They talked a long time, though to Spence it seemed only seconds, when Olmstead Packer's wife came to pry her husband loose to mix with some of her friends. Adjani excused himself as well and vanished into the press around the buffet. Spence felt naked and obvious, having no one to talk to. The camaraderie he had experienced with the two men evaporated all too quickly.
"I thought I'd never get you back," said a voice behind him.
He turned to see Ari standing there. She seemed always to be popping up unexpectedly. "I'm drifting-save me," he said.
"It didn't look to me like you needed saving. It looked like you were having a good time."
"No, I mean now."
She smiled shyly and said, "I'll save you. Would you like something to eat? Daddy will be most disappointed if you don't at least try the mousse."
"I'd love to try it."
Ari led the way to the buffet and Spence followed gladly. He had begun to feel that above all else he did not want to be lonely anymore.
12
… THE BUFFET LOOKED AS if it had been attacked by sharks.
"Daddy's pride and joy-look at it now," lamented Ari. She handed Spence a plate and took one herself. "Oh, well, we might as well join in the plunder. Let's dig in."
They inched their way along the table laden with platters and serving dishes containing a varied and exotic fare: shrimp on ice, salmon aspic, sweet and sour meatballs, soufflйs of several kinds, quiches, a great cheddar wheel, cold roast beef and ham, baby lobster tails, relishes and pickles, brandied pears, deviled crabs, avocados stuffed with chicken and tuna salad, petits fours, cakes, and many other delicacies, some of which Spence did not readily recognize.
Not that it made a difference whether he recognized any particular dish. Ari adroitly ushered them through the snarl of elbows and reaching hands and filled both plates while Spence tagged after her trying not to spill anything.
"Oh, no," sighed Ari as they arrived at a great empty bowl; the cut glass vessel appeared to have been recovered from a mud wallow. "Just as I feared. The mousse is gone. Too bad. But I think I know where there may be some more. Follow me."
They edged through the crowd and dodged diners who stood on the periphery holding their plates to their mouths. She led him away from the confusion of the gathering, through a dim passageway, and into a room which had been transformed into a makeshift kitchen; it looked more like the staging area for a major battle. Several employees of Gotham's food service worked over platters, valiantly attempting to reconstruct beauty from the spoils on the plates before them, replacing wilted lettuce and replenishing depleted items. They worked deftly and quickly, shouldered their trays, and faced once more into the fray.
"We should have come here first," murmured Ari. "It's quieter. Here's the mousse, or what's left of it." She picked up a spoon and shook a healthy dollop onto his already overflowing plate.
"It will take me a week to eat all this."
"Nonsense. I've seen you eat. Remember?"
He looked around for a place to sit. There were no chairs in the room at all.
"Shall we join the others?" asked Ari. "I would rather face lions."
She raised an eyebrow. "That was the right answer. I know a place that may not have been discovered. Come along."
They ducked out through a side door and across the hallway into a small vestibule. He gathered the room was a sort of private sitting room. Bookshelves lined the walls on three sides; on the fourth there was a large, abstract green painting above a low couch. A table in front of the couch bore the telltale traces of diners who had eaten and departed, leaving behind the litter of their repast.
"Daddy calls this his reading room. He says it's cozier than his library or office. Most often he just comes in here to nap."
They sat down on the couch and fell to eating at once. Spence sampled a bite of each of the items on his plate in turn before devouring them one at a time.
"It's very good," he mumbled around a mouthful. "Only the best for our guests."
He regarded her with a look of genuine gratitude. "Thanks for inviting me. I don't usually-" He stopped, "I'm glad I came."
She looked down at her plate. "I'm glad you came, too. I guess I didn't think you would."
"To tell you the truth, I didn't either." "What changed your mind?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just a pushover for chocolate mousse."
"Then we'll have to serve it more often," she said gaily. "But you're not eating yours."
He glanced down at his plate. It had become a muddied palette of confused colors and textures. He put it down on the table in front of him. "I don't like mousse," he admitted.
She laughed then, and to Spence it seemed as if the room suddenly brightened. "Silly, then why did you let me give it to you?"
"I don't know, you seemed to be enjoying yourself."
Ari blushed slightly and lowered her head. "Well, I am." She seemed to become flustered then and said no more.
Silence reclaimed the room and laid a gulf between them. It grew until neither one wanted to cross it. The atmosphere became sticky.
"Ari, I'm not too good at this sort of thing." Spence was surprised to hear his own voice bleating uncertainly into the vacuum.
"You don't have to say anything," said Ari. She raised her blue eyes to his. "I understand."
"It's just that I…" Words failed him.
"Please, it isn't important." She smiled at him and cocked her head to one side. "I think we should rejoin the party. Daddy will wonder what happened to me."
"You're right." Spence stood slowly. Ari remained seated, and he looked down on her and then offered his hand and helped her to her feet.
"Thanks," he said softly.
They crossed the room and Ari turned, putting on her jaunty demeanor again, once more the vivacious hostess. "We'll be lucky if they don't eat the tablecloth as well," she said as they passed the buffet.
"Well, next time I get hungry for mousse, I know where to come," said Spence.
She turned to him and placed her hand on his arm. "I hope you won't wait that long." Before he could answer she whirled away into the crowd and was gone. …
SPENCE WALKED BACK To his quarters alone in a mood of fluttery anticipation, almost wonder. He had forgotten his anxiety of only hours before; in fact, he had forgotten a great many things. What had taken possession of him now left no room for those darker thoughts. Though he had no name for what he felthaving never felt it before-he knew it to be in no small way connected with the person of Ariadne Zanderson.
The warmth of the feeling surprised and confused him. It was wholly beyond his rational ability to describe. It seemed to defy objective analysis, leaving him fumbling for an explanation like a man groping for a light switch in a dark room. That the elusive feeling might be love did not occur to him.
He punched in his code and the panel whispered back, admitting him into the darkened lab. Neither Tickler nor Kurt were to be seen; he guessed they had finished and gone long ago. That suited him. He did not care to think about the project, Tickler, or the scans. All he wanted was to throw off his jumpsuit and flop into bed-which he did, after leaving an alarm call with MIRA. …
SPENCE PEERED INTO THE depths of a vast chasm as the rumble of underground thunder shook the rocks he clung to fearfully. His inward parts trembled to the awesome roar. Below him, whirling in the seething darkness, he could see strange shapes churning and grinding, sending up a fine blue powder like a velvet mist.
Great jagged flashes of blue lightning rent the air and peeled away the darkness of the pit. He looked down and saw clearly into the tumbling mass below. In the fleeting illumination of the lightning he saw the groaning, shuddering, grinding contents of the pit: bones. The enormous skeletal remains of gigantic prehistoric creatures, thrashing in perpetual motion.
A bolt of lightning raked the rock on which he perched and he felt his hands torn away as he fell backward into the chasm. He twisted in the air, his fingers clawing e
mpty space for a hold on the rock. It was too late.
Spence plunged screaming into the whirling dance of the bones.
Down and down he spun, turning and turning. The fine blue grit ascending on the warm updrafts stung his eyes and filled his nose and mouth, choking him. He squirmed and gasped as black mists closed around him.
The sound of the terrible rumbling thunder gradually died away. He dropped like a stone through formless space. He felt nothing and heard nothing-only the beating of his own heart and the thump of his blood as it pounded in his ears. He felt as if he would fall forever. He told himself the notion was absurd.
Perhaps, thought Spence, I am not falling at all. But what else could it be? All at once a new terror seized his mind: he was shrinking. Instantly he could feel himself becoming smaller -dwindling by fine degrees, becoming ever smaller. Though he had no point of reference by which to gauge himself, he felt that by now he must be very tiny. And still the shrinking continued.
This is the way it will end, thought Spence. The universe imploding on itself, racing back into its flash of creation, compressing its atoms back into that single elemental spark from which all matter was born. And he was part of it; he was one with it. Now and forever. …
THERE WAS NO WAKING this time. Spence was fully conscious of his surroundings, and was aware, too, that he had been conscious for some time. There simply was no dividing line he could point to and say, "Here I was asleep, and here awake." The shadowy line between waking and dreaming had been erased. It no longer existed. In Spence's mind dream and reality had merged.
Before him hung the shimmering iridescent halo of blue light with its tendrils glowing faintly as they waved in the darkness of his quarters. The luminous tendrils seemed to be reaching out for him, pulling him up into the green shining halo. He felt the rising, pulling, falling sensation and knew that he had felt it before in just this way.
He knew that he had experienced all this before-the shining wreath, the glistening tendrils, the shapeless mass moving darkly in the center-he knew it, but there was no memory of it. There was simply a knowing.
He watched in grim fascination as the swirling inner eye of the halo condensed into a glimmering mass of light. He felt a pressure in his chest; his lungs burned and he realized he had been holding his breath. His heart flung itself against his ribs and he could smell the fear rising from him as the reek from the fur of a wet animal. But the thing held him firmly in his place.
The terror seemed merely a physical response. He noted it with scientific curiosity, as one might note the progress of water boiling in a beaker and turning into steam, or chart the stages of a well -known chemical reaction. The horror he felt belonged to another part of him, and that part no longer connected with his mind.
A sound like needles clinking or glass slivers breaking against one another rose in volume. He noted the sound and marked how it seemed to tingle on the surface of his skin. He gazed more deeply into the green halo and saw the forms within weaving themselves into vaguely human shapes. These ghostly features then hardened into the recognizable form of a face-the thin, wasted face of Hocking.
Spence blinked back dully at the leering apparition. His mouth was dry; he could not speak or cry out. The will to do so had left him.
Hocking began speaking to him, saying, "You are becoming accustomed to the stimulus, Spencer. That is good. You are making remarkable progress. Soon we will begin a few simple commands. But one thing is needed yet before you are ready. We must establish a permanent mental link through which my thought impulses can travel to you. Heretofore, I have been sending suggestions to you through your dreams. When our minds are linked, however, I shall be able to do so in your waking state as well."
Hocking smiled his skeletal smile and Spence, held in his place, stared impassively ahead.
"This will not harm you," soothed Hocking. "Relax. Close your eyes. Empty your mind of all thought. Think only of the color blue. Concentrate on the color blue, Spencer. Think of nothing else."
Spence obeyed the image's commands. He closed his eyes and filled his mindscreen with an intense, vibrant shade of blue. He relaxed his clenched fists and slumped; his head hung forward and his chin rested on his chest.
"In a moment I will tell you to open your eyes and look at me. But not before I tell you-do you understand? Concentrate. Do exactly as I say… concentrate…"
Spence felt his consciousness slipping away. It was as if his soul-all that which he called Spence and recognized as himself-began flowing from him, poured out like liquid from a bottle. The sensation sent a quiver up his spine and through his limbs. Once more the high-pitched tinkling sound increased, boring through the top of his head and into his skull.
Dizziness overcame him, and with it a tough little kernel of resistance formed somewhere deep within. But the powerful forces working on him threatened to steal even that away.
No! thought Spence. I cannot let this happen! Those words echoing inside his brain lacked force. All strength had gone out of him.
No! he cried again. Stop it! Stop it! He did not know whether he spoke the words aloud or whether he merely thought them. It did not matter. He held to the hard kernel of resistance, fighting to hang on to that last tiny shred of himself. He found that as he struggled to grasp it, a remnant of his will returned.
"Relax. Do not fight it. Relax, Spencer. This will not hurt you." Hocking's voice sounded inside him. Hocking was there inside him!
The hideous realization broke upon his shriveled awareness.
"I will not!" shouted Spence, snapping his head up. He opened his eyes and saw the shimmering green halo with Hocking's dreadful face glaring down on him. But he saw something else that shocked him back to his senses.
The quavering fibrils around the edge of the halo were stretched taunt and extending toward him, touching him. He knew that if he did not break the contact at once he would cease to exist. Spence Reston would become a hollow shell inhabited by Hocking's mind and controlled by Hocking's will. He could not let that happen.
Already he felt Hocking's presence seeping into him. He screamed and threw himself onto the floor, forcing his leaden extremities to move. But the tendrils did not release their hold, remained attached to his forehead.
Shaking with the effort, his muscles turning to jelly and his strength flowing away like water, he dragged himself across the floor to the sanibooth. Hand over hand he pulled himself to his feet.
"Sit down, Spencer. Relax. We are nearly finished. Relax. Concentrate… " Hocking's voice chanted inside his head. "Relax… relax… relax…"
He punched the access plate, and the door of the booth slid open. He teetered on the threshold.
"Relax, Spencer. Sit down."
Spence heard a crack and felt his cheek sliding down the stall's smooth wall. The booth seemed to tilt upside down and he slid to the floor, half in and half out. His head struck the sensor plate in the floor and he heard the whir of the mechanism as the gentle rain of powder began descending upon him like fine snow. The quiet drone of the mechanism was the last thing he heard.
13
… ARI SAT IN A white molded plastic chair next to Spence's bed. The nurses had just finished washing the last of the blue sanitizing powder from his hair. One side of his face bore the red poached look of a sunburn. He appeared to have suffered nothing worse than falling asleep on the beach at high noon.
The patient's breathing came slow and regular-the doctor had said that the worst was over. There would be some slight inflammation and pain due to the inhalation of the chemical, but nothing more serious. The physician indicated that it was a wonder Spence had not suffocated in the powder. His skin would be sensitive for a week or so and it would probably peel. Spence was fortunate, remarked Dr. Williams, that he had not fallen face up into the booth. He could have been blinded by the ultraviolet light. All in all, he had escaped unharmed.
"Did he tell you about his first `accident,' Miss Zanderson?" Dr. Williams had asked.
<
br /> "No-he mentioned a bump on the head, I believe. He seemed fine. I never dreamed…"
"Oh, it's serious all right. Our young friend is manifesting definite self-destructive tendencies. He was found in the cargo bay with the lock open. He nearly died. I wouldn't tell you this, you understand, but he seems not to have any close friends – except you, of course."
Ari frowned and bit her lip. "What can I do, doctor?"
The medic shook his head slowly. "Only watch him. Get him to talk about what causes these attacks, if you can. We'll wait and see. It'll be better in the long run if he volunteers the information on his own. If we pry too hard, try to force him to tell us, it could drive the cause deeper.
"Of course, if the bottom drops out we'll intervene. I would rather it never came to that. And so would he, I'm sure. As with a lot of men in his position, one incident like that on his record and he would be ruined professionally."
Ari had listened to Dr. Williams intently, and her features reflected the turmoil of her emotions. She looked so forlorn when he finished speaking that he felt compelled to comfort her and discount his dire predictions. "Forgive me for speaking frankly," Dr. Williams said apologetically. "I tend to function on a 'worst case' basis. I may have overdramatized things a bit. He'll be all right. Your Dr. Reston is a strong-willed chap. He'll snap out of it, I daresay."
Ari thanked the doctor then and he had gone away, leaving her to wait beside the bed. She occupied her time puzzling over the physician's parting words: Your Dr. Reston. Was it really so obvious then? she wondered.
After a while a nurse brought in a cup of coffee for her and stayed to chat a little. There were no other patients in that particular wing at present, so Ari was free to stay as long as she wished. "You can even stretch out on one of the other beds if you like," the nurse suggested.
"I'm not tired, and I don't mind waiting. Thank you for the coffee, though."
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