boy.”
Amazement made yet another fright mask of the troll’s face. “What genius would make such clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Erika admitted. “But I’ve got an idea who might. Glenda. The estate provisioner. She shops for everything needed here. Food, paper goods, linens, staff uniforms, holiday decorations….”
“Does she shop for soap?” Jocko asked.
“Yes, everything, she shops for everything.”
He put aside his empty Scotch glass and clapped his hands. “Jocko would like to meet the lady who shops for soap.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Erika said. “You stay here, out of sight. I’ll talk to Glenda and see what she can do.”
Getting up from the armchair, the troll said, “Jocko is feeling like he better twirl or cartwheel, or walk on his hands. Whatever.”
“You know what you could do?” Erika asked. “You could browse the shelves in here, choose some books to take along.”
“I’m going to read to you,” he remembered.
“That’s right. Choose some good stories. Maybe twenty.”
As the troll moved toward the nearest shelves, Erika hurried to find Glenda.
At the door to the hall, she paused and looked back at Jocko. “You know what …? Also choose four or five books that seem a little dangerous. And maybe … one that seems really, really dangerous.”
CHAPTER 53
The powerful engine transmits vibrations through the frame of the car.
The tires on the blacktop raise vibrations that are likewise transmitted through the vehicle.
Even in the plush upholstery of the backseat, these vibrations can be felt faintly, especially by one made sensitive to vibrations by the tedium of semisuspended animation, in which there was, for so long, little other sensory input.
Like the freezer-motor vibrations in the liquid-filled sack, these are neither pleasant nor unpleasant to Chameleon.
It is no longer tormented by extreme cold.
Nor is it any longer tormented by its powerless condition, for it is no longer powerless. It is free, free at last, and it is free to kill.
Currently, Chameleon is tormented only by its inability to locate a TARGET. It has detected the scents of numerous EXEMPTS, and even most of them were dead.
The sole TARGET located in the laboratory suddenly became an EXEMPT just seconds before Chameleon would have killed it.
Frustrated, Chameleon cannot account for this transformation. Its program does not allow for such a possibility.
Chameleon is adaptable. When its program and real experience do not comport, it will reason its way toward an understanding of why the program is inadequate.
Chameleon is capable of suspicion. In the lab, it continued to maintain surveillance on the one who transformed. It knew the man’s face from the past and from the film, but because of the transformation, it thought of him as the PUZZLE.
The PUZZLE had gotten busy, busy in the lab, rushing this way and that. Something about the PUZZLE’s frantic activity made Chameleon more suspicious.
In the hallway, the PUZZLE encountered a thing unlike any creature in the extensive species-ID file in Chameleon’s program. This thing, large and moving erratically, looked not at all like an EXEMPT, but it smelled like one.
The PUZZLE had run from the building, and because Chameleon had no whiff of any TARGET, no reason to remain there, it followed.
On the way out of the building, Chameleon detected faint traces of a TARGET’s scent under the EXEMPT scent of the PUZZLE.
Interesting.
Once they were in the car and in motion for a while, the PUZZLE seemed less agitated, and as he became calmer, the TARGET scent slowly faded.
Now there is only the scent of an EXEMPT.
What does it all mean?
Chameleon broods on these events.
On the backseat, looking exactly like the backseat, Chameleon waits for a development. It confidently anticipates that there will be a development. There always is.
CHAPTER 54
Erika phoned Glenda, the estate provisioner, at the dormitory and asked for a meeting immediately in the staff lunchroom. This was in the south wing on the first floor, and it could be entered either from the south hall or from an exterior door.
In a few minutes, Glenda arrived at the exterior door. She left her umbrella outside and came into the lunchroom, saying, “Yes, Mrs. Helios, what is needed?”
A sturdy New Race woman with short chestnut-brown hair and a scattering of freckles, wearing an off-duty jumpsuit, she appeared accustomed to lifting and toting. As the sole shopper for the estate, her job included not just browsing the aisles of stores but also the physical labor of transporting goods and stocking shelves.
“I’ve been out of the tank little more than a day,” Erika said, “so my downloaded data hasn’t yet been complemented by enough real-world experience. I need to buy something right away, tonight, and I hope your knowledge of the marketplace will be helpful.”
“What do you need, ma’am?”
Erika brazened through it: “Boys’ clothing. Shoes, socks, pants, shirts. Underwear, I suppose. A light jacket. A cap of some kind. The boy is about four feet tall, weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Oh, and his head is big, quite big for a boy, so the cap should probably be adjustable. Can you get me those things right away?”
“Mrs. Helios, may I ask—”
“No,” Erika interrupted, “you may not ask. This is something Victor needs me to bring to him right away. I never question Victor, no matter how peculiar a request may seem, and I never will. Do I need to tell you why I never question my husband?”
“No, ma’am.”
The staff had to know that the Erikas were beaten and were not permitted to turn off their pain.
“I thought you’d understand, Glenda. We’re all in the same quicksand, aren’t we, whether we’re the provisioner or the wife.”
Uncomfortable with this intimacy, Glenda said, “There’s no store open at this hour, selling boys’ clothing. But …”
“Yes?”
Fear rose in Glenda’s eyes, and her previously placid face tightened with worry. “There are many articles of boys’ and girls’ clothing here in the house.”
“Here? But there are no children here.”
Glenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “You must never tell.”
“Tell what? Tell whom?”
“Never tell … Mr. Helios.”
