Chapter 7
Robert Lennick leaned far back in his swivel chair, and sighed a deep sigh at the ceiling, being careful it would not be heard by the party on the other end of the wire.
“Now, listen, sweetheart,” he said. “You are good. Got that? Good, with a capital tremendous. But you don’t click in urban dramas. You’re too—” He didn’t want to say tall, or gigantic, though these words were more readily at tongue-tip. “—too Junoesque for the parts we’re casting.... No, I mean it. You just—Well, you’re just not the housewife type, darling!”
The speaker crackled in his ear for another minute, and Lennick sat and studied the piled-up scripts in his in-box with wearily narrowed eyes. When his chance came again, he said, “No, not today. I’m sorry, Lona, really I am.... It’s impossible, that’s why.... All right, if you have to know—We’re shooting Fredric Stanton, that’s why—”
The speaker’s reply to the phrase made some of the color wash out of Lennick’s smooth-shaven face, and this time he interrupted with a snarl. “You better watch it, Lona, baby! A smartaleck pun like that can get you sent to the hospital. You know damned well I mean we’re going to photograph him.... Okay, but simmer down, huh?!... Okay, baby, I will.... Yes, as soon as anything, anything at all in your line comes by my desk.... Word of honor.... Sure thing.... Yeah, that’d be lovely. We’ll do it sometime.... Okay, Lona—Lona.... I said—.... O-kay, Lona!” He spat out the last words, and clamped the phone into the cradle with vicious pleasure. “Dumb broad!” he mumbled, then got up and opened the door to his anteroom.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Frank,” he said to the tall, gangly youth who rose from a chrome-and-plastic chair and came into the main office.
The man called Frank sank into a chair and fiddled idly with a button on his shirt until Lennick had the door closed again. When the youthful producer was once more back in his swivel chair, eyeing his visitor, Frank lost his casual air and locked eyes with him, disconcertingly steady blue eyes, and Lennick had to fight an impulse to wince.
“Trouble?” he said, after a moment.
Frank knitted his brows, and cupped his upper lip in the moist curve of his lower before replying, without emotion, “Depends.” He fiddled with the button again, then gave it up and stood. He preferred pacing as he talked. “It’s—Well, it’s about Andra, Bob.”
Lennick stiffened. “They got her...?” His relief was only a conditional relaxation when the other man shook his head; he was keyed to tighten up again without notice. “So where is she? How is she?”
“Fine, to answer your second question. I don’t know the answer to the first, though I could make some guesses. The thing is—We better get the word out to the others not to try and contact her.”
“Not to—!?” said Lennick, stunned. “But she needs help, bad. She has to hide until we can—!... Frank, what’s the matter? You look so damned funny!”
“Okay, I’ll level with you, Bob.” Frank stood at the front of the desk and leaned his hands on the blotter, staring down at the anxious face of his friend. “Last night, after her escape, Andra tried to hide in the Temple, up on ninety-five. The Goons were right after her, Bob. There wasn’t even any Service because of her. Every person in that Temple was checked—one by one—for Voteplates. She had one, Bob. She got out.”
“That’s crazy!” Lennick gasped. “Where in hell—? Frank, I saw them collect her Voteplate after the accident. She couldn’t have gotten it back. And she couldn’t have a spare, I know, so—?” He saw the uneasiness still in the man Frank’s features, and was quiet. “There’s more...?”
“After her escape,” Frank said flatly, taking no joy in telling the tale, “She met a man, outside the arcade, went with him for cocktails, then up to his level. That’s the last she was seen, Bob. It was the Hundred-Level. None of us are authorized to go that high without escort.”
“But who the hell did Andra know on the top?” Bob blurted. “She’s given autographs to a few higher-ups, but—”
“It was Lloyd Bodger, Junior, Bob. They acted like old friends. Now do you see why I think it’s unwise if she’s contacted?”
Lennick suddenly surged from his chair and nearly tore the shirtfront from his visitor in an angry fist, as he yanked the other’s face close to his own. “You can’t mean that about Andra, Frank. You know her! You’ve worked with her—And I... I know her better than anyone, Frank. She’s not a traitor. She wouldn’t betray us.”
“I wish,” said Frank, calmly ignoring the enraged aspect of Lennick’s attitude, “you’d put your heart back where it belongs and think it over just once with your brains....”
Bright beads of moisture suddenly appeared in Lennick’s eyes, and he released his grasp of the other man’s shirt and sank down into his chair, burying his face upon his arms. “There’s an explanation,” he mumbled into the blotter. “I know there is. She wouldn’t—” he lifted his head, suddenly hopeful. “Frank, we’re still here! If she told all she knew, we’d be atomized by now, right?”
Frank looked uncertain. “Maybe. At least—It’s a point in her favor. I don’t know. You’ve got me shook, now.” He sat back down and pondered, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “If she isn’t hollering for the Goons—What’s she doing with Junior? A guy like that doesn’t take perfect strangers up to his place, does he?”
“I don’t believe that part at all,” said Lennick. “She may’ve gotten off before he did.”
“The indicator went right on up without stopping. My witness’ll swear to it. Right to top level, just before Ultrablack.”
“Maybe she’s under arrest, going for questioning,” Lennick parried weakly. “It could be, you know.”
“Why up there? Goons carry Truth Serum. Besides, the witness further states that they didn’t look like anything but a couple of chummy dates. Real chummy.”
“How about if—Maybe he was helping her? Andra’s not a bad looker.... If she turned on the tears—”
“You’ve been reading your own scripts, friend,” said Frank, not unkindly. “This is reality we’re dealing with, not never-never-land on film. This Lloyd Bodger, Junior is not the boy-most-likely when it comes to helping anti-Hive people. Face it, Bob. Something’s up.”
“So why, I repeat, aren’t we all on our way down the chute costumes, cameras and all?”
“That’s the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” Frank admitted. “And the only thing that prevents me hiring a sniper to knock her off.”
“You’d do that?” said Bob. “To Andra?”
“For the time being, we’ll let it ride,” Frank decided on the doorstep. “It may be handing ourselves over on a silver salver, but—We’ll let it ride. Till we hear from her. And she’d better make it convincing.”
“I know she’d tell me the truth—Whatever it is,” said Bob, then regretted his rhetorical lapse into doubt. But Frank let it pass, and simply said, with a fleeting smile of compassion, “If I were you, I’d take that Goon’s advice, from yesterday when Andra was carted off: Get engaged to somebody else.”
“I want to talk to her,” Bob insisted.
“If it was your neck, fine. Talk. But it’s all our necks. I can’t risk it.”
“You could fix it, Frank. You could find out where she is, a way to get there. Come along, even, so I don’t fumble the ball. Please, Frank? I’ve got to know....”
“Bob, if you knew what you were asking—!” Then the taut, painful set of his friend’s features cracked away some of his veneer, and he slumped wearily against the jamb, fiddling with that button again. “So maybe insanity’s catching, or something,” he said after a pause.
“You’ll help me?”
“I’m not absolutely sure I can, Bob. But—Tell you what.... Buzz me about nine tonight. I might have an idea.”
“Thanks,” Bob said. “You’re—You’re a nice guy, Frank.”
Frank turned and walked across the anteroom and out, without replying. Robert Lennick settled back in the swivel chair again, this time not at all relaxed.