The Touch

* * *

"Nothing's happening," McCready said after Bulmer's hands had rested on him almost a full minute. He fought the uneasiness creeping into him like a chill. "Does it usually take this long?"

"No," Bulmer said. "It usually happens instantly."

"Why isn't it working?" McCready fought off a rising panic. Bulmer seemed so unconcerned. "It's supposed to work half an hour before and after high tide! What's wrong? All the conditions are right! Why isn't it working?"

"Something's missing," Bulmer said.

"What is it? What? Just tell me and I'll have Rossi get it! What?"

Bulmer glared into his eyes.

"Me."

"I don't understand."

"I've got to want to cure you."

And then it was all clear. "So. Axford got to you."

"He sure did, you son of a bitch."

McCready repressed a desire to scream in rage at Axford's treachery. He kept cool on the outside.

"That makes things difficult, which is unfortunate, but it doesn't change anything."

"Meaning?"

"You'll remain our guest until you do something about my condition."

"I do have friends, you know."

McCready allowed himself a bitter laugh. "Not many. Hardly any, in fact. I had my people take a careful look into your life, hoping to find some sort of lever against you. But there was none. No mistress, no vices. You're pretty much a work-obsessed loner, Alan Bulmer. Much like me. The only friend who might present a problem is that lawyer, DeMarco. But I can deal with him. So you can consider yourself out in the cold."

Bulmer shrugged carelessly, almost as if he had been expecting this. Wasn't he frightened? His uncaring attitude worried McCready.

"Don't you understand what I'm saying to you? I can tie up your life indefinitely! I have personality profiles, answered in your own hand, that any psychiatrist in the country will interpret as the product of a severely psychotic and probably dangerous mind! I can keep you here or have you committed to state institutions for the rest of your life!"

Bulmer leaned back and folded his arms. "You exaggerate. But that's okay. You still won't get what you want."

"Oh. You want to deal, is that it?"

"No deal. Either I stay or I go free, but in neither case do you get the Dat-tay-vao."

McCready stared at him, his mind whirling in confusion. What was the matter with this man? The determination in his eyes was unnerving.

"So that's how it's to be?" McCready said finally, leaning heavily on his cane as he struggled to his feet. "Suit yourself."

"All you had to do was ask."

McCready felt his legs go weak—the weakness now was due to more than just the myasthenia gravis—and sat down again. All you had to do was ask. Such a naive statement… yet it cut him to the core to think that he could have avoided all the intrigue and plotting simply by walking into Bulmer's office two months ago when he first got wind of those stories. Oh, God, if that were true, if he could have been well all that time, if he could have—

No! This was a crazy way to think. Bulmer was lying!

McCready stood firm against the wave of uncertainty. He had proceeded the only way he could.

"That was impossible. I couldn't give you a gun like that to let you hold to my head. You showed what you think of my politics at the committee hearing in April. I couldn't take the risk that you'd exploit what you knew and what you'd done as soon as I decided to run for President."

"I'm a doctor. Anything that went on between us would be privileged."

McCready snorted. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"I guess not," Bulmer said, and for an instant McCready thought he saw pity break through the anger in the other man's eyes. "You assume I'm like you."

He could no longer fight the overwhelming fear that he would never be free of this disease.

"I'm sick!" he cried through a sob that tore itself from his heart. "And I'm sick of being sick! I'm desperate, can't you see that?"

"Yes, I can."

"Then why don't you help me? You're a doctor!"

"Oh, no!" Bulmer said, rising and stepping toward him. "Don't try to run that game on me, you cold-blooded bastard!

You were going to have me committed for the rest of my life a minute ago. That didn't work, so now you do the poor-broken-down-old-man number. Forget it!"

Alan hoped his words were convincing, because inside, much to his frustration and dismay, he was actually beginning to sympathize with McCready.

"I want to live again! Make love again! Shout again!"

"Stop it!" Alan said, trying to block out the words, made all the more compelling by the steadily fading power of McCready's voice.

"No! I won't stop! You're the only hope I have left!" With a sudden burst of strength he grabbed Alan's hands and pulled them down against his shoulders. "Heal me, damn you! Heal me!"

"No!" Alan said through clenched teeth.

And then it happened. Lancing pain, like fire, like ice, like electricity, ranged up his arms and throughout his body. Alan fell back and McCready screamed, a howl from the depths of his lungs.

Rossi lunged into the room.

"What the fuck's goin' on here?"

He looked at McCready, who was gray in the face and rapidly shading toward blue as he tried to pull air into his lungs.

"What'd you do to him?"

"Nothing!" Alan said, hugging his burning arms against his chest. "Nothing!"

"Then what's the matter with him?"

"Myasthenic crisis, I think. Get a house doctor or somebody up here with oxygen! Quick!"

"You're a doctor!" Rossi said, looking from Alan to the senator and back again. "Help him out!"

Alan hugged his arms more closely against himself. Something awful had just happened at his touch, and he was afraid to lay a hand on McCready again, afraid he'd make it worse.

"I can't. Get somebody else."

As Rossi leaped to the phone, Alan glanced at the open door that led to the hall. He started for it. He wanted out of here.

He made it all the way out to the elevator area, where he pressed the Up and Down buttons. He was waiting for the doors to open and take him away from there—he didn't care in which direction—when Rossi rushed up and grabbed his arm.

"Wait a minute, pal. You ain't goin' nowhere!"

It was fear and it was anger and it was sheer frustration at being told what he could and could not do once too often that made Alan lash out at the guard. He rammed his elbow into Rossi's solar plexus; as he doubled over, Alan got both hands against the back of the guard's head and pushed him toward the floor. Rossi landed with a grunt as the air wooshed out of him.

But then he was rolling over onto his back and pulling his revolver from its holster.

Suddenly a foot and a long leg, both in black, appeared and pinned Rossi's gun arm to the floor.

Alan jerked his head up and nearly cried out in fright and pleasure. Ba! The lanky Vietnamese stood there like a pallid vision from a nightmare. The door to the fire stairs was swinging closed behind him.

"Excellent, Dr. Bulmer."

He bent and casually plucked the weapon from the guard's hand. Rossi looked up at him in wonder and terror.

Just then the elevator doors opened. The blond guard stood within, a woman slouched next to him.

"Sylvia!" Alan cried in shock. How could she be—?

"What the hell are you doing out here?" Henly said, stepping forward as Sylvia straightened up behind him and beamed at Alan.

Ba stepped up beside Alan, the pistol dangling in his hand.

"Good evening, Missus," he said, then turned to Henly. "We shall need this car."

Henly said, "What the fuck—?" and reached for his own pistol.

Ba stepped into the car and slammed him against the back wall.

"Take us down, please, sir," he said.

Alan stepped in and took Sylvia in his arms. She clung warm and soft against him.

Henly was nodding and fumbling with his key ring. "Yeah. Sure." He keyed an override and the car started down.

"Thank God you're all right!" Sylvia said, hugging Alan close.

"I'm fine," Alan said, "but I don't know about the senator." He suddenly realized that he was touching Sylvia and nothing was happening. Whatever had caused the sudden progression of the senator's disease seemed to have passed.

"What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know. The Dat-tay-vao—some sort of reverse effect."

His eyes were drawn to Ba, who was holding his hand out to Henly. The awestruck guard meekly handed his revolver over to the gaunt figure that towered over him. Ba emptied the cartridges from both pistols, put them in his pocket, then handed the empty weapons back to Henly. "Please not to do anything foolish."

The doors slid open and they were on the ground floor. Alan hurried Sylvia toward the doors while Ba brought up the rear.

"Dave!" Henly yelled from behind them as they passed the front desk. "Stop 'em!"

Dave looked at Alan and Sylvia, then looked at Ba and shook his head.

"You stop 'em!"