It terrified me. Up to now he had seemed wholly unconcerned by the world’s response to him, as aloof as he had been the day he strolled naked up the Spanish Stairs while a Roman policeman shouted at him to halt. Now, though, a feedback was appearing. He watched his own documentaries. Was he enjoying the confusion he engendered? Was he consciously planning new upheavals? Vornan acting in lighthearted innocence created chaos enough; Vornan motivated by deliberate malice could smash civilization. I had been scornful of him at first, and then amused by him. Now I was afraid of him.
Our gathering broke up early. I saw Fields speaking urgently to Aster; she shook her head, shrugged, and walked away from him, leaving him scowling. Vornan went up to him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. I have no idea what Vornan said to him, but Fields’ expression was even darker afterward. He went out, trying to slam a slamproof door. Kolff and Helen left together. I lingered awhile for no particular reason. My room was next to Aster’s, and we walked down the hall together. We stood awhile talking in front of her door. I had the odd impression that she was going to invite me in to spend the night; she seemed more animated than usual, eyelashes fluttering, delicate nostrils flaring. “Do you know how much longer we’ll be on this tour?” she asked me. I told her that I didn’t know. She was thinking of getting back to her laboratory, she said, but then she confessed wryly, “I’d leave right now except that I’m getting interested in this despite myself. Interested in Vornan. Leo, do you notice that he’s changing?”
“How?”
“Becoming more aware of what’s happening around him. He was so divorced from it at first, so alien. Do you remember the time he asked me to take a shower with him?”
“I can’t forget it.”
“If it had been another man, I would have refused, of course. But Vornan was so blunt about it — the way a child would be. I knew he meant no harm. But now — now he seems to want to use people. He isn’t just sightseeing any more. He’s manipulating everyone. Very subtly.”
I told her that I had thought all these thoughts too, during the television program a little earlier. Her eyes glowed; points of rosiness sprouted in her cheeks. She moistened her lips, and I waited for her to tell me that she and I had much in common and ought to know one another better; but all she said was, “I’m afraid, Leo. I wish he’d go back where he came from. He’s going to make real trouble.”
“Kralick and Company will prevent that.”
“I wonder.” She flashed a nervous smile. “Well, good night, Leo. Sleep well.”
She was gone. I stared for a long moment at her closed door, and the stolen image of her slim body drifted up out of my memory bank. Aster had not had much physical appeal for me up till now; she hardly seemed a woman at all. Suddenly I understood what Morton Fields saw in her. I desired her fiercely. Was this, too, some of Vornan’s mischief? I smiled. I was blaming him for everything now. My hand rested on the plate of Aster’s door, and I debated asking her to admit me, but I entered my own room instead. I sealed the door, undressed, prepared myself for sleep. Sleep did not come. I went to the window to stare at the mobs, but the mobs had dissipated. It was past midnight. A slice of moon dangled over the sprawling city. I drew out a blank notepad and began to sketch some theorems that had drifted into my mind during dinner: a way of accounting for a double reversal of charge during time travel. Problem: assuming that time-reversal is possible, create a mathematical justification for conversion from matter to anti-matter to matter again before the completion of a journey. I worked quickly and for a while even convincingly. I came to the verge of picking up the phone and getting a data hookup with my computer so I could run some verifying mockups of the system. Then I saw the flaw near the beginning of my work, the stupid algebraic error, the failure to keep my signs straight. I crumpled the sheets and threw them away in disgust.
I heard a tapping at my door. A voice: “Leo? Leo, are you awake?”
I nudged the scanner beside my bed and got a dim image of my visitor. Vornan! Instantly I sprang up and unsealed the door. He was dressed in a thin green tunic as though to go out. His presence astonished me, for I knew that Kralick sealed him in his room each night, and at least in theory there was no way for Vornan to break that seal, which was supposed to protect him but which also imprisoned him. Yet he was here.
“Come in,” I said. “Is anything wrong?”
“Not at all. Were you sleeping?”
“Working. Trying to calculate how your blasted time machine works, in fact.”
He laughed lightly. “Poor Leo. You’ll wear out your brain with all that thinking.”
“If you really felt sorry for me, you’d give me a hint or two about it.”
“I would if I could,” he said. “But it’s impossible. I’ll explain why downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“Yes. We’re going out for a little walk. You’ll accompany me, won’t you, Leo?”
I gaped. “There’s a riot going on outside. We’ll be killed by the hysterical mob!”
“I think the mob has gone away,” said Vornan. “Besides, I have these.” He extended his hand. In his palm lay two limp plastic masks of the sort we had worn at the Chicago brothel. “No one will recognize us. We’ll stroll the streets of this wonderful city in disguise. I want to go out, Leo. I’m tired of official promenades. I feel like exploring again.”
I wondered what to do. Call Kralick and have Vornan locked into his room again? That was the sensible response. Masks or not, it was rash to leave the hotel without a guard. But it would be a betrayal to turn Vornan in like that. Obviously he trusted me more than any of the others; perhaps there was even something he wished to tell me in confidence, beyond the range of Kralick’s spy-pickups. I would have to take the risks in the hope of winning from him some nugget of valuable information.
“All right. I’ll go with you.”
“Quickly, then. If someone monitors your room—”
“What about your room?”
He laughed smugly. “My room has been adjusted. Those who pry will think I am still in it. But if I am seen in here as well — get dressed, Leo.”
I threw on some clothing and we left the room. I sealed it from the outside. In the hall lay three of Kralick’s men, sound asleep; the green globe of an anesthetic balloon drifted in the air, and as its temperature-sensitive scanning plate picked up my thermals it homed in on me. Vornan lazily reached up for it, caught its trailing strand of plastic tape, and tugged it down to turn it off. He grinned conspiratorially at me. Then, like a boy running away from home, he darted across the hall, motioning to me to follow him. At a nudge a service door in the corridor opened, revealing a tumbletube for linens. Vornan beckoned me to enter.
“We’ll land in the laundry room!” I protested.
“Don’t be foolish. Leo. We’ll get off before the last stop.”
Mine not to reason why. I entered the tumbletube with him and down we caromed, flushed like debris to the depths of the building. A catchnet erupted across the tube unexpectedly and we bounced into it. I thought it was some kind of trap, but Vornan said simply, “It’s a safety device to keep hotel employees from falling into the linen conveyor. I’ve been talking to the chambermaids, you see. Come on!” He stepped out of the net, which I suppose had been activated by mass-detectors along the sides of the tube, and we perched on a ledge of the chute while he opened a door. For a man who scarcely understood what a stock exchange was, he had a remarkably complete knowledge of the inner workings of this hotel. The catchnet withdrew into the tube wall the moment I was out of it; an instant later some soiled linens zoomed past us from above and vanished into the maw of the laundry pit somewhere far below. Vornan beckoned again. We went scrambling down a narrow passageway lit from above by strips of cold light, and emerged finally in one of the hallways of the hotel. By a prosaic staircase we took ourselves to a sublobby and out unnoticed into the street.