Fire in the Sky Page 7

  "Quite clear," Bolan replied.

  Floyd Bacon was old. He was bone lean, like a praying mantis, his spindly wrists practically lost in the cuffs of his shirt and jacket. His skin was smooth and pampered-looking, his blue-veined hand soft and its clasp weak.

  The old man fell silent for a long moment, then spoke again. "I see that your field is poison gases." He coughed deeply, a handkerchief coming up to his mouth. "This is no doubt militarily applicable and will enrage some of the more dovish members of our fifth-floor staff."

  "I'm sure I can…"

  "No matter how bad it gets, Dr. Sparks, you are on your own. It is not my job to act as referee. I administer this facility — period. So, don't come to me with your social problems. Your paycheck comes from the government. Go through the governmental grievance procedure if someone insults your parentage, your intelligence, your religion or your ethnic origin. I'm not your confessor, and I'm not a complaints department."

  "I can take care of myself," Bolan said.

  For the first time, Bacon looked up and met his gaze. He held it, inexplicably, for nearly half a minute before once again returning to the papers on his desktop.

  "I would take you up to Five and introduce you around," Bacon said, "but I haven't been up there in two years and I don't see any reason to start now. Look for Robbie Hampton. He'll get you straightened away. Did you fill out a W-4?"

  "Yes," Bolan answered.

  The man nodded slowly, then gestured to the door. "Welcome aboard. I hope you don't have any strong antisocial tendencies."

  "Thank you," Bolan said, standing.

  Bacon ignored him then, as if he had left already. The old hands reached out, took a stack of papers from his In basket and put them in the Out. Then he sat back and sighed deeply, closing his eyes.

  Bolan left quietly, briefcase full of chemical information dangling from his right hand, his photo ID badge attached to the lapel of his sport jacket. He passed Bacon's secretary — who also ignored his presence — and moved out into the hall, nearly bumping into a five-foot-tall mechanical man wearing a Groucho Marx nose with attached glasses and mustache.

  The robot bent and studied his badge. "You're new here, aren't you?"

  "That's right," Bolan said.

  "Well, this is a gala day...and a gala day should be enough for any man."

  "Could you direct me to the elevator?" Bolan asked.

  "Sure... walk this way," the robot said, ambling along the fake marble halls with an exaggerated swivel in the hip area.

  "My name is Arthur," the machine said.

  "Sparks," Bolan answered. "Are you self-directed?"

  "Alas, no. I am being driven by remote control from Dr. Smyth's laboratory on Floor 2. Dr. Smyth also most ably provides my melodious voice. Here's the elevator."

  Bolan walked up to the sliding doors and pushed the "up" arrow. He searched Arthur's face and saw that his "eyes" were actually miniature TV cameras.

  The elevator opened, both Arthur and Bolan stepping inside. "Would you push 2 for me?" the robot asked.

  "Sure." Bolan pushed both 2 and 5, and the doors closed. "What exactly are you being developed for?"

  "We are studying the feasibility of the computer-operated, self-generated engine that can recognize, by analog, different terrains so that it can move itself to destinations by discerning roadways and signs and sticking to them."

  "Quite a program," Bolan said as the elevator jerked to a stop. "Good luck."

  The robot lifted an arm in parting and left the elevator, happily singing the refrain from "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady."

  The doors closed again, and Bolan resumed his journey to the fifth floor, wondering how the brutal murders of Jerry Butler and Dr. Arnold could have anything to do with this nuthouse. He found that he was nervous, too. The warrior who could walk alone and confident into any situation was entering an arena where his well-honed battle skills would be of little use to him. And yet, this arena could be as dangerous as any he had fought in. Were Jerry Butler alive, he could testify to that fact. He would have to be extremely careful. The wars here would be fought with words, but backed up with something far deadlier.

  When the doors slid open on the fifth floor, Bolan was confronted with a large waiting room furnished expensively. At its far end, a uniformed security guard sat reading a comic book in a closed-in booth with a barred cutout. Hallways branched out on two sides from the waiting room. A noise echoed through the whole floor, a high-pitched screeching that sounded frightened, faraway and nearly human.

  He walked to the guard station, the man still intent on his reading, his lips moving silently as he took it all in.

  "Excuse me," Bolan said, the security man starting and nearly falling out of his tilted-back chair. "My name's Sparks," Bolan said. "I'm supposed to start working here today."

  "Oh...oh yeah!" The guard picked up a clipboard. His eyes scanned slowly, lips silently moving as he read. "Here you are, all neat and tidy." He looked at his watch. "Arrival: 10:32. You're a little late."

  "Sorry," Bolan apologized.

  "Want me to show you your office?"

  "Right now I think I'd like to meet Dr. Hampton."

  "You bet, Dr. Sparks." The young man stood, fumbling with a ring of keys attached to his belt. "Just call me Chuck. If you need anything, I'm your boy." He got one of the keys into the lock on his station door and let himself out.

  "What the hell is that noise?" Bolan asked, as Chuck moved to the elevator and locked it so no one could come up to the floor.

  "Dolphins. That's Howard's project."

  "How does anyone get any work done around here with all the racket?"

  Chuck's face fell, perhaps in anticipation of trouble. "You get used to it," he said, leading Bolan down the west hallway. "Pretty soon it'll fade away in your mind, just like Muzak."

  "I don't like Muzak, either."

  Chuck took a long breath. "I think that Robbie is in the break room."

  They moved along the hallway, past storerooms and other unoccupied cubicles, Bolan still lugging his briefcase. The walls on either side were paneled maple and would have been extremely pleasant had they not been covered with spray-painted graffiti pictures of Kilroy and cartoon women with mammoth breasts.

  "What...?" Bolan began, Chuck looking at him with raised eyebrows.

  "Howard again, I'm afraid," he said. "He's real smart, so they indulge him."

  "I see."

  "Here we are."

  Chuck led him into a large, homey-looking combination break room and lounge. Half the room was brightly lighted and contained a large bank of vending machines, as well as several long tables. The other half was dimly lighted and had the look of a comfortable living room, furnished with sofas and easy chairs, and shag carpet on the floor. Several people occupied this part of the place.

  "Over here," Chuck directed, leading him across the room.

  All conversation stopped as they approached the group, Chuck stopping in front of an older man who wore a red plaid flannel shirt and who had an unlit pipe clenched firmly between his teeth. The man smiled up at them.

  "Dr. Hampton," Chuck said, "this is Dr. Sparks, our new loony."

  Hampton stood, extending a hand. He was extremely tall and lanky, with salt-and-pepper hair and eyes as deep as a well. "Call me Robbie. Welcome aboard."

  "I'm David," Bolan replied, shaking his hand. "Strange place you've got here."

  "It gets stranger. Let me introduce you around."

  "I'd better be getting back," Chuck said, moving off.

  "Thanks," Bolan called after him.

  The boy waved. "Remember Doc, anything you need."

  "Nice kid."

  Hampton chuckled softly. "He's our housemother. Come on, let's talk to the inmates."

  A gray-haired man with long muttonchops and dancing eyes sat on a red leather easy chair, drinking coffee. He wore a string tie and seemed to have a permanent smile fixed on his face, as if he found the world perpetually amus
ing. He stood as Hampton led Bolan toward him.

  "Isaac Silver," the man introduced himself, "citizen of the world. Most people call me Ike. My field's extraterrestrial communication. What's yours?"

  "Gas," Bolan replied.

  "As in petroleum?"

  "As in nerve and mustard."

  The man's smile widened. "Fascinating. You and I will have a great deal to discuss."

  Bolan and Hampton moved away, then, and approached a sour-faced, middle-aged woman wearing a white lab coat. From her place on a flower-printed sofa, she looked at Bolan disdainfully.

  "This is Margaret Ackerman," Hampton said. "We call her Peg, or Peggy if we really want to get her goat. Peg is our resident biochemist."

  The woman ignored Bolan's proffered hand. "I try to undo the damage that your kind does," she said.

  "Nice to meet you, too," Bolan replied dryly, which infuriated the woman, who puckered her lips angrily.

  Next to Peg on the couch was a large black man. He stood and was eye to eye with Bolan.

  "Fred Haines," Hampton said. "Solar energy." Bolan shook hands with the man, noticing arm tattoos poking out from under the sleeves of the tan jumpsuit. A long, thin scar ran from Haines's ear to his jawbone.

  "You stay in shape," Haines observed, in his low, melodious voice. "That's good for your mind. You keep your vices under control, also good. You, unfortunately, don't eat right, your skin tone is ruddy, your…"

  "And you've been to prison," Bolan interrupted, "where you had a lot of lousy dental work."

  The man smiled widely and said, "I like you already."

  Hampton patted Bolan on the shoulder. "I'll introduce you to the rest of the family as we run into them. We're just sitting around figuring out why the world is so screwed up. Care to join us?"

  Bolan held up the briefcase. "As you can see, I haven't even settled in yet. I really need to see my office, if that's okay for now."

  "Perfect," Hampton agreed, turning to the others. "We'll pick up on this later."

  The others responded halfheartedly, and Hampton led Bolan out of the comfortable living room arid across the break area to the door.

  '"I hope I'm not taking you away from anything important."

  The man took the pipe out of his mouth and stuck it in his shirt pocket. "Just the usual. You'll get used to it. First time in a crazy house?"

  "I've always worked alone before," Bolan replied.

  As they neared the open doorway, they were almost run down by a man hurrying in. He was short, with curly brown hair. A cigarette dangled from a corner of his mouth. He wore a three-piece suit, with a wide tie loosened at the neck.

  "Oh ... Robbie," he said with a thick accent, cigarette bobbing. "I need to talk to you about harvesting machines and capabilities."

  "Let's schedule it for tomorrow morning." Hampton turned to Bolan. "I'd like you to meet…"

  "Can't we do it sometime today?" the man asked, agitated. He seemed to be in a tremendous hurry in everything he did — walking, talking, smoking. "This problem is holding me up."

  "Okay," Hampton replied, shrugging. "I'd like you to meet David Sparks, the newest member of the team. David, this is Yuri Bonner, our resident geneticist."

  "Pleased to meet you," the man said, quickly shaking Bolan's hand. "Pardon my, er... rudeness, but I'm in a hurry. Thank you very much."

  "I'm glad ..." Bolan began, but the man had already hurried off in the direction of the vending machines, quickly waving off greetings from the others in the living room.

  "Russian?" Bolan asked, as they moved through the doorway into the hall.

  "Refusenik," Hampton revealed. "Soviet dissident. Came over in the great migration when détente was at its peak during the Carter administration."

  "Is he always in such a hurry?"

  "Always. I think he feels the need to prove himself among us. I've never seen anyone push himself the way Yuri does."

  "How about you?" Bolan asked. "What's your specialty?"

  Hampton put the pipe back in his mouth. "Don't have one. I guess I'm kind of a... thinker. My 'job,' as it were, is to talk abstractly to the others about what they're doing and try to extrapolate some of their ideas into the future to see where they might be taking us. Guess I'm kind of a father figure around here, a sort of comfortable chair."

  "I noticed some blankets and pillows. What were they for?"

  The man removed his pipe and laughed. "Sometimes the work doesn't go by the clock."

  They reached the waiting room, Chuck again immersed in his comic book. As they walked by, the elevator door slid open and Arthur the robot rolled out.

  "Hello, Arthur," Hampton greeted, stopping close to the machine. "And hello to you, too, Charlie," speaking to the operator.

  "Come away with me," Arthur mimicked in his best Groucho, "and we can be married and divorced before you know it."

  "What have you got there, Arthur?" Hampton asked.

  The robot raised its powerful metal arms. He was carrying a compact but heavy-looking electrical transformer. "A present from Dr. Smyth to Dr. Silver, to help with his radio transmissions."

  "Didn't Charlie and Ike fight over this piece of equipment just last week?"

  "We are giving it to Dr. Silver," the robot said. "Trying to share it was like being married to two people at the same time."

  "Bigamy," Hampton put in.

  Arthur's head swiveled to Bolan for the punch line. "Of course it was big of me. It was big of all of us!"

  "Well, he's down in the break room," Hampton said.

  "Hail thee and farewell," the robot replied, wheeling down the hall. Hampton and Bolan took the opposite corridor.

  "Smyth is a bit eccentric with the robot," Hampton said as they walked, "but he's the greatest computer brain in the field of applied research alive today. He'll have a breakthrough with Arthur before the year is out."

  "That transformer looked heavy," Bolan noted.

  Hampton nodded. "Once he can program the machine to travel and operate on its own, he intends to assign it tasks that will show its versatility and usefulness. It's an extremely powerful piece of engineering."

  As they moved down the hall, Bolan noticed and recognized the names on the doors. "Our offices?"

  "Offices and labs," Hampton replied. "You should be quite pleased with yours. It's the best that money can buy."

  Just then a door ten feet farther on slammed open, and a small computer flew through the space to crash against the wall. Seconds later, a straggly teenager with long curly hair came charging out of the room, turning in their direction.

  "Ah, Howard," Hampton began, "I'd like…"

  "Go to hell," the boy shouted, shoving his way past them to hurry down the hall.

  "Don't tell me," Bolan said. "That was the dolphin boy."

  "Howard Davis. He's not so bad once you get to know him."

  They continued walking, skirting the demolished machine, the dolphin sounds loud as they walked past the open doorway.

  Hampton stopped at the next entry. "Here we are," he announced, "and before you ask, your lab is soundproofed, so Howard's experiments won't bother you."

  A key was stuck in the lock. Hampton opened the door, pulled the key out and handed it to Bolan. "The only one," he said. "The door's always locked when it's shut. Nobody will come snooping."

  Bolan pocketed the key and they walked into the lab. "Wow," he whispered. The room was as big as a barn, and jammed full of lab tables and equipment — a chemist's dream.

  "The powers that be had this place stocked for you," Hampton said, closing the door behind them. "Anything else you need, you can requisition it quickly enough."

  "Fine." Bolan let Hampton lead him through the maze to the walled off corner of the room.

  "Your office is down here," the man said, walking with his hands behind his back.

  Bolan followed him to the office, which wasn't large or impressive. It was totally unornamented concrete, painted the same yellow as Bolan's bungalow. The
re were two filing cabinets and a government-issue gunmetal-gray desk with a computer terminal and telephone on top. A chair had been pushed into the well. Windows with Venetian blinds looked out onto the lab.

  "Same story here," Hampton said. "Nice it up any way you want to. Bring your own stuff or requisition. There are some request forms in the top drawer."

  "You seem to know everything."

  The man smiled, removing his pipe from his mouth and looking at it. "Guess I'm the welcome wagon."

  "Where's the guy who had this place before me?" Bolan asked, pulling out the chair and sitting.

  Hampton's face became sullen. "That was Jerry Butler. A brilliant but troubled man. He had, I think, some sort of emotional breakdown and left the institute. Shortly after, he was killed, murdered." The pipe went back in his mouth. "Jerry was always looking for conspiracies. God knows, maybe he found one."

  "You liked him a great deal?"

  The man nodded. "Like a son. He had ethics, values. You don't often see that in a place like this. Brilliant minds tend ofttimes to be selfish minds — not Jerry's."

  Hampton took a breath and smiled. "I'm going on like an old lady. Maybe I take my job here too seriously."

  "Don't worry about it," Bolan replied. "I'm the one who asked."

  "Sure," the man returned. "I know you're probably anxious to get settled in, so if there's anything you need, the list of extensions is there by the phone. Any more questions before I go?"

  Bolan leaned back in his chair. "Just one," he said, pointing to the pipe. "Do you ever light that thing?"

  Hampton took it out and looked at it as if surprised it was there. "Nope. A nasty habit. I just chew on it, satisfies the primitive sucking instinct."

  Bolan grinned. He stood to shake Hampton's hand. "Good to know you, Robbie."

  "I think we'll get along just fine," the man said, then turned and walked out of the office.

  Through a partially open blind, Bolan watched as the man crossed the lab and closed the door behind him. As soon as he was gone, Bolan picked up the phone and dialed Julie.