Davidson felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl. So Garwood had been telling the truth, after all. It was indeed pure knowledge alone that was behind his walking jinx effect.
He shook his head. No, that was utterly impossible. Much easier to believe that whatever scam Garwood was running, he'd managed to take in Backdrop's heads with it, too.
Either way, of course, it made Garwood one hell of a dangerous man. "I see," he said through stiff lips. "Thank you, Doctor. Good-night."
A Marine guard, dressed in one of Backdrop's oddly nonstandard jumpsuit outfits, was waiting outside the door as Davidson emerged. "If you'll follow me, Major," he said, and led the way to an undistinguished door a couple of corridors away. Behind the door, Davidson found a compact dorm-style apartment, minimally furnished with writing desk, chair, and fold-down bed, with a closet and bathroom tucked into opposite corners. Through the open closet door a half dozen orange jumpsuits could be seen hanging; laid out on the bed was a set of underwear and a large paper bag. "You'll need to put your clothing into the bag," the guard explained after showing Davidson around the room. "Your watch and other personal effects, too, if you would."
"Can I keep my cigarettes?"
"No, sir. Cigarettes are especially forbidden."
Davidson thought back to the car ride, and Garwood's disintegrating trick. "Because that effect of Garwood's destroys them?" he hazarded.
The Marine's face might have twitched, but Davidson wouldn't have sworn to it. "I'll wait outside, sir, while you change."
He retired to the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Grimacing, Davidson stripped and put on the underwear, wondering if it would help to tell Saunders that he'd already seen what the Garwood Effect did to cigarettes. The thought of spending however many days or weeks here without nicotine... Preoccupied, it was only as he was stuffing his clothes into it that his mind registered the oddity of using a paper bag instead of the usual plastic. A minor mystery, to go with all the major ones.
The Marine was waiting to accept the bag when he opened the door a minute later. Tucking it under his arm, he gave Davidson directions to the mess hall, wished him good-night, and left. Closing the door and locking it, Davidson limped his way back to the bed and shut off the nightstand light.
Lying there, eyes closed, he tried to think; but it had been a long day, and between fatigue and the medication he'd been given for his leg he found he couldn't hold onto a coherent train of thought, and two minutes after hitting the pillow he gave up the effort. A minute after that, he was fast asleep.
—
The jumpsuits hanging in the closet were the first surprise of the new day.
Not their color. Davidson hadn't seen any other orange outfits in his brief walk through Backdrop the previous night, but he'd rather expected to be given something distinctive as long as he was effectively on security probation here. But it was something else that caught his attention, some oddity in the feel of the material as he pulled it off its wooden hanger. Examining the label, he quickly found the reason: the jumpsuit was one hundred percent linen.
Davidson frowned, trying to remember what Garwood had said about the potential targets of his strange destructive power. Engines, plastics, televisions, had been on the list; modern conveniences had also been there. Did synthetic fibers come under the latter heading? Apparently so. He pulled the jumpsuit on, fingers brushing something thin but solid in the left breast pocket as he did so. He finished dressing, then dug the object out.
It was a plastic card.
Frowning, Davidson studied it. It wasn't an ID, at least not a very sophisticated one. His name was impressed into it, but there was no photo, thumbprint, or even a description. It wasn't a digital key, or a radiation dosimeter, or a coded info plate, or anything else he could think of.
Unless...
He licked his lips, a sudden chill running up his back. Engines, plastics, televisions... He'd been wrong; the card was a dosimeter. A dosimeter for the Garwood Effect.
Whatever the hell the Garwood Effect was. He gritted his teeth. All right, let's take this in a logical manner. The Garwood Effect destroyed plastics; okay. It also ruined car engines and pistols... and cigarettes and ash trays. What did all of those have in common?
He puzzled at it for a few more minutes before giving up the effort. Without more information he wasn't going to get anywhere... and besides, a persistent growling in his stomach was reminding him he was overdue for a meal. No one thinks well on an empty stomach, he silently quoted his grandfather's favorite admonition. Retrieving his crutches from the floor by his bed, he clumped off to the mess hall.
After the linen jumpsuit, he half expected breakfast to consist of nuts and berries served in coconut shells, but fortunately Backdrop hadn't gone quite that far overboard. The dishware was a somewhat nonstandard heavy ceramic, but the meal itself was all too military standard: nutritious and filling without bothering as much with flavor as one might like. He ate quickly, swearing to himself afterward at the lack of a cigarette to help bury the taste. Manhandling his tray to the conveyer, he headed off to try and find some answers.
And ran immediately into a brick wall.
"Sorry, Major, but you're not authorized for entry," the Marine guard outside the Backdrop garage said apologetically.
"Not even to see my own car?" Davidson growled, waving past the Marine at the double doors behind him. "Come on, now—what kind of secrets does anybody keep in a garage?"
"You might be surprised, sir," the guard said. "I suggest you check with Colonel Bidwell and see if he'll authorize you to get in."
Davidson gritted his teeth. "I suppose I'll have to. Where's his office?"
—
Colonel Bidwell was a lean, weathered man with gray hair and eyes that seemed to be in a perpetual squint. "Major," he nodded in greeting as Davidson was ushered into his office. "Sit down. Come to apply for a job?"
"More or less, sir," Davidson said, easing gratefully into the proffered chair. "I thought I could lend a hand in hunting down Dr. Garwood. Unless you've already found him, that is."
Bidwell gave him a hard look. "No, not yet. But he's in the Champaign-Urbana area—that's for damn sure—and it's only a matter of time."
Automatically, Davidson reached for a cigarette, dropping his hand to his lap halfway through the motion. "Yes, sir. I'd still like to help."
For a long moment Bidwell eyed him. "Uh-huh," he grunted. "Well, I'll tell you something, Major. Your file came through about an hour ago... and there are things there I really don't like."
"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Davidson said evenly.
Bidwell's expression tightened a bit. "Your record shows a lot of bulldog, Major. You get hold of something and you won't let go until you've torn it apart."
"My superiors generally consider that an asset, sir."
"It usually is. But not if it gets you personally involved with your quarry. Like it might now."
Davidson pursed his lips. "Has the colonel had a chance to look over the rest of my file? Including my success rate?"
Bidwell grimaced. "I have. And I still don't want you. Unfortunately, that decision's been taken away from me. You're already here, and it's been decided that there's no point in letting you just spin your wheels. So. Effective immediately, you're assigned to hunter duty. Long-range duty, of course—we can't let you leave Backdrop until your updated security check is finished. You'll have a desk and computer in Room 138, with access to everything we know about Dr. Garwood."
Davidson nodded. Computer analysis was a highly impersonal way to track down a quarry, but he knew from long experience that it could be as effective as actually getting into the field and beating the bushes. "Understood, sir. Can I also have access to the less secure areas of Backdrop?"