"Cara — Miri ! — come back from there!"
The little girl hesitated. Under the cabinet were the crushed remains of the mouse array that had been about to load. It wasn't going anywhere now. Miri reached down into the broken glass. Robert cricked his neck and saw a tiny face peering back into his, a mouse loose from its suction trap in the array.
"Oo," Miri's voice squeaked. "Hi, little guy." A laugh mixed with a sob. "And you, too. You each get a free pass." Robert saw more tiny faces as she freed other mice. The heads bobbed this way and that. They didn't seem to see him, and after a moment, they found something that was much more important in the mousely order of things: freedom. They ran around the girl's hands and away from the heat.
Now Robert could see what caused the heat. A glowing white gob of syrup dripped over the wreckage, hissed into redness as it oozed down the side of the fallen cabinet.
Cara gave a panicked cry and came back to him. "What is that?"
The hissing and spattering. If it could make it over that barrier, it must be dammed up several feet deep. "I don't know, but you've got to get away."
"Yes! Come on!" The girl pulled at his shoulders. He pushed with her, ignoring the tearing pain in his leg. That moved him four or five inches; then he was stuck more solidly than before. And now the heat was even more distracting than the crushed leg. Robert's mind hopped from one horror to the other, trying to keep its sanity.
He looked across at his crying sister. "I'm sorry I made you cry, Cara." She just cried harder. "You've got to run now."
She didn't reply, but the crying stopped. She looked at him, uncomprehending, then slid back from the furnace heat. Go! Go ! But then she said, "I don't feel good," and lay down just beyond his reach.
Robert looked back at the oozing rock. It had swamped the bottom of the cabinet. Another inch or two and it would slop onto his little sister. He reached out, snagged a long shard of — ceramic? — and wedged it against the glowing tide.
There were more explosions, but not so loud. Up close there was just the smell and sound of things cooking. He tried to remember how he had come to be here. Someone had done this to him and Cara, and surely they must be listening now.
"Please," he said into the glowing dark. "Please don't do this to her. She's just a little girl."
No reply, just the terrible sounds, and the pain. And then the strangest thing, letters scrolling across his gaze:
Anonymous — > Robert Gu: <sm>Where is your little girl?</sm>
"Who is this? She's right here. Unconscious. And I can't move her out of the way ."
Anonymous — > Robert Gu: <sm>I'm sorry.</sm>
He waited, saw nothing more.
"Please. Just tell the police. Don't let her burn."
But the silent watcher was gone. Cara lay unmoving. Can't she feel the heat ? It took everything he had to hold the shard in place.
Then: "Professor Gu? Is that you?"
It was some pestering student! There were so many afterimages, he couldn't be sure, but someone was there, partly submerged in the molten ooze.
"It's me, Zulfi Sharif, sir."
That name was familiar, a weaselly arrogant student. But now his skin wasn't green. That meant something, didn't it?
"I've been trying for some hours to call you, sir. It's never been this bad before. I… I fear I may have been truly hijacked. I'm so sorry." He was mostly submerged in the glowing rock. A ghost.
"You're injured!" said the ghost.
"Call the police," said Robert.
"Yes, sir! But where are you? Never mind, I see! I'll get help straight — "
The glowing rock dribbled over Robert's makeshift dam, onto his arm. He descended into a pit of mindless pain.
33
Freedom on a Very Long Leash
The New Annex to Crick's Clinic was less than five years old, but the spirit of the place was straight out of the last century, when hospitals were great imposing places where people had to go for a chance at survival. There was still some need for such places: the most extreme intensive-care units were not something you could pack into a first-aid box and sell to home users. And of course, there were always tragic cases of incurable, debilitating diseases; some small portion of humanity might always end up in extended-care nursing homes.
The New Annex satisfied certain other needs. Those occurred to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gu, Jr., every day when he drove onto the hospital grounds. Every day since the debacle at UCSD, he'd pull into the Crick's traffic circle, get out, and look down along the cliffs and beaches toward La Jolla. The clinic was just a short hike up the hill from some of the most fashionable resort properties in the world. Just a few miles inland were the biotech labs that ringed UCSD, perhaps the most prestigious source of medical magic in the world. Of course, those labs could have been on the other side of the world for all that their location made any real difference. But psychologically and traditionally, this joint nearness to resort luxury and magical cure was a lure for the very richest of the very ill.
Bob Gu's wife, daughter, and father were not stuck here because they were rich. Once you walked past the imposing — and totally real — main entrance, you had privacy. In this case, the privacy was a combination of the clinic's basic design and the fact that Uncle Sam had taken a special interest in certain patients.
What better place to keep sensitive cases hidden from contact than in a resort hospital. The press flitted around beyond the walls and speculated — without having grounds for a civil-liberties complaint. It could be a very good cover.
Bob hesitated just outside the main entrance.
Oh Alice ! For years, he had lived in fear that JITT would take her. For years, he and she had fought about the limits of duty and honor, and the meaning of Chicago. Now the long-imagined worst had happened… and he found himself quite unprepared. He visited her every day. The doctors were not encouraging. Alice Gu was stuck under more layers of JITT than these guys had ever seen. So what did they know? Alice was conscious. She talked to him, desperate gibberish. He held her in his arms and begged her to come back. For unlike Dad and Miri, Alice was not a federal detainee. Alice was a prisoner in her own mind.
Today Bob had an official assignment at Crick's. The last of the detainee interrogations — that is, the last of the debriefings — were complete. Dad was scheduled to be awake by noon, Miri an hour later. Bob could spend some time with them, in the virtual company of Eve Mallory, a DHS officer who fronted for the investigation teams.
At 1200 hours, Bob was standing in front of a very old-fashioned-looking wooden door. By now he knew that such things were never faked at Crick's. And he'd have to turn the doorknob if he wanted to go in.
Eve — > Bob: <sm>We're especially interested in this interview, Colonel. But keep it short. Stick to the points in our memo.</sm>
Bob nodded. For a moment he didn't know who he was most angry at, his father or the jerks from DHS. He contented himself with pulling the door open without knocking, and stepping abruptly into the hospital suite.
Robert Gu, Sr., was pacing the windowless room like a caged teenager. You'd never guess he'd recently had one leg crushed and the other fractured; the docs were good at fixing that kind of thing. As for the rest, well, his burns were hidden by medical pajamas.
The old man's gaze snapped up as Bob came in the room, but his words were more desperate than angry. "Son! Is Miri okay?"
Eve — > Bob: <sm>Speak up, Colonel. You can tell him everything about your daughter. </sm>
"… Miri is fine, Dad." He waved at the plush chairs by the table at the side of the suite.