The Missing Man (v4.1) Read Free

through a narrative of
something he had done the day before. The girl rolled the report sheet through
the typewriter opposite a different blank and asked a question timidly; a tape
recorder showed its red light, recording the questions and answers. George
hesitated, looking at the ceiling desperately for inspiration, his brow more
knotted than before.
    George always had trouble understanding the
reasoning behind red tape. He did not know why certain answers were wanted.
They both looked up with relief when Ahmed interrupted by turning off the tape
recorder.
    “They told me to team up with you this
afternoon,” Ahmed said to George. “They give this job priority over
reports or any other job. Are you feeling okay now?”
    “Sure, Ahmed,” George said, slightly
surprised.
    “Let’s go outside and see if we can tune to
the subject. Okay?”
    “Okay.” George got up, moving easily.
A bruise showed at his hairline on the side of his head, almost hidden by hair.
On George’s right arm were two blue bruises, and below his slacks on the right
ankle was a line of red dents with bruises. A left-handed assailant with a
club, or a right-handed assailant with a chain, swinging it left to right,
would bruise a man on one side like that.
    Walking out of the Rescue Squad office, Ahmed
indicated with a gesture the bruise on George’s arm.
    “May I ask?”
    “No,” George replied and closed his
mouth tightly, staring straight ahead as they went through the double doors.
    George didn’t want to talk about it, Ahmed
thought, because he had lost that fight. That meant he had been outnumbered.
But he was not dead or seriously hurt. The assailants then were not killers, or
he had escaped them. Probably a trespassing problem. Probably George had
trespassed onto some group’s territory or Kingdom last night while searching
for Carl Hodges by himself. Ahmed put the thought aside. They stopped on a walk
among the bushes and trees and looked up at the towering buildings of
Presbyterian Medical Center, like giant walls reaching to the sky. Helicopter
ambulances buzzed around landing steps like flies.
    “Let’s not waste time, George, let’s get
you tuned into Carl Hodges,” Ahmed said, pilling out a notebook and pen.
“Do you have a picture of Hodges with you?”
    “No.” The big young man looked uneasy.
“You going to do it that same way, Ahmed? If he’s sick, will I get
sick?”
    “I’ve got a picture here.” Ahmed
reached for a folder in his pocket and passed a photo to George.
    The ground jolted in a sort of thud that struck
upward against their feet.
    Nine miles or more away, and two minutes
earlier, Brooklyn Dome, the undersea suburb, suddenly lost its dome. The heavy
ocean descended upon it, and air carrying a torrent of debris that had been
houses and people blurted upward through an air shaft. A fountain of wreckage
flung upward into the sky, falling in a circular rain of shattered parts to
float upon the sea.
    All morning a mass wish to escape from the
enclosure of walls had driven George happily into the heights and winds and
free sky. Now that note in the blend of the mood of the city suddenly changed
and worsened to panic, helplessness, defeat and pain, and then an end. The
event telescoped in speed, compressed into a blow of darkness. The broadcast of
many thousand minds ended and their background hum in the vibes of the city
diminished.
    Reaching out with his mind for information,
George encountered the memory of that impact. It went by like the thunder wave
of breaking the sound barrier, like a wave of black fog. He shut his eyes to
tune in, and found nothing, except that the world had lightened. A burden of
fear had been suddenly erased.
    George opened his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Something big,” he said. “Something …”
    Ahmed was watching the sweep-second hand on his
watch. “Fifty-five hundred feet, one mile,” he muttered.
    “What are you doing?”
    “It’s an explosion somewhere. I’m