It could also be an assassin dispatched by Hollis. He could be killing us off one by one.
Joe opened the door.
Quivering with unease, wringing his pulpy hands together, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang stood in the doorway mumbling. “I just don’t understand it, Mr. Chip. We worked all night in relays. We just are not getting a single spark. And yet we ran an electroencephalograph and the ‘gram shows faint but unmistakable cerebral activity. So the afterlife is there, but we still can’t seem to tap it. We’ve got probes at every part of the cortex now. I don’t know what else we can do, sir.”
“Is there measurable brain metabolism?” Joe asked.
“Yes, sir. We called in an outside expert from another moratorium, and he detected it, using his own equipment. It’s a normal amount too. Just what you’d expect immediately after death.”
“How did you know where to find me?” Joe asked.
“We called Mr. Hammond in New York. Then I tried to call you, here at your hotel, but your phone has been busy all morning. That’s why I found it necessary to come here in person.”
“It’s broken,” Joe said. “The phone. I can’t call out either.”
The moratorium owner said, “Mr. Hammond tried to contact you too, with no success. He asked me to give you a message from him, something he wants you to do here in Zurich before you start back to New York.”
“He wants to remind me,” Joe said, “to consult Ella.”
“To tell her about her husband’s unfortunate, untimely death.”
“Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?”
“Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as”
“Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this. However, nothing smaller than this was available, which Al did not foresee. You can add it onto the statement which you will be presenting to Runciter Associates at the end of the month. I am, as Al probably told you, now acting director of the firm. You’re dealing with a positive-thinking, powerful man here, who has worked his way step by step to the top. I could, as you must well realize, reconsider our basic policy decision as to which moratorium we wish to patronize; we might, for example, prefer one nearer New York.”
Grumpily, von Vogelsang reached within his tweed toga and brought out an ersatz alligator-skin wallet, which he dug into.
“It’s a harsh world we’re living in,” Joe said, accepting the money. “The rule is ‘Dog eat dog.'”
“Mr. Hammond gave me further information to pass on to you. The ship from your New York office will arrive in Zurich two hours from now. Approximately.”
“Fine,” Joe said.
“In order for you to have ample time to confer with Ella Runciter, Mr. Hammond will have the ship pick you up at the moratorium. In view of this, Mr. Hammond suggests that I take you back to the moratorium with me. My chopper is parked on the hotel roof.”
“Al Hammond said that? That I should return to the moratorium with you?”
“That’s right.” Von Vogelsang nodded.
“A tall, stoop-shouldered Negro, about thirty years old? With gold-capped front teeth, each with an ornamental design, the one on the left a heart, the next a club, the one on the right a diamond?”
“The man who came with us from Zurich Field yesterday. Who waited with you at the moratorium.”
Joe said, “Did he have on green felt knickers, gray golf socks, badger-hide open-midriff blouse and imitation patent-leather pumps?”
“I couldn’t see what he wore. I just saw his face on the vidscreen.”
“Did he convey any specific code words so I could be sure it was him?”
The moratorium owner, peeved, said, “I don’t understand the problem, Mr. Chip. The man who talked to me on the vidphone from New York is the same man you had with you yesterday.”
“I can’t take a chance,” Joe said, “on going with you, on getting into your chopper. Maybe Ray Hollis sent you. It was Ray Hollis who killed Mr. Runciter.”
His eyes like glass buttons, von Vogelsang said, “Did you inform the Prudence Society of this?”
“We will. We’ll get around to it in due time. Meanwhile we have to watch out that Hollis doesn’t get the rest of us. He intended to kill us too, there on Luna.”
“You need protection,” the moratorium owner said. “I suggest you go immediately to your phone and call the Zurich police; they’ll assign a man to cover you until you leave for New York. And, as soon as you arrive in New York-”
“My phone, as I said, is broken. All I get on it is the voice of Glen Runciter. That’s why no one could reach me.”
“Really? How very unusual.” The moratorium owner undulated past him into the hotel room. “May I listen?” He picked up the phone receiver questioningly.
“One poscred,” Joe said.
Digging into the pockets of his tweed toga, the moratorium owner fished out a handful of coins; his airplane-propeller beanie whirred irritably as he handed three of the coins to Joe.
“I’m only charging you what they ask around here for a cup of coffee,” Joe said. “This ought to be worth at least that much.” Thinking that, he realized that he had had no breakfast, and that he would be facing Ella in that condition. Well, he could take an amphetamine instead; the hotel probably provided them free, as a courtesy.
Holding the phone receiver tightly against his ear, von Vogelsang said, “I don’t hear anything. Not even a dial tone. Now I hear a little static. As if from a great distance. Very faint.” He held the receiver out to Joe, who took it and also listened.
He, too, heard only the far-off static. From thousands of miles away, he thought. Eerie. As perplexing in its own way as the voice of Runciter – if that was what it had been. “I’ll return your poscred,” he said, hanging up the receiver.
“Never mind,” von Vogelsang said.
“But you didn’t get to hear his voice.”
“Let’s return to the moratorium. As your Mr. Hammond requested.”
Joe said, “Al Hammond is my employee. I make policy. I think I’ll return to New York before I talk to Ella; in my opinion, it’s more important to frame our formal notification to the Society. When you talked to Al Hammond did he say whether all the inertials left Zurich with him?”
“All but the girl who spent the night with you, here in the hotel.” Puzzled, the moratorium owner looked around the room, obviously wondering where she was. His peculiar face fused over with concern. “Isn’t she here?”
“Which girl was it?” Joe asked; his morale, already low, plunged into the blackest depths of his mind.
“Mr. Hammond didn’t say. He assumed you’d know. It would have been indiscreet for him to tell me her name, considering the circumstances. Didn’t she-”
“Nobody showed up.” Which had it been? Pat Conley? Or Wendy? He prowled about the hotel room, reflexively working off his fear. I hope to god, he thought, that it was Pat.
“In the closet,” von Vogelsang said.
“What?” He stopped pacing.
“Maybe you ought to look in there. These more expensive suites have extra-large closets.”
Joe touched the stud of the closet door; its spring-loaded mechanism sent it flying open.
On the floor of the closet a huddled heap, dehydrated, almost mummified, lay curled up. Decaying shreds of what seemingly had once been cloth covered most of it, as if it had, by degrees, over a long period of time, retracted into what remained of its garments. Bending, he turned it over. It weighed only a few pounds; at the push of his hand its limbs folded out into thin bony extensions that rustled like paper. Its hair seemed enormously long; wiry and tangled, the black cloud of hair obscured its face. He crouched, not moving, not wanting to see who it was.
In a strangled voice von Vogelsang rasped, “That’s old. Completely dried-out. Like it’s been here for centuries. I’ll go downstairs and tell the manager.”
“It can’t be an adult woman,” Joe said. These could only be the remnants of a child; they were just too small. “It can’t be either Pat or Wendy,” he said, and lifted the cloudy hair away from its face. “It’s like it was in a kiln,” he said. “At a very high temperature, for a long time.” The blast, he thought. The severe heat from the bomb.
He stared silently then at the shriveled, heat-darkened little face. And knew who this was. With difficulty he recognized her.
Wendy Wright.
Sometime during the night, he reasoned, she had come into the room, and then some process had started in her or around her. She had sensed it and had crept off, hiding herself in the closet, so he wouldn’t know; in her last few hours of life – or perhaps minutes; he hoped it was only minutes – this had overtaken her, but she had made no sound. She hadn’t wakened him. Or, he thought, she tried and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t attract my attention. Maybe it was after that, after trying and failing to wake me, that she crawled into this closet.