Morlacher’s mouth contorted. “You’re a liar.”
“If you’ve got a pair of binoculars,” Werry replied casually, “you can look out the window and see the inn on a pin turning into the fire on a spire.”
“I’ve got to go there,” Morlacher said, a pink triangle standing out on each cheek against the sudden pallor of his face. He turned and strode to the wooden chest which served as a hall table and picked up a CG harness.
Werry crossed to the entrance door and stood with his back to it, looking hard and confident behind the immaculate uniform and the badges of office, transformed into the man Hasson had once imagined him to be.
“I’ll decide where you’re going,” he said. “After you’ve answered my questions.”
“You, Al?” Morlacher continued struggling into the harness. “You’re just a joke, and I’m in no mood for laughing right now.” He tightened the harness’s belt connection, took one pace towards the door and halted when he saw that Werry had drawn his pistol.
“What about the bomb?” Werry said.
“Now you’re turning into a bad joke. You’re not fooling anybody with that thing.” Morlacher started to walk again.
Werry squeezed the trigger. There was no sound — the pistol was of a type which used electromagnetic energy to expel its slugs — but a block leapt out of the parquet floor close to Morlacher’s foot and skittered to the far end of the hail.
“The next one will go right up your nose,” Werry promised. “Now — about this bomb…”
Morlacher took a deep breath, swelling hugely, as though sucking in elemental power for some Herculean feat of strength, then something seemed to break inside him. A driving force was neutralised, a puissance was withdrawn. He withered and shrank.
“For God’s sake, Al,” he pleaded, “what are you trying to do to me? Let me out of here. I’ve got to go to the hotel.”
“About this bomb…”
“It wasn’t meant to be a bomb.” Morlacher spoke quickly, making fluttering movements with his hands. “You don’t think I wanted to damage the hotel, do you?”
“What was it meant to be?”
“I just wanted to shake those punks up a bit. Scare them out of the place. Let me go now, Al.”
Werry signalled his refusal with a movement of the pistol. “What did you use as an explosive?”
“It was just an old piece of hidyne I got from George York out at the Bettsville quarry.”
“Hidyne! You used hidyne to scare kids?”
“Yes, but I cut it up into little squares.”
“How little?”
“Little ones. Little ones! What more do you want me to say?”
“What weight were they?” Pridgeon shouted, lurching forward from his chair. “You didn’t mention no hidyne to me. What weight were they?”
“How would I know?” Morlacher said impatiently. “Fifteen grams. Twenty grams. Something like that.”
“Oh, Christ,” Pridgeon quavered, turning towards Werry. “Al, I swear to you I didn’t know about this. If there’s anybody in the Chinook you better get them Out of there. He got me to make up about twenty fuses.”
“What sort of fuses are you talking about?” Werry said “Do you mean timers?”
“Proximity fuses, Al. They’ll fire off when anybody goes near them.”
To Hasson’s surprise, Werry seemed bemused by the incidental technicalities of what he had just heard. “But how could anybody work with a gadget like that? What’s to stop it going off in your hand?”
“I used timers as well. The circuits are only activated at night.” Pridgeon advanced on Werry, pressing both hands to his battered face as though holding it together. “Al, I had no idea.”
“Stay back,” Werry told him, his eyes intent on Morlacher. “Buck, how many of those things did you actually put into the hotel?”
“All of them,” Morlacher said in a dull voice.
“Whereabouts?”
“All over the place. One on each floor and a couple extra in places where I found food. You know, places where they’ve been camping out.”
“Can you remember the exact locations?”
Morlacher shook his head. “The floors are mostly just wide open spaces. I’d need to look around in daylight.”
“You’ve really done it, haven’t you?” Werry fingered the controls of his communicator and raised it to his lips. “Victor? I was trying to raise Henry.”
“I’ve been trying to contact him, too.” Victor Quigg’s voice sounded both tinny and anxious. “The first floor of the hotel is really alight now, Al. You can see the glow from down here on the ground — and if Henry doesn’t get back to that second floor window soon he’ll be in real trouble. The fire is going to cut him off, it looks like.”
“Have you heard any more explosions?”
“Explosions? No, Al. What would…?”
“Victor, you’ve got to contact Henry,” Werry said quickly. “Go up there with a voice magnifier, but don’t go inside — the place is a minefield.” He went on to explain the situation to Quigg, concluding with instructions to tell Henry Corzyn to retrace his exact path to the window by which he had entered.
“I’m on my way,” Quigg said. “When are you coming back here, Al?”
“Soon.” Werry’s eyes, cold and unforgiving, remained fixed on Morlacher. “I’ve just one little chore to take care of first.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Morlacher said in something like his normal manner, moving towards the door. “I’ve got to get to the hotel.”
Werry continued to bar his way, shaking his head. “You’re going to my hotel, Buck. I’ve got adjoining rooms reserved for you and Starr.”
Morlacher pointed at him with an unsteady forefinger. “You’ve just lost yourself a good job.”
“That’s the second time in one night,” Werry said, unimpressed. He took a pack of restraint patches from his pocket and tossed them to Hasson. “Behind their backs, Rob, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Hasson nodded, went to Morlacher and drew the big man’s hands together behind his back. He peeled the wrapper from a square blue patch, placed it between Morlacher’s wrists and squeezed them together, creating an unbreakable bond. Pridgeon submitted to the same treatment almost eagerly, establishing himself as a man who believed in co-operating with the law.
“Now we can go,” Werry said. He opened the front door, reconnecting the interior of the house to the outside universe, and this time the Chinook Hotel was immediately visible, burning low in the southern sky like a troubled red planet.
nine
As Werry had predicted, the vicinity of the hotel had become thronged with spectators, both on the ground and in the air. The roads bordering the hotel land swarmed with the glistening curvatures of automobiles, as though infested with monstrous insects, and the sky was filled with veering constellations of fliers” lights. A bilaser projector had been used to float a huge warning sign in the middle air, the crimson lettering of which read: CAUTION! THERE IS A DANGER OF MORE EXPLOSIONS! GLASS WILL FALL OVER A WIDE AREA! STAY CLEAR! And perched high on its unseen pinnacle, at the unmoving centre of the spangled chaos, the hotel building itself remained invisible except for a partial nimbus of flickering orange.
“I’m almost sorry I put Buck inside,” Werry said as he got out of the police car. “He should have been here to see this.”
Hasson tilted his head back, trying to take in the entire spectacle. “How long do you think he’ll stay inside?”
“His lawyers should spring him in about an hour.”
“It was hardly worth the trouble of putting him away.”
“It was worth it to me — I owed him.” Werry grinned vindictively. “Come on. I want to find out how Henry got on up there.” He led the way across the uneven ground to where the impotent fire tenders stood in a line of other vehicles. The television unit was still in operation, surrounded by a cluster of men and women who were using its monitors to obtain a convenient view of the happenings in another world four hundred metres above their heads. As Werry and Hasson drew near, the slim figure of Victor Quigg detached itself from the group and came to meet them. His eyes had grown large and dark with strain, giving his immature face something of the look of a nocturnal animal.
“Everything okay?” Werry said. “Where’s Henry?”
“Still up there, Al. I couldn’t find him, and that’s a fact.”
“Do you mean he’s still inside the hotel?”
“I guess so. He wouldn’t have come out again without somebody noticing. He should have kept in touch.” Quigg sounded tired and afraid.
“The crazy old, . .” Werry stood on his toes to get a glimpse of the television image of the hotel. “It looks like the fire will be through into the second floor in no time at all. How’s he going to get back out?”
“That’s what I want to know. Al, if anything happens to him…”
Werry silenced the young policeman by raising his hand. “Is there another way out of the hotel? What about the roof?”
“There must be a way in and out through the roof — that’s the way the kids seem to get in — but I couldn’t find it,” Quigg said. “It’s like a town up there, Al. All kinds of machinery houses and water tanks and things.”
“Well, we can send for keys or rip a door off’.” Werry paused, looking thoughtful. “Except… if we go inside and start working down we’re likely to stand on one of Buck’s Goddamn bombs. We might just have to take that risk.”
“Henry should have kept in touch.”
“What about the windows?” Hasson put in. “Are there no big ones he can put out with a brick?”
Werry shook his head morosely. “It’s all this modem blastproof — blastproof, that’s a good one — tessellated stuff. They’re supposed to make high buildings more psychologically acceptable, or something like that.”
“I see.” Hasson moved closer to the television unit and examined the image being sent down by the airborne camera operator. The architect of the Chinook Hotel had extended the tessella motif to the entire outer surface, blending walls and windows into a single mosaic design. Looked at from a purely aesthetic point of view the building was a success, and it would have been unfair to expect an architect to foresee a situation in which anybody would have wanted to launch himself out of a room into the sort of thin cruel air streams that flowed over and above the Empire State Building. Hasson’s imagination, catching him off guard, drew him into the situation he had envisaged and the ground seemed to rock beneath his feet. He turned away from the television monitor, sickened, and was trying to control his breathing when he saw a young woman approaching from the direction of the road. Seeing her in the unusual circumstance and setting, he had a momentary difficulty in identifying her as May Carpenter. She hurried by him, white-faced and distraught, and halted beside Al Werry.
