It couldn't have been three minutes since Phil's capture, yet it
seemed that he had been listening to Mr. Billig for years. He was
sitting apprehensively on a stool in a long low room to which he had
been conducted by two men in sober sports togs--obviously a cut above
company guards--whom Mr. Billig addressed as Harris and Hayes. Along
one of the long sides of the room were windows and a doorway leading
onto a balcony of some sort, beyond which yawned perplexing darkness.
Harris and Hayes stood behind Phil while Billig paced in front of him.
Just now the voice that was like a tape played at triple speed, but
not so high-pitched, was saying, "Have you ever pictured $10,000,000
concretely? Think of it this way: a yacht on the Amazon, bubble-dome
cabin, your private copter, a blonde, a brunette, and a red-head,
yourself absolute monarch of a very interesting microcosm. Doesn't it
appeal to you?"
"But I didn't take the green cat," Phil replied quickly--Billig's speed
was catching. "I don't know where it is."
"What do you want then?" Billig demanded. "Or like most people, are you
afraid to say? Tell me, I've heard everything."
Phil opened his mouth, thought of Lucky, and said nothing.
"Hit him, Harris," Billig ordered, "and don't be all day about it!"
Pain bounced like a steel ball back and forth inside Phil's skull at
Harris' dispassionate swipes. At the last one Phil felt his head go
numb and his thoughts glassy. Harris' bank cashier face swam out of
sight, to be replaced by Billig's smooth mask with its lurking host of
wrinkles.
Billig produced the gun he'd been carrying when Phil was caught. He
informed Phil, "I propose to cut your limbs off, one by one. The beam
burns, which keeps you from bleeding too fast."
All Phil's glazed mind could think was how ludicrous the word "limb"
was. He wondered if Billig considered him a tree. Billig's head
persisted in circling Phil like a small planet, though that may only
have been the room swimming. Suddenly Phil stuck out an arm.
"All right," he informed Billig, "begin with this. Don't hurt the
leaves."
Billig lowered the gun. "You hit him too hard," he told Harris, "or
else he likes it. There are other kinds of pain. Where's Brimstine? I
told him he had only two minutes to find Jack. Hayes, frisk this man."
Slim fingers rippled through Phil's pockets and tossed Billig
commonplace items. When the hand went for his right hand pocket, Phil
had a belated memory and made a move to prevent it, but Harris grabbed
his arms from behind.
Hayes carefully handed Billig the figurine of Mitzie Romadka in black,
off-the-bosom frock.
Billig rattled softly to Hayes, "I'd swear this is Mary
what's-her-name's work--the girl who used to do strip-tease dolls for
us. She always had a touch and now it's got better." He fingered the
doll delicately, studying the reactions in Phil's face. "Do you want
her?" he asked suddenly. "Would it pain you to see her hurt?" He made
as if to wring the doll's head off, then quickly set it on a table
beside him and threw up his hands. "Where _is_ Brimstine!"
"Here," the latter announced, hulking into the room like a bear in a
great hurry. "I've located Jack. And we've caught the girl the three
hep-jerks blabbed about. She lined herself up with the dress-display
robots and might have passed herself off as one, but she sneezed."
Mitzie was marched into the room, her hands twisted behind her by Dora,
whose face wore a disdainful smile that now seemed spiced with cruelty.
The analyst's daughter had lost her evening cape and her long dark hair
hung half over one eye. She held her chin up, as one who has struggled,
found it no use, yet not really submitted. She saw Phil and looked away
from him proudly, as if her being caught had wiped out the problem into
which he had plunged her.
"Ah, the original," Billig observed, looking up from the figurine,
which he deftly pocketed. "Darling," he said, walking toward Mitzie,
"would you care to be featured in coast-to-coast living ads, or sit
for a line of ultra deluxe dress-display robots; would you like to be
a handie star, ambassadress to Brazil, or become my girl Friday and be
in on everything interesting that goes on in the world; would you take
$10,000,000? Just tell us what you've done with the green cat."
Mitzie answered the five-second barrage with a shrug of her upper
lip. "Darling, I'm serious," Billig assured her. "This is a lifetime
opportunity and you're a very nice girl." And he made as if to caress
her shoulder affectionately, but instead whipped around to catch Phil's
reaction.
Jack Jones ran into the room and whisked to a stop. He glanced at Phil
as if he didn't know him and then saluted Billig sardonically.
"What are you standing around for?" Billig demanded. "Get to work.
Hayes, I want those three hep-jerks in here."
Phil tried to squirm away from Harris' seemingly casual grip. And then
Jack's fingers were digging at nerves and pain was not a steel ball but
a fiery plant's red hot roots and million rootlets finding an instant
way through every crevice between the cells of his body. He heard
himself squealing, "Romadka! Romadka!" The pain lessened and he babbled
swiftly, "Dr. Romadka stole the cat. I saw him coming out of the room
where the cage is, carrying his black bag. The cat must have been
inside."
"Who's this Romadka?" Billig whipped at him.
"An analyst," Phil gasped weakly. He nodded at Jack Jones. "He can tell
you about him."
"I never heard of the man," Jack asserted instantly.
"You did," Phil mumbled desperately. "You saw how he was after me
tonight. You must have guessed he was after the green cat."
Jack shook his head curtly. "He's making it up," he assured Billig.
Across the room Brimstine put down a phone and called to Billig,
"Benson says Greeley's acting cool as they come, still confident the
raid will start when he said."
"Well, don't freeze!" Billig rapped exasperatedly at Jack. "Get back to
work on him."
As the small terrible hands approached, Phil looked imploringly at
Mitzie.
"Dr. Anton Romadka is my father," she said coldly, "reputed to be a
great psychoanalyst. This hysteric you're wasting time on is one of his
patients."
"Darling, why didn't you say so before?" Billig asked her joyfully.
"Dora, let go of her wrists at once!" The violet blonde complied with a
cynical hop of her slim eyebrows.
"Darling, it escaped my mind she was still doing that, I'm sorry,"
Billig assured Mitzie as he glided towards her, his feet moving
almost as glibly as his tongue. "Darling, it's very clear to me now:
this hysteric, as you accurately describe him, stole the cat on your
father's orders and handed it to your father, whom I can see you don't
like and who probably forced you to come along. Now just tell us where
your father is, or where you think he is, darling, and you'll have, not
one, but all of those things I mentioned to you a half-minute back."
"My father hasn't skill enough to burgle a banana-vending robot,"
Mitzie snapped at him. "You're as stupid and conceited and unbalanced
as all men, only faster. You think because something clever has been
done, a man must have done it. My father's a rotten analyst, but you
could use a few sessions with him."
"Darling, we're not going to get anywhere if you talk that way," Billig
assured her laughingly. "Realize it, darling, you're among friends and
well-wishers." And he took her arm with a paternal amiability.
Mitzie's right hand was a blurred arc and Billig sashayed back with
four bright red lines on his left cheek.
"Grab her, Dora!" Billig ordered. The violet blonde willingly wrapped
her arms around Mitzie's waist and elbows. Mitzie avoided noticing
it. Meanwhile, Billig was rapid firing, "I assumed she was disarmed,
Brimstine. Get those claws off her." Brimstine grabbed Mitzie's right
hand around the knuckles with one of his big paws and began to jerk off
the needle-fanged thimbles. Billig waved off Harris, who had let go
Phil to offer to minister to his boss's dripping cheek.
Billig paced back toward Mitzie. "Darling," he said, and for once the
words came slow, "you're really wonderful, you're just the sort of
charming vixen the sadisto-hackers dream up to torture the hero. But
tonight I'm afraid you're going to have to reverse roles."
Phil's mysterious inward tormentor who had made him go up against
Moe Brimstine at the Akeleys', now got to work again and despite the
weakness of his pain-threaded muscles, forced him to start a staggering
rush at Billig, meanwhile calling out, "Don't you touch her!"
Naturally Jack tripped him, caught him by the collar almost before he'd
painfully smashed into the flooring, and slammed him back onto the
stool.
At that moment, Hayes and four or five other men, the latter in the
company guard costume of the half-headless man, marched a banged up
Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck into the far end of the room. Carstairs,
who now had blood as well as hair trailing down his forehead, looked
steadily at Mitzie.
"Thank you for this, Mitz," he said rather quietly.
Llewellyn and Buck each nodded his head.
"You take it for granted I skunked on you?" Mitzie asked. None of the
three acted as if they'd heard the question.
Phil, watching Billig, noted a very slight shiver, smile, and widening
of the eyes, although the boss man of Fun Incorporated wasn't looking
at anything in particular.
"Take those boys down to the company garage," Billig called to Hayes,
keeping his slashed cheek turned away. "I'll phone you orders about
them in fifteen seconds." Then, as Hayes and the guards jumped to obey,
Billig said to Mitzie in a voice just loud enough to reach Carstairs,
"Thanks again, darling. That was a nice job."
Carstairs had time to give her one last deadly look before he was
hurried out with the others.
"Come on, everybody," Billig said gayly, "we're going to have a little
show. Darling, would you like to take my arm? I've quite forgotten
that love tap. If you promise to be a good girl, I'll tell Dora to
let go of you." Mitzie made no reply but Dora unwrapped her arms with
lazy reluctance. "Come on, darling," Billig entreated, starting for
the balcony. Mitzie didn't look at him, but she walked at his side. He
didn't try to touch her. They moved fast. Billig looked back over his
shoulder.
"Hurry up, everybody," he ordered exasperatedly. "Stop acting
slow-motion!"
Brimstine, Dora and Harris quickly fell in behind them. Jack brought up
the rear with Phil.
"I had to do that," Jack whispered in Phil's ear. "I couldn't fake it
and trust you to fake reactions well enough to fool Billig. But for
God's sake, don't spill anything more about Romadka. I know you're
Juno's lover. Well, Romadka made me bring him here. His friends are at
the house. They'll kill Mary and Sacheverell--Juno and Cookie, too--if
he gets caught."
As Phil was trying to formulate some sort of answer to this, they
followed the others onto the balcony. Its railing was split by a
gateway, from which a metal stairway projected down and out into the
darkness, its first dozen treads glimmering faintly.
Without warning Mitzie left Billig and darted down the stairs, taking
them three at a time. Harris lunged after her, but Billig stopped him
with a gesture. "She's doing what I want," he explained softly, "and
five times faster than if you dragged her. Won't you ever understand
it's speed I need?"
Brimstine was closely watching Mitzie, who was now no more than a
glimmering moth flitting through a duller darkness. "She can't see the
steps any more," he said with professional admiration. "That girl's
good."
Billig shrugged and stepped to a control panel in the railing. He
picked up a phone, then paused thoughtfully as if he were making sure
it was a full fifteen seconds since he had spoken to Hayes and not a
mere twelve or thirteen.
"Hayes?" Billig said, and then whispered rapidly. He paused for a
moment, writhing his eyebrows, as though Hayes were being unbelievably
slow in catching on. "Of course, of course!"
Then Billig touched a button and blinding light transformed the
darkness into a huge, empty, gray garage, its floor some thirty feet
below the balcony. There were all sorts of lines and signs indicating
which way cars should move and park, only there weren't any cars. There
were also a dozen open gateways in the gray walls, eight of them marked
"Exit." The silvery stairs down which Mitzie had flown touched the
center point of the garage's vast floor. A few paces away from that,
Mitzie stood tiny and stock-still, as if blinded by the light.
Somewhere, far off, an electric motor was revving up.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Billig said to Dora, Brimstine, Harris, and
Jack, but mostly to Phil, "this is the place where people park their
cars while they watch the wrestling bouts. But now the wrestling's
over and the cars are gone." He delicately touched his cheek, where the
four furrows had almost stopped bleeding. "So now we can have the place
for our little show. Mr. Gish, I must have the green cat. I believe you
value that girl's beauty and life--"
But Phil, whose arms were gripped hard by Jack from behind, hardly
heard him he was watching Mitzie so intently. She seemed to come out
of her daze suddenly, at any rate she darted towards the nearest open
gateway. Dark, close bars shot down and blocked it, as they did all the
other gateways Phil could see. He looked at Billig and saw his dark
fingers lifting from buttons. He looked back at Mitzie and saw her
hesitate and then run back toward the silvery stairs. Billig touched
another button and the stairs retracted, telescoping upward. Mitzie
stood on the gray floor all alone.
The revving of the unseen motor grew louder. Billig leaned over the
guard wall and looked thoughtfully at Mitzie, as if he were a cleverer
Caligula, a more practical Nero. Then he turned back, and took the
figurine of Mitzie out of his pocket, and spoke to Phil.
"Mr. Gish," he said, "I seriously want to know where the green cat
is, or where your Dr. Romadka has taken it. Otherwise, how would you
like this to happen to her down there?" And he jerked off a leg of the
figurine. Phil could see the twin ragged cones of wax where the leg had
parted. "Or this?" Billig jerked off an arm. "Or this, or this?"
At that moment an open topped black jeep came accelerating out from
under the balcony. Phil saw there were three people in it, though for a
moment he couldn't tell who. But Mitzie darted toward the car, calling
out excitedly, "Carstairs!" The car came on. "You're wonderful!" Mitzie
called. But then suddenly the car came forward faster and straight
toward her, and she had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.
The car started to swing around in a great loop. Mitzie picked herself
up from the harsh floor.
"Or _this_!" Billig hissed at Phil, and he ripped the figurine apart at
the waist, while one thumb made a smashed flatness of the tiny breasts.
"Now please tell me where's this Dr. Romadka."
"I don't know!" Phil yelled, struggling to get away from Jack, who
maddeningly whispered in his ear, "That's right, don't spill a word."
"I'll remind you," Billig continued swiftly, taking something else from
under his coat, "that it's much worse for her--or for anyone--to be
hurt by people she idolizes than by people she hates. So tell me about
the green cat. Look here, this is an ortho. I can cut down that car any
moment you tell me."
But Phil, like all the others, was watching Mitzie. Having picked
herself up, she didn't move. She simply stayed there, facing the
oncoming car. When it was so close that for an instant Phil saw
Mitzie's dark head against its chrome muzzle, it veered and missed her
by a breath. Mitzie stood motionless as a statue, though her short
skirt whipped out.
Then she turned at the waist and watched the retreating jeep.
"Chicken!" she jeered, loudly.
For an instant everyone on the balcony was very still. Then there was
a dull banging, and Phil realized that Moe Brimstine was pounding the
railing, and saying, "I tell you, that girl's good."
"Yes, she is," Billig buzzed at him curtly. Brimstine stopped his
applause, looking ashamed.
"But," Billig continued smoothly, turning to Phil, "they're bound to
get her, sooner or later, unless...." And he wiggled the large black
gun he held in his small hand. "So you better talk."
The jeep swung round under the balcony in a much tighter loop and
headed back, revving screamingly. Mitzie faced it, grinning, hands
as light on her hips as before. Then, just as--from Phil's point of
view--it had swallowed her up to the waist, she sprang to one side.
Phil felt her foot must have brushed the tire. The jeep slammed through
the air where she'd been.
"_Dumb-bell!_" Mitzie screamed.
Brimstine lifted his clenched fists above the railing, glanced at
Billig, and with an effort dropped them to his sides. Phil realized
his arms were numb, Jack was gripping them so tightly. Beyond Billig,
Harris and Dora leaned forward over the guard rail, as abstracted as
gamblers.
But Billig himself, though presumably a gambler, was neither still nor
intent. "Look, Mr. Gish," he said rapidly, "I don't want to see this
girl smashed myself, and Brimstine here is figuring on starring her in
a knife throwing or dodge-the-car act. This is probably the last chance
you have to save her. Where's Romadka? Where's the cat?"
Phil didn't even look at him.
A phone-light began to blink on the control panel. Billig ignored it.
"_Where's the cat?_" he repeated.
But all Phil could think, as the black jeep turned very tightly by the
far wall and as Mitzie pivoted to face it--all he could think was that
this had happened before, in ancient Crete, where girls as slim waisted
and dark haired as Mitzie had faced the black, charging bull and dodged
it or vaulted or somersaulted over its cruel horns, their breasts as
bare as Mitzie's, opposing the most tender thing in the world to the
most terrible.
The phone-light continued to blink.
The jeep finished its tight turn, Llewellyn and Buck leaning out to
balance it like a sailboat while Carstairs stuck steady as death
behind the wheel. Then it shrieked toward Mitzie. She waited until it
was almost as close as the time before, then sprang toward the left.
Quickly, almost as if it were tied to her thoughts, the jeep veered
toward the left, too. But Mitzie's feet, slamming down after that first
jump, didn't carry her farther, but reversed her direction, carrying
her back to the spot she'd first occupied.
Again the jeep slammed past her.
"_Double dumb-bell!_" Mitzie howled.
The jeep, screaming into another tight turn, vanished under the
balcony. There was a grating crash, then a sick, rasping sound, as if
the jeep had sideswiped the wall but was still going.
At the same moment a dark shouldered but pink topped figure walked
out rapidly from under the balcony. It was carrying a black bag. It
stopped, leaned over, set the black bag on the floor, and opened it.
The black jeep came out from under the balcony, limpingly but gaining
speed.
Something green and small stuck its head out of the black bag and
looked toward the jeep.
The jeep didn't stop, but it slowed, and Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck
tumbled out and sprinted away from the green head as if from horror
itself.
The jeep continued very slowly and haltingly toward Mitzie, like a
blinded, badly injured animal.
The pink topped figure walked rapidly and mechanically back under the
balcony, as if it didn't understand the why of what it had been doing.
Belatedly, Phil realized it must be Dr. Romadka.
The phone-light went on blinking.
The green cat leaped out of the black bag and lightly settled itself
beside it.
"Stun it!" Billig knifed at Brimstine and Harris.
The green cat twisted its neck and looked up curiously.
Brimstine and Harris looked at Billig and each took a step and peered
down over the railing and stopped stock-still. Behind them Dora was as
pale and quiet as a ghost.
And then Phil felt it too--the same invisible golden wave of amiability
and understanding as had quieted the quarrelers at the Akeleys', but
now in a flood, a spring tide.
"Stun that thing down there!" Billig demanded. The hidden wrinkles were
showing themselves twitchingly on his face and he was backing away from
the railing as if he couldn't bear the golden wave.
Brimstine started to reach inside his coat, but instead picked up the
phone beside the blinking light. After a moment he said quite casually,
"The raid's begun, just as Greeley told us it would. The FBL are coming
in everywhere."
"Stun it, I tell you! Get it somehow; it can save us," Billig ordered,
frantically fanning the air in front of his face as if to beat off the
golden wave.
Harris just looked at him. Brimstine slowly and puzzledly shook his
head.
Billig gave a shuddering gasp and clapped his free hand over his mouth
and nostrils, as if the golden wave were something breathed in with the
air, and fought his way to the railing. With his other hand he raised
the big gun until it was high above his shoulder.
A needle of blue light jutted from either end of the big gun and made
smoking trenches in the opposite wall of the garage and the wall behind
them. Then Billig brought the gun steadily downward, lengthening the
forward and rearward trenches. The air smelled acid, as if laced with
ozone. The blue beam dimmed the bright lights and made everything
shadowy.
The green cat still looked up at Billig curiously. Billig didn't look
straight back at it. The little muscles in his jaw and temple bulged
around the hand clamping shut his mouth and nose.
The forward trench dug itself across the wall and floor, swung
drunkenly past Mitzie and the doddering jeep, got ten feet from the
green cat and hesitated. It swung this way and that, as if it had
encountered a magic circle it couldn't pierce--and stopped.