Afterward, he didn't look or feel any different except that his vision was a little better and he was ravenously hungry.
He ate a manhole cover for breakfast.
It wasn't fair, Gregg decided. It wasn't fair at all.
It took a while to dig up the necessary humility to beg for change, but it got easier each time he tried. When he had a few quarters clutched in his front legs, Gregg went looking for a phone he could reach. It took half an hour or more to find one of the old-fashioned booths with a seat he could use as a perch. He dropped a quarter in and held the receiver up to the clown nose that served as one of his ears. That left the other end dangling several inches from his mouth. He dialed Pan Rudo's private extension at WHO. Pan had a habit of working late - he hoped tonight wouldn't be an exception.
When he heard the receiver click and Rudo's cautious "Hello?", Gregg moved the phone to his mouth.
"Don't say anything," he said. "This is Gregg Hartmann. That's right. By now your goons must have told you that I got away after you jumped me out of my body." Gregg heard a faint tinny squawking and quickly moved the phone back to his ear.
"... are you talking about? How did you get this number? You - "
Back to his mouth. "No need to get so shrill, Pan. That's not like you. You gave me the number back in January at the van Renssaeler New Years party - on the embossed private card you use for your personal contacts. I am Hartmann. When you came over to my office the last time, you were wearing your double-breasted Italian suit - the blue one - and a floral tie. I told you I was sending you an invoice for the work I did on the Senate WHO funding - $35,900, it was. Your secretary's name is Dianne, mine is Jo Ann."
More squawking. Back to the ear.
"... do you want?"
"I want a body. A nice normal one. And you'll get it for me. I still have the evidence, Pan, and now I have more. See you soon."
Gregg hung up on Rudo's protest.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Rudo's limousine pulled up in front of the UN plaza while the sun was still hidden behind the Manhattan skyscrapers. The driver got out and opened the door for Rudo while a tall, muscular black man got out of the other side: Rudo's security chief, General MacArthur Johnson. Gregg moved from where he'd been pretending to look at the landscaping by the street and hurried toward them on his six legs. Johnson spotted him before he was halfway there. Johnson's right hand disappeared beneath his jacket, and Gregg called out loudly in his cartoon character voice: "Pan! Sorry I'm late for our appointment, but it's hell getting a cab when you look like this."
Rudo swiveled around awkwardly, nearly stumbling. "And you're usually so graceful," Gregg tsked softly. "Sorry I startled you, but I'm not exactly responsible for my appearance, remember?"
Ruao's pinched features contracted even more. "Just come with me and shut up," he said.
They entered the UN building. Rudo spoke with the guards and signed Gregg in for a visitor's pass before taking the elevators to the WHO floor. They didn't talk. Rudo left Johnson outside his office with his secretary, Dianne. He shut the door and turned to face Gregg. Rudo seemed uneasy and out of sorts. He sat in the chair behind his desk like a kid in his parent's office, uselessly straightening the calendar pad and toying with the Mont Blanc fountain pen on the leather-encased blotter. His eyes kept darting about nervously. He didn't seem comfortable at all, like a person in unfamiliar surroundings.
It hit Gregg suddenly. He's not Rudo. He's someone else. Rudo's been jumped, too. The implications staggered Gregg. The Sharks had a tame jumper - which meant that Rudo, Faneuil, Durand, Battle, Herzenhagen, all of them, could be safely ensconced in shiny new bodies. Safe.
"Oh my God," Gregg said.
"Not quite," said a voice. "But I did come for vengeance. A nice look, don't you think?"
Rudo was staring in fascinated horror at something behind Gregg. Gregg pivoted on his hindmost legs to see a shape coalesce out of air. Humanoid, it never seemed to quite reach solidity. Gregg could see the striped wallpaper of the office through it. "I'm Croyd, Pan," the ghostly apparition said in a cheery voice. "Just so you know."
"Croyd?" the false Pan managed to sputter.
"Yep. Amazing what a little nap will do for you, ain't it? Pan, I should have killed you long ago."
Gregg was never quite sure what happened then.
Croyd was whistling softly as he seemed to shape something in his hands, as if he were using the air in the room like clay. The outlines of the shape were suddenly visible: a long, tapering spear. "Crude, but effective," Croyd said.
And Croyd's arm flashed. The weapon flew unerringly toward Pan, who was rising from his seat. The spear tore through the man's chest as if Rudo were no more substantial than paper, and then seemed to explode. Gregg saw the man's back rip open. A gout of blood spattered the wall behind Rudo as if someone had thrown a bucket of red paint mixed with raw hamburger.
"Very effective, in fact," Croyd observed.
"But I'm not ..." Rudo screamed, but the scream quickly became a gurgle as blood frothed over his lips. "I'm not - " he said again, and keeled over on top of the desk, his mouth still open in the protest. The Mont Blanc went clattering to the floor.
"You're right. You're not anymore," the ghost of Croyd said, and chuckled. He waved to Gregg almost cheerily and disappeared in a roll of soft thunder.
It had taken perhaps fifteen seconds. The door burst open and Johnson rushed in, gun in hand. He looked at the carnage, at Rudo's body.
At Gregg. "You son of a bitch," Johnson said.
"No!" Gregg screeched. "I didn't do it!"
He moved at the same time, and Johnson's first shot grazed one of his legs. That was all that was needed. Gregg felt the sudden blinding panic, and Johnson dropped into slow motion. Gregg's joker body streaked for the door, turned left, and nearly left skid marks on the walls and ceiling as he half-ran, half bounced up and over Johnson. He landed on Rudo's body, legs pumping and skidding momentarily in the blood, then he was moving again. Johnson was trying to track Gregg for another shot, but he was hopelessly behind.
Out the damn DOOR! Gregg willed the body, and nearly ran down Dianne as he scurried from the room. The outer door was open now, with people running toward the commotion, but he couldn't make himself move in the right direction. He was all around Dianne's area: over the desk, tangling his multiple feet in the computer wires and taking the equipment over with him. The monitor shattered as he sped up and around the walls as if they were a racecourse specifically designed for him. Another shot tore great chunks of plaster from the wall in front of him and Gregg did an involuntary and impossible 90° turn as onlookers screamed and hit the floor. The DOOR! He felt like he was starting to get some control of this flight reflex, but it still took two circuits of the room before he managed to make the left turn out into the hallway. He heard Johnson shouting behind him and alarms going off.
He headed for the stairs.
And hit the door like a rushing bull. The door was harder than his head. He bounced. Johnson was pounding down the hall toward him, still bellowing and waving the gun. Office workers were scattering in his wake - under desks, behind chairs and filing cabinets. Gregg jumped for the handle and slipped off. Panicked now, he thought desperately of the garbage can he'd had for supper, remembered the saliva flowing and the pressure building and building -
He spewed onto the door panel, then could no longer hold his body still. He took off like a crazed gazelle toward Johnson, bouncing madly out of control from wall to wall and past the man as Johnson fired once more, missing. Johnson whirled around; the people who'd thought the trouble safely past them ducked for cover again.