Lilly looked questioningly at Corrigan. “My office is empty,” he said. “Use that for now. You know where it is.” He moved with her to see her to the door. She nodded, happy to let them get on with it. Pinder stood aside and held the door for her to leave. But just as he was about to close it behind her, he saw Ken Endelmyer and John Velucci approaching along the corridor. They halted just outside the room. Endelmyer looked at Pinder strangely. Pinder looked strangely at him.
“What are you doing here?” Endelmyer asked, looking puzzled. “I thought we left you outside. How did you get inside?”
“Inside what?” Pinder replied, just as puzzled. “I’ve just come across.”
“Across what?”
“Across from HQ. You asked me to.”
“1 did? When?”
Pinder tried desperately not to look like a subordinate suddenly confronted by a superior who has taken leave of his senses. “Ten minutes ago. You wanted me to get over here and see what the problem was with Joe.”
“No, you were already here,” Endelmyer said, looking equally suspicious. “We’ve just come over from HQ—to join Frank and the others here. But we left you outside in the Monitoring Center.”
“Outside?” Pinder queried.
“Outside Oz—outside the simulation,” Endelmyer replied.
Pinder looked uneasily around the room in a silent plea for somebody to tell him that he wasn’t the only one for whom this was getting insane. The others returned looks as devoid of expression as a fog bank.
Then Corrigan realized what had happened. Pinder, the animation, had just left an Endelmyer animation in HQ, across the river, and now had run into the real Endelmyer, who had entered the simulation as a surrogate; and since Pinder knew only the animation Endelmyer, he was presuming this one to be he. The real Endelmyer, on the other hand, had come over from HQ in the real world, and by the sound of things had talked to the real Pinder before being coupled in. Corrigan groaned inwardly. It could only get worse. Nothing was going to sort this out now.
Pinder looked back at Endelmyer. “Outside the simulation,” he repeated. “That’s very interesting. I’m not quite sure I follow, though, since the simulation isn’t due to begin until tomorrow.” His voice was polite and inoffensive, like a student not wanting to say that the professor was wrong when it was obvious. “Perhaps you could explain?”
“Tomorrow?” Endelmyer blinked, nonplussed. “It’s been running for three weeks, Jason. What in God’s name are you talking about?” He sent an uncertain look around the room in his turn, then moved in through the doorway to appeal to them all directly. “Is Jason not making sense, or is it me?”
Tyron hadn’t quite seen it yet either. “I understand you, but not him,” he said, but sounding distant as if fearing that he might be missing something. “Of course, it’s been running for three weeks. We just came into it.”
“You’re all mad,” Pinder declared flatly.
“What kind of talk is this?” Endelmyer demanded. “First Hatcher flips. Then Corrigan won’t talk to anybody. Is there something we don’t know about this process that affects . . .” His voice trailed away when he saw that Corrigan was staring past him, out into the corridor, with a look of open disbelief. Endelmyer turned to follow his gaze, and his jaw fell. Another Endelmyer and another Velucci were coming along the corridor from the elevators.
“Ah, there you are, Joe,” Endelmyer called ahead, seeing him. “I figured that maybe you were having bigger problems over this Hatcher business than I realized, so John and I decided to follow Jas—” He stopped in midword and came to a dead halt as he saw who was with Corrigan, just inside the doorway of the conference room. The Endelmyer and the Velucci inside stared at the Endelmyer and the Velucci outside. The ones outside stared back. All of them seized up.
Joan Sutton came out of her stupor first. “Frank, freeze the animations,” she said sharply.
At the far end of the room, Tyron fished out a communicator and hammered in an emergency code. “Control? Do we have synchronization yet? Hello? Does anyone out there read? This is critical. . . .” All attention in the room focused upon him. Perspiration showed on his forehead. His eyes were wide with alarm behind his spectacles.