He stood, trapped and staring, blinking, shivering, pushing against the window as if he could shove himself through it into the twenty-three levels of unblocked air that separated him from the ground level before the hotel.
Paul checked instinctively. And the wave of sick fear emanating from the man crested and broke over Paul like solid ocean surf. Paul stood, momentarily and in spite of himself, stunned. He had never thought a thinking being could go so bad.
The man's eyes flicked and bored into Paul. The eyes themselves were watering, and the nose sniffled uncontrollably. The man's face was gray and rigid. Something mangled whimpered within him.
"It's all right," said Paul. "All right ..." He came gently toward the man, Blunt's stick tucked under his right arm and the box of capsules in his single hand outstretched. "Here... I'm just bringing you these...."
The man continued to stare and sniffle spasmodically. Paul, now within arm's length of him, laid the box down on a table. As an afterthought, he opened it with two fingers and took out one of the white capsules.
"See?" he said. "Here . . ." He held it out to the man, but the other, either jerkily reaching for it, or jerkily pushing it away, knocked it from Paul's fingers. Automatically, Paul bent to pick it up.
His head was still down when warning rang loud within him. He straightened up suddenly to see the drug addict facing him now, a small handgun black and deadly in one trembling hand. The pinhole of its muzzle wavered at Paul's chest.
"Easy," said Paul. "Easy..."
His voice seemed not even to reach the ears of the other man. The drug addict stepped forward and Paul automatically stepped back.
"It sent you," said the man, hoarsely. "It sent you."
"Nothing sent me," said Paul. "I came to bring you that box on the table. There it is." He nodded toward it.
The man did not look at it. Moving out into the room, he began to circle Paul, while keeping gun and eyes aimed at Paul.
"I'm going to kill you," he said. "You think I won't kill you, but I will."
"Why?" asked Paul. And that monosyllable, he thought, should at least have made the other pause, but again it seemed the drug addict did not even hear him.
"It sent you to kill me," said the man. "It can't kill. It isn't built to allow itself to kill. But it can fix things so some other factor does the duty work."
"I don't want to hurt you," said Paul.
"It's no use," said the man. Paul could sense the will to pull the trigger accumulating in the mind opposite him. The man's back began to straighten with something like pride. "I understand, you see. I know all about it."
The man was almost between Paul and the room's entrance, now. He was at a distance of about eight feet, out of arm's reach. Paul made a move to step toward him and the tiny muzzle of the gun came up sharply.
"No, no!" said the man. "No!"
Paul stopped. He became conscious suddenly of the hard roundness of Blunt's walking stick under his arm. It was a good three feet in length. Paul began to let the stick slip down into his hand.
"Just a little," said the man. "Just a moment more ... It thought you'd find me alone here. It didn't know I had a gun. When you steal something, there's no way for it to know. No record - what're you doing?"
The last three words came out in a scream, as the man noticed the end of the walking stick slide into Paul's hand. The pinhole muzzle leaped up and forward. Paul jumped aside and forward. There was no time to throw the stick as he had planned. He saw the man swinging to bring the gun's aim upon him. The other was close.
"Now!" screamed the man. The walking stick leaped in Paul's grasp and he felt it connect solidly. The man fell away from him.
The man fell and rolled over on his back on the carpet The small gun tumbled foolishly out of his hand. He lay, looking in terrified accusation at the ceiling.
Still holding the walking stick, Paul stepped forward. He stared down at the drug addict. The man lay still. His bloodshot eyes did not focus upon Paul. Paul lifted the stick in his hand and stared at it. The dark wood was dented and splintered a little but in no way broken or weakened. Paul looked back down at the man on the floor, letting the heavy weight of his unnaturally muscled right arm, holding the stick, drop limply at his side.
Among the sparse black hair on the man's skull, the blood was beginning to flow, slowly and darkly. Paul felt emptiness inside him, as if he had deeply inhaled on nothingness. The broken skull looked as if it had been stricken almost in two by some heavy sword.
Chapter 8
The man's dead, thought Paul. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but the emptiness inside him did not go away. Why don't I feel anything more than this?
Once he would have expected an answer from the unconquerable element back in the depths of his mind. But with the overgrowth of his right arm, and the decision in the psychiatrist's office, that part of him seemed to have melted into the rest of his consciousness. He was all of one piece now. Still, he could almost imagine he heard the ghost of a whisper replying to his thought
Death, it whispered, is a factor also.
The stick was still poised in his hand. Paul opened his hand about it and a small object fell onto the carpet. He bent and picked it up. It was the capsule he had offered the dead man, flattened and bent now from being between his palm and the walking stick. He put it in his pocket. Swiftly he turned and went out of the suite.
He closed the door behind him and was halfway to the same elevator tubes which Tyne and Blunt had taken, when his mind started working sensibly again. He stopped dead.
Why should he run, he asked himself? He had only acted in self-defense on being attacked by what amounted to an insane man waving a gun. Paul went back into 2309 and used the phone there to call the hotel's security office.
The office answered without lighting up the vision tank. A voice spoke to him from out of blank grayness.
"Who is calling, please?"
"Suite 2309. But I'm not a guest of the hotel. I want to report..."
"One minute, please."
There was a moment of silence. The tank still did not light up. Then suddenly it cleared and Paul found himself looking into the neat, expressionless features of James Butler.
"Mr. Formain," said Butler. "I was informed twenty-eight minutes ago that you had entered the hotel by the plaza entrance."
"I was bringing something..."
"So we assumed," said Butler. "As a matter of routine, our hall monitor cameras are lighted to follow nonguests under conditions when we haven't been notified of their visit in advance. Is the occupant of suite 2309 with you now, Mr. Formain?"
"Yes," said Paul. "But I'm afraid there's been an accident here."
"Accident?" Butler 's voice and expression stayed invariable.
"The man I met here threatened me with a gun." Paul hesitated. "He's dead."
"Dead?" asked Butler. For a second he merely looked at Paul. "You must be mistaken about the gun, Mr. Formain. We have a complete file and check on the occupant of 2309. He did not own a gun."
"No. He told me he stole it."
"I don't mean to argue with you, Mr. Formain. But I must inform you that in accordance with police regulations this conversation is being irreversibly recorded."
"Recorded!" Paul stared into the tank.
"Yes, Mr. Formain. You see, we happen to know that it would have been impossible for the resident in 2309 to steal any kind of weapon. He has been under constant surveillance by our staff."
"Well, your staff slipped up!"
"I'm afraid that's impossible, too. The only way a gun could have entered the suite where you are now would have been if you had carried it in yourself."