Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  Randal Rumpp looked out the window. The BCN helicopter was fluttering around aimlessly. He wasn't finished being quoted yet, but the chopper didn't seem interested in coming back for more pearls of Rumpp wisdom.

  He let his executive secretary tug him to the trophy room, thinking this had better be worth his time.

  Randal Rumpp saw right away that it wasn't a ghost. Even though it was white and floated just under the ceiling like a ghost probably would float, it was no ghost.

  It looked vaguely humanoid. There were two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head. The head was not like a human head. It was too big, too smooth, too white, and too hairless, and where its face should have been there was a kind of puffy balloon.

  In the dim light, the thing shone. Its edges were misty.

  Dorma whispered, "See, Mr. Rumpp? A ghost."

  "It's no ghost," said Randal Rumpp, grabbing an original Frank Lloyd Wright chair. He lifted it up over his head and poked at the floating apparition with the chair's hard legs.

  The legs went right through the floating white being.

  "See? It's unreal," Dorma said.

  "It's no ghost," repeated Randal Rumpp sternly. "Get a grip on yourself."

  "How can it not be a ghost?"

  "Because," Randal Rumpp pointed out reasonably. "It's got two cables sticking out of its shoulders. They look like coaxial cables. Coaxials mean electricity. Ghosts aren't electric."

  "How . . . how do we know that?"

  "Because we have a grip on ourselves," said Randal Rumpp, moving around to get a better look at the floating thing.

  The thing was emitting a kind of soft shine, like a low-energy light bulb. Through it, certain details could be made out. The pulsing golden veinwork. The fact that it wore boots and gloves, and there were straps that snugged at his shoulders.

  Randal Rumpp was trying to see what the straps were holding on to when he noticed the thing's belt. The buckle-it was round and white-suddenly blinked red. It was a very angry red color. It made Dorma shrink in fear. Then it turned white again. Then red. It was like something short-circuiting.

  Randal Rumpp took this as further proof that the thing was electrical. Randal Rumpp feared nothing electrical. Not even the electrician's union, which could make or break a construction project.

  "What does the red light mean?" Dorma wondered from the safety of the open door. She looked ready to bolt.

  "It means," Randal Rumpp said, pointing to the Sears DieHard battery clearly strapped to the floating thing's back, "that its power is running low."

  "I don't understand."

  "That makes two of us. Where did it come from?"

  "I think . . . I think it came from the telephone . . . ."

  Rumpp scowled. "Telephone?"

  For the first time, Rumpp noticed the phone off its hook.

  He turned to his cowering assistant. "I told you not to touch the phones!" he shouted.

  Without warning, the glowing thing came to life. It grabbed at its belt buckle, then went dim and fell to the floor with a thud.

  Dorma screamed and fled. Randal Rumpp knelt beside the thing. He reached out to touch it and, to his surprise, he got the slick, plasticky sensation of touching something like vinyl. His fingers recoiled. He hated vinyl. Especially vinyl siding. It offended his sensibilities. His first home had had vinyl siding. The day he'd traded up to his first condo, he'd had it torched so no one could throw it back in his face when he became famous.

  The thing lay supine for only a minute. Then, with a sound like a respirator, the white bubble that was the thing's face crinkled inward. It expanded. Contracted again, crinkling. The crinkling was something seen, but not heard.

  "It's still breathing," Randal Rumpp muttered. "Whatever the heck it is."

  He tried to shake it.

  "Hey, pal. Wake up. You're on my time now."

  The thing struggled into an upright position. Its featureless face swiveled in his direction. Even though there were no eyes, Randal Rumpp had the distinct feeling he was being stared at. It gave him the creeps. Worse than cost overruns.

  Then, even though the thing had no discernible mouth, it spoke.

  It said, "Ho ho ho."

  "Hello. Do you speak English?"

  "Da."

  Too bad, Rumpp thought. Maybe I can communicate with it some other way.

  "Me Rumpp," he said, pointing to his own chest. "Rumpp? Comprende?" He pointed to the thing's chest. "You name?"

  To his surprise, the thing stabbed its own chest with its thumb and said in perfectly understandable English, "I am Grandfather Frost. Ho ho ho."

  "You speak English?"

  "Da. "

  Scowling, Rumpp said, "Da isn't English. It's baby talk."

  "Da mean 'yes.' You understand 'yes'?"

  "Yeah. I've been hearing it all my life. Listen, where did you come from?"

  "Telephone. "

  "That so? How'd you get into the telephone in the first place?"

  The creature struggled to its feet. It grabbed at its right shoulder, as if in pain. "It is long story," it said, moving about the room and examining the objects kept on display tables and open shelves. "I am thinking we do not have time for long story now."

  "Yeah? Why not?"

  "I must escape."

  "What about the three billion we were talking about?"

  "Take a check?"

  "You have one on you?"

  "Nyet. I mean, 'no.' "

  Rumpp frowned. "Nyet. Where have I heard that word before?"

  "I do not know, but I must be escaping now. Thank you for your time."

  Randal Rumpp grabbed the thing's arm. Standing, the thing was shorter than he. And that was saying something, considering that its boot heels were as thick as a stack of waffles.

  Randal Rumpp expected no fight. And he was right. The creature didn't struggle at all.

  But Randal Rumpp was suddenly on his back, trying to get the air the floor had knocked out of his lungs back where it belonged.

  "Ghosts," he gasped, "don't use judo."

  Then the creature spoke another unfamiliar word. "Krahseevah, " it said. Its voice sounded very pleased.

  Gasping, Rumpp got to his feet. The creature was examining a gold-filled Colibri cigarette lighter with the initials "RR" set in diamonds. Rumpp noticed it no longer shone. And its face, which was a bladder that kept expanding and contracting as if in rhythm with its measured breathing, crinkled audibly now.

  Somehow, it was able to see through that featureless membrane.

  While it was distracted, Rumpp leaped in front of the only exit.

  "You go out over my dead body!" he warned.

  "There is no need for dead bodies," said the faceless thing, retreating to the telephone receiver. He dialed directory assistance and asked, "Give me number of Soviet Embassy, please."

  The operator's response came loudly enough for Randal Rumpp to hear it clearly.

  "I'm sorry. There is no listing for a Soviet Embassy in this city."

  "What! Then provide me number of Soviet Embassy in Washington."

  "What do you want with the Soviet Embassy?" Rumpp asked suspiciously.

  "I must give them present," the thing said flatly. "Grandfather Frost forgot them this year." "Christmas hasn't happened yet. In fact, it's only Halloween."

  The thing started. "Excuse, please. What month this?"

  "October."

  "What year this?"

  Before Randal Rumpp could answer the insane question, the operator was saying, "I'm sorry. There is no listing for a Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. Would you like me to try Washington state?"

  "No Soviet Embassy? What happened to Soviet Union?"

  "It dissolved," Randal Rumpp said flatly, just to see what response he'd get.

  A dramatic one, as it turned out.

  The blank-faced white creature dropped the telephone and began to moan.

  "Soviet Union dissolve in nuclear fire! What about Georgia?"

&nbs
p; "It's still down there between South Carolina and Alabama," Randal Rumpp said.

  "I am not meaning U.S. Georgia. I am meaning Georgia in Soviet Union."

  "Search me. I can't keep track of what's left of Russia."

  The thing's bladder-like face regarded him. "It is gone completely?"

  "Yeah. Yeah. Completely. And good riddance."

  "I am homeless expatriate," it said, cabled shoulders falling. "Without family."

  "Look," Rumpp said sharply, "we have some business to conduct here. Let's leave sentiment out of it."

  "I am man without country, and you are without human feelings," the thing blubbered. "After all I have done for you."

  "What have you done for me?"

  "I have restored your building."

  It was Randal Rumpp's turn to appear startled. "You have? Are you sure?"

  "Am positive. If building were no more, I could not be standing on floor as I am now. Would fall through to death."

  "Why not?"

  "I am vibrating normally. Therefore, floor is vibrating normally."

  Randal Rumpp raced to a window. He took up the Frank Lloyd Wright chair and started banging it against a big bronze solar panel, splintering the legs of the eighty-thousand-dollar original. But Rumpp didn't care.

  The glass cracked and shattered, and pieces fell out.

  He stuck his head out and watched them fall.

  The largest pieces shattered into a million golden shards when they hit the pavement below.

  At that moment, the electricity returned.

  "It's true! It's true!" Rumpp said distractedly. "Not now! I haven't closed the megadeal of the century yet!"

  He grabbed the slick creature and said, "Make it go back to the way it was."

  "I cannot."

  "Then tell me how it got that way in the first place."

  "I am not sure. Was sucked into telephone, but number I dial did not pick up. I think I was tricked by American agents. I have been trapped in telephone system since I do not know how long ago. I think I became trapped in your building, and somehow it became as I was. A ghost."

  "You're no more a ghost than I am," Rumpp insisted, giving the thing's arm a hard squeeze.

  "True," it gasped, grabbing its shoulder.

  "Explain it again. You got sucked into the phone?"

  "Da. I mean, yes."

  "Show me."

  "Why should I?'

  "I'll give you this Rolex if you show me."

  The faceless thing hesitated. He accepted the watch, put it to the side of his head where his left ear should have been, and listened curiously. He brought the watch face up to what passed for his own.

  "Is fake," he said, returning it disdainfully.

  "How do you know?"

  "True Rolex has smooth secondhand movement. This jerks. Is no good. Cheap copy."

  "Show me how you did it," Randal Rumpp said quickly, pulling out his ace in the hole, "and I'll let you have this entire building."

  The thing moved its smooth head around like a curious radar dish. "Worth how much?"

  "A quarter billion."

  "Is deal. But I must have safe number to call."

  "I got one. Dial 555-9460."

  "Where is that?"

  "My Florida summer home. The weather's great right now."

  "Hokay. I go there," said the thing, picking up the receiver and stabbing the key pad with a flexible white finger. As he dialed the number with one hand, he squeezed the handset between his lifted shoulder and his head, and reached down to his circular belt buckle.

  He gave it a twist. Instantly, his outline became a kind of fuzzy nimbus of light. Randal Rumpp blinked as the details of the creature's outer skin grew indistinct.

  Then, like a cloud that was being sucked into a cave, the creature collapsed into the mouthpiece.

  There was no sound. Just a quick inhalation of glowing white smoke. The deformed head was the last to go. It was drawn into the receiver, which hung in the air a brief moment, then hit the hardwood floor.

  "Damn!" said Randal Rumpp, racing back to his office, yelling, "Don't answer that phone! Don't answer that phone if you value your fucking job!"

  The ringing was coming from down the corridor, from his office.

  He sprinted past his shocked assistant and to his office cellular phone. It was ringing insistently.

  Randal Rumpp grabbed up a copy of The Scam of the Deal and slammed it onto the receiver, as if to block a rat trying to escape from a hole. He pushed down hard. The phone kept ringing.

  "Dorma! Get a window open and throw something out!"

  "But the windows don't open."

  "Kick the glass out! Anything!"

  The crash of glass came a moment later.

  "Listen for it to hit the ground."

  "I am."

  "Anything?"

  "No."

  "Keep listening."

  "It should have shattered by now."

  Then the lights winked out.

  "Great!" chortled Randal Rumpp. "It worked! It worked! My deal is still on! I'll be back on top yet!"

  He dug out his attache case and extracted his portable cellular phone. It took but a moment to reprogram it to ring when his private number was called. He felt empowered again. He was on a roll. Nothing was going to stop him now.

  Chapter 17

  The first thing Cheeta Ching wanted to do upon disembarking from the churning BCN helicopter was to liberate the Rumpp Tower. She announced this in a triumphant screech that made everyone else reach for their eardrums.

  "Nobody goes in until Cheeta Ching, superanchorwoman of our age, has done her duty!"

  "So?" Remo asked. "What are you waiting for?"

  Cheeta turned to her cameraman. "Is there enough tape left?"

  The cameraman popped the cassette port, looked at the cartridge, and shook his head.

  "Then load up a fresh one," Cheeta said impatiently. "I want every dramatic moment immortalized on half-inch tape."

  "Oh, for crying out loud," Remo burst out, "just let's all go into the building, okay?"

  "Not on your miserable life!" Cheeta flared. "Grandfather, please don't let him ruin my story."

  "Remo, behave."

  "Watch it, Little Father," Remo warned, "or I'll tell everybody how old you really are."

  "I am not a day older than eighty!" Chiun screeched, in a voice whose tone clearly suggested that he had seen eighty a long time ago. In truth, the Master of Sinanju was more than a century old, a fact that he was sensitive about, inasmuch as he had never officially celebrated it. Somehow, by the logic of Chiun's ancestral tradition, this lapse denied him the right to claim that august achievement.

  "Do not be ashamed of your advanced age," intoned Delpha Rohmer, "for in age there is wisdom. The druids knew this."

  "Weren't they men?" Remo said.

  "Warlocks. Male witches, which absolved them of the sins of ordinary men."

  "Bulldookey."

  Remo folded his arms while Cheeta and the cameraman fiddled with the videocam. Cheeta took possession of the old tape while the cameraman reloaded. That gave Remo an idea.

  "Want me to hold that for you?" he asked helpfully. "So it won't get lost?"

  "Sure, thanks," Cheeta said, handing it over her shoulder absently.

  Remo reached out for the tape, a wicked smile on his cruel lips.

  Suddenly, Cheeta let out a screech and her hand snapped back. Remo's reflexes ordinarily would have been equal to snatching it from her easily, but Cheeta's ungodly sudden screech had tripped his defensive reflexes and he had faded back from the horrific sound.

  "Something wrong?" Remo asked innocently.

  "Last time I let you near one of my cameras, a very important tape turned up missing. Mysteriously missing."

  "Missing usually is mysterious," Remo agreed.

  "I will be glad to safeguard the artifact," Delpha offered.

  Cheeta hesitated. Then, saying, "I know I can trust a fellow woman," turned
it over to Delpha, who promptly warmed the cartridge by slipping it down her swelling cleavage.

  "It will be safe here," she intoned.

  "Especially if it picks up traces of your animal repulsion," Remo said unhappily.

  "You mean 'attraction,' " Delpha corrected.

  "Let's split the difference and say 'aroma,' " Remo said.

  The videocam reloaded, Cheeta Ching fluffed her raven-black hair. Strands of it clung to her fingers like a sticky spider web, and she pulled a small can of industrial-strength hair varnish and created a halo around her head. It not only tamed her hair but kept her thick pancake makeup from flaking off her flat cheeks.

  She squared her padded shoulders and started for the entrance, saying, "BCN anchor chair, here I come. "

  Remo turned to Chiun. "So we just watch?"

  "Emperor Smith instructed me to investigate and report on all I beheld."

  Remo shrugged. "I guess that means watch. There are worse ways to spend Halloween Eve."

  Cheeta got halfway to the door when one of her spiked heels struck a pebble. She stumbled, caught herself, and said, "Oh, damn. I gotta start over."

  She went back to her mark, squared her shoulders again, and retraced the path. Her heels made sounds that made Remo expect to see sparks spit in her wake.

  Then, walking backward, Cheeta's cameraman went before her, his lens capturing her every brisk, fearless step, the way her hair bounced determinedly. Cheeta narrowed her almond eyes at the camera until they glinted.

  She came to an abrupt stop and said, "Okay, cut. Now move off to one side."

  The cameraman obliged.

  He repositioned himself so he could catch Cheeta's resolute profile as she reached for the door and flung it back.

  That was not the image his lens captured. Cheeta reached for the brass door handle. Momentum carried her into the glass. It didn't break. It didn't resist. Cheeta tumbled through it and fell on her flat face in the lobby marble.

  Her face quickly sank without a trace, taking Cheeta's shoulders with it.

  "The building! It went crazy again!" Remo said.

  "Cheeta! My Cheeta!" Chiun screeched.

  "Use your atavistic womanly powers!" Delpha called. "Levitate! Levitate!"

  The Master of Sinanju reached the scene a second ahead of Remo. He grasped Cheeta by her wildly kicking ankles and pulled back.

  Cheeta came loose from the marble floor like a big yellow tooth with legs.