Ellery smiled weakly.
Curtis stood up, rubbing the shoulder that was now aching badly from where he had thrown himself against the washroom door.
'How is he?' said David Arnon.
Curtis turned around, moving them away from the man on the floor.
'Not good. There might be some brain damage. I don't know. After what he's been through he should be in an intensive-care unit.' Curtis nodded at the walkie-talkie in Arnon's hands. 'How are they doing?'
'About halfway up.'
'Keep me posted. They're going to need help getting from the branches on to the balcony.'
He caught sight of Helen Hussey standing in the doorway. At first it was the fact that she was not wearing her blouse that drew his eye, but then he noticed her pale face and the tears on her cheeks. He went over and took her by the arm.
'What is it?' he asked. 'Are you OK?'
'I'm all right,' she said. 'It's the people in the elevator. From the atrium floor. They're outside, in the car.' She touched her forehead. 'I think I'd better sit down.'
Jenny helped Helen to a chair.
'I'll take a look,' said Curtis.
'I'll come with you,' said Mitch.
David Arnon followed them.
The three dead men, frosted white as Christmas, lay huddled in a corner of the frozen elevator like some disastrous expedition to reach the South Pole. Wearing expressions of calm and with open eyes, it was as if they had seen death coming from a long way off.
'I can't believe this is happening,' said Arnon. 'Men freezing to death in LA. It's surreal.'
'Do we leave them there?' asked Mitch.
'I can't think of anything to do with them,' said Curtis. 'Besides, they're frozen solid. Even in this heat it'll be a while before we could prise them apart. No, for the moment we'd best leave them where they are.' He glanced at Mitch. 'Does that bother you?'
Mitch shrugged.
'I was just thinking. Abraham must have some purpose in sending the elevator back up here now.'
'You mean he's trying to demoralize us?' said Arnon.
'Exactly. It shows a pretty good understanding of human psychology, doesn't it?'
'He's sure got me demoralized,' said Curtis.
'In which case, maybe Abraham's not such a mystery. What I mean is, this is a message. Not a very pleasant one. But a communication none the less.' Mitch paused. 'Don't you see? If Abraham communicates with us, maybe we can communicate with Abraham. If we can do that then maybe we can get Abraham to explain itself. Who knows? We might even be able to persuade it to stop this whole thing.'
Arnon shrugged. 'Why not?'
'I'm sure of it,' said Mitch. 'A computer acts on logic. We just have to find the right logical argument. Persuade it to scrutinize a few essences and meanings, the objective logical elements in thought that are common to different minds.'
'In my considerable forensic experience,' said Curtis, 'it's usually a waste of time to try and understand the criminal mind. We'd be better off putting our heads together again and thinking of a way to get out of here before we end up like the three in the car.'
'I don't see that one excludes the other,' said Mitch.
'Nor do I,' agreed Arnon. 'I vote for a bit of diplomacy.'
'But first things first,' said Mitch. 'We have to see if Beech can establish some kind of a dialogue.'
Two hundred feet above the atrium, Irving Dukes kicked the thick, leathery leaves of the dicotyledon aside and clambered on to another branch. When he was seated safely he looked down the length of the trunk to check on the progress being made by the others.
Joan Richardson was thirty or forty feet below him, and making slow work of the climb. Her husband, the asshole, was a few feet behind her, talking her up like some relentless football coach. Below them the grand piano on the atrium floor looked like a keyhole.
'In your own time,' he heard Richardson say. 'Remember, it's not a competition.'
'But I'm holding you up, Ray,' she said. 'Why don't you go on ahead with Mr Dukes?'
'Because I'm not leaving you.'
'You know something, Ray? I think I'd almost prefer it if you did. Your nagging doesn't exactly help me, you know.'
Dukes grinned. That was telling him. The asshole.
'Who's nagging? I'm just trying to encourage you, that's all. And to be here in case you run into any difficulties.'
'Just let me do it in my own way, that's all.'
'All right, all right. Do it your own way. I won't say another word if you don't want me to.'
'I don't,' Joan said firmly.
Dukes raised his fist and grinned. She was telling him where to get off. Joan hauled herself up on to the next branch. She rubbed both of her aching shoulders and then glanced up, looking for Dukes. He waved down to her.
'How's it coming there?' he called.
'She's doing fine.'
Asshole.
'OK, I suppose. How about you?'
'Fine, ma'am, just fine. Looking forward to my beer.'
Dukes took hold of his liana, hauled himself carefully on to his feet and stared up. There was no more than eighty or ninety feet left. Boy, was he going to drink some beer when he got up there. The thought filled him with renewed enthusiasm. He was readying himself to launch his weight on to the liana when something caught his eye. A thin, clear plastic pipe running up the length of the tree. Closer scrutiny revealed tiny bubbles, and that the pipe was filled with liquid. Why had he not thought of it before? The tree had its own dedicated supply of water. He had only to break the tube to have a drink of water. Or better still, put his mouth to the tiny diffuser hole…
As his face neared the hole the air was suddenly filled with a puff of spray.
For a second Dukes felt a cool, almost peppermint-sharp sensation of freshness on his neck and hands. He looked again at the diffuser and encountered another puff of moisture.
Instinctively he stepped back from the tiny plastic pipe as he felt a burning pain in his eyes, as if he had been sprayed with Mace. Squeezing his eyes tight shut he cried out with pain and wiped his face with his shirt sleeve.
Insecticide. He had been sprayed with insecticide.
'Mr Dukes? Are you OK?'
Joan Richardson felt the spray, saw the tiny droplets on her own sunglasses and knew immediately what had happened. The synthetic contact poison in the pipe was a chlorinated hydrocarbon. On the skin it was irritating and unpleasant. In the eyes it caused blindness. She squealed as the insecticide burned her arms and legs. But behind her sunglasses her sight remained unharmed.
'It's insecticide,' she shouted. 'We've been hit with bug spray. Don't for Christ's sake get any in your eyes.'
But for Dukes her good advice came too late.
Whimpering with pain he opened his eyes to find that he could see nothing except the same red spots he had seen behind tightly shut eyelids; and, as the red spots grew in size, so did his agony.
'Fucking shit,' he yelled, rubbing his eyelids furiously with hands that were themselves impossibly contaminated. 'Help… I'm blind.'
'Joan?' yelled Richardson. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm OK,' she said, 'but Dukes got some in his eyes.'
'Dukes? Hang on. I'm coming.'
Dukes never heard Richardson. He groped blindly for the liana, missed it and then reached for the bough beneath him, to sit safely astride it again.
Then there was a new sensation, a wind on his face and a sudden rush of blood to his head, like the time he rode the Space Mountain at Disneyland. With a sudden sense of horror he realized that he had fallen out of the tree, and the fear of his discovery was followed by the understanding that the pain in his eyes would soon be gone.
'No. Stop,' Joan shouted. 'Wait.'
She reflected on the stupidity of saying that to a man falling two hundred feet through the air.