“Put your bag over there,” Kirk says officiously. To Dann’s surprise, Kirk also has a dog on a lead, a large, calm, black Labrador bitch. He recalls that Deerfield is supposed to be in a forest preserve. Evidently one of the military’s many private hunting grounds.
He looks around, telling himself not to hope. Beyond Winona is the bearded, leukemic ensign, Ted Yost. And there’s the little man, K-30—wait a minute: Chris Costakis. Beside him are the two girls, W-11 and W-12, the Princess and the Frump. The Frump is a thin, short, sullen creature in grimy brown jeans with a black knapsack. Beside her the Princess looks like Miss America , pink-cheeked, with a wide, white-toothed Nordic smile. Dann notices the meanness of his thought, knows what’s the matter with himself.
Next minute nothing’s the matter. Behind the senatorial party a tall beige-and-black figure is drifting toward them. She’s coming with us. He catches himself grinning like a fool and turns away.
“Ah, there you are, Rick. All here.”
Rick is the twin, R-95. He ambles up expressionlessly, hung with a bright orange plastic bag labeled Dave’s Dive Shop.
Kirk herds them all out the end gate. It feels strange not having tickets. At the main gate the senator and entourage are boarding a shiny executive jet with Air Force markings. Three huge, dusty Air Force cargo planes wait beyond. Their own plane turns out to be a small unmarked twin-engine Lodestar, rather beat-up looking.
For a moment a queer sense of alien reality pierces Dann’s insulation. Kirk’s pompousness about the supersecret installation, the code names, their “classified” status had all seemed to him absurd games played by grown boys. But the very normal, busy, used look of this big terminal impresses him. The planes: millions of miles flown on unknown errands apart from the civilian world. A whole worldwide secondary transport system in the shadows… He hopes it is secondary.
Behind him she is coming too.
At the plane Kirk is talking to a shirt-sleeved man holding a clipboard. The Labrador patiently sits.
“The Gates of Mordor,” the Frump said loudly as they climb up into the Lodestar. What does that mean? R-95—Rick—looks around at her. The Princess smiles, suddenly looking like a worried young girl.
Dann sits by a window. Obviously she won’t sit by him. No; the long beige-clad legs pace by and stop beside the turquoise bulges of Winona . Into the seat beside him drops little K-30, Chris Costakis. His legs don’t reach the floor. Pituitary dysfunction, probably could have been prevented, Dann thinks automatically. The clipboard man closes them in and goes up front.
With no ceremony, the engines start and they are taxiing to the runway. A minimal engine run-up, no waiting. Almost at once they are in the air.
Absurd happiness blooms inside Dann. She can’t leave now. We’re really going on this trip together. Stop being childish.
Chris Costakis is speaking in his high, unconvincingly tough voice.
“Heading south. We’re not going far in this, has to be around Norfolk .”
Dann doesn’t care if it’s around Vladivostock, but he nods politely.
“We’ll be comfortable. The Navy does itself good.” They chat desultorily. Costakis turns out to be a locksmith, semi-retired. “They call us security engineers now. Eighty percent of my jobs are electronic. I had to slow down when my liver acted up.”
That confirms Dann’s note of the fiery flush in the little man’s palms. An old wives’ sign but often accurate. “How in the world did you get into this?”
“I did a lot of work for Annapolis , the Navy security people. Catledge came around looking for volunteers to test. I got what you call a sixth sense about combinations, always had. So I tried out. I scored real high.”
“You mean you can guess the numbers in a combination without, ah, listening to the tumblers or whatever one does?” Dann is happy enough to take any nonsense seriously.
“It’s not guessing.” Costakis’ shiny, bulbous face closes up; he gives Dann a sly look.
“Of course. I beg your pardon. Please go on.”
“Well… Numbers, see. Some days I’ve gone as high as thirty out of fifty. But it has to be a man. From a woman I can’t pick up a thing.”
Dann gazes at the little man’s high, ill-formed forehead, his few sandy hairs. Hundreds of times he’s fastened electrodes to that skull. Does some unnatural ability really lurk in there? His thoughts touch the closed compartment in which lies the memory of a sliding water glass, and veer off, shaken. And all these others here, can they really do something abnormal? Incredible. Yet this is a real plane, taking them to a real place. Real money is being spent. Even more incredible, is a submarine actually steaming out to sea with Rick’s twin in it? Crazy.
The government always spends money in crazy ways, Dann reassures himself. Especially the military. He recalls some absurd scandal about condoms in balloons. This is just another. Float along with it.
Genially he asks Costakis, “If nobody is around who knows the combination, how can you, ah, read the numbers?”
“They don’t have to be around.” Costakis purses his small mouth. “Maybe I read someone, maybe there’s traces, see? I don’t want theories. I just know what I can do. Gives me like an interest in life, see?”
“I see.” Delicious, Dann thinks. I am in the realm of fantasy. The faint glow of his chemical supplement to breakfast has taken firm hold.
Costakis is peering down. “I told you, Norfolk . That was U.S. Three-Oh-One.” His tone is not quite casual.
“You know the area well?” From his internal shelter Dann looks benignly on the unappetizing little man. He is totally unaware that his own knobby face emanates a profound and manly empathy that a TV casting director would give an arm for.
“I know Route Three-Oh-One.” Costakis pauses and then blurts out with dreadful cheeriness, “I spent twenty hours lying on it with a busted head. Nobody stopped, see? Hitch-hiker sacked me and took my car. Broad daylight, man, it was hot. I couldn’t move, see? Just jerk my arm. Last ride I ever give anybody.”
“Twenty hours?” Dann is appalled. “Couldn’t they see you?”
“Oh yeah, they saw. My legs were on the concrete.”
“But the police—”
“Oh yeah. They picked me up. Threw me in the drunk tank at Newburg. I was about gone when the doc noticed me.”
“Good lord.” A cold shaft of pain is probing for Dann, sliding through his defences. Shup up, Costakis.
“ ’Course, if I had family or something, they might’ve looked for me,” Costakis goes on relentlessly. “Had one brother, he got killed on Cyprus . Went back to try to find Dad’s grave, he got caught.” He grins in a hideous parody of fun. “What woman would look at me?”
Dann makes a wordless sound, knowing life has tricked him again. The unwelcome reality of the little man is flooding in on him. The loneliness, the horror vitae. Confirmed by twenty hours lying alone in pain, being passed… Dann shudders, wanting only to turn him back into K-30, an unreal grotesque.
“So I can use an interest in life, see?”
“Of course.” Stop, for God’s sake, I can’t take it. Dann’s hand is feeling for the extra capsule in his pocket. No closeness, nobody. What woman would look at me? Costakis is undoubtedly right, Dann sees; to a woman that pumpkin-headed, pygmoid body, the inept abruptness, would probably be actively repulsive. To a man he is a cipher, faintly annoying, exuding a phoney jauntiness and knowledgeability that smell of trouble inside. Keep away. And everyone has, of course, always will… To be locked forever in rejection… I can use an interest in life… Pity grabs painfully at some interior organ Dann suspects is vital. Panicked, he bolts over Costakis and heads for the plane lavatory.