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"Whoever's laying a tap-in beam on me is doing it from any of the floors above the tenth. I don't think he could angle in from a lower floor."
"I know," Smith said. "I've had men in the Parmenter Building since yesterday. I don't overlook anything, Lane."
Lane had intended to ask him why he had overlooked the fact that they were undoubtedly being overheard at this moment. He did not do so because it struck him that Smith wanted their conversations to be bugged. He was keen to appear overconfident so that SKIZO, or whoever it was, would move again. Lane was the cheese in the trap. However, anybody who threatened Lane seemed to get hurt or killed, and Smith, from Lane's viewpoint, was threatening him.
During the next four days, Lane read Volume IV of the Durants' The Story of Civilization, drank more than he should have, exercised, and spent a half hour each day, nude, under the skylight. The result of this exposure was that the skin burned and peeled all over his body. But the sexual titillation accompanying the dermal heat made the pain worth it. If the sensations got stronger each day, he'd be embarrassing himself, and possibly his observers, within a week.
He wondered if the men at the other end of the beam (or beams) had any idea of the gratuitous sexuality their subject felt. They probably thought that he was just a horny man with horny thoughts. But he knew that his reaction was unique, a result of something peculiar in his metabolism or his pigment or his whatever. Others, including Smith, had been under the skylight, and none had felt anything unusual.
The men investigating the Parmenter Building had detected nothing suspicious beyond the fact that there was nothing suspicious.
On the seventh day, Lane phoned Smith. "I can't take this submarine existence any longer. And I have to get a job or starve. So, I'm leaving. If your storm troopers try to stop me, I'll resist. And you can't afford to have a big stink raised."
In the struggle that followed, Lane and the two CACO agents staggered into the area beneath the skylight. Lane went down, as he knew he would, but he felt that he had to make some resistance or lose his right to call himself a man. He stared up into the skylight while his hands were cuffed. He was not surprised when the phone rang, though he could not have given a reasonable explanation of why he expected it.
A third agent, just entering, answered. He talked for a moment, then turned and said, "Smith says to let him go. And we're to come on home. Something sure made him change his mind."
Lane started for the door after his handcuffs were unlocked. The phone rang again. The same man as before answered it. Then he shouted at Lane to stop, but Lane kept on going, only to be halted by two men stationed at the elevator.
Lane's phone was being monitored by CACO agents in the basement of the apartment building. They had called up to report that Smith had not given that order. In fact, no one had actually called in from outside the building. The call had come from somewhere within the building.
Smith showed up fifteen minutes later to conduct the search throughout the building. Two hours later, the agents were told to quit looking. Whoever had made that call imitating Smith's voice and giving the new code words had managed, somehow, to get out of the building unobserved.
"SKIZO, or whoever it is, must be using a machine to simulate my voice," Smith said. "No human throat could do it well enough to match voiceprints."
Voices!
Lane straightened up so swiftly that the men on each side of him grabbed his arms.
Dr. Sue Brackwell!
Had he really talked to her that last time, or was someone imitating her voice, too? He could not guess why; the mysterious Whoever could be using her voice to advance whatever plans he had. Sue had said that she just wanted to talk for old times' sake. Whoever was imitating her might have been trying to get something out of him, something that would be a clue to... to what? He just did not know.
And it was possible that this Whoever had talked to Sue Brackwell, imitating his, Lane's voice.
Lane did not want to get her into trouble, but he could not afford to leave any possible avenue of investigation closed. He spoke to Smith about it as they went down the elevator. Smith listened intently, but he only said, "We'll see."
Glumly, Lane sat on the back seat between two men, also glum, as the car traveled through the streets of Washington. He looked out the window and through the smog saw a billboard advertising a rerun of The Egg and I. A block later, he saw another billboard, advertising a well-known brand of beer. SKY-BLUE WATERS, the sign said, and he wished he were in the land of sky-blue waters, fishing and drinking beer.
Again, he straightened up so swiftly that the two men grabbed him.
"Take it easy," he said. He slumped back down, and they removed their hands. The two advertisements had been a sort of free association test, provided only because the car had driven down this route and not some other it might easily have taken. The result of the conjunction of the two billboards might or might not be validly linked up with the other circuits that had been forming in the unconscious part of his mind. But he now had a hypothesis. It could be developed into a theory which could be tested against the facts. That is, it could be if he were given a chance to try it.
Smith heard him out, but he had only one comment. "You're thinking of the wildest things you can so you'll throw us off the track."
"What track?" Lane said. He did not argue. He knew that Smith would go down the trail he had opened up. Smith could not afford to ignore anything, even the most farfetched of ideas.
Lane spent a week in the padded cell. Once, Smith entered to talk to him. The conversation was brief.
"I can't find any evidence to support your theory," Smith said.
"Is that because even CACO can't get access to certain classified documents and projects at Lackalas Astronautics?" Lane said.
"Yeah. I was asked what my need to know was, and I couldn't tell them what I really was trying to find out. The next thing I'd know, I'd be in a padded cell with regular sessions with a shrink."
"And so, because you're afraid of asking questions that might arouse suspicions of your sanity, you'll let the matter drop?"
"There's no way of finding out if your crazy theory has any basis."
"Love will find a way," Lane said.
Smith snorted, spun around, and walked out.
That was at 11 a.m. At 12:03, Lane looked at his wristwatch (since he was no longer compelled to go naked) and noted that lunch was late. A few minutes afterward, an Air Force jet fighter on a routine flight over Washington suddenly dived down and hit CACO HQ at close to 1000 mph. It struck the massive stone building at the end opposite Lane's cell. Even so, it tore through the fortress-like outer walls and five rooms before stopping.
Lane, in the second subfloor, would not have been hit if the wreck had traveled entirely through the building. However, flames began to sweep through, and guards unlocked his door and got him outside just in time. On orders transmitted via radio, his escorts put him into a car to take him across the city to another CACO base. Lane was stiff with shock, but he reacted quickly enough when the car started to go through a red light. He was down on the floor and braced when the car and the huge Diesel met. The others were not killed. They were not, however, in any condition to stop him. Ten minutes later, he was in his apartment.
Dr. Sue Brackwell was waiting for him under the skylight. She had no clothes on; even her glasses were off. She looked very beautiful; it was not until much later that he remembered that she had never been beautiful or even passably pretty. He could not blame his shock for behaving the way he did, because the tingling and the warmth dissolved that. He became very alive, so much so that he loaned sufficient life to the thing that he pulled down to the floor. Somewhere in him existed the knowledge that "she" had prepared this for him and that no man might ever experience this certain event again. But the knowledge was so far off that it influenced him not at all.