“No you won’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re not the type. From what I’ve been told you’re a real smart-ass, a real know-it-all. Too many brains for such a pretty face. I don’t think you have any more intention of being nice to me than I do to you.”
“But you just said—”
“I was lying. I wanted to see how you’d react. Besides, why should I bother sedating you? Half of you is permanently sedated anyway.” He burst into unexpected laughter, convulsed by his own wit.
A hand came down on Jake’s shoulder. He spun around, found himself staring into the face of an earnest young man in a hard hat.
“Hey, old timer, how’d you get in here? This is a Secured Area. No visitors allowed. You could get yourself hurt.”
Jake tried to make his brain work. Slow, so damn slow! He envied Amanda’s quickness. "I’m just going to visit a friend. Over there.” He pointed to the distant Administration Building.
The young man considered a moment. “You sure wandered off the path from the parking lot. Okay. Let me see your pass.”
Jake went through the motions of searching his shirt and pants’ pockets. He looked blankly at his interrogator. "Must have dropped it somewhere. I walk around with my hands in my pockets a lot. Probably pulled it out accidentally.”
“Uh-huh. Tell you what, old timer. You tell me who you’ve come to see and I’ll get you another pass. How’s that?” His hand still rested on Jake’s shoulder.
“Oh, that’s okay.” Jake tried to back away, failed. The younger man’s grip was firm. “I can find my way.”
“No, I think we’d better go get you another pass. Your friend won’t mind waiting a couple of minutes.” His tone turned apologetic. “See, it’d be my neck if I let you into Administration without one and somebody found out about it. For all I know you could be from Supervision, sent down to check us out on procedure and reaction. Company’s real security-conscious. They run surprise tests like that all the time.” He started pulling Jake away from the Administration Building.
Uncertain how to proceed, Jake went with him. The Administration Building began to recede behind him, swallowed up by the jungle of white pipes.
“Hey, Stan?” The young man called out to another worker. The older colleague joined them, eyeing Jake curiously. “This old timer says he’s here to visit somebody in Adminstration, but that he’slost his pass. What do you think? Should I let him go on in?”
The older worker’s hard hat was red instead of orange. “Who’re you supposed to see?” he asked Jake.
Everything was happening too fast for Jake. His heart began to thump warningly against his ribs. “Just a friend,” he replied weakly.
The man opposite didn’t smile. “Just a friend, huh? Your friend doesn’t have a name?”
“Sure he does. It’s just that …” Jake was looking around desperately. Behind the two men a gigantic steel globe soared several stories skyward. Pipes and lines ran from it like threads peeling off a ball of white yarn. He started concentrating on it, thinking about its interior. This being a refinery, the globe doubtlessly held some kind of liquid, some kind of petroleum derivative. It was hard making something slipt that you couldn’t see, he thought painfully. Hard, but not impossible.
An alarm suddenly went off on the catwalk running through the air above them. Just as rapidly the attention of both men confronting Jake shifted to the metal globe.
“Holy shit,” said the older man in surprise, “what the hell is overheating?”
Somebody yelled down at them from a third-story catwalk. “Number Three! Three’s up to two hundred!”
“Christ,” muttered the senior worker. “I’ve told them again and again they’re overfilling.” He started running for a nearby ladder.
“Hey, wait a minute, Stan,” yelled the younger man. “What do I do with him?” He gestured at Jake.
“Run him up to Security, Bob.” He was already halfway up the ladder on his way to the uppermost catwalk. Around them men and women were arriving from different areas of the plant. Alarms continued to shrill in the shattered air of morning.
“You heard what Stan said, old timer.” The younger worker was no longer friendly. “Come on, let’s go.” He yanked on Jake’s shirt.
The bucket that struck the worker wasn’t large, but it was half full of fire sand and fell from a sufficient height to make him let go of Jake. One hand went to his head as he staggered dazedly backward. He gaped at Jake a moment longer, then fell over backwards. His hard hat had protected his skull, but not his consciousness.
On the wall overhead, bordering the second catwalk, a hook had come loose. The hook had held the bucket, which had fallen to the catwalk, the center section of which had disintegrated, letting the bucket fall through and onto the young man’s head.
Jake didn’t pause to wonder at this latest manifestation of his long dormant ability. He’d progressed infinitely beyond the loosening of bottle caps.
He started running toward the Administration Building as fast as he could. His mind urged him to hurry, his heart demanded that he slow down. This time the mind won out.
Men moved quickly past him, ignoring him as they ran toward the source of the still clamoring alarm. No one else stopped to question him. No one challenged him as he strode rapidly across the floor of the Administration Building lobby and stepped into one of the elevators. There were four buttons on the control panel; floors one through three and above the last, one marked PH. He stabbed it with a thumb.
The doors opened onto a hallway decorated like the entrance to a fine restaurant. A woman was seated to the right, behind a desk. Close, Amanda was very close now, he knew. He could sense it. He started past the desk.
“Excuse me, sir,” the neatly dressed young woman said, “but you can’t go past this point without special authorization.”
“I have to,” Jake said hurriedly. “My grandniece is down there and something terrible’s going to happen to her if I don’t go to her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.” The woman’s pleasant, professional smile abruptly disappeared. “But I do know one thing. You can’t go past this point.”
Jake started down the hall. The woman reached into a desk drawer and pulled out an impressively large handgun, pointing it at Jake’s chest. “Really, sir, I’m afraid I have to insist that you stop right there.” Her free hand moved toward an office phone. “If you’ll just wait a moment, please.”
Jake stared down the hall, hardly hearing her. She seemed a nice enough young woman. Possibly she was quite innocent of what was going on only a few yards from her desk. He didn’t want to hurt her.
So the gun in her hand stayed intact but her clothes did what the rag in the Benson motel had done. The receptionist gaped at the pile of colored threads which had suddenly appeared at her feet and forgot all about the old man nearby. She made a funny little noise in her throat, tried vainly to cover herself, and bolted past the elevators toward the ladies’ room. She was still carrying the gun, now rendered harmless because the person wielding it had developed an overriding interest in other matters.
Jake hurried down the hall, passed one door, a second, finally halting before the one at the end of the passageway. The knob didn’t resist when he turned it because the internal lock had suddenly become a pile of gray dust.
The door admitted him to a small living room-like area, elegantly decorated with couch and chairs, table and TV and other fake French furniture. A well-stocked bar buttressed the far wall. Pushing through the room, he shoved against an inner door and stepped into the chamber beyond.
XVII
Startled, Drew looked up from the bed. He sat in the center of it, towering over Amanda. Both hands were fumbling with the buckle of his belt as he straddled her, a knee on either side of her hips.
Now he let loose of the buckle and turned slowly, moving away from the girl until he was sitting on the side of the bed. Intruder and abuser studied each other.
So this is the old man, he thought calmly. I wonder how he got this far. He recalled the warnings repeated by Huddy and Somerset. Now that he was actually face to face with their inspiration, it was hard to take any of them seriously. Drew could not recall seeing a less menacing individual. The old man was panting hard, his face was flushed, and every so often he winced in obvious pain. He didn’t appear to be a danger to anyone except himself.
Still … that part of Drews’s mind which had rescued him from situations which had been the death of less cautious men caused him to consider what was known instead of what was merely visible. He disliked Somerset and Huddy intensely, but he also respected them. They were not idiots. Therefore it was just barely possible that this man was more dangerous than he looked. Drew hadn’t forgotten Benson.
So he stayed close to the girl, reached over, and put one hand gently but possessively on her throat. She inhaled sharply but didn’t resist. Good girl, he thought.
“I wouldn’t come any closer, old man,” he said quietly. “I’m still not sure what it is you can or can’t do, but all I have to do is push real hard with my fingers here, and they’ll go right through this little lady’s throat. You don’t want that, and neither do I. So don’t do anything to make me nervous, okay?”
Uncertain how to proceed, Jake just stood there. Amanda stared imploringly at him, motionless.
“Don’t make him panic, Uncle Jake,” she thought at him. “Don’t rush him into anything. We’ll work something out, but don’t push this man. He really will kill me.”
His heart was trip-hammering on his ribs, but now wasn’t the time for measuring out medication. Besides, there was the real possibility that a reach for a shirt pocket would be dangerously misinterpreted by the man on the bed.
So they stared at each other, Jake unable to decide what to do next, Drew considering how best to inform others of his situation. As it developed he didn’t have to, because a breathless Huddy burst into the room followed by an equally anxious Somerset.
A strange calm came over Jake Pickett as he locked eyes with the young executive. “Mr. Huddy. I haven’t seen you in a long time, but I sure have felt your presence around me. You really want me to take those tests of yours, don’t you?”
