The Puppet Master

than I sometimes do at walking out before I was stuffed, and had just reached my car when a guy with a pistol pointed at me stepped from behind a van.

'Hands up, asshole!' he said. 'We want your money!'

Never get into a life-threatening fight over your wallet, sure as hell not when the other guy's got the drop on you. My hands went all the way up, shoulder-width apart and open wide. I heard someone else come up behind me, and expected him to go through my pockets. Instead, something pressed against the back of my neck, something not a gun or knife. It stung, and almost instantly I felt my mind fogging, my knees going weak. I started to fall, and he grabbed me under the arms. That's all I remember of that.

* * *

When I woke up, I was in the back of a van, parked in someone's attached residential garage. Some Gnostie's no doubt. The dome light was on, and there was a guy in the off-side front seat. I was gagged, but I must have made a noise, because he was looking back at me. My wrists had been handcuffed behind my back, and my ankles and knees were tied with duct tape. The guy didn't say anything, just put his book aside, got out, and went into the house.

I don't know what they juiced me with, but I didn't feel too bad. A little headachey, a little weak. I rolled around enough to discover that my pistol was no longer in my shoulder holster, not that I could have gotten to it anyway. A couple of minutes later he came back with two other guys. One was big, with a nasty smile. He stood in the van door, flexing and unflexing his hands in front of him, trying to intimidate me, while the third guy got in and blindfolded me. Then they threw a plastic tarp over me. A minute later I heard the garage door open, and we backed out.

As we started down the street, I heard one of them talking on the car phone, telling someone we were on our way. We drove for fifteen or twenty minutes, then stopped—I had no idea where—and the tarp was pulled off me. Someone grabbed my feet, pulled me most of the way out, and cut the tape on my ankles and knees. Someone else grabbed my upper right arm. 'Stand up!' he said, and pulled.

I was a little unsteady, but I managed. The problem was being blindfolded and disoriented, not the shot. I heard traffic sounds not far off, smelled night jasmine and damp soil. Then he told me 'Walk!' I stumbled trying, and someone grabbed me to keep me from falling.

'Fischer, take his blindfold off. It doesn't matter if he sees something. Walking blind like that he'll fall down, and he must weigh 250 pounds.'

Two hundred thirty, I thought. At most. I felt someone untying the blindfold, and when he pulled it off, I realized at once where I was: at a service entrance to one of the Campus buildings. I could see a residential street maybe 120 feet to my left, with apartment houses on the other side.

And it didn't matter if I saw things! That could only mean one thing. I yelled as loudly I could, louder than you'd think. The gag was effective against speaking words, but when it came to an animal-like howl . . . The big guy slugged me in the gut, doubling me over, then uppercut me, hitting me in the forehead. I went down like a stone, and he kicked me once in the side. When I looked up, he'd stepped back. He had a police baton in one hand, and the guy in charge was swearing at him in a hard-edged undertone.

'Miller, you goddamn fucking idiot, if you kill him, Lon will have your balls on a stick! You'll be lucky to get assigned to the SRC! He wants information from this guy.'

'Whaddaya mean? I had to shut him up!'

'You did that when you hit him in the gut. If you hit him with that goddamn billy club, you could kill him.'

'Shit! You couldn't kill him by hitting him on the head with a crowbar.'

'That's backflash, Miller! Once more and I'll see you before a committee! And when you talk to me, call me sir! Now get him inside!'

He took a key ring off a clip on his belt and unlocked a pair of double doors, holding one of them open while the other two guys dragged me inside, into a dimly lit corridor. The door clashed shut behind us. After he'd locked it, he spoke to me. 'Can you stand up?'

I grunted, nodding my head.

'Help him!'

Fischer and Miller lifted me by the arms. I stood there for a second, steadying myself. Actually, Miller didn't seem particularly strong. He'd been getting by on big.

'Okay,' the leader said, 'let's go.'

We went down the corridor, turned left down another, and entered a large dining room at the end. It was unlit except for city light shining like a full moon through large windows. Open windows; night jasmine overrode the smell of floor-cleaning compound. Three people were sitting at a table near the front, looking at us. The light was too weak to show their facial features from across the room, but the big one had to be Lon Thomas. The others were probably bodyguards, I told myself. My keepers led me to him.

It was Thomas, all right. As for the bodyguards— One didn't seem to be. He was a thin, tallish guy with some kind of instrument on the table in front of him. The other was a woman, young and good-looking in a hard, lipless way, but a bodyguard sure enough. One of her hands rested on a machine pistol, an Uzi. Anyone who'd carry one of those where an ordinary pistol would do, is at least a little crazy.

Thomas looked me up and down, then nodded. I noticed Miller rubbing his right fist. I hoped he'd broken it; sprained it at least.

'He yelled,' my captor told Thomas. 'Right through the gag.'

Thomas grunted. 'So that's what that was.' He looked at the quiet one, Fischer. 'Mr. Fischer,' he said, 'go outside and see if anyone's poking around who seems curious about the noise. If there is, tell them someone was, uh, preparing to braze a door handle and burned himself with the torch. Be casual but convincing. At this hour, I doubt anyone would investigate, but let's not take anything for granted.'

Fischer left. Thomas was looking at me again. 'So. Mr. Seppanen,' he said. 'You see, I know your real name. I am going to have your gag taken off so you can answer some questions. If you become abusive or refuse to