Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  Cheeta stuck her head out of the bubble. She was definitely talking, but there was no sound coming out of her red mouth. It was obvious to Rumpp that she couldn't hear him, either. No more than he could hear the helicopter blades as they slashed the still air of his office. Weren't those things supposed to kick up a little dust? There wasn't even a breeze.

  Randal grabbed a pen and stationery off his assistant's desk and wrote ANOTHER RANDAL RUMPP TRIUMPH.

  Cheeta ducked inside, scribbled on a notebook, then pressed the open page to the inside of the Plexiglass bubble. One word was visible: HOW?

  Rumpp wrote in return: A MAGICIAN NEVER TELLS. He smiled as he held up the answer, because a video camera suddenly poked out of the side and was staring in his direction. He made sure his tie was on straight and the hair was over his ears evenly. Image was everything.

  Then he remembered his pants. Rumpp looked down.

  "Oh, shit!" He stepped behind his assistant's desk so the camera wouldn't pick up his hairy, exposed legs.

  He wrote on the pad, I CALL THIS TRICK SPECTRALIZATION.

  The pilot was saying, "I can't hover like this forever."

  "Hold your pecker," Cheeta said. "I almost have my story."

  "But you don't have any sound."

  "For once, this is a time where no sound makes the footage. This is going to look sooo spooky on the air."

  "It's pretty freaking weird right now," said Remo, who was feeling like a mere hitchhiker. He and Chiun were absorbing the unique experience of being in a helicopter hovering inside a skyscraper. After they had gotten used to the disorienting effects, Remo decided it felt stupid. Like being inside a video game. He wanted to step out, but even though his eye told him there was solid floor under the skids, everything he had witnessed indicated that to step out would be to fall twenty-four stories to the subbasement, and his death.

  "Can you figure this out, Little Father?" he whispered. "He can't hear us and we can't hear him. But we're both making noise."

  The Master of Sinanju was silent. His keen hazel eyes were darting this way and that, and Remo could tell by the set expression on his wrinkled face that he had no more idea what had happened to the Rumpp Tower than he did.

  Eventually, the pilot could stand it no more.

  "I'm outta here!"

  He spared Randal Rumpp the novelty of being run through by a helicopter and sidled out through the eastern wall.

  Once they had emerged into the night, their flood lamps making hot spots on adjacent buildings, Remo said, "Well, that was an experience we won't soon forget."

  Cheeta smacked the pilot on the head and snapped, "You idiot! I wasn't through yet! Go back in there!"

  "I vote we land," Remo said.

  "This is a news helicopter, not a democracy!" Cheeta snarled, slapping the pilot again. "I order you to go back in there!"

  The pilot, holding his head in one hand, sent the helicopter back toward the gleaming pinnacle that was the Rumpp Tower. He looked as scared as if he were about to jump into a bottomless hole in the earth itself.

  The chopper raced to meet its own reflection in the Tower.

  They all watched themselves in a disorientation of reality that was perfect for the occasion.

  Then, from one corner of the twenty-fourth floor, there came a burst of white light.

  And the Master of Sinanju, his voice a shrill squeak, cried out.

  "Turn away! Turn away! We will all be killed!"

  Chapter 14

  Dorma Wormser, executive assistant to Randal Rumpp, had gone through most of the twenty-fourth floor, picking up telephone receivers and speaking into them without success.

  She wasn't quite sure what she was going to accomplish. But she would do anything to rectify the terrible thing that had happened to her place of work. If for no other reason, than it meant she could go home. After over a dozen years as Randal Rumpp's glorified secretary, being traffic manager to every conceivable hype and scam, going home every night was her favorite part of the working day.

  It had been different in the beginning, when Randal Rumpp was a cocky young developer trying-Dorma was convinced-to outdo his old man, developer Ronald F. Rumpp. Every new deal was a challenge. Every success a cause for celebration.

  Somewhere along the line Randal Rumpp had peaked financially. Unfortunately, by that time his ego had gone ballistic. His eye was always on the next deal, a bigger score. The publicity rush he invariably got kept him from tying up the loose ends of the previous deal. He talked openly of running for president, while overpaying for every gaudy object that caught his eye, like some overcapitalized raccoon.

  It had all come undone with the fiasco Rumpp had dubbed "Shangri-Rumpp." He had already bought into three other Atlantic City casinos. All successful. But he wanted to build one that would go down in gambling history.

  Shangri-Rumpp was designed to be the biggest thing on the boardwalk.

  And it was. The first night it pulled in six million dollars. Investors predicted that within a month Shangri-Rumpp-with its gilt domes, faux-gem trimmings, and neon fountains-would be synonymous with Atlantic City.

  Unfortunately for Randal Rumpp, he had cut costs in a foolish area. The chips. Each one was emblazed with an RR on one side and Randal Rumpp's simpering profile on the other. Rumpp had insisted on it.

  So when the manufacturer could not deliver a sufficient quantity by opening night, Randal Rumpp faced a difficult choice: Go with blanks, or postpone opening night.

  He did neither. Instead, he had had an emergency order placed with a manufacturer of plastic fast-food drink cup lids. They were cheap, they were inexpensive, and they would retain the sharpness of his profile in the stamping process.

  They were also, Randal Rumpp discovered to his eternal regret, as easily counterfeited as cornflakes.

  On his second day of business, more chips were cashed in than had been delivered. The record six-million-dollar opening turned, overnight, into a nearly twenty-million-dollar sinkhole.

  When he realized the magnitude of the financial hemorrhaging, Randal Rumpp faced another difficult choice: Close down until the original chips came in, or keep playing.

  As always, Randal T. Rumpp led with his ego. He ordered the roulette wheels to keep spinning, the blackjack dealers to keep dealing, and the baccarat tables to remain open, boasting, "The slot machines will keep us going until the chips are down. I mean, in."

  When he lost over twenty-five million to counterfeit chips on the third night, Randal Rumpp issued a statement that Shangri-Rumpp was setting new records for payouts and quietly talked his father into buying forty million dollars' worth of twenty-dollar Shangri-Rumpp chips to bail him out for the first operating week.

  It was a disaster from which the Rumpp Organization had never recovered. Not even when Randal Rumpp refused to allow his father to cash in his chips, claiming they were "shoddy counterfeits."

  The entire house of cards began to collapse then. Loans were called due. Assets were seized. Staff was fired. Dorma Wormser, like most Rumpp employees, was forced to accept a fifty-percent pay cut. The only reason she stayed on was because jobs in corporate America in the early nineties were scarce. Especially if a job-seeker was in the position of having to list Randal Rumpp as a reference.

  And now this. She was trapped, with an angry mob roaming the building. A mob that blamed Randal Rumpp for their plight.

  If there was anyone who could help, Dorma Wormser wanted to talk to him.

  She was beginning to think she would have to test every phone in the Tower, when she tried a desk phone in the executive trophy room. It was off-limits to everyone except Randal Rumpp. It was the place where he kept his favorite trophies-from his childhood Monopoly game and photographs of former girlfriends, to the more modest business acquisitions, such as the solid-gold stapler that never worked but was brought out for office photo opportunities.

  The desk phone was a simple AT ne. But it had been Randal Rumpp's first business phone, and he tr
easured it. The bell had been disabled, but a red light winked on and off, indicating an incoming call.

  She lifted the receiver.

  Dorma Wormser had answered telephones both personally and professionally for most of her life. She was good at it. Her voice was clear and crisp. Her manner smooth and businesslike. It was the perfect executive assistant's telephone voice.

  This time, she whispered a timid, "Hello?"

  There was no answer. Just a rushing, like a comet composed of static coming in her direction. It grew louder very fast. Soon it was a wooshing roar. It was coming from the earpiece. Definitely.

  Then came the flash of blinding white light that changed everything.

  After she had regained her sight and other senses, Dorma Wormser knew she would look back upon her life in entirely different terms. She would never regain the normal, ordinary existence that had been hers before she'd picked up that ordinary telephone handset, as she began the long slide into nervous collapse that would haunt her for the rest of her days.

  The stunningly bright light was all around her. It was soundless. It was not an explosion, but the suddenness of it was enough to knock her on her back. How long she was out, Dorma Wormser had no idea. Her eyes fluttered open and there it was, floating directly above her.

  "Oh, God," she moaned.

  It might have been a man.

  Her initial impression was that it was white. It was white from the hairless bald top of its bloated head to the tips of its very white feet. But it was not all white. Some of it was golden. There were golden veins on its smooth white skin. Not in, but on. They lay along the skin like printed circuits, except that they pulsed and ran with fleet golden lights.

  That was weird enough. But the thing that shocked Dorma Wormser, that sent her scrambling to her feet and running for help, was the dead way the manlike thing floated just under the high ceiling. It was like a white, lifeless corpse filled with helium. Worst of all, it had no face.

  Chapter 15

  The pilot of the BCN news helicopter heard the voice of the old Korean warn him against flying into the Rumpp Tower. His brain told him that the shrill voice was serious. His brain also screamed that he was flying into a solid object and should swerve to avoid it.

  He had been with BCN for over six years, half of them working for Cheeta Ching. Before that he had been a bush pilot in Alaska. And before that he had seen action in Grenada. He was used to risk. Even though every fiber in his highstrung being told him to swerve, he stayed on course.

  If I die, he reasoned, I die. If I disobey the Korean Shark, I'm worse than dead.

  He closed his eyes, not bothering to hope for any particular result.

  So it came as a total shock to him when Cheeta Ching dug her bloodred claws into his shoulder and screamed, "You heard Grandfather Chiun! Swerve, you testosterone-drunk fool!"

  The pilot's eyes flew open. He pulled back on the collective. Just in time. The helicopter swooped up and over the Rumpp Tower, a fly's-eye panorama of repeated helicopter reflections chasing it along every mirrored surface.

  When the chopper had flattened out into a lazy circle and everyone's stomach had climbed down out of their throat, Remo asked the Master of Sinanju a question.

  "What is it, Little Father? What did you see?"

  "The building has found its proper vibration."

  "Huh?"

  "He means it's solid again," Cheeta offered. "Right, Grandfather?"

  Chiun nodded somberly. "I do."

  Everyone looked. The Rumpp Tower looked no different. The last hot, purplish-orange rays of the sun were streaking its sawtooth top, but otherwise it had become a kind of stalagmite of obsidian, with a subtle bronze underhue.

  "Looks the same to me," Remo muttered.

  "Now look with your eyes," spat Chiun, pointing down with one spindly finger.

  Everyone looked downward.

  Several floors up from the RUMPP TOWER sign over the Fifth Avenue entrance, a balloon was swirling in the eddies and currents surrounding the Tower. It was Halloween-orange and had a pumpkin face. Evidently, someone from the crowd behind the distant barbed wire had released it.

  As they watched, a gust of wind swept it up. It skidded close to the Tower facade and, as it rose, bounced off.

  "It bounced!" Cheeta breathed.

  "I saw this happen before," Chiun offered.

  "Praise Diana, Goddess of the Moon!" Delpha cried, closing her eyes and lifting empty palms to the moon. "My womanly magic proved true."

  "My ass," said Remo, quickly pinching his nose shut.

  "You did this?" Cheeta asked, dumbfounded.

  "Indeed," said Delpha calmly. "You may interview me now. I suggest a two-shot."

  "And I suggest we land before I throw up," Remo said.

  Cheeta said, "Later. I want to see what's going on in the Tower. You! Cameraman! Let's get some footage."

  The cameraman got his video up and running.

  "Make a circle of the building," Cheeta told the pilot.

  Delpha chimed in. "Good. Circles are good. They represent femaleness. If we create enough of them, they will dispel the Horned One forever."

  "Shouldn't we be landing, to let the people know it's okay to come out now?" Remo suggested.

  "No," Cheeta said sharply, "Later. If we set them free now, we can't interview them."

  "Since when does a story come before people?"

  "Since before Edward Z. Murrow," said Cheeta solemnly.

  "Can I quote you on that?" Remo asked.

  Before Cheeta could answer, Delpha cried, "Look, I see an otherworldly apparition!"

  Cheeta's glossy head snapped about, like that of a confused Mako shark. "Where? Where?"

  Delpha pointed. "There! In that corner office."

  The cameraman was trying to position his lens, saying, "Where? Which corner? I don't see anything."

  Delpha reached back and yanked the camcorder lens toward the southwestern corner of the building and held it.

  "Do you see it now?" she asked.

  "I don't know," the cameraman said. "I think you bruised my eye."

  "Just keep taping," Cheeta said. "The network will gladly buy you a glass eye."

  They swept past the corner and around to the other side, where the Spiffany Building, as solid as the granite it was built of, lay bathed in cold moonlight.

  Cheeta asked, "What did you see?"

  "It looked like an evil spirit," Delpha said, more pale-faced than usual. "I think it was a night-gaunt."

  "What's a 'night-gaunt'?" Remo asked.

  "It is a creature normally seen only in dreams," Delpha explained. "They have rubbery skin, long forked tails, and no face at all."

  "This thing you saw had no face?"

  Delpha nodded. "No more than an egg does."

  "Sounds like a night-gaunt to me," Remo said dryly.

  "If night-gaunts are breaking into the waking world, I fear for humanity. None are female."

  Cheeta frowned. "God. What is this world coming to?"

  "There is only one odd thing," Delpha said slowly.

  "What's that?" asked Cheeta.

  "Night-gaunts are usually black-skinned. This one was completely white. I will have to consult the Necronomicon about them."

  To Remo's surprise, she pulled a dog-eared paperback book from under her skirt and consulted it.

  "This is strange," she said thoughtfully. "There's no mention of white night-gaunts. Not even in the demonology concordance."

  "It doesn't matter," Cheeta put in. "We got it on tape, whatever it was." She glared back at her wincing cameraman. "At least, we'd better have gotten it on tape."

  "But the Necronomicon should list it if it exists," Delpha said worriedly.

  "Maybe you got the abridged edition by mistake," Remo suggested helpfully.

  "Remo," Chiun flared, "you are behaving like an idiot. "

  "I've been dragged down by the company I'm forced to keep. Look, can we just land this thing?"


  "An excellent idea," Chiun said sternly. "We will land and rescue the persons formerly trapped within this glittering monstrosity, thus earning the eternal gratitude of this country and whoever may rule it."

  "Why would we do that?" Remo wanted to know.

  "Contract negotiations," Chiun whispered.

  "Oh."

  This half-overheard conversation made Cheeta Ching think of something.

  "You know, it's quite a coincidence."

  Remo made his face blank. "What is?"

  "Bumping into you two again like this. Clear across the country."

  Remo looked away. "It's a free country. We travel a lot."

  "Whose campaign are you with this time?"

  "Nobody's. We're in a new line of work," Remo explained, blank-voiced. "We're insurance adjusters. We're out here because Randal Rumpp needed extra fire insurance."

  "That's ridiculous!"

  To which, Remo offered a business card that identified him as Remo Wausau, with Apolitical Life and Casualty.

  "This is awfully unlikely," Cheeta said.

  "Tell her, Little Father."

  Chiun thinned papery lips. "It is as Remo says," he said with obvious distaste. "We are adjusters of insurance. Temporarily."

  "Okay, I believe you," Cheeta said, returning Remo's card.

  Remo blinked. He had to will his face still to keep it from dissolving into incredulous lines. The blunt-faced barracuda had bought his lame story on no more strength than Chiun's word. What the hell? he thought. Anything to get us through the night.

  Remo settled back as the helicopter pilot wrestled his craft into a soft landing on Fifth Avenue. Maybe when they got into the building, he and Chiun could figure out what was really going on, waste anyone who needed wasting, and split before Delpha decided to flash somebody into asphyxiation.

  Remo didn't think his sinuses could stand another high-speed scouring.

  Chapter 16

  At first, Randal T. Rumpp thought his executive assistant had broken down. She was babbling again. Worse, she was raving.

  "It-it's a ghost! A real ghost!" Dorma Wormser cried.

  "What's a ghost?" Rumpp asked calmly. It was important to be calm when dealing with the unstable.

  Dorma grabbed his arm. "The thing in the trophy room. Come see, come see. You'll see. It's real."