought.
“There’s another one!” Nash’s voice rapped excitedly from the concealed speakers.
“Another what?” Garrod looked downwards at a panorama of tan-coloured hills flecked with scrub and traversed by a single highway. He saw nothing unusual.
“Crop-spraying job at about two thousand feet.”
Garrod’s unpractised eye still had not found anything resembling another aircraft. “But there aren’t any crops out here.”
“That’s what’s funny about it. I’ve seen three of those Joes in the last month, though.”
The plane banked to the right, increasing the downwards view on that side, and suddenly Garrod found a tiny gleaming crucifix far below, moving across their line of flight and trailing a white feather of what appeared to be smoke. As he watched, the feather abruptly vanished.
“He’s just spotted us,” Nash said. “They always quit spraying when they see you.”
“Two thousand feet is too high for crop-spraying, isn’t it? What’s the normal height?”
“Practically on the deck—that’s something else that’s queer.”
“Somebody must be testing spraying equipment, that’s all.”
“But…”
“Lou,” Garrod said severely, “there are too many automatic controls on this airplane—and that means you’re sitting up there all alone with nothing to occupy your mind. Would you please either fly this thing yourself or do a crossword?”
Nash muttered semi-audibly and lapsed into a silence which lasted for the rest of the flight. Garrod, who had curtailed his night’s sleep in preparing for the trip, dozed, drank coffee, and dozed again until the viewphone built into the forward bulkhead chimed for his attention. He accepted the call and found himself looking at the hawkish features of Mansion, his public relations manager.
“Good morning, Alban,” Mansion said in his neutral accent. “Seen any newscasts or papers this morning?”
“No, I hadn’t time.”
“You’re back in the headlines again.”
Garrod sat upright. “In what way?”
“According to all the splash stories I’ve seen you’re on your way to Augusta full of confidence that you can pinpoint Senator Wescott’s murderer by examining the remains of his car.”
“What?”
“There are all kinds of hints that you have a new technique for getting images out of fragmented or fused slow glass.”
“But that’s crazy! I told Pobjoy there was no…” Garrod took a steadying breath. “Charles, did you make any statements about this to the Press last night?”
Manston adjusted his blue spotted cravat and looked pained. “Please!”
“Then it must have been Pobjoy.”
“Do you want me to issue a counter-statement of any kind?”
Garrod shook his head. “No—let it ride. I’ll sort it out with Pobjoy when I see him. Thanks for calling, Charles.”
Garrod terminated the call. He sat back in his chair and tried to drift off to sleep again but a thread of annoyance was wavering in his thoughts, like a bright serpent squirming across the surface of a pool. The past year with Esther had made him very sensitive to some things, and at this moment he had a strong sense of being manipulated, of being used by another person. Pobjoy’s statements to the Press were not merely ill-considered, they were blatantly contrary to the entire gist of the single conversation he had had with Garrod. He had not given the impression of being a man who would act without a well thought out motive, but what had he hoped to gain?
It was a clear brassy noon when Garrod’s aircraft dropped on to the runway at an airport close to Augusta. As it rolled to a halt in the private aircraft arrivals bay Garrod looked through the ports and saw the now-familiar grouping of reporters and cameramen. Some of the latter were holding Retardite panels, but the others—reflecting the struggles that were taking place between branches of the photo-journalists’ union—were carrying conventional photographic equipment. At the last moment Garrod remembered to lift Esther’s discs from the window and clip them to his lapel. When he stepped out of his aircraft the newsmen surged towards the tarmac, but were held back by a strong contingent of uniformed police. The tall, powerful figure of Miller Pobjoy came into view wearing a suit of midnight blue silk.
“Sorry about the crowd,” he said easily, shaking Garrod’s hand. “We’ll get you out of here in no time.” He gave a hand signal, a limousine appeared beside the aircraft, and in a matter of seconds Garrod was inside it and being driven towards the airport gates. “I guess you’re used to the celebrity treatment by this time?”