SUB-ZERO

ROBERT W. WALKER

Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Walker, www.robertwalkerbooks.com

Cover copyright © 2010 by Stephen Walker, www.srwalkerdesigns.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert W. Walker.

Prologue

The snow began as large flakes the size of leaves, lovely to watch as they floated like feathers from above, lazily at first, bumping one another with little kisses, and this is how it all looked to Arlene Stephanuk when she glanced out her living room window for a final look before making the attempt to get to the sitter’s and then to work before the storm might grow in intensity—as the newscaster on TV warned. She turned and saw her little toddler playing about in his tee-pee, a cardboard thing that he loved to sleep in and play in all day long if she let him. But for now, she must disturb his play, strap him into the backseat of the car out in the garage, and off they must go so she could make the rent and pay for the groceries and all manner of sundries needed for a single mom and her babe. She was sure the weatherman was exaggerating conditions, and they had been living in sub-zero weather now for what, two months? Life and strife as her dear mom was fond of saying, must go on.

It was no more than ten minutes and she was out the door with everything little Stephen would need at the sitter’s—a day care, really—and in a moment the garage door opened and she backed out into a snowfall that was not so sweet anymore. The leafy large flakes had transformed into a driving rain-like pelting of beady snow like rice making noise against the windows and hood. For a second, she thought to just pull back in, call in and tell them it was not safe, but then she chastised herself for being a wimp, hit the automatic to close the garage door before her and backed out, careful around the snow banks like bunkers all around them when a snow plow with either a drunk driver or a fellow up for forty-eight hours came within inches to hitting them as it barreled by and shoveled huge globs of snow onto their car, frightening Stephen and setting him on to tears and wailing.

Arlene did her best to calm him from the front seat as she drove for the day care center, unaware that already her car top was covered in white as if some giant had worked to make it disappear against the snow covered landscape all around them. Arlene drove on, despite the early morning darkness and despite the radio voice saying that “if at all possible, remain in your homes today. This will be a killer storm folks.”

“Yeah, and a career killer for mommy,” Arlene said to her baby, “if I miss another day.”

Stephen burped loudly in response at the same moment the car hit a patch of black ice and spun out of control, careening to one side of the road and then the other, and slamming to a jaw-jarring, abrupt stop when it dove into a snow bank.

With Arlene dazed and the baby staring at the blank whiteness all round them, the snow outside saw the victims and directed more snowfall to cover and claim them. Arlene came to and realized that she was pinned in her seat where the door had wrinkled in on her bleeding leg. She panicked for a moment before blacking out altogether. Stephen by contrast played with a chew toy, teething.

1

Dateline Chicago, April 14, 2020 United International Weather Services

Arctic conditions grip much of us Great Plains regions, the entire Midwest, and most of the Northeast-reaching as far south as Missouri, Kentucky, and the Virginias, have claimed an estimated 1,984 lives over the past three days.

While figures remain unofficial, they are not expected to exceed the great storm of December 23, 2019, less than six months ago, which took the lives of thirty-eight hundred Americans. However, state and local officials in areas hardest hit by the storm are reporting higher fatalities in their regions than they’d experienced with the blizzard of 2019.

Death tolls as they stand to date, by city and state, are as follows ...

A runner stood at the electronic teletype machine, oblivious to the staccato rapping of the keys as the machine seemed to drone on endlessly like a sewing machine on automatic pilot. The runner was a young man of eighteen years, a would-be reporter after four years of college. The tele-tape sheets had run down to the floor and covered his neat, square-toed boots looking like the ticker tape of the Stock Exchange. The stories had long since lost their appeal for the student. All of them were weather reports of one sort or another. A bridge at Wabash had collapsed due to the amount of ice piled there by the three-day-old blizzard. It had happened three days ago but only now was it discovered. Traffic congestion hampered rescue efforts until it was decided that all efforts were too dangerous. Not even the newly developed Cyclonic Helicopters, more powerful than earlier aircraft, could withstand the howling winds, ice, and snow.

The runner knew he would not be returning to his apartment in nearby Evanston for a long time, and that his snowhorse—a snowmobile of gargantuan strength, purchased for him by his parents when he started college, would be under several feet of snow by now. The storm meant he’d miss another week of classes. But so, too, would his profs and the entire academic community in Evanston. Then he wondered if anyone had been trapped in classes. His heart leaped, going out to whatever poor soul got stranded with Professor Leper. He had once. Before they’d been able to get out of English 10 I, the students were nearly ready to murder Leper, who had kept them on a schedule of class work the whole time. They’d gotten half way through the classics in three days. The students conspired to murder Leper and blame it on the weather. Fortunately for Mr. Leper, the weather broke.

For the runner, all the news stories amounted to one big pain in the ass, a huge stack of paper he had to cart to the newsroom on the 99th floor. He’d been given strict orders not to take any of it up until now. By usual standards, the tape was running slow. Most of the remote terminals were inoperative, probably because no one could get to them to report a story. Much of the material coming in, ironically, was from the outside-National Weather Service, United Press. So the boss, Mr. Sirotto, said let it pile up. The runner, being an obligingly correct young man, let it pile up.

While it piled up, he’d become bored stiff with the stories, all of them weather-related. Everything that happened had a weather tie-in, cause, or angle. Sometimes the death tolls from weather-related accidents, stranded motorists, and the like, were higher than those from the war in South America. Electric power in many parts of the Midwest, and along the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, was either lost or going again. Another dam had sustained structural damage as a result of ice-laden rivers that had begun to move in the manner of small glaciers across the Great Plains, the Northwest, the Midwest, and New England. Canadians continued to pour across the American border, which was largely unpatrolled, adding to the joblessness, hunger and degradation in North American cities. North America’s war over the Panama Canal was only the beginning. America had its eye on Peru. Once dominated, Americans meant to occupy the vast acreages left untouched by the Peruvian Government, then build farms to provide food for the starving masses in cities all across the sun belt-where massive population movement into California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida had caused overcrowding and resulted in so much human suffering. Thousands died annually on the streets of Orlando and St. Petersburg from sheer hunger. The U.S. program aimed at “spreading the wealth” was a monumental failure.

All the stories were the same-the weather around the world was responsible for a wave of terror, famine, and death.

The runner took his box of tele-tape to the elevator, and soon faced the messy newsroom where the reporters were sprawled about their desks and chairs, some sleeping, others talking. Paper cups and cigarette butts were everywhere. The room was filled with a haze that smelled of smoke and perspiration. They’d all been trapped in the building for several days. When the elevator door opened, those who were awake instantly looked to see who it was, to see any new face.

“Ah! Something to do!” shouted one reporter. “Something besides filing my nails,” said Joanna Sommers, a tall, willowy blonde whose features changed with her steps from demure to aggressive. “I’ve got dibs on the Coulton stuff!”

“Better than cleaning my desk again,” one middleaged, glassy-skinned reporter said to the man beside him.

“Coulton?” cried a voice from across the newsroom. “What do you have going with the Coulton investigation? That’s my story.”

Joanna Sommers saw a thick-bearded, long-haired man coming at her with full force; his eyes softened a little, as he let them go over her. She’d heard about Tim Crocker but they had never met. Some of the newsmen joked about his appearance, calling him Davey Crockett, after some mountain man in America’s past who’d died at the Alamo in a buckskin coat. Tim Crocker had his infamous buckskin coat on now. From the smell of it, it’s the one Crockett wore at the Alamo, she thought. It was certainly not an imitation. She wondered where he picked it up.

Crocker stammered somewhat, realizing he was up against a woman, Joanna thought. His dimples could be seen below his bearded cheeks. With a hot shower, a shave and perhaps a shampoo, he might be a handsome man, she thought. His eyes were a beautiful, sincere blue as deep as she’d ever seen. It was a pity they were covered with thick glasses on wire rims.

“I’ve been following Coulton from the beginning,” he managed to tell her. “I know all there is to know about the case. Why don’t you just ask me?”

“Do you think he’s guilty, like they say?” she said directly.

“Well, sure. I mean it’s obvious.” “Not so obvious,” she countered. “Okay, not so obvious.”

“But you’re pretty sure he’s guilty.”

“I’ve been at most of the hearings, and I have come to the conclusion that he is,” said Crocker loud enough for everyone to hear, an edge in his voice.

“Do you really think he deliberately left his wife and children to die, knowing where he might find shelter? That his plan called for a knowledge of just how long he could survive in the cold himself? He’d actually plotted the time he would fall through the door of that diner out in the middle of nowhere on I-55?”

“I do, after seeing all the evidence laid out by the prosecution.”

“So, even though the man may still die of pneumonia, and although he almost froze to death himself-leaving his car eight miles from the diner and trudging through the worst blizzard of 20 19-it’s an absolute certainty that he’d driven out there with the express purpose of doing away with his entire family?”

“Read my articles. All the facts presented by the prosecution are there and they all spell murder, m-u- ... ““Okay, I know how it’s spelled.”

Crocker’s eyebrows went up at this. “What’s your concern?”

“Such crimes are on the rise and I think they’re linked to two things. One we can’t do much about. The other-new laws enacted to keep people like you and me in our place, is another thing.”

“Bully! Bully,” Tim Crocker said, raising his arms mockingly. “We have a damned inalienable right or two left! You tell them!”

“We know the Annery-Sideon Act is unconstitutional,” she answered.

“What can we or anyone do about the Annery Act? It’s not only law, Miss, Miss - what is your name?”

Joanna was surprised. She was a minority in the newsroom, though there were’ several other women, but her star had risen far above any other female reporter on either of the Fieldcrest papers. “Sommers, Joanna Sommers,” she answered.

He had to look slightly up at her when he talked. She was perhaps an inch taller. “Well, Miss Sommers, as I say, it’s not only law, it’s survival! Limiting population and controlling the density of masses in areas below latitude 40 North has become top priority for our southern congressmen, who happen to be running the country these days, as you know.”

“Yes, I know it well. They’ve got all the capital, all the millions to build on, while we’re left in a crippled world where anyone can get in, but no one can get out.”

“All you need is a visa, a work permit, and a job waiting at the other end, if you want out, Miss Sommers. Really not so much to ask. If you did go to say, sunny California, where I understand the average temperature is now 15 above, the sun continues to shine but has no warmth, you’d probably starve to death. Unless, of course, you took up hooking, but even there we’ve got an oversupply.”

Joanna’s face reddened a little, not over the remark but because she didn’t know if Crocker was being cruel or not. She’d been sleeping with Mark Wertman, Fieldcrest’s highest paid Climatologist, for less than a year. She was sure the rumors were flying.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” said Crocker. “Come over here and sit down. I’m tired too, drained. It’s the drudgery of all this. After a while it starts working on you, you know. I’ve managed to alienate just about everyone in the newsroom and I’m working on the girls in the cafeteria. The only one who cares about me at all is Marie at the receptionist desk. She gets a little teed-off when she thinks I’m not taking my coffee break, or when I’m not in the office for seven or eight days. Thank God we’ve got the Computa-punch cards. Even as it is, if I don’t get to a terminal to punch in my time, they dock hell out of me, and how’s a guy supposed to punch in and out when he’s working on a story in this madness? Once, for eleven days, I was snowed in-almost starved in my own apartment-and on the eleventh day I realized I hadn’t punched out at the University terminal. Do you think they’d overlook that and pay me around the clock? No way. They made it straight time. There’s a girl in bookkeeping crazy about me. So crazy that, if she ever saw me when she was holding a gun, she’d surely kill me.”

“You’re really a talker when you get going, aren’t you,” said Joanna.

“Yeah, I guess I am. I talk easiest with beautiful women,” he smiled.

She returned his smile. “Well, you answered my question and, since you’re sure Coulton’s guilty, I’ll use his case in my story tomorrow.”

Crocker’s eyes narrowed again. “You can’t say he’s guilty-the verdict’s not in.”

“Don’t worry, I’m hardly an amateur. I’m just going to point to his case as another example of what’s happening to us all.”

“What’s happening to us all,” he repeated.

“Like the girl in bookkeeping you mentioned, Mr. Crocker. She might easily hunt you down one of these mornings and kill you, if she is given a steady dose of weather-fever, or what I’m calling in my article ‘the cold inside,’ meaning in here.” Joanna pointed to her head.

“Another story about weather and human behavior,” said Crocker, unimpressed .”I hope it will be more than just another story, Mr. Crocker.”

“Hey, call me Tim, or Crocker, okay?”

“Sure,” she said, leaving for the elevator, “call me Joanna.”

He smiled, watching her measured, graceful steps as she walked away from him. She was, Crocker had to admit, too classy for him. He wondered if the rumors about her and Wertman were true.

“Hey, wait a minute.” Crocker caught up to her. “Yes?”

He stammered more, and she thought he was going to ask her for coffee or a date. “What’s the first thing?”

“The first what?”

“You said such crimes as Coulton’s are on the rise and they are related to two things, the Annery Act which contains us in our frozen States and ... “

“Hey, nice pun,” she smiled. “You should be doing political cartoons.”

He ignored her and continued, stammering a little.

“And, and something we can’t do anything about. What’s the something?”

“The pressure, Tim. Don’t you feel it? I can see it in just about everybody, especially those who haven’t lived here all their lives. It comes with the years, the near escapes, the rising number of friends, relatives, and loved ones who’ve been caught and killed by the ice.”

Crocker only lowered his head and nodded a simple agreement as Joanna boarded the elevator, a partial tele-tape clutched in her hands. “When I get through with these stories on Coulton, I’ll send them down. I’m going to observation.”

The door closed on Crocker’s protests.

2

In all of his years as a copter pilot, Marlo Cigliani had never felt so much frustration and hatred due to a storm. Everywhere he turned he was thwarted, and he knew it was madness to remain aloft another minute, much less the time it would take to get to Meig’s Field. Still, there was no landing on the top of the Fieldcrest building. The helipad was completely gone, buried beneath several feet of snow. The building top itself was nearly indistinguishable in the raging white outside the helicopter. And now Mark Wertman was pulling his Doctor Wertman routine-pulling rank, like so-called buddies in the service always wound up doing once they moved up the scale.

“Goddamnit, Marlo, I have to get back to command post. Either lower the bird or throw out the ladder,” shouted Wertman, clearly not to be argued with anymore. “1 don’t give a damn if you and the copter are dashed against the building! There’s more at stake than just you or me anymore.”

Cigliani knew what the kid meant. They’d traversed over four hundred thousand square miles around Chicago and the Great Lakes region. After seeing what was happening all over, Marlo didn’t care if he ever set his bird down on the ground again. It was mid-April, and the entire Midwest was experiencing the worst snow and ice storm since the crippling storm of 1989. Since ‘89 there were more and more crippling, terrible, death-carrying storms of ice and snow. It had become an acceptable phenomenon, barely questioned. Winter meant death. The statistics had skyrocketed so often over the past thirty years that people no longer wondered. It was like listening to the news about the war in South America. The figures were high, but they were acceptable because some unfeeling bastard on television, with polished teeth and styled hair, said the toll was lower than expected or lower than yesterday’s head count.

Sometimes Cigliani allowed himself to wonder why he worked for FBC (Fieldcrest Broadcasting Company), carting around the weathermen and newspaper men he despised. He’d be in South America in the war if they’d take him.

“When I was a kid,” he’d said to Mark Wertman, who had treated him like an equal and a friend, “you never had people dying in Chicago, Minneapolis, or Cleveland of cold. Oh, sure, we’d hear about some poor old guy that went out with his shovel and had a heart attack, or someone who’d overexposed himself or something. But this, this is crazy.”

Wertman had been very professional about answering him, saying, “How old are you, Marlo? Fifty-four maybe? What would that have made you in 1969--no, 1978? Twelve, say thirteen?”

“That’s about right.”

“In 1978, in the Midwest, over a three day period, over ninety people died as the result of a blizzard unparalleled in the history of the region. Recorded history, I mean, kept records on the weather. In 1979 it was worse. After ‘80 still worse, until it peaked in 1989, when we lost four hundred and sixteen people in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Several hundred more dead to the west of us- Iowa, the Dakotas. Even more dead in Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

“I can still remember when deaths were few due to such weather conditions.”

“The conditions aren’t the same, Marlo. They never will be the same again.”

Marlo had pushed the release at his right which opened the hatch at the copter’s center simultaneously sending a rope ladder careening down, toward the top of the building. He turned to Wertman and looked into the younger man’s eyes, figuring him to be in his mid to upper thirties, though he looked younger. Wertman, he realized, had never known a mild Midwestern winter.

“Good luck, Doc.” Cigliani attempted a quick handshake.

“Keep your hands on the controls, and be careful getting to Meigs—and thank God the new governor saw to renovating the airstrip there. I’m afraid we’ve overstayed our welcome out here!”

They looked firmly into each other’s eyes, Wertman trying to rekindle some of Cigliani’s usual good nature. He realized the copter was all Cigliani had.

“Look,” he finally said to Cigliani. “I’m sorry about the crack about wrecking the Copter! I didn’t mean it. I know how much ... “

“Get moving, Doc, she won’t last long here in this current.” Marlo Cigliani’s usual semi-tough voice had returned. Wertman hurried to the hull and out onto the rope, shinnying down quickly.

3

The observation tower was crammed with many more people than Mark Wertman cared to see at that moment. He entered the glassed-in floor from the stairs leading to the roof, while rubbing his burning, red eyes with the palms of his gloved hands. He calculated the last time he’d slept was two days before. He’ was ‘dressed in a snow-drenched, tan, Marlboro sports coat. His face was covered partially by a deep blue scarf. Over his hair was pulled a blue stocking cap.

Normally, the observation floor was empty. It cost a dollar for restricted people to enter, and they could not go completely around the floor, their path being cut off on the north side where Wertman now stood. Still, there were always a few amateur weathermen, and visitors from out of town who’d heard of the John Hancock; the Sears Tower, and Fieldcrest Buildings. But the Hancock and Sears were the place to go, unless you came on the chance that you might meet some of PB’s celebrities. FBC, Fieldcrest Broadcasting Company, was housed in the building, along with Fieldcrest Enterprises-consisting of two newspapers, two FCC radio stations, and a wholesale distribution and manufacturing company which dealt in communications equipment of all kinds.

Mark Wertman was a celebrity, by having risen as the city’s top climatologist through his studies at the University, and his role as FBC’s top weatherman. He’d been trying to get out of his contract with James Atgeld Fieldcrest and FBC for several months, since he’d taken the Mayor’s offer to become the City’s Chief Climatologist. Climatology was more than weather, and a climatologist was not a weatherman. He’d outgrown FBC, the camera’s eye, and celebrity. He hated to be called a weatherman, and tried to get FBC bigwigs to change to the more enlightened title of climatologist. They did a study on the street. Nobody knew what a climatologist was. One woman said it must be a mountain climber. They scrapped the idea.

More important than his being tired of the unimaginary, disciplined FBC thinking, Mark wanted to have the freedom to devote himself one-hundred per cent to his new duties as the city’s Chief Climatologist. It meant special projects, a department and staff of his own choosing, and freedom from time requirements of men like Fieldcrest, whose only interests were inextricably mixed with average gains. Not that Wertman’s new position wouldn’t be lucrative.

But his contempt for FBC, and his thoughts of a better life with a budget from the Mayor’s office were pushed far back into his mind now. His concern was for the horrible nightmare, which lay in the city. The death toll already stood at ninety-four persons, and the snow and ice continued to mount. When would it end? He and every other weatherman across the Midwest had predicted it would end nine hours before. But it didn’t. The snow just kept coming.

Wertman started for the six doors of the elevators at the center of the observation deck. He recognized some of

the people who stood in shocked horror about the windows, intimidated by the ferocity of the storm. They were employees of FBC, from the two newsrooms or with one or more of the radio stations in the building. His eyes fell for a moment on Joanna Sommers-a fair-skinned, tall blonde, who had earned a reputation as a competent and aggressive investigative reporter. Joanna and Mark Wertman weren’t dating as far as anyone knew, but they saw a lot of each other over lunches at The Hilton, The Ritz, The University Club and other posh places within walking distance of a four-star hotel. But Wertman’s and Joanna’s talk at Fieldcrest, when their paths did happen to cross, was usually short, formal, almost cryptic and always self-conscious. That they were seeing each other was no one else’s business. They’d agreed their relationship could be ruined by office talk, gossip, and notoriety.

Mark acted as if she were just another of the employees milling about the deck, trapped within the building like everyone else had been. Wertman thought he would get an elevator before anyone he knew would say anything to him. People who didn’t know him would take him for one of the maintenance crew.

Days before, his friendly grin had died away, along with his energy. Underneath the stocking cap, his dark, long hair was matted with grease and perspiration. Like everyone else, he needed a bath. But he could not disguise the boyish good looks, the broad, athletic shoulders or large frame. He’d never looked like a weatherman, more like a sportscaster, or the football player being interviewed by the sportscaster. He didn’t wear a tie, not even on camera, and his six-three frame was well illustrated when he’d take off his jacket in the newsroom.

Suddenly, as he waited there for the infernally slow elevator door to open, a heavy hand lay on his shoulder and someone shouted, “Some goddamn weatherman you are.”

It was Henry Ketterling. Ketterling, the anchorman for the weekend news show at FBE, was a tall, square-jawed man who slapped everyone on the back and enjoyed cursing whenever it fit well with what he had to say, which seemed always. Ketterling’s semi-friendly gaze brought crow’s feet to his eyes. Mark vengefully said to himself, “Bet you’re getting to be more and more of a problem for makeup.”

“Hey, keep it down, will you, Ketterling?”

“Touchy, touchy aren’t we,” said Ketterling, acting like a first class fruit, his fingers and hands moving about Mark’s collar. Then Henry Ketterling said in dead seriousness, “You know I’ve been trapped here for three days? The food in the cafeteria is about gone. The damn heat keeps going off every hour. There’s no place to call for help because the place to call for help needs help!”

Henry’s face had become red, contrasting sharply with his thinning, silver hair.

“So what in hell do you want me to do about it?” asked Mark, irritated beyond endurance, glaring into Ketterling’s eyes now.

The elevator door opened. Several people were on it.

They were laughing about something. One of them was telling a story. The group looked out the door at the two angry faces in front of them and fell silent. Wertman fought with people getting off the elevator as he got on.

Before the door closed, Ketterling put his foot in it. The two doors returned to their hiding places between the walls as though they’d touched fire. “You might have warned us about this, this nightmare, Wertman!”

Wertman took a step toward the older man. He was too tired for this, he knew. He tried to control his voice. “I did predict this. I’ve been predicting it for years. Now it’s here and there isn’t a hell of a lot I can do about it!”

Just then Joanna pulled away from the group of reporters she was with, hearing Mark’s voice. She yelled to him, “Hold the elevator, please.”

At the same time the elevator began to close again. But a trim, light-skinned, sallow-faced man of about fifty, standing only five-foot six inches tall, forced his way past Ketterling and got into the elevator with Mark Wertman. A moment before the doors closed, Joanna Sommers boarded.

Wertman greeted Joanna, ignoring the stranger at his left, too tired to notice that the short man hadn’t pushed a down button. The newsroom was on the 99th floor. The weather room occupied the entire lOOth floor just below the observation deck. Joanna smiled politely at the stranger. His face was like a cold mask. She pushed the 30th floor where the company cafeteria was located.

“You look like you could use some coffee, Mark,” she said. “I’ll join you.”

“I have to work,” he said dryly. Then looking into her eyes, he said sincerely, “I’m glad you’re here, Jo, and not stuck somewhere outside, running down some wild story in this blizzard.”

“N0 one’s going anywhere for a long time,” she responded.

“You’l1 be there first though, when they open the doors.”

She chuckled lightly in return. He began to step off the elevator on the weather room floor. “I’ll bring your coffee up!”

Mark turned to look at her, somewhat shocked. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea, Joanna.”

It was only then he realized that the little man on the elevator, standing slightly behind Joanna had a gun in his hand and was visibly trembling. The gun was pointed at Wertman.

Mark saw the hand, blue from frostbite, fingering the trigger. He saw there was no time to react, that he would be shot in less than a second. His eyes fixed for the first time into the man’s face. He had a nearly blue growth of stubble on his face, and looked comical in a crumpled coat and hat, like some refugee from a circus. The little man’s lower lip retreated behind the upper lip in a pout. It looked as if he might cry as soon as the gun was fired. As the elevator doors began to close again, Wertman realized the man’s hand wasn’t working, that it reacted to his will the way a lead paperweight might. It was a blue, frostbitten clump over which he had no control.

Wertman hadn’t time to think. He just pushed through the closing doors, past Joanna, grabbing the would-be assassin in his massive hands, prying the gun loose from him. But the gun did not pry easily. Wertman found it was so tightly clasped in the man’s blue fist that it was part of him.

Joanna screamed when Wertman lurched back into the cab of the elevator. She thought he’d gone mad when he attacked the stranger next to her.

“Mark! Mark!” she kept shouting.

“Joanna!” responded Wertman, wrestling the smaller man to the floor and finally dislodging the gun. “Press the lower level!”

By this time the elevator doors lunged open to face a crowd of bewildered office workers in wrinkled, loose clothes, holding sandwiches and plastic cups in their hands.

“What the hell?” asked one man who had his hands filled with several bags of potato chips and a hot drink.

A young man with long hair and a beard, whom Joanna knew as Crocker from the newsroom, glared for only a moment before dropping his sandwich and jumping into the elevator. Crocker pulled at Wertman to get him away from the stranger, but Crocker was no match for Mark who pushed him aside. Still, Crocker, like the hero in a soap opera, looked at Joanna and asked, “Are you all right?”

Wertman had to reach up and push the button marked LL himself. He saw that both Joanna and Crocker were staring at him.

“Has this guy gone nuts?” asked the bearded Tim Crocker.

“I don’t know,” said Joanna, still staring. Her smooth blonde hair lay wildly over her shoulders.

Wertman had lost his stocking cap in the foray. He recalled tearing off his gloves in order to pull the gun away. Even the gun was lost somewhere in the cab of the car.

“What’s at LL?” asked Joanna, finally. “Where’s the gun?”

“You mean this?” asked Crocker, getting up from the corner of the cab where he’d been pushed. “This is frozen solid.”

“This man here,” said Wertman out of breath, “was going to kill me with it.”

“It can’t fire, Wertman. The barrel is frozen stiff. If it did go off it would’ve taken his hand with it. Why’s he after you?” Crocker began the newsman’s questions in rapid fire. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” answered Mark Wertman, perspiring under his heavy coat, and staring at the Whimpering little man. Then, taking the gun from Tim, Mark said, “I’m going to take him to Gordy in Security. I hope there’s someplace where he can be locked up.”

Joanna shivered as she realized what had happened.

But she forced herself to bend over the tearful man and, seeing his frozen features, his blue hands, she snapped, “He needs a doctor.”

“Sure, I’ll call Rush or General right away,” said Wertman sarcastically.

“There must be someone in Fieldcrest’s kingdom who can administer medicine,” said Crocker. “I’ll check with Marie at the switchboard. She knows everyone in the building, what their jobs are, and how long they take for breaks.”

Crocker was about to take the elevator back up. Mark, Joanna, and the assailant stared down a blank corridor towards Harold Gordon’s office. At the lower level, no money was wasted on frills. The walls were as gray and drab as the inside of an underground cavern. The floor was stone white. Joanna visibly shook with the cold and damp.

Wertman held the elevator for a moment, wondering if they should let it go. “What if Gordy isn’t in his office,” he thought to himself. He and Joanna would be left alone with a maniac.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Crocker.

“I’ve never been down here before. It’s spooky, cold,” said Joanna, as if answering Crocker,

“No trouble,” said Mark. “Hurry back, though, and Crocker, thanks for the help you gave me on level thirty.”

Crocker half smiled. Wertman laughed easily.

4

Tim Crocker pulled at the curly stubble of his beard, wondering why in hell the man downstairs with Joanna Sommers and Mark Wertman was so bent on killing Wertman. He pushed the button for the concourse and held it there. The elevator didn’t seem to want to lift. He wondered if it would give out soon, and if the electricity would be lost again. He’d already spent a half hour stuck in this very elevator earlier that day. He should have taken the stairs.

The beard was beginning to irritate him. He needed to wash it, as he needed to wash all over. He’d grown the damn beard not only to be different but because he’d hoped it would make him look older. He was tired of being called “Kid” by everyone he met. He looked years younger without the growth. His size and weight were a deceptively tall 6’3” and a prizefighter’s 160. His weight was distributed well, being mostly taut muscle. He stayed in condition. He only wished he’d given Wertman a good jab to the jaw. The larger man might have been surprised. He would certainly have been stunned.

The elevator opened on the concourse level at the second floor. Crocker went directly for the information desk, where he’d find a telephone and call Marie. Before he got to the desk, the sight of the windows and doors leading out to Michigan Avenue almost knocked him over. The concourse windows would soon burst from the weight of snow and ice, reaching God knew how far above the concourse level.

“My God,” Tim gulped, realizing the FBC building was fast becoming a monolithic tomb for them all. Then he wondered how the blue-faced assassin had gotten inside the building. He looked as though he’d just crawled out of the snow. Crocker forced his mind over every exit and entrance he knew to the building. He knew the doors to the lower level garage had a sign marked emergency exit. He wondered where it led to. Probably right into the alley on Hubbard, below Michigan. There was also the loading dock at that level. The stranger must have somehow come through one of these. There were other exits, but they’d be buried too. Perhaps the only way out of FBC was the way the stranger got in, at the lower Wacker-Michigan level. He’d have to get the blue man talking. He didn’t like the eerie feeling that came over him as he looked into the blank wall of white snow, perhaps twenty-five feet high, which seemed to beckon in some unholy voice, ‘Open the door, open the door.’ He didn’t like the idea of being trapped.

He turned away from the wall of ice at the windows and dialed Marie by punching 0 on the phone. The phone had a video screen and Tim was anxious to see a human face. The concourse seemed like a place for only dead people.

But Marie didn’t pick up her phone. It just rang and rang. The other switchboard girls had long before stopped answering calls or bothering with intercom calls throughout the building. They must have finally enticed Marie to join them in the cafeteria, Tim reasoned.

“Damnit, Marie, where are you when I need you?”

5

At the switchboard, located on level twenty-one in a small corner office behind an unmarked door, Tim Crocker knew he would find the Master-com amid the octopuslooking wires of the gigantic switchboard. With a simple flick of a switch, the Master-com could reach all floors, offices and rooms in the building, overriding any other in-house communications. It was designed for such an emergency. Even Joanna and Wertman at ground level would hear him.

God could not have so large a switchboard in heaven, Tim thought. Each time he entered the room where Marie and fifteen other receptionists worked, he felt trapped and uncomfortable. The room looked smaller that it was, due to the vast console of plugs, wires, mysterious lights, and the little caps that made Tim think of points and plugs in the old gas-burning automobile his father drove.

The room was unusually cluttered. Chairs seemed to have been knocked over when the girls left in a mad rush from the console to the cafeteria where, as Tim had seen earlier, they’d taken up more permanent residence, some sleeping at tables. Even Marie’s chair was thrown down beside the large blackboard. That seemed strange to Tim.

As did the lights. They were not completely on or off. If Marie had left for the cafeteria, he reasoned, she’d have first tidied up the room. She would not only have picked up the chairs but pushed them into place. She wouldn’t have left ashtrays and magazines lying about. Nor would she have left the lights on. She was very meticulous, and perhaps the most energy-conscious person Tim had ever met. They’d argued over her pinching light, gas, water, microwaves, and, as if that wasn’t enough, personal power! He’d often accused her of holding back when they made love. She denied it, of course.

It was as if someone had come in after Marie had left to completely and maliciously disrupt everything. Unless she herself had finally blown her stack like everyone else. Perhaps she’d said to hell with conservation, neatness, and good living. He hoped it was the former. He wouldn’t really like to see Marie change.

He found the tiny switch on the Master-com and cleared his throat. Then he realized he should put on the headphone to hear himself clearly. “Attention. Attention everyone. We need a doctor or someone familiar with first aid at the lower level, Harold Gordon’s office, right away! We need help with a cold-burn victim. He’s blue with cold.”

He snapped the switch down and pulled off the headphones, his thick, sandy-brown hair lifting in tufts about his ears. He wondered for a moment about Marie and the room. It looked for all the world as though someone had deliberately stormed the room. The semidarkness made him feel chilled. He decided to return to Wertman and Joanna. He had some questions for the man with the blue face.

6

Mark Wertman held the blue-faced killer’s arms pinned against his back. Wertman had never touched a living man who was so stiff and unresponsive before. He knew the would-be killer’s life was fast going, unless he could be helped. But the lower level was not the place to start thawing him out. It was uncannily cold. There seemed to be a terrible draft coming from ahead.

Joanna clutched Wertman’s arm, uncomfortable with the cold and the dingy surroundings.

“Gordy? You in there for Chrissake?” asked Wertman as he knocked at the door marked H. G. Gordon, Chief of Building Maintenance and Security.

“My feet,” complained Joanna, looking at the crack at the bottom of the door. “Do you feel that?”

Mark felt the rush of super-cooled air coming from beneath the door. “You’d swear the door led to the outside.”

“He doesn’t answer. Maybe he’s upstairs somewhere, Mark.”

“There’s always someone on duty.”

“Not now. I mean, not necessarily, in these circumstances,” Joanna argued. “If someone were down here they’d answer. Wouldn’t they?”

“Open the door,” he instructed her, still holding the icy stranger.

Joanna tried to twist the knob but it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s frozen, Mark. My hands are numb just touching it.”

Mark looked into the face of the would-be killer. He wondered who he was, what his name could be. “He must have come in through this way, Jo.”

Suddenly, the nearly frozen man seemed to tip like a lead-bottomed child’s toy. He slipped down, faint. Mark released him. Joanna hovered over the stranger.

“He’s comatose, I think,” she said, shaking her head in concern.

Mark was at the door, however, not paying any attention. He held the still cold gun in his hand and pointed it mockingly at the doorknob. “I feel like a detective in a spy novel where all the gadgets have backfired on me, This gun’s no good and there’s no way I can turn this simple, stupid doorknob!”

He backed up and kicked at the door several times without much effect. Then he tried several more times until he heard some noise from inside. Joanna looked to him. “Sounds like ice on the other side fell away,” he said.

He tried the knob again. It came grudgingly.

Inside, Gordy was at his desk asleep, it seemed, over some paperwork, but it was difficult to tell because a wind of gale force rushed out into the corridor, hitting Wertman in the face. One whole wall, the northwest wall, had given way under the ice and snow. Brick and metal had come crashing down. The temperature in the office had to be thirty or forty below. Since the lower level was somewhat protected from the heavy snows by the cave effect of being beneath Wacker and Michigan, Wertman could not believe this was happening to the outside of the building. Gordy’s office, located on the northwest corner, was outside much of the lower Wacker cover, below street level.

Wertman had never seen a more chilling sight in his life than the large form of Harold Gordon slumped over his desk, the skin on his hands and neck purple in the dingy light of the refrigerated room. It was then he realized Gordy’s head was matted with blood. He’d been hit over the left eye. Blood had coagulated with the frost. It looked as though someone had set off a bomb on that side of the building, and Gordy had been struck by debris and left to die here.

But wouldn’t a bomb have been heard? Wouldn’t it have quaked the building? Perhaps it had. Perhaps some of the people in the building did feel it, but chalked up the shattering effect to the storm itself. Maybe it was the storm that broke down the wall! Wertman’s mind raced. The man who’d tried to kill him must have known Gordy was Wertman’s body guard. He must know about Project WWC. He rushed out the door, closing it against the forceful wind.

He almost pushed Joanna aside when she tried to ask him what had happened. She’d seen the dead Security Chief and the mound of snow about the office. But Wertman was rifling through the pockets of the man who lay unconscious on the frozen concrete floor of LL.

Wertman’s large arms yanked the unconscious man over brutally, gashing his forehead. Mark’s face was contorted with hate for the man. Joanna stared, unbelieving. She’d never seen Mark so angry before.

“Who are you, you son-of-a bitch!” Wertman was screaming at the limp body of the man on the floor.

“He’s unconscious, Mark! Take it easy, you’ll kill him!” Joanna yelled. “Didn’t you get a good enough look in there?” shouted Mark, pointing to Gordon’s office door.

Joanna was certain, looking into his fiery, angry gaze that he was going to seize her roughly, perhaps to take her into Harold Gordon’s icebound office for a closer look at the dead man. This must be what the experts on human behavior meant by the “bad-weather animal,” thought Joanna, looking into his face. The phrase referred to the non-person man becomes in the face of extreme weather conditions.

The bad-weather animal was all that was left in man after the food, water, and warmth were gone. He was the cave-dweller of years past who killed his own children over the carcass of a deer, antelope, or bison. The bad-weather animal was the woman who helped to devour the child killed by the father. To stay alive she might even have done the killing herself. Altruism, parental love, concern for anyone at all was wiped out in a frozen world-men return to survival of the fittest. It was a nightmare Joanna did not want to face. She’d always told herself no matter how horrible the world’s climate became, the human race could never return to its animal beginnings. Civilization would remain civilization.

On the other hand, as a reporter, she’d seen mounting evidence of cruel, inhuman actions directly or indirectly related to the growing neurosis over the killer storms that continued to devastate the U.S. and other countries.

Mark’s eyes, looking down at the man who’d undoubtedly killed Harold Gordon and tried to kill Wertman, bespoke murder. Was even a man like Mark capable of being controlled by escalating feelings of anger, the more he was cooped up inside the Fieldcrest Building watching his world fall down around him?

Wertman had turned back to the prone body of the blue-faced man. He yanked a wallet from his inside coat pocket. His eyes seemed to rise in a look of surprise as he scanned it.

“Come on,” he said to Joanna, placing the wallet in his own coat pocket. “Let’s get out of here.”

“But what about him’?” Joanna pointed to the man on the floor.

“He’s dead, Jo. Come on.”

She shook her head, unsure. She bent over the body to feel for a pulse. There was none. Mark had already gone down the hall, and was ringing for an elevator when she got there.

It was then, standing at the elevator doors, waiting for the elevator to descend and open to them, they heard the startling, crackling noise. It was the noise of some gutteral ghost. The voice seemed to be emanating from Gordy’s office. It sounded like a plea for help.

“What is it?” Joanna shivered.

Wertman didn’t answer right away. “Intercom. Some one’s on override. It’s broadcasting in Gordy’s office. Must be Crocker.”

When the elevator doors opened, Joanna was relieved to get off LL. On the elevator, going up, she wondered why flip phrases and outrageous thoughts raced through her mind in times of crisis. She supposed it was an inner defense mechanism. She wondered if anyone else did it. Right now, with Mark Wertman acting like a total stranger, tearing apart the dead man’s wallet, she wanted to say, “Where to from here? Ladies lingerie? Housewares?”

Instead she pressed 101, the observation deck, the furthest point from LL on the board.

“I’ve got to get back to the weather room, Jo,” Wertman said almost casually. “Still have my reports to make to the National Weather Service.”

“Who is he?” she asked, pressing the number 1 00 on the panel.

“His name was Joraski, Emil Joraski, according to this.”

They were silent for a moment. Wertman looked at her. His eyes had cooled. “I’ve never heard of him before.”

“You don’t know if he was really out to get you do you? I mean, he seemed out of his mind. He could have been looking for anyone to kill. He may have been a maniac. Anyone. But you acted like a hunted man, as though you half expected someone to be pointing a gun at you, the way you leaped on him. I’m not so sure you didn’t insure his death, knocking him around like a melon!”

“Hey, wait a minute, Jo,” began Wertman, raising his large index finger.

“All right, maybe insure was the wrong word. But the man didn’t need the extra jockeying around you gave him, Mark. Maybe he’d still be alive to talk, if you’ hadn’t added the element of fright to his condition.”

“He was dead when he hit the floor down there, Jot Don’t make a damned ass of yourself on top of everything else today.”

“And another thing,” she countered, largely ignoring his remark. “Stop calling me Jo! I hate being called Jo.”

Mark’s full, boyish grin suddenly lit up his face. The elevator had ascended to the weather room. “Okay, okay,” he was laughing.

“I’m staying with you, Mark,” she said, getting off the elevator ahead of him. “At least for a while.”

He nodded in understanding. “But I’ll be busy for a couple of hours here.”

“While you’re doing that, I’ll report Gordon’s and Joraski’s deaths to the police,” she said.

“Don’t bother. I’ll take care of that. Nothing the police can do anyway right now,” he said. “They’re as snowbound as we are.”

“But we should make the report,” she answered.

“1 will. Now, you go into my office, fix yourself a drink, and get some sleep. Use the hotbox, if you like.”

7

On the elevator, going up, Joanna Sommers wondered why flip phrases and outrageous thoughts raced through her mind in times of crisis. She supposed it was an inner defense mechanism. She wondered if anyone else did it. Right now, with Mark Wertman acting like a total stranger, tearing apart the dead man’s wallet, she wanted to say, “Where to from here? Ladies lingerie? Housewares?”

Instead she pressed 101, the observation deck, the furthest point from LL on the board.

“I’ve got to get back to the weather room, Jo,” Wertman said almost casually. “Still have my reports to make to the National Weather Service.”

“Who is he?” she asked, pressing the number 100 on the panel.

“His name was Joraski, Emil Joraski, according to this.”

They were silent for a moment. Wertman looked at her. His eyes had cooled. “I’ve never heard of him before.”

“You don’t know if he was really out to get you do you?

I mean, he seemed out of his mind. He could have been looking for anyone to kill. He may have been a maniac.

8

The hill of bristled hair around Tim Crocker’s head, and the tufts of frost embedded in his thick beard, made him appear like an Eskimo in a fur-lined parka, though he was in his shirtsleeves. In his bare hands he held a large chunk of snow-encrusted ice.

“I’m okay, I’m just fine,” he kept telling the man in the elevator beside him. ‘

George Walsh, a second-year medical student, was shorter in stature than Tim, and he carried his barrel chest around as if it were armor. His face was older, serious, and Neanderthal. Serious balding had begun at each temple. He reminded Tim of a college friend who spent up to twelve hours a day in the archives, studying Middle and Old English.

Tim had gone back to the lower level in search of Joanna, Wertman, Gordy and the would-be killer. He’d found the blue-faced man in the corridor just as Wertman and Joanna had left him, on his stomach, dead. He then investigated Gordy’s office. What he found there struck terror into him. When he opened the door, the force of the wind almost knocked him down. Gordy’s body was solidly frozen. A mound of snow and ice arched from across the room where the wall had caved in, and formed a beautiful ridge over Harold Gordon’s shoulder blades. It was like an old horror film about a giant spider spinning a giant web, trapping people within it. The snow seemed to have been working its way toward old Gordy in a crazy, thinking sort of way, wishing to wrap itself about him, to coddle his dead remains.

The wind whipped about the room and rushed through the door. Gordy’s large arms and hands were frozen to his desk. He had some paperwork in front of him which he seemed to have been studying. It was as though he’d fallen asleep over it.

Gordon’s skin was white with a blue luster. It looked as if someone had poured a bottle of linoleum wax over his head. His hair was matted with ice and as hard to the touch as flint chips.

Tim stood over him, oblivious of the cold which was fast causing his own hair to bristle and stand on end. It was now, below the icy layer of hair, he saw the matted blood over Gordy’s eye. Some blood had trickled from his ear.

Something inside Tim Crocker’s mind told him he must see what it was on Gordy’s desk that he’d been reading before he died. He must have been greatly absorbed to have allowed someone to hit him from behind. It was obvious to Tim’s trained eye that Harold Gordon had been the victim of murder and not the storm.

Tim saw he couldn’t just pick up the papers on Gordy’s desk. They were under a half inch layer of ice.

“Good Lord,” he gasped, the wind roaring around him. “How damn cold is it in here?”

He pulled out a large hunting knife from his pocket.

The knife had come in handy again and again. It had tools for all purposes in it: a can opener, a cork screw, a three inch blade, and a six inch blade could be pulled from the fat little grooves of the knife. He opened the six inch blade and tried to chip away at the edges of the desk where the papers under Gordon’s hands lay. After several chips at the ice, the blade broke. Tim realized it was the cold as much as the ice that had broken the blade.

He looked down at his hands. They were burning from cold. The hair on the back of his hands was standing straight up, bristling. So was the hair on the back of his neck, on his arms and legs. He could feel a sensation like needles touching him all over, and then felt nothing. The sensation was gone. He felt numb. Each movement he made, each step seemed a great effort, weakening him terribly. At the same time, his movements couldn’t be felt. He no longer felt his toes, or Gordy’s hair when he placed his fingers on it.

He knew enough about the first stages of death by cold to know he was close to faint. Still, he wanted those papers.

Tim looked at Gordy’s middle-fifties face in its frozen state, and shook his head. Gordy was a nice, friendly guy, always greeting people with a smile and shouting in the worst of weather, “Beautiful day to be alive!”

Tim Crocker kicked wildly at the snow and ice at Gordy’s side, pushing at the waist-high ridge of spidery whiteness. He pulled away all the snow he could from around the older man at the desk. Then he stepped back, even more aware now than before: that his time was running out. He could hardly believe that no one in the entire building had answered his distress call. He wondered, too, where Wertman and Joanna had gone.

He lifted his leg and braced his foot against Gordy’s chest, the heavy boot resting against Gordy’s brown uniform shirt. He held onto the icy desk’s corner. “Sorry, Gordy,” he said with a powerful kick to the dead man’s chest.

The effort was not immediately successful, but Tim heard the dull crack made by the separation of ice between Gordy’s head, his hands, and the desk top. With a second kick the chair pulled slightly away, and Gordy’s body fell to the floor at the foot of the desk. Portions of ice, like miniature icebergs, lay about the desk. The flat, almost translucent piece in the center held the precious papers.

Bits and edges of the sheets were torn and sitting in other ice pieces, which had shattered when Tim forced Gordy’s body and the desk apart.

He snatched up the most promising looking piece of the large ice-puzzle covering the desk. The shattering had loosed the ice from the desktop.

“What the hell is this?” came a voice over the roar of wind. “What happened?”

Tim was startled by the sudden sound of another human voice. He managed to get to the door where a square-faced, squat, rough-looking young fellow stood. Tim could hardly control his vocal cords any longer. He stuttered with the chill in his bones. “You, you, you a, a, a doctor?”

“Something like that,” snapped the square-shouldered, shorter man. “Med student. What’s happened? You look almost as dead as the fellow in the hall.”

“Help-me-out-of-here, doc,” Tim managed to say. In the corridor, there were several other men standing about the corpse of the man who’d tried to kill Wertman. “No I.D.,” one of them was saying.

“Damn, it’s frigid down here,” said another. Tim recognized a third man as Henry Ketterling of the newsroom. Henry was saying, “Poor bastard froze to death waiting for the damned elevator.”

“Looks that way,” guffawed Jim Marvin, Ketterling’s writer.

Then they saw Tim come out with the doctor into the drab corridor. They passed the refuse dump, the door to the underground garage, and a door marked emergency exit, until they stood before the elevators. Marvin and the others surrounded Tim and George Walsh, the medical student, asking questions.

“Tim! Who is this guy on the floor?” “Y ou the one called for help?” “What’s the matter with him?”

George Walsh tried to fend Marvin and the others off. “Can’t you see he’s nearly frozen himself? Leave him alone.”

But Tim managed to say, “In there, Gordy.”

The elevator arrived. Tim and Walsh boarded but the others went curiously down to Harold Gordon’s office.

“You all right? Can you feel this? Can you hear me?” George Walsh kept asking Tim as they ascended in the elevator, trying to get some response from Tim. “What’s this? Your hands are turning blue under this ice sheet in your hand. Let me hold it for you.”

But Tim just kept saying, “I’m all right,” refusing to release his hold on the ice sheet now in his possession.

9

High above Meig’s Field, Marlo Cigliani could feel the fantastic pressure of the winds whipping around the ice-packed lake below. Marlo could not get down. Meig’s was crusted with waves of ice that had engulfed aircraft sitting off the runways. Choppers and other small aircraft were being hurled about so that the landing sites and runways below looked like a child’s room cluttered with discarded toys. Marlo didn’t want to stay aloft with dwindling fuel and the raging storm, but he couldn’t get ground clearance. He’d tried several times to rise over the storm. This proved impossible. The storm layers were miles high, the pressure against his bird was tremendous, and the weight of the ice around his copter’s blades conspired to keep him low.

He wished now he’d bailed out over the Fieldcrest Building and left Wertman to pilot the copter.

He immediately thought about Midway Airport, southwest of his present position. It was a lot closer than O’Hare and probably a lot less jammed. But he’d heard a report several hours old that all rescue operation vehicles were reorganizing at O’Hare. He sure would like to be there when operations resume, he thought. It would be automatic. He and his copter would be drafted, along with every other helicopter. There wouldn’t be much he could do or say. He’d have at least a week, maybe more, of rescue operations. His services being requisitioned by the Civil Aeronautics Rescue Operations, he’d still draw full pay from Fieldcrest, and at the same time really help out—a damn sight more exciting a prospect than flitting around with these newsmen with their dumb-ass questions posed to frost bite victims and bereaved people who’d lost family. Questions like, ‘How’s it feel?’

“The hell with Midway,” he said to the storm outside the five-inch-thick Meteor-glass dome of the helicopter. He yanked the throttle to the right and veered westward, lowering his altitude as he did so. He picked up the octopus-looking section of roadways where the Dan Ryan, Northwest-Kennedy, and Eisenhower Expressways merged near downtown Chicago. He shook his head at the sight of hundreds of stranded cars, seemingly endless zigzagged truck trailers and Greyhound bussesso close and yet so far from the downtown terminal. He followed the trail of cars leading west, those stalled on the Eisenhower. He would follow it west until he was parallel with the airport and then skip over. Normally, he’d follow the Kennedy, a more direct route. But the strange wind was carrying out west right now. He would ride the air current. Fighting it for too long would crush him.

Less than fifteen miles from the airport, Cigliani, flying low and following the path left him by the tops of sedans and trucks, spotted something unusual. It was a vehicle, halfway overturned in the right hand lane. What was unusual was that it wasn’t buried. Almost all the cars he’d been able to make out down below were covered to their rooftops. But this little square job, lying over on its side, was still showing most of its chrome and honey color. It looked like a jeep. Maybe it was a rescue vehicle, now stranded itself. Maybe there less than a half hour. Whoever was driving it must be nearby or even trapped inside. On the other hand, Cigliani tried to tell himself, the way the wind was blowing, it could just have uncovered the jeep. The thing could have been buried there for days and the wind just decided to look to see if its prize was still there! The wind was funny that way. You could never tell which way air currents and little pockets of air were going to act.

But that clean looking, honey-colored paint kept staring back at Marlo. The stranded machine seemed to be sending up a plea. Some sort of living vibrations.

Marlo wanted to push on to the airport. He knew the control boys there could help him down. He thought how stupid it would be to smash up on the highway trying to rescue someone who wasn’t even alive or there! How the hell would he explain it to his FBC bosses? Worse, how would he explain it to the other pilots?

He pushed his throttle forward giving himself a nice, comfortable rise and tilt to move on. He began to hum his favorite melody, What I Did For Love. But it was no use. The object he’d seen tugged at him relentlessly.

“Damn fool,” he said to himself, turning the bird to circle the unusually clean jeeplike vehicle below.

10

George Walsh brought a syringe out of his black valise and filled it with Heparin IV. He injected Tim with the powerful anti-coagulate immediately, disregarding Tim’s outburst of “Hey! No junk goes inside me!”

“Shut up!” snapped Walsh, plainly irritated.

Until he reached for the syringe, Tim Crocker had paid more attention to the melting ice block on the settee beside him than he had to Walsh’s adept medical hands. They were in a small alcove outside the men’s room, where a mini-kitchen and soft chairs stood, long since used up by the storm-trapped junior newsboys. The alcove stood just beyond the Junior Newsroom where student reporters paid their dues: running errands, carrying tele-tape, sweeping floors, and going out for lunch orders.

Walsh had tried to get Crocker off at the 28th floor where he knew a comfortable place, but Tim was like a bear in fear of being caged. He’d told Walsh he didn’t need any more help. He told him to take a hike. Walsh always marveled at frostbite victims. They usually felt no pain, nothing, except lightheadedness. Meanwhile, icy crystals, like tiny snowflakes, turned their blood cells into miniature log jams inside the affected areas.

Walsh applied a heat-inducing, non-friction gel over both hands and wrists now. Crocker held his hands out and up like a boxer preparing for a fight.

Crocker’s mind was not on his hands, though. He was staring at the wet, soggy papers that lay in a puddle on the settee next to him.

“It’s the goddamn building prints,” said Tim Crocker to George Walsh who’d tied the last of the bandages around Tim’s hands.

“Hold still, will you?” Walsh said for the hundredth time. “You don’t seem to realize the seriousness of these frost burns. Do you know what’s happened to your hands?”

Tim, who hadn’t been paying much attention to George Walsh before now, straightened up and stretched out his bandaged hands for inspection and asked, “What do you mean?”

Walsh was suddenly quite officious and angry. “You could damn well lose your hands pulling a stunt like the one you pulled. Ice crystals get under the skin, turning the cells frigid until the blood vessels constrict. You might liken it to hardening of the arteries, except the cause is the cold. So, your blood stops flowing through, making the human hands, organs, legs, whatever, even colder. It’s a closed cycle, and for a prolonged period, it can cause gangrene. Any longer and you might’ve lost these!”

Walsh tapped Tim’s bandaged right hand with a jabbing index finger, picked up the little medical bag he carried, and started for the elevator. “I’m going back to my couch on the 28th floor. I just hope it’s still there.”

“Couch?”

“In the receptionist area for someone named Theodore Atgeld,” chuckled Walsh, whose curly hair rose above his head in wild clumps and mounds, looking like a morass of dry blueberry bushes. Pity it was all falling out, Tim thought.

“Atgeld’s some relation to Fieldcrest,” remarked Tim, putting the building prints aside for the time being. “He’s a big shot in PR, I think.”

“Personnel,” Walsh corrected Tim. “How’d you find the handy couch?”

Tim was smiling into Walsh’s face, a tacit thank you for his help. The elevator arrived and Walsh, stepping onto it, answered, “Looking for work, what else?”

The door closed on Tim’s plea, “Looking for work here? Why?”

With Walsh gone, Tim turned back to the building’s blueprints. There were several pages. Photostats. Gordy would’ve had to go to Denver for the originals. Like everything else at Fieldcrest, the blueprints were on microfilm, for the originals had been shipped to safer climes. Tim’s mind raced. Why was Gordy looking over building sketches of pipes, electrical lines, elevator shafts, and air-filtration ducts carrying heated air to all parts of the building? The designs also showed every office, every coffee room, and every hallway, not to mention staircases, lighting, and heating centers. Was he studying the building? If so, what for? Hadn’t he known every niche and corner? He’d been working there for years, Tim thought. But Tim wasn’t certain just how long Gordy was with FB Enterprises.

Maybe Gordon didn’t know the building as well as everyone always assumes a man in his position would, Tim considered. Taking another tack, Tim wondered if Gordy pulled the copies for some sort of inspection, a reason other than studying them for himself.

“Personnel,” Tim mused aloud. Maybe it would be interesting to know how long Gordy was Chief of Security at FBE. He wondered how he could get the information. Of course. Marie. She’d know.

He glanced again at the blueprints. They appeared complete. Then he noticed a small circle traced in light pencil around a control area marked 2-10-b. What this control was Tim could not know for certain, for the legend to the blueprints was not among the papers he’d gotten off Gordy’s desk. It could be important, but didn’t seem to be. It was somehow connected with the ventilation and heating and cooling systems. From the print, it was located at ground level, just below the concourse, near the elevators.

Tim looked around the near empty newsroom for a place to stash the blueprints. He didn’t want to be around when Ketterling, Marvin, and the others returned. That’s why he’d chosen to come to the Junior Newsroom on 86.

Just then he saw the young kid who delivered the tele-tape to the newsrooms upstairs. The kid was bent over a desk, perspiring over a story he’d written for his editor. Tim fought his memory for a name to attach to the kid. He wanted to say Jerry or Gerald.

He risked a tentative, “Jerry! How the hell are you doing?”

The white-faced young man looked up at Tim. When he saw who it was, he turned back to what he was doing. Crocker thought the kid might be interested in his hands, so he came closer, clutching the building prints between the bandaged hands the way a bear holds onto a live fish he’s caught. Tim put his hands where the boy couldn’t miss them. He studied the boy’s response, or lack of response. Finally, Tim sat on the desk’s edge.

The young would-be reporter looked up. “Hey, I’ve got to get this story done. What do you want?”

“I’m Crocker, with the news, upstairs,” said Tim. “I know.”

“Aren’t you curious about these?” Crocker lifted his hands, spilling the blueprints across the kid’s desk.

“I saw you thawing out over there. What’d you do, stick them outside?” But the student reporter’s deep brown eyes were going over the building prints. He didn’t care about Crocker’s hands. But his interest in the blueprints was great. “Hey, where’d you get these?”

“Listen, Jerry,” .began Tim, lifting the prints from under the young man’s eyes, “I think I’m onto a damn good story, but I need help.”

“Help” “Yeah”

“What sort of help?”

“I need help investigating. There’s too much for one,” began Tim, waving his hands.

“How much help you want?” “As much as I can get.” “Investigating?”

“Right, investigating, like a real live reporter,” smirked Tim.

“What can I do for you,” smiled the student, revealing a missing tooth.

Tim tersely told the young man the whole story regarding Gordy, swearing him to secrecy. “I want you to get down to the archives and find out what this 2-1O-b is, and for God’s sake, keep the prints in a safe place. We may need them later.”

“What do you think old Gordy was doing, going over these?” asked the kid.

“Listen, if we can learn something about 1O-2-ABC or whatever it is, maybe we’ll both know, Jerry,” said Tim with a little sarcasm. “Look, I’ve got other avenues to follow. You’re a buddy for checking into this for me. I’ll try to meet you back here in an hour or so. Okay, Jerry?”

“Sure, okay.” He smiled and pushed hair out of his eyes. “But since we’ll be working together when the story breaks, I want a by-line, and the name’s Gary, Gary Hornell.”

11

Mark’s office looked the same as the day Joanna Sommers had first seen it. It was spacious, the walls lined with dark wood paneling, bookshelves filled with thriving plants, books, and knick-knacks. The rich, brown furnishings conspired to make a person feel warm. The lights were kept low and the curtains always drawn. Mark’s semi-oval desk, a map of the world embedded in its surface by a thousand successive varnishings, made Joanna pause to think of their first meeting.

She’d come to ask him to corroborate information she’d received from an unknown caller. A man with a hoarse, raspy voice who sounded incoherent much of the time. Yet, what he’d had to say sounded plausible.

“I am a scientist,” the man kept interrupting himself over the receiver. “I know what I say is crazy to you. But I speak the truth!”

The man’s voice was tinged with an accent she could not pinpoint. His story was as horrible as it was plausible. In essence, an organization of a highly secretive nature had caused the cataclysmic disturbances at the poles which resulted in the glacial conditions of the Northern hemisphere.

“How, how?” she’d asked the phantom caller. “What methods were used?”

“Radioactivity,” was the abrupt answer, and then, “Examine the Iceman.” Then the telephone clicked off.

Joanna paid the call little attention until she received another. The voice was a little more hysterical this time, rising out of its whispering hoarseness to a high pitch several times. This time the mysterious caller sounded quite mad. He implied that Joanna was a part of the conspiracy. The caller knew she hadn’t done anything in regard to the previous call. Joanna wondered how.

Joanna tried to get a name from the person on the other end. She asked him to meet her somewhere, swearing to keep everything secret. The caller hung up again.

But the calls continued until she was nagged into investigating the U.S. Iceman Experiments in the North Atlantic, Pacific, and Polar regions. Iceman began as an experiment to rid North Atlantic shipping lanes of hazardous icebergs. Icebergs were snatched up by gigantic trawlers and pulled southward to coastal desert areas where they were moored. Warm sea air passing over them brought up moisture, creating cumulus clouds. These clouds traveled over the deserts, bringing rain to these areas. Iceman teams were always studying glaciers. Glacial modification experiments abounded. For a number of years, tundra areas in Siberia and Canada, as well as Alaska, were made productive, while permafrost layers dropped below the earth.

There had never been any outcry against the Iceman Experiments for having used radiation-not even when the floods began at the turn of the century, burying Canada, Siberia, and parts of Asia and Alaska under icy waters. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and property destroyed, while healthy glaciers and glacier lakes dotted the globe.

Joanna went to Wertman in-the hope that he could fill in gaps that seemed to be missing. Did the U.S. and other Glacial Modification Projects around the world cause the cold of today? Were the Iceman Experiments using radioactive materials or nuclear blasters to reduce glaciers to manageable proportions, to get to fresh, untapped waters? It sounded outrageous and impossible. The Iceman was made up of the most eminent men of science.

Mark somehow knew she didn’t believe her own questions and she was ill at ease. She was clumsy. She phrased her questions badly. From the moment she entered his office Joanna lost all of her usual poise, reserve, and professionalism. How much was Mark’s dominance and how much was her own misgivings about the story, she could not say.

Until Mark put her at ease, offering her a drink, she’d felt like a Junior Newswoman or high school girl.

Mark quickly enumerated a list of contributing factors to the world’s weather conditions, hastening to add that the Iceman Experiments did indeed add to man’s molesting of his own environment; but he laughed at the radiation theory.

“We would have been contaminating the fresh water we were after,” he chuckled easily. “On the other hand, radioactivity was and is still a part of the atmosphere. Fall-out was found in Polar Regions, but it can also be found in Indiana in the same quantities.”

Joanna recalled laughing lightly at this and saying, “I don’t know if that’s a relief or not. I guess it is.”

“A lot more damage has been done by Ocean Current Modification by African countries, South American countries, India, and Australia than the vast polar areas,” Wertman continued. “Building girders the size of the Great Wall of China below the sea to offset arid air currents and encourage ocean clouds to come onto continents has to take its toll elsewhere. I’m sure it’s the same list you’ve heard throughout your exhaustive investigations: stupendous commercial cloud seeding operations, attempts at de-fogging whole cities such as London, thermal heating of the ocean in areas to feed rain clouds, redirection of Ocean currents, the controversial underwater tunnels placed in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans to carry away icebergs with less loss through melting, and the equally controversial opening of the straits between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. These, plus the increase in pollutants placed in the air by man, add up to a molested world.”

Joanna had squelched the story. It had been done many times before. The US and other large governments were bearing the brunt of worldwide criticism on the subject. It was generally believed they were doing all they could to put an end to many of the irrational and controversial ideas to place the world’s weather at anyone’s disposal. All experimentations deemed hazardous or potentially dangerous to climatic conditions were ceased. The US Iceman teams alone had been given sanction to explore methods of correction to the world’s weather machine by the World Wide Weather Watch.

She had squelched the story but not her attraction for Mark Wertman. Before she could leave, he had several questions for her and they dined that evening. It began as a whirlwind romance. Joanna hadn’t felt so young and girlish since high school. She loved it and she loved Mark for showing her that she still possessed feelings of unrestrained joy.

She laughed out loud in the empty office at the thought. Feelings of unrestrained joy; she mulled the words over in her mind, taking each separately, then placing them in mad combinations: Unrestrained feelings of joy-joy unrestrained-feelings of joy-joy feelings!

But she hadn’t been feeling any joy for some time now. She had seen so little of Mark and when she was around him, he was somewhere else in his head.

Mark hadn’t been himself today. He was not himself the last time she saw him or the time before that. Something was troubling him. He was sharp, caustic with everyone. He was quick-biting like an aroused lion, his every nerve ending exposed. He seemed to be a robot, partially disassembled and feeling vulnerable with his wires and tubes showing-and pity the poor fool who reached out to touch him.

She was beginning to wonder if things would ever be the same between them. And she wondered if he’d been completely honest about US involvement in the Polar ice caps. Was it even remotely possible that spent nuclear energy was being stored below the ice caps? Her reporter’s mind envisioned it at quite possible now, now that what had always seemed science fiction was fact.

She collapsed on Mark’s leather couch and suddenly realized how tired she was. She also felt dirty, her clothes clinging to her. She hadn’t slept in two days except for the brief snatches at her desk in the newsroom. She wondered if she shouldn’t get back to her desk now and get to work. It would rid her mind of Mark and the episode of the little man who’d tried to kill him. But when she stood up she planted her eyes firmly on the built-in ‘hot box’ unit to the right of Mark’s desk.

Perhaps Mark was right, she told herself now. Maybe the best thing she could do for herself would be a stint in the ‘hot box,’ properly called an Environ, or Enviro-box,

She felt tired and dirty. The Tropical Rain setting was what she needed. The Enviro-box built into the wall of Mark’s office was a deluxe Baja model. It could deliver sun, soothing breezes, or rainforest conditions and all Joanna had to do was lie back and enjoy. The Baja was large enough for three people! Mark had another in his bedroom. It was there they’d first made love, under the gentle spray of water-misting her, steaming her, raining down rhythmically with the hot rays of the sun lamps. It was the first time she’d gotten a tan and made love all at once!

After the revitalizing rains, the Baja sent hot air currents shooting over her body, blow-drying the skin.

Joanna said aloud, “But it never snows on you.” She began stripping away her clothes. Her skirt and blouse seemed to cling to her. She longed for the Baja machine as never before. The thought disturbed her a little when suddenly she realized her own feelings. She’d always characterized Enviro-boxes as machines, mostly plumbing equipment, like some fantastic bathtub. Although beautiful, lined with teakwood and smoked- glass window, and having the capacity to close out the real world, the box could not be allowed to replace reality.

But looking through the smoked glass, seeing the exotic flowers, the exotic fish in the aquarium, the green, living plants all around the cypress deck, Joanna could hardly wait to get inside. She stood naked, arranging her clothing over the couch. She was shivering a little. The office was very cold, she thought. At the door of the Environ, she hesitated only a moment, wondering if she should open the little panel to find a bathing suit. Instead, she pulled open the Enviro door and climbed in as she was.

Inside, Joanna nestled down on the cypress deck and fondled the controls over her right shoulder. She had the option of selecting all five settings, or environments, or any combination. She decided to skip the devilishly hot Baja sun setting and go directly to the Tropics and the rainforest. She loved the hot spray. It made her feel like a lazy, sleeping lizard, or a rubber tree-her only ambition to sense the fingers of the rain coming from the twenty-four karat gold spray heads on the ceiling. The next setting she preferred was called ‘Jungle Steam,’ which gave her complete privacy.

Over Joanna’s left shoulder was a discreet panel which housed all the bare necessities, such as sun tan lotion, dark glasses, towels, and bathing caps. Joanna grabbed a pair of dark glasses. The rains began at the flick of the switch on the controls. She took a moment to stare at the other settings: Warm Ambience, Chinook Winds, and Spring Showers. Each setting was twenty-nine minutes. She wanted to dry off with the roaring, sudden Chinook Winds, which fell somewhere between a gentle breeze and a hurricane.

12

Tim was nagged by the question of Security Chief Gordon’s time in the employ of Fieldcrest. Just how long had Gordy been here, and what had been his background before coming to the FBC job? A lot of security guys were retired cops. Some were just guys who’d answered an advertisement in a newspaper.

But for now, Tim decided to locate Mark Wertman and Joanna. He’d been somewhat angry when he arrived at the Lower Level and found them gone. One of them could have been there. They knew he was returning.

He guessed they were at Wertman’s newsroom. He waited as the lights on the elevator moved steadily upwards. When the doors opened on the wall maps of the weather room, Tim found the floor nearly deserted. But he did hear Wertman’s voice. He shouted at someone, there was silence. Then he shouted again.

“I don’t give a damn what trouble it is! l don’t care how you do it, Kennelly, just get someone over here. If you haven’t anyone else, then I’ll expect to see you, and if I don’t see you, I’ll see you don’t have a job!”

Tim shook his head at this. The only Kennelly he knew was the Chief of Police of Chicago. Could Wertman be talking like this to the Chief of Police? But how?

Crocker didn’t like getting information this way. He preferred direct confrontation to eavesdropping, or forms, of wire-tapping. He walked into Wertman’s large weather room and waved at him. Wertman looked a little white and stammered into the telephone.

“Please, Herb, we need you over here.”

“How’s he going to get into the building?” asked Tim loudly. “Does he have a helicopter?”

“Herb,” shouted Wertman into the telephone, “you find a way.”

“Let me talk to him. I think I know a way,” said Tim. Wertman looked surprised but he handed the phone over to Crocker. Herb Kennelly thought he was still talking to Wertman when Crocker put the earphone to his head.

“Who the hell is that, Mark?”

“I’m Crocker, with the Daily. I think I know a way in from the lower level.”

“Oh, yeah? If I could get down to ours and out, I bet it wouldn’t be too tough getting over there. I’d have to walk, maybe.”

“There’s a door, near the parking for the underground, east side of the building,” Crocker said matter-of-factly.

Crocker heard a click and thought for a moment that Kennelly had hung up and rushed off. But there was no dial tone.

“Hey, you still there, Crocker?” asked Kennelly. “Yeah,” answered Crocker.

“Who the hell is on this line?” shouted Kennelly. “One thing I hate, it’s somebody listening in on my conversations.”

“N 0 one else on the line, Chief,” said Tim.

“Someone was,” he answered.

“There’s a thousand phones in this building. It could have been a mistaken connection,” Tim began. But what he was saying brought a crystal clear recollection of Marie’s switchboard room, empty, left in disarray. Where was Marie, he asked himself again.

“Maybe you’re right,” began Kennelly. “With Wertman and this whole damn thing, I’ve come unscrewed before.”

Herb Kennelly obviously thought that Tim knew what he was talking about, that he and Wertman were somehow together on this ‘whole damn thing.’ Tim answered as casually as he could, “Yeah, I know what you mean, Chief. But I wouldn’t take any chances if I were you. Be careful on that lower level, that’s where they got Gordy.”

“Geez, I can’t believe it-Gordy. He must’ve got careless is all I can think,” answered Kennelly. “Try to get there as soon as I can.”

Kennelly hung up. Crocker stared for some time into Wertman’s eyes. “You two good friends?”

“The Chief and me? Sure. Went to night school together,” said Wertman solicitously. “Hey, what happened to your hands, Crocker?”

“Burned them on some ice, nothing really, just stupid I guess. Hey, where’s Joanna, anyway?” asked Tim, trying to smile. Wertman indicated his inner office with ajerk of the head, saying nothing. He turned to his wall maps.

Tim knocked at the door with a Quick rap, making absolutely no noise with his hands in bandages. Wertman had noticed his hands but seemed too preoccupied to ask anything.

He peeked into the dark interior of Wertman’s office and saw Joanna’s clothes lying over the back of the black leather couch. He saw that the Enviro-box lights were on and that the window was covered with steam. A humming noise came from the Environ. It was an expensive model. Tim had only seen one that was comparable in his life. It belonged to Fieldcrest in the Penthouse which could only be reached by private elevator.

Tim’s heart raced at seeing Joanna’s clothes strewn about the room. He was amazed at Wertman’s casualness with Joanna, allowing him to walk in like this. The man’s mind must be a million miles from here, he thought. Since Tim was not a man to pass up opportunities, he went directly to the hot box and flicked on the tiny communicator switch.

“Hey,” he said softly, “want any company in there? I could use some revitalization along about now.” There was no response from inside. It was as though no one was inside.

“Hey, it’s me, Tim. Come on out.”

Still no response. Tim had heard of people who’d suffered euphoric, trancelike comas induced by the fantastically effective environmental control machines. It was easy to imagine yourself to be a dull, lazy crocodile in the Amazons when those tropical sprays hit you and that hot sun beat down. He’d read where some doctors said the Environ-induced coma was like a permanently “happy” existence, if brain wave patterns meant anything.

Tim ran around to the concave glass window, and through the haze he saw Joanna’s nude body lying perfectly still. He yelled her name and banged with his bandaged hands on the doorway glass. He tried frantically to pull the heavy teakwood door open, but he couldn’t grasp it with his hands. The door wasn’t locked but it was semi-sealed by the special liner around its edges, like a vault door on a refrigerator.

Tim continued crying out her name, trying to get her to move, to show some sign of life. Mark Wertman came rushing into the room. He immediately grasped the situation, moving like a thunderbolt to the door and yanking it open swiftly. He went to the control panel and shut down the box, while Tim placed his bandaged hands under Joanna’s armpits and pulled her into the air, a blast of steam pursuing her.

Tim carried Joanna’s limp, nude body to the couch and stared at her for a moment. He shook himself. Staring at her, he thought she looked like a beautiful, storybook Sleeping Beauty. She was hardly breathing. He felt for a pulse. Minimal.

“God, she’s beautiful,” he kept saying over and over like a man who habitually sings a line from a song.

Wertman had found a huge woolen blanket and he threw it over Joanna. He sat down on the couch beside her and tucked it around her form. He was repeating her name louder and louder, trying to wake her.

“I’ll get a doctor!” shouted Tim.

Wertman buried his head in the blanket over Joanna, repeating her name.

Tim dialed for the personnel desk downstairs, hoping Walsh would be there. But when he put the earphone to his head, he realized there was no way Walsh would answer the phone. Still, he let it ring.

Finally, someone picked it up. “Hello.”

It was Walsh. “It’s me, Tim Crocker. We need you on the hundredth floor, weather room. Quickly!”

“Your interrupting my sleep is getting to be a habit, Mr. Crocker,” said Walsh.

“There’s been an accident up here. I think it’s an Enviro-box coma.”

“Damn machines,” growled Walsh as he hung up.

13

At the switchboard on the 10th floor, a gloved, white hand dropped the headphone set onto the large console carelessly.

The room was still in semidarkness, as Tim Crocker had found it earlier. The figure in the room moved with precision, even grace, stepping over and around upturned chairs, upended trash cans, and litter. The movements of the person in the room were those of a dancer-s-lilting and energetic.

Clad in a tweed print overcoat, the gloved figure leaned against the wall near the door and stared across the room at the switchboard lighting up with calls that were going unanswered.

In a high piercing voice the dancer, pressed against the wall laughed and said, “FBC Enterprises, FBC Enterprises!”

Suddenly the figure was pacing the room again, uncertain whether to stay or to go, darting glances at the switchboard lights. The figure hesitated for only a moment at the door before pulling it open. A beam of light from the hallway shot across the face. The head was covered in a hood attached to the coat. Long, stringy hair fell about the forehead and spilled out of the hood at the ears. The bloodshot eyes were bulging, wild, and animated. The nostrils flared with every breath and the mouth was contorted in a silent scream.

The gloved hands went over the eyes as though the light hurt them. Searching both directions, the figure dashed down the corridor to the Exit sign.

14

Marlo Cigliani stepped over the snow-packed ice cautiously. The snow-covered expanse of the Eisenhower Expressway was difficult to maneuver even with his snow shoes. He was never without a pair of the best made; they were part of his survival kit which he kept in his helicopter.

He was approaching the Cyclone jeep for the second time, a shovel in hand. Earlier, he’d torn away enough ice from the left front corner of the windshield to peer inside. He had used his old, conventional window scraper, the sort that was hard to get nowadays. He liked the width of the metal blade, the weight and the feel of it in his hand.

Marlo expected to find the jeep empty. What he saw through the square of cleared glass made his chest swell as if his heart had become heavier. There was a child inside, an infant. The infant was strapped in a car seat with a plastic carriage and vinyl upholstery, black against his light blue snowsuit. The baby’s small head, the size of a softball, had fallen forward in the appearance of sleep, or death.

Marlo cursed the snow as he fought to get back to the stranded vehicle. The ice ripped at his face, the cold wind paralyzed his legs, utterly stopping him in his tracks several times. He’d had to stand still against the wind and helplessly curse it until it allowed him to take another step in the direction he wanted to go. The deep snow pulled him down several times the way a murky swamp tugs at a man who tries to traverse it. All of this, despite his equipment and his snow shoes. The powerful wind snatched up his shovel and held it in the air, trying, it seemed, to take it away from him. He held onto the shovel but was knocked down by the thrust on it. He fought to his feet. After several more steps it happened again. He fought up to his feet once more and continued.

When he reached the jeep he stood over it, the snow was so high. He bent down to the section of windshield he’d cleared earlier. He saw that it was already covered with ice again. He crawled around the top of the jeep, his knees pulling snow with them, forming small honey- colored lines. Except for the marks his legs made over the top of the jeep, it was virtually buried.

He began shoveling in earnest at the point where he judged the passenger window to be, the one closest to the child. Even as he dug, Marlo dug, was pushed again and again from behind by the overpowering wind. He fell several times. The snow was wet and heavy. It kept sticking to the shovel. Marlo cursed it. As he continued to dig he became angrier and angrier. He wondered who the little child was and whether it was a boy or a girl. He wondered who the baby belonged to. Who could have left him here, alone? He’d read about it happening, people, driven by circumstances, unable to cope, to feed their children, placing them in a snow bank to die. He’d seen cases where both parents maintained that they were told to do what they did by voices, or by God.

Marlo kept the shovel moving up and down like a tireless machine. He thought of his own childhood, so much better than that of kids today. Sure he’d had to wonder all his life if his father loved him, if the old man cared one way or another about him. But kids nowadays didn’t even have that luxury-the luxury to gripe, to question, to fight.

“The sons-of-bitches!” shouted Cigliani at the top of his lungs. His shout was drowned out by the screaming winds around him. “How could they do this to a baby?”

Cigliani recognized his anguish for what it was. True, he was concerned about the child but he also remembered vividly a day in his past when his mother and father left him at a military academy, the Lakehurst Boy’s Academy. I t was like being packaged and sent off to the post office, the way his parents treated him. He’d sworn to never have children of his own.

The shovel was halfway down the side of the car now, reaching the rim of the window and the door latch. Marlo was cutting wide, trying to form a boxlike square around the entire frame of the window. He knew he could never get the car door open. But if he could clear away the window, smash it out and reach in, he might be able to undo the child’s seat belt and pull him out. Still, the digging was near impossible.

Slowly, grudgingly, the snow began to pull away from the jeep’s window. Marlo set his goal at a three by three square around the window. He wanted to see the entire metal stripping around the window before he would shatter the glass. He’d need the whole space to put his arms in and pull the child free.

The snow he pulled out of the hole was carefully thrown over the car top, ahead of him. When he placed it elsewhere it fell back in or the wind drove it into him. If he’d gone by in his copter now, rather than forty minutes earlier, he could never had spotted the jeep.

Marlo began to see the entire molding around the window. He dug furiously now. Despite the heavy shovel and water-laden snow, Marlo was not breathing hard. He’d trained for such emergencies, and he’d remained in good physical health.

His shovel was cutting in deeper now. The icy square hole he cut looked like an ice cube turned inside out, he thought. He kept wondering if he should cut it wider before breaking the glass. But how much oxygen was left in the jeep? He decided he could not wait another moment. He pulled out his scraper again, feeling he must dear away the glass so he could at least make out the child’s form so as to not smash the glass too close to his head. He intended using the handle of his shovel to break the glass. He prayed the glass would break apart in chunks that could be peeled off, avoiding any real danger to the child. He judged that the jeep had ice-glass which should crackle into a matted sheet of broken, tile-like fragments. But ice-glass behaved oddly sometimes.

Marlo upended his shovel and was about to smash the window when he watched it slowly move, a fraction of an inch at a time, grinding against the ice packed inside the door as it lowered. The window was being opened from inside.

“Help! Please, help!” someone began crying.

Marlo went to his knees, his head and shoulders against the small section of opened window. He saw Arlene Stephanuk staring back at him.

“My baby, for God’s sake, help my baby,” she was pleading with him.

“Calm down, take it easy, Miss,” said Marlo. “I’ll get you both out, but we’ll have to hurry.”

“No, don’t worry about me. Just get Steve out,” she was crying.

Her face was smudged with a mixture of dirt and tears. Marlo guessed that she was in pain and that she’d fallen to the floorboard when the accident occurred.

“All right, we’ll get Steve,” he reassured her. “The important thing is you’re both alive and well.”

The little boy began to rouse and was crying low, complaining. Marlo felt good. They would be all right, he was sure.

“Can you roll the window down further?” “I don’t think so,” said Arlene.

“Try, try hard.”

“I’m trying.”

The window grated harshly but moved very little.

Marlo groaned. It was worse to smash the window half open than if it were closed tightly. “If you can get it down more I can reach in and turn it the rest of the way,” he told her.

Suddenly it gave and the window slid down a little more. Marlo was relieved, but the baby boy began screaming with the cold blast of ice pellets and wind that hit his face. He howled above the roar of the wind, a great deal louder than Cigliani thought possible.

“Now, now,” cooed the burly helicopter pilot. “Everything’s going to be all right. Just take it easy. Marlo’s going to get you out of here.”

In a matter of seconds Marlo had lowered the window all the way, reached in to the child, unstrapped his seat belt, and surveyed the condition of his mother. “You’re all right,” he said to Arlene. “You have a bad gash in your left leg but it’s stopped bleeding. Try to get yourself together. I’m taking Steve to my helicopter and then I’ll be back for you. Do you understand?”

Arlene raised her blue eyes up to his. She looked like a princess, Marlo thought, and so helpless. Her long, soft-looking brown hair covered her shoulders and part of her cheek. She tried to smile and reached out to touch his arm. The tears came again. Marlo understood their meaning.

“It may take a little more digging to get you out through this hole,” he said, “but for now, I’ll get the boy to my warm helicopter.”

She responded by pulling herself up to the seat and sitting upright.

“Yes,” she finally managed to say. “Please, take care of my baby.”

But Marlo was already gone and all she was able to see was the whiteness around the hole and the window. The raging wind came at her. Marlo rushed back to the copter, Stephen held tightly against his fur-lined parka. Under his breath he cursed the woman’s husband, the boy’s father, wherever he was.

15

“Lack of oxygen,” announced Walsh, standing over Joanna’s prone body.

“J don’t get it,” said Tim.

“Too much carbon dioxide, maybe some carbon monoxide and no air.” Walsh began talking to Crocker in the tone of a parent speaking to a child.

“But she’ll be all right?” asked Wertman.

Walsh nodded several times in succession. “I think so. She’ll probably have one hell of a headache for some time. She’ll be woozy and maybe hallucinate a little. Keep her down for awhile after she recovers. She’s not comatose. She’s just unconscious. She’ll come out of it quickly now. That’ll make her a little sick.”

“But how the hell could this have happened, Doc?” asked Tim.

“I’ve only heard of one other such case,” began Walsh, “involving a hot box. It was caused by a hell of a bad mistake in the installation of the box. The pipe which was supposed to carry in fresh air and take out the stale air wasn’t hooked up properly. Made a fine lawsuit for the owner’s wife but didn’t do him any good.”

“But this unit’s been here for years without the least difficulty,” countered Wertman.

“When’s the last time it was checked?” Wertman shook his head. He didn’t know.

“Who knows how defective it’s become?” said Walsh with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Either that or someone’s tampered with it,” said Tim. “That’s not an impossibility either,” said Walsh, “the way things are going around here.”

“Maybe it was Joraski,” muttered Wertman. “Who?” asked Tim.

“Joraski, the man in the basement.” “The blue man? The dead guy?”

“Yeah,” nodded Wertman. “He could have gotten in here and tampered with it. Then, upstairs, he saw me and decided to make sure I was dead.”

“How do you know his name?” asked Tim suspiciously. “1 dug out his wallet. Why the hell do you suppose I called Kennelly?”

“Only trouble with your theory, Mr. Wertman, is that such a machine as this can’t be so easily tampered with,” interrupted Walsh, stepping from between the two others who seemed on the verge of a fist fight. “This system is controlled elsewhere. It’s the only safe way to run such a contraption. It may even be borrowing off the normal fresh air sources of the building!’

“Some of these systems have their own intake, though,” said Tim. “That must be the case, or else we’d all be suffering from a lack of oxygen, Doc.”

“Not necessarily, Tim,” answered Walsh, stretching out on one of Wertman’s soft chairs. “The box is limited in space. It follows that it would fill up Miss Sommer’s lungs with deadly gases a great deal faster than, say, this office would from the three of us breathing. The only thing that saved her is your quick action and the steamy water. Water carries oxygen and as it evaporated around her, she could take in some of it.”

“You’re telling me that the entire air supply in this building may be diminishing as we sit here and talk?” asked Tim.

Walsh shrugged. “Depends on the way this system is tied into the main air vents. There might just be a hole in the system somewhere, preventing fresh air from outside coming in and possibly preventing carbon dioxide from being taken out.”

“Why wouldn’t we know? I mean, we’d notice wouldn’t we?”

“Some of the people on the lower floors have,” said Walsh, sitting calmly. “We just may have to knock out a few windows.”

“You can’t in this building,” said Wertman. “Permafrost glass,” said Tim, “a foot thick.”

“We could open the door above the observation deck,” said Wertman.

“Who’s going to decide who gets to go up and who gets to stay down here?” asked Tim coldly.

“Look, it’s not too bad yet, and with that hole in the wall on the lower level, we may have a chance to get down to the source and see if anything can be done,” began Walsh, getting to his feet. “It may be nothing, just claustrophobia.”

“Joanna’s condition is not just claustrophobia,” said Tim.

“No, but we don’t know for sure about the building,” answered Walsh.

“You seem to know a lot about buildings and air ducts,” said Wertman in a strained voice.

“I got through two years of medical school working on construction jobs. But now, nobody’s building anything anymore. Not around here, anyway. Construction costs have more than quadrupled since 2006. Plumbing and water mains require a lot of protection from the cold. I don’t know so much about heating and cooling systems, but I’m sure they need as much inspection as any.”

“2-1O-b,” blurted out Tim. “What?”

“What are you talking about, Crocker?” asked Wertman.

“On the blueprints from Gordy’s office. He’d circled something labeled 2-1O-b. It might have something to do with the fresh air flow. Maybe Gordy knew there was something malfunctioning.”

“And maybe the heat,” said Walsh, rising to his feet. “It’s getting cold in here.”

“Let’s get downstairs,” said Tim.

“You’d better stay with the young lady, Mr. Wertman. When she comes to, she’ll need you,” Walsh said.

Tim clenched his teeth. He wished he could be there when Joanna awoke.

“Where are the prints, Tim?”

“I’ve got a stringer downstairs in the library looking up the legend on the prints, to tell us what 2-1O-b is.”

16

“Some god damn library,” Gary Hornell said aloud, and heard the reverberations of his own voice off the stone-block walls that stared back at him with their charcoal gray lines. Between the sound of the squealing, complaining reels of microfilm which he inserted into the large-screened viewer, there was perfect silence in the room. But for some reason Gary had the feeling he wasn’t alone. He kept reaching around himself to try and warm up. It was cold in the stacks, but it was freezing back here. He was angry, too. Microfilm should be accessible, not hidden away in a dungeon! That’s what you did with the hard stuff.

He inserted another reel and punched the button for forward, glad to hear the sound of the threading tape. Somehow the noise blocked the spooky feeling that he was being watched. The microfilm readers sat in a long row down the length of the room, on two sides, perhaps twenty in all. Each had a screen that stood blank in anticipation. They made Gary think of store manikins. They might come to life any moment.

Even at the busiest of times, Gary told himself, the microfilm room was isolated, except for a few reporters and weirdoes out to dig up something. The main library was located on the 11th floor of the building, with the stacks located at levels that went all the way to the basement. The only way to get to the Microfilm room was through the main library and down the narrow ladders of the stacks, or in a tiny elevator at the rear of the building.

Gary had had to take the narrow steps all the way down. The elevator, as usual, was either tied up by the library workers re-shelving books, locked by the overprotective librarian, or out of order. He arrived at the Microfilm room exhausted and short of breath.

Gary located the tapes he needed with little difficulty.

He’d used the Microfilm room as much as he could and it was paying off. Few people understood the way things were categorized and filed here. Many people went away from the room with less information than they’d come with, and Gary learned if he were to master the reporter’s trade well, he must learn microfiles. He was anxious to impress the hell out of Tim Crocker. The tapes he wanted he found under Building Maintenance—Fieldcrest. The categories included space coordination, measurements, layout, materials, and systems. Gary saw immediately that each of these categories had subcategories. He looked under layout and found blueprints. But that was what he had in his hands and the legend was as cryptic and helpful as a group of hieroglyphics. He searched down to systems, his eyes moving quickly over the words, reading hydraulic, heating, cooling, electrical. He pulled both heating and cooling which were on the same reel as the others, noting the index number at which the information would be found.

The light in the room was dim so that the light behind the screen on the viewer would be effective. As Gary popped in the reel he wanted, a sensation that someone had stepped in between him and what little light he had was powerful enough to cause him to turn and look behind his chair. The effort was futile. No one else was there. He shook his head and for the first time realized he had a painful headache growing between his tightly squinting eyes and a nauseating feeling welling up from his stomach. He wondered if it was repressed fear. He’d always hated closed-in places. How many fights had he gotten into at the fraternity with people during the long winter days when he was trapped there? How often had he thought he was going to go mad watching the frat house walls moving in on him? There too, the lights were low, the dark corners filled with unseen and perhaps unhappy creatures. There were so many unhappy creatures in Gary’s past. His special needs brother, his divorced sister, his parents.

Gary tried to get a hold on himself. He tried to shake off the sick fee1ing coming over him. He tried to think of his goals in life and how close he was to them. He went back to the reel and started it on its dizzy flight to the screen before him. Watching it made him feel a little disoriented. It always did.

He was glad when he finally could stop it to the exact information he needed with a few false stops, the forward and back buttons being alternately pressed. He was staring at a layman’s explanation and illustration of the building’s heating system. He read it word for word and he scanned the illustration. There was nothing on it to indicate the circled 2-10-b that Crocker was so damned hot to know about. It was either not important enough to mention, or it was directly related to cooling. He sent the tape reel back, stopping and starting until he found similar information on the cooling system, which for all intents and purposes was the same system. Whatever 2-lO-b was, it was not here.

Tim Crocker was certain it had something to do with one of the systems. Gary ran the reel to hydraulic to check there. Nothing. He sent the reel to electric with the same results.

His final conclusion was that the 2-1O-b was unimportant in the overall working of the system to which it belonged, hence not cataloged for the layman. They would need someone who could read blueprints to get an answer. Gary did the next best thing. He ran a complete set of blueprints, including the legend.

He noticed as he ran out the systems reel that all systems were subject to periodic inspections for structural damage and stress. These stress checks, he guessed, were conducted by the city.

Then something happened to the light again. Gary spun around to see who was there. He thought he saw some movement in the stacks, through the doorway. Who else knew where he was?

Gary shouted, summoning his voice, his hands going to his temples. The headache had grown to unbearable pain. When he stood up he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. “Is that you, Crocker?”

There was no answer.

“If anyone’s here, please come forward.”

Still, there was no answer. Gary cocked his head. He heard footsteps, light, whispering footsteps. Whoever it might be, she was taking the steps. Gary was certain it was a woman. He could smell her perfume, Chanel No.5 or was it 19?

Libraries are full of weirdos, Gary told himself, not the least being female hermits: shy, frightened girls who spent life avoiding ever having to see, or speak to, or be spoken to by another human being. He shrugged off the visitor and returned to the work he’d come to do.

17

The stillness of the empty stacks leading into the depths of the library and to the microfilm room was absolute, broken now and again by George Walsh’s coughing. Tim, feeling a little contagion, coughed in answer to Walsh’s last, on the lowest level of the stacks.

“Cold,” repeated Walsh.

Tim agreed with a nod. “Low use area.”

Walsh nodded. He was well acquainted with the notion of conserving energy in modern buildings by cutting off heat in such areas. The Microfilm room, laid out on a chart in a maintenance check, would probably reveal the least use, so the place was stuffy and cold from a lack of ventilation and heat. Walsh coughed again, thinking about it.

Tim passed the shelves of books, glancing at titles as he went. He loved browsing in a library but cared little for library research. He knew he was an undisciplined library user who went in search of one thing, soon became bored and stumbled onto something he truly wanted to read about. A job like the one he’d given Gary Hornell interested him only when it was done by someone else.

That was the sort of legwork he despised. But from the looks of things, he thought, he should have done it himself. It appeared that young Hornell was not even here. There was no sound coming from the Microfilm Readers. The place was stone dead. Hornell was off somewhere else.

But when Tim reached the room, he realized he’d been wrong. Gary layover a Microfilm reader which droned like an angry bee, left on, it appeared, though the light was out. Tim and Walsh grabbed Gary from both sides, and set him upright. The moment they touched him, he screamed and jumped away from the swivel chair, tearing free of them.

“Let go of me! Let me alone!” he shouted repeatedly. “Easy, take it easy!” shouted Tim.

But Gary stared at them as if he might do something desperate or try to run past them. “What’s the big idea,” he said suddenly, regaining himself.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” said Tim. “The hell you didn’t,” the boy sneered.

Walsh and Tim stared at one another a moment. “Hey, Tim,” said Walsh, staring again at Gary, “he doesn’t look so good. He’s been down here too long, I think. Let’s get him out of here.”

“There’s an emergency exit out that way,” Tim pointed toward the northeast corner of the stacks. “I think it’ll land us in the basement, near where we want to be anyway.”

“The quicker, the better,” answered Walsh, taking Gary firmly by the arm and ushering him in the direction which Tim pointed. Gary seemed to sense Walsh’s professionalism and offered no resistance to him. He’d calmed considerably. Tim grabbed the many blueprints he saw lying about and followed. In a moment they stood in a bare hallway, breathing easier. Walsh pulled out some smelling salts from his black bag and as he applied it to Gary’s nostrils, he talked to Tim.

“I don’t think it’s anyone’s imagination, or just my chills, which I picked up while pulling you out of that frozen room of the security officer’s-not anymore. This boy is not in any danger but he was getting close in there. Something’s wrong with the air flow or the heating system.”

Tim only stared into Walsh’s eyes and said, “It could get downright deadly.”

“Maybe it has already,” answered Walsh.

Gary, standing between them, shook his head away from the smelling salts. “I don’t feel so good.” His eyes were vacant. He pushed hair away from his forehead, making a horrible face as though he’d just swallowed a dose of medicine. His arms were covered with goose pimples and his teeth chattered in the quiet corridor. He coughed intermittently.

“We’d better waste no time locating the source of the problem,” Tim said. “Can you walk, Gary?”

Gary nodded. “Sure, I’ll be all right.”

“Good. On the way you can tell us what you found.”

18

“I don’t think this is the right corridor, Tim,” said George Walsh as he, Gary Hornell, and Tim Crocker searched the labyrinthian halls of the Lower Level. “I think the boiler room is this way.”

Tim looked in the direction Walsh was pointing, then glanced down the stone gray corridor ahead of him. He looked at Gary. Gary hunched up his shoulders, saying, “I’ve never been down here before.”

“How do you know, Walsh?” Tim asked, a trace of the reporter’s accusatory tone in his voice.

Walsh had no difficulty picking up the innuendo. The two men stared for some time. Walsh’s flat, colorless, doctor’s voice rose out of its usual calm as their eyes met. “Earlier, if you recall, I had occasion to pull your half-frozen self out of a frozen office, where one man was already dead! I passed a door on that corridor with a directional sign on it, reading Boiler Room. At the end of that corridor, left of Harold Gordon’s office, there is another, and this is it. I’d stake my life on it!”

Tim looked down the corridor again. “You’re very observant then.”

“Yes. I am that.” “Well, I have to admit, below the ground, my sense of direction stinks,” Tim confessed.

They proceeded in the direction Walsh indicated, Gary and Tim following Walsh now. “Sure of himself, isn’t he,” Tim whispered to Gary.

“Most doctor types are,” answered Gary. “Tim, how long were you and Walsh outside, in the stacks? Didn’t you hear me call out?”

Tim slowed his pace and looked at Gary. “Call out to who?”

“I don’t know.” “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, but it seemed that someone was there, in the stacks, hiding and maybe watching me.”

“Hallucinating perhaps,” said Walsh who had stopped and returned to Tim and Gary.

“It seemed so real, like I could smell someone, a presence.”

“There and yet not there,” said George Walsh. Gary nodded several times.

“Not unusual under the circumstances,” said Walsh clinically. “You were suffering a lack of fresh, clean air.” Tim pointed out that the library was dark, too quiet. “Spooky is the word,” said Gary. “But it seemed so real.”

Gary’s voice carried the insistence of truth and certainty. Tim almost let it drop but asked, “In what sense, Gary?”

“Like when a light bulb flickers and you’re sure it’s going to blow, but in a split second it’s okay again. Then you sit there and wonder if it was your eyes all along. You wonder if the bulb dimmed at all. You know what I mean?”

“Yea, I know,” said Tim. “Did you hear anything?”

“Not much. Thought I heard footsteps on the stairs. Smelled something. I saw a shadow go over the screen of the microreader. I sort of froze up. When I turned to look, there was no one.”

“You smelled something? What?” asked Tim.

“Tim, the whole place smelled of old books, musky and damp,” began George Walsh, irritated and strident. “We’ve got to find out what’s happening with the damned air in this building. You two are wasting time. Come on!”

Walsh stalked away from the other two. Gary and Tim watched him as he went ahead. “Come on, Gary. We better stay together.”

Gary agreed and they jogged to catch up to Walsh who had turned a corner ahead and disappeared. As they jogged alongside one another, Gary said, “It was a smell like flowers, Tim.”

Tim thought Walsh was probably right. Flowers were a well known symbol in dreams and hallucinations. It could mean that Gary was afraid of death, afraid of life, or a thousand other things!

They found Walsh shivering outside the door which led to Harold Gordon’s office. It was pulled shut. He pointed to a door beyond and said, “It’s through there, Tim.”

Tim went ahead of Walsh and pushed open the door. The room was pitch black, but the noise was the unmistakable rumble of elephant-sized machines, the boilers and the flush and tumble of moving water through pipes. Tim searched the wall for the light switch. He cursed when he had trouble finding it. With ease and a seeming knowledge of the locality, Walsh stepped through the door and flicked the switch on.

“The reporter’s dilemma,” joked Walsh with a smile. “How to find the light switch.”

Tim let the remark pass. Walsh was beginning to get on his nerves.

Walsh continued, obviously amused with himself. “The postman has the dog to contend with, the investigative reporter, the button!”

“Look at this place,” said Gary Hornell, eyes wide, mouth agape.

The three men stood on a catwalk which extended around the entire room, bordered by black, wrought iron railings. The boiler room took up two floors. Tim thought it looked like something from a science fiction movie. N one of it made any sense to him.

The room was vast, filled with steam which welled up from somewhere below. At every turn there was another mammoth, pachyderm-gray tank or drum. One looked like a hippopotamus, another a rhinoceros. Each bellowed out its own unmistakable cry for oil and attention. Each stood stolid, thick-skinned and insensitive to the pipes, valves, and electrical conduit rammed into the sides like spears. The pipes and conduit went in and out, over and under, and between the giant drums—adding another dimension to the confusion of the metallic and concrete maze over which the three men stood.

The noise coming from the room was deafening. Tim tried to shout above it. “Everything appears to be working down here!”

“Sounds like it!” shouted Gary.

“Must be 110 decibels,” Walsh shouted, putting his hands over his ears. “I’ve seen noisier construction jobs, but this place comes close to thirty jackhammers playing at Carnegie Hall!”

“What?” asked Gary. “Can’t hear you.”

Tim’s eyes were led in several conflicting directions at once. He glanced at the blueprints in ‘his hands. Nothing made sense and, as Gary had told him, the 2-1O-b thingamabob was nowhere to be found on the explanatory legend. They would have to go to it to find out what it was. Tim was certain it was the answer to the poor circulation. He only hoped they could get the air in the building circulating again. But looking from the blueprint-the very one he’d pulled from Harold Gordon’s dead hands-and up to the fantastically complicated room, he knew this was going to be more difficult than looking for treasure at the bottom of the ocean.

“Give me that, Tim!” shouted Walsh in his ear.

“It’s all yours, maestro!” returned Tim, knowing Walsh couldn’t hear him.

Walsh studied the prints for some time then shouted, “Damn it, it’s down below!”

“What?”

Walsh pointed downward, over the rail of the catwalk, using exaggerated movements. They were like deep sea divers, able to communicate only through gestures and lip reading. Walsh waved to the other two men, indicating that they were to follow. Tim didn’t like the way things were going.

Gary and Tim followed Walsh down a flight of ladder-sized steps which ran along the huge side of one tank. The ladder was warm to the touch. The room was wet and sticky with clouds of steam. Once on the lower level, Walsh moved rapidly around the room, designating an area, pointing, disappearing ahead of the others. Going between tanks, stepping over pipes, and squeezing into areas that seemed impossible for his stocky frame to maneuver, he seemed too at home to Tim. But he did say he’d worked in construction for many years. Maybe he just knew what to look for, and what he was doing. Still, Tim couldn’t help but wonder. When Walsh had turned up at Gordy’s office, it had been timely. He’d known the corridors down here so well.

Walsh suddenly stopped ahead of them and Tim caught up. Tim was having difficulty keeping up with his bandaged hands, but at least he hadn’t burned them as had Gary several times on hot pipes. Walsh could be heard better now. They had all become a little more accustomed to the noise level of the room. Still, the short, round man had to shout.

“It looks like a conventional system, heating, cooling, and electrical. Rather old fashioned, really!”

“I’m glad it looks like something to someone!” shouted Tim in return.

“I don’t know where this 2-10-b could fit in here, Tim,” admitted Walsh. “I had an idea. I thought I knew. But, for the life of me, I’d swear it just doesn’t belong!” Walsh held the prints in his hands still.

“For God’s sake, why didn’t you say so? You’re going to get us forever lost down here!” Tim shouted, pulling the blueprints out of his hands, straightening them and staring dumbly at them once more.

“This whole area here is in question, Tim,” said Walsh, pointing. “It’s not the single element, this 2-1O-b, It’s this whole range of 2-mechanisms. There seems to be a 2 attached to everything in this area. I think we’re close to it, but it has nothing to do with the air system. It can’t!”

“‘What’s wrong then?”

“It appears, from down here, there’s not a damn thing wrong. 1 checked everything that has to do with the heating and air-filtration system. Like I said, it appears that all systems are go!”

Tim could not accept it. He began to doubt Walsh thoroughly. “What happened upstairs in Wertman’s office didn’t happen? The god damn air in the building isn’t stifling? Gary didn’t faint? What the hell are you trying to sell me, Walsh?”

“Look here, Crocker,” shouted Walsh, having heard most of Tim’s accusation, “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to stay here either. You can just locate this thing yourself, if it exists!”

“Wait a minute,” Gary was shouting above them. “We need him, Tim.”

“That’s the trouble with you types,” shouted Walsh, squeezing past them. “You use people when you need people. Get out of my way.”

“Hey, don’t leave,” pleaded Gary. “Let him go, Gary,” said Tim.

“We’ll be lost down here among these pipes,” said Gary. “I’m following him out.”

“But it’d be all for nothing!”

“Maybe he’s right,” returned Gary. “This has all been a wild goose chase!”

Tim straightened up at this. Walsh was nearly out of sight ahead of them. Gary was following Walsh. Tim had little time to make up his mind if he would go with them. He shook his head, indecisive, and raised his eyes. Above him, suspended, it seemed, was an odd-shaped, circular machine. It frightened him at first because it seemed to be held up in midair, and would fall upon him in a second. It was as large as one of the hippopotamus drums but it had wings tubular, concentric pipes. The color was no different than all the other machines around Tim. But it was odd, like a giant goose egg, sitting there in the sky overhead, seemingly hidden there by some giant child playing at hiding toys.

“Walsh! Gary!” he shouted and realized instantly they could not hear him. “This is it, I know it! This is it!”

19

“What is it, Walsh?”

Walsh did not answer immediately. Tim had raced to Gary and George Walsh, and brought them back to the spot where he’d found the odd-shaped hippo-drum suspended overhead. They had found a ladder that took them up to the strange mechanism and found that it was suspended, as if hidden, between the upper and lower floors. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to spot from the catwalk above at any angle.

“What is it’?” Tim repeated.

Walsh stood on the little platform which went completely around the egg-shaped machine. His head continued to shake and he kept repeating the single word, “Impossible. “

“What? What’s impossible?” asked Tim.

“This,” said Walsh, pointing at the machine, and stepping around it.

“This what?” Tim asked, following him. “This is a reactor, a nuclear reactor, Tim.”

Gary and Tim looked at one another and then back to Walsh. “Holy cowl” shouted Gary.

“You must be crazy,” said Tim.

“I wish I were,” answered Walsh. “This is the 2 system, the alternate. Perhaps the only one really. It’s run on computerized chips. It has its own little brain, right here.” Walsh was pointing at a tiny door, hardly visible. “It receives instructions here.”

“I don’t believe it,” Tim shouted over the roar of the machinery around them. “What’s all this other stuff for then?”

Tim left his bandaged hands up in the air, in an exaggerated shrug.

Walsh swallowed hard. “You tell me. You’re the investigator. Put two and two together.”

Gary Hornell and Tim Crocker studied the gray metal globe once more. It had become even more ominous now that they knew what it was and what it contained. It looked like a flying saucer. Tiny, thick-glassed windows studded each end, where powerful microscopes could be used. A long, hollow tube entered on one side, and another tube exited on the other side.

“This thing is programmed to heat the building?” asked Tim.

“Why else would it be here? It’s like the reactors you’d find at Camp Century in the Arctic, or McMurdo in the Antarctic, for light, water, heating. It can generate all three alternately if programmed to do so. It can also be programmed to generate only water, or only electrical power.”

They still had to shout to hear one another. “And all the rest of this?” Tim motioned to take in the entire room. “This is all for, for ...”

“For show!” shouted Walsh.

“You’ve got to be wrong, Walsh!” cried Tim. “Damn it, Tim, this thing’s in operation! It’s probably even running this show, making this room appear to be a conventional boiler room. It’s masking itself!”

“Camouflage,” shouted Gary.

“Hold on. I’ve worked over this thing for years and haven’t known it?” shouted Tim.

Walsh nodded several times, tired of shouting.

“I’ve read about even smaller units than this,” shouted Gary. “Like the power packs the Icemen used and the astronauts. They had units on their land rovers, and for their own oxygen supply.”

“Come on,” Walsh said, indicating the stairs downward. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave it, not the way it is,” said Tim.

“Can’t do a thing about it without the proper program,” countered Walsh, going ahead of them. “We’ll have to return.”

“The office!” shouted Gary. “What office?” asked Tim.

“Right at the bottom of the stairs as we came in, there was a tiny office, windowed-in partition, really. Maybe there’s a computer file there.”

20

Tim left George Walsh and Gary Hornell to correct the computerized, nuclear-powered, air-filtration and heating system. He’d argued once more with Walsh when Gary said it was scary being so close to nuclear material, because Walsh had tried to minimize the situation.

“A lot of superstition is involved in your fear, Gary,” Walsh had said, standing in the small office on the lower level of the boiler room. The office was hardly larger than a telephone booth, but Gary had been right. There was a complete set of computer chips in a file, marked appropriately, 2-10 System. Walsh had identified the computer chip which would put the reactor back into proper order.

“Maybe Gary’s built up some superstition,” Tim argued, “but a lot of fact is involved in my fear of that thing out there. In 1982 a nuclear reactor caused the deaths of hundreds of workers at a laboratory for Nuclear Research in Colorado. Thousands more would have died if the correct measures hadn’t been taken at once.”

“That was experimentation, Tim. A thing like this, well, that’s just a well tested tool. You’ve both read too damn much trash about nuclear power. The system we have here is a controlled radiation system, using the lowest grade uranium and no more than is necessary to do a relatively simple job. We can shut it down or we can go without heat, air, electricity, and water. What’s it to be?”

Gary Hornell only repeated his lament. “It’s still scary being so close to it.”

“The thing is potentially dangerous, Walsh,” said Tim. “For heaven’s sake, Joanna was almost killed because of it.”

“She could have just as easily been killed using a conventional air system, if the killer knew the source control,” Walsh shot back.

“The source,” mumbled Tim, shaking his head. “The control. The programmed chip, the instructions given the computer. Whoever tried to kill Wertman knew how to make one of these gizmos.”

“What he didn’t know was that Joanna, and not Wertman, would use the Enviro-box.”

Tim and Walsh stared at one another for some time. Tim finally said, “Then we have a sophisticated killer on our hands, and not just a psycho with a wrench.”

“Someone who wants your guy—the weather guy—Wertman dead,” added Walsh. “It was quite by design. No chance of an accident.”

“Who’d know the reactor was here, Tim?” asked Gary. “That’s a good question, Gary.” Tim turned to George Walsh, “Who would know about this elaborate hoax?”

“Are you insinuating that I had something to do with this, and with the attempt on Wertman’s life, Tim? ‘Cause if you are, you can just go to hell, and you can correct that thing out there yourself!”

Tim stood silent for a long time and finally shook his head. “No, I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I’m just getting edgy, and my skin’s starting to itch everywhere. This whole place is getting to me.”

“Get out of here then!” shouted Walsh, throwing up his hands. “You’re making me edgy. Go look for that girl you’re so worried about. The one you said you couldn’t find. That Marie.”

“All right, I will,” answered Tim, leaving Walsh and Gary to do whatever was necessary in the boiler room.

Tim was glad to get away from the deafening room, and away from the nuclear reactor. Superstition, hell. A nuclear reactor leak could kill them all. The very idea of installing such a potentially deadly device in a building in the heart of Chicago, was beyond Tim’s wildest dreams. Fieldcrest seemed to be a man possessed of no scruples. The reactor was there to save on fuel, electricity, and other expenses. To hell with people, to hell with the risks involved, just keep showing a profit! It would make a fine story one day, Tim told himself, once he’d secured a job with the San Francisco Sentinel, or the L. A. Times. One day he’d write it, whether it cost him his job or not. He knew that if he ever met James Fieldcrest he would lose his job. He’d be fired for hitting Mr. Big square in the face.

But for now, Tim’s concern was for Marie Stanton. He’d gotten on the elevator for the cafeteria. Perhaps she’d be there.

21

In the cafeteria, Tim caught snatches of a heated conversation at a table in the corner as he glanced around for a sign of Marie, One man at the table was nearly shouting.

“From a management point of view you don’t have a leg to stand on,” he was saying. “You people have no idea .of the difficulties involved in running an organization of this size.”

“And you do?” sneered another.

“Businesses remaining in the Chicago land area must face untold losses,” the shouter continued without missing a beat. “You want increases, benefits, more time off the job, increased data bank support for your hair-brained ideas. You want to be treated like professional men when it’s time for evaluation and review, but you want consideration granted your persona/lives when it comes down to being late, absent, or in the wrong. Then, you want to be mollycoddled like children!”

“You’re full of shit, Atgeldl” cried the other man. Tim recognized the thin-lipped, mustached Atgeld, the Personnel Director. The poor man had probably never had to deal with so many of Fieldcrest’s employees at once before. Tim was sure he felt cornered where he sat. There were several men and two women glaring at him.

“Mr. Atgeld is right in a lot of ways,” said one of the women suddenly.

“Oh, Jesus,” groaned several of the men.

The woman continued, imploring the others to listen to her. “It’s not his fault. It’s the cold, the snow. Increases in absenteeism, delays in shipments to and from FBE, fuel and power shortages, and higher production costs are taking the company down!”

“Bad weather hurts any enterprise,” said Atgeld, straightening up, looking a little more confident now, knowing he had at least one ally at the table.

The woman continued when she realized the others were staring at her. “Why should the factory, or the store, or the newspaper pay for it all?”

“Party line,” moaned the other woman.

“Talk about your Organization Woman!” said a blonde-headed fellow.

“Maybe you should read it,” said the woman. “You might learn something.”

A tall and silent man at the table pressed his finger against his chest and said, “I’m a worker, Mr. Atgeld, and from the viewpoint of the workers, there are impossible difficulties just in getting to work when trains and buses can’t keep to schedules. And we’re docked for being minutes late! Meanwhile we have higher heating costs, there are greater risks of fire from overheating, or simply in driving here. Daily we face disappointmentscancelled parties, classes, programs, sports events. We’ve lost out on hobbies like gardening, and even winter sports are too dangerous to engage in. We fear entrapment, freezing somewhere, losing electricity or gas, not being able to get to hospitals. We fear getting stuck somewhere with personnel managers!”

Atgeld merely flexed his mustache at this remark. “All of these things are equally true of the corporation, if you were to multiply them by hundreds of thousands. You can’t hold corporate business responsible for the weather!”

Then the young woman spoke again in her controlled tones. “But the corporations should be helping where they can, Mr. Atgeld.”

“The corporation has no heart,” the blonde-haired man groaned melodramatically.

Then the tall worker said with measured grace, “Yes, but the corporation does have a penis and we are getting screwed every day.”

Tim snickered at this, and would normally have become embroiled in a conversation like this one. He hated management types who took themselves too seriously. But he spotted a table where the switchboard operators were spread out, some talking, others asleep. He stared long for some sign of Marie. She didn’t seem to be among them.

As he approached the switchboard girls, Tim could hear Atgeld defending himself further. “What do you think we’re running here? A recreation hall?”

Tim recognized Cindy, Georgette, Pat, and Cheryl sleeping amid their coffee cups. Jackie Pendleton first noticed him, and waved him over. Jackie and Tim were always on good terms.

Jackie was a thin girl with no breasts to speak of but a smile large enough to make up for any deficiencies. She seemed ecstatic to see Tim, shouting his name and waking the girls beside her.

“Have you seen Marie?” Tim asked immediately. “Well, no, not for awhile.” She was crestfallen. “What’s she got that I haven’t?”

“I’d drop her in a minute for you, if I could find a way without hurting her,” teased Tim.

“Sure!”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Hours ago. She stayed at the switchboard when we all came up here.”

One wall of the cafeteria was windows, but the venetian blinds had been pulled across them and the lighting in the room was dim. Occasionally the lights would flicker, threatening to go out. Tim stared trancelike through a portion of the blinds past the windows and out into the cold. He could make out falling ice and snow from the ledges along the building next door. He imagined the small avalanches adding to the piling snow about Fieldcrest. He felt like an ant captured inside a small boy’s sand castle on a beach.

“Tim, what’s wrong with your hands?” Jackie was asking him.

“Never mind that.”

“We heard about Gordy and the man who was frozen to death,” began Jackie, a look of concern creasing her brow. “You don’t think something’s happened to Marie, do you?”

“N0, I don’t think that at all,” countered Tim, reassuringly.

“Then why isn’t she at the switchboard, or here with us?”

“Did I say she wasn’t at the wires?”

“You didn’t have to. You looked it when I said she was. Besides, I’ve tried to ring her down there a couple of times,” Jackie squeezed his arm. Tim stood up and shrugged, saying, “Marie could be anywhere in the building, Jackie. It’s no big deal.”

“Yea, who knows,” answered Jackie. “I mean it’s a big place.”

“Still worries me with what’s been going on. One reason we all came up here was because it was getting so cold down there.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll locate her.”

Tim rushed out of the lunchroom and down the corridor leading to the elevators. His fears mounting, he pictured the elevator doors opening with Marie lying flat on her face, a knife in her back. He imagined going down to the switchboard room again and finding her there, twisted and strangled with her own headphone set, her body thrown behind some closet door, He cursed himself for not having thoroughly canvassed the room earlier, along with the hallway outside, and the whole damn floor.

The elevator doors stared back at him. How nice it would be to see them open and find Marie smiling out at him. But it seemed the elevator would never come, and Tim looked around for the stairwell door. He rushed to it, taking long, brisk steps. Pushing the door open, he took the stairs. It was a long way down, but he felt panicky. The run would relieve some of his tension, he thought.

He took the steps two at a time, onto each landing. He kept his breathing rhythmic, pulling air in at the nostrils, realizing there was very little of it to work with. He watched the floors, numbered in bold letters at each landing, pass by.

But Tim’s headlong rush down the stairwell was abruptly stopped when he saw a figure ahead of him-dressed in a hooded; dark coat-rushing equally fast away from him. The person ahead was several flights down. Tim’s heart thumped. It could be Marie. Her coat was similar to the one he’d caught a glimpse of below. He began shouting.

“Marie! Is that you?”

Whoever it was, it was not Marie. N or did it seem to be a woman. The figure gave no response, but continued madly down the stairs and Tim thought he heard a controlled growling under the hood, like that of an animal.

“Jesus’ Wait up will you,” Tim called out. “1 want to talk to you. I’m looking for someone.”

But the hooded figure kept going faster down the stairs. Tim threw himself into pursuit now, realizing whoever it was, his behavior was suspect. Maybe Kennelly would like to talk to this guy, he thought.

Just then the figure darted through a door on the 24th floor and disappeared. Tim almost passed the floor in pursuit, but realized at the last moment the door was slightly ajar when the door hissed air from its automatic hinge. Tim took the door. On the other side, however, he found only an empty hallway thrumming with some electronic noise. Near the end of a long corridor there were lights behind a door. Tim inched forward.

22

Tim Crocker stood before the door, where he suspected the strange man who’d given chase down the stairwell had fled. The name on the door read Benjamin J. Nevis, Ph. D., Meteorological Research. Tim had no idea that meteorology had offices way down here. Who was this Nevis fellow, he wondered. Certainly didn’t rate.

Tim gave a tentative knock on the door and gently nudged it open. He was struck by the bright lights, contrasting so sharply with the hallway. He was amazed at the size of the room, which crossed to the outside wall and curved around the elevators, taking almost the entire floor.

“Hello?” asked Tim, taking a step inside. “Is anyone here?”

Tim’s eyes fell on the large wall maps and aerial photos which circled him. They were weather maps. His eye was caught by the series of maps near him, which were marked with black lines showing directions of air currents, and centers of low and high pressure areas.

Another look around the room revealed a white haired man in a white smock, much like one worn by a doctor. He was seated at the control panel of a computer. The computer was an outmoded 4400 Xron. Tacked around it, along the corked walls, were several octagonal computer pictures. The old man seemed absorbed in one of them. Tim knew the pictures depicted current weather conditions.

He cleared his throat as he approached the aged man whose back was toward him. “What’s the outlook?”

The old man kept his back to Tim. He only slightly shook his head. He seemed undecided as to whether he’d heard anyone else in the room or not. He decided he hadn’t and went back to his octagonal. Tim saw it was a computer depiction of the USA., but it looked strangely different. There were no squalls of snow. Everything appeared normal. Then Tim realized there was no Florida to speak of; that, in fact, the coastline had risen several thousand feet. Coastal cities and states all over the U.S. were submerged below the sea.

“What the hell is that?” asked Tim outright.

The old man turned on his chair as if floating in air without the slightest noise or trace of surprise. “Long term prediction, based upon suppositions, calculations. Who are you and what do you want?”

The old man was bearded and had friendly red cheeks and blue eyes. He was a stubby man, not more than five feet high. Somehow he reminded Tim of the mythical Santa Claus.

“My name’s Tim, Tim Crocker. I was looking for someone. I thought he might be here. He was wearing a dark, hooded coat. Tweed, I think. You must have seen him come through here?”

The old man stared at Tim as though he couldn’t make out what he was saying. “What is your purpose here? I don’t get many visitors.”

Tim wondered if the old man were some lunatic relative of Fieldcrest’s and was kept on for that reason. “I’m with the Daily. Are you Dr. Nevis?”

The white beard moved up and down quickly. Tim took the movement to mean that the man was Nevis. “I-was-look-ing-for-some-one,” began Tim, couching his words in tones a child would understand, speaking more slowly than a standing freight train. “Chasing him actually. He may be quite dangerous.”

“Look here, young man,” blurted Nevis. “Don’t try my patience.

No one has been in here but me. What are you up to? It’s less than two hours until air time upstairs, and I have to have this evening’s charts to Dr. Wertman by then.”

Tim’s eyes scanned the room. It appeared empty except for him and the old man. “Wertman?” he asked, “You work with Mark Wertman?”

“N at with him, for him,” answered Nevis, a slight irritation in his voice, “You didn’t think Wertman had all those predictions and long-range forecasts at his fingertips, did you? No. He’s much too busy a man to be bothered with details. He just shows up. I see to it he has the information he needs.”

“What do you get in return?”

“A computer room where I can work, a job,” replied the old man. “Sometimes 1 have an opportunity to do research. Not often.”

“J thought Wertman was a real work-horse type meteorologist,” said Tim.

“That’s the image Fieldcrest has promoted. That’s what you’re supposed to think. I didn’t know there was still one of you alive.”

Tim looked puzzled. “One of what?”

“A man who believes everything he sees,” laughed the old man.

“Well, I don’t,” said Tim, still glancing about the large room, interested in the aerial photos, the large maps, and computer printouts that covered much of the walls. “What is all this stuff?”

“I didn’t like the white, stark walls, and this stuff as you call it, this is my work.”

“OK, but are you sure no one besides me came through that door?”

Nevis shook his head and sighed, indicating that he was sure. “I am old, but I’m not blind.”

Tim almost asked him how his hearing was but thought better of it. It didn’t appear possible that Nevis could be the man who Tim had chased on the stairwell. He moved very slowly, stiffly getting back on his stool before the computer console. Whoever had been on the stairs may have pushed the door open and kept running down them. He might have gone into another room on the floor. Nevis’ lights just happened to be on.

Still, to satisfy himself, he asked Dr. Nevis if he could look around the complex room for a sign of anyone else having been there. His search turned up nothing. But he could feel the old man’s gaze upon him as he went about the room.

As he looked about, his eyes kept going back to the many wall hangings. There was a picture of Great Britain but the English Channel was solid pack-ice. Another picture revealed that arid Australia was reduced in size with rising ocean levels, but the deserts were greener, lusher. Then his eyes were led again to America, where something struck him as odd.

“Dr. Nevis,” began Tim as he came closer to the large map of the US, “what’s this dark spot here along the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington?” “Can’t you read a map, young man?”

“Well, sure, a regular map.”

“A road map, perhaps? Look here,” the old man began pointing out dark spots all over the map. “You see it is not glue or coffee stains. Read the legend.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” said Tim as the old man retreated. The legend showed a miniature of the dark spots Nevis had pointed out. Beside the spot it read, “Cold Spot.”

“You see above, on the smaller scale, how the cold water off the Pacific Coast has increased enormously since the 1970’s?” Suddenly the old man was back and Tim started with surprise. Nevis was pointing to a group of maps near the ceiling which went all around the room. These maps each had a clearly marked date, going as far back in time as 1955. “Why do you think it’s so damn cold here these days? And this is the cause of the drought in the southwest. From Alaska to Baja, nothing but icy waters.”

“Frightening to see. it so graphically,” said Tim.

“That’s why these maps are kept here. Aerial photos, satellites, scare,” Ben’s voice wandered off as he shook his head. “Must not ever panic the people, they say! Fools! The people are frightened to death, or enough to kill others to survive. You’ll never see one of these, or any of my historical series on television. You might have at one time. But I think you’re too young to have been concerned in 1996.”

“1996? You made predictions, long term predictions on the weather’?”

“Calculations, my boy. Predictions are for sorcerers.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Not to worry. I have no delicate sensibilities left, really, and as to your misworded question, yes. I made my calculations right here from FBE. I was not the only one who, after successive demonstrations of my calculations, lost my job. No indeed, even the Associate Producer was, as they say, canned!”

“Fired? From FBE for having an opinion?” Tim said in mock horror. “It couldn’t happen!”

The sarcasm was wasted on old Nevis who shot back, “Damn right, and it can happen to you or anyone else. That’s what worried all the others. The evidence, all my charts, my calculations were confiscated and I was booted out. I used to work elbow to elbow with those same technicians and reporters Wertman works with now.”

“But you’re here.”

“After twenty-four years they rehired me. I don’t know why. All I know is, I like eating better and now I do what I’m told.”

“Who asked you to make the computer calculation I saw earlier, the one showing the U.S. half flooded by the oceans?”

“Oh, you are nosey, aren’t you? Looking over my shoulder were you?” The old man waved his question away as soon as he said it. “You reporters haven’t changed in twenty-four years.”

“That may be true,” began Tim, but he was immediately interrupted.

“Right now shorelines are down drastically. Twentynine years ago they were up. The fluctuations that have occurred should only occur over thousands of years. Why do you think we’ve been hit with so many tidal waves and hurricanes? Fluctuating base levels in lakes and rivers, continually reshaping their valleys, cause floods every other year and droughts the next! Climatic zones are a thing of the past. Habitat and vegetation belts are reduced to a few areas. All manner of plant species and animals have disappeared from the face of the earth, including fresh water fish.”

The feeling of being trapped came over Tim again as he pictured fish trapped below ice so thick no vegetation could grow beneath it for them to feed on. What the old man was saying to Tim, in his cocksure way, was frightening.

Tim shook his head in near disbelief, “But Wertman and others say the present situation is a crazy fluctuation in an otherwise orderly world. You don’t see all this as a climatic oddity?”

“I should not say anymore perhaps.”

“Oh yes you should. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.”

“Why? What will you do with my words? Print them?

Make a fool of me again, as the papers did in 1996? Call me a crackpot?”

“I just want to know the truth. I don’t believe the garbage the tube weathermen have been feeding us for years either.”

“What will you believe then? You know the old saying, believe in something or you’ll believe in anything!” replied Ben Nevis with a chuckle. “Where else are you going to get information if not on the air waves and in newsprint? And not so often in newsprint anymore. Everyone believes what their told, so long as it’s palatable. No one wants the truth, and I’m not so old and foolish to put myself on the line again. Once burned, twice shy.”

“What your colleagues are calling a climatic oddity, you have another name for?” asked Tim.

The old man was silent for a long time, “Come over here, I’ll show you something, young man. Do you see this map. Here is Hudson Bay in Canada, now a perennial glacier, growing like a hungry animal, daily. We can see now with our own eyes that glaciers are not simply a product of snowcapped high-altitude mountaintops, now can’t we? The naysayers can put that in their pipe and smoke it. Now we have irrefutable evidence that glacial eyes can grow in lowland areas, and not simply creep down to lowland areas.”

“Can you put all that in terms my readers might understand, Dr. Nevis?”

The old man looked angry at this. He pointed to the map again. “Look here, dry sea beds, such as the English Channel, will be filled with glaciers in a few years, at the present rate at which the sea level is falling.”

Tim stareed for some time at the area designated by the old man. Nevis continued, “This area is uninhabited now, or so we are told. It is anybody’s guess as to how many people are trapped here. Most have migrated in one form or another. You’d move off, too, after watching a great lake of this size become a glacier and then begin to encroach on your back yard. Look all about the map. Would you care to see any satellite shots? Newly formed barriers of water, rock or rock-hard ice, inhospitable territory turning to tundra as far south as Minnesota!”

“Wertman says this is just a frozen lake. You say it’s a glacier. What’s the difference?” asked Tim.

“There is a world of difference, not the least being the notion that a frozen lake will thaw. Suffice it to say that the Hudson’s water has diminished as much as the sea level has, and that the water was replaced by tons of very real ice and snow. The weight of the accumulations has spread the ice outward, started it moving.”

“Have you got proof of that?”

“You look but you don’t see, Mr. Reporter,” said Nevis, stepping to the next map in the row. “Here’s the same area several years; ago, and another map several years before that. Weather history in the making.”

Tim studied the other maps and found the size of the Hudson to be growing enormously. “My God, are these maps for real?”

“This is a large, healthy ice field, Tom, right at our doorstep.”

“Tim,” he corrected.

“Tim, Tom, what’s the difference with what I’m saying?

This ice field is manufacturing great quantities of ice in the North American highlands. Others are doing the same in Asia, Europe, Siberia! The ground in all areas above 80 degrees north latitude, like Greenland, will soon be perennially frozen, in some places over thousands of feet deep. Each winter is claiming more land, more lakes, and more rivers.”

“I can’t see how it’s happened,” Tim said almost to himself.

For Tim the room began to take on a nightmarish quality and the old man seemed somewhere between an evil elf and Lucifer. Tim didn’t want any of it to be true. He felt the weight of this fact wrenching his heart. It was like that nagging, ever recurrent fact that one day he would die, and take to the grave only biological truths and evolutionary principles.

“I read somewhere,” stammered Tim, “that sixteen percent of the ocean area is covered with ice, part or all of the year. Is that true?”

“It was twelve percent in 1978,” shrugged the old man, his white beard twitching as if animated. “It was sixteen, ten years ago. Now, I’m afraid, it’s twenty-seven percent. Icebergs are on the rise-s-delaying shipping, causing more hazards than ever. If the cold wants to stop us, it will at its present rate. The cold is in control.”

“Then it must be stopped!”

“A nice attitude, a good supposition,” said the little white-headed man. “I begin to like you, Tim. You remind me of someone I was familiar with once. But again, to be brutally honest, the ice will not be stopped. Not if it reaches the middle latitudes. Then, there can be no stopping a full scale ice age descending upon us.”

“Will it reach the middle latitudes?”

“I don’t know, except to say that at its present rate of growth, it could not be denied by any sane individual,” sighed the old man. “I will be gone by then, I suppose. Nevertheless, it troubles me. Still, this is calculation based upon available data.”

“But isn’t there some counter measure? We can’t sit idly by and do nothing,” Tim raised his voice.

“But that’s just what we have done, thanks to my colleagues who’ve maintained for generations the myth that ice sheet growth can only occur above the snowline. They didn’t reckon on the snow line’s dropping to level ground. They didn’t reckon on climatic catastrophe. Until recently, many people and scientists could not grasp the fact that ice doesn’t need gravitational pull to move-it moves by sheer weight. Ice on a level surface, not having the pull of gravity, must be two hundred feet thick to move, under pressure of its own weight, and then it spreads outward. Well now, the seas weigh a hell of a lot more than the pressure of two hundred feet of ice, and the seas are being caught up in this cold cycle both through evaporation and precipitation, and by being covered by large ice sheets, ledges extending between landforms!”

“The experts have been saying since the 1980’s that such ice sheets would take hundreds of thousands of years to develop. I remember a speech by the president when I was a kid. He said there was no present danger that wehad centuries to adjust to coming climatic changes.”

“At the same time he was outfitting his top naval and army officers with millions to find a solution to the ice crisis,” said Ben with a shake of the head. “He didn’t bother to inform the public that greater and greater accumulations of snow and ice had begun as early as 1955. All of our presidents since the 1980’s have known this. But few people, privy to the information, cared to shout about it. The ones who did were castrated, largely because they blamed atomic fallout and waste as a contributing factor.”

“I don’t understand?” said Tim.

But Ben Nevis seemed not to hear his question. “What rankles me to this day is the fact that there was so much optimism and lack of concern shown by earlier generations. And, of course, the fact that nuclear energy was continually being used at polar sites for heating, lighting, and even construction purposes, not to mention the subs and other nuclear powered craft. Especially, when all the while the authorities knew!”

“Knew what? What did they know?”

“They knew that in principle an ice age could start following summer, or at any rate, the next one hundred years, with a ferocity greater than a mere climatic fluctuation. We’d begun to get those sooty, cold summers with so much rainfall in the 1990’s.”

“Are you speaking of the Iceman Experiments?” “Yes,” said Nevis a little hesitantly, “that and others. GARO, GATE, and others.”

“The weather’s normality was eroding and these clowns continued to work on experiments involving nuclear energy in the arctic circle?”

“Not all of them. Most of the work of these organizations was very beneficial, and as for normality in weather, there’s no such thing. Climatic changes do take place gradually, but not always so imperceptibly as once believed.”

“That’s the understatement of the day,” said Tim loudly.

“It used to be taught that our existing climate was a relatively settled condition, sedate=-appearing as properly calm as the ocean’s surface. We know that the atmosphere above our heads is no more settled than the cold depths of the oceans.” Nevis began to pace. “There are wild, raging rivers up there,” Nevis was pointing skyward. “Like the jet stream-rivers of air. But our leading weather experts have always been a safe and conservative bunch. As far as they could see, and as far as you or I could see, everything was calm with only an occasional deviation. Deviations soon right themselves, it was taught, and the climate returns to ‘normal’.”

“Then, are you saying, what’s outside is becoming the norm?”

“There is no normal where weather is concerned, never has been, don’t you see?” answered Nevis. “It was all theory. Look around you. The evidence of the kind you see in this room, of local climatically induced environmental changes-deserts expanding or constricting, slowing of erosion, growing erosion elsewhere, flooding, typhoons, storms accelerated beyond all limits.”

“And nothing is being done about it?”

The old man shook his head. “I can’t get Wertman to listen. I can’t get anyone to look at my calculations. At least, I haven’t up until now. He asked me recently to get some information related to my own research to him as quickly as possible. At least he’s begun to listen. I just fear it is too late.”

“I certainly hope not, Dr. Nevis,” replied Tim.

“He’s a fool to have done nothing for so long. All of the so-called experts are. Mavericks like me, drummed out of the elite by people like him, unable to get funds, financial support for our research, or jobs in universities and business, don’t stand a chance. Who listens anyway?”

“I’m listening, and I’m very interested, Dr. Nevis. Can I come back and talk again with you?”

“You may, if you wish, but I may be in no mood to talk, and I may deny everything I have told you, son.” The old man stared into Tim’s eyes. “They don’t like dissent around here, not even conscientious dissent.”

“That plagues the newsroom, too, Dr. Nevis,” answered Tim. “But I’ve got an idea that the time’s right for a man like you to be heard and I think you’ll be surprised at the response a story like this will receive today.”

“I don’t think people change very much,” said Nevis, turning and going back to his work. “People are sheep.”

Tim got the image of a line of people being herded along by a number of weathermen onto an iceberg docked in an ice-filled lake or bay. Like so many old Eskimos, the people were supposed to float over the water until they died of exposure. He shook his head as he left Nevis’ offices. When he got into the hallway, his thoughts shifted to Marie Stanton once more. He went to the elevator, intending to take it down to the switchboard room where he’d find Marie-little headphone set atop her black hair, smiling over her shoulder at him.

23

Tim Crocker stood at the doorway to the small switchboard room. Nothing was the same. All the chairs had been neatly arranged at the board, even tucked in so that a visitor had space to walk. The once-scattered newspapers and magazines were neatly stacked on a corner table, and the ashtray was picked up and placed in its proper spot. There were no ashes or soot on the linoleum floor. The evidence that Marie was still alive and well was overwhelming. Tim’s breath became a little easier.

Still, as he pulled out a chair at the switchboard, he wondered where she might be. He had the feeling that all along she had been close by-doing something quite basic and simple, like sleeping somewhere as George Walsh had been doing on the couch at the Personnel waiting room. Then she returned and cleaned up the place. Perhaps she was now at the cafeteria rounding up the other switchboard girls, trying to get them to return to their plugs.

His finger went over the switch of the Master-com, the intercom he’d used earlier. He was certain that using it now would turn out to be foolish. He flicked it on and off several times. He wanted to shout into it, “Where in hell are you, Marie?”

He thought better of calling an all points bulletin on Marie. She’d be furious with him and he’d look like a fool if she were sipping coffee somewhere.

He glanced around the small room. His eyes fell on the closet door at the rear left, The door was open ever so slightly. It was the room in which the switchboard girls hung their coats. Tim went toward it. Reaching the door, he yanked it open. The little room was dark but it appeared empty. He found a light switch and turned it on. Except for an assortment of sweaters, hats, scarves, gloves, and coats, it was empty. Investigating further, he pulled back several coats and found the hooded tweed coat that was Marie’s, resting on its hanger.

He sighed and let go of the coat. He closed the closet door and went back to the chair he’d occupied a moment before. The thought ran through his mind that she’d found another man, and together they’d found a quiet corner of the building and were sleeping somewhere together. The thought was half wishful thinking. It might do Marie good, to take on a new lover, he thought to himself. She’d become jealous to the point of rage several times in their relationship. She needed to loosen up. Sometimes she acted as if they were married.

He was suddenly tired, his eyes burning. He rubbed them several times, trying to ward off his drowsiness. Maybe, he thought, he should just wait there until Marie returned. He began thinking of the last time he’d seen Marie.

She’d convinced him to stay with her all night and he awoke to her caress. She was a passionate woman, and Tim found it close to impossible to satisfy her completely. She was the complete opposite of the person she appeared to be at FBE, with her headphone so neatly perched on her velvety, black hair. She was a reckless, wild lover, who allowed her long hair to play over him. She acted the part of a powerful, dominating goddess. She had no inhibitions.

This contrasted sharply with the strict discipline of her public image, her neat-as-a-pin pose.

After making love again, they had coffee and smoked cigarettes. Marie went about the apartment in the nude as he sat in bed watching her. They talked and listened to the radio. It had begun to snow the night before. The music was frequently interrupted by over-anxious weather forecasters distressed that no end seemed in sight for the snow during the day.

Marie raised the shade next to the bed and peaked at the day. “Darnn it,” she’d cursed. “I’m so sick of this winter. Hell, Tim, it’s April!”

“I know how you feel,” he’d moaned in response. “Drop the shade. Do you want the neighbors to talk?”

“They already do,” she replied.

Marie sat sipping her coffee for some time. Her mind seemed to wander away from Tim. She shivered, until Tim put a blanket over her shoulders. She began talking as if to herself. “We watched the bay turn to ice, eaten by the glacier. First the water turned opaque. It was freezing cold. Then fragile crystals formed, hardening more quickly all around the edges. Next, tiny needles spread together to form giant, cold pie plates shining like tin. More and more ice gathered until the water looked muddy-it was slushy with it. Then the surface froze solid. The waves came in from the Pacific, carrying warmer winds, and tried to fight it all the time. The waves would break it up, buffet it, turn the ice layers intoseparate lily pad shapes again and again.

“Pretty soon all the separate shapes of ice were fewer and fewer. The ice sheet became thicker and stronger.

“We watched it begin to climb over its edges, growing from the shores, and reaching outward to the sea.”

Tim sat upright in bed beside her. “Sounds like a National Geographic caption. Where was this, Glacier Bay, Alaska? What were you doing there?”

“The more it grew, the more it protected itself by its own mass,” Marie continued in her reverie. “It methodically refrigerated all the area around it with its reservoir of cold.”

“I didn’t know you knew such large words, grandma,” quipped Tim at the time. “Say, did you live in Alaska once?”

She shook her head to indicate yes.

“A chilling tale,” Tim bounced a friendly punch off her shoulder, trying to cheer her. “You know, going into a depression after we make love does not a little bother me!”

She had no answer for this. She got up and began to dress for work. It surprised Tim that she felt in such a rush to get to work that morning. She left ahead of him.

Now, in the wire room, as Tim called it, he waited for her to come through the door.

24

In the sub-basement of the boiler room, Gary Hornell and George Walsh completed their work, replacing the deadly, incorrectly printed circuit board with the correct one. The little board was circular, the size of a poker chip. Walsh pocketed the chip, intending to give it to Tim Crocker when next he saw him.

Together, George and Gary walked back toward the office and the ladder-sized steps that would take them to the lower level and out of the boiler room. The room was still noisy. Gary’s ears were beginning to ring from it. He’d be glad to get on the elevator and return to the newsroom upstairs. He wasn’t sure what this trouble had been worth, or if he could salvage anything from the time he’d spent here for Crocker. Sure there was a story in the reactor, but what were the details? Who knew the answers? Who could he talk to? Who would talk? Did it constitute a crime? It seemed to him it must.

Gary stopped Walsh at the foot of the stairs leading up and asked, “How can you be so calm about this? There’s a self-contained nuclear power pack and turbo-engine running this building, and you aren’t even sweating.”

“Whoever it is, he’s using regained uranium waste,” answered Walsh with a shrug. “It’s weaker, having been run through a reactor before. I’m more concerned with how they ship it here than its being here. That reactor may look small and fragile to you, but I’ve never seen one quite so well put together. I don’t know that I condone it, but Fieldcrest has a large operation going here. It looks to me as if he sells power to neighboring buildings, too.”

“I don’t think it’s small,” said Gary.

“By comparison, it is a miniature. I don’t know how it can be afforded, though,” answered Walsh. “That is, unless they perfected a cheap method of production.”

“It’d have to be cheaper. Why else have it?”

“I thought it was a back-up system, like the normal steam generator, or coal generator,” said Walsh. “But no, this is the system.”

“Isn’t it a crime?”

“It’s no crime to produce your own electricity, or to generate heat, Gary, but I know the Atomic Energy Commission would take a dim view of all this.”

“You mean they’d lynch Fieldcrest?”

“If he’s responsible, and ultimately, he is.”

Gary stared into the grayness of the subbasement as Walsh began his assent. “You sure that thing won’t blow any minute?”

“Not a chance, Gary. Quit worrying. It’s quite secure, at least until someone turns on the air conditioning,” joked Walsh.

Walsh started up the steps that ran along the huge. gray oil drum. Gary followed, head bent, careful not to slip. When George reached the seventh step, he realized that a man, with a large round stomach and black bowler hat, was standing at the top, waiting for them. He was also pointing a gun at them. Walsh did not recognize the man, and the thought flashed through his mind that he was about to die here, amid all the great, gray, belching machines. Dead amid all the phony machinery, he laughed to himself.

Another thought hit him at the same instant. He’d been a fake, a phony all his life. Why had he never finished medical school? Why did he always put off everything? Time and again he quit, took up meaningless odd jobs. He’d become the proverbial ‘Jack of all Trades, Master of None, least of all medicine. Now, he was going to die.

But the man standing over them shouted down. “Just keep coming.” And then to Gary, “You too, kid.”

25

When Marie did not show up after almost an hour, Tim gave up his vigil. He turned out the light as he left the empty, little switchboard room. He spent some time going about the floor, pulling open doors. He glanced in both the men’s room and the women’s. But it was no use. He checked any janitorial closets that might be unlocked. He had a terrible fear that she’d been killed by whoever killed Gordy, and who was presently stalking the building for Wertman. He feared she might be stabbed and helpless, or raped and thrown in some dingy corner of the building.

He’d come down the stairwell on the north end of the building from the thirtieth floor. He decided to take a little used and little known stairwell, near the south end of the corridor, back up to the thirtieth floor, and perhaps beyond. He took the stairs two at a time. After having reached floor thirty, he abandoned the stairs and his search, and decided to go straight to Wertman’s newsroom. He was going to have it out with Wertman. He wanted to know why Joraski was after him, and he hoped some answers would lead to Marie’s whereabouts. He half expected to find her in the cafeteria as he passed by it once more. He had every reason to believe he might bump into her as she got off the elevator there. But when the doors opened and half a dozen people got off, she was not among them.

Moments later, at Mark Wertman’s office, Tim was angry enough to put his fist through the wall. When he got off the elevator there was no one around. He marched for Wertman’s private office, banged loudly on the door, and entered.

Wertman and Joanna were sitting on the couch having a drink. It seemed to be a scene that might have made sense sometime before, but Tim thought they looked ridiculously calm. Of course, they didn’t know about Marie, or how drained he was, both physically and mentally.

“Tim!” said Joanna, rising and going to him. “You look frightful.”

“Have a drink, Crocker?” asked Wertman matter-of-factly.

Tim didn’t answer right away. He stared into Joanna’s eyes for a moment, a look of curious defeat on his face. What he’d come to do, beat the truth out of Wertman, he was neither wide awake enough nor strong enough to do right now. “Scotch and rocks,” he answered Mark.

“I want to thank you for saving my life, Tim,” Joanna said, marching him to the couch. “I’m feeling fine now.”

“I’m sure the liquor is just what the doctor would prescribe,” said Tim sarcastically. “Why is it that I feel like I’m being conned, Wertman?”

Wertman looked up from the drink he was mixing. “I don’t follow you, Cracker.”

“Are you in on this thing with him, Joanna?”

Joanna looked shocked. She backed a little away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tim.”

“I’m talking about one dead man on Fieldcrest’s payroll who happens to be a retired cop, and who happens to be protecting Wertman’s body! I’m talking about another dead man named Joraski who was out to kill this man for some unknown and mysterious reason, and I’m talking about a missing woman, someone I think a lot about, who’s somehow mixed up in this,” Tim began to rant and walk about the room. “Not to mention the fact that Wertman’s also being looked out for by the Chief of Police! I want to know what’s so hot about you, Dr. Wertman?”

“You’ve summed up the situation very well, young man,” came a voice from behind Tim.

A man in a dark coat sauntered into the room, forcing George Walsh and Gary Hornell ahead of him, and indicating to the other two where they might sit. “Kennelly’s my name. Mr. Crocker, isn’t it? I guess you fooled me over the phone. I thought you knew something about our fair-haired boy, Dr. Wertman.”

“What do you know about him? Why is he so high up on your list?” asked Tim directly.

“Here,” said Wertman to Crocker, pushing his drink in his hand, “Take this and cool down, will you?”

“He’s not so high up on my list,” said Kennelly, giving Mark Wertman a casual glance.

“Are you going to tell me he’s just another citizen in need of protection,” said Tim sarcastically.

“I don’t know quite what’s so important about him. I do my job. Part of my job means taking orders. The Governor gets a he gives me a call, so we protect Wertman. I farmed the job out to Harold Gordon, I didn’t have the men to spare and Gordy, well, he could use the extra scratch. He still had a mother to support, y’all know. Someplace called Crest Haven or Rest Haven. It was costing him a bundle to keep her there.”

Kennelly was a staunch, hefty man, his arms bulging at his enormous sides. He seemed to have a perpetual half smile on his wide, square face. He might easily be mistaken for the local sheriff in a town the size of Dundee or Carpentersville. He kept inserting and pulling out a cigar which was unlit.

Kennelly pointed over to Walsh and Gary. “I found these two down in the boiler room, snooping around. I’d followed someone else there but lost whoever it was. Walsh and the kid here have filled me in on everything that’s happened since your call, Wertman. It looks like someone tampered with the heating system, and whoever it was knew several things not just anyone would.”

Kennelly made a dramatic sweep of his arm when he again snatched out his unlit cigar. “The killer is no stranger to either Fieldcrest Building or the habits of our good weatherman.”

“Then it’s not just some lunatic on a binge. a hate weathermen fixation?” asked Joanna in surprise. “Mark’s thought that all along. He was just telling me so.”

Kennelly seemed only now to notice that the end of his cigar was burnt out. He pulled out a lighter and relit it. Taking his time, he looked about for an ashtray; one was handed to him by Gary Hornell. He continued, “The killer knows enough about computers to program that thing downstairs to kill. He also knew about the best kept secret in all of Fieldcrest Enterprises, that the heating system is run on nuclear power.”

“What?” asked Joanna.

“That’s impossible!” cried Wertman.

“1 see you got a lot of information from my two able assistants,” said Tim, indicating Walsh and Hornell.

“They are both bright men, Mr. Crocker. They want to help the police any way they can. I find such good citizens are rare these days,” said Kennelly, the smile continuing. “Now, then, the killer also knew that Wertman’s Environment Box was tied into the heating and air filtration system. He also knew there was a pattern to Wertman’s use of the Enviro-box there. When do you usually use it, Dr. Wertman?”

“Before air time, every evening,” said Mark. “Whoever wanted you dead knew this fact also.” “I used it instead,” remarked Joanna.

“The killer couldn’t know Wertman would change his habits, or that you would take his place at precisely the same time,” said Kennelly. “The killer’s plan, I’m sure, was to remove the program from the system after Wertman’s demise in the box. The killer is as trapped here as we are. I don’t believe it was the intention of anyone to kill all of us slowly by asphyxiation. I think the person I saw going toward the boiler room was out to retrieve the deadly chip, which, I’m told is in your pocket, Mr. Crocker.”

“Yes, I didn’t want it used again.” “May I have it?”

“Certainly.”

“Not really of much use now, except in evidence, . though I’m sure the only fingerprints we find will be yours or Walsh’s,” answered Kennelly, taking the tiny printed circuit board. He examined it a moment. “Small but deadly.”

“Can you be so certain that the killer didn’t wish me dead along with Mark’?” asked Joanna Sommers.

“You are in a fine position to be the killer, Miss Sommers,” said Kennelly, shocking her. “You would have known just how much oxygen loss over a period of time you had in the Enviro-box, and if you weren’t rescued in time. the timer would have opened the door.

You set the dials. You have access to this office, and to Wertman’s innermost thoughts, his routine. I can see you as a possible suspect but not as an intended victim.”

“Well I can!” Joanna snapped back at him. She described the telephone calls she’d received over the past few months.

When Joanna was through, Tim sat repeating the phrase, “Examine the Iceman.”

“Why didn’t you report these calls, Miss Sommers?” asked Kennelly in an officious manner.

“They stopped,” she answered. “Besides, I went after the story, to see if there was anything to it and there wasn’t. At least, I didn’t think there was.”

“It’s nonsense,” said Mark Wertman from across the room at the bar where he mixed himself another drink.

“After I got to know Mark better, I confided in him about the telephone calls. I didn’t know he was getting threatening calls also,” continued Joanna, and turning to stare at Mark, her voice quivering a little, “He didn’t confide in me.”

“You guessed that something was wrong though,” said Kennelly.

“Yes, I knew he’d changed. And the calls, I could never truly put them out of my mind. The sound of the voice on the other end. A man’s voice and not a man’s voice. It was not even a woman’s voice.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kennelly.

“It was real. The emotions, the highs and lows were there, but they seemed to be filtered through something. The voice was strained and garbled. The person who made those calls was quite mad.”

“Could it have been a machine?” asked Kennelly. “Or a number of rumbling machines.”

“Those calls were made from the boiler room,” said Kennelly with finality.

“In the office down there,” shouted Gary in excitement.

“We’ve got to know who was programming that reactor,” said Tim.

“There ought to be a guard on duty down there to make sure it’s not tampered with again. Once the killer knows Wertman is still alive, he’ll try it again,” said Kennelly.

“Worse, he might go completely overboard and blow this whole damn place up,” said Tim.

“You’re all talking as if Joraski were still alive,” Mark Wertman shouted at them. “He was the killer and now he is dead.”

“I had Joraski checked out at headquarters before I left, from the information you gave me in his wallet. He was a scientist, living in Leningrad. For the past several years he’s been in an institution for the insane over there. Shame of it all is that he once won some notable honors, just went off the deep end, cracked, as they say.”

“Then it fits. He was insane. He got some idea in his head to kill me,” Mark said.

“Doesn’t seem likely, Mr. Wertman, unless he had an accomplice. Walsh here knows something about these computer chips. It seems the reactor down there can tell us when the program is changed to the minute and day. J ora ski was long dead when the killer tried to ice you in the hot box.”

“Then what was Joraski’s reason for pointing that gun at me?” said Wertman in anger.

“Like I said,” answered Kennelly, “maybe there’s a conspiracy on. Maybe a lot of people want you dead. Or maybe that poor slob was trying to shoot himself with that gun and you got in the way. From the looks of him, that’s what I’d have done, shoot myself.”

“So, it’s not any simple matter,” said Joanna Sommers. “What else did you find out about Herr Joraski?” said Tim.

“U sual stuff. Plane reservations, room reservations, telephone calls. He knew someone here. He’s called into this building on a number of occasions.”

“What kind of a scientist was he?” asked Tim. “What do you think?”

“Weather? A meteorologist?” asked Tim.

“Not exactly. He was a specialist with the Iceman Experiments years ago. His specialty was geophysics and ice age phenomena.”

“Why does the Iceman keep coming up?” Tim asked everyone in the room and turning to Mark Wertman, “Do you have an answer, Dr. Wertman?”

Wertman slammed down his drink, spilling the contents over the bar. “The Iceman was a straightforward, routine sea and land project, covering weather experimentation. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. It was no larger in scale than South Pacific studies, Atlantic Ocean studies, or a dozen others from GATE, GARP, NATO-SEA, to diving for hidden treasure!”

There was a long silence. Joanna and Tim stared into Mark’s eyes. There seemed to be something insincere about his outburst. Tim knew he was lying about something. Joanna wondered what it was he was hiding. Silently, she cursed herself for not having been more of a reporter around him.

“There’s something missing, something right under our noses,” said Tim, standing again. “I can feel it.”

“There seems to be only one person who can tell us why he is a killer,” said Kennelly calmly. “We’ll have to flush him out. How long before you go on the air, Wertman?”

“Half hour, forty minutes, I’m told,” Mark answered. “They keep losing power, but I’m sure all’s well now.”

“Good. We have time to make some plans. Take me down to the place where you do it all.”

Kennelly and Wertman left the office for a moment. Kennelly returned and gave Walsh and Hornell a signal. George and Gary went outside the office as well.

Tim found himself alone with Joanna. She looked away from his intense gaze.

“I haven’t thanked you.” “Thanked me?” he asked.

“You’re too cavalier for your own good! For saving my life. For getting me safely out of there!” She pointed to the Enviro-box.

“Mark actually pulled you free. I was kind of handicapped with these,” he answered, holding up his hands.

“You got those downstairs in the Security Chiefs office,” she said. “I’m sorry we didn’t wait for you down there. It was so awful.”

“That’s all right,” Tim had come around the couch to face her. He yawned heavily and sat down beside her.

“Tim, you think Mark’s hiding something, don’t you?” “I’d stake my career on it.”

“You might have to. It involves a call from the White House.”

“The White House? Hey, that’s a pretty far out assumption to make on the basis of what that fat cop said about phone calls from the Governor.”

“No. It was while you were out. Mark got a call. 1 couldn’t make it out entirely. But he was talking to someone in the White House.”

“How do you know that?”

“1 listened at the door. He ended with ‘Tell the President everything is all right.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

She shook her head to indicate yes. “What?”

“Something like, ‘The World Control knows that! The members are agreed. There’s no other solution. Earth Two is all that can be hoped for.’’’

“Earth Two?”

“Yes. Sounds frightful doesn’t it?”

He nodded and repeated the words. “World Control? No other solution? The members are agreed?”

Joanna clasped his hands in hers. “I’m afraid, Tim.” “Not knowing makes me nervous too. Take it easy.” “I was such a fool. I’ve believed in him all this time. Instead of doing my job, I let him sidetrack me, and into bed of all places!”

“Hey, take it easy on yourself, Joanna,” Tim held her, and brushed back her yellow hair. He felt warm tears against his cheek.

“There are a lot of stones to turn up around here, Joanna. Stay with me now, don’t fall apart and don’t sell yourself short. We’ve all made fools of ourselves in this business, and you know yourself: reporters are always being conned or used! At least he wasn’t using you, and I really do think he loves you.”

She raised her head Their eyes met. “Tim,” she said, “kiss me.”

He swallowed hard. He felt a little off guard. This was all too much like a movie scenario for him. But she closed her eyes and raised her lips. Tim could not resist. He pressed his lips to hers and tasted her tongue in his mouth. She was burning, passionate. He felt a sensation not unlike holding a powerful electrical tool and being thoroughly vibrated by it. He knew she would be good in bed.

“God,” he whispered in her ear as they embraced, “I wish I knew where we could go.”

“My place,” she whispered in return.

“Your place? You live in Highland Park, don’t you?” “1 have a Pullman apartment in the building! Come on.”

She stood over him and pulled him up. He smiled like a schoolboy, saying, “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” she answered. “Believe it and come with me!”

26

“Air time!” shouted the producer.

Mark Wertman stood before a map of the United States. He knew there were at least eight or nine minutes left before actual air time. The producer had been told by Herb Kennelly to shoot five minutes, to fake the opening of the show. George Walsh stood at one of the cameras, and young Gary Hornell at the other. They panned too fast and showed little aptitude for zooming in. Kennelly had instructed the real cameramen to give them a crash course. Kennelly stood beside the producer, holding a copy of the script from Morning’s Beginning, a soap opera just going off the air on the next set. He didn’t resemble any script girl Wertman had ever seen.

The ploy was all right, Wertman thought, but he didn’t care for being the bait. If someone were watching the late 6 o’clock news, they would see he was quite well and living. Kennelly hoped that whoever wanted Wertman killed by asphyxiation, seeing that it didn’t work, would try something again, while he was on camera.

“Where’s Nevis with those printouts?” the producer, a graying, thin-haired man said. “He’s never been late before.”

Kennelly was asking who Ben Nevis was when a white-haired, bearded man in a white smock showed up at the stage door. The man held an armful of maps, printouts, and aerial photos. He was spotted by the producer, who went directly to him and said, “Get over here with those, Dr. Nevis. You’re late.”

Nevis only stared at Wertman. Kennelly couldn’t miss the hatred and scorn in the old man’s eyes, his clenched teeth, and red knuckles, as he held tightly to the material in his hands.

The producer began pulling the material from the old man, saying, “Let me have the forecast, Nevis. Let go.” Then, suddenly, the man’s tone changed. “What are these? Are you crazy, Ben? You want to lose your job? These aerials don’t belong up here. What in hell is this?”

“I have something special for Mr. Wertman, John,” said Nevis finally, with the calm of a man who didn’t care about anything the producer had to say. “He must receive them personally from me. I’ll have to go on camera, if he can’t come to me.”

“Well, he can’t,” said the producer.

“Get out of my way!” shouted Nevis, pushing the producer down. He was, or seemed, strong as a bull. Kennelly realized for the first time that beneath his little white frock and frame, Mr. Ben Nevis, had large, athletic arms and a muscular build. Nevis charged at Wertman, his charts, maps, and printouts flying in an directions. Kennelly went for Nevis, his revolver pulled, but two steps in front of Wertman, he slipped on the shining surface of the stage and a printout sheet. Kennelly’s gun fell from his hand and skidded across the room.

“Killer!” shouted old Nevis, his hands around Mark Wertman’s throat now. “Murderer of innocent children! Murderer of the world! Emil did you no harm, but you killed him. He was only a child! You too k everything from him! You are the one!”

Wertman was caught wholly by surprise by the old man’s sudden rage and strength. He was amazed that he couldn’t pull free from the man.

Gary Hornell went for Kennelly’s gun, abandoning his camera. George Walsh ran into Gary’s spinning camera before he could get to Ben Nevis. He had a hypodermic needle in his right hand, but the camera knocked it loose and it shattered beside Kennelly. Walsh looked down at Kennelly. The policeman seemed to be hurt from his fall. Walsh and Hornell stared at one another for a moment; Gary raised the gun with his hands to indicate he didn’t know how to use it, or that he couldn’t.

Nevis was screaming with rage. Wertman raised a knee and it hit the old man hard in the middle section, but his hands seemed frozen around the larger man’s neck. He was continuing to squeeze Wertman’s throat when George Walsh grabbed the gun from Hornell and went at Ben Nevis with the butt end.

His first attempt only grazed the old man, catching him on the shoulder. To Walsh’s surprise, Nevis let go of Wertman, turned, and with a large fist, hit Walsh right below the left eye, sending him over the top of Kennelly.

At that moment, Mark Wertman had the advantage, and he grabbed Nevis from behind in an arm lock. He twisted Nevis’ arm so hard the older man went to his knees. subdued.

Wertman looked down at Kennelly who was pushing Walsh from his back. Walsh rolled over like a sack of potatoes, out cold.

“I guess we’ve got our killer,” said Wertman. “I’d’ve never thought it of old Ben.”

27

“Uhmmmmmmmmm,” Joanna Sommers moaned again, laying in the pullout bed in the center of her one room, Pullman apartment. She listened to the shower spray and Tim’s terrible rendition of Love’s Winding Promise, a popular show tune.

The night had been both peaceful and fulfilling for her.

She’d not thought of Mark that night. She’d put the whole question of his guilt or innocence, and all mysterious happenings, out of her mind. She and Tim Crocker had made fine wine, soft music, and the touch of skin come alive with a freshness she hadn’t felt in a long time. Tim had such an assured, calm, and measured grace in his love making, and his touch was as gentle as that of a priest. It was morning and she still didn’t want to think or feel anything but Tim Crocker beside her.

The water was turned off in the other room, and Tim returned. “Hi, baby,” he said, seeing she was awake. “Tim,” she said simply, holding out her arms to him.

They embraced. Once again Tim felt the firmness of her breast, and the warmth of her skin against his. She repeatedly kissed him about the neck and chest, acting like a hungry animal, laughing and smiling. Her wildness beneath him excited his passion, and at once recalled Marie Stanton to his mind. He raised himself out of bed and began to dress. Joanna stared at him; a hurt look coming over her.

“I could use donuts and coffee,” said Tim as he dressed, “how about you?”

She grabbed him about the middle and pulled him down to the bed. She kissed him hard on the mouth. When she lifted her lips away from him, she said, “How about me?”

He kissed her in return and said, “You’ll think me pushy, my dear, but I’m in love.”

She smiled at this. “Tim. I hate to agree with you, but you are pushy. On the other hand, I think I love you too.”

“God, I thought you’d never say it!” he laughed. “Now that it’s settled, make me some coffee, woman.”

“Is that what Marie would do?”

“Marie? How did you know about Marie?”

“Simple deduction, and a little snooping,” she answered with a grin.

Together, each pointing a finger at the other, they both laughed and said, “And a lot of office gossip!”

“Right!”

“Right!” she answered.

“What about us?”

“What about us?”

“The office talk will now be about us,” said Tim. “Justas soon as we walk out of here.”

“Maybe not. Nobody knows I have this apartment here. Except you.”

“Not even Mark?”

“No one. It is my one sanctuary, even from him.”

“You need that, don’t you?”

“Sanctuary? Yes. I’d go mad without it.”

“Now it’s been violated,” said Tim. “Sorry it was by me?”

“Your choice of words is sometimes disturbing, Mr. Crocker.”

“So I’ve been told, Ms Sommers, by politicians and crooks.”

“And by women, no doubt.”

He agreed with a smart shake of the head. .

“How are your hands this morning?” she asked. Tim had taken off the bandages around his hands which Walsh had so meticulously worked on.

“A little sensitive still.”

“Did wonders for me last night,” she smiled.

“Have to try the treatment myself sometime!” Joanna became serious as she now dressed. “What about Marie. Do you love her?”

“I don’t think Marie really wants me to love her. I’ve tried. But it’s just not there. She wants affection, like a child. She wants to play wild love making, but she doesn’t want anything beyond that,” he said, thoughtfully. “But she’d be insanely jealous knowing about us. I’ll have to cut it off with her, and I will, if I can ever find her.”

“You don’t have to, you know. Not on my account.” “On whose account then? Hey, let’s don’t start any head rolling games. That stuff that kills friends and eventually ruins marriages, okay? Let’s just love and like.”

She smiled, her greenish eyes beaming. “I like, I like!” “Then get me some coffee, will you?”

“Cave man type, huh?”

“Only before eight. After that I’m your basic ‘bad-weather animal’.”

During coffee they talked at length, and Tim told her how he’d spent so much time going about the building in search of Marie. I t now occurred to him that she too could have an apartment in the building. Such apartments were at a premium, very expensive, and the waiting list was two or three blocks long.

“How did you get an apartment here?”

“I know someone on the inside real well.” “Not Wertman.”

“No. Mark doesn’t even have an apartment here. Says he doesn’t like them for one thing. I got it through Mr. Atgeld.”

“Head of Personnel?”

“Right,” she answered. “It’s been nothing but trouble with him. He thought I got the apartment so he could sleep with me. He said I owed him as much-well, not in so many words. But you know what I mean.”

“That son of a bitch.”

“Don’t ever say a word to him! He could boot me out anytime. Company people aren’t even supposed to have apartments in the building.”

“I have heard that but I’ve never dreamed of getting one. They’re too expensive. How can you be in here then?”

“Some company people are on a list, something to do with necessary and accessible personnel. Our friend Mr. Atgeld keeps the list. When the list dwindled below the number of apartments he saw a fine opportunity to form a stable. At least it started that way for him. He found out that not every woman in the world has been lying in wait for a well-off, debonair chap like himself to come along and whisk her off her feet.”

“Then, if Marie has an apartment inside this complex herself, she’s either one of Atgeld’s favorites, or a necessary accessible.”

“She runs the wire board,” said Joanna. “Hell, anyone can do that.”

“Can you?”

“No! I’d be petrified. Even if I knew what I was doing, I’d go stark raving mad.”

“I sure would like to see Atgeld’s necessaries list.” “Does Marie do anything besides the telephones?” “No. That is, not to my knowledge,” said Tim. “Then she’s either playing Atgeld for a fool, or she’s being played with.”

“You’re picking up a bad habit, Joanna.” “What’s that.”

“Poor choice of words. I’m going to see our Mr. Atgeld.”

“Oh no you’re not! Do you want to get me thrown out of here?”

“1 won’t say a word about you. I’ll offer him a bribe, something, to become a ‘necessary’ in order to get an apartment, just to see what happens.”

“What have I created?” moaned Joanna.

“I’ll threaten to expose him unless I can see that necessaries list. I’ll make it clear that I’m after a story far beyond anything so trivial as playing corporation favorites, or making moonshine under Mr. Fieldcrest’s window, but I need to find someone on that list.”

“Oh, Tim,don’t.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle with Mr. Atgeld.”

“It won’t do you any good, Tim. The list will be worthless to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“My name on the mailbox here is Corey, Mabel Wellington Corey, a fictitious name.”

Tim’s head sank visibly. “Everything’s a dead end.” She shook her head and clenched her lips into a pout. “There, there.” She stroked the hair out of his eyes.

“Still, I’ve got to talk to Atgeld,” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re like every man I’ve ever known. You’re as stubborn as a moose determined to squeeze his big head into the knothole of a tree.”

“I want to see what he’s got on file downstairs on a number of people.”

“Upstairs, dear. And just who are you going to be spying on? My personnel files are up there too.”

“Hey, I think things have gone too far around here. It’s time to take some action.”

“Even if it’s illegal?” “Yes.”

“And if Atgeld won’t release files to you? What then?” “I’ll explain to him in detail about a certain list I have learned about.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’ve been used?” “Don’t take it that way, Mabel!”

“How should I take it, Tim? When is what I say off the record? When is what I say not to be used in a court of law?”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion. I just have to know that Marie is all right. That she’s safe. And while I’m at it, I want to know if Joraski ever worked here. I want to know more on Harold Gordon, and, if I can lay my hands on the information, I want to know all I can about Mark Wertman before I next talk to him.”

They stared for some time into one another’s eyes. “I guess there’s love and there’s work, and the twain shall never meet-or shouldn’t,” said Joanna, finally. “Go, my cave man, and bring home meat. While you are engaged in your spearing exercises, I will be at work too. If you don’t mind, please don’t talk to the boys on the hunt about your conquest here.”

Frowning, Tim released a long, heavy sigh, nostrils flaring as he stood at the door, glancing back at her as she sat over a final cup of coffee. “It doesn’t change how I feel about you, Joanna.”

She looked up after a moment’s silence, but he was gone.

28

When Tim arrived at the offices of Mr. Theodore P. Atgeld, Personnel Director, he was surprised to find a number of people had beaten him to Atgeld. Atgeld’s secretary wouldn’t get out of Tim’s way, professing that Atgeld was not to be disturbed. The woman, a tall; slender, middle-aged lady; who stood erect and proud of her position, had been crying. Tim knew that Atgeld was already disturbed. He could hear the booming voice of Herb Kennelly coming from Atgeld’s inner office.

“I’m with the police,” Tim lied.

The proper, graying secretary took a step back, retreating from him as though she’d touched fire. “Oh, well, in that case.” She had no more fight in her. She went to her desk, pulled out some paper, and began typing.

When Jim pulled open the oak-paneled door, he found that Gary Hornell was up against it, like a guard. George Walsh was seated across the room. Kennelly, cigar in hand, was pacing the floor and shooting questions at Atgeld. Tim’s arrival made the Chief of Police lose his train of thought for a moment.

“Ah, Mr. Crocker, from the Daily,” said Kennelly.

“Come in, join us, won’t you. I like to conduct my investigation in an open and honest forum. This way no one feels left out and no newspaper man can cry cover up, payoff, or anything else. I’m sure no introductions are necessary. I tried to find you earlier, Mr. Crocker. I wanted you present for this. But you were nowhere to be found.”

“I found a place to sack out for the night,” said Tim. Kennelly smiled widely. “I’m sure you did.”

Tim stared for a moment at Theodore Atgeld. The man’s eyes were sunken. He was visibly shaking. He looked as though Kennelly had gone at him with a rubber hose. A number of pill boxes and a pitcher of water sat before him on his desk. He looked close to a heart attack.

“So, what brought you to see Mr. Atgeld, here, Crocker?” said Kennelly. “Did you put the same two and two together that I did?”

Tim shook his head to indicate yes and said, “It appears so. But I was just hunching.”

“Good hunching,” said Kennelly. “But Theo here says he hasn’t a reason in the world to want Mark Wertman dead. He contends that that’s one murder attempt he has nothing to do with.”

“One?” asked Tim. “I don’t follow you.”

“All the time we were looking for one murderer with one motive,” said Kennelly. “After a few years in this business, you learn you can’t assume anything. You can’t assume that Gordy’s death had anything to do with Joraski, or that Joraski’s attempt on Wertman’s life was connected with any rational plan, or that the killer stalking the building right now for Wertman has anything to do with Harold Gordon’s death.”

“You’re tying my head up in knots, Chief,” said Tim.

“Do you mean to say that Atgeld killed Gordy? And that deed has nothing to do with our killer?”

“He won’t admit it, yet,” said Kennelly, taking a chair, “but he will. I’ve read him his rights. He’s under arrest.”

“The reactor downstairs,” said Tim, thoughtfully.

“Atgeld’s baby?”

Kennelly nodded several times. “He was saving a bundle on maintenance and power costs, and at no loss to the company that would show in the books he kept. He manufactured bills from all the power companies. The reactor’s cost had been regained in a matter of months.”

“How long has it been in operation?”

“We’ve determined at least seven years,” said Kennelly. “Quite some hoax,” commented Walsh.

“Quite some story,” said Gary.

“And he killed Gordy,” said Tim. “Why?”

At that moment Atgeld seemed to explode with pent up rage. He became red in the face. With his arm, he knocked over everything from his desk. He had to be restrained from running out of the room.

“Grab him, Tim.” Kennelly shouted. “Gary! Help!”

There was a scuffle at the door. Gary and Tim brought the thin man to his knees, and he seemed to give up. His secretary, seeing the scuffle through the half opened door, ran to him and pushed the others away, shouting, “Leave him alone! Leave him be.”

Atgeld in turn pushed her away. She began crying hysterically and left. It seemed obvious to Tim that her concern was more than matronly, and much more than a secretary’s loyalty.

“Should you let her leave?” asked Tim, pointing through the door at the departing woman.

“I’ve spoken with her, Tim. She was very helpful, enviably helpful, actually. It seems she wanted to get back at Mr. Big here herself. He made one too many promises to

her that he didn’t keep, if you know what I mean.” Kennelly motioned them to place Atgeld back into his chair. “As I’ve told you, Theodore, you don’t have to say a word to us. But you don’t wish to be uncooperative, do you?”

Atgeld shook his head to indicate no.

“Why don’t you tell Tim, here, why you killed Gordy?” Atgeld shivered repeatedly. “I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t do it. Not really.”

“That’s rather lame as an explanation, Mr. Atgeld.” Kennelly breathed out cigar smoke into his face, and leaned over his desk now.

Atgeld stared up at him. He had the look of an eleven year old boy caught in a theft. Tim knew he could never be a policeman, to have to force information out of people, to have to be the tough. He admired Kennelly on the one hand, for his Charlie Chan deductive powers, but disliked his harshness.

“Well then,” said Herb Kennelly, retreating from the desk and strutting about the office again, “I’ll tell you what happened. Gordy was hitting you up for money.”

“No!”

“He needed more money than you or Fieldcrest thought a good, honest, retired cop ought to make doing all your dirty work around here.”

“That’s just not true!” Atgeld denied.

“He wasn’t supposed to know about your sneak-thievery on the inside, or your gizmo downstairs. You didn’t hire him for his brains. You thought he was just the right, big lug you needed when he came through the door.”

“It’s lies, I tell you!” protested Atgeld.

“You’d seen his service. Nothing spectacular, just an honest, hard working street cop who never wanted to be anything else, and who never made anything else in the department, and was now on a crummy pension that hardly supported him. But Gordy fooled you. He fooled me too. He got wise and went into the bad old blackmailing business, because he found some pretty shifty things going on right here. He threatened to take the story to someone like Tim here.”

Atgeld shriveled under the barrage of facts cascading over him now, but Kennelly didn’t lighten up. “You paid him off, but it wasn’t enough. He told you about his expenses and you got sick of hearing about them. You got tired of his always being there, blood-letting, a thorn in your fat-cat side, the only problem with your fool-proof scheme.”

Atgeld shook his head through the entire account. “It wasn’t that way at all. Tried to reason with him, yes. He wouldn’t take the money! Offered him more money than he’d ever seen in his life, his whole career as a policeman. He turned me down. He gave me an ultimatum! Imagine it. He gave me an ultimatum! Just like that, he said, ‘Get rid of the reactor and reconvert the old systems.’ He gave me four weeks, or else he’d reveal the story. Didn’t kill him, though. The wall killed him. The damn wall came crashing in. Was damn near buried myself-hit by flying debris.”

“What really happened down there?” pressed Kennelly.

“I tell you, he was struck on the temple, here I think. He was knocked over by the sudden crashing of the wall, I swear. The snow and ice flew in. I was stunned. Didn’t know what to do. I thought he was dead, and I panicked...ran.”

“Then you left him for dead,” said Kennelly. “We’ll have to see what the coroner’s report says.”

“Mr. Atgeld,” began Tim. “If you didn’t program that reactor to shut down air in the building, and make a death trap of every Environment machine in the place, then who did?”

“I do all the programming. On no occasion has anyone ever been allowed to put anything but my programs into it. They’re all routine programs. I can’t imagine anything but a malfunction somewhere in the lines. It couldn’t have been the program.”

Kennelly pulled out the computer chip from his pocket. “Did you program this?”

Atgeld studied it for some time. He was calmer now. Having talked out everything seemed to be a great relief to him. “This is one of my chips, but it’s been tampered with.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. No one else working with the reactor knows the slightest thing about programming.”

“Who else works with it?”

“There are two others. But they’re just operators, no more knowledge of the actual programming than a keypuncher would have.”

“What are their names?”

Atgeld swallowed hard before he answered. “One comes on each night. The other is on call during the day.”

“On call?” asked Tim.

“I don’t need them every hour, every minute. It’s only part of their jobs, the smallest part, really,” he answered Tim, still avoiding names. “Dual-role hiring,” he continued. “You’ve heard of it.”

“Like hiring Gordy as head of maintenance as well as security. You didn’t need any maintenance for a maintenance-free system, but you had to have it on the old books. Gordy was again perfect for your hiring practices because he knew next to nothing about maintenance. He’d have difficulty putting a bolt lock on a door. But you gave him the job, not knowing the man very well. You gave him a job to do, and he took that very seriously. Because everything was done by the reactor, all he had to do was see that his small crew clean the men’s room off and on. It’s little wonder it took him so long to stumble onto that thing down there, to look it up in the blueprints, and find out what it was.”Kennelly leaned over the desk, and puffed at his cigar like an enraged bear. He shook his head, becoming self-conscious. Then he said, “Gordy was an old man, and an old friend.”

After a moment of silence, Tim asked, “You don’t think Atgeld here tried to kill Wertman, do ya?”

“We’ve got a likelier suspect in custody already, Tim,” said Walsh.

“Who? When?”

“Last night,” said Gary. “He tried to kill Wertman just before his news show.”

“Caught in the act, as they say,” said Herb Kennelly.

“One of the oldest geezers I’ve ever come across. Worked with Wertman for years. Just went berserk. Seems there was some jealousy. The old man used to hold Wertman’s telecast job, years ago. Ben Nevis is his name.”

29

“Nevis? Old Ben Nevis? No way, just now way, man!”

Tim cried out in Atgeld’s office. “That’s insane, ridiculous.

The old man could hardly have gotten around to all the places the killer is supposed to have been, He wouldn’t harm a fly, anyway!”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” Kennelly rebuked him. “Yes, quite sure.”

“He did pretty well on Walsh last night,” said Gary Hornell with a boyish grin.

Walsh frowned and turned his head. Tim hadn’t been able to see the dark bruise under George Walsh’s left eye before now.

“What happened? Where is Nevis? I want to talk to him,” said Tim, “You know he’s a brilliant man. He’s got some possible answers to the ice age condition our world is in. I was going to see him today.”

“He asked for you,” said Kennelly. “Won’t talk to anyone else. We still don’t know why he wanted Wertman dead. Have to assume it was good, old fashioned jealousy. I have an idea the old man knew Joraski too. They might have been on the same binge together. Maybe J oraski was burned at some time or another by Wertman. He seems to have very few friends.”

“The list,” answered Tim. “What list?”

“Atgeld has a funny little list that might prove interesting,” said Tim. “Has to do with another scam he was conducting here. Renting rooms. Seems he was an affectionate landlord to the needy. Maybe Joraski was one of them.”

“We’ve gone over the personnel files, Tim,” said Walsh. “There’s no record of Joraski as having been employed here.”

. “Where’s this list, Atgeld?” asked Kennelly.

“I keep it in the vault.”

“Good. We’ll have a look at it while Tim has his talk with Dr. Nevis,” replied Kennelly. Looking at Tim, he said, “The old man’s in the vault for safe keeping.”

Tim ignored the pun. “Take me to him.”

“You’re forgetting the names of the two programmers,” said Gary.

“Oh, no we’re not,” answered Kennelly. “Are we, Tim?”

Tim looked again into Kennelly’s half-smiling face and his semi-cool eyes of brown. “No, we’ve pretty well figured out who they are, haven’t we, Chief?”

Kennelly nodded.

They took Atgeld to the vault and locked him up there too. The list was found where Atgeld said it would be. When Tim saw Ben Nevis, his heart went out to the old man. He had been cut over the right eye. A large, white bandage showed spots of blood. A small cot had been set up in the vault. Nevis was still in his white smock. He had difficulty trying to get up and greet Tim. Tim shouted at him, saying, “Please, stay where you are. Don’t move.”

Nevis ignored Tim and got to his feet. Tim helped him to a small, empty table and chair at the center of the room. All around the tiny room, the walls were lined with shelves. Stacked on the shelves were books, ledgers, cashier’s forms, and lock boxes. One wall was lined with safety-deposit type drawers and file cabinets.

Atgeld was placed on the cot. Tim and Nevis exchanged a few pleasantries. Then the old man said, “I only regret that I didn’t kill him, Tim.”

“Why? Why Ben?”

“You programmed the reactor downstairs to kill Wertman, didn’t you, old man?” badgered Kennelly.

Nevis stared at Kennelly. He shook his head. “I only do what Mr. Atgeld tells me; I don’t like that thing. I wouldn’t touch it at all if I didn’t have to. I only put in the program he wants, when he wants.”

“How did you get down there without breaking your neck?” Tim asked.

“There’s a way, an accessible way, Tim,” he said simply.

“He’s telling the truth,” Tim said. “He didn’t program the computer to kill Wertman.”

“That was the part that puzzled me, too,” said Kennelly. “But he had access and he had motive enough, and he’s certainty smart enough to have changed Atgeld’s program. Atgeld wouldn’t have used it in that manner, not to kill Wertman. It risked the discovery of the reactor. Nevis here, unconsciously wanted the reactor found, and quite demonstrably wanted Wertman killed.”

“But what about the other programmer?” asked Gary.

“Couldn’t he have done it? Maybe it was Joraski. Maybe he’s on this ‘Necessary Personnel’ list.”

Gary held the list in his hand. He read off some of the names. Tim flinched a little when he heard Mabel Wellington Corey read. “Joraski won’t be there,” said Tim with finality. “The names are all changed, to protect the guilty.

We have to persuade Mr. Atgeld there to supply us with the real names. Of course, it might save time if he just told us who the other programmer was.”

Atgeld raised his head. His hair was in strands, wet with perspiration. He lowered his head in his hands again and looked as though he might begin crying like a baby. “I love her,” he said simply.

“Here it is! Joraski! It’s paper thin, brief but here it is.” Tim stood up and left Nevis at the table. He went to Gary who stared unbelievingly at the name Joraski. Kennelly leaned over his shoulder and said, “I’ll be switched.”

“It’s not Emil, though,” said Gary.

“No, it’s Emily,” said Tim. “Emily Joraski.”

“But it is Joraski. I mean, he used a woman’s name, right?” asked Gary.

“He was the other programmer?” asked Walsh.

“He couldn’t have been,” said Kennelly, finally. “My boys did a thorough job on him and he’s been living in Leningrad.”

“Who did you think it was then, Kennelly?”

“His secretary, Margaret Tyler.” He pointed to Atgeld. “That’s what I thought you’d say,” answered Tim. “And you believed the old man, and not she, would have it in for Wertman. You let her off Scott free.”

“She can’t get far,” answered Kennelly.

Atgeld suddenly came alive, shouting, “That’s right! It was her. Margaret did it, and you let her go, like a fool! She did it.”

“Oh, shit!” moaned Kennelly.

“It wasn’t Margaret either!” shouted Tim at the same instant.

“It was her!” insisted Atgeld. “She was the other programmer. The only one left who knew of the reactor. I hired her just like old Nevis. She was destitute. She made promises to me, the same as him.”

“You’re too insistent, Theodore,” said Kennelly.

Atgeld stood up from the cot and shouted, “It’s the truth! She’s getting away with it!”

Kennelly lost his temper, and with the ease of a cook flipping over a pancake, he yanked Atgeld’s legs out from under him. Atgeld hit the stone floor with a thud and was immediately silent. He’d been knocked unconscious.

“Oh, great, Chief,” moaned Tim.

George Walsh instinctively went to Atgeld and examined the damage that was done.

“He can tell us a whole shitload of facts now,” continued Tim in exasperation.

“I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know what came over me,” said Herb Kennelly, dropping his cigar. “I guess this place is getting to me, and him-his snot-nosed whining.”

Kennelly pointed to Atgeld’s prostrate form. Walsh looked up at the others. “He’ll be all right, I think. He won’t be talking for awhile.”

Tim turned his attention to Ben Nevis, going back to the chair beside him. “Do you know who the other programmer was, Ben?”

Ben shook his head to indicate no. “I wish I did.”

I t was said in a tone of desire, as though Nevis admired the killer’s intentions. Tim scratched his head and looked at Kennelly.

“Look,” began Kennelly, standing over Nevis and coming around the table to face him. “You could be facing life-the rest of your life, that is-in prison. No computers to play around with, no meteorology work, nothing.”

The remarks didn’t faze the old man. “I did what I had to do. What any man would do. Emil was my friend and he killed him. Emil was half dead already, a broken man. His mind was no longer his own. His Russian brothers had seen to that. He came here to find me. He was looking for his daughter. She was here, somewhere in the city, and he thought I could help him. He called me no less than twenty-nine times before he found the courage to get on an airplane and fly here. The Russian government had taken him off their list of ‘dangerous’ sorts years before. He’d spent some time in a Siberian work force. He’d been stripped of his dignity. The only thing that remained for him was to find his daughter.”

“His daughter?” asked Tim. “What was her name, Emily?”

“That is right,” replied Nevis. “From the look of things, Emil was closer than he dreamed to finding her.”

“She’s the other programmer,” said Tim, certainty in his voice. “I don’t know why she did it, but it has to be her.”

“We have Nevis in custody,” said Kennelly in a summing up mood. “We have the body of a man from Leningrad who has spent time in an asylum and in Siberia, considered dangerous by the Russians, and we have Atgeld here. Now, we have a woman named Emily Joraski, that we know nothing about!”

“But we don’t have her, Chief. She’s still here, somewhere in the building, ready to strike again, maybe,” said Tim.

“It must have been the same as phoned me,” said Nevis.

“Whoa, back it up there. Phoned you?” asked Kennelly, suddenly interested in the old man again. “Why?”

“She told me her father was killed by Wertman. She told me where the body was taken, so I could see for myself! When I went there, when I saw Emil, I went mad! I stormed up to Wertman’s newsroom. I tried my best to kill him with my bare hands!”

“Did she say she was Emil’s daughter?”

“No. She said that it was Wertman who-and I quote ‘First cast doubt on my father’s name. Now, he has killed him! The Iceman, the Iceman,’ she shouted.”

“Would you recognize her, if you met her?”

“Maybe not. I haven’t seen her since she was a child!” “When was that?”

“I don’t know, 1989, perhaps. It was in Alaska.” Tim was suddenly struck with the place. “Alaska? Joraski was doing some work in Alaska?”

“Among other places, yes. He kept his home there until funds were cut off by his government, so his research could not continue.”

“Was that during the glaciation of Glacier Bay, Alaska?”

“His wife and child lived in the Bay area. He and other scientists would spend months further north,” answered Nevis. “It was a lonely life.”

“Y ou were there, on the science team?”

“Everyone was there, including your Mr. Wertman.” “Tim,” interrupted Kennelly. “I think we should continue this upstairs with Wertman.”

“I am in agreement one-hundred per cent, Chief.”

30

In his semi-darkened, inner office, Mark Wertman was just completing a tape recording. He’d wheeled his chair around, parted the drapes behind his desk a few inches, and stared out as he spoke in the microphone. He was quite unaware that a slender, silent-moving figure had entered his office. The intruder was wearing a full length, black coat with a wide monk’s hood. Beneath the hood were two burning eyes, which seemed made of some combustible mineral. Flowing about the shoulders was thick, matted hair-as black as the coat. The figure moved step by step closer to the seated Wertman, breathing heavily, nostrils flared, seemingly unconcerned with Wertman’s monologue.

“Every calculation,” Wertman said into the recorder, “from all the members of the Worldwide Climate Control, points to a calming trend, and though we must expect to lose a great deal more land, especially along the seacoasts, Earth Two conditions will prevail. There can never be a return to the paradise we knew as Earth Three, the life we took for granted only fifty years ago.”

Wertman clicked off the tape recorder. At his back, the hooded figure lifted a long, thin-bladed knife as high as it tumbled him over his head. The attacker crashed into the sofa, and landed on the floor with a heavy thud. Meanwhile,

Mark got up immediately, feeling a sharp pain course through his entire frame. He rushed to the killer’s side, glancing everywhere for the knife. The killer seemed out cold, lying there silent. But the moment he took his eyes away from the prone figure, the knife shaft caught him in the side.

Mark’s groan of horror and pain mingled with the wild, delighted scream of the attacker whose head went back now with laughter, the hood falling away. Mark stared down at the killer in amazement. It was a woman. She looked familiar and yet, like no woman he’d ever seen in his life before.

Mark held her hand and the blade fixed in his side, refusing to allow her another chance to stab him again. The look in the woman’s eyes told him she was quite mad, and that she would like nothing better than to cut him into as many pieces as possible.

“Who are you?” he begged.

She spoke with a trace of an accent. “I’ll kill you!” “Who the hell are you?” he shouted.

“Emily,” she answered.

At that moment Tim Crocker, Kennelly, Ben Nevis, Walsh, and Hornell, followed by Joanna Sommers, burst into the room. Crocker shouted, “What happened?”

“Mark,” Joanna shouted, rushing toward him. Wertman was covered with blood. He pulled away from the mad woman at his feet, the knife still embedded in his side. The angle of the wound was almost straight up and Wertman’s blood spilled over the handle of the knife.

“Sit down here,” ordered George Walsh. Joanna helped Mark to the seat which Walsh had pulled up.

Tim Crocker and Herb Kennelly each bent over the prone figure of Marie Stanton, or, more rightly, Emily Joraski, Tim’s eyes shown with amazement. “Marie! Why? How could you?”

“She’s cut badly too, Walsh,” said Kennelly, seeing the wound in Emily Joraski’s side, and tearing away the black coat.

Ben Nevis stood over Tim and Kennelly. His face showed anguish when Emily Joraski’s wound was exposed. She’d lost a lot of blood. “It’s Joraski’s daughter,” Nevis managed to say.

Tim pulled her limp form up to him and held her for some time. He shook his head over her. “Marie, it was you—you all along!”

“No,” she whispered into his ear. “It was Emily.”

Tim looked around at the others. Walsh left Wertman’s side to have a look at Marie. He looked into Tim’s eyes, and Tim lay her down gently on the floor.

“It was her father’s coming,” mused Nevis, shaking his head up and down. “When she saw him, she snapped.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Kennelly. “Anyway, it was awfully clever of her to get a job working under her intended victim’s nose.”

“Her apartment, here, at Fieldcrest,” said Tim thoughtfully. “She must have let her father use it.”

“The reunion could have brought Emily out,” said Walsh as he cleaned the wound in her abdomen. “Your Marie, Tim, could have successfully buried Emily Joraski, Of’ that part of her that would commit murder, for the rest of her life had it not been for Joraski’s return …”

“Will she be all right, Walsh?” Tim begged.

Walsh shrugged. “If we could get her to a hospital. If she remains still. I don’t know.”

But Emily Joraski did not remain still. She tried to get up and she was shouting. “I gave them a mathematical model, showing the odds against a true glacier coming to be as great as twenty to one! It was crude arithmetic they said! They ignored me! They didn’t want to hear the truth!”

“Marie! Marie!” shouted Tim. “Stop it. Lay back!” Kennelly helped Tim to restrain the woman. But even with her shoulders pinned to the floor, she continued to rant. “Danger! Millions will starve from drought. Whole countries will be wiped from the face of the earth!”

“Haven’t you got something you can give her Walsh?” shouted Tim.

Walsh dug into his bag for a needle and drugs. Emily Joraski stared into Tim’s eyes. She suddenly stopped shouting, and spoke to him as though normal and reserved. “If I may show you my own comparison of the record of the centuries; with arithmetic, based upon variations in summer sunshine at 50 degrees North, the calculations can be extended into the future to arrive at an explicit forecast.”

“My God,” said Nevis, “She’s speaking as Joraski himself! Those are his words.”

“Psychotic, huh?” said Gary Hornell from his seat on the couch.

Joanna Sommers had left Mark Wertman’s side also to stand over the struggling, pitiful figure of Emily Joraski. “Poor child.”

“Please, Walsh,” cried Tim, tears in his eyes now. “Give her the injection.”

Walsh bent over the writhing, struggling woman. As Tim held onto her he thought of the last time they were together. He thought of her melancholia and the little story she told of Glacier Bay, Alaska. Walsh’s needle was sunk into her arm. In a moment she was asleep.

31

Miles above the concrete fortress of the Fieldcrest Building, the ice, wind, and thick snow appeared to be weakening. The shift was slight, near imperceptible. Outside Fieldcrest, on the sidewalk or even at the observation tower, the storm center over Chicago looked the same. The movement away from Chicago was hardly noticeable even to Marlo Cigliani, whose helicopter dangled several miles over Lake Michigan again.

Marlo was feeling his way back to Fieldcrest, trying to find the calmer pockets of air to ride on. He had never felt so vulnerable in his helicopter, like a new father driving his wife and his child home from the hospital the first day, certain that every other car on the road was trying to ram his. He knew his worries were for his cargo, Arlene and her son, Stephen. But it didn’t lessen the concern. His bird seemed so fragile, a pendant being dangled by some ruthless Zeus atop Mount Olympus, uncaring, mocking his horror.

But the instrument panel showed a steady lessening of the barometric pressure and wind speeds, while the temperature was stable. “Still,” he told himself, “any number of things could go wrong.”

Marlo pictured the machine parts in the rotor-head, turning the huge blades of the copter against the gale force winds. There were a thousand or more parts in the rotor-head alone, each of which was absolutely essential to flight. Most of them were moving parts. The bird could come crashing down like an awkward, wingless pelican, and as quickly as a stone statue, even in good weather, if any single part of the whole mechanism failed. He’d never allowed himself to think about this aspect of his work before. But he’d always joked with other pilots that a balloon was safer than a copter!

In the blink of an eye Marlo lowered the throttle, taking the helicopter down easily, steadily. He found the resistance to the tilted blades to be firm but not brutal, as before.

He looked at Stephen, who sat on his mother’s lap, intently watching the gray and white of the billowy cloud cover they were in. Arlene looked close to tears, her fright was so great. Marlo patted her shoulder firmly and said, “Hey, don’t you like it up here? Beats that car, doesn’t it?”

She didn’t answer, but smiled and nodded in return.

Marlo was taken with the twinkle and life in her eyes.

“We should be close now,” he said reassuringly. Arlene sighed heavily and answered, “Thank God.” Stephen, on Arlene’s lap suddenly pointed out the window and cooed, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhl”

They were coming out of the cloud cover and the skyline of Chicago began to marerialize below them. Marlo said to Stephen, “You like it up here with Marlo, don’t you?”

Stephen smiled back at him, and tried to pull at the throttle in his hand. The wispy-haired boy laughed devilishly at his prank.

Marlo laughed in return. “You’re a teaser, aren’t you?” Arlene held Stephen a little tighter and said, “Don’t encourage him. He’s bad enough on his own!”

“Oh, no!” Protested Marlo. “He’s a good boy. Aren’t you?”

“Yah!” cackled Stephen’s voice.

Applying just enough pressure to descend at a steady pace, Marlo returned to his thoughts. In an earlier life, he imagined himself an aerial balloonist, going up, up, and up into the stratosphere, discovering new heights, living on the wonders of the mysterious skies, and sending messages back to earth. He’d send word of conditions aloft for weathermen like Wertman to make their rudimentary predictions. Weathermen really didn’t know anything about it, about the vastness, the unleashed power of the air. In olden times the Puritans thought the Devil was the controller of wind and storms. He was called the Prince of the Power of Air.

Marlo was never surprised at the power of the air. He loved to see its raw power. There was a certain beauty, a fascination about it. He loved the sky, the clouds, and the feeling of freedom derived from flying among them like a seagull. But right now, with the boy and his mother hugging the seat beside him, the freedom and exhilaration were lost.

“Still,” he thought to himself, “I’d rather die here than like some mole on the ground, buried below a snow bank.”

They were away from the lake now, hovering over the tall buildings along the lake front. The streets, buildings, and parks were indistinguishable from place to place, being covered with high snowdrifts. It seemed impossible to pinpoint one particular building among the white- capped roofs. But Fieldcrest had a beacon shining from its tower. Marlo spotted the beacon.

“We’re here!” shouted Marlo with excitement.

A large grin covered Arlene’s face. “We’re going to make it.”

Marlo was on the radio, trying to hail someone at Fieldcrest Central Tower to get help. “Central Tower, this is Able-six, this is Marlo, come in, please.” He was answered by a great deal of static, then an excited voice came through.

“Able-six? Marlo, is that you?”

Marlo recognized the voice from the tower. It was Fred Orme, a good man who’d get some help.

“I’m in trouble,” said Marlo, and for the first time Arlene heard the news that their fuel was low. “I need that helipad. Can you get a crew out to assist?”

“Damn it, Marlo, I’ll do it myself if I can’t find anyone else,” answered Fred. “I thought you parked it out at Meig’s.”

“Couldn’t get down there, nor at O’Hare!”

The talk was garbled with static. But Fred Orme’s voice was coming through most of it. “All my men are scattered, Marlo, it could take time.”

“Call Doc Wertman, Fred. He’s got a lot of help, and he’ll get some of them newsmen off their dead ahhhh,” Marlo stopped himself.

“Will do,” said Fred, “Stand by. Over and out.” “Amen,” said Marlo.

Arlene stared out the window of the helicopter. Everything was white and indistinguishable below. “How are we going to get down, Marlo? It all looks the same? We could set down right over the side of the building!”

“First, you are going to calm down!” he shouted at her.

“We’ve got help on the way.” After scolding, he softened his voice. “This old bird is tougher than you think. I thought we’d be smashed to pieces when we were fighting to get aloft on the expressway. We were more than just lucky then. Our luck will hold.”

“I don’t know if I will,” she said shyly.

“Sure you will,” he answered. “Besides, can’t you feel how calm the wind is now? This will be a cinch.”

Arlene took a moment to answer, looking out the bubble window again, stretching to see above Stephen’s head. The boy was using her lap to stand. “Yes, I guess it does seem calmer now.”

“Seem? It is! My instruments don’t tell lies.”

32

“How long will she be out, George?” asked Tim.

Everyone was trying to regain his equilibrium. Gary Hornell sat down on the sofa to keep from saying, I don’t believe this again, and to keep from shaking. Old Ben Nevis stood and stared out the window. Kennelly busily turned on as many lights as he could find. Joanna hung on Tim’s arm. Walsh had just completed bandaging Wertman’s wounds. Wertman Was nearly asleep with weakness.

“A few hours,” Walsh answered.

“Will she be the same when she wakes up?” asked Joanna.

“I don’t know. Perhaps not. The drug I gave her might soothe her for some time—same thing Michael Jackson OD’d on but hey, I know what I’m doing.”

“1 can’t believe she’s the same girl, you know,” said Tim to them both.

“She was in a position to know or to find out anything she needed about the operation of the building, and Wertman’s comings and goings,” said Kennelly. “The fact that she got a job here suggests premeditation. She knew what she was doing. She’s also our other operator. The one who set the Environment Box for kill, and almost killed Miss Sommers. She made frequent telephone calls too.”

“Emily did all those things,” countered Tim.

“Emily, Marie, what’s in a name,” answered Kennelly.

“She just used this Marie character as a cover.”

“1 don’t know,” said Walsh, thoughtfully. “Marie seems to be another person, deep within her-just as Emily is. I suggest that Marie didn’t do any of the things for which Emily may be accused.”

“That’s too much mumbo jumbo for me,” said Kennelly.

“A court of law will determine whether it’s mumbo jumbo or not,” said Walsh in response.

“What she was saying, just before she was put under,” began Nevis, coming to join the group from the window. “She was then, at that moment, a third person! She was her father. I knew Joraski. Those were not only his words, but the very inflection. You caught the accent?”

Tim shook his head in agreement. “Marie didn’t have an accent!”

“I believe you could be quite right, Dr. Nevis,” said Walsh.

“I know I’m right, young man,” replied Nevis. “And what is more, I believe Emily had more than a madman’s reason for wanting Mark Wertman killed.”

The group looked to Wertman who only stared back in response.

“Mark was one of the men who disagreed with and suppressed Joraski’s research,” said Ben Nevis authoritatively, pointing a long index finger at Wertman.

Wertman did not get up but his voice bolted in anger, “Damn it, Ben, you know it was no one’s singlehanded decision to ignore Joraski’s research. The U.S. didn’t even control his funds! Russians on the Committee fought to see

Joraski cut off. When he persisted again and again, and after his final condemnation of the international project called Iceman I, the U.S.S.R. saw to it that he was silenced for good.”

“They had him committed,” said Nevis sadly. “And the rest of the scientific community sat idly by and said nothing.”

“They issued research under his name, refuting all his own theories, and made a mockery of the man,” said Mark Wertman, shaking his head.

“Phony research findings?” Joanna was shocked. “Why then was he out to get you?” Tim asked Mark. “I don’t understand,” Joanna joined in Tim’s confusion,

Wertman breathed deeply. “Before the man was completely demoralized, he came to the Worldwide Climate Control people.”

“Of which Mark was a prominent young member at the time,” said Ben.

“Although 1 agreed with Joraski’s findings, I didn’t think them significant enough to alter our Iceman I project appreciably. He wanted all construction and glacier modification in Arctic areas to cease. No one on the committee, at that time, was willing to sacrifice the project for this man’s notions of impending doom. But I was the man to whom the responsibility of presenting his case to the committee fell. I recommended that his calculations be suppressed. I believed he was wrong. These were the same calculations she was babbling about.” When he finished Wertman indicated Emily Joraski.

“So the man’s findings were ignored,” said Tim with a shrug. “Why not? His findings say that we are in for another freakin’ ice age, nothing serious. Nothing to get excited over. You didn’t believe him?”

“None of us did!” shouted Mark. “The project was succeeding in every way. Its purpose was clear, to provide otherwise arid and tundra lands with fresh water. To do this, glaciers had to be brought under harness. That took power, nuclear power!”

“1 was one of the scientists who worked with the Iceman I U.S. team,” said Ben Nevis, pulling at his white whiskers. “We contained the Arctic Ocean, bottled it up-so to speak-with a series of dams and locks. The cold water was pumped out in controlled fashion. This brought results in a matter of a few years, so that Alaska, East Siberia, China, Indo-China, Japan, and even the European and North American Continents enjoyed milder weather! The great wilderness stretches of the Northwest Territories above Canada, and Siberia were supporting grain productions unheard of! China was well on its way, for the first time in history to feeding her millions. The monsoons, now a thing of the past, came with regularity; and predictable amounts of rain-fall over India, China, and East Africa freed whole deserts from drought.”

“Are you saying that the Bering Strait Dam and other such manmade controls in the Arctic caused the ice?” asked Tim, probing for Nevis’ meaning.

“That was Joraski’s theory,” said Nevis simply. And then he added, “Isn’t that right, Mark?”

Wertman groaned with the pain in his side and shoulder. Walsh had applied thick white bandages and plenty of gauze. Mark had no shirt on, and already the bandages were a dark red where he’d lost more blood.

“His theory was that we were creating a marked rise in Arctic temperatures, the same as if the sun were to increase radiation at those latitudes. We had just as much evidence to show that we were not using that much nuclear power up there. Sure, we used nuclear subs, and reactors, but we sure as hell weren’t detonating neutron bombs to see what would happen!”

“What did you use to melt the glaciers to make fresh water with?” Tim asked, and as if in afterthought, he continued. “And no matter what was used, weren’t you contributing to the increase in temperatures thereby decreasing the glacial ice?”

Gary Hornell shouted, “Hey, wait a minute, this is crazy, talking about rising temperatures. Everything’s freezing over, including hell.”

Tim shrugged, saying, “It stands to reason, Gary, that it takes a warm up to melt glaciers.”

Ben Nevis, tugging gently at his white beard, interceded here. “The theory may strike you on the chin, young man, but there’s a certain, paradoxical logic to it all. Moderately higher temperatures across the wide expanse of the Arctic Ocean increases both evaporation from the seas and atmospheric circulation. This in turn carries heavier precipitation-more snow and ice-to the higher latitudes.”

“Heating, rather than cooling, started all this?” said Joanna in surprise.

“It encouraged massive Antarctic and Arctic ice surges, more and more icebergs, until shipping lanes were virtually obstacle courses,” said Nevis. “The warm Arctic encouraged more snow accumulation, which builds more ice sheets.”

“You need fairly warm, moist air to manufacture snow,” said Tim expertly.

“You’ve been doing your homework,” said Dr. Nevis. “Did you come across the fact that ice depends upon snow not only to fall but to fail to melt? Cold, dry Arctic air is, or was, always a poor snowmaker. With the help of an international team of scientists, and support from governments around the world, manhas created a warm Arctic.”

“Project Iceman,” said Tim thoughtfully.

“Of course,” seethed Joanna, “That’s why Emily continued to harp on the Iceman experimentation going on when she telephoned her threats.” Joanna glared at Mark Wertman. “You’ve been lying all along, about everything!”

“An experiment? Someone’s damned experiment has caused all the death and destruction?” Herb Kennelly roared.

“Inadvertently, I can assure you,” said Ben Nevis when Mark Wertman failed to answer the charge. “Inadvertently the northern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans were becoming the catalysts for catastrophe. First they filled them with glacial ice, to produce fresh water supplies for Siberia, China, and elsewhere. The evaporating ice sheets increased precipitation and snow. Over an expanded time period, no one could predict that the Westerlies, and particularly, the Jet Stream would be pushed into a persistent block which began to maintain snow, ice, and cold the way it once maintained rain and warmth, or a balance of power between the two.”

“You haven’t anything to say about all this, Dr. Wertman?” Tim asked mockingly.

“I’m afraid we learned too late that some of Joraski’s theories were accurate, that the last ice age was brought on by rising temperatures.”

“Radiation levels were higher in the Arctic than anyone knew. Joraski found them dangerously high at times and made numerous reports and predictions based on this fact,” said Nevis, pacing before Wertman now. “Either no one took him seriously, or someone wanted him silenced. Now, it’s probably too late. Now we know Joraski was right. He theorized that higher arctic temperatures would create cold elsewhere. He warned that if the earth’s average annual temperatures were to decrease by three degrees, we would be hurled into an ice age! Further, we both know, Mark, that if the ice flows should meet or ever reach a little closer to the equator than they have managed so far, the new ice age will be virtuallyunstoppable.”

“I can see why they labeled him a crackpot,” said Tim in deep thought.

“Yeah,” agreed Joanna. “Who wants to hear facts like that? Like Gore’s film, rather inconvenient on the ear.”

“Especially if the facts might harm a multi-million· dollar, international, peace time, cooperative venture?” asked Tim with a frown.

“But even if Mark were the man who black balled Joraski’s report to the Worldwide Climate Control people, the others had a vote,” said Joanna. “And what about this Russian involvement? They stood to gain a lot by glacial modification.”

“N0 doubt there were a lot of international trade-offs involved in the whole thing,” said Tim, and then looking directly into Mark’s eyes. “What did you stand to gain or regain? A seat on the WWCC?”

“Is that why Emily Joraski hated you so much, Mark?” asked Joanna.

“No,” answered Nevis. “It was Mark’s father, who first conceived Iceman One.”

Wertman’s jaw was clenched tightly. “My father was trying to end a condition worse than this.”

“Worse than this? What in hell is worse than this?” asked Tim.

“Ben here knows,” said Mark simply.

“What’s worse than ice, Ben?” Tim went to Nevis. “N0 ice,” answered Nevis. “Whole populations around the world were dying of starvation, disease, and drought during the years 2010 and 2014, Tim. We were in dire need of fresh water. Only the Arctic could provide it.”

“Radiation levels had increased the world around,” said Wertman curtly. “No one cared to hear anymore horror stories about what might happen if there were a radiation leak or an explosion of a reactor somewhere, because it had been shown a million times over that such a catastrophe was near impossible-that reactors were not bombs sitting and waiting to be exploded by some careless employee or military man. What we didn’t take into consideration was the Arctic itself, the climate combining with the sudden heating. The running off of glacial ice added to the increase in environmental change.”

“There’s more,” said Tim, his blue eyes flaring out from his handsome bearded face in anger. “There’s got to be more to it than what you say. Something you’re hiding.”

“You picked a sharp boyfriend, here, Joanna,” Wertman said.

“But his imagination outdistances his senses.”

Joanna studied Mark’s reply but could not determine anything from it. Just then Wertman’s private line rang and Herb Kennelly picked it up. “Yea, yea, he’s here. Hold the line!” Kennelly thundered into the phone. To Wertman he said, “You know a guy named Fred Orme?”

“Control tower director for the helipad,” said Wertman, getting to his feet and, without assistance, going to the desk phone.

33

“There’s no time left, Arlene,” Marlo was shouting now. “You’ll just have to do as I say! We haven’t any more options left. Steve’s our first concern, and you have to get him down!”

Arlene was visibly shaken. She nodded slowly and tried to regain her composure. “All right.”

“Put on my parka and the snow shoes after you tie Stephen into the basket. When you’re ready, I’ll lower the ladder. You’ll climb down first, and then reach in and carry the basket with you. It’s on a line, so if you drop it, it’ll be all right. But Steve’ll be happier if you’re holding on. Then climb down steady, not fast; and be careful. The wind is still rough out there, and that ice is going to cut into your eyes and face.”

Arlene struggled to get out of the copilot’s seat with Stephen in her arms. Stephen sensed her fear and began to cry. He was hungry and tired, though they’d rested comfortably in the warm cabin of the helicopter.

Marlo had shared some chocolates and cookies with them, as they sat in the middle of the expressway waiting for an opportune moment to ascend. They had flown out to O’Hare airport, but there were damaged and wrecked air vehicles of all sorts on the runways, and they could not get ground clearance there. Now, darkness was upon them.

Though the copilot seat swiveled, Arlene’s bandaged leg was still giving her some pain, and Stephen’s kicking and crying didn’t help. She knew the moment she made her move for the rear of the compartment, Stephen would begin to react from fear, hunger, and tiredness. In a crouch, she hurried back to the hatch which Marlo opened automatically from his pilot’s seat. Another button would send the strong, thick rope ladder over the side. Arlene ignored her child’s piercing cries and the outstretched little arms that implored her to reach down and pick him up again, as she strapped him into the basket beside the hatch. In the next instant, she saw the rope ladder suddenly come to life, moving like a snake. She watched it descend into the surrounding blue-white of snow and shadows below. It fell like an anchor going over the side of a ship.

“Stephen’s ready!” she called out to Mario.

Marlo was cursing under his breath. “What in hell happened to Orme and Wertman? Where are they?”

Arlene, crouching, came up behind Marlo and shouted again, “I’m ready, I think!”

“Oh, great,” said Marlo. “Is the boy tied in tight?” She nodded, coming around to face him. “How are you going to get down?”

“I’ll be okay as soon as Wertman and Orme arrive with the others. If I turn off the blades and set her down without their locking me on the port, the helicopter will be toppled over the side.”

They gazed for some time into one another’s eyes.

“You’re really something, you know that,” she said.

“Oh, sure, I know that,” he kidded. Then, seriously, he said, “I wish we’d met sooner. I think you’re beautiful.”

Her eyes began to tear. Marlo protested, but she bent over and kissed him full on the lips.

“Hey, hey,” Marlo was still protesting when she stopped. “Get going now.”

“A little thanks shouldn’t be so hard to accept,” she said.

“It isn’t! Not that kind of thanks,” he said, his eyes beaming. And then he was all business again as he felt himself blushing. “As soon as you touch ground-or snow, I should say-you’ll see a door with a light over it, just ahead of the copter. Keep low. The wind from the storm and the helicopter will rake you right over if you aren’t careful. There’ll be stairs. They’ll take you to the Observation Deck. Get some strong men out here to help me out, okay? Try to get Wertman. He’ll get that pad clear for me.”

Arlene nodded automatically to all of Marlo’s words. They’d gone over the plan several times now. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known,” she said.

“Except for Stephen, maybe,” laughed Marlo. “Those Icemen are all brave.”

She nodded. “Please, please be careful.”

“I’ll be sipping coffee with you down below soon. Don’t worry.”

“Coffee,” she nodded several times, still crying. “Get, now!” he shouted.

She laughed nervously, and kissed him once more quickly before dashing out of his sight and back to Stephen. She balked only a moment, looking down the ominous, open hatchway, seeing the heavy rope ladder swaying madly in the wind.

“Hurry Arlene!” Marlo shouted back to her.

Arlene shouted back, “We’re off!” She’d planted her feet firmly on the ladder and lowered herself down to the waist. She hefted a still smiling, laughing Stephen in the basket. Then with a final look at the back of Marlo’s curly head, she disappeared below the hatch.

Marlo looked over his shoulder and saw that they had gone. “Careful!” he shouted out to them.

Outside the copter, the biting, cold wind hit her full in the face, though she’d covered her head with the hood. Stephen continued to wail, but the noise of the helicopter drowned him out. She held onto Stephen’s basket with one hand and the ladder with the other, but she was finding the going impossible. She’d have to lower Stephen down and then climb down herself. She did so, her heart aching to see her child on the end of the lifeline, the little carriage basket swaying recklessly in the wind. But it had to be done.

She took the ladder steps too fast and slipped at one rung, losing her balance and dropping two feet before she was able to stop the fall. She’d grabbed onto the rope and burned her hands badly. Her leg was charged with an electric, pulsating pain. She knew the bleeding was beginning again. Each time she looked up to the belly of the helicopter above, its little hatchway open and light flooding down, she thought of Marlo up there alone.

Arlene looked down to see how much further she had to go. It was difficult to judge. Heights made her dizzy. The helicopter ride had made her sick to her stomach. But as she gazed below, a relief took hold of her. A man in a wild west looking coat was unstrapping the bands around her son, and getting him out of the basket to take him to safety. Other men stood around the ladder now and held it steady. She could move down now with more ease. In a moment she felt helping hands on her legs and shoulder, steadying her. She heard someone shouting orders and believed it was the man Marlo wanted there, Mark Wertman.

34

Although Tim Crocker was first to reach the rooftop and unstrap the child from his basket, to convey him safely inside to the waiting arms of Joanna Sommers, it was Mark Wertman who took command and barked out orders. Above them all, the helicopter roared like some unhappy whale that had been beached.

George Walsh and Gary Hornell tried to hold steady the rope ladder. They let go when Arlene was safely down, and Herb Kennelly conveyed her indoors. But Wertman had shouted to them to regain hold on the ladder.

He pointed to the copter. “The pilot can’t see she’s safe! He won’t return the ladder until he’s certain. I know Cigliani. He’s also come in too low, for the safety of the girl and the child.”

Fred Orme stood beside Wertman, taking in the situation. He almost read Wertman’s thoughts. “If that cable gets coiled around a duct, or blown up into his own blades, Marlo won’t have a prayer!”

“Get back to your radio! Order him to run up those lines pronto!” Wertman howled over the noise of the helicopter and the ferocious wind.

Just as Orme left, a powerful wind took hold of Walsh and Hornell, and pushed them down. Hornell held onto the ladder, but Walsh was stunned and let go. Young Gary Hornell and the ladder were swept over the side of the building, Gary screaming, unable to be heard above the noise. The cable with the basket at the end of it was thrashing around madly.

“Get that line!” barked Wertman, going into action. Mark stood at the edge of the building, and when he couldn’t reach the ladder on which Hornell was tossed about by the wind, he leaped for it.

Tim had returned just in time to see Wertman’s heroic jump. Kennelly, beside him, said, “Some acrobat, huh? Is he out to commit suicide now!”

Tim grasped the situation immediately, seeing the wild, lasso-like cable with the basket almost doubling over in the wind and reaching up for the blades of the helicopter. He saw that Wertman’s added weight to the ladder had brought it back in control. He rushed past Wertman and Gary to try to catch the other cable. But at that moment, the ladder and cable were being drawn in by the pilot, and it appeared all would be well.

Then Tim heard a powerful cracking noise, the sound of a tree snapping at its base. The copter blades had cut down the control tower’s antennae! Tim, Wertman, and the others watched the blinding explosion when the helicopter blades stopped spinning, and the giant smashed against the tall, spiraling aerial over the top of the tower. The helicopter had spun into it when the cable carrying the basket was suddenly forced around the rotor-head, stopping the blades’ spin. The bird went sidewise, out of control, and burst into flames. It shot down the side of the building like the falling Icarus.

“Marlo!” Wertman cried out.

Arlene Stefanuk had run back on the roof. Unbelieving, she cried out too.

35

Tim and Joanna exchanged note pads. “These are the questions I have for him,” Joanna said.

“There’s Mark now,” Tim answered.

Several weeks had passed. The reporters hadn’t seen or heard from Wertman in all that time. All around Chicago, hundreds of thousands of pieces of snow removal equipment were at work, along with the men who commanded them, working day and night, hoping to clear all major arteries of snow and ice.

The total number of dead from the storm rose every day with each newly uncovered automobile or home where someone had become stranded. It would be sometime before the city could truly begin to rebuild. It must first be regained.

“Thank God it’s over,” Joanna had said the morning after Marlo Cigliani had died.

“You didn’t hear the weather report,” Tim had answered, shaking his head sadly.

“What do you mean? We can’t take more of the same!” She sat bolt upright in bed.

Tim’s eyes scanned Joanna as she rose, naked, from the bed.

“The weather boys aren’t going to put their foot in it-not yet, anyway. But they are predicting that there’ll be so little summer warmth that the snow on the ground will still be with us next fall and winter.”

“Oh, dear God,” groaned Joanna. “Not a pleasant long-range forecast, it it?”

“This lull is just a pause in the weather’s true occupation, to annihilate us all,” Tim said angrily.

Now, weeks after that day, they were preparing to face Dr. Mark Wertman at Fieldcrest’s T.V. center on the set of Your Right To Know. They’d been selected to act as panelists from the media. Both Joanna and Tim had won recognition for their stories dealing with Iceman I and II, the international Arctic and Antarctic experimentation projects.

Newspaper coverage claimed that top-ranking scientists and politicians, along with military leadership around the world, had formed a conspiracy of silence and fear, causing the killer storms around the globe, and bringing world havoc.

Dr. Benjamin Nevis was also on the panel which would interrogate the spokesman for Project Iceman II: Dr. Mark Wertman.

Joanna walked over to Wertman, who stood in the wings, appearing nervous. “How are you, Mark?” she asked. “Oh, it’s so foolish asking how are you.”

“I’m glad you’re talking to me. You’re never foolish.”

“But you played me for the blonde fool all along,” she countered.

“I was sworn to secrecy, Jo, you know that. Besides, you’re doing a pretty good job of making me and everyone associated with Iceman look like fools and mass murderers.”

She breathed deeply at this. “I’m sorry you’re being crucified in the papers, Mark. Neither Tim nor I wanted it this way. Least not in the beginning, not ever, really.”

“Tim and you are a couple of cream puffs,” he answered bluntly. “You’ve both been more than fair with me in your coverage.”

Joanna nervously loosened the scarf around her neck. “Pretty,” he said.

“What?”

“Your scarf. Isn’t that the one I bought you? Orange. Your favorite color.”

“Mark, this forum talk show, you know you don’t have to do this,” she said.

“I know that.”

“You could lose.” “Jo, I already have.”

She tried to interpret the remark. The way he was staring into her eyes, she knew he meant losing her.

“Air time, ladies and gentlemen,” barked a young man who went rushing by them. “Take your seats please.”

Wertman ushered Joanna to a seat and sat down beside her.

“No, no, Mr. Wertman,” shouted an assistant producer, who rushed onto the set and led Mark to a seat which was clearly apart from the others.

Mark looked down the long, oval table at Joanna and said,

“I guess I’m the adversary.”

Joanna lowered her eyes. Tim sat beside her, and beneath the table he squeezed her hand tightly.

The moderator of the talk show was Fieldcrest News’ anchorman, Henry Ketterling, whose middle-aged spread was tucked below the table, and whose make up was streaked below his silver-gray eyebrows. He began the discussion, asking Wertman the first question. “All recriminations and fault-finding aside, and I’m sure we’ve all heard enough of it, Dr. Wertman, please tell us what lies ahead? Now that we’re into ice age conditions, where do we go? To Australia?” Ketterling managed a cryptic giggle at himself.

Wertman cautiously and slowly enunciated each word prefacing his remarks with ‘Let me be clear’ and then leaping in with: “There are five possible states to which the planet Earth could fall which have been at times the ‘norm.’ Each of the five is a ‘natural state,’ given the conditions. Project Iceman I altered conditions. Project Iceman II, contrary to some of the reports circulating about it, is primarily an experiment in restoration. Project Iceman II may be our only salvation.”

“Project II is continuing the work of Project I,” Tim Crocker interrupted hotly.

“Please, Mr. Crocker,” interrupted Ketterling. “Will you introduce yourself first?”

“Oh, yes, sure,” said Tim, and he looked blankly into the wrong camera as he proceeded to do so.

Wertman took the opportunity of this awkward moment to interrupt Tim. “Project II is continuing controlled heating up and removal of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers. Project Melt, as it is popularly called, is necessary to redirect the swift move Earth has made from Earth Condition Three to Earth Condition Five. If we reach Five, or even Four, we could all be considered extinct!”

“Earth Three, Four, Five,’; muttered Joanna Sommers as Ketterling’s hands flew over his head to indicate she hadn’t introduced herself. “Sommers, newswoman with the Daily also,” she countered, and then returned to Mark. “We haven’t heard these terms before, Dr. Wertman. Will you explain?”

“I have been authorized by the President of the United States to discuss in full the purposes and operating techniques of Project Iceman II. I have also received full clearance from the Worldwide Climate Control Committee, which oversees and helps support Iceman II.”

“Full disclosure?” quipped Tim. “Full disclosure,” repeated Wertman firmly.

“May I help out Dr. Wertman here?” said Ben Nevis coolly. He introduced himself with some pomp. “Earth One, as I understand it, is a superheated state, like Venus. It may sound nice to your viewers after a winter like this, but in such a condition, none of us would be alive to enjoy it. “

“And Earth Two?” asked Joanna when Nevis paused.

“Earth Two, my dear woman, is ice free. All ice in the world would be reduced to water, adding to the oceans thousands of tons of water. The sea level would rise to engulf all coastal regions of all continents.”

Mark Wertman indicated with a nod that he agreed with Nevis’ summation. Then he added, “Earth Three is what we enjoyed in the past. Relative calm, a paradise by comparison, a balance between hot and cold.”

Tim Crocker added succinctly, “Earth Four then is more ice.”

“Four is more,” said Nevis with a nod. “As in the New Ice Age,” said Wertman.

“Isn’t that what we’re presently in?” asked Joanna. “We’re wavering between four and two. We’re at a crucial time,” Wertman said, his hands outstretched. “By continuing the gradual, controlled heating of the Arctic areas, we are continuing to create Earth Four conditions.”

“Then why in hell don’t you stop?” shouted Tim irritably.

“The heat up began as an accident. We can’t go back. There’s no changing what’s already happened. So we have to go with it, or expect-know-that Earth Four conditions will ensue! By continuing the annihilation of the glacial land masses and warming Arctic Ocean areas, we might just pull ourselves out of this!” Wertman was red with anger.

“The authorities do not want Earth Four conditions anymore than we do, Tim,” soothed Ben Nevis. “And I’m quite sure they’re extremely concerned that we stay clear of Earth Five conditions.”

“Super-cooled, super-frozen,” muttered Wertman.

“Our precious Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice,” said Nevis authoritatively. Then the old man grew reflective.

“We’ve varied between Earth Two, Three, and Four since man’s arrival on this planet. Man has avoided the two extremes throughout his stay here, unlike the dinosaurs whose extinction came as a result of a major ice age. There were always the powerful, natural regulators at work-gulf streams, jet stream, air and ocean giving and taking, the weather more or less constant. Now, like children with no idea of the havoc we can create with our technological toys and gadgets, we’ve stumbled onto a deadly control mechanism. Unlike the controls in your Environment Box, Dr. Wertman, this one cannot so easily be turned to the off position.”

Wertman and the others sat in silence for a moment to ponder Ben’s words. Finally, Wertman said, “We may not have found the stop button, Dr. Nevis, but we can and will slow it down.”

“For how long?” asked Tim directly.

But Nevis took the floor with another thought. “The jet stream was one of the powerful regulators. It kept the cold and warm air masses in constant duel, like two lions fighting over territory. A warmer or cooler condition weakened its westerly flow, but it was always there, like a wall, like a river above our heads in the stratosphere. Now, though it is there, it can no longer be called a Westerly!

The flow is near vertical, north and south, or damn near imperceptible. As I indicated, we had a lot to be thankful for.”

“Ben perhaps overstates the importance of the Westerlies,” argued Wertman. “The WWCC believes that the natural ground regulators will fall into place with the controlled warm up.”

Ketterling interrupted at this time. “I’m sure our viewers are glad to hear someone is warming up this old world. It’s been cold outside! But for now, we have to take this commercial break for Sham-Wow! Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more.”

The cameras swung away but Tim Crocker, unsatisfied with Wertman’s responses, began to dig at him. “How do you, or anyone else, know when you’ve warmed up the Earth enough? What are you using? Radiation? A Neutron bomb?”

“We’re using tested, controlled methods, Tim.”

“What if the Westerlies and other natural regulators don’t return to normal?” Tim pressed.

“We can’t expect anything to return to complete normalcy,” shouted Wertman. “1 thought I made myself quite clear on that. We must stabilize at Earth Two. We must trade off our coastal territories.”

“You have now made yourself-clear,” said Ben Nevis.

Joanna walked down to Mark and put a hand on his shoulder. “Mark, what about Tim’s first question. How do we know when things are hot enough? When do we shut down the warm up?”

“Worse,” said Tim, getting to his feet now, “what guarantee is there that we won’t go too far and start heading toward this Earth One, superheated condition?”

“Is that possible?” asked Joanna. Mark sat in silence.

“Mark,” repeated Joanna. “Is that possible?”

“No. Absolutely not,” he finally said with resignation.

But Ben Nevis pounded his fist on the table and glared at Wertman. “Why can’t you just say it, Wertman? We don’t bloody know!”

The cameras swung back to the party around the table.

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert W. Walker is the author of more than forty published novels, beginning with SUB-ZERO in 1979. He has millions of books in print. You can visit him at www.robertwalkerbooks.com.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE INSTINCT THRILLERS featuring FBI forensic pathologist Dr. Jessica Coran

Killer Instinct

Fatal Instinct

Primal Instinct

Pure Instinct

Darkest Instinct

Extreme Instinct

Blind Instinct

Bitter Instinct

Unnatural Instinct

Grave Instinct

Absolute Instinct

THE EDGE THRILLERS featuring Detective Lucas Stonecoat

Cold Edge

Double Edge

Cutting Edge

Final Edge

THE GRANT THRILLERS featuring Medical Examiner Dean Grant

Floaters

Scalpers

Front Burners

Dying Breath

THE RANSOM MYSTERIES featuring 19th century detective Alastair Ransom

City for Ransom

Shadows in the White City

City of the Absent

THE DECOY THRILLERS featuring Chicago cop Ryne Lanarck

Hunting Lure

Blood Seers

Wind Slayers

Hand-to-Hand

THE BLOODSCREAMS SERIES featuring archeologist Abraham Stroud

Vampire Dreams

Werewolf’s Grief

Zombie Eyes

HORROR NOVELS

Dr. O

Disembodied

Aftershock

Brain Stem

Abaddon

The Serpent Fire

Flesh Wars (the sequel to The Serpent Fire)

Children of Salem

THRILLER NOVELS

Sub-Zero

PSI: Blue

Cuba Blue (with Lyn Polkabla)

Dead On

Thrice Told Tales (short stories)

YOUNG ADULT

Daniel Webster Jackson & the Wrong Way Railroad

Gideon Tell & the Siege of Vicksburg

NON FICTION

Dead On Writing – Thirty Years of Writerly Advice

Excerpt from CUBA BLUE by Robert W. Walker and Lynn Polkabla

ONE

Friday, Late Afternoon Aboard the Sanabela II

Flowing across the sea-green coastal waters of Canal del Entrada, the mechanical cry of screeching gears aboard the shrimper, Sanabela II, trawling a few miles north of Havana, formed an oddly musical counterpoint to the shrieks of hungry seagulls hunting food along the shore. When the ship’s gears shuddered to a sudden standstill, the absence of that sound shocked the gulls into momentary stillness. Aboard the shrimper, all activity stopped. The men froze in place, afraid to breathe, afraid to hope. They stared first at the choked-off wench and then at one another. Fishing had been wretchedly poor all season; not once had the nets filled with so heavy a prize as the one promised by the old equipment groaning as the ship rocked in the waves. In the pilothouse, bearded and white-haired Captain Luis Estrada gasped. As another enormous groan choked from the wooden moorings and metal hoist, he rushed down to the main deck.

Everyone aboard knew what the subsequent silence meant.

Still, Estrada, like his crew, feared giving a moment’s vent to any jubilation. Not until a man stood knee-deep in the catch did he dare celebrate—an unwritten rule that all seamen knew only too well.

Pearls of small Christmas lights, strung from the tops of masts and the crow’s nest, created a colorful necklace for the busted-up old tub, Estrada’ cheap, efficient answer to the lighting problem whenever they worked into the night, or like today, under a dark sky threatening rain. The crew joked mercilessly about Estrada’s low-tech solutions.

The captain watched the net being slowly pulled up. Too slowly for his or anyone’s liking. He exploded, ordering, “Crank it up!”

The pulley operator shouted back, “She’s at full-throttle now!”

“It’s a full net!” shouted Adondo, his young eyes expectant.

Big Giraldo added, “Net’s heavier than my wife’s ass!”

“That’s damn heavy!” replied Adondo, laughing and adding, “but such a sweet one, that Miranda. You don’t deserve her, Giraldo!”

The jest made them all laugh, touching off their pent-up jubilation. Shouting, dancing, and singing erupted, with Adondo happily beating on oil drums with a knife in one hand and a huge tenterhook in the other.

With a burst of black oily smoke belching from the old machinery, the net lurched upward. Inside the rough-hewn many times mended net, hung a tangled web of bodies. Bloated skin mottled with dark bruises stretched over a grotesque catalogue of swollen body parts: eyes, ears, noses, limbs, torsos pressed tightly against the net, as if searching escape. The appalling package wore a ribbon of heavy chains with decorations of sea life.

The noisy celebration instantly turned into stunned silence.

Estrada exclaimed, “Madre de Dios!” Shaking his head, he muttered, “God just doesn’t like me, does he?”

TWO

Police Headquarters, Old Havana

“There is no cause for angry words, Mr. Zayas! After all, we’re a small police department.”

“I understand that but—”

“We’re doing everything in our power as quickly as we can.”

Lieutenant Detective Quiana Magdalena Aguilera looked up from a file she’d been poring over, both curious and annoyed at the sound of raised voices here in the Old Capitol Police Force building. Detective Jorge Peña was escorting a tall dark-haired man out of Colonel Gutierrez’s office. “These things take time.”

As the two men passed her desk, the stranger glanced her way, seeing a slim, dark eyed, black haired woman beneath the poor lighting of the old stationhouse. Her café au lait skin had the sheen of faint perspiration, ever present in this tropical climate. She noticed his blue-green eyes widen at her as if in greeting, and she smiled in reply.

The rest of the man’s conversation with Peña trailed off, lost in the sound of office noise and humming fans.

Anything to break up the tedium of her latest and most boring assignment—preparing monthly reports. Sighing, she turned her attention back to the papers on her desk. Damn, lost my place again. They do this sort of thing on computers in other countries, why not here? Castro’s celebrated full employment—that’s why a lieutenant detective is saddled with such chores. The oft repeated thought provided a backdrop to the irritating squeaking of old worn-out chairs and tired fans that did little more than move hot air from one place to another. She promised herself that this weekend, she’d go diving off the coast of Miramar. Glancing up, the clock said she could shortly escape the drab office, but knowing the Colonel, not before she finished this report. To this end, Qui—as her friends called her—took up her pencil once again and vowed to ignore any further distractions.

But a few moments later, her attention was again diverted, when Peña, returning to his desk, complained about the officious security guard from the American Interest Section poking his nose into Peña’s missing persons case.

“Peña, wanna trade? I’m sure with your experience, you’d be better suited to analyzing last month’s figures,” she called out, knowing he hated preparing reports.

Peña caustically replied, “Not done with your paperwork yet, Aguilera? With your skills, it shoulda been done hours ago! You’ve got nothing else to do.”

The insult, regardless of how true, rankled and Quiana wanted to be anywhere but here. Those still left in the squad room listened with relish, hoping for a replay of last month’s noisy confrontation.

“At least I’m making progress, Peña! How long’s it been since you’ve cleared a case?”

Peña’s face visibly darkened. “Just remember, you gotta finish the Colonel’s report before you can go home to Papa. Speaking of which, what’s for dinner tonight?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she taunted.

“Let me guess: grilled filet mignon with hollandaise sauce, roasted yam wedges seasoned with cumin and freshly ground pepper and sea salt, fresh tomatoes sprinkled with goat cheese served with a vinaigrette delicately flavored with cilantro and lemon zest, a light red wine with hints of raisins and pear, and—”

“Stop it!” shouted another detective. “You’re making my mouth water!”

“—and for dessert, flaming crepes suzette and coffee served in those cute little demitasse cups.”

His mimicking of fancy menu descriptions made the squad room erupt in laughter. No one in Cuba ate well except tourists and the elite.

“Aguilera! Come here. Now!” demanded the Colonel, shouting above the laughter.

“From bad to worse,” Quiana muttered under her breath while grabbing her notebook and pen. She walked to the Colonel’s office, a sense of dread replacing the sting of ongoing chuckles and the smug look on Peña’s face. The dislike between the two detectives paled in comparison to the aversion she felt for her boss. Beyond his dislike of women in general, his inexplicable animosity toward her made Qui regret being under the Colonel’s command.

“We have a problem.” Her superior, Colonel Alfonso Gutierrez, spoke in his familiarly irritating deadpan. “And you, Aguilera, have been requested to investigate.”

Surprised Qui asked, “Requested?”

“By the captain of a shrimp boat.”

“A shrimp boat, sir?”

“Yes, they radioed a problem.”

“So, where is this boat? Which marina?”

“No marina! It’s out on the water, a few miles off the bay. The Sanabela II, a Captain Luis Estrada…says he knows you. Says you are, errr, related. Are you?”

Estrada called himself uncle to her, but he meant it in the loosest way. She knew that in some distant past they might well be related somehow, but no one knew precisely how; he called himself uncle to anyone he had an acquaintance with who happened to be younger than himself. Such an attitude toward the entire community, well that was Old Cuba. Qui thought of people as either Old Cuba or New Cuba, defined more by attitude than age, though she must admit most men tended to act Old Cuba around women.

“No, sirs, we’re not related, Colonel. He just calls himself ‘Uncle’ to almost everyone.”

“How nice for you…well then, take a police boat out. You can get a boat, can’t you?” Gutierrez needled more than asked.

“I’ll find transport.”

“Yes, I am sure you will.”

No love lost here, she thought, seeing Gutierrez’s sour expression. It’d never set well with the older man to have a woman—ranking as a detective-placed under his authority.

“Do your best,” he finished, his words daring her to take offense. “Some sort of death aboard; can’t say for sure exactly what. The man sounded hysterical.”

“A death aboard a shrimp trawler?”

“More than one—if this ‘uncle of yours’ hasn’t exaggerated.”

“Two deaths aboard the Sanabela?” She gave a flash thought to the Sanabela’s hard-luck reputation.

“Three-if Estrada’s report is true.”

“Three?”

“Are you suddenly deaf?” he replied, “Get moving! Take Hilito and Latoya. Three deaths, three investigators, all the support you need. Go. Call in your initial findings.”

Quiana stood, saluted, turned, and made for the door, her mind racing. Finally, a major case—but a huge one, three deaths. What awaited her aboard Estrada’s boat? Must’ve been an accident: old boat, old equipment, young men—bad combination. Three deaths at once? This felt like a gauntlet Gutierrez’s had thrown down. A challenge to her training and skills as an investigator.

Emerging from Gutierrez’s office, Qui walked toward her desk and called over to two detectives sitting nearby. “Hilito, Latoya, come. We’ve got an investigation. Let’s go!”

“Terrific!” Tino Hilito leapt from his squealing desk chair.

“We’re with you, detective!” added Sergio Latoya, stuffing paperwork into a desk drawer.

Their eagerness reflected delight at escaping headquarters. In fact, they’d been clock watching until now, fearful of the last hour before shift’s end, praying for a telephone to ring and pull them out onto the street. Everyone under the colonel’s command hated Friday afternoons when Gutierrez would emerge from his office to give them all a good talking to—a lecture on desk etiquette, filling out forms properly, often haranguing against sloppiness of dress and attitude and lack of military bearing. “After all,” he’d remind them, “this is the Policia Nacional de Revolucion.”

“Investigation?” asked Tino. “Where?”

“On a shrimp trawler off the coast. We need a police cruiser. Tino, you’re good with the water cops. Get us a boat.”

“Aye, aye, Lieutenant,” he said a bit too loudly.

Qui checked for signs of amusement but his wink was one of camaraderie. Leaning close, he whispered, “For effect,” nodding toward the watching eyes.

She glanced around, annoyed at still being the center of attention. “Sergio, go check out an evidence kit—gloves included this time!” She grabbed her gun, strapped it onto her hip.

“So Aguilera, got a real case now?” taunted Peña. “Want my notes from school?”

Quiana turned, paused, and replied, “You keep ‘em. Try using ‘em on that missing persons case you’ve got! Perhaps then, you might be able to close it.”

Turning back, she grinned at the catcalls and laughter.

Walking alongside her, Sergio watched the grin fade as her lips thinned. He assumed it a sign of frustration. “He’s just jealous, Lieutenant. Ignore him. You got your shield faster and made higher scores in training—we all know that. Besides, you got that ‘thank you’ note last week. He’s still fuming about that.”

Quiana chuckled at the image of Peña fuming over a letter of appreciation detailing her perfect scores. This from a high-ranking training officer who happened to be Peña’s role model. Tino had made sure that Peña had seen the letter, posting it on the bulletin board. “Still fuming?” she replied. “Serves him right. Payback for rudeness.”

“You get your own licks in too,” Sergio reminded her.

“True enough.”

“I’ll bring my car around to the front,” he said.

They headed in separate directions, Qui’s shoes tapping out a quick rhythm. Before she cleared the door, Colonel Gutierrez shouted from his desk, “Detective Aguilera! Why’re you still here? I gave you an order five minutes ago! Now, go, go!”

THREE

Aboard Police Cutter PNR-48, Havana Bay

Here on the water, the air smelled more like rain than it did from onshore, and the sky seemed even darker, more threatening. Quiana expertly piloted the police cruiser, pushing it to maximum speed across the choppy waters of the bay. She wanted to reach the Sanabela before daylight faded or rain fell. The ponderous government boat rocked and bucked over the surface. Sergio, never one for boats, had turned slightly green from the bouncing and the foul smell of polluted water. The sound of wind and motor had become a constant barrage of noise, making conversation impossible.

Outside the bay, in smoother waters, Quiana reduced their speed as they cruised in search of the trawler.

“Gutierrez sure seems to have it in for you,” Sergio shouted to be heard.

“Yeah,” agreed Tino. “That wily old, card-playing poker-faced bit of nastiness, our beloved Colonel, is a hungry dog, and he bites.”

“Even when you throw him scraps,” added Sergio.

Quiana laughed at the apt comparison. “Hey, are you two playing suck up?”

“Nahhh…we’re your main guys!”

“How’s your family, Tino?” she asked.

“Wife’s pregnant again. Kid’s doing better.”

“That’s good, yes?”

“Only if you got money.”

“Hey, don’t listen to him. Carmela’s having our second, too,” said Sergio, smiling. “Tino’s always complaining.”

“What’s a cop got to complain about,” she facetiously asked. “Low pay, long hours. Nobody listens anyway.”

Sergio replied, “The weight of the job can kill a man—or a woman in your case.”

Qui considered Sergio’s last remarks, although flippant, a serious matter. Other than Tino and Sergio, she had no one to confide in about the job, certainly no one in her personal life. Few people outside law enforcement understood the pressures. Still, Qui wished she had one friend or relative to whom she could openly and easily discuss such matters, but who? Her longtime friend Liliana concerned herself with her dancing career, dreams of one day making a splash on a real stage—somewhere in America maybe, and she simply did not care to understand what Qui faced on the job. Qui’s father did not want her on this job period, wishing she’d pursue any other career, something safe, perhaps photography as he had. As for her boyfriend, Dr. Estaban Montoya, he could hardly be bothered with such trivialities as her problems with Gutierrez or the department.

“I just thank God, that I have you guys to talk to once in awhile,” she confided.

“In that case, beer’s on you tonight, boss lady,” responded Sergio.

Tino, looking a bit despondent with his own thoughts, added, “I could damn sure use a beer.”

In smoother waters now, outside the bay, Qui was first to spot the Sanabela II. “There she is!”

Sergio asked, “How do you know that’s the one?”

“See the Christmas tree lights?” she replied.

“Yeah, so?”

“I recognize them. Only on the Sanabela.” Quiana went on to explain the meaning of the lights.

As she turned the boat toward the shrimper, Qui’s thoughts turned to her pending assignment aboard the Sanabela. Wanting this case to be by the book perfect, she reminded herself of each step in a successful investigation. In training, each lesson was learned in the company of other recruits, but now, although Tino and Sergio were here, she was the primary investigator, and any and all results depended on her competence. She steeled herself to deal with whatever lay ahead.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shouting. “Finally, somebody in authority,” bellowed Estrada. “I radioed when it was still daylight!”

Noting the rebuke, Qui waved at him before aligning the cruiser with trawler, gently bumping alongside the Sanabela.

“Help us tie off, Uncle!” Qui called to Estrada, who nodded to someone outside her line of vision.

Lines were tossed and Tino and Sergio coordinated with Estrada’s crew to lash the boats together.

From the side of the cruiser, Quiana looked up into the piercing eyes and the inscrutable face of Luis Estrada where he stood aboard the Sanabela. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, still robust but pale and uncharacteristically grim.

While Tino held the ladder steady, Qui handed off the evidence kit to Estrada. As she stepped aboard the foul-smelling fishing vessel, Qui immediately wished she hadn’t eaten that pork and rice lunch at the sidewalk café in the plaza.

“So Uncle, what sort of tragedy do we have? Accident?”

“This way. See for yourself.”

He maneuvered easily across the deck, while she cautiously picked her way past fishing paraphernalia and other obstacles. Streaked with an enormous yellow-brown stain, the deck had forty years of smeared and ground-in fish guts and tobacco. He suddenly stopped ahead of her, and she looked up. What she saw made her gasp and wince, her hand flying to her mouth. Suspended before them at eye-level dangled a heavily burdened net that slowly twisted with the shifting winds and seesaw motion of the boat.

Incrementally, by degrees, her brain made sense of what her eyes dared tell her, that the grid of the net held a mass of entwined bodies.

“Que horror…” muttered Sergio, beside Quiana, slipping a flashlight into her hand.

Tino joined them, standing stone-like, as fascinated as he was repulsed.

Estrada said, “I count three heads.”

For once Estrada had not exaggerated a situation. No one could exaggerate this. This was real, and in real life bodies smelled and tore at one’s senses like hungry ghosts screaming at the living.

The three officers began examining every nook and cranny of the net and visible portions of the bodies.

“Obviously, no accident,” muttered Sergio.

Tino added, “Pure chance…a trawler out here, raising the dead.”

“Curse of the Sanabela,” Qui muttered. As if to punctuate her words, more half-dead eels and crabs dropped from the net, scuttling slowly into the shadows near the railing.

Tino lifted a camera and began taking photos, saying, “Still life takes on new meaning.”

Estrada shook his head at the words. Qui said to him, “Uncle, it’s how we deal with traumatic death. Bad jokes.”

Qui took a deep breath, her nose already de-sensitized to the odor. She stepped closer to the winch and held onto the solid metal to mentally ground herself. The death net continued to sway ever so slowly below the hoist and hook, making a high-pitched, irritating sound—sandpaper against raw nerves. A sound that made Qui want to reach out and stop the swaying until she remembered what was in the net.

Qui again stared through the crisscrossed netting at the tangled bodies. Two white-skinned males and a paler, snowier-skinned female. All of them showing signs of torture: contusions, burns, and marks indicating some sort of binding of the wrists. Some of the bruising created a shadowed blush about the woman’s neck, and the chain had cut deep furrows in her thigh. Cigarette burns dotted the men. The same thick gray chain snaked around the lower legs, creating a knot of bodies bound together by a massive ornate lock of a type she’d never seen before. Qui noticed Estrada also staring at the lock, and she gauged his weathered face, his whiskers drooping in the damp night, the deep fissures of his wrinkles without his customary smile to lift them. She’d caught him in an unguarded moment of total despair.

“Qui…why don’t we just do what my men want?” Estrada asked.

“What exactly do they want?”

Estrada conspiratorially whispered, “Send them back to the deep, where they came from. It’d be so easy. It’s why I left them dangling in the net. Why I didn’t bring the boat in…why I insisted it be you.”

“Would solve our problem, wouldn’t it, Uncle? Pretend this never happened?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

She looked at Tino and Sergio. Each in turn raised his shoulders. Tino finally said, “Your call, Lieutenant.”

Sergio lit a cigarette for Tino, handed it to him, and then did the same for himself.

Now standing so close to the bodies that she again smelled the waterlogged decay that had taken hold, Qui asked Estrada, “Did you or your men touch any of them—or anything within the net?”

“Are you accusing me of stealing from the dead?”

She ignored his outrage. “Rings, watches, jewelry? I need to know. Such things help us to identify the dead.”

He gave her a pained look and a little shake of the head.

“I know, I know, but I have to ask, Uncle.”

“Sure…sure you do…you’re a detective now.”

The warm waters of the Caribbean, always kind to the living, were brutal to bodies left in the gulf. The normally sun-dappled waters made a poor preserver, bloating the bodies like parade floats—filling the lining between epidermal and sub-epidermal layers of skin with gases from rotting flesh that eventually pulled apart all semblance of outer cohesion, doing strange and surreal things to the features and the body. Floaters were a common occurrence in Cuban waters for many reasons, but not many were found in this manner, meant to be a forever-lost trio.

Captain Estrada stared at his crewmen before saying, “These are fishermen, Qui. Something like this comes out of the sea no one dares touch it, not even for a new watch. This is no gift from the depths. This is evil.”

Listening to him, she felt strangely disconnected, standing here on a gently rocking boat as if she were a gatekeeper between the dead and the living. All that ground her in the present was her queasy stomach, a constant reminder that she was still among the living, that this was not some horrid nightmare from which she might awake to bright sunshine and squabbling birds. She was here, the bodies were here, and it was up to her to find out why and how these once vital people had died. She was their advocate, and she began to feel both possessive and protective of them. Odd how this sense of ownership flashed through her mind, only briefly replaced by a repeating phrase: up to me…up to me…up to me. This was what she trained for, this was what she wanted, right? But she didn’t feel that sense of detachment she’d enjoyed in training, instead she felt a ball of emotions too complex to identify at the moment. Her father had spoken about similar feelings during the revolution, a war fought without a given battlefield, but rather guerilla-style, scattered across the island world of Cuba. Once he’d spoken of a day when he stood amid a field of bloodied bodies—still wired from an adrenaline high. He’d avoided speaking of it for years, saying no words existed for so eerie a sensation. But now, she knew what he’d meant—a co-mingling of gratefulness and elation at being alive, feeling an irrational invincibility—perhaps even invisibility to the enemy, and an overwhelming sense of guilt at surviving. He claimed the more bloodshed he’d seen, the more a profound sense of isolation set in along with depression and hopelessness, all due to a disagreement that had ended in mass death.

She mused: I don’t believe that a soldier’s death in guerilla warfare is the same as stone cold murder. A seagull’s shrieking dive to snatch an escaping crab ended Qui’s reverie.

She looked at Estrada. “Murder is an evil business, Uncle. No doubt of that.”

Clearing his throat, Estrada repeated, “I also asked for you, Qui…” he repeated, “‘cause my men… they wanted to disobey me, to throw these children of God back into the ocean.” He raised his shoulders and frowned. “They fear for what will come of this.”

“I don’t blame them in the least,” she quietly replied, momentarily considering the possibility of her failing the dead, being unable to solve their murders.

He stared deeply into her eyes, searching her meaning. “Then you think the crew is right? That this...this can only bring evil on us?”

Qui knew what he suggested but feared to vocalize: If a future accident befalls any one of us, will it truly be an accident? “Uncle Estrada, you’ve already spoken to my colonel, and he’s sent me here. No throwing them back, no cutting loose the net, not now. Maybe before, but not now. It…it’s gone too far.”

Everyone aboard heard her words.

She meant them to hear.

Pointing now to the cache of death, Qui demanded, “Open the net! On the deck, Uncle. Let’s get on with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, do it. Now.”

Estrada swallowed hard but gave the signal. The pulley operator yanked a switch, and the net bottom fell out. Bodies, chain and lock, dead shrimp, and assorted sea life spilled from the net like a mosaic created by a madman. The bodies slid on the wet sea life, rippled toward them, making everyone start, and at once creating a kind of creepy knell, lock and chain having careened into a bulkhead.

“Jesus Christ!” shouted Tino from atop the nearest bulkhead. Intent on photos and observations, and not paying attention to the conversation, he’d been standing almost under the net when it opened, and had to move quickly to escape the deluge Qui’s orders had created. His shoes and pant legs were shiny with splashed fluids and be-speckled with bits of gore.

Sergio, staring at the disturbing montage, muttered, “Medical examiner’s not going to like this.”

Except for a growing cloud of scavenging sea gulls, silence again settled over the boat.

Feeling brutalized, her brain screaming, Set up…set up!, Qui was hit with the certain knowledge that Gutierrez knew what she’d find aboard the Sanabela, that Estrada had filled him in on more detail than the colonel had shared. She imagined his grin at her horror and loathing. I can do this, she told herself. It’s what I trained for.

From the evidence kit, Sergio handed her a pair of surgical gloves. “Time to go to work?”

With growing paranoia, Qui knew this crime scene must be treated with absolute precision. Proper procedure adhered to with greater care than with any of her previous cases. She turned to Tino, who was about to light up another cigarette, and barked, “Tino, we need to call a medical examiner—now! Radio for one to meet us at the marina. You take the police cruiser. Sergio and I’ll stay here with the bodies.” Turning to Sergio, she continued, “I need you, Sergio, to pilot us into harbor, and oh, Tino—”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Meet the medical examiner and brief him. Also, I need you to find us a slip!”

“I can do that.”

“Make it as close to the Capital headquarters as possible. Understood?”

“Got it, Lieutenant.” He rushed off and climbed aboard the police boat, where he cast off tie lines, freeing the vessels from one another.

Qui now quietly said to Estrada, “Uncle, please allow Sergio to pilot the Sanabela into harbor.”

Her tone, body language, and action informed the crew that they were no longer taking orders from Estrada—that the lone woman on deck was in charge. Qui sensed a feeling of relief come over everyone, pleased that someone in a position of authority had taken charge. She had in effect cast an official cloak over the terrible find.

Estrada replied, “For now, Lieutenant, you are my captain.”

Excerpt from TRUCK STOP by Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath

-1-

Taylor liked toes.

He wasn’t a pervert. At least, not that kind of pervert. Taylor didn’t derive sexual gratification from feet. Women had other parts much better suited for that type of activity. But he was a sucker for a tiny foot in open-toed high heels, especially when the toenails were painted.

Painted toes were yummy.

The truck stop whore wore sandals, the cork wedge heels so high her toes were bent. She had small feet—they looked like a size five—and her nails matched her red mini skirt. Taylor spotted her through the windshield as she walked over to his Peterbilt, wiggling her hips and wobbling a bit. Taylor guessed she was drunk or stoned. Perhaps both.

He climbed out of his cab. When his cowboy boots touched the pavement he reached his hands up over his head and stretched, his vertebrae cracking. The night air was hot and sticky with humidity, and he could smell his own sweat.

The whore blew smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Hiya, stranger. My name’s Candi. With an I.”

“I’m Taylor. With a T.”

He smiled. She giggled, then hiccupped.

Even in the dim parking lot light, Candi with an I was nothing to look at. Mid-thirties. Cellulite. Twenty pounds too heavy for her skirt and halter top. She wore sloppy make-up, her lipstick smeared, making Taylor wonder how many truckers she’d already blown on this midnight shift.

But she did have very cute toes. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it into the pavement, and Taylor licked his lower lip.

“Been on the road a long time, Taylor?”

“Twelve hours in from Cinci. My ass is flatter than roadkill armadillo.”

She eyed his rig. He was hauling four bulldozers on his flatbed trailer. They were heavy, and his mileage hadn’t been good, making this run much less profitable than it should have been.

But Taylor didn’t become a trucker to get rich. He did it for other reasons.

“You feeling lonely, Taylor? You looking for a little company?”

Taylor knew he could use a little company right now. He could also use a meal, a hot shower, and eight hours of sleep.

It was just a question of which need he’d cater to first.

He looked around the truck stop lot. Pretty full for late night in Bumblefuck, Wisconsin. Over a dozen rigs and just as many cars. The 24 hour gas station had a line for the pumps, and Murray’s Eats, the all-night diner, appeared full.

On either side of the cloverleaf there were a few other restaurants and gas stations, but Murray’s was always busy because they boasted more than food and diesel. Besides the no-hassle companionship the management and local authorities tolerated, Murray’s had a full-size truck wash, a mechanic on duty, and free showers.

After twelve hours of caffeine sweating in this muggy Midwestern August, Taylor needed some quality time with a bar of soap just as badly as he needed quality time with a parking lot hooker.

But it didn’t make sense to shower first, when he was only going to get messy again.

“How much?” he asked.

“That depends on—”

“Half and half,” he cut her off, not needing to hear the daily menu specials.

“Twenty-five bucks.”

She didn’t look worth twenty-five bucks, but he wasn’t planning on paying her anyway, so he agreed.

“Great, sugar. I just need to make a quick stop at the little girls’ room and I’ll be right back.”

She spun on her wedges to leave, but Taylor caught her thin wrist. He knew she wasn’t going to the washroom. She was going to her pimp to give him the four Ps: Price, preferences, plate number, parking location. Taylor didn’t see any single men hanging around; only other whores, and none of them were paying attention. Her pimp was probably in the restaurant, unaware of this particular transaction, and Taylor wanted to keep it that way.

“I’m sorta anxious to get right to it, Candi.” He smiled wide. Women loved his smile. He’d been told, many times, that he was good-looking enough to model. “If you leave me now, I might just find some other pretty girl to spend my money on.”

Candi smiled back. “Well, we wouldn’t want that. But I’m short on protection right now, honey.”

“I’ve got rubbers in the cab.” Taylor switched to his brooding, hurt-puppy dog look. “I need it bad, right now, Candi. So bad I’ll throw in another ten spot. That’s thirty-five bucks for something we both know will only take a few minutes.”

Taylor watched Candi work it out in her head. This john was hot to trot, offering more than the going rate, and he’d probably be really quick. Plus, he was cute. She could probably do him fast, and pocket the whole fee without having to share it with her pimp.

“You got yourself a date, sugar.”

Taylor took another quick look around the lot, made sure no one was watching, and hustled Candi into his cab, climbing up behind her and locking the door.

The truck’s windows were lightly tinted—making it difficult for anyone on the street to see inside. Not that Candi bothered to notice, or care. As soon as Taylor faced her she was pawing at his fly.

“The bedroom is upstairs.” Taylor pointed to the stepladder in the rear of the extended cab, leading to his overhead sleeping compartment.

“Is there enough room up there? Some of those spaces are tight.”

“Plenty. I customized it myself. It’s to die for.”

Taylor smiled, knowing he was being coy, knowing it didn’t matter at this point. His heart rate was up, his palms itchy, and he had that excited/sick feeling that junkies got right before they jabbed the needle in. If Candi suddenly had a change of heart, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She was past the point of no return.

But Candi didn’t resist. She went up first, pushing the trap door on the cab’s ceiling, climbing into the darkness above. Taylor hit the light switch on his dashboard and followed her.

“What is this? Padding?”

She was on her hands and knees, running her palm across the floor of the sleeper, testing its springiness with her fingers.

“Judo mats. Extra thick. Very easy to clean up.”

“You got mats on the walls too?” She got on her knees and reached overhead, touching the spongy material on the arced ceiling, her exposed belly jiggling.

“Those are baffles. Keeps the sound out.” He smiled, closing the trap door behind him. “And in.”

The lighting was subdued, just a simple overhead fixture next to the smoke alarm. The soundproofing was black foam, the mats a deep beige, and there was no furniture in the enclosure except for an inflatable rubber mattress and a medium-sized metal trunk.

“This is kind of kinky. Are you kinky, Taylor?”

“You might say that.”

Taylor crawled over to the trunk at the far end of the enclosure. After dialing the combination lock, he opened the lid. Then he moved his Tupperware container aside and took out a fresh roll of paper towels, a disposable paper nose and mouth mask, and an aerosol spray can. He ripped off three paper towels, then slipped the mask on over his face, adjusting the rubber band so it didn’t catch in his hair.

“What is that, sugar?” Candi asked. Her flirty, playful demeanor was slipping a bit.

“Starter fluid. You squirt it into your carburetor, it helps the engine turn over. Its main ingredient is diethyl ether.”

He held the paper towels at arm’s length, then sprayed them until they were soaked.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Candi looked panicked now. And she had good reason to be.

“This will knock you out so I can tie you up. You’re not the prettiest flower in the bouquet, Candi with an I. But you have the cutest little toes.”

He grinned again. But this wasn’t one of his attractive grins. The whore shrunk away from him.

“Don’t hurt me, man! Please! I got kids!”

“They must be so proud.”

Taylor approached her, on his knees, savoring her fear. She tried to crawl to the right and get around him, get to the trap door. But that was closed and now concealed by matting, and Taylor knew she had no idea where it was.

He watched her realize escape wasn’t an option, and then she dug into her little purse for a weapon or a cell phone or a bribe or something else that she thought might help but wouldn’t. Taylor hit her square in the nose, then tossed the purse aside. A small canister of pepper spray spilled out, along with a cell phone, make-up, Tic-Tacs, and several condoms.

“You lied to me,” Taylor said, slapping her again. “You’ve got rubbers.”

“Please…”

“You lying little slut. Were you going to pepper spray me?”

“No… I…”

“Liar.” Another slap. “I think you need to be taught a lesson. And I don’t think you’ll like it. But I will.”

Candi’s hands covered her bleeding nose and she moaned something that sounded like, “Please… My kids…”

“Does your pimp offer life insurance?”

She whimpered.

“No? That’s a shame. Well, I’m sure he’ll take care of your children for you. He’ll probably have them turning tricks by next week.”

Taylor knocked her hands away and pressed the cold, wet paper towels to her face. Not hard enough to cut off air, but hard enough that she had to breathe through them. Even though he wore a paper face mask, some of the pungent, bitter odor got into Taylor’s nostrils, making his hairs curl.

It took the ether less than a minute to do its job on the whore. When she finally went limp, Taylor placed the damp towels in a plastic zip-top bag. Then he took several bungee cords out of the trunk and bound Candi’s hands and arms to her torso. Unlike rope, the elastic bands didn’t require knots, and were reusable. Taylor wrapped them around Candi tight enough for her to lose circulation, but that didn’t matter.

Candi wouldn’t be needing circulation for very much longer.

While the majority of his murder kit was readily available at any truck stop, his last piece of equipment was specially made.

It looked like a large board with two four-inch wide holes cut in the middle. Taylor flipped the catch on the side and it opened up on hinges, like one of those old-fashion jail stocks that prisoners stuck their heads and hands into. Except this one was made for something else.

Taylor grabbed Candi’s left foot and gingerly removed her wedge. Then he placed her ankle in the half-circle cut into the wood. He repeated the action with her right foot, and closed the stock.

Now Candi’s bare feet protruded through the boards, effectively trapped.

He locked the catch with a padlock, and then set the stock in between the floor mats, where it fit snuggly into a brace, secured by two more padlocks.

Play time.

Taylor lay on his stomach, taking Candi’s right foot in his hands. He cupped her heel, running a finger up along her sole, bringing his lips up to her toes.

He licked them once, tasting sweat, grime, smelling a slight foot odor and a faint residue of nail polish. His pulse went up even higher, and time seemed to slow down.

Her little toe came off surprisingly easy, no harder than nibbling the cartilage top off a fried chicken leg.

Taylor watched the blood seep out as he chewed on the severed digit—a blood and gristle-flavored piece of gum—and then swallowed.

This little piggy went to market.

He opened up his mouth to accommodate the second little piggy, the one who stayed home, when he realized something was missing.

Where was the screaming? Where was the begging? Where was the thrashing around in agony?

He crawled around the stock, alongside Candi’s head. Ether was a pain in the ass to get the dose right, and he’d lost more than one girl by giving her too big a whiff. Luckily, Candi was still breathing. But she was too deeply sedated to let some playful toe-munching wake her up.

Taylor frowned. Like sex, murder was best with two active participants. He gathered up the whore’s belongings, then rolled away from her, over to the trap door.

He’d get a bite to eat, maybe enjoy one of Murray’s famous free showers. Hopefully, when he got back, Sleeping Homely would be awake.

Taylor used one of the ether-soaked paper towels to wipe the blood off his chin and fingers, stuffed them back into the bag, then headed for the diner.