While the outside of the house was Middle American Victorian and rather tasteless, the inside was decorated in Neo-Student-Activist style. Yellowing posters covered most of the walls in the front hallway, featuring personalities as diverse as Martin Luther King and Jane Fonda. The newest of the posters, and it was already fading, demanded U.S. OUT OF BRAZIL! NO MORE EL SALVADORS! A library table stood to one side, heaped high with pamphlets. I glanced at them. Everything from abortion to disarmament, but none of them mentioned the fusion laboratory.
Doors were open on the right and left of the hallway. I looked left first, but the big high-ceilinged room was devoid of people. A couple of old sofas, three tattered Army cots, a big square table with a battered, well-worn word processor on it. But no people.
I tried the room on the right. A bright-looking young woman was sitting behind an ultramodern portable telephone switchboard, which rested incongruously on a heavy-legged, ornate Victorian mahogany table. She had an earphone and pinmike combination clamped over her short-cropped blonde hair. Without breaking her conversation into the microphone, she waved me into the room and pointed to one of the rickety plastic chairs that lined the wall.
I remained standing and waited until she finished her conversation. My mind wandered, my attention shifted, and I saw Aretha’s serious, finely chiseled face once more, her midnight-dark hair, her luminous gray eyes. I shut off the image in my mind and forced myself to concentrate on the gumchewing girl at the switchboard.
The blonde ended her phone conversation and looked up at me. Their phones had no picture screens, I saw.
“Welcome to STOPP,” she said cheerfully. “What can we do for you, Mr… er…?”
“Orion,” I said. “I want to see the chief of this operation.”
Her pert young smile clouded over. “You from the city? Fire Marshal?”
“No. I’m from the CTR facility. The fusion lab.”
“Oh!” That took her by surprise. The enemy in her boudoir.
“I want to see the head person around here.”
“Don Maddox? He’s in class right now.”
“Not him. The one he works for.”
She looked puzzled. “But Don’s the chairperson. He organized STOPP. He’s the…”
“Is he the one who decided to demonstrate against the fusion lab today?”
“Yes…” It was an uncertain answer.
“I want to know who put him up to it.”
“Now wait a minute, mister…” Her hands began to fidget along the keyboard buttons. A barely discernible sheen of perspiration broke out along her upper lip. Her breathing was slightly faster than it had been a few moments earlier.
“All right, then,” I said, easing off the pressure a little. “Who first suggested demonstrating at the fusion lab? It wasn’t one of the students, I know.”
“Oh, you mean Mr. Davis.” She sat up straighter. Her voice took on a ring of conviction. “He’s the one who woke us up about your fusion experiments and all the propaganda you’ve been laying on the people.”
There was no point arguing with her.Davis. I had to smile to myself. With just the slightest change in pronunciation it came up Daevas, the gods of evil in the old Zoroastrian religion.
“Mr. Davis,” I agreed. “He’s the one I want to see.”
“Why? Are you trying to arrest him or hassle him?” she asked.
I had to grin at her naïveté. “If I were, would I tell you? No one was arrested at the lab this morning, were they?”
Shaking her head, she replied, “From what I heard, they had a goon squad out there to break heads.”
“Really? I’d still like to seeDavis. Is he here?”
“No.” I could easily see that it was a lie. “He won’t be around for a while… He comes and goes.”
With a shrug, I said, “Very well. Get in touch with him and tell him that Orion wants to see him. Right away.”
“Mr. O’Ryan?”
“Orion. Just plain Orion. He’ll know who I am. I’ll wait outside in my car. It’s parked right in front of the house.”
She frowned. “He might not be back for a long while. Maybe not even the rest of the week.”
“You just get in touch with him and give him my name. I’ll wait.”
“Okay,” she said, in a tone that implied, but I think you’re crazy.
I waited in the car less than an hour. It was a cold, gray afternoon, but I adjusted easily enough to the chill. Clamp down on the peripheral blood vessels so that body heat isn’t radiated away so fast. Step up the metabolic rate a little, burning off some of the fat stored in the body’s tissues. This keeps the body temperature up despite the cold. I could have accomplished the same result by going to the corner and getting something to eat, but this was easier and I didn’t want to leave the car. Too much could happen while my back was turned. I did get hungry, though. As I said, I’m no superman.
The blonde girl came out on the porch, shivering in the cold despite the light sweater she had thrown over her shoulders. She stared at my car. I got out and she nodded at me. I followed her back into the house. She was waiting in the hallway, her arms clamped tightly across her small bosom.
“It’s really cold out there!” she said, rubbing her arms. “And you don’t even have an overcoat!”
“Did you reach Davis?” I asked.
Nodding, she replied, “Yes. He… came in through the back way. Down at the end of the hall. He’s waiting for you.”
I thanked her and walked to the door at the end of the hall. It opened onto a flight of steps leading down to the cellar of the house. A logical place for him, I thought, wondering how many legends of darkness and evil he had spawned over the span of millennia.
It was dark in the cellar. The only light came from the hallway at the top of the stairs. I could make out a bulky, squat, old-fashioned coal furnace spreading its pipes up and outward like a giant metal Medusa. Boxes, packing crates, odd-shaped things hugged the shadows. I took a few tentative steps into the dimness at the bottom of the stairs and stopped.
“Over here.” The voice was a harsh whisper.
Turning slightly, I saw him, a darker presence among the shadows. He was big, almost my own height, and very broad. Heavy, sloping shoulders; thick, solid body; arms bulging with muscle. I walked toward him. I could not see his face; the shadows were too deep for that. He turned and led me toward the furnace. I ducked under one of the pipes…
And was suddenly in a brightly lit room! I squinted and staggered back half a step, only to bump against a solid wall behind me. The room was warmly carpeted, paneled in rich woods, furnished with comfortable chairs and couches. There were no windows. No decorations on the walls. And no doors. Not one.
“Make yourself comfortable, Orion,” he said, gesturing to one of the couches. His hand was thick fingered, blunt and heavy.
I sat down and studied him as he slowly eased his bulk into a soft leather armchair.
His face was not quite human. Close enough so that you might not look twice at him on the street. But when you examined him carefully, you saw that the cheekbones were too widely spaced, the nose too flat, and the eyes had a reddish cast to them. His eyes! They smoldered; they seethed — they radiated a constant torment of fury — and, looking deeper, I could see other things in his eyes: implacable hatred and, mixed with it, something else, something I could not fathom. It made no difference to me. The hatred was there, burning in his eyes. Just as it was in mine.
His hair was dark and cropped close to his skull. His skin had a grayish pallor. He wore denims and a light shirt, open at the neck. He was as muscular as a professional weightlifter.
“You are Ahriman,” I said at last.
His face was grim, mirthless. “You don’t remember me, of course. We have met before.” His voice was a whisper, like a ghost’s, or like the tortured gasping of a dying man.