“I’m not worried about anything,” he snapped. “But I’m not going to fake data. That’s a scheme that only a drunk would even think of.”
And, abruptly, he turned and walked off toward the BOQ. Jo stood at the base of the steps and watched him disappear up the shadowy street.
Markov went to her. “I never believed he would go through with it,” he said gently. “It was merely wild talk, to get over his disappointment about Professor McDermott’s intransigence.”
But Jo said, “No. That’s not the real reason. He won’t tell us his real reason. He won’t even admit it to himself.”
Markov put a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Dear child, I know how you must feel.”
“How could you?”
“I know what a broken heart feels like.”
Jo shook her head. “And I thought mine was shatterproof.”
“None of them are,” Markov said. “The best you can hope for is some quick-setting cement to put the pieces back together again.”
With a rueful grin, Jo said, “Quick-setting cement? And here I thought you were a romantic.”
Markov put his arm around her shoulders and started walking her along the street. “Come, I will escort you to the hotel.”
Jo let him lead her. She only turned once to look down the street in the direction Stoner had taken.
In the darkness of her bedroom, the baleful red light of the electronics unit stared at Maria like a devil’s unwinking evil eye.
He’s an old man, she told herself. I can’t keep it on maximum power for long; he’ll collapse and die on me.
She was about to turn the power dial down when she heard a strange shuffling, dragging sound outside the window. Looking out toward the street, she saw Cavendish moving like a zombie, up the porch steps, to her front door.
Maria glanced at her wristwatch. The luminous dial was fuzzy, the hands indistinct. With an impatient huff, she leaned across the bed and turned the power dial down to minimum. The eyes are getting worse, she thought as she got to her feet. I will need stronger lenses soon.
Smoothing her dress, she went into the living room and unlocked the front door to admit Cavendish. He was standing there obediently, like a dog or a stolid cow, waiting to be allowed to enter.
Maria kept the lights off. She didn’t want to see the Englishman’s face. He went to a chair, collapsed into it with a soul-wrenching sigh.
“Your shoes,” Maria saw in the dim light from the street. “Why are you holding your shoes?”
“I was in the infirmary,” he answered.
“Why there?”
Slowly, Cavendish began to tell her what had happened to him, how he had tried to outwit his just punishment by going to the American hospital.
“How did you get away?” Maria asked.
He told her about the hubbub with Schmidt.
“Everyone knows he’s been popping drugs,” Cavendish said in his flat, machinelike tone, “but apparently he’s taken a serious overdose of something very powerful. He was like a madman. A berserker.”
A berserker. The phrase caught in Maria’s mind. A berserker. Certain narcotics can turn an ordinary young astronomer into a mindless fighting machine.
In the darkness, she smiled. Now I know how to stop Stoner, she thought. And it won’t even hurt Cavendish. For some strange reason, she felt relieved by that thought.
Chapter 30
God elevated the forehead of Man and ordered him to contemplate the Stars.
The rally began at eight, but the powerful lights of RFK Stadium were already blazing when the first eager people arrived to begin filling up the huge oval.
Willie Wilson wiped a bead of nervous perspiration from his upper lip as he saw the seats filling up under the still-bright early evening sky of Washington.
“I told you it’d be a sellout,” his brother Bobby said, smiling. “We’ll be turning ’em away at the gates in another half hour.”
By the time the warm-up bands and singers and guest stars had prepared the huge, sellout throng, it was fully night, even though no one could see the sky through the overpowering glare of the stadium lights.
Willie’s entrance was carefully, dramatically staged. All the stadium lights were to go out except for the single spot that would pick him up as he stepped out of the entrance ramp and onto the turf. Then the spot would follow him as he walked—magnificently alone—the length of the runway and up the steps to the platform where the microphone stood waiting for him.
No matter how many audiences he spoke to, no matter how many times he delivered his message to the people, Willie still felt that sick, fluttery queasiness in his gut the last few seconds before he went out.
Behind him, he could hear Bobby crowing to Charlie Grodon, “I told you it’d be a sellout crowd, didn’t I?”
“This time,” Charlie agreed reluctantly. “But what about Anaheim? From what I hear the tickets ain’t moving so fast out there.”
Willie shut their voices out of his mind. They were not important. Nothing was important except convincing that crowd out there that his message was worth listening to.
He stood poised tensely as a young bronco about to be let out of its chute as the ex-singer turned proselytizer raised her voice in praise of him. Willie felt the clammy sweat oozing from his pores as she shouted into the microphone:
“…THE MAN YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING TO SEE,” the loudspeakers bellowed, “WITH THE MESSAGE YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING TO HEAR—THE URBAN EVANGELIST HIMSELF, WILLIE WILSON!”
The combined bands struck up a fanfare, the lights faded and died, and the crowd roared.
Then choked into silence.
In the lone spotlight, Willie halted in the middle of a loping, athletic stride.
Silence. As if the whole stadium had disappeared. As if he’d been whisked away into the darkness of interplanetary space.
Confused, bewildered, scared, Willie halted with the spotlight still dazzling his eyes. He could see nothing in the overpowering glare of that single light.
But he heard gasps. Voices. Groans.
“Look!”
“My God, what can it be?”
“Up there, look at the sky! Look at the sky!”
Willie tried to shade his eyes but it did no good. There were screams now, strangled cries of…what? Fear? Awe? Terror?
He took a couple of fast strides forward and the spotlight stayed where it was. Even the light’s operator had frozen.
Willie looked up and saw it. Flickering in the sky. The message.
The stadium was coming alive with sounds now. People were cursing, hollering, moving, jamming toward the exits, pulsing with the animal fear of a mindless mob.
Willie raced for the platform. Even in the darkness his steps were unfaltering. He banged his shin on the first stair, gritted his teeth and made his way to the top of the platform.
The mob was a living, breathing, mindless organism out there in the darkness. He could hear whimpers and screams and the bellowing of animal rage.
His hands clutched the slim rod of the microphone.
“LISTEN TO ME,” he shouted, and his voice was amplified a millionfold throughout the vast stadium.
“LISTEN TO ME! HEAR MY VOICE! THE WORD OF GOD IS HERE AMONG US. FALL TO YOUR KNEES!”
The clamor in the flickering darkness faltered, took in a collective breath. Willie thundered:
“FALL TO YOUR KNEES! HEED THE WORD OF GOD. THIS IS THE SIGN THAT WE HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. DO NOT BE AFRAID. THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.”
He hesitated, face raised to the lights in the sky. They pulsed and flickered like a living presence. The spotlight suddenly jerked into motion, caught him in its radiant circle.