A Borrowed Man (19 page)

It should have fallen over on me, and to tell the truth I had my free hand up to catch it. Only what I really thought was that it would swing toward me like any other door, and that is exactly what it did. It moved slowly because it was so heavy, but I had expected that.

What I saw then was what I expected, too. It was the fourth-floor landing, with the stairs coming up, and the lift tube doors, and the other doors, one to the room where the reactor was, and the other one to what had been Conrad, Senior's, office and lab. I knew that if I stepped out and shut that door, I would have to climb through windows if I wanted to get in there again; I was about to try to figure out how to reset the door so it would not lock when a new thought hit me, and it hit me hard.

If I did it, it would mean that anybody else who came up here and tried that door could just open it and walk into the jungle. As if that was not bad enough, he might even leave the door standing open behind him, probably because he would be afraid it might lock if he closed it.

That would mean that anything in that jungle could get out and come right down the stairs even if it did not know about tube lifts. No sweat, just walk through the doorway. Animals would be bad. Bugs might be a lot worse. So I did not reset the door. I just walked out onto the landing and shut it good and tight behind me, which took a good hard pull. I tried it, too, bearing down on the handle and shaking it. It was locked as solidly as ever, a thick, probably steel door that somebody who knew what he was doing had painted to look just like stained and varnished ponticwood. By that time I was breathing Earth's air again and glorying in it. It was the same air that I had been breathing ever since the day I had been pulled out of the incubator, air that knew warm golden light, birds' wings, and good cooking. The air of home. I got into the lift tube.

When its doors clanked open, I was about to go back into the room I had slept in, but I got stopped. It was Georges. “Ah! There you are, Mr. Smithe. Mahala's in the kitchen helping the 'bot make breakfast, and I've been looking around for you.”

Thinking fast I said, “I'm afraid I haven't shaved. If you'll excuse me, I'll join you as soon as I shave. You're in the dining room?”

“No, no! In the sunroom, where all the pictures are. Just take this lift tube—”

“I know where it is.”

“Hurry up before your breakfast gets cold. Mahala, well, she gets angry.”

“I'll shave as fast as I can,” I promised. Which I did, ducking into the corner room to put my socks and shoes back on, then taking the lift tube to the second floor and finding a bedroom that must have been Junior's, with a shaver on the basin counter and almost a dozen nice clean shirts hanging in a closet; these were the usual thing, all colors, with a deep V-neck and no buttons. I picked a blue one with green sleeves.

Georges and Mahala were sitting down and eating when I came in, but Mahala did not look angry. She just smiled and pointed to all the food. There was a beautiful fruit salad, a platter with a big pile of bacon and another with a big pile of sausages, plus scones and clotted cream to spread on them. When I said, “This is a feast!” she gave me a happy grin.

Georges said, “The 'bot will make you an omelet, too, if you want one. They're quite good.” He was eating one himself.

I told him this was more than enough to satisfy me, and helped myself to a little of everything, beginning with fruit salad and ending with bacon.

“So what have you been up to?”

“Not much.” I could not help smiling.

“You were outside your room without shoes? I'll bet you thought I didn't notice. If you were listening in on Mahala and the 'bot, you can't have heard much.”

Mahala giggled.

“I wasn't.” I tried to make it light.

“I didn't think so.” Georges was having none of that. “What was it?”

I chewed and swallowed a bite of fresh pineapple. “I've been trying to decide how much to tell you.”

“Meaning that you're not going to tell us everything?”

I had made up my mind. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you everything, so we're going to leave it at this: I have been exploring the house.”

“But you're not going to tell us what you found?” Georges raised an eyebrow.

“That's right, because I want to show you and not spoil it in advance.” I stood up and picked up my plate. “Besides, you wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I won't, but I can show you something good right now. See that table out on the patio? What do you say we eat out there? Yesterday the rain kept us inside all day. I don't know about you and Mahala, but I'd like to go out and get a breath of fresh air.”

It took a few seconds for Georges to nod; but he did, and when he looked at Mahala and touched his ear I knew that he was all over it. We took our cups and plates out and told the maid 'bot to carry out the rest of the food. Then Georges said, “This ought to be safe. Going to tell us about it now?”

“Absolutely not. In order to be believed, I've got to take you both into those rooms. How much do you know about electronics?”

He shook his head. “Very little, actually.”

“Small nuclear reactors?”

“Enough to build one, maybe. Not enough to improve what we've apparently got.”

That came as a surprise, and I had to take a moment to digest it. “You could run one? Operate it?”

He nodded. “And make simple repairs. That was what I did when I got out of the university. I fixed them. It was interesting for the first year or so, then I got bored with it. Eventually I quit and went to—what do you want to know?”

“I want to show you one, and get you to tell me a little about it. Teach me.” I smiled. “Just a quick course.”

“I'll be happy to. They're very safe, really. There are all sorts of safety devices built into them to prevent them from overheating.”

“It won't explode?”

“Not the way you're thinking. Not if it's a standard model—they're not bombs. When a commercial reactor goes out of control, it overheats and there's a steam explosion. No mushroom cloud and nothing like the power of a nuclear bomb.” Georges paused. “I see I've lost you.”

“I'm afraid you're quite correct. I didn't know about the steam.”

Georges sipped iced kafe. “Something like ninety-seven percent of all reactors power generators. They heat water in a sealed system, and the steam drives a turbine. Clear?”

“I think so.”

“When one goes out of control—somebody's got to disable several safety devices for this to happen—it heats up, getting hotter and hotter. Steam pressure builds. There's a relief valve, of course, but for an explosion we've got to assume that valve's failed somehow. Meantime, the boiler's weakened by all that heat coming off the reactor, so you get a steam explosion. I've never seen this happen, you understand. Only seen film.”

“No nuclear explosion?”

“Right. If you're lucky, the steam explosion wrecks the reactor so that it quits overheating. If you're not, it continues to heat up. That starts fires and melts steel, everything collapses, and inside the collapse you've got a loose collection of radioactive material. Dangerous but not catastrophic.”

My mind was so full of thoughts that I wanted to stand up and pace.

Georges grinned. “Want to show me what's got you so interested, Mr. Smithe?”

“I do, only not now.” I took a deep breath. “There are two things we absolutely have to find. You can guess the first pretty easily.”

“No, I can't. Not unless you mean the woman who owns this house.”

“Two things we have to find before we can find her. The first one is a card that will open those doors. Imagine yourself in the place of Colette's father—of Conrad Coldbrook, Senior. You've put something, or found something, enormously valuable behind one of those doors. Would you have just one card for it?”

“Wait up! Are you saying you've been in there without a card?”

I nodded. “What about that second card? Would you do without one?”

Georges considered. “I might, but probably not.”

“Why not?”

“All right, I might lose one, or one might quit working. Quit if I got it near a strong magnetic field, for example. I've told you I don't know a lot about electronics, and I don't. But a friend who did told me once that would wipe a card. It's what hotels do. Do you know about that?”

“No. Please tell me.”

“They give you a card when you rent a room, and they like to get it back when you check out. If they do, they wipe it. They send a signal that recodes the door, and they can recode your card to whatever room they want. A strong field wipes, a varying field recodes. They don't need a backup card because they can code any card they've wiped to open that door. In general, a private person had better have a spare.”

I thanked him.

“Wait up. I said the father probably wouldn't do that. I said it because I've seen his lab. My guess is that he coded his card himself, and some screen will have a record of the coding. If his card were wiped or lost, he could code another. Or maybe he could wipe the doors and recode them, then code himself a new card, like the hotels. That way, if somebody found his old card, it wouldn't work.”

I sighed. “This morning we're going to search the house for a couple of things. One is the spare card, if it exists. Colette's father probably had a card on him when he died. If he did, she will have gotten it and the people who took her will have it now. The second is a weapon, or weapons. Her father must have had some, and we may need them. We'll take missile pistols or ordinary pistols, and hunting weapons might be even better. Anything that we can find.”

Mahala held up her pad: BIG HOUSE.

I nodded. “It is. I've been thinking about that, and it seems to me Colette's father would hide things—we'll assume that he had things to hide—in one of three places, places nobody else was likely to spend much time in. I'd like you to take the laboratory upstairs, Mahala; I'll show you where it is. I searched it superficially when I was here with Colette, but I found nothing. Will you look? A card or weapons. Possibly the coding for a card, or a means to code cards.”

She stood up and gestured. Georges said, “Do you want her to go now?”

“No. She should know where you and I are. I'd like you to look for the master bedroom. It's probably on the ground floor, but it could be on the second. Will you do that, and search it thoroughly?”

He nodded.

“I'll be searching the library. That's on the ground floor on the other side of the house.” I pointed. “This patio is on the south side, and that's where the sunroom is. The library's on the other side, the north side. It doesn't seem likely that he'd hide weapons in there, but it's possible. Behind the books and disks, under the floor, or whatever. On the other hand, it would be the perfect place to hide a card, or that's how it seems to me.”

“Hollowing out a book is an old, old trick.” Georges rose. “You just cut the center out of a lot of pages. If it's a big book you might easily put a missile pistol in there. Are you sure he had physical books? You don't see those much anymore.”

I stood, too. “Colette told me once that all the books in the library had been pulled off their shelves. That may not actually have happened, and to tell the truth I don't believe it did. But I don't think she'd have said it unless it was possible to do it.” I said “to tell the truth,” only I was not; not the whole truth, which was that I had been in the library and seen her father's books when Colette and I had come.

Now I went back, and I must have pulled down thirty or forty books before it hit me. At first I was mad at myself for being so stupid, but after that I had to laugh. Right! That second card
was
hidden in the library, exactly like I had thought it might be. Only I was the one who had hidden it there.

Toward the back of the room, there was a freestanding bookcase a little more than half full of books with plastic bindings. I went to it and pulled out
Murder on Mars.

What I wanted next might be in the kitchen or it might not. I went back there wanting to ask the 'bot, but it was off somewhere. So I poked around in the cabinets and eventually found what I wanted in the broom closet, small but powerful and, according to a built-in meter, all charged up and ready to go. After trying it out to make sure it worked, I dropped it into a pocket.

Georges was making enough noise that I had no trouble finding him and the master bedroom. He looked at me as I came in and said, “Nothing.”

I motioned for him to follow me and led him to the lift tube. Up in the fourth-floor lab, I asked Mahala to do me a favor, if she could. “Find a site where people advertise for domestics. Make it a blind ad with a box number, if you can. We want an experienced housekeeper, and we want to see references. Salary negotiable. Can you do that?”

She gave me a confident nod and handed me a sheaf of papers before she went to the screen. I read the first two or three, riffled through the rest—there were a dozen or so—saw they were all pretty much alike, and put them in my pocket.

Georges had found a spare chair. “You don't want to talk.”

“You're right. Right now I've got too much to think about.” I had started pacing up and down, passing the book from hand to hand.

“Fine. I'll leave you alone.”

It took me two or three minutes, but I finally got it. Colette had mentioned emeralds when she told me about her brother bringing her the book.

Mahala stood and pointed to the screen.

Georges said, “She means she's done. I doubt you'll get any answers today. Tomorrow there might be some. Want to tell me why you want to hire a housekeeper?”

I said, “No,” and motioned for both of them to come with me.