An Affair Of Sorcerers

very angry man.

He barely managed to bring himself to a halt in front of my desk. He stood before me, fists clenched, trembling with rage. 'What were yon doing in my private laboratory?' he growled in a deep, rasping baritone.

I swallowed the last of the bagel, washed it down with coffee, patted my month with a paper napkin. 'I got lost looking for the men's room,' I said. It was no way to talk to a Nobel winner, but I was feeling a bit surly myself.

Smathers' tongue worked its way back and forth across his lips until he finally found the words he wanted. 'You're a liar!'

'Okay, okay,' I said testily. 'I was looking for you or Dr. Kee. I wanted to consult you on a professional matter.'

He swallowed hard and finally managed to bring his voice under control; stripped of the distorting anger, it was deep and rich-almost hypnotic. 'I believe my secretary informed you that neither Dr. Kee or I have time for such matters.'

'I don't like doing business with other people's secretaries. You might have extended me a little professional courtesy.'

'Courtesy!' he boomed. 'The door to my laboratory was locked!'

'Not when I got there,' I lied. 'Talk to your keeper of the keys. The door was open when I walked by, so I just went up. The next thing I knew I was face to face with Fu Manchu.'

'Do you realize you could have killed that man? You might have ruptured his spleen or his heart!'

'If I'd wanted to kill him, he'd be dead,' I said quietly, trying to meet Smathers' curious, off-center gaze; he seemed to be looking at me first with one eye, then with the other. 'The fact of the matter is that your helper got a bit pushy. I just pushed back. If you want to pursue the matter, file a complaint. Go see the Chancellor. He might like to find out what's so damn important to you that you feel the need to keep an entire floor locked behind two inches of steel.'

That backed him up. He took his hands off the top of my desk and stiffened slightly. 'I don't think there's any need for that,' he said carefully. His gaze rose to a spot just above my head, then snapped back to my face. 'We're both professionals. I have no desire to embarrass you, and quite frankly, I can't spare the time from my work that bringing formal charges against you would entail.'

'What are you working on?' I asked casually.

'I didn't come over here to discuss my work, Frederickson.'

'Sorry; I was just trying to make conversation. I can't help being curious as to what kind of research requires a human watchdog like the one that came after me.'

Smathers made a nervous gesture with his hand. 'If you must know, Dr. Kee and I are investigating some of the more bizarre human mental aberrations. On occasion we have potentially dangerous people on that floor. That's the reason for the security. Our assistant obviously thought you might have been one of our subjects.'

I laughed. 'You get a lot of crazy dwarfs up there, Doctor?'

The scientist didn't smile. 'I repeat: the man simply thought he was doing his job.'

'What's behind those locked doors, Dr. Smathers?'

His green eyes flashed. Smathers' apologetic number, not that good to begin with, was over. 'None of your business. God, you have nerve! But then, I suppose a spy needs it.'

'I wasn't spying,' I said evenly. 'I was looking for you.'

'You will not come up there again, Dr. Frederickson!'

We stared at each other for a few moments across the narrow expanse of my desk. I was the one who finally broke the silence. 'Interesting colleague you have. Did you know that Dr. Kee was an adviser to the Peoples' Liberation Army in North Korea? I understand he was a brainwashing specialist.'

'That's slanderous,' Smathers said, flushing. 'Who told you that?'

'What difference does it make? It's just a rumor. Haven't you heard it?'

'I wouldn't pay attention to such a story.'

'If Dr. Kee was in Korea, why try to cover it up? That war's long over.'

Smathers' eyes narrowed and his voice dropped in pitch. 'Why this sudden interest, Frederickson?'

'I have tremendous respect for anyone who wins a Nobel Prize,' I said truthfully. 'I simply wanted to meet you. It turns out you're a very secretive person. Of course, if you've got something to hide-'

'I have nothing to hide!' Smathers snapped. He paused, thoughtfully tapped his knuckles on the top of my desk. 'All right,' he continued with a slight air of resignation. 'I knew when I invited Kee to work with me that he'd been in the Chinese Army during the Korean War. That fact was-and is-irrelevant; there are still people who would be very upset if they knew of it, and we thought it best to keep it to ourselves. Dr. Kee is an expert in induced aberrational psychology, and the only man in the world who knows enough about the subject to be able to assist me.'

'How did the two of you get together?'

'You're interrogating me!'

'No, I'm not,' I said easily. 'I'm just curious; and you did say that you had nothing to hide.'

Smathers was uncomfortable, but apparently felt he'd already said too much to stop. 'I was attending a conference in Poland,' he said defensively, staring at me with his cast eye. 'It was made known to me through intermediaries that Dr. Kee was available and wished to come to the United States in order to work with me. I said that I was agreeable, and he joined me soon after that.'

'Interesting,' I said casually. 'Are you still experimenting with sensory deprivation?'

'No! Why do you ask?'

I raised my eyebrows, said quietly, 'It's what you won your Nobel for. Why shouldn't you still be working in the field?'

'Because the research is considered dangerous, and it's no longer approved of by my colleagues.' The scientist hesitated; the focus of his eyes shifted until he seemed to be looking through me. I must have pushed the right button, because he suddenly started talking rapidly, with passion. 'I was surrounded by fools!' he continued heatedly. 'I was on the verge of a medical breakthrough as profound as the work they gave me the Nobel for.'

'A cure for the common cold?'

'Don't mock me, Frederickson,' Smathers said, breath whistling through his voice. 'I'd almost discovered a cure for alcoholism. Alcoholism, like drug addiction, is primarily a psychological problem; despite the gross changes that take place in the body as a result of dependence, the problem is one of the mind. I can literally remold a mind, erase those problems-'

'By erasing the mind,' I interrupted. 'I've done a little reading on sensory deprivation. To put it simply, a man goes out of his mind; to be more precise, his mind goes out of him. You take away all of a man's sensory landmarks and he'll eventually become like a baby-with no past, present or future. He becomes extremely suggestible; brainwashed, you might say.'

Smathers slapped his thigh in an impatient, angry gesture. 'Don't use that archaic term with me! You're being hopelessly simplistic. To begin with, the minds of the people I'm talking about have been rendered useless anyway. These men and women are no good to themselves or to anyone else. So don't moralize to me!'

'The thought never crossed my mind, Doctor.'

Smathers suddenly thrust his shoulders back and raised himself up ramrod straight. 'You will not interfere in my affairs again, Frederickson,' he murmured in a quiet growl. 'If you do, I'll make certain you regret it. You've been warned.'

He spun on his heel and strutted stiffly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. I crumpled my coffee container and tossed it toward the wastebasket. I missed.

The confrontation with Smathers out of the way, I wanted to shift cases and see Esteban Morales. I drove over to Garth's precinct station and had already parked before I remembered that he was away for the weekend. I might have been able to get in to see Esteban on my own, but I didn't want to talk to the healer until I'd spoken with Garth-and I didn't want to talk to Eric Jordon until I'd heard what Esteban had to say. That seemed to leave