In The House Of Secret Enemies

Rage

Slow day; anathema to a criminology professor moonlighting as a private detective. I had a graduate seminar to teach later in the afternoon, but my lecture was prepared and I was in my downtown office, staring out my second-floor window, hoping for some business to blow in off the street. I had to settle for my brother.

Someone else was driving the unmarked car, but it was Garth-all normal six feet two inches of him-who got out on the passenger's side, then walked stiffly across the sidewalk and into the building. I ran my finger over a water spot on the glass. It wasn't unusual for Garth to drop by for coffee when he was in the neighborhood, but this time there had seemed a tension-an urgency-in the way he moved that was incongruous. I went out by the elevator to meet him.

The elevator doors sighed open-Garth's face was ashen, his eyes two open wounds. He pushed past a young couple, glanced once in my direction, then rushed into my office. I went after him, closing the door behind me. He had already stripped off his jacket, and the black leather straps of his shoulder holster stood out like paint stains on the starched white of his shirt. He took the gun from its holster and slid it across my desk. "Find a drawer for that, will you, brother?" Garth's teeth were clenched tightly together and the voice behind them trembled.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Put it away! " Now Garth's voice boomed. His fists slammed down on the plastic surface of the desk top. A stack of books on the corner teetered and fell to the floor.

Angry men and guns make a bad mix. As a cop, Garth knew that better than anyone. I walked quickly around to the other side of the desk, opened a drawer and dropped the gun into it.

Garth sat down hard in a straight-backed wooden chair. He planted his feet flat on the floor and gripped the edges of the seat. Instantly the flesh around his knuckles went white. His head was bent forward and I couldn't see his face, but the flesh of his neck was a fiery red, gorged with blood. I could see his pulse, framed by muscle cords that looked like steel rods implanted just below the skin.

I spoke very quietly. "You want to talk, brother?"

Garth, in some soundproofed prison of rage, couldn't hear me. He suddenly sprang to his feet, grabbed the chair and flung it across the room, snapping a pole lamp in two and mining an ugly hole in the plaster wall. The shattered pieces fell to the floor; instant junk. In the same motion Garth spun around and with one sweep of his hand cleared the top of my desk. A heavy glass ashtray made another hole in the wall about a foot too low to be a perfect match for the other. Considering the fact that my office wasn't that large to begin with, I estimated that a complete renovation was going to take about three more minutes. I walked up to Garth and grabbed his arm. That was a mistake.

Now, I have a black belt, second Dan, in karate, and am reasonably proficient in a number of the other lesser-known martial arts; when you're a four-foot-eight-inch dwarf you develop a predilection for such things. Still, a man my size must rely on anticipation, leverage and angles, factors that don't normally spring to mind when you're merely trying to calm down your brother. Consequently, I found myself standing on my toes, Garth's hands wrapped around my neck. The whites of his eyes were marbled with red, while the dilated pupils opened up and stared at nothing, like black circles painted on canvas by a bad artist.

I knew I had only a few seconds to act. At the least, I could very well end up with a cracked larynx; at worst, there was the very real possibility I was going to end up as one dead dwarf, killed by my own brother. I didn't like the options.

I was floating in an airless void, Garth's features spinning before my eyes. I extended my arms, then drove my thumbs into the small of his back, just above the kidneys. That didn't do much except make him blink. I smashed my stiffened fingers up into the nerve clusters in his armpits. The animal that Garth had become grunted; his grip loosened, but it was nothing to cheer about; I still couldn't breathe. Finally I raised one hand up between his arms and poked at his larynx. Garth gasped and his hands came loose. I collapsed to my knees, my lungs sobbing for air. I managed to reach the shattered chair at the opposite end of the room. I grabbed one of the broken chair legs and spun around, prepared to bounce the splintered wood off my brother's skull. It wasn't necessary. Garth was leaning against my desk, staring uncomprehendingly at his hands. His face had changed color like a traffic light, from a brilliant crimson to a sickly yellow-white. His gaze slowly shifted to where I was poised like a statue, my improvised club raised in the air.

"Mongo. ." Garth's voice was a muffled whisper of pain.

"I hope you feel better," I said, trying to sound sardonic. It didn't come out that way. It was hard for me to sound sardonic with a bruised voice box that felt as if it had been pushed back somewhere in the vicinity of my spinal column.

Garth's lips moved, but no sound came out. He was across the room in four quick strides, trying to lift me up in his arms. Enough is enough-I pushed him away with the chair leg. I was building up a little anger of my own, but it vanished as the door suddenly opened. The man who stepped into the room was of medium height, with close-cropped, warm-yellow hair that tended to clash with his cold gray eyes. I wondered if he dyed his hair.

Garth glanced at the man, then quickly turned back to me. His face was a pleading exclamation mark as he shook his head. The movement was almost imperceptible, but I thought I'd received the message.

"Who the hell are you?" I said to the man in the doorway.

Oddly enough, my voice sounded quite normal, with just the right seasoning of surprise. It hurt only when I swallowed.

"Name's Boise," the man said, surveying the damage. "I came looking for my partner here. Saw your name on the directory down in the lobby. Didn't know Garth had a brother."

Or that the brother was a dwarf, judging from his expression. I knew that look from scores of experiences with potential but unsuspecting clients. I didn't like it. Boise wasn't exactly getting off on the right foot with me.

"Garth doesn't feel well," I said. "Why don't you tell MacGregor I've taken him home? I'll call in later and let him know how Garth is."

Boise didn't move. "What happened?"

"I'm redecorating."

"Must be expensive," Boise said without smiling.

"Look, Boise," Garth said tightly, turning to face the other man, "my brother's right. I can't cut it the rest of the day. Cover for me, okay? I'll be in tomorrow."

Boise glanced once more at the wreckage of the room, then shrugged and walked out into the corridor. A few moments later I heard the whine of the elevator and Boise was gone.

"Where'd you pick him up?"

"We were assigned as a team for a case I've been working on," Garth said without looking at me. He had begun to tremble. "I don't know why. Look, get me out of here, will you?"

I went to the desk, took out Garth's gun and slipped it into my own pocket. Garth didn't object. He wheeled and walked out to the elevator ahead of me. I glanced at the clock as I closed the door. Less than ten minutes had passed from the time Garth had walked into my office. It struck me that Boise was a very impatient man.

"Where are you taking me?"

"I don't want you to think I'm being touchy," I said, guiding my compact out of the parking garage and into the cacophony of New York's midmorning vehicular insanity. "Still, the fact remains that you did try to kill me back there, and I don't even owe you money." I glanced sideways. Garth's face was stony, his eyes fixed straight ahead. "You knew enough to dump the gun," I said seriously. "That was smart, but a man doesn't do something like that just because he's feeling a little annoyed. I saw you get out of that car. You looked like Lon Chaney Junior running from a full moon. You climbed right out of your tree, and my guess is that it's not the first time something like this has happened. It's happened before, and you've done nothing about it. That's not so smart. It doesn't take a master detective like myself to figure out that you need a vacation-a long one-and some medical attention. I know a good shrink who teaches up at the-"

"Pull over a minute, will you?"

I debated with myself for a few moments, decided there was no sense in possibly provoking another attack, and pulled over to double-park beside a No Standing sign.

"You're right," Garth said, still staring straight ahead of him. "It has happened before-four times in the past three weeks. Each time it gets worse. I can't think of any words to tell you how sorry I am about what happened back in your office, so I'm not even going to try. But I am telling you I can't go to a hospital or see a shrink. Not yet."

"Like hell!"

Garth shook his head. Still, he remained calm. There was no sign of the terrible rage that had wracked him just a few short minutes before, but my neck still hurt. "Look," Garth said quietly, "you yourself said I knew what was happening. I know I need rest, and I'm going to take it. You can take me to anyone you want, and I'll cooperate fully, but just give me four days."

"What happens in four days?"

"I have to testify before the grand jury-with Boise. I have to be there. It's very important."

I grunted and slammed the car into gear. Garth reached out and touched my arm. I tensed, ready to drop him, but his touch was very gentle. "Just listen, Mongo." I put the gears in neutral but left the engine running. "Have you ever heard of anethombolin?"

I'd seen the word somewhere but couldn't place it. I said so.

"Anethombolin is a hormone produced naturally in the body under certain conditions," Garth continued. "Recently it was synthesized. Among other things, anethombolin may provide a cure for asthma, male infertility, high blood pressure and a host of other ailments. It also induces spontaneous abortions, and that's what makes it potentially worth millions. I say 'potentially' because, so far, nobody has come up with a way to control certain very unpleasant side effects. A New York laboratory named Whalen Research Associates has spent a lot of money trying to find ways to neutralize those side effects, and they've developed a lot of patents along the way. With the liberalized abortion laws, you can see what a drug like this would mean to some people here in this country, not to mention its value to the governments of underdeveloped, overpopulated nations like India. Because a lot of the work was government-financed, agreements were made that would provide for controlled, low-cost distribution. Those agreements go out the window if some other company comes up with the same thing, and that's exactly what may have happened.

"A few months ago an outfit calling itself Zwayle Labs announced that it was on the verge of developing synthetic anethombolin fit for human consumption. Whalen claimed that Zwayle couldn't possibly have done the work without violating one or more of the patents Whalen holds-in other words, industrial espionage. A secret investigation was ordered, the results to be presented to a grand jury. I pulled the case, and Boise was assigned as my partner because he'd worked on similar cases before. We started the preliminary undercover work and discovered possible leaks on Whalen's staff. The nature of the business makes it all very tentative, but we did find prima facie evidence of industrial espionage and patent violation. What's needed now is a full-blown investigation, but first our evidence must be presented to the grand jury. If it isn't, a lot of time will have been wasted, not to mention the fact that an injustice will have occurred."

That would have sounded naive-even funny-coming from a lot of cops I know; coming from Garth it didn't.

"Patent law. That sounds like a job for the feds."

"It is, but some aspects of the case come under our jurisdiction. Besides, we were asked to cooperate. We did the groundwork."

"Why can't Boise testify?"

"He can and will, but it's a very sticky deal, and the grand jury is going to want to hear corroborative testimony from either one of us. In other words, Boise needs me and I need Boise if we're going to make a case. Do you understand?"

"No. It sounds like a hell of a way to run an investigation."

"Industrial espionage and patent violations are very difficult things to prove-you'll just have to take my word for that. In any case, I must be at that hearing, and my testimony isn't going to mean much if they have to wheel me in from the psycho ward."

"I don't buy it, Garth. I saw you back there. You're not going to do anybody any good if you're dead-or if you're responsible for making somebody else dead."

"That's not going to happen, brother." Garth's voice was harder now, determined. "Four days. That's all I need. After that, a long rest. Agreed?"

Actually, there was nothing on which to agree. I couldn't make Garth enter the hospital and he knew it. He was asking for my cooperation-in effect, my approval, my belief that he could control the strange fires in him long enough for him to complete a task he had set for himself

"Most of the work is done?" I asked.

"Right. Now it's mostly just a matter of waiting around for the hearing."

"Full checkup when it's finished?"

"Full checkup."

I didn't like it, but I made no move to stop him when he opened the car door and stepped out into the street.

"I'll need my gun, Mongo," Garth said quietly.

It was true. If Garth would have a tough time testifying from a psychiatrist's couch, he'd have an even tougher time explaining how and why his dwarf brother took his gun and wouldn't give it back. I took the gun out of my jacket pocket and gave it to him.

I hate hospitals. I'd spent too much time in them as a child while doctors struggled to cope with the results of a recessive gene eight generations removed. The hospitals ran through my childhood like trains through a station. I stayed the same.

Now it was my brother, strapped to a bed in a psychiatric ward, too doped up even to recognize me.

I made arrangements to have him transferred to a private room and took a cab down to Garth's precinct station house. MacGregor, Chief of Detectives, was floundering around behind a desk strewn with stacks of coffee-stained papers. He was wearing his usual harried expression.

"What the hell is my brother doing up in Bellevue?"

"Easy, Mongo," MacGregor said. "I was the one who called you, remember? How is he?"

"Drugged right up to his eyeballs. I asked you what happened."

"I'm not sure. We're still trying to sort everything out. Garth called in sick yesterday. He came in this morning to go over some paperwork with Boise. You knew he's been working on a big case?" I nodded. "Your brother and Boise were having coffee," MacGregor continued. "A few minutes later Garth comes out and gets into an argument with Lancey over some little thing. Anyway, your brother wouldn't let it go; he broke Lancey's jaw for him, then he tries to pistol-whip Q.J. Took four guys to get him down. We called the hospital, and then I called you. We're just as anxious to know what happened as you are." MacGregor leaned forward confidentially. "He really wigged out, Mongo. You had to be here really to appreciate what he was like. Boise says he's been acting funny for some time now."

"Is that right? What about the case Garth was working on? The grand jury is supposed to hear it day after tomorrow. What happens now?"

"Nothing. They won't be hearing anything from this department."

"Why can't the hearing be postponed until Garth is better?"

"Because it wouldn't make any difference. Boise says we don't have a case."

"Now why would Boise say a thing like that?"

"Ask him."

I did.

"You know about that?" Boise asked.

"Garth mentioned it to me."

Boise carefully stirred the coffee in front of him. The sound of the spoon bouncing off the sides of the cup grated on my nerves. "There was never a case to begin with," he said evenly. He punctuated the sentence by dropping the spoon on his saucer. "I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but this whole affair was a result of paranoia on your brother's part, and that's all."

"Uh-uh. He wasn't the one who asked to initiate the investigation."

"No. We were asked to investigate-we did, and found nothing. Everything Zwayle Labs had done was on the up-and-up. They just worked faster and cheaper than the Whalen people. Certainly we found nothing to present to a grand jury. Some circumstantial evidence, a little hearsay, most of which was sour grapes from staff members who hadn't been able to handle the competition within their own departments. Nothing concrete. The evidence just wasn't there."

"Garth said it was tricky, and you'd have to corroborate each other's testimony."

Boise had finished his coffee and was signaling for another. "What can I tell you? Somewhere along the way your brother took a real strong dislike toward the guy who runs Zwayle Labs, a man by the name of Hans Mueller. Don't know why, but that's the way it happened. Guess whatever it was that finally put him away was working on him even then. He swore he'd get Mueller, and he started inventing evidence in his mind to do it."

The second cup of coffee was served and Boise started clanking around in it with his spoon.

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. "Why didn't you tell MacGregor all this before?"

"Because I didn't want what happened to Lancey and Q.J. to happen to me. With me it could have been worse; I was alone with him all day. Besides, Garth's a brother officer. I wasn't about to tell him-or anybody else-that he was crazy. I was hoping he might straighten up after the grand jury shot us down."

"What's going to happen to him now?"

"They'll probably give him an extended leave of absence."

"It's more likely he'll lose his shield."

"Probably," Boise said, averting his eyes to his coffee. He didn't have to tell me that the camaraderie between police officers did not extend to asking taxpayers to keep a psycho cop on the payroll.

I didn't like it; all of the pieces seemed to fit, but the finished puzzle was ugly, misshapen.

"You mind if I look at the files?"

That stopped the stirring. "I think I would," Boise said after a pause, "and I think MacGregor will back me up. First of all, you're close to calling me a liar. Second, it's not the policy of the New York Police Department to let private citizens-especially private investigators-examine its files."

I bit off my next remark, rose and turned to go. I was stopped at the door by one of those inspirations I usually know enough to keep to myself. I walked slowly back to the table wearing my innocent, concerned-brother face. It hurt like a mask of nails.

"Mueller. That's a kraut name, isn't it?"

Boise's eyebrows flicked upward. His eyes followed. "How's that?"

"Mueller," I said. "Isn't that a German name?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Why?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, really. I was just trying to figure why Garth would flip out like this. Now I think I know the reason."

"Which is?"

"Germans," I said easily. "Garth hates Germans, It's a real thing with him. He's been that way ever since he was a kid. Too many cheap comic books and war movies. I guess. Anyway, when he was fifteen he almost killed a German classmate. That cost him six months in an institution. I guess it would've been better if they'd kept him a little longer."

I knew I had heard of anethombolin, so I canceled my evening class and went to the university library to find out where. By closing time I'd found what I'd been looking for in the scientific journals. I photocopied the appropriate articles and stuck them into my pocket. Then I went to an twenty-four-hour diner and ate a full meal. It was going to be a long night.

I was about to try my hand at reconstructing a sequence of events, a sequence that, for the moment, existed only in my mind: a play-a drama in which at least one of the players would be an unwilling participant. To make matters more difficult, that player would also be the most critical of audiences. One act-or even one line-out of place and the curtain would come crashing down. If I was right-if there was more fact than fiction in the scenario I was about to produce-my brother's sanity could hinge on the success of my improvisation; his sanity and possibly his life.

At the moment Garth was drowning in a black sea of madness, and his flailing hurt people. Now he was no more than a dangerous animal. Of course, it would not be the first time a good man had gone mad; a psychiatrist would have a field day expounding on the probable causes of Garth's breakdown. Still, I knew something the psychiatrists didn't; I knew my brother. If he was lost in a drowning pool of the mind, and all evidence suggested that he'd jumped in by himself, I still suspected he'd been pushed.

It was dawn by the time I finished. I slept for an hour, rose and ate breakfast, then sat down at the telephone. I tried unsuccessfully to control the trembling of my hands as I dialed the number of Zwayle Labs, but I did better with my voice. It was Mueller who sounded tense as he agreed to meet me in an hour.

Act One appeared to have been well received.

Zwayle Labs stood in the middle of a lower West Side block like a chrome and glass box tied together with ribbons of plastic. I paused outside on the sidewalk, activated the miniature tape recorder and microphone in my jacket pocket, then went in. The recorder was compact, and sensitive enough to pick up a normal speaking voice thirty feet away. The only problem was that, even running at low speed, there was only about twenty minutes' worth of tape on the tiny reel. I was going to have to do my talking in a hurry.

Mueller did a double take on me in the hall. I brushed past him and walked into his office.

"Ten thousand dollars," I said as Mueller was in the process of nervously offering me a chair. "That's how much I'll take not to blow this whole deal wide open. Considering the stakes you're playing for, that's peanuts. But then I like peanuts."

Mueller's pale Teutonic features were suddenly mottled with patches of red, but I couldn't tell whether they were caused by anger or fear. Thin and professorial-looking, smelling of greed, Mueller wasn't exactly an imposing figure. Still, looks can be deceiving; at least, in my own case, I liked to think so. I was sitting in on the biggest poker game of my life, against a man I didn't know, and I was bluffing blind. I didn't know of any other way to do what I had to do. There just wasn't time.

"My time is valuable, Mr. Frederickson," Mueller said quickly, avoiding my gaze. "Please come to the point."

"You knew my point when you heard what I had to say over the phone." I watched him carefully, very conscious of the time limit imposed by the machine in my pocket, fighting the urge to rush my words. "I didn't know the whole story when I was talking to Boise yesterday. Then I went up to Garth's place and looked around. He'd made some notes on this case, private notes that he hadn't shown to anyone else for obvious reasons. Did you know that? Garth is a very conscientious policeman; he likes to have all the facts before he makes any accusations. That cost him this time."

I punctuated my words by slapping down my manila folder in front of Mueller. He opened his mouth to speak. I spilled the photocopies out onto the polished mahogany surface of the desk and ran right through whatever it was he was going to say.

"Remember these? You should. They're reports on research done in this very lab-research done by you. Before this anethombolin fuss you were well known for your work in isolating and synthesizing drugs that were thought to trigger various emotional responses; all very experimental, but you'd had great success-with rats. The thinking was that the drugs might or might not affect men, but that a lot more research would have to be done. You decided to take a shortcut."

"What are you getting at?"

His voice gave him away. The fact that he had agreed to see me at all had been the first indication that I was on the right track. The fact that he hadn't already thrown me out of his office was, to me, conclusive proof. I'd hooked him. Now the problem was to reel him in before the plastic line of the tape in my pocket broke; or before I made a mistake.

"My brother was your first human subject." Which was precisely why my charade was so important; if I was right, I had to obtain samples of whatever it was Mueller had given Garth so that the lab boys could find some way to neutralize it.

Mueller seemed in perfect control. His eyes were like two opaque marbles. "What you are saying has no basis in fact, Mr. Frederickson," he said quietly. "Even if it did, I find it highly unbelievable that you would accept money to remain silent about something which could gravely affect your brother's health."

I laughed harshly. "That's because you're not a dwarf. In case you haven't noticed, my brother's bigger than I am. Bigger, and better able to take care of himself. It's always been that way, and its going to have to stay that way. He's just going to have to take care of himself-that is, if you cough up the money. What's ten thousand dollars when you're anticipating millions from the exclusive rights to anethombolin? In fact, I suggest that you hurry up and complete the deal before my conscience starts to bother me. Or before I up the ante. Maybe I'll ask for twice what you're paying Boise."

Thin, white lines were appearing around the corners of the other man's mouth. "Boise? Isn't that your brother's partner?"

"You know damn well who Boise is. He's the man you bought off. He's the man who's been dumping your drugs into Garth-probably by way of his coffee. Garth's testimony was needed at that grand jury hearing. He couldn't be bribed; it wouldn't take much checking to find that out. Therefore, he had to be put out of commission by a man who could be bribed: Boise. Then Boise could do his number about the whole thing being nothing more than paranoia on my brother's part and you'd be home free-with the anethombolin process you stole from Whalen Research Associates. The testimony of a madman wouldn't hold up very well against that of a perfectly sane partner. It will still work, except that now it's going to cost you a little more money. You don't pay, and I take my story to MacGregor, along with Garth's notes."

Then MacGregor would throw me out of his office. There were, of course, no notes and, thus far, the tape contained not much more than a not-too-brilliant Mongologue, though Mueller was sweating. I'd pulled the handle on this particular slot machine as far as it would go, and there wasn't much more I could do but stand and watch the cylinders spin. One lemon and it was all over.

Mueller tried to juggle the machine. "You're forgetting one thing," he said breezily. "Your brother has suffered bouts of paranoia before. Our own investigation shows that your brother was institutionalized for a homicidal attack on a German youth. I happen to be German, and my associates and I have suspected all along that your brother's persecution of me had something to do with my national origin."

I turned away quickly so that Mueller couldn't see the flood of emotion in my eyes. The last number had come up and it spelled jackpot. I turned back and allowed myself a weak smile. "You lose, Mueller," I said easily. "I figured Boise would call you with that choice bit of information. The fact of the matter is that my brother has a special fondness for Germans. He should-both our parents are German."

The last resistance went out of him like air whooshing from a crushed lung. He stared at me helplessly. "All right, Frederickson. Perhaps you are due some money. Say, as a 'counseling fee.'"

"You can call it anything you want. Just get the money up front. Now."

"Perhaps we could negotiate the exact-"

"Shut up, Mueller!" Boise's voice came from behind me. I didn't bother to turn; I could feel the barrel eye of a.38 staring at my spine.

It looked as if the game wasn't over yet. I had counted on Boise calling, but I hadn't counted on his actually being here for the meeting. I was out of cards, and someone had unplugged the slot machine.

"You're a fool, Mueller," Boise said calmly. Now the cold barrel was pressed against my temple as Boise's free hand flew expertly over my body until he found what he was looking for. He yanked the tape recorder out of my pocket, dropped it on the floor, then crushed it under his heel. "He doesn't want money. He's as straight as his brother. He just wanted you to talk, which you did beautifully."

Still keeping the gun trained on my head, Boise knelt and fired the scattered tape with his lighter. The room was suddenly filled with an acrid odor that made my eyes water.

"You're burning a hole in my carpet," Mueller said weakly, staring down at the small pyre of burning plastic.

"Get this, Mueller," Boise said, backing up so that both the scientist and myself fell into his range of fire, "I want that hundred thousand dollars you owe me, and I want to be free to spend it. If you don't start wising up, I'm going to burn a hole in your brain."

The tape was destroyed. Boise snuffed out the last glowing embers with the toe of his shoe. I tried to think of some maneuver that would get me closer to Boise, but you don't mess with a man who practices three times a week on a firing range. The gun in Boise's hand was a tight drawstring on any bag of tricks that I might have been tempted to explore.

Boise wasn't taking any chances either. Slowly he came up behind me. I anticipated the blow and managed to move my head enough to avoid having my skull crushed. Still, it was a long way to the bottom of the rainbow-colored well into which he crudely pushed me.

It was also a long way up.

The sides of the well were dotted with faces of my brother. His lips were curled back like an animal's, baring froth-specked teeth. There were large red holes where his eyes should have been. His hands were studded with hundreds of snakelike fingers, and I wept helplessly as they reached for me, curling around my throat, tearing at my eyes.

I floated up and out of the hole and down onto what felt like a hardwood floor. Finally conscious, my body was a raft cast adrift on a vast, eerie sea of total darkness.

I was still crying, not as a man cries when touched by some deep emotion, but as a child cries in the grip of some nameless nighttime terror. I sobbed and wailed, my hiccuping moans swallowed up by the dark. In one part of me I was profoundly embarrassed; in another part of me, weeping seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing.

Gradually I muffled my cries and wiped my tears with the back of my hand. At the same time my muscles seemed to go rigid. I couldn't move or, rather, I dared not move. In the surrounding night I could hear the dry rustle of snakes, large snakes moving toward me, large snakes of the variety that lie in wait along the banks of tropical rivers to crush and eat things that are small and warm.

There were other things out there too, and they all crushed and squeezed and bit and hurt. I began to cry again, and pray to the God I had known as a child.

Another part of my mind, a tiny area where the fear had not yet penetrated, began to stir. I listened to it whisper of snakes and other things that crush, big things, a world of giants that laughed and mocked; things that would hurt a dwarf, things that would eat a dwarf.

It suddenly occurred to me that these fears were somehow familiar, like a scarred rocking horse uncovered in a dusty corner of some attic, an attic of the mind. In this case they were old monsters from the mental storage bin of childhood.

Then I understood. I remembered Garth and Mueller and Boise, and I knew what they had done. The terrors were from childhood; all those special horrors that had plagued me when I had first learned I was small, so different from other children, had come back to visit. Something had dredged them all up from my subconscious and scattered them in the darkness around me. .

Something like a drug, something like phobetarsin; that was what the fear-producing drug had been called in the research papers I had read.

At least the drug Mueller had given me had a name.

The terrible dread was still there, but now I knew its source. That made all the difference in the world; I had labeled the fear-or at least its cause-and that made it, if no less real, at least easier to deal with it. I was sure I had been given a drug, probably phobetarsin. The question remained as to why they had bothered. Perhaps it was an attempt to make me more manageable, or perhaps it was merely gratuitous sadism. Whatever the reason, I knew I needed some defense.

I closed my eyes against the fear and slowly moved out across the room, crawling inch by inch on my belly. I finally bumped up against a wall and paused, cradling my head in my arms. My clothes were drenched with sweat and, once again, I was crying.

Still, I had my single psychological weapon; I knew what had unleashed the demons around me. Garth had had no such advantage. Whatever they had given him had somehow had the effect of stripping the scabs off his psyche, simultaneously releasing the thousand and one irritations and frustrations that plague a man every day, bringing them all up in one lump to fester in his conscious mind until a flash point was reached.

Somewhere in every man's mind are the fetid odors of rotted dreams, mercifully flushed into the sewers of the subconscious. Mueller had discovered chemicals that somehow interfered with the mechanism of suppression. He'd been playing games with my brother's sanity, not to mention my own. I owed him.

I curled my legs up close to my body and waited in the dark.

Several eternities later the lights came on, harsh and white-hot on the dilated pupils of my eyes. Now I could see the door, lined with rubber flaps to exclude any light, on the other side of the bare room, to my right. It opened. Immediately I cringed, curling my body up into a tight ball. I covered my face with my hands, leaving just enough space between my fingers to see through.

Boise's gun was the first thing into the room, followed by Boise himself, then Mueller. Boise stopped inside the door, nudged Mueller and pointed at me. He was grinning.

"Boo!" Boise said. That was almost funny enough to make me forget the other, real fears that were still buzzing around inside my head.

I moaned and shrunk even closer to the wall. At the same time I dropped my right forearm and planted it in the angle between the wall and the floor. I would get only one shot at Boise and I wanted all the leverage I could get.

"Hey, dwarf!" Boise barked, still grinning. "You want to die, dwarf?" He was enjoying himself, and that was a mistake.

My sick terror was rapidly being displaced by red-cheeked, eminently healthy anger. I moaned a little bit, prompting Mueller to enter the conversation.

"Boise, I don't see why you have to needle him like that."

"You were the one who suggested doping him up."

"Just to make him easier to handle, Boise. I don't see how we can just-"

"I've already figured out what to do with him," Boise said, coming closer and looking for my eyes. His gun was still steady on me.

"Please let me go home," I said in my best whine, at the same time trying not to ham it up too much. "I promise I won't bother you anymore. Please don't hurt me." I considered my next words, then figured, what the hell. The coup de grace : "Please let me call my mother."

That broke Boise up-mentally. The room echoed with his loud, hoarse laughter. He reached out with the toe of his shoe to nudge me in the ribs, and that was what I had been waiting for. I broke him up again-physically.

Shifting all my weight onto my right arm, I tensed and kicked out with my instep at the exposed side of his left knee. It popped with a metallic sound of breaking joints and tearing ligaments. Boise dropped like a felled tree, his gaping mouth wrapped around a long, meandering scream. The gun clattered to the floor and bounced in Mueller's direction. Mueller belatedly reached down for it and got me instead. I slapped him across the bridge of the nose. He sat down hard. I stood and placed the end of the gun in his ear. I pulled the hammer back, and Mueller made a retching sound.

"Get up, Mueller, don't throw up," I said evenly. "You do and I'll kill you. Think about that."

Mueller put his hand over his mouth and struggled to his feet. I glanced at Boise, who lay on his side holding his shattered knee. His eyes had the dull sheen of cheap pottery. I turned back to Mueller.

"The drugs," I said. "I want samples of whatever it was you put into Garth and me."

Mueller's head bounced up and down like a wooden block on a string. He led me out of the room, down a narrow corridor, and into a smaller office. He reached up onto a shelf and took down two small vials.

"Which is which?"

"This is what we gave you," he said, pointing to the vial on the left. I took the other vial and dropped it into my pocket; I felt as if I were pocketing Garth's mind, his sanity.

There was something huge creeping up behind me. It was a green, multilegged insect that ate dwarfs. I resisted the impulse to turn and look for it. I knew there would be many such things waiting for me in the void of time ahead, at least until the contents of the other vial could be analyzed and a way found to neutralize its effects. Or perhaps the creatures would go away by themselves. In any case, I decided I wanted company.

"Let's see how fast you can come up with two glasses of water." I waved the gun at him. He was very fast.

I opened the vial in my hand and tapped a few crystals of the drug into each glass, then motioned for Mueller to pick them up. He didn't have to be told what to do next. We marched back to the closed room, and I waited while the cloudy water disappeared down the throats of the men. Then I left them alone-I shut off the lights and closed the door.

I found a phone and dialed Garth's precinct. Then I backed up against the wall and held my gun out in front of me. The nameless forms sharing the room with me stayed hidden. At last MacGregor's welcome voice came on the line.

"Listen to me closely," I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. "I can probably only get it straight once. Garth's insanity is a setup. I think he'll be all right if you do what I say. If you do a urinalysis and blood test soon enough, I think you'll still find traces of a very unusual drug in his system. I know you will in mine, and I can prove where it came from. In the meantime, send a car to pick me up. I'm at Zwayle Labs. I have a surprise package for you."

MacGregor started to pump me for more information. I was in no shape to give it to him, and I cut him off. Boise was starting to scream. Soon, Mueller joined him.

"Please hurry," I said softly, closing my eyes. "I'm afraid."