As we waited for Unitrak to come up with an answer, I began to feel an odd kind of nausea. At first I thought it was the swaying and rippling of the hospital floor, but then I realized it was a smell. A ripe, fetid, revolting smell that reminded me of a frozen rabbit I had once bought which turned out rotten. I sniffed, pulled a face, and looked at Singing Rock.
"He's coming," said Singing Rock, without apparent emotion. "The Great Old One is coming."
I heard shouting outside, and I left Singing Rock holding on to the telephone and went to see what was going on. There was a crowd of doctors and nurses around the CBS camera. I pushed my way through to Jack Hughes and asked him what had happened. He looked pale and ill, and his hand was obviously hurting him a great deal.
"It was one of the cameramen," he said. "He was holding on to his camera, and it seemed like he just collapsed. He was shaking like he'd had an electric shock, but it isn't that."
I struggled forward toward the cameraman. He was young and sandy-haired, dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt. His eyes were closed and his face was contorted and white. His bottom lip kept shuddering and curling in a strange kind of snarl. One of the interns was rolling up his sleeve to inject him with tranquilizer.
"What's wrong?" I said. "Is he having a fit?"
The intern carefully inserted the hypodermic into the cameraman's arm and squeezed the plunger. After a few moments, the facial spasms and the shuddering seemed to die away, and apart from a few isolated twitches, the cameraman began to calm down.
"I don't know what it is," said the intern, shaking his head. He was a callow young doctor with carefully combed hair and a round, freshly poured face. "It looks to me like some kind of severe psychological shock. Probably a delayed reaction to everything that's been going on here."
"Let's get him out of here and try to fix him up more comfortably," called Dr. Winsome. Three or four of the doctors went for a trolley, while the rest of us, frustrated and frightened, dispersed in awkward silence to wait for whatever manifestation was going to make its presence felt on us next. I heard Lieutenant Marino talking angrily on the telephone to his reinforcements, and it was clear that they were still having trouble gaining access to the building. Mingled with the moans of Misquamacus's wind, I could hear more sirens howling in the streets outside, and I could see spotlights flickering against the windows. In an hour or two, it would start to grow light, if we survived long enough to see it. The putrid stench of the Great Old One was thick in the air now, and two or three people were retching. The temperature kept fluctuating from stifling heat to uncomfortable cold, as if the whole building had a raging and uncontrollable fever.
I went back to Singing Rock. He was scribbling down a series of numbers on the corner of a magazine, and he looked intense and anxious. I waited for him to finish, then said: "Do you think you can make it?"
Singing Rock examined the figures carefully. "I'm not sure, but there's something here. The computer programmer said that the machine had no police records on anyone called the Great Old One, and he combed back for ten years through every known criminal alias. But Unitrak did respond with a message and a series of numbers."
"What do they say?"
"Well — the programmer translated the message for me, and it says Call Procedure Follows Promptly. Then we get the numbers."
I wiped my forehead with my stained handkerchief. "Does that help? Does that mean anything?"
"I think so," said Singing Rock. "At least Unitrak answered. And if it answered — well, maybe it knows that we want."
I pointed to the numbers. "You mean these numbers tell you how to summon its manitou?"
"Possibly. We don't know until we try."
I sat down wearily. "Singing Rock, it all sounds too far-fetched for me. I know what I've done and I know what I've seen, but don't tell me that some publicly funded computer is going to tell us how to raise its own spirit. Singing Rock, it just doesn't sound sane."
Singing Rock nodded. "I know, Harry, and I don't think I believe it any more than you do. All I can say is that the message from Unitrak is here, and that these numbers do tally with the appropriate ritual for summoning the manitous of manmade objects. In point of fact, it's one of the easiest of rituals. I was taught it by the medicine man Sarara, of the Paiute, when I was only twelve years old. I learned to raise the manitous of shoes and gloves and books and all kinds of things. I could make a book turn all its pages, without touching it at all."
"But a book is a book, Singing Rock. This is a multimillion-dollar computer. It's powerful. It could even be dangerous."
Singing Rock sniffed the stench of the Great Old One that was already crowding the room. "Nothing could be more dangerous than what we are about to experience now," he said. "At least if we have to die, we will die a hero's death."
"A hero's death doesn't interest me."
Singing Rock laid his hand on mine. "You didn't think of that when you faced the Star Beast alone."
"No, but I'm thinking of it now. Twice in one night is too much for any man."
Singing Rock said: "What was all that noise outside? Was someone hurt?"
I reached for a cigarette from the pack on the desk. "I don't think so. It was a cameraman from CBS. He was walking about filming and he just collapsed. I guess he must've been epileptic or something."
Singing Rock frowned. "He was filming?"
"That's right. I guess he was just taking shots of everybody in the whole place. He went over like someone had knocked him on the head. Don't ask me — I didn't see it."
Singing Rock thought for a moment. Then he walked quickly out of the office, and over to the CBS reporters. They were standing in an uneasy circle, five or six of them, smoking and trying to figure out what to do next.
Singing Rock said: "Your friend — is he all right?"
One of the reporters, a short stocky man in a plum-colored shirt and heavy glasses, said: "Sure. He's still with the doctors, but they say he's going to be okay. Say listen, do you know what the hell's going on here? Is this true, about evil spirits?"
Singing Rock ignored his questions. "Is your friend prone to fits?" he asked intently.
The TV reporter shook his head slowly. "Never saw him have one before. This is the first time, far as I know. He never said he was an epileptic or nothing like that."
Singing Rock looked grave. "Was anyone else looking through a camera at the same time?" he asked.
The TV reporter said: "No sir. We only have this one camera here. Say — do you know what that terrible smell is?"
Singing Rock said: "May I?" and lifted the portable television camera out of its case. It was dented where the falling cameraman had dropped it, but it was still working. One of the technicians, a dour man in blue denim, showed him how to heft it on to his shoulder, and how to look through the viewfinder.
The floor of the room began to tremble and pulsate, like someone shaking in fright, or a dog reaching a sexual climax. The lights dimmed again, and the sound of that gruesome wind grew steadily louder. There was a panicky babble from the twenty or thirty doctors and police and reporters crowded into the room, and Dr. Winsome, ashen-faced and sweating, finally had to leave his clamoring internal phones off the hook. We didn't dare to think what was happening in other wards and offices, and we couldn't get to them now if we did. Lieutenant Marino was still hanging on to the phone, waiting to hear from his reinforcements, but he had given up any semblance of optimism. He chain-smoked, and his face was set hard and grim.
As the floor spasm passed, Singing Rock pressed his eye to the black rubber socket of the television camera's viewfinder, switched it on, and slowly began to scan the room. He covered it in careful, systematic sweeps, exploring every corner and behind every door. The CBS crewmen watched uneasily as he circled the room, bent forward like a water diviner his thin body tense.