PAGE 13
What The Left Hand Was Doing
by
“A psychologist,” Ch’ien repeated in a monotone. “I see.”
“Yes. Now, will you stand, or do I have to ask the guards to lift you to your feet?”
James Ch’ien recognized the inevitable, so he stood. But there was a wary expression in his black eyes. He was not a tall man; he stood nearly an inch shorter than Candron himself.
“You have nothing to fear, Dr. Ch’ien,” Candron said smoothly. “I merely wish to test a few of your reactions. We do not wish to hurt you.” He put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, and positioned him. “There,” he said. “Now. Look to the left.”
“Hypnosis, eh?” Ch’ien said with a grim smile. “All right. Go ahead.” He looked to his left.
“Not with your head,” Candron said calmly. “Face me and look to the left with your eyes.”
Ch’ien did so, saying: “I’m afraid you’ll have to use drugs after all, Dr. Wan. I will not be hypnotized.”
“I have no intention of hypnotizing you. Now look to the right.”
Ch’ien obeyed.
Candron’s right hand was at his side, and his left hand was toying with a button on his coat. “Now up,” he said.
Dr. James Ch’ien rolled his eyeballs upward.
Candron had already taken a deep breath. Now he acted. His right hand balled into a fist and arced upwards in a crashing uppercut to Ch’ien’s jaw. At almost the same time, he jerked the button off his coat, cracked it with his fingers along the special fissure line, and threw it to the floor.
As the little bomb spewed forth unbelievable amounts of ultra-finely divided carbon in a dense black cloud of smoke, Candron threw both arms around the collapsing physicist, ignoring the pain in the knuckles of his right hand. The smoke cloud billowed around them, darkening the room and obscuring the view from the monitor screens that were watching them. Candron knew that the guards were acting now; he knew that the big Mongols outside were already inserting the key in the door and inserting their nose plugs; he knew that the men in the monitor room had hit an alarm button and had already begun to flood the room with sleep gas. But he paid no attention to these things.
Instead, he became homesick.
Home. It was a little place he knew and loved. He could no longer stand the alien environment around him; it was repugnant, repelling. All he could think of was a little room, a familiar room, a beloved room. He knew the cracks in its ceiling, the feel of the varnish on the homely little desk, the touch of the worn carpet against his feet, the very smell of the air itself. And he loved them and longed for them with all the emotional power that was in him.
And suddenly the darkness of the smoke-filled prison apartment was gone.
Spencer Candron stood in the middle of the little hotel room he had rented early that morning. In his arms, he held the unconscious figure of Dr. James Ch’ien.
He gasped for breath, then, with an effort, he stooped, allowed the limp body of the physicist to collapse over his shoulder, and stood straight again, carrying the man like a sack of potatoes. He went to the door of the room and opened it carefully. The hall was empty. Quickly, he moved outside, closing the door behind him, and headed toward the stair. This time, he dared not trust the elevator shaft. The hotel only boasted one elevator, and it might be used at any time. Instead, he allowed his dislike for the stair treads to adjust his weight to a few pounds, and then ran up them two at a time.
On the roof of the hotel, he adjusted his emotional state once more, and he and his sleeping burden drifted off into the night, toward the sea.
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