Keith’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “That’s the hardest lesson you’ve ever given me,” he said.
“I hope it is the only vun of its kind you must learn,” the Master said, with a sad smile. Keith recalled suddenly that Asrai was his granddaughter.
“I’m sorry,” Keith said lamely.
The Master waved away his apology and nodded toward the door. “Nefer mind. Ve vill find them. Go. Perhaps you vill discofer information of interest to us.”
***
CHAPTER NINE
“Ms. Gilbreth is expecting me,” Keith told the plain, cheerful girl sitting behind the combination reception/telephone switchboard desk. The young woman picked up the receiver and punched two numbers.
“Representative from PDQ is here to see you, Ms. Gilbreth,” she said, smiling up at Keith. She nodded, replaced the handset, and gave him a coy glance. “If you’ll just wait a minute, then you can go back.”
Keith thanked her and stepped back to examine the walls of the reception area. Framed photographs of green crop fields hung against walls paneled in cheap brown wood. If he’d owned this place, he wouldn’t have spent much money on expensive furnishings, either. The whole place exuded a choking, clinging miasma that had to go home on everyone’s clothes, and in every piece of mail sent from the office. Could that be useful in any way? Direct mail advertising to the discerning farmer? he thought with some amusement. The employees he saw were dressed in tan coveralls about the same color as the smell. He wondered how long it took to get used to it. Dust tickled his nose, and he sneezed. Surreptitiously, he took out a handkerchief and wiped the taste of airborne fertilizer off his tongue.
“You can go back now,” the receptionist called out. “Second door on the right.”
Keith thanked her. The gray-painted hallway had the same threatening anonymity as the corridors in the Death Star. No pictures interrupted the dullness of these walls. Did the proprietor match the unprepossessing aspect of her factory? He expected her to be funereal in aspect, or maybe hearty, like the stereotypical pictures of a farmwife.
Mona Gilbreth fit neither of his preconceptions. She was very tall, a few inches taller than Keith himself, and dressed in a neat and fashionable skirt suit that would have fit right in on Michigan Avenue. With her frizzy hair dyed a uniform rusty brown and her large teeth which, though straight, gave her the appearance of a slight overbite, she was not very pretty, but determinedly attractive. Her makeup was very skillfully applied, playing up her better features, and her hair was firmly coifed away from her face, to give her an open, approachable look. She gave him a strong, cordial handclasp that reminded him she was running for political office.
“How do you do?” Ms. Gilbreth greeted him. “So you’re from PDQ, Mr…?”
“Keith Doyle,” he said, with a friendly smile.
She gave him a sharp glance. “Doyle? You don’t have any relatives down here, do you?”
“No, Ma’am,” Keith lied. “I’m from up near Chicago.” He pulled Paul’s letter out from his back pocket and unfolded it. She took it from him and read through it.
Ms. Gilbreth breathed a perceptible sigh of relief. Keith was secretly amused. He could almost hear her mental processes churning as she dismissed the suspicion that he was connected with those pesky Doyles at Hollow Tree Farm who’d been writing all those destructive letters to the editor. “So how can I help you, Keith?” she asked.
“I’m a college student working as an intern under Paul Meier at PDQ,” he explained. “He wants us to learn everything we can about the ad business, and research is part of our job. I had to come down to, er, get an assignment from one of my other teachers, and Paul suggested I drop in on you and familiarize myself with your company. To bring your ad campaign right up to the minute,” he added helpfully.
Mona smiled. “That’s very good of Mr. Meier. I’d be delighted to give you all the information you want. The most important thing I want you to stress right now is my candidacy for state representative. I hope he’s continuing along the lines we set out the last time I was up there.”
“You bet,” Keith said. “I’m sure you’ll be impressed with what they’re doing when you come up next. Say, while we’re talking, would you mind showing me around? I’ve never been in a place like this before.”
“I’d be delighted,” Mona repeated, a little taken aback. After a moment’s thought, she decided the request was reasonable. “Will you excuse me just a moment?”
Keith gave her a friendly grin as she sidestepped around the desk and out the door. He was pleased. There he sat, right in the enemy camp; the dirt that he would uncover would humiliate her all the more when it hit print. She hadn’t stopped dumping on the Forest Preserve and Hollow Tree land, so as far as he was concerned she had another zinger coming. He’d just have to keep his eyes open for any other offenses Kill-breath Gilbreth was getting away with.
With a glance over her shoulder to make certain Keith wasn’t following her, Mona hurried up to the front office. “Page Pilton,” she told the receptionist. The girl picked up her handset and dialed.
Grant appeared, stupid and willing, in his dusty coveralls. “Yes’m?”
She took him aside. As yet neither the receptionist nor any of the office staff knew about their two detainees in the back office. It was a secret between her, Pilton and Williamson. Until she could figure out how to get rid of them, she couldn’t risk having to explain their presence to outsiders. “We’ve got a visitor on the premises. I’m going to take him on a tour. Go keep that child quiet. I don’t want her making a noise and attracting attention. Got it?”
“Yes’m,” Grant said again, and headed at once down the corridor toward the office where the children were confined.
He unlocked the door and let himself in quietly. The little girl was sitting in her accustomed perch on the orange chair, reading aloud to the baby from a children’s magazine. Without a TV or radio in the room, Grant guessed it was as much to hear a human voice as anything else. They made such a cute picture, like a toddler reading to her doll.
Both pairs of eyes glanced up at him from the colorfully illustrated page when he entered. The girl had been very quiet since the night Jake Williamson had threatened to shoot up the room. Whenever Jake went in there with him, she shrank back, holding the infant protectively in her arms, keeping real still. She was a lot calmer around Grant, which he hoped meant she liked him better. He’d sure done his best to make things nice for her.
Pilton’s wife had accepted the excuse that there were a couple of kids visiting from out of town, and allowed him to bring over spare blankets and toys. He’d replaced the single flour-sack towel in the bathroom with a couple of Disney character towels. After the little blond girl had rejected the TV, he brought a radio and a nightlight instead.
He knew it wasn’t right to keep these kids here away from their folks, but he accepted Ms. Gilbreth’s reasoning that they had to bring them back at the right time, to minimize the trouble the company was in for taking them. It was mostly his fault they were here in the first place, so he accepted his employer’s excuse.
The blond child continued to stare at him. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and stared back. The child pursed her lips disapprovingly, probably in unconscious echoes of a similar gesture one of her parents or grandparents used.
“Hey,” he said, grinning at her, “go on reading, huh?”
Mona took Keith Doyle around the factory complex, pointing out the tanks and piping systems that carried individual products. Each system was painted a different color, giving it an orderly appearance in spite of the tangle of conduit, catwalks, and s-bend pipe that snaked overhead. She was grateful that he didn’t ask about waste, then became suspicious that he was leading her on. “You don’t ask me anything about environmental impact, young man. Don’t you have any interest in that?”
“I do,” Keith said disarmingly, “but I’m not a scientist. I only know what I read in the papers. Besides, I’m
here to get the scoop on you. I’m working for your hired gun, remember?”
“Oh, yes,” Mona said. “Well, remember, I’m campaigning on a ‘Preserve Our Environment’ platform.” She swung a hand up in a graceful gesture to encompass the vast, sea-green tank beside her. “This is one of the most modernized systems for liquid and powder transport in the world. I want other potential polluters to look to me for leadership in preserving—”
“But I’d like to know more about how your business runs,” Keith was saying. “More of how you do things right here. Your voters will want to look at the way you operate, your sense of fairness, your history, to give them confidence in how you’ll do things in Washington.”
The last thing Mona wanted to do was expose her business practices to this nosy youth, but it wasn’t good policy to offend anyone with access to the media, especially media she was paying for.
“Oh, but that’s so boring,” she said, smiling determinedly at him. “Wouldn’t you rather hear about the political issues? You see,” she said, straightening the shoulder pads on her jacket then touching a wave of her stiff hair with a coy hand, “I want to show an honest image of myself to the voters of Illinois.”
Keith nodded politely. “Could I have some literature about Gilbreth Feed? Didn’t I hear that the firm was founded by your grandfather?”
“Why, yes,” Mona said, flattered. “You’ve certainly done your research, young man. There are some flyers in one of these offices. Let’s see.”
She led him up the hallway toward the comptroller’s office, where she seemed to recall there was a supply of public relations literature. As they passed close to the office where Pilton and the children were, Mona trembled. If the baby let out one of its rebel yells now it was all up with her. With the room set up as an improvised nursery, there’d be no way of disguising her motives for keeping them there as a benevolent or temporary gesture of any kind. She steeled herself not to look at the door at the end of the hall, so as not to draw attention to it, and ushered Keith into the accounting office.
Dola finished the story and went on to the next one in the magazine. Her voice automatically laid stress upon strings of prose and quoted dialogue in humorous voices without her having to think about it too much—no problem, since she no longer was drawing images in the air to go along with the narrative. The arrival of Skinny meant to Dola that there was something going on in the building that the boss-lady didn’t want her to disturb. Dola was more than a little afraid of the boss-lady. The Big woman was formidable in appearance and so very tall. Dola felt intimidated by her size.
Holding her breath, she listened as keenly as she could. There were voices in the corridor, but so faint that they were indistinguishable. One of them belonged to an adult male. Dola was convinced that there was some reason that the Big Folk didn’t want her to be seen or heard by the possessors of those voices. Perhaps it was a police officer, who would wonder what a child was doing at a factory. If she could get his attention, maybe he would take her and Asrai home.
Dola glanced at the skinny man. He watched her as if he expected her to perform some other wonder, like the disappearance she had attempted on the hilltop two days before. She was impatient with him and desperate to get out of the room. In spite of the daft way he talked her jailer was too big and too canny to be tricked into letting her slip by him. She needed a distraction—something dangerous, so he’d have to remove them from there to save their lives.
Skinny got up on his knees beside her to coo at the baby. Asrai stared at him, her round, milky green eyes wandering across the big face without recognition but luckily without fear. So long as he was occupied, Dola had time to come up with a really terrifying illusion. A spider. One at least a foot across, climbing up the wall behind him, but further away from the door than they were. That way he’d have to get them out. The footsteps were coming closer to the door. They couldn’t be more than a few yards away. Her chance was at hand.
She shaped the sending in her mind’s eye, seeing it form from eight irregular points on the pocked wall, solidifying in the center into grotesque head and abdomen portions of black and shiny bronze, with hair the length and thickness of cat’s whiskers sticking out of the joints of the legs and covering the base of the body near the spinnerets. She admired her work, and glanced down at Grant, timing the moment. If she managed to scare the baby when she screamed, Asrai would lend her lung power to hers, and they’d be free in no time.
Letting her eyes go wide with feigned fear, she started to take in a huge breath, readying a really loud outcry.
Her gasp alarmed Pilton, who looked up. Guessing what she was about to do, he fell forward onto one knee and clapped his hand over her mouth. Quickly he looked around to make sure no one was coming into the room, and saw the spider. Dola made it hiss, spreading its palps and front legs menacingly. With the greatest presence of mind, Pilton let Dola go and put himself between the children and the horrifying arachnid on the wall.
“Look at that sucker!” he cried. “Stay back, little lady. It might jump.” The spider assumed a karate stance, waiting for its foe to approach. Getting no closer, Pilton leaned over toward the table, picked up a magazine, and threw it at the spider. Dola had no choice but to imagine it falling to the ground and scuttling into a corner. Grant followed it and smashed it into a pulp with his big boot. “Whew! I haven’t seen a spider that big since I was in the Everglades. It’s dead. You aren’t scared, are you?”
“I’m all right,” Dola said in a very small voice. She sank back, thwarted and a little tired from the expending of energy. The illusion, hidden from view, faded into nothingness. It’s a pity I can’t like him, she thought, because he’s brave.
To her dismay, she heard the footsteps receding in the hallway. She’d missed her chance at freedom once more. Pilton resumed his perch next to Asrai, and was babbling nonsense words at her in a silly falsetto.
“No, the big bad thing’s all gone,” he said, making the baby gurgle. “Yes, it is. It wasn’t gonna hurt you, no. I wouldn’t let it do that. No, I wouldn’t.”
Dola tried to lose herself in the baby’s happy murmurs, because she herself was close to frustrated tears. I want to go home, she thought sadly. I wish someone was here to comfort me.
Mona saw Keith off from the front door with relief so great she worried that it might show.
“See you on Monday, ma’am,” the young man called. He waved. Mona waved back.
“It’ll be a pleasure,” Mona assured him. As soon as he was gone, she plopped down on one of the chairs in reception and rubbed her feet. She was exhausted but happy. The youth had led her all over the factory, sticking his nose into all the departments, but he had asked a lot of intelligent questions. She knew about the job PDQ offered its most successful intern. With the kind of initiative he showed, she wouldn’t be averse to recommending that very polite young man for the position, if he promised never to come back to the factory.
She went down the hall and tapped on the door at the end.
“He’s gone,” Mona said. “Thank God. Come on out of there and get back to work.”
“Yes’m,” Grant said, and looked back at the child. “I’ll come back later and bring you some dinner, okay?”
“All right,” the girl said very quietly. They closed the door on her.
Dola was doubly depressed to hear the locks clicking shut. By the Boss-lady’s tone, she guessed she’d missed a very important chance at escape. She and Asrai were left alone again in their prison. Who knew how long it would be before she had another opportunity. And what did these Big Folk have in mind for her and Asrai? The man called Jake and the Boss-lady treated them like a pair of inconvenient parcels. Would they dispose of them the same way?
She was glad neither of them spent much time with her. If they began to suspect, like Skinny did, that there was something strange about her, she and Asrai would never be free to go home again. Catra had passed around many articles from journals and magazines tal
king about what scientists did to alien-seeming artifacts and remains. She shivered, and covered up Asrai, who was sleeping again on her lap.
Pulling in by a wayside phone booth, Keith called the Farm to offer his help for the evening. He didn’t feel much like ballooning, and Frank didn’t really need him. He volunteered to forego his lesson and come back. The Master thanked him for his concern, but said the others had elected to call off the search for the night.
“Go to your lesson,” the Master added. “You haf vorked hard today, aiding us in our search. Let it be. Ve vill continue tomorrow, and velcome you back at the veekend. As I told you, you cannot continue to take all responsibility for us upon your shoulders.”
What the little teacher said was true, but it made Keith feel unwanted and unneeded. He could have helped more. Discontented, he turned south and headed toward Midwestern.
Keith was too late to help inflate the great bag. The rainbow of Skyship Iris was already rising like a multicolored sun beyond the trees on the campus. One of Frank’s crew waved him over as he hopped out of his car, and pulled him over to help walk the balloon to its launch point.
His heart wasn’t really in it, but he pulled against the light wind, his back and arms straining against the thin fabric of his shirt. He couldn’t stop thinking about Dola and the baby. He had the same feeling his friends had, that the girls were off in a northeasterly direction, but the trace was too vague to pin down. You’d think that a small, isolated target like a pair of elven children would be easy to locate, but other things kept getting in the way of a direct connection, as if they were anchored too tenuously in reality to be easily detected. Maura was handling things incredibly well, but he could tell she wasn’t going to last too long if the baby wasn’t found soon. He suspected some of the others were doing subtle enchantments on her to keep her from going over the edge.
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