Tarr began filling his pipe. ‘And frankly, Bud, I wonder if you know either.’
‘But you, you saw me do it, with the map, remember? And the p-p-p — the vibrating dangly thing, remember? You and Byron were witnesses!’
He lit his pipe and puffed out an ectoplasm of blue smoke. ‘Can’t say I remember that, no, hmm, hmm, hmm…’ After a moment he added, ‘But even if you did, so what? One swallow doesn’t make a flock.’
‘But—’
‘Kindly let me finish? Okay, what I think we have here is a political situation, Bud. No sooner do I tell you the committee will probably veto my proposal, than you want to back another horse. Maybe all you ever really cared about was your pendulum, eh?’
‘No, but—’
‘It’s okay, Bud. Really. I’m not hurt. Some people are capable of loyalty, some aren’t, I realize that. I don’t know, maybe you’re after my job in your own crazy way, I can accept that too. Just a humble scientist myself, I leave the politics to you slick guys with all the answers.’
Unanswered phones were ringing all over the place. A patrolman sat on his desk, trying to juggle two receivers and take down a message that would probably be just another flying saucer sighting. The dispatcher peered over her glass partition (a frosted look over frosted glass, he would write) letting the chief know she was peeved about missing her coffee break. The telex was ringing its bell and rattling out a yard of paper. The fat prisoner threw him a sulky look from the cage (‘…as if,’ he would write, ‘as if he thought someone else had crapped his drawers’).
Chief Dobbin went into his office and closed the door against all of them. But even here he had Sergeant Collar balancing an armload of reports and shouting into a phone:
‘Don’t ask me, that’s all. Just don’t ask me!’ The receiver banged down. ‘Been like this all fucking day, chief. Two more men down with flu, the coroner’s screaming for his paperwork on this suicide, not to mention—’
‘Shut up, Collar, and get outa my office. I need five minutes to get squared away here.’ Getting squared away meant sitting down with a clean legal pad and a handful of sharpened pencils, to work on his book. Dobbin wrote slowly and carefully, his tongue protruding at the corner of his mouth:
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again. Why was I ever dumb enough to marry a cop?’
Suddenly I felt big and awkward and very, very tired. ‘Look, I know it’s our anniversary, but this Delmore diamond case is ready to crack wide open—’
‘And then there’ll be some other case,’ she said, her mouth set hard. ‘Maybe when you give all you’ve got to your work, there’s just nothing left for me.’
She was near the window when it happened. Suddenly the glass blossomed into a spider-web pattern, with a hole in the middle the size of a .303 slug. There was a matching hole in Laura’s lovely throat. Even before she hit the floor, she was very, very—
‘What is it now, Collar? Can’t you handle it?’
‘Security problem, chief. With our visiting potentate. He’s visiting all the wrong places. In fact we can’t locate him.’
‘Terrific. Have Angie get him on the radio, and—’
‘No can do. He’s got the wrong car, too. I’m trying to get a VSU fix on him now, but nothing. Zilch. Maggie’s drawers.’
‘Probably left the damn campus.’ He flicked on his own video surveillance unit and ran through the scenes quickly, then slowly. ‘There, is that his car? Black Mercedes limo, gold grille? Okay, he’s at the Ag Sci complex, horse barns. Can we detail a coupla men to escort?’
Collar made a face. ‘Nope. Simons is off sick, and Fielder has to guard this gold dinnerware at the Faculty Club, so that leaves—’
‘Okay, okay. Try to catch up on a little paperwork around here and what happens? All hell breaks loose, people get sick, people want coffee breaks — and now we got this guy, a king of some place, just walking around loose like anybody else!’
‘You want to question the prisoner now, chief? He’s kinda weird and—’
‘Who is he, anyhow?’
‘A John Doe. No ID at all. Our special Ripper Patrol picked him up last night. He was using a glass-cutter on a window at the Computer Science building. Had a microflex camera on him, and a wig.’
‘Kinda fat for the James Bond stuff, isn’t he? Okay, bring him in. Oh but first, ring the morgue, tell ’em it’s okay to release the Hannah kid’s body for a funeral. We’ll catch up on the paperwork later. I know his ma wanted to cremate him today.’
‘Already released him, chief.’
Thank God something was done. Dobbin could see he’d get no further today on Call Me Pig.
As soon as they were in the car, His Incomparability removed his gold military cap, unbuttoned his stiff collar and sighed. ‘Now we can relax. Let us be informal, eh? I will call you Helen, and you must call me Ox.’
‘Ox?’
‘It is my favourite pickname, as you say. These horses’ barns, are they far?’
‘Why yes. I hope your driver knows the way.’
‘Yes, he studies your campus with a fine tooth comb. He knows it like the back of his hams.’ The weedy secretary spoke into a gold microphone, and they moved.
The patchouli scent was heavy. Dr Boag tried to forget it by studying the car’s elaborate furnishings. The roof interior was covered with peacock feathers, the floor with squares of black and white fur (ermine? sable?) and while two guards and the secretary were forced to squat on tiny carved stools, she and the Shah reclined on a deep, comfortable seat, upholstered in cloth of gold and heaped with blue silk cushions. She remarked on the luxury and he replied that he owned seventeen such cars.
And that seemed to be that. Six miles to the horse barns, and already they’d run out of conversation.
The Shah rummaged in a carved cabinet and produced a book.
‘Very interesting, this Book.’
‘Ruritanian?’
‘Alas, my English is not so well for reading, so I have had it translated into my own poor tongue. I believe in English it is called Pianola? By Mr K. Vonnegut. Very good. Much computers.’
She studied the beautifully-tooled cover. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read it. Technical book is it?’
‘A novelle. All on my own crazed subject, the computers. But the curious part is, there is a Shah in it, making a visitation! Of course he is nothing like me, but even so — reading this is a déjà vu experience for me. Suppose I too were in a novelle, eh? Read by another Shah, who is in turn — you see?’
‘Interned?’
‘I explain so badly. Let me only say I begin to feel like the iteration within the great computer myself, or thereabouts.’
One of the guards grinned, nudged the other and pointed out of the window at a Coca-Cola sign.
‘The pianola,’ continued the Shah. ‘An excellent symbol for the automation, yes? It is I believe used also by Mr W. Gaddis in his novelle J.R., where he speaks of Oscar Wilde travelling in America, marvelling at the industry, the young industry you understand. Now I do believe Mr Wilde suggested shooting all the piano players and using the pianola instead, or do I have that erroneously?’
‘Very ahm, perceptive, Your Inc — Ox, I mean.’
‘Do you like books, Helen? How stupid of me, of course you must be immured in them, books are your life, yes?’
She chuckled. ‘Not as much as I’d like, I fear. Pressure of work, administrative duties—’