The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

nightmare world at home because of his success in school, and with failure had come a complete loss of self- esteem and desire to live. He had tried to kill himself by drinking close to a quart of gasoline.

Garth hadn't been too far off the mark when he'd said it was all wrong.

It wasn't quite four thirty when I left the children's hospital; not feeling like hanging around Garth's room until he was brought back, I headed for my apartment. Still anxious and agitated, I was pleasantly surprised to find Veil waiting for me outside the staff building. The yellow-haired man with the glacial blue eyes was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and he was lounging on a bench set on the grass a few feet back from the sidewalk. He saw me coming down the street, stood up and waved with his good arm.

'Hello, my friend,' Veil said as I came up to him. 'I figured it was time to get out into the country for some fresh air, so I rented a car, and here I am.'

'Hi, Veil,' I said, gripping his hand. 'Hey, I'm sorry I haven't been in touch.'

'Don't be ridiculous. You've got a few things on your mind.'

'How's the arm?'

'The cast comes off next week.' Veil's smile vanished. 'How's Garth?'

'You want a drink or something, Veil?'

'Not really.'

'Neither do I,' I said, and we sat down together on the bench. I brought Veil up to date on everything that had happened, shared my misgivings about Slycke's behavior-and my own.

Veil was silent for some time when I had finished, staring out over the grounds where patients and staff members were walking in groups of two and three. 'This is the first time I've been back here,' he said at last. 'It's been more than twenty years since I was committed. The place hasn't changed much-except, of course, for the fact that we didn't have a children's hospital then, and we were housed in these buildings with the adults.' He paused, pointed down the street. 'I was in Building 11-just around the corner from the fire-house.'

'God, you must feel spooky sitting here.'

'Yes and no,' Veil replied easily. 'It's like something that happened to a different person, in a different world.' He paused, looked at me. 'My point is that I have a lot more experience being certifiably crazy than you do. I hear you loud and clear when you say you're worried about Garth. Of course you are. But you can't press. That nurse is right when he tells you that you really have no idea what's going on inside Garth's head. It sounds to me like something close to a miracle has happened virtually overnight, and you're bitching about it. Think of where Garth has been.'

'I know where he's been, and I know I'm probably being childish and ungrateful. But to have Garth simply ignore me now that he's up and around is upsetting.'

'Are you sure he recognizes you?'

'No. . I'm not sure. But I think he recognizes me, and he just doesn't seem to give a damn. His responses are totally flat, if you know what I mean.'

Veil nodded thoughtfully, then pointed to my forehead. 'How's the cut?'

'Clean as a whistle. You do good work.'

Veil reached out and gently peeled back the small bandage, grunted. 'You should have listened to me and gone to see a plastic surgeon, Mongo. You're going to have a pretty nasty scar there.'

'Veil, I really don't give a shit.'

'Anyway, the wound seems to have healed. I think you can have the stitches taken out now.'

'Can you do it? You'll save me the trouble of waiting around some doctor's office for two hours for five minutes' work.'

Veil shrugged. 'Hell, I put them in, so I may as well take them out.'

I found a pair of small scissors in a drawer in the kitchen. Veil sterilized them with boiling water, sat me down over by a window, then proceeded to remove the stitches from the wound in my forehead.

'By the way,' Veil said, 'it looks like we won't have to wait around for Garth to tell us who poisoned him- assuming he knows.'

I reached up, pushed Veil's hand away from my forehead. 'Did you. .?'

'I didn't do anything.'

'But the police have caught him?'

Veil shook his head. 'Not him; them. Two men. The police don't even know about it yet, although they probably will by this evening. Chances are very good that they're K.G.B. They'd managed to infiltrate the manufacturing section of Prolix.'

'How do you know all this?'

'Mr. Lippitt called earlier this afternoon to tell me. I was planning on coming up here anyway, so I said I'd tell you.'

'Why the hell didn't Lippitt call me?'

'He said he tried to reach you a number of times, but you were never around. He also called your answering service in the city, but it seems you don't bother checking in with them anymore. He knew you'd be spending a lot of time up in the clinic, but for some reason he preferred not to call you there; he said it might make someone nervous.'

I thought about it, nodded. It seemed Mr. Lippitt wasn't quite as oblivious to Charles Slycke's sensibilities as I'd thought. 'He's right. I should have touched base with him, or made it easier for him to get hold of me.'

'No problem. He wanted you to have the information as soon as possible, and now you've got it. Before I leave, it might be a good idea to set up some kind of system to make it easier for Lippitt or me to get in touch with you if we need to.'

'Agreed. You say the police don't even know about these guys yet. Then how. .?'

'They took off; in effect, they fingered themselves. They must have been feeling the heat, and got a bad case of nerves.

'Lippitt told me that the D.I.A. had been working on the case overtime-but keeping a low profile, because they didn't want what's happened to happen. There were a dozen people under surveillance; yesterday morning, two of those people failed to show up for work. The surveillance people let themselves into the men's apartments, found them both cleaned out. Both guys had split during the night without being spotted. But they were in such a big hurry that they left some tracks, and those tracks appear to lead out of the country, probably to Russia. Mr. Lippitt is pissed.'

'The hurry and the sloppiness sounds very un-K.G.B.-ish.'

'Agreed.'

'Maybe they were just amateurs selling information to another company.'

'Mr. Lippitt thinks not. I don't know what the evidence is, but he seems certain they were K.G.B.'

I thought about it, frowned. 'You say they may have been feeling the heat, but they were only two of a dozen people under surveillance. From what I understand, the K.G.B. is usually pretty good at making clean, orderly retreats. Why would they have suddenly panicked and taken off like that?'

'Mr. Lippitt has a rather interesting theory on that subject.'

'Which is?'

'Think about it. What's been happening the past couple of days?'

'For Christ's sake, Veil, I haven't exactly been keeping up on current events.'

Veil's response was to go back to work on my forehead. When he had removed the last stitch and cleansed the wound with peroxide, he leaned back against a counter and made a gesture which seemed to indicate the building-or the entire hospital complex.

'Garth?” I said.

Veil nodded. 'That's Mr. Lippitt's notion. It was four days ago that Garth first showed signs of coming around-after you started playing the Ring for him.'

'Wrong. Four days ago I played Das Rheingold for him, and he didn't respond at all. He cried two nights ago, but I was the only one who saw that. Nothing heavy happened until last night, and according to you these guys were gone by then.'

'To your eyes, Garth didn't respond to Das Rheingold. One of Garth's nurses made a note on Garth's chart four days ago that Garth had possibly displayed emotional