Страница 95 из 265
It was something he hadn't thought about much, and he had trouble holding it together to consider it. It was all wrapped up somehow with Renie's mother, but not with the awful helplessness of watching her die, as his feelings of protectiveness were. He missed having someone around who cared about him. He missed the company of someone who understood his little jokes. Not that Renie liked them very much, and sometimes she pretended they weren't jokes at all, that he was just being stupid or difficult, but there had been times when she was just as amused by him as her mother had been.
Now that he thought of it, though, it had been a long while. Not many jokes in the last few years, at least not the kind you could laugh about.
She was fu
When she was a little girl, we used to talk. She'd ask me questions, and if I didn't know, I'd make up some foolishness just to see her laugh. He hadn't seen that laugh in a long time, that surprised laugh where her whole face lit up. Such a serious little girl she'd been, he and her mother couldn't help but tease her sometimes.
Come back, baby girl. He stared at the silent tank, then turned back to the monitor. Break time was over: three men were digging now in the hole in the concrete floor, dust billowing up like they were devils in the smokes of hell. Joseph had the strangest feeling, like he was going to cry. He reached out and took a swallow of his last, dwindling bottle of wine. You come back soon and laugh with me. . . .
The ringing of the telephone startled him so badly that he almost dropped the precious squeeze bottle with its cap open. He stared at the device for a moment as he would a black mamba. Jeremiah was upstairs, but he must be able to hear the ring—with the floors all open to the high central ceiling, the underground lab complex was like being in some big train-station waiting room.
Maybe I just leave it alone until he gets down, Joseph thought, but the thought of being frightened of an antique telephone was too much. As it rang again, he stood up and snatched it off its dented metal cradle.
"Who is that?"
There was a pause on the other end. The voice, when it came, was ghostly and distorted. "Is that Joseph?"
Only after the first superstitious chill had raced across his skin did he remember, but he wanted to be sure. "You tell me who's calling, first."
"It's Sellars. Surely Mr. Dako has told you about me."
Joseph didn't want to talk about Jeremiah. Joseph was the one who had answered the phone; he was the one in charge of this emergency. "What do you want?"
"To help, I hope. I take it that they haven't managed to break in yet."
"They are trying. They are surely trying."
In the silence that followed, Joseph found himself suddenly worried that he had done something wrong, driven off their benefactor. "I don't have much time," Sellars finally said. "And, I must confess, not a lot of ideas, either. You managed to get the armored elevator doors closed?"
"Yes. But those men are digging through the floor now—started out with a grenade, I think, but now they using picks, shovels. Coming right down through the cement."
"That's bad. Do you have the monitors working?"
"I am looking at those men right now. They are digging like dogs after a bone." Jeremiah had appeared, a look of worry on his face. Joseph waved him back: everything was being taken care of.
Sellars sighed. "Do you think you can help me co
"You mean these cameras and so on?" Joseph felt his competence suddenly under heavy fire. "Hook you up? To those?"
"We should be able to do it, even with that old equipment you have there." There was a strange, wheezing laugh. "I'm pretty old equipment myself, after all. Yes, I think I can talk you through it."
Joseph was disturbed. Every cell in his body told him to take charge, to make something happen, but he knew Jeremiah had spent much more time with the machinery than he had. In fact, he knew he hadn't even bothered to learn anything about the monitors at all. With real regret, he said, "I will let you talk to Jeremiah." But he could not give up without even a show of involvement. "It is that man Sellars," he whispered as he passed the receiver. "He wants to get hooked up with the pictures."
Jeremiah stared at him quizzically, then leaned forward and tapped a button on the instrument panel. "I've put you on the speaker, Mr. Sellars," he said out loud, then hung up the receiver. "That way we can both hear you."
Joseph was caught off-balance. Was Jeremiah being kind to him, like to a child? Or was he treating him as an equal? Joseph wanted to be irritated, but could not help feeling a small glow of pleasure.
"Good." Sellars' voice sounded even more strange now, scratchy on the small speaker. "I'm trying to think of things to do, but first could you patch me in to your monitors?" He gave a list of instructions to Jeremiah that Joseph could not quite follow, which left him feeling a
By the time Joseph had summoned up the meditative calm to shrug off the unintended insult, Jeremiah had apparently done what Sellars wanted.
"I see three working and one with a gun, watching," the ti
"I'm not sure," said Jeremiah.
Joseph frowned, thinking. When he and Del Ray had snuck in, they had seen . . . how many? "Five," he said suddenly. "There are five of those men."
"So one's off somewhere," Sellars said. "We shouldn't forget about him. But first we have to deal with the digging. How thick are the floors, any idea? Wait. I should be able to access the plans."
For long seconds the speaker was silent. Joseph's thoughts were just turning sadly to the small bit of wine he had left when the strange voice spoke again. "Roughly two meters deep where they're working, next to the elevator bay. Which means they're probably about a quarter of the way there." He made a strange sound, perhaps a hiss of frustration. "It's heavy concrete, but they'll be through in a day at the most."
"We only have one gun, Mr. Sellars," Jeremiah said. "Two bullets. We're not going to be able to fight with them when they get through."
"Then we have to see what we can do to keep them out," Sellars replied. "I wish this place were a bit older, then maybe I could find a way to banjax the heaters, fill that upper section with carbon monoxide."
Joseph remembered enough from his days in the construction trade to remember something about those carbon what-so-oxides. "Yes, kill the bastards! Poison them. That would be a fine thing."
Jeremiah winced. "Kill them in cold blood?"
"We can't do it," Sellars said, "or at least I can't see a way just now, so it's not worth debating the morality of it. But you must understand that those are not ordinary men, Mr. Dako. They are murderers—perhaps the very men who attacked your friend, the doctor."
"How do you know about that?" asked Jeremiah, startled. "Did Renie tell you?"
"In fact, they have killed someone else that Joseph knows," Sellars said, leaving Jeremiah's question unanswered. "The young technician you visited in Durban."