Warren Murphy: Ghost in the Machine

"Definitely."

"Okay. I'm going to pick up the other phone now."

"Before you do that, there are two things you must know."

"Yeah?"

"One, I will be unconscious when I leave phone. I will float."

"I saw that happen. You'll come out of it."

"Not if I do not turn off suit before battery runs out. "

"Suit?"

"I am wearing suit. Vibration suit. It enables me to vibrate through solid objects. If I float into solid object, then battery runs low and rematerialize inside, explosion may be nuclear."

"What explosion?"

"The one that will result when atoms and molecules attempting to be occupying same space collide. Is bug in suit."

"That's a pretty big bug," Randal Rumpp said dubiously.

"That," the voice said, "is the second thing. I am ready to come out now."

Randal Rumpp thought a moment. He hadn't bargained on a nuclear downside. On the other hand, who would have thought a day ago he could have found a scam to make the Rumpp Tower safe from the banks? He decided to go for it.

"I'm picking up the other phone now," he said.

The static roar was brief, loud, and seemed to pierce Randal Rumpp's unwary brain like a noisy stiletto. The air about him turned white. Very white.

Randal Rumpp fell back in his chair and hit his head. The cellular phone fell from his fingers and struck the floor.

When Randal Rumpp regained conciousness, he was looking at the ceiling. The ceiling looked ordinary. It was tile. The initials RR had been laid in the tile so large that only Randal Rumpp could see them.

He saw them perfectly now. He just couldn't understand why he was looking up at the ceiling, when he had been sitting up straight at his desk just a moment ago.

He found out, when he tried to extricate himself from his fallen chair. His head hurt. The circulation in his legs had been cut off by the weight of his thighs on the chair edge.

"Damn."

Unable to climb to his feet, he looked around.

Then he saw it. The white creature. The Russian. He was floating limply, just inches before the big picture window that looked out over Central Park and the nearby Rumpp Regis Hotel.

"Oh, shit," said Randal Rumpp, realizing from the limp way the Russian's arms hung down that he was dead to the world. Dead to the world and about to float into the window. The solid window.

Randal Rumpp's legs refused to support him. So he crawled. He crawled hard. He got under the floating thing.

Its face was not expanding or contracting. It looked dead. And Rumpp, for the first time in his life, cared about a fellow human being.

"If that schmuck dies, I'm dead," he said bitterly. "Gotta do something fast."

He tried throwing objects at the floating apparition. All sailed harmlessly through him. He crawled to his computer and yanked out cables, trying to form a lasso. Desperation made him remember his Cub Scout knots. He flung the loop and actually scored a ringer on a left foot.

The loop dropped through the ankle like it was composed of fine mist.

"Gotta figure out a fresh scam," he muttered.

Then, the creature floated into the window.

Randal Rumpp covered his head with his hands and hoped for a painless death. He got, instead, utter silence.

He looked up. Eventually.

The thing was still in the office. It was moving toward the glass again. This time Rump couldn't tear his eyes away from it.

It touched and, like a balloon animal sculpture, bounced back.

Randal Rumpp was exuberant. "Back! It bounced back! This is fantastic! I'm not gonna go nuclear."

Then, like a patient who had been subjected to electric shock therapy, the floating creature started to wave its arms helplessly. The fat bladder of a face contracted. Expanded. It was breathing again. Somehow.

Reaching for its belt buckle, the white creature gave the white rheostat affixed there a twist. Immediately, it lost its fuzzy glow and fell to the rug.

"Ouch!" it said.

Randal Rumpp forced himself to his feet. His feet felt like they were walking across tacks and not carpet nap.

"You-ouch!-okay, pal?" he asked.

"I am fine. Happy not to be vaporized in nuclear fire. "

"Same here," said Randal Rumpp, giving the thing a hand. He pulled it to its feet. It grabbed its own shoulder as if in pain.

"You bounced off the wall. How come?"

The thing tested its footing. Rumpp noticed it stepped carefully, as if testing the solidity of the floor under its ridiculously thick boot soles. "Building was insubstantial. I was insubstantial. We were on same vibratory plane, and so felt solid to one another." The manlike creature extended a rubbery white hand. "Here is lighter."

"Keep it," Rumpp said.

"Thank you. I can keep gold pen also?"

"You stole my graduation Waterman?"

"Da."

"What are you, some kind of klepto?"

"Da. I am klepto. This is why I was sent to America by KGB. To steal. I steal much technology for KGB. And other things for myself, which I send to cousin in Soviet Georgia for black market. All lost now."

"Okay," Rumpp said impatiently. "Now that I know your work history, let's get down to cases. I wanna buy the suit."

"What about job?"

"I changed my mind. How much do you want for it?"

"I keep suit, all the same to you. Very valuable."

"Don't be coy. Everybody's got their price. Name it."

"I want job."

"And I want that suit. Five million."

"Dollars?"

"Yeah."

"Hokay."

"Take a check?" Rumpp asked.

"No."

"Look, I'm Randal Rumpp, the greatest financial genius since Rockefeller. You know I'm good for it."

"I know you are not," the other snapped. "I have been trapped in your telephone system, and overhear every phone conversation. You are pauper."

"The hell I am."

At that moment, the lights came on.

Randall Rumpp looked up at the lights. "Oh, shit. Does that mean what I think it means?"

"If you mean, is building normal again, lights mean that, da."

"Damn. Okay. Forget my buying the suit, I want you to fax yourself over to my hotel."

"Why?"

"The IRS just seized it."

"Ah. The IRS. I have heard of them. They are more vicious that KGB."

"You're pretty smart for a guy without a face."

"Have face under helmet. Is for protection of eyes for when walking through walls."

"Right, right. Listen, if we can pull off spectralizing the Rumpp Regis, the IRS can't do anything."

"What about Rumpp Tower II?"

"On the back burner, until we get this straightened out. How about it?"

"I do not know if this will work. It is dangerous. Also, I do not trust you. You tricked me once already."

"Let me make you an offer you can't refuse."

"There is no such thing."

"When word gets out that the Rumpp Tower is back on line-so to speak-the mob is going to try to bust down my door and tear me limb from limb."

"Da?"

"If you're here when that happens, you get the same medicine," Rumpp pointed out.

The faceless Russian tilted his head, as if thinking. "You make excellent offer. I will telephone myself wherever you wish."

"Great. There's just one last thing."

"What is that?"

"Any way I can hitch a ride with you? I wasn't kidding about that mob."

"Nyet."

"That's Russian for no, isn't it?"

"Da. "

"Damn."

"Sorry. Technology brand-new."

"Okay," Randal Rumpp said, offering the celluar unit, "I'll be in a better bargaining position when the Regis thing is taken care of. Let's give it our best shot."

Randal Rumpp repeated a number and the thing dialed it.

Then the Russian turned on the suit.

Randal Rumpp had seen it before, but it still amazed him. The thing went white, seemed to congeal and collapse, only to be drawn into the diaphragm like a movie image being run in reverse.