Mama Baker's voice seemed to be right above me-and that had a remarkably galvanizing effect on my muscles and mind.
Footsteps were coming up fast behind me; with the drugs in my brain and my arms strapped around my body, there was no way I was going to outrun the other man on the stairs. Baker was going to nab me, unless I did something ingenious-like trust that I maintained what in normal times was a pretty keen sense of balance, jump, drape the canvas-shrouded upper part of my body over the steel guardrail on the stairs and slide down. I banged painfully into the knob at the end of the first section of railing, fell back, and landed on my side.
'Goddamn you, dwarf!' Baker was shouting as he scrambled down the stairs toward the first landing. 'Stop! Stop, dwarf!'
Stop, dwarf? He had to be kidding me. 'Mflkmpiph!' I screamed as I got to my feet, did another perilous dive and bellyflop up onto the railing, and slid down to the next landing. This time there was no knob to halt my descent-which simply meant that I sailed right off the railing and slammed hard against the opposite wall in the stairwell.
Baker's shoes clattered on the steps, descending on me. I looked up, saw something flash in his right hand as he raised it to strike. .
I ducked under the swinging scalpel blade, once again managed to get to my feet, and flung myself on the railing. But this time I had been off balance, and had lunged too hard; I was sliding down the railing, but I was leaning too far over, slipping. .
An instant before I would have slipped over the railing and escaped from Baker the hard way, in death, strong hands gripped the straps on the back of the straitjacket and pulled me back over the railing, set me down on the stairs.
'Mongo!'
'Elmptak!'
'You son-of-a-bitch, I'll kill you too!' Mama Baker screamed as he rushed the rest of the way down the stairs and slashed at Veil.
There was a most satisfying sound of Veil's fist colliding with Mama Baker's jaw. I savored that sound for a few moments, then decided to reward myself for my strenuous labors with a little nap.
I had vague recollections of very nasty things, but they all seemed to have happened a long time ago, in a prehistoric nightmare time. At the moment the most pressing thing I had to deal with was a splitting headache. Very gingerly, I opened one eye-and winced as a pinkish-white razor blade of light stabbed through to my brain. Gradually, I became accustomed to the light and saw Mr. Lippitt and Veil floating in the middle of it, at the foot of my bed.
And then I remembered what had happened.
I started to sit up in bed, and almost fell out of it when pain exploded inside my skull, momentarily blinding me. I cried out, and hands grabbed me and pushed me back up on the bed, eased my head back on the pillow.
'Take it easy, Mongo,' Lippitt said. 'You'll be all right, but you're not ready to jog around the park yet. First you have to recover from that psychotropic cocktail of LSD, Thorazine, and scopolamine Slycke shot you up with. Also, you have a slight concussion. You've been out of it for close to two days.'
'Two days?!' That got my eyes open again. This time I found myself looking up into the smiling face of a handsome woman I judged to be in her early fifties. She winked at me.
'You're in the clinic infirmary,' Lippitt said. 'This is Dr. Fall-the new director of the clinic. You'll be in good hands here.'
'You can call me Helen, Dr. Frederickson,' the woman said. 'I believe you'll be feeling fine after a few more days of rest. In the meantime, if you need anything, just push the button at the side of your bed.'
Helen Fall patted me reassuringly on the arm, then walked from the room. I glanced back and forth between Lippitt and Veil, who had taken up positions on opposite sides of the bed. 'What the hell happened?' I croaked.
'What do you remember?' Lippitt asked, running a leathery hand back over the top of his completely bald head.
'I was supposed to meet Slycke at eleven at night up in his office. I found the door to the building open, and I went in. I didn't like the feel of the situation. I was on my way out to go with Veil to get RPC Security and call you when I got cold-cocked. I remember being carted around in a straitjacket by a psychotic patient by the name of Mama Baker who was getting ready to open up my throat. I remember taking myself off the hook, so to speak, and then getting down the stairs. . to Veil.'
'I was almost too late,' Veil said tightly. 'Mongo, I got the first beep, at ten after. And then I got another beep twenty minutes later. It was when I didn't get a third one that I ran to the building, and found the front door open. I figured the elevator might be just a bit too public, so I started up the stairs. I was about halfway up when I heard all this shouting and commotion above me, so I decided I'd better put a move on.'
'The son-of-a-bitch had my apartment bugged,' I said with disgust. 'Slycke knew all about our security arrangements; he was the one sending you the signals, while he was giving me that hot shot and otherwise taking care of business upstairs. What happened serves me right for being so stupid. When I get out of here, I'm going to order myself a custom-made dunce cap.'
'Better order two,' Veil said. 'I should have considered the possibility of your apartment being bugged.'
'No dunce cap for you. But it's a damn good thing you got there when you did; about two seconds later, and you'd have had to mop me up off the ground floor.'
Veil smiled thinly, shook his head. 'You and your buddy were putting on quite a show, Mongo. I could see you while I was running up. There you were sliding down the railing, falling off, and sliding down another one. . and all the while this maniac with a scalpel is clomping down the stairs, trying to catch you. It was a sight to see.'
'I'm really happy Mama Baker and I kept you amused, Veil. Sprinting up those stairs must have been tiresome.'
Veil laughed. 'You should have seen the look on his face; he was really getting frustrated.'
'The look on Mama's face was the last thing I wanted to see, Veil, I assure you. And he wouldn't have been frustrated much longer if you hadn't gotten to me when you did.'
'Yeah, well, I should have followed you in like I'd wanted to in the first place. It's the last time I ever listen to you.'
I turned to the old man with the soulful eyes and bald head. 'So Slycke was K.G.B.?'
'An informant, not an officer,' Lippitt replied with a faint note of anger in his voice. 'A traitor. He'd probably been feeding information to the Russians for years. They were blackmailing him. From what we've been able to turn up in the past twenty-four hours, it looks like they had the goods on him as a homosexual; he frequented some pretty heavy leather bars in the city. They probably entrapped him with K.G.B. personnel, took photographs and made tape recordings, and then threatened to expose and ruin him if he didn't cooperate by giving them information about who was in the clinic, and what went on there. That's the way these things usually work.'
'What the hell's such a big deal about being a homosexual?'
Lippitt shrugged. 'It's no big deal, as long as you don't care if people know you're one. Slycke cared very much; he had a wife and four children. The bars he patronized specialize in some pretty gruesome activities. It means I was almost certainly right about the connection with Prolix; it was Slycke who provided the information about Garth-'
'Garth!' I said, sitting up. Pain sloshed around inside my head, and I swayed. Veil grabbed for me, but I pushed his hands away. 'Where's my brother?!'
Lippitt and Veil looked at each other. 'He's missing, Mongo,' Veil said at last.
I looked at Lippitt.
The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency nodded. 'He's not here, and he's not anywhere on the hospital grounds. He's missing, along with another patient by the name of Marl Braxton.'
'Oh, shit,' I said.
'Lie down, Mongo.'
'You're sure. . he's not …?'
'We're not sure of anything, Mongo-except that he's not here at the hospital, and the police haven't found him
