Six hotels, and nothing to guide them. As they emerged from the latest of them and signified no progress to the anxious watchers in the car and ambulance at the roadside, Singh gave Howson a keen glance.
“Still keeping off the subject, Gerry ?”
Howson gave an almost guilty grin. “How well you know me, Pan !” he replied with forced lightness.
“Well, stop it!” Singh said roughly. “If our man wasn’t damned close you’d never have let me stop the car, and I can’t think of a likelier place than a top hotel for an out-of-town telepathist to be found in. We’ll probably get him at the next one we try.”
The next one was decorated in a flamboyant Chinese rococo, with huge twisted brass pillars and red and black dragons lacquered on the walls. The night-clerk was a stout middle-aged woman who kept one hand on an alarm button all the time she was talking to them; she was terrified of rape, and the concept flamed beacon-bright in her mind. Howson had to stifle a pang of disgust at the masochism which underlay her conscious terror.
Singh persuaded her to produce the file of registration cards, and riffled through a dozen or so before stopping, an exclamation rising to his lips. He snapped the important card from its holder and mutely showed it to Howson. In bold letters the name was inscribed: Hugh Choong.
“But he’s — !” Howson began, and checked at Singh’s frown. Wordlessly, he continued: But he’s a top, top man!
Correct. Eleven years of close association with Howson had enabled Singh to verbalize an unspoken communication almost as clearly as a telepathist. An arbitrator based on Hong Kong — maintains the Pacific Seaboard beat virtually single-handed.
Also a therapist retained occasionally by top UN staff. Not met him ?
No.
Nor have I. But we’re about to, aren’t we?
For the life of him, Howson could not have matched that mock-cynical comment. He felt only dismay. What was an arbitrator doing setting up a catapathic grouping? They were all chosen from the most stable, capable, highly-trained telepathists; they had to be like Caesar’s wife, beyond any breath of suspicion, for on the knife-edge of their self-control rested the uneasy peace of the planet.
If even such a man as that could choose fugue rather than reality, how secure was he, the cripple who could not even face strangers without being hurt ?
Singh was speaking briskly to the night-clerk. “Which is Mr Choong’s room, please ? I shall have to disturb him.”
“Mr Choong’s suite,” the woman corrected morosely. “His party booked into our penthouse early this evening. But I don’t think I can let you—”
“His party! How many?” Singh interrupted.
“Ten altogether.” And unwillingly: “Sir.”
“You were right about the need for another ambulance, Gerry,” Singh grunted. “All right,” he added to the night-clerk. “Get a porter or someone to take us up — and hurry! It’s a medical emergency, hear?”
Howson was content to comply with the course of events. He said nothing as he hobbled towards the elevator, in the wake of a porter wearing a sleepsuit and a startled expression. The ambulance attendants had gone around with their stretchers to the freight elevators. Howson left all that to Singh; he was busy trying to ride the bucking bronco of his thoughts, which threatened to run out of control whenever he let his attention wander towards the telepathic fantasies Choong was elaborating.
Try not to think of a white horse…
The car stopped at penthouse level. Singh automatically made to use the pass-key he had obtained from the night-clerk, but the door opened before he applied it. And beyond…
“It reminds me,” Singh said with ghastly calmness, “of the stage at the end of a performance of Hamlet.”
Bodies everywhere! Only — not bodies yet. Wax-pale, they sat or lay immobile, on chairs, couches, stacked cushions, nine of them in a circle around the tenth: a plump man with a Eurasian cast of features, relaxed in a padded arm-chair and wearing a splendid silk robe. At his side, as though this moment removed and set down, lay a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim spectacles. And that was, therefore, Hugh Choong.
Howson’s fists clenched ridiculously. Like a badly jointed puppet he limped towards the trance-lost telepathist, the violence of his anger fouling the air.
Damn you, damn you, damn you—
“Gerry!” Singh’s words lanced into his brain. “You can’t reach him, so don’t waste the effort!”
Howson’s rage, punctured, faded to nothing, leaving only a sick apathy. He made an empty gesture and turned his back.
“Where he’s gone, he doesn’t want anyone to reach him.”
“I’m not so sure,” Singh countered. “Look!” He strode over the soft carpet towards the wall-mounted phone and pointed to something on a low table close by. Howson’s lack-lustre gaze followed him.
“There’s a time-switch on the phone, and it’s set for eight tomorrow morning. And this is a recorder. Let’s see what it says.” He lifted up the small device, cased in a fine lacquered box, and discovered that it was connected to the phone by a gossamer-weight flex. A tug snapped the link; he depressed the replay switch.
At once a firm voice rang out.
“This is Hugh Choong in the penthouse. Good morning. Please do not be alarmed at this recorded message, which is set to repeat in case you don’t take it all in at one go.
“Please contact the director in chief of the WHO therapy centre, Dr. Pandit Singh. Inform him of my identity, and request him or one of his senior aides to come and see me. The elevator door is set to open automatically, so he will have no difficulty in entering. Thank you!”
“Shut it off!” said Howson savagely. “So he had it all worked out! The best of therapy, for no good reason! And now, I presume—” He broke off, his mouth working.
“Yes, Gerry ?” Singh prompted.
“You know exactly what I was going to say!” Howson flared. “Now somebody’s got to go in after him, drag him out of fugue by force, waste time and effort that ought to go to somebody who needs it!”
“As far as I’m concerned, Gerry,” said Singh in a tone he did not need to colour with reproof, “the fact that Hugh Choong is here, in this state, makes him a person in need of therapy. Am I wrong ?”
Howson flushed. He made as though to contradict, but before he had a chance to speak the ambulance attendants came from the freight elevator, and Singh’s entire attention went over to the supervision of their work.
Howson drew back into a corner out of the way, and gazed at the waxwork calm of Choong’s face as they manhandled him on to his stretcher, completing his statement for himself alone.
No, damn you. That’s why there’s such a stench of smugness reeking around you! You can’t have needed help, because you’ve taken so much care to make sure of getting it!
And you will — damn you again. They’ll make me chase after you into that nowhere-land, destroy your dreams, pester and persecute you till you come back. And I’ll take on the job, because this is all I have: my skill that nobody in the world can match.
So who will come after me, to help me, Choong? Who else is there? Damn you to hell.
16
His bitterness was still growing, accentuated by his lack of sleep, when the special conference convened next afternoon. For any ordinary patient, a place on the regular daily agenda sufficed; for anyone else in UN employ, at most a multi-line phone link was used to discuss the case. But for Choong the high executives came swarming in by Mach Five express.