I pointed. "That's it," I told Charles, then stepped back with my repeating Polaroid. Hjelmgaard stood beside me with his own. Charles turned, faced the observatory, and stood quiet for a long minute. My shivering was only partly from the cold. Then he shifted his gaze down the path that led to it, closed his eyes and grimaced. After a long moment he gritted out: "Now!" I pressed the shutter release. "Now!" he repeated, and again, my finger keeping time. Then he turned, facing almost toward the skyvan. "Now!" I exposed a fourth frame. "Now! Now!" Two more.
His eyes gleamed as he turned back to Hjelmgaard. "That's all, Clarence," he said. He didn't sound retarded at all; at his game we were retarded.
"Thank you, Charles," Hjelmgaard answered, smiling, then looked at Hamilton and me. "Well, gentlemen." We crunched our way back to the van, where the pilot eyed us curiously as we climbed in.
Off the ground and flying back to Eugene, I turned on the cabin lights and we removed the prints from the cameras. Hjelmgaard was blasé about what we found, but Hamilton and I stared. Charles had unbelted, and crowding close, laughed delightedly, a strange sound in the chilly skyvan cruising otherwise silently above nightbound mountains. The prints looked as if they'd been shot with Ultracept 1000, instead of Polaroid, the details of faces and figures equal to film exposed in, say, overcast daylight with a proper exposure setting. Yet the background was dark with night.
The first shot showed Christman walking beside a young woman, both of them wearing down parkas with the hoods back. His arm was around her waist. Behind them to one side, you could make out a man wearing black trousers and jersey, his face and hands blackened. He was half crouched, as if just getting to his feet. The rest formed a sequence, two men grappling with Christman, Christman being injected, Christman being supported to a skyvan while the young woman was carried to it dead or unconscious. And two men pushing and pulling Christman through the door. He seemed semiconscious; his head wasn't lolling.
The final shot appeared as if taken from the rear of the skyvan's cabin. The woman was trussed up on the floor, apparently unconscious instead of dead, while Christman lay on a side seat, handcuffed and seemingly also unconscious. Three men sat across from him, looking toward him, and each face was clear. In the previous shot we'd seen four men. The fourth was either the pilot, or was with the pilot in the pilot's compartment.
"Do you know any of them?" I asked Hamilton.
He shook his head. "Only Christman."
At the airport I called a taxivan, and had it take us to an all-night restaurant off the freeway. We were too wound up to go to bed, especially Charles. He chattered about the food, and a place in Minneapolis where Hjelmgaard and his wife occasionally took him for supper, and about other pictures he'd made that he was particularly proud of. I had bacon and fried eggs, buttered sourdough toast, and tomato slices, and listened to him partly because I owed it to him, but also because he was interesting. Charles had strawberry waffles, and respectable table manners in spite of talking so much.
I looked forward to a few more hours of sleep. But more than anything else, I looked forward to getting back to L.A. and finding a way to identify the men in the pictures. The pictures weren't legal evidence of anything, but they could be a powerful wedge for breaking the case.
24
LUNCH BREAK
The effect of the Veritas had begun to fade; it showed on the aura analyzer. Now the young woman spoke, breaking Martti's groove. "This is a good place to stop for lunch, and the injection is wearing off."
His eyes had opened. "Ah. How did we do?"
"Just fine. Excellent in fact. Why don't we eat on my expense account and start again at one-thirty."
"Sounds good. Do I need a counter injection?"
"No. A bit of walking will handle what's left. Is there a restaurant you like within walking distance?"
They agreed on Canter's. It was a bit far, but she was willing and they had time.
He'd been aware of his monolog as he gave it, aware that he'd rambled, and aware that he had no will to edit as he spoke. As he went down the hall to the men's room, he was also aware that his throat felt none the worse for his verbal marathon. The effect of the Veritas, he decided. It was, after all, a sort of hypnotic.
PART TWO:
SERVICIO VIAJERO INTERNACIONAL
PROLOG
The old man was no longer bed-bound, nor showed any obvious sign of the stroke he'd suffered some years earlier. He still did not look healthy—his face remained puffy, his eyes yellow with jaundice, and his body flaccid—but neither did he seem actively ill.
The sun was high enough that the cool of morning was beginning to dispel. Sweatered, he rested beneath a large parasol in his garden, on a light, motorized, mobile recliner. Beside him, several books lay scattered on a glass-topped table, waiting to be devoured. Another lay open, facedown on his little paunch. His lips were pursed, and a frown creased his forehead.
Most people's minds the old man could monitor undetected, especially someone who discussed or argued with himself a lot. Ordinarily he would eavesdrop from the fringes of the person's immediate mental field, but would sometimes intrude within it, to poke and pry for information, blending in as the self-generated entity the person discoursed with.
Some, though, when he intruded, would sense his presence, and almost invariably reacted sharply, repelling him, a jolting experience that snapped him back to his body. Given his poor health, he'd designed and practiced drills enabling him to better withstand ejection shock.
If he intruded undetected, however, there was then the possibility of hypnotizing the person from within, whispering his formula directly into their mind. Subliminally at first, then more strongly as it began to influence them.
If they were susceptible enough to suggestion. So far he'd found no firm criterion for predicting that susceptibility. Intelligence, emotional stability, strength of character—none of these assured it or ruled it out. And therein lay danger. For if, when he tried to hypnotize someone, his would-be victim discovered him, their reaction was likely to be violent. Shocking to both of them but far worse for the intruder—far worse than simple ejection shock. The first time it happened, he'd been taken by surprise, and very nearly died. The crippling effects still were not entirely gone.
To him though, the game was worth the risk. It was what he lived for now. And he was too strong-willed to abandon his plans, though he had learned caution. Besides, once a subject had been hypnotized and given an appropriate post-hypnotic suggestion, he could reenter at will to give further commands, seemingly with little or no danger.
After the shock that had precipitated his heart attack and subsequent stroke, he'd worked very carefully, improving his technique. But although his skill had increased markedly, there still was risk in undertaking to hypnotize someone from within their mind for the first time. He'd learned this the hard way, and again had lain in a coma for two days. And again, if his personal physician had not been at hand, he would probably have died. After that he became very selective, taking the risk only for compelling reasons.