Warren Murphy: Dying Space

"I am not a Communist," Dickey said with dignity. "And I've told you a dozen times that I'm not responsible for this."

"Yeah? Well, how come you needed somebody to let you in today. What happened to your magnetic passcard?"

"I misplaced it," Dickey said.

"Yeah. Probably right in the hands of some Russian, you Communist fairy."

"You were here when I left last night, lady," Dickey said. "Whoever took it probably walked right by you in your drunken stupor and, hell, dear, you probably helped him carry it to his car."

The professor sank down slowly in a chair, her face ashen. Dickey looked at her, sitting Eke a

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lump, defeated and frightened, and felt suddenly sorry for her. "It'll be all right, Doctor. The man from Washington will find whoever it was."

"It won't be all right," she said listlessly. "Nothing will ever be all right again."

"Of course it will."

The professor looked up at her mousy, pockmarked, but tanned assistant. "Maybe I've misjudged you, Dickey," she said softly.

"I'd like to think that, Professor," he said.

"You've really been loyal to me, haven't you?"

"I'll always be loyal to you, Professor."

"If I needed something—really needed it ... Do you know what I mean by really needing something?"

He patted her on the shoulder. "I think so," he said, smiling gently.

"Well, if I really needed something, ycfu'd come through in the end, wouldn't you, Dickey?"

"You could count on me, Doctor."

"Good. Get me a drink."

Dickey's face snapped shut, his little pig eyes pinched. "Oh, no you don't," he said.

She stalked him around the lab until she had him by the lapels of his lab coat. "You promised me you'd come through if I needed anything. Now goddammit, Dickey, my LC-lll's missing and my heart's broken and I need a goddam drink, do you hear me?"

"Professor—"

"Find me a drink before I beat your face into cube steak, Dickey."

"Calm down, Professor. Everything'11 be all right-"

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"Will you stop saying that, you algae-brained imbecile?" she roared. "What's all right? Huh? Just what in the hell in all this mess is all right?"

There was a click at the door and a tall, thin man wearing a green uniform with the name "Lewis J. Verbanie" embroidered in red over "Hollywood Disposal Service" entered.

"Hello is all right," the man said cheerfully.

"Who are you?" the professor snapped. "How did you get in here?"

"I adjusted the locks."

Ralph Dickey muttered, "I'll call the police."

"I've cut the lines," the garbageman said.

Dickey began to whimper.

"Jesus, another Communist," the professor said disgustedly.

"I beg your pardon, but Jesus was not a Communist, according to my information. The Communist Party was not conceived until well after the beginning of the present century—"

"Who is this jerk?" the professor asked.

"Are you the person in charge here?" the garbageman asked. "Are you Dr. Frances Payton-Holmes?"

"That's me," the professor said crisply. "What do you want?"

"One of my components identifies this location as part of my origin," Mr. Gordons said, "and I discerned from the high-frequency sounds issuing from this building that someone might be able to assist me in some type of global orientation."

"Components?" Dickey said. "Global orientation?" He got an idea. "Listen, guy, I'm going to step out and come back with some folks who'll

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orient you all day long, okay?" He was smiling and moving quickly toward the door.

"Please do not attempt to leave," Mr. Gordons said. "If you leave, there is a high probability factor of your notifying others of my presence. Such an action may render my survival hazardous."

"What are you talking about?" Dickey said.

"I am saying that I will kill you unless you cease all motion immediately."

Dickey froze. "He threatened me," he whined.

"Shut up," the professor said. "Go ahead, Mr.—er, Ver . . . Ver . . ." She squinted at the name tag.

"Gordons. Thank you. You see, I am very nearly complete, with the exception of certain peripheral informational input, which was destroyed in the relatively recent past. Consequently, my recall of some, but not all, persons and events has been reduced dramatically, as well as my perception of present place and time."

"In other words, your memory's shot."

Mr. Gordons smiled. "Exactly. I knew you would be perceptive."

"I wish the man from Washington would get here," Dickey muttered under his breath.

The professor was interested. "What do you mean by your 'components,' young man?"

"I'll show you." He unlaced one of his ankle-high boots and took off his sock.

"Oh, for God's sake," Dickey moaned. "A foot fetishist, yet. Of all the days he could have picked to diddle his toes."

Mr. Gordons hobbled over to a desk, picked up a bottle of ink and, as the professor and her as-

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sistant looked on in wonder, proceeded to pour the ink over the sole of his foot.

"Now, see here," Dickey said, jumping out of his corner. "This is really going too far."

Mr. Gordons tossed the empty bottle at Dickey, hitting him squarely in the midriff. Dickey slid to the floor with a whoof. "I warned you not to move," Gordons said. "The next time, I'll have to kill you."

"Forget him," the professor said impatiently. "Go on with what you're doing. And this had better be worth my while."

"It is, I assure you." Then he took a piece of blank white paper and stepped on it. He took the paper with the imprint of his foot on it and handed it to the doctor.

She stared at it in disbelief. In the instep of the footprint, in mirror image, read the legend:

PERSONAL PROPERTY OF DR. FRANCES PAYTON-HOLMES, UCLA

"Can you help, identify me?" Mr. Gordons asked.

But the professor didn't hear him. She had crumpled the paper into a ball and fainted.

Remo knocked at the sliding doors to the software lab. At his touch, the doors opened effortlessly. He walked through, feeling for the tracking that should have held the doors closed and locked. They had been torn off the frame. Something of tremendous power had been used to enter the building.

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The scene in the lab was odd: a blonde woman was lying in a dead faint on the floor beside a man in a uniform from the Hollywood Disposal Service whose one bare foot was stained navy blue. At the other end of the room, a young man wearing a white lab coat and clear nail polish stood immobile and trembling.

"Are you the man from Washington?" the man in white asked.

"Guess so," Remo said.

"Arrest this person," Dickey shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the unshod garbageman.

'What for?"

"He tried to kill me with this ink bottle," Dickey said, holding up the evidence.

Remo stared at the man with the ink bottle, then at the unconscious woman on the floor and the garbageman beside her. "Maybe we'd better start over," he said. "Who's Dr. Payton-Holmes?"

"She is," Dickey said, gesturing toward the woman.

"What's she doing on the floor?"

"How would I know?" Dickey snapped. "That man barged in here, threatened my life, stepped on a piece of paper, and the next thing, the professor passed out."

"Maybe you ought to keep your shoes on, buddy," Remo said to the garbageman. He walked toward the professor as she was coming to, and clutching frantically at the garbageman's trouser leg.

"What's going on here?" Remo asked.

The professor's hand slipped over the crumpled

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wad of paper bearing the garbageman's footprint and held it closely. "Nothing," she squeaked.

"What are you talking about?" Dickey shrieked from across the room, still afraid to move. "He's from Washington. He's here to.help us find the LC-111."

"He's a friend of mine," the professor piped quickly. Dickey sucked in a gulp of air in surprise.