An Affair Of Sorcerers

Daniel's behavior, Marlowe's immolation, Kathy's poisoning-I kept it all rolling, in living color, on an endless loop in my mind.

It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that Smathers and Kee had been carrying out experiments in sensory deprivation at the university from Day One. They'd probably been scooping Bowery derelicts up off the sidewalk to use as subjects, then putting them back-or burying them-when the experiments were finished. The money for the equipment had come from their piece of the coven action in milking wealthy victims like Bobby Weiss.

Also, I was now positive that the rabid bat had come from Smathers. The Nobel Prize winner had unlimited access to the research facilities of the university's medical school, and that was undoubtedly where he'd scrounged up the diseased animal. Ironically, his reason at the time had probably been personal, completely divorced from the Esobus investigation. The bat had been Smathers' offbeat revenge on me for investigating him.

Every so often I tried to move. Perhaps because I finally had a fix on the nature of what was being done to me, I imagined I could occasionally feel an arm or leg move, my chest expand and contract. Once I even felt pain in my thumb, and I'd never experienced a more welcome sensation. But then it disappeared, which seemed to confirm that they were using curare in the intravenous solutions they had to be feeding me.

Waiting.

It went on and on, the terrible, crushing silence filled with my personal demons. Despite my acceptance of my death and my desperate efforts to focus my thoughts, the impact of the sensory deprivation was devastating. Knowledge of my situation was at once my greatest torment and my only defense; but it wasn't enough of a defense. The total lack of stimulation was tearing away the scabs on my psyche, releasing every pustule of fear and frustration I'd ever known, bringing it all up in one lump to sore and fester in my conscious mind; soon a flash point would be reached.

With increasing frequency, I found myself waking from periods of unconsciousness to find myself slipping down into the black hole. I fought back, but I was getting progressively weaker. Soon, I knew, I would fall down there and not be able to climb out. I'd be a zombie, a slave to Esobus, willing to do anything that was asked of me.

Until the rabies killed me.

The next time I emerged from semiconsciousness, I discovered that the black hole was far in the distance, and I felt on fairly solid mental ground. It took me a few seconds to realize what had brought me back.

My left foot was resting against something solid. I could feel it, and it was as if this delicate sense of touch were the greatest gift I'd ever received.

Slowly, tentatively, I sent a message from my brain down to my left leg, very politely asking it to move. It did. My toes wiggled, and my foot slid back and forth, touching the smooth, slightly slimy side and bottom of the tank. I tried the other leg. It too moved, as did my arms.

I was floating free.

I twisted around and felt my knees bang against the slate bottom. I stood, reached up with my hand and felt my fingers curl around a steel edge. I gave a mental whoop, pushed off the bottom and pulled with my arms. Buoyed by the salt water, I soared like a slightly dopey flying fish over the side of the tank. Needles tore from my flesh, and I landed hard on my back on a bare, hardwood floor. That stunned me for a moment, but nothing had broken. I ripped the rubber mask off my head. The light from the fluorescent lights in the laboratory slashed into my eyes like razor blades. I screwed my eyes shut and took deep, shuddering breaths. My skin was a kaleidoscope of sensation, as if every nerve fiber in my naked body were thirstily drinking up the feel of the water and the cold wood. My sensory floodgates were open, and living was gushing through them.

They hadn't killed me yet.

I tried to rise, but couldn't. My legs felt like warm putty. After spending an unknown length of time in the water, I knew it was going to be some time before everything worked properly.

I propped myself up on one elbow and opened my eyes to slits. The light still hurt, but the pain was tolerable. I was surrounded by a tangle of wires and plastic feeding tubes. A metal stand from which the intravenous feeding bags had hung was directly to my left. A huge electronic monitoring machine a few feet off to the right blinked merrily, as if welcoming me back to the world of light and the living.

When I moved my head, I found something else watching me. My flop on the floor and the tearing out of the feeding tubes must have tripped some warning device; Kee's Chinese assistant had appeared, and he was holding a large.38 in his hand. The sight was just what I needed to cheer me up.

The Chinese advanced toward me. I rolled over on my back, closed my eyes and moaned. When I felt him standing over me, I opened my eyes, grabbed the metal stand and pulled it toward him. The Chinese ducked, instinctively raising his gun hand to ward off the steel bar. The.38 went off, and a bullet shattered the glass tank above me. Several thousand gallons of water cascaded over us, knocking the Chinese off his feet and sloshing me across the room to come up hard and painfully against the monitoring machine. I sputtered and coughed water. My vision cleared in time for me to see the dazed Chinese get up on his knees and retch; fortunately, he'd swallowed more water than I had. The gun had fallen out of his hand and was about twenty feet to his right, near what looked like the main power switch for the floor. I began crawling toward the weapon on my hands and knees.

I'd just got started when the rest of the entourage arrived. Smathers and Kee, probably alerted by the sound of the gunshot, rushed in through the door on the opposite side of the room.

Things didn't seem to be going too well for me.

Seized by terror, and not a little self-pity at the injustice of it all, I felt my heart hammering inside my chest, paralyzing me; all I could do was stay kneeling and stare at the two scientists.

Kee was wearing a plaid work shirt, shiny chinos a size too small for him, and green, high-top sneakers. But he didn't look funny to me. His eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses were great dark pools of oil set in flesh that might have been made of fine yellow porcelain. He made a hissing sound behind his teeth.

Smathers' emerald-green eyes were filled with hate. He swore in frustration, then barked orders. The assistant quickly rose to his feet, spotted the gun and started to walk toward it.

The realization that I was about to be shot-or dumped back into the tank-proved remarkably therapeutic. It seemed a good time to do something; like turn around, scramble back the way I'd come, climb up on top of the monitoring machine and pull some wires.

The machine whirred and popped, sending up clouds of black, acrid smoke. The live wires in my hands sputtered like deadly Fourth of July sparklers. I figured it was time for something to start going my way; I spun a mental prayer wheel, something concerning proper insulation in the machine I was squatting on, then tossed the wires into the water on the floor.

Kee had excellent reflexes. He leaped at the same time I dropped the wires and managed to land on a dry, warped, upward-sloping spot against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Smathers and the assistant weren't so lucky-or fast. They both tried walking on water, but didn't get far. Their screams were burned out of their throats by a few hundred thousand volts of electricity. Already dead, they danced around for a few seconds, then fell; their bodies gradually stopped twitching as the electricity locked their joints and muscles. There was a smell in the air like that of fried pork rinds.

The gun was still in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the electricity-filled water. That was just fine with me, because Kee was having troubles of his own: the water was gradually working its way up the increasingly narrow shores of his island of dry wood. Kee was backed up against the wall, his arms splayed out to either side of him, his fingers clawing at the plaster. Rabies or no, dunking or no, at the moment I felt-good. I sat down, crossed my legs and smiled at him.

'Tough batshit,' I said easily. 'Win a few, lose a few.'

For the first time, Kee's eyes reflected real emotion. There was fear of the liquid death seeping toward him, and there was hate. A lot of hate. I shouldn't have goaded him; it had been too inspirational.

The main power switch was a good fifteen feet away, but I'd already seen the strength he had in his legs. Kee gave a tremendous yell, then leaped straight up in the air; he planted his feet against the wall and dived for the power switch.

I knew he was going to make it, and he was closer to the gun than I was. Kee's fingertips hit the control