Tintagel Read Free

that his "transmission room" be as quiet as possible when he worked, since the crudest vibrations interfered with his "stalking."
    Christy read his expression as he checked.
    "It would have been bad if the music stopped in the middle, wouldn't it," she asked.
    Lanier merely nodded, taking another swig of tea.
    "Well," he began quietly, "I hope the 'copter makes it through all the shit in the air. It probably would have been suicide if they tried to wheel him out of here in an ambulance. What a wreck he was."
    "Before or after?"
    He looked at her. "Very funny." Christy was no politico either.
    But Lanier was still thinking. If the music being sent from Christy's transmission board into the transceiver in my ear wasn't recorded fully, I wouldn't have gotten to Randell. Or …
    He let the thought pass. It hadn't happened to him yet, but the "experts"—if ever there could be said to be any—said that it was just possible to get stuck in the mind of a man lost to Liu Shan's Syndrome and forever wander the world that mind had created for itself. But being a Stalker, immune from the Syndrome's effects, he didn't believe a word of it.
    The idea was only unpleasant when Lanier reconsidered the river of human blood inside the wall city. When he had chased the fleeing Randell outside onto the grassy, sloping piedmont, he knew that he could have spent the rest of eternity under that wonderfully blue sky and not minded a thing. Except that he would be there with Albertson Randell and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra . As a Stalker, he could come and go as he pleased, fortunately.
    Lanier shivered suddenly. Christy, about to go back into her own office in the rear of the house, caught sight of it. Lanier gently put the glass of iced tea down.
    "Again? So soon?" she asked.
    "No, I was only thinking back to the place where I found Senator Randell."
    "You shouldn't do that. It might bring it on again."
    "I know," he smiled. "But not too likely. Not with me, anyway. I wouldn't be paid so much for being able to do what I can if I would slip into the Syndrome as easy as most." He paused, almost as if catching his breath. Christy watched every nuance his face made. "But sometimes …"
    "Yes," she said. "I know." They looked at each other momentarily. They both understood. Christy knew all too well what Liu Shan's Syndrome did, and what Fran Lanier always underwent to pull people out of it.
    Two years ago, when Lanier moved out to southern California to retain his anonymity as a Stalker, his best friend and lawyer, Charlie Gilbert, called him up as soon as the video was installed. He had a problem.
    His girlfriend, Christy, whom Lanier only barely knew at the time, had succumbed to Liu Shan's Syndrome at a modern dance concert at Palo Alto. Everyone in the theater was surprised, since to get into the hall for the performance in the first place, patrons had to have a clean immunization card. Even at the time, Lanier was swamped with government rescue requests that ranged from bishops to princes, to the sons of millionaires. Even farmers and laborers in the Yucca Valley had tried to track him down. A waitress from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, needed him to find her mother. Everyone needed him, it seemed.
    For Francis Lanier was one of eighteen hundred of the most sought-after Americans of the century.
    Liu Shan's Syndrome fed off the emotional variances of its victims, especially when spurred on by any form of music. And everyone likes music. Lanier was one of a small community of people immune to the disease that manifested itself as Liu Shan's Syndrome. When individuals would succumb to its effects and literally vanish from sight, he would meditate on the music and "go under" to return as many people as he could to the real world. In times like these, this usually meant scientists and politicians first, and special cases second.
    Yet the Syndrome was relatively new to the west coast of the United States when Christy went under. In his sudden shock,