Behind Prior in the screen, a new face appeared, peering over his shoulder: Celia’s.
“Why, you’re calling Matthew,” she said brightly. She seemed to have shed most of the dulling effect of the drugs she had been pumped full of in the Ginsberg, and was almost vivacious again. “And that’s his office. Hmm! It must be something important for him to be working on a Saturday afternoon. Hello, Matthew!”
“Freeze it!” Flamen barked. “I’m not in a sociable mood. Apparently I just lost my job.”
“What? But how could you? I thought your contract still-”
“Lionel says the Gottschalks bought out Holocosmic, and it looks as though it was specifically to get rid of my show.”
“But that’s awful,” Celia said slowly. “I mean, I know how important your work is to you. It even made you neglect me, didn’t it?”
“Now if you’re going to start a domestic wrangle you can-”
“No, no, of course not,” Celia interrupted soothingly. “I’m not blaming you, it’s just the way you are. I supI do resent it, sort of subconsciously, because a woman likes to be wooed and pampered, but it’s not a rational reaction and after all you have been doing some wonderful work with your show all these years.” She sounded perfectly sincere, although Flamen’s reaction was to look suspicious. “Isn’t there something you can do about it, like sue them for breach of contract?”
“They’re going to offer compensation,” Prior said beFlamen could answer. “Celia darl, go away, will you? We have troubles!”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Her pretty face set in a sympafrown, she withdrew from camera range.
“Now where were we?” Prior said in an annoyed tone. “Oh yes: Matthew, I was asking whether you’d done something to alarm the Gottschalks and if so whether you-”
He was cut short by an exclamation from Diablo, who had jumped to his feet and thrust out an arm towards Madison.
“What’s wrong with him all of a sudden?” he cried.
All heads turned. Madison had slumped in his chair, and his formerly stem face had taken on an idiot slackthe lips so loose that a trace of drool was glistening on his chin. After a moment he picked up his left hand in his right and examined it curiously, seeming to count the fingers. When Conroy spoke to him, his only rewas a bland foolish smile.
“Dr. Reedeth,” Diablo said nervously, “I guess you’d better take a look at him.”
The psychologist approached cautiously, looking the knee over from head to foot. He said, “Madison?” And then, more sternly, “Madison!”
The knee rose awkwardly, as though having difficulty in controlling his limbs, and stood in a scuffling Uncle
Tom posture. “Here, captain, sir,” he said whiningly. “Sir, I don’t feel good, honest. Please don’t send me back to the stockade!”
While Reedeth and the others were still petrified with astonishment, Flamen rounded oh Conroy.
“Well! I’m only a layman, of course, but that doesn’t sound particularly rational to me. What was it you were saying just now about going along with his story until you were forced to disbelieve it?”
Conroy was standing dazed, mouth a little ajar. He tried to say something and failed.
In command of the situation for the first time since he and Conroy met at the airport in the morning, Flamen drew himself up triumphantly. “I,” he announced, “have had enough. Get out, the lot of you. You go back to Canada, Professor-go on. Apparently I won’t have any need for your services now because there won’t be a Matthew Flamen show to attack Mogshack on, not that we ever got around to that project. The same goes for you, Diablo; you’ll have to go find someone else to fulthe Washington-Blackbury contract. And you get back to your hospital, doctor, and take him with you.” A jerk of the head at Madison, still playing with his own fingers and seeming to find something amusing in their number, for he shook with repressed chuckles every few seconds. “And you, Miss Clay! I have absolutely no inof volunteering to mack for you in spite of what addlebrains there may think. Move!”
Silent, like machines, they complied; Diablo and Reedeth each took one of Madison’s hands and he folthem docilely, Lyla bringing up the rear. The moment the door had closed behind them, Prior burst out from the comweb screen, “Matthew, what in the world has been going on there?”