“Ms. Robbie, can you hear me?”
“Beauray!” his pocket screamed.
Uh-oh. Couldn’t let Liz get hot under the collar. The lives of thousands depended on it. Awkwardly with his pinioned hands, he fumbled for the cell phone.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’ve got Ms. Robbie. She’s freakin’ out somethin’ awful.”
“And Lewis?” Liz’s voice was already calmed down again. The lady was a real pro.
“He’s gone.”
“Things are still going on here, Beauray,” Liz said. “Whatever he has done is running on its own now.”
“You still getting the full fireworks treatment?” he asked. He whispered one of the Words of Unbinding, and the cuffs leaped free. His shoes untied and his pants button popped open at the same time, but that was pretty much normal for the course. He refastened them.
“And laser monsters,” Liz said, enumerating a list for him. “And fireballs with attitude. And carnivorous rainbows. One of them just bit Mr. Lockney on the arm. But what is troubling me the most is that the Jumbotron is moving. It looks as though it could come down at any moment. You must persuade her to stop before she tears it off its moorings.”
Boo-Boo looked at Robbie. She didn’t see him. That girl was one powerful channel, but she wasn’t in control at all. He had to try and guide her back to reality.
Robbie reeked of liquor. Boo-Boo crouched down beside her and sniffed her breath speculatively. Tequila. Yes, here was the bottle beside her on the grass. But that wasn’t enough to cause her to twitch like that. Lewis had to have been feeding her drugs. In spite of those mental obstructions, Boo-Boo had to get through to her. He didn’t have much time.
“Ms. Robbie?” he asked. “D’you know me? Beauray. You know me. We got along real well back at the Superdome. Can y’all hear me?”
The girl looked at him without seeing him and rolled over, her legs spasming. He picked her up under the arms. Her hands flailed out and hit him in the face.
“Hey, there,” Boo-Boo said, trying to catch her arms.
Some well-meaning citizens in the milling crowd on the pavement saw him do that.
“Hey, you!” a large black man said, jumping up the three concrete steps to the grass. “Get your hands off that girl!”
He attracted the attention of other people who must have decided that Boo-Boo didn’t have any business trying to talk to Robbie. He’d better scare ’em off quickly.
“Any of y’all know CPR?” he asked, putting a healthy measure of panic into his voice. “’Course she’s foamin’ at the mouth. Dunno if she’s got somethin’ catchin’ or not. Anyone want to help?”
That did it. The ones that hadn’t melted away when he mentioned CPR vanished like genies when he suggested Robbie might be diseased. Even the first man to speak was suddenly nowhere in sight. The Good Samaritan wasn’t dead these days, but he was worried about incurable illnesses. In a moment Boo had the area near the gazebo all to himself.
“Now, Ms. Robbie, listen to me. You’re causin’ all kinds o’ trouble back along at the Superdome. Y’all got to stop that. Can you hear me? Nod your head if you understand.”
Instead, she flung herself at him, pointing at the sudden explosion of pink and gold stars over the river. Boo-Boo grabbed her and started probing her mind gently, using a mind-touch technique he’d gotten the idea for from Star Trek. He thought he felt a spark of recognition. Her eyes suddenly met his.
“Ms. Robbie, do you know me? I’m Beauray.”
She nodded.
“Good. D’you know where you are? Good,” he said when, after a brief hesitation she nodded again. “Can y’all shut down the fireworks at the Superdome?” She nodded. “Good. Can y’all do that right now?” She nodded. Her bleary eyes drifted away from him and focused on the fireworks display. Boo picked up his cell phone.
“That do anything?” he asked Liz.
There was a pause. “No change. That horrid box is still moving.”
Boo-Boo helped the girl to sit up. She stared at him wildly. Spittle flecked her lips and she mumbled nonsense. Her hands moved of their own volition, performing a bizarre dance in midair.
“Look, Ms. Robbie,” he said reasonably, “if you don’t cut off what you’re doin’, thousands of people are goin’ to get hurt. Some of ’em could die. It’ll all be your fault.”
He could almost see the words bounce off her ear. He had to break the connection between Robbie and the Superdome.
“Nothin’ personal, ma’am,” he said. He cocked back an arm and caught her under the jaw with a solid right. Robbie dropped to the grass in a boneless heap. Boo crouched over her, keeping passing couples from walking on her. He clapped the cell phone to his ear.
“I just knocked her out. Did that help?”
“No, it made it worse,” Liz said, briskly. Boo could tell just from her voice how difficult her task was. “If she is the only one in control, that just set off everything she was thinking of. We have monsters, rockets, musicians in flight and the Jumbotron. How is she doing all of that?”
Boo looked down at the unconscious woman sprawled at his feet. “Well, I can’t ask her just now.”
“But what can we do to turn her off?” Liz asked, and he could tell how she was straining to keep her cool. “The building itself won’t take much more. There is only so much power any one structure can contain. This one is more flexible than most, but, oh, Boo-Boo!”
“I know, darlin’,” he said, slumping beside Robbie with his head in his hands. He could try force-feeding the girl a Mickey Finn, but if a stiff uppercut didn’t work, a knockout drug wouldn’t have much more effect. Besides, she was dosed to the eyeballs with something strong. He was afraid to try mixing more chemicals into her system. Who knew what kind of subconscious horrors would swim up from delta-wave sleep? What about a lobotomy? Could cutting off the prefrontal lobe squelch the violent emissions of her brain? An operation, or even a spell to the same effect, would take too long. Time was running out. The quickest solution might be a bullet to the head. He hated to take a life, but he had to balance one girl against the thousands and thousands of others trapped in the Superdome. If someone popped that bubble of power now there’d be a massacre. He glanced out over the river. Maybe sinking the barge with the fireworks would do it.
Thankfully, the fireworks stopped before he could put that into effect. There was a smattering of applause, and the crowd began to break up. He was left alone on the steps of the gazebo with Robbie slumped beside him.
“The show’s over. Did that do it?” he asked the phone. “Did the effects stop?”
“No,” Liz said. “The place is still shaking itself apart.”
Boo-Boo’s heart sank. “Then it’s all goin’ on in her head.”
“How can we turn off her subconscious? There are only a couple more numbers to be played. Everyone is going to want to leave soon, and the place is a hermetically sealed drum full of power that will blow if someone breaches the walls.”
Boo-Boo’s eyebrows went up. He had an idea. The girl had pretty much been following her cues in the beginning. Maybe her subconscious would continue to do it. He hoped he could connect with those ingrained reactions.
“Let’s try and reestablish her connection to the show,” Boo said. “Hold the phone toward the band.”
* * *
Liz nodded to the roadie holding the phone to her ear. He pulled it away and prepared to turn it off.
“No, don’t do that,” she said. “Hold it out between the speakers so it picks up the music.”
Whatever the concertgoing audience thought of seeing a disembodied hand with a telephone at the top of the stage Liz couldn’t guess, but Boo-Boo was right. After a few falters, the special effects began again, this time following the cue sheet that the astonished stage manager held in his hand. Robbie certainly did know her work backwards and forwards. Lasers touched the stage. A few Roman candles popped into the air in sequence. The steam box played. At last the show was going according to the plan the producers wanted. The gigantic box overhead stopped swaying. Liz was able to relax her stance for a moment.
It had taken her a short while to appreciate the skill of the young man who had been holding the phone up for her. Not once did he let the instrument slip off her ear or jam it too tightly against her head. He was watching her, moving when she did, and adjusting his grip accordingly. He must also have muscles like iron. Her arms were getting tired being held aloft for hours, and she was trained to hold that pose. It had taken a great burden off her, not having to worry about the telephone slipping off her shoulder and falling down because she couldn’t spare a hand for it.