listened to Barnum's sermonette on first impressions; the man in front of me looked like a refugee from some tong war. Somebody had tried to use his head as a whetstone; the whole right side of his face was a sheet of white, rippled scar tissue. The right eye was stitched shut, unseeing, but the other eye was perfectly good, and it was obvious that he had all the moves. He was crouched now, perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet, his calloused hands rigid and extended in front of him like knife blades.
I smiled and gave him a cheery good morning. He must have taken it as a Chinese insult, or maybe he just didn't like dwarfs. He grabbed my right shoulder and threw me over his hip. I bounced off the wall and fell to the floor, where I stayed, eyes half-closed, watching him. He came forward in the same crouch, his hands in front of him. This guy could kill.
I waited until he was just above me, then snapped my left leg out, catching him on the side of the knee with the instep of my shoe. The joint snapped. His eyes flecked with pain and he toppled backward. He didn't stay down for long. Somehow he managed to get up on his one good leg and, dragging the smashed one behind him, he came toward me.
The karate had surprised him, but that was finished. I had a black belt, but so, obviously, did he. This time he meant to kill.
His arm darted out like a snake's tongue, the deadly knuckle of his middle finger aiming for my forehead. An ear-splitting scream deafened me as I ducked. The missile that was his hand went over my head and smashed into the wall behind me. I came up with my head into his solar plexus. He grunted as he rose into the air, then screamed when he came down on the bad leg. He crumpled over on his side.
The man was finished, staring up at me with hatred and unspeakable pain forming a second skin over his eye. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I went back down the stairs and headed for my office.
It didn't take Smathers long to get there. He burst through the office door, long brown hair flowing behind him, his face the color of chalk. He barely managed to bring himself to a halt in front of my desk. He stood there, trembling with rage, literally speechless. A tall, thin man with pale, exhausted eyes, he leaned on the desk and finally managed to speak.
'What were you doing in my private laboratories?'
'I got lost looking for the men's room.'
Smathers' rage was probably more justified than my sarcasm, but he looked fairly ridiculous. His tongue worked its way back and forth across his lips. 'You, sir, are a liar!'
'Okay, Dr. Smathers,' I said testily. 'The reason is quite simple. I was looking for you or Dr. Kee. I wanted to consult on a professional matter.'
'My secretary told you that neither Dr. Kee nor I have time for such matters.'
'I don't like doing business through other people's secretaries.'
'The door to the laboratories was locked!'
'Not when I got there, it wasn't,' 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 that that man may never walk properly again?'
'He was trying to kill me. If you or your associates want to press charges, go ahead. We'll take it up with the president. Barnum might like to find out what's so important to you that you feel the need to keep it locked behind two inches of steel.'
That backed him up. He took his hands off the top of my desk and straightened up, making a conscious effort to control himself. 'I don't think there's any need for that,' he said. 'We're both professionals. I have no desire to get you into trouble and, quite frankly, I can't spare the time from my work that bringing charges against you would entail.'
'Just what would that work be?' I asked casually.
'Surely you can appreciate the fact that I don't care to discuss my private affairs with you.'
'Sorry, I was just making conversation. I couldn't help but be 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. 'Quite frankly, Dr. Kee and I are involved in research into some of the more bizarre human mental aberrations. On occasion, we have potentially dangerous people on that floor. Tse Tsu thought you might have been one of them. He overreacted in simply doing his job.'
'What are those water tanks for?'
Gates clanged shut behind Smathers' eyes. 'You've been spying!'
'Not at all. I just happened to be looking around for you and noticed the tanks. Naturally, I was curious.'
'You will not come up there again, Dr. Frederickson.'
'Interesting man, this colleague of yours. Did you know that Dr. Kee used to be an officer in the Peoples' Liberation Army in North Korea? I understand he was a brainwashing specialist.'
Smathers flushed. 'That's slanderous. Who told you this?'
'It's just a rumor. Haven't you heard it?'
'I wouldn't pay any attention to such a story.'
'Why not? The war's over.'
Smathers was either tired of talking or didn't like the turn the conversation had taken. He gave me a long, hard stare. 'Please don't interfere in my affairs anymore, Dr. Frederickson.'
I wanted to talk some more, but Smathers had already turned and was walking out of my office. He slammed the door behind him. I picked up the phone and dialed Barnum's office. After running a gauntlet of secretaries, I finally got to hear the Big Man himself.
'This is Frederickson,' I said. I considered telling him about the incident-and the laboratories-in Marten Hall, then decided against it. 'I have a nagging feeling that you left out parts of the story.'
'I can't imagine what you're talking about.' Barnum's voice was arch, restrained. I'd hurt his dignity.
'What did Smathers win his Nobel Prize for?'
'He did pioneering work in sensory deprivation. He's the top authority in his field.'
'Sensory deprivation; that's artificially taking away all a man's senses-sight, sound, smell, touch, taste?'
'That's correct.'
'To what end?'
'No end. That's what the experimentation was all about: to determine the effects. NASA was interested in it for a while because of its possible relation to interplanetary space travel, but they gave it up when it became apparent that it was too dangerous for the volunteers involved.'
I remembered Smathers' comment about dangerous people in his laboratories. I'd assumed he'd been making excuses for his Chinese gorilla. Now I wondered; but I wasn't ready to accuse him of anything, at least not yet.
'Where did he come from?'
'Platte Institute. Near Boston.'
'I know where it is. How did he come here? Platte takes good care of its prize winners. It's hard for me to believe they wouldn't have matched any offer you made.'
I took the long silence at the other end of the line as an answer of sorts, a justification for the nagging itch at the back of my mind.
'There's some question about it, isn't there?' I pressed.
'There's no question that Dr. Smathers is a Nobel Prize winner,' Barnum said. He sounded irritated. 'They're not exactly a dime a dozen, you know.'
'So you don't ask questions when one wants to leave one place and come to another?'
'No,' Barnum said after a long pause. 'But he came with the highest recommendations.'
'I'm sure he did. Now, what you want to know is how you came to get a Nobel Prize winner at what amounts to bargain basement prices.'
Again, a long pause, then: 'Have you found out anything?'
'I'll get back to you.'
Barnum was, after all, my client, and I wasn't quite sure why I'd held back on him. Perhaps it was because Smathers was a colleague, and scientists-especially brilliant ones-take enough nonsense from administrators as it is. I
