Ghost in the Machine, page 7
“I...don’t...care...” Dorma whispered eerily.
“Then I’ll do it myself,” Rumpp snapped.
It took a while. Every so often he heard the weird foreign voice crying out from the receiver’s diaphragm, like a lost soul. He slammed those phones harder than the others.
By the time the floor had fallen silent, the sun was setting. It was then and only then that Randal Rumpp realized the electricity was off. It had not been off before. The computers had been running. Now their screens were dim to the point of grayness.
Whatever had happened, the electricity was no longer flowing through the building’s wiring.
He made a mental note to sue the contractor who had put in the wiring, and Con Ed as well. If he sued enough people, he was bound to recoup enough of his losses to bounce back.
Randal Rumpp brushed past his executive assistant and plunked himself down behind his massive desk. He decided to play a hunch.
There was one cellular phone in the office. It had not gone crazy like the others. He picked it up, extended the antenna, and stabbed out the number of the President of Chemical Percolators Hoboken, his chief creditor.
“Mr. Longstreet’s office,” a crisp voice announced.
“Randal Rumpp calling.”
He was put through without another word.
“Alan? Randal here. By any chance have you heard about what’s going on up here in the Rumpp Tower?”
“The TV is full of it. I don’t understand. What is going on? Are you all right?”
“Never felt better. Listen, I don’t appreciate being foreclosed on.”
“The Tower was our collateral on the Shangri-Rumpp deal, and we had to call in the note. We had no choice.”
“And neither did I.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You can’t seize a building you can’t touch,” Randal Rumpp said flatly, looking at his face reflected in his buffed and polished fingernails.
“Are you saying you’re responsible for this...this Halloween prank?”
“No prank, Chuck. The Rumpp Tower is Randal Rumpp’s top tangible asset. Now it’s been converted into an intangible asset. Never play against a born winner. Chumps like you always lose.”
At that Randal Rumpp hung up, smiling a simpering smile that could have belonged to a turn-of-the-century chorus girl.
“That ought to tangle up their balance sheets while I formulate my next move.”
The trouble was, Randal Rumpp didn’t have a next move. In fact, he still didn’t know what the heck was going on. But in the game of life, he knew, he who talks big and bluffs high usually walks away with the jackpot.
And since he was a virtual untouchable in his own tower, he might as well pull on people’s chains a little more.
“Get me BCN,” he called into the next room.
“How? The phone’s are all dead.”
“Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” He stabbed out a number on his cellular and identified himself to the BCN switchboard. He was put through to the news director at once.
“Let me speak with Don Cooder.”
“He’s covering the Lincoln Tunnel collapse.”
“Really?” said Randal. “It collapsed, huh? Maybe I’ll rebuild it. How about the baby-maker-what’s her name?”
“Cheeta Ching?”
“That’s the one. Put her on. Tell her Randal Rumpp is offering her an exclusive in the Rumpp Tower spectacular.”
“Spectacular?”
“You are covering this story, aren’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, Miss Ching is down on Fifth Avenue now.”
“Great. Tell her to meet me in the lobby in five minutes.”
“But–”
Randal Rumpp hung up. He went to a wall mirror and primped his hair, straightening his fire-engine-red Hermes tie. He had to duck and twist to see himself clearly, inasmuch as he had had his last name etched vertically into the mirror surface. It was an antique, for which he had overpaid. But with his name on it, it was sure to fetch a princely sum when he got around to selling it.
“I look great,” he said. “A winner.”
As he walked past his secretary he said, “If anyone wants me I’ll be down in the lobby, schmoozing with the media.”
The woman looked up, pale and drawn. “There are no media in the lobby.”
“There will be by the time I get down there,” Randal Rumpp said confidently.
It was a prediction that proved true only because the elevators had gone dead. Randal Rumpp began the slow, tortuous stairwell descent to the lobby, vowing that when things got back to normal he would have a greased brass firepole installed in a masonry column, so if this ever happened again he could zip down to the lobby, just like Adam West.
Chapter Eight
Up close, the Rumpp Tower looked more charcoal than bronze. Dying sunlight made it smolder, as if fires lurked beneath its opaque surface.
Remo looked around. Fifth Avenue was deserted in both directions for several blocks. It was a strange sight. But it enabled them to work unchallenged.
“He stepped into the lobby and just fell out of sight,” Cheeta was explaining.
“Ridiculous,” snorted Remo.
“Supernatural,” said Delpha.
“I saw it all,” added Chiun. “From my place of vantage. Before him, a lowly fireman was pulled down to a like fate.”
Cheeta Ching looked startled. “You were here before, Grandfather?”
“In my secret capacity, I was studying the fate that has befallen this mighty but hideous structure.”
“Was there nothing you could have done?” Cheeta asked, to Remo’s relief. She hadn’t seemed to pick up on Chiun’s broad hint that he worked for someone important.
“Alas, no,” said Chiun. “For when confronted with the unknown, the first rule of Sinanju is to observe, lest one become ensnared along with lesser mortals.”
“Very wise,” said Delpha.
“That’s why I made my cameraman go in ahead of me,” Cheeta said.
“You sent your cameraman in to his death?” Remo blurted.
“He is not dead,” Delpha intoned, snatching the hand of glory from Remo. “He has merely gone to another realm.”
“Bull! There’s gotta be a scientific explanation for what’s happening here.”
“Self-blind science cannot explain all,” Delpha insisted.
“Sure it can.”
“Then why do men have nipples?”
That stumped Remo. While he was pondering the imponderable mystery, Cheeta snapped her fingers and offered a theory of her own.
“I know! It’s a dimensional rift opening up.”
“Huh?”
“Our planet is intersecting with a parallel dimension, causing an exchange of realities.”
“Bull!” Remo exploded.
Chiun cut in. “Silence! Speak, child. Tell us more.”
“It’s just a theory,” Cheeta said slowly, “but I think the tower is slowly entering the Fifth Dimension, or a parallel reality.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it’s a cultural exchange.”
“With who?” Remo snorted. “Rod Serling?”
“Remo!”
Remo subsided. Cheeta went on.
“With any luck,” Cheeta said smugly, “we’ll get a skyscraper of theirs in exchange.”
“What if they don’t have skyscrapers in Dimension X?” Remo asked dryly.
“Then we’ll probably get a pyramid, or something just as cosmic,” Cheeta said flatly.
“This is not what my inmost eye tells me,” Delpha warned.
“My ass,” Remo said.
A crowd was collecting behind the ground-floor display windows of the skyscraper, where the boutiques and highpriced antique stores were. Others milled about the atrium lobby aimlessly.
Remo had never seen such forlorn faces. Some were calling out, but Remo couldn’t hear the words.
He walked up to the glass of a window display.
“Remo,” Chiun admonished. “Be careful...”
“Relax, I’m just going to check this out.”
Approaching, Remo lifted both hands to the glass. He set himself in case his highly attuned nervous system encountered something it could not handle, and he had to retreat fast.
His fingers were reflected in the glass. They approached one another’s mirror image. At the point when they should have touched, both sets kept going. His fingers seemed to be swallowing each other.
Despite himself, Remo felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift and stiffen.
More incredibly, a part of the crowd inside, seeing how easily Remo’s hand had passed through the seemingly solid glass, began beating their fists against the inner glass walls.
Their hands did not go through. In fact, the glass clearly wobbled in its frame from the strong blows.
“This is weird,” Remo said, withdrawing his hands. They looked okay. He returned to the others.
“Do you still doubt that dark forces are at work?” Delpha inquired coolly.
“There’s a scientific explanation,” Remo insisted, frowning at the tower.
“No science of man can account for this.”
“It’s like a two-way mirror,” Remo decided aloud. “You know, where the light goes through one way but not the other, so it’s a mirror on one side and clear glass on the other.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Cheeta Ching said snippily.
Remo frowned. “It’s just a working theory. The light bulb wasn’t invented in a day, you know.”
Delpha lifted her hand of glory to the sky and waved it back and forth, getting oily smoke into their nostrils.
“Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath!” she howled. “Oh, All-Mother, we wish to communicate with the cameraman who disappeared into your nurturing earth.”
“What is this crap?” Remo demanded.
“Shh, Remo!” Chiun hissed. “It is a kut.”
Remo understood kut. It was Korean for “seance.”
“This is loopy,” he growled.
Chiun whispered, “Some matters must be dealt with in the traditional manner. Let the mudang work her white magic. It may not be Korean, but there may be some usefulness in it.”
“How do you know it’s not black magic, Little Father?”
Chiun shrugged. “She is white. What other kind of magic can she work?”
Delpha closed her eyes. Her face began to contort.
“She’s in touch with higher forces,” Cheeta said breathlessly.
“Looks like she’s having a standing orgasm to me,” Remo muttered.
Delpha’s next words were incomprehensible. They weren’t English or Korean. Remo decided they were probably witch, and therefore not important.
Delpha swayed like a palm tree that had been dipped in tar. Her face warped and twitched as her mouth chanted inarticulate phrases.
Then her eyes jumped open.
“I have seen! I have communed with the greater wisdom.”
“What? What?” Cheeta demanded.
Delpha turned to Cheeta. “I have seen inside your womb.”
“No!”
“Yes! It is a boy!”
Hearing this, Chiun turned to Remo, smiling happily. “Did you hear, Remo? A boy! A strapping Korean boy. I have always wanted a male child.”
“The skyscraper!” Remo snapped. “Remember the skyscraper? We’re here to figure out what the dingdong hell is going on with this stupid skyscraper.”
Joyous faces collected themselves, sobered, and the three celebrants reluctantly returned to the matter at hand.
“Did you communicate with anyone about the mystery?” Cheeta wanted to know.
“I have heard a name spoken by the winds that whistle through this Tower of Babel.”
“What name?”
“It begins with an R.”
“The second name begins with an R,” Delpha added.
“R...R...” Cheeta repeated, frowning. “A name that begins with an R...” Her smooth brow furrowed. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“Try Randal Rumpp,” Remo offered acidly.
“That’s it!” Cheeta howled. “Randal Rumpp! Of course. Randal Rumpp. Is he responsible for this?” she asked Delpha.
“So the Great Goddess whispers in my third ear.”
“Oh, brother,” Remo groaned.
Chiun tugged on Remo’s T-shirt and drew him aside. “Remo, what is wrong with you this night? Respect the powers that reveal hidden knowledge to that woman.”
“‘Hidden knowledge’? She didn’t exactly pull the name Randal Rumpp out of a hat, now did she?”
“I do not know if her white demons wear hats,” Chiun said vaguely.
Remo pointed out the bronze lintel over the main entrance. It read: RUMPP TOWER.
“Maybe she got a major clue from that,” he snapped.
Chiun looked, sniffed delicately, and said, “Coincidence.”
Remo threw up his hands and groaned, “Oh, I give up!”
“Look!” Cheeta screeched. “There he is!”
“Who?” Remo said, turning.
“There he is! Randal Rumpp himself!”
“It is just as the All-Mother told me,” Delpha called.
Chiun squeaked, “There, Remo! Proof!”
“Oh, blow it out your backside. Of course that’s Randal Rumpp. It’s his building, isn’t it?”
In the main doorway of the Rumpp Tower Randal Rumpp had appeared, his hair slicked down with sweat and obviously breathing hard from exertion.
He was holding up a sign. It said: HALF PRICE.
“Don’t tell me this is a cheap retail promotion,” Remo growled.
Under the HALF PRICE were words scrawled by a blue felt pen: Wanna interview me about this?
Cheeta Ching read those words. Their full meaning hit her like an anvil dropped on her head from the thirteenth floor. She shouldered her camcorder and without another thought–or any thought in the first place–she sprinted for the main door.
Remo and Chiun were caught by surprise. Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that Cheeta Ching would go plunging into the building, knowing what she did.
But an unbroadcast story was like blood in the water to the Korean Shark, and she plunged in. Through the immovable door, through the unresisting glass, through the startled figure of Randal Rumpp.
And promptly began sinking into the floor.
“Cheeta!” Chiun shrieked. He started in.
Remo got in front of him. “Wait, Little Father. You can’t go in there!”
“Cheeta!” he squeaked. “She must be saved!”
“Forget her,” Remo said, moving to block the Master of Sinanju. “She’s gone.”
“But the baby!”
“I’m sorry, Chiun, I don’t care what you do or say, I can’t let you go there. It’s crazy.”
The wispy head of the Master of Sinanju darted this way and that, attempting to see around Remo. His eye were frantic, his mouth a round hole of anguish.
“Look!” he shrieked.
Remo turned. And the instant he did so, his legs seemed to turn to water.
For a wild moment, Remo thought he was sinking into the pavement under his feet. No such thing. The Master of Sinanju had, with a sandaled toe, separated his ankles with such speed that Remo never felt the twin blows.
He went down on his knees, his stricken eyes following the blue-and-golden specter that was Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju bounded through the glass doors.
“No, Little Father!”
And before Remo’s horrified eyes, he too began sinking into the lobby floor.
Chapter Nine
Remo tried to get up. His legs refused to obey him. He was on his knees and helpless.
“Chiun! Chiun!”
“O Shub-Niggurath, hear our plea,” moaned Delpha. “Smite the clutching hands of the Great Horned One, who pulls your children down into his fiery domain.”
“If there’s anything constructive you can do,” Remo said, struggling to get his legs to work, “do it now.”
Delpha closed her eyes. Her green eye shadow made it seem like they had been replaced by dull glass orbs. “It is in the lap of the All-Mother,” she murmured.
His face twisting with fear and anger, Remo watched as Cheeta and then Chiun sank into the seemingly solid lobby floor. Randal Rumpp stuck around only long enough to acquire a dark stain in the crotch of his sharply creased pants. Then he fled in the direction of a fire door. He was followed by a knot of people shaking their fists at him.
Remo closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to watch. He willed the blood to return to his legs. He got the pins-and-needles sensation that told of returning function. Still, his legs were slow to respond. Whatever it was Chiun had done, it certainly had been effective. Remo was almost an invalid.
He blocked out Cheeta’s frantic cries of, “This can’t happen to me! I’m the perfect anchorperson! Somebody do something!”
There was no sound from the Master of Sinanju. Of course, Remo realized, Cheeta’s screechy caterwauling may have been drowning him out.
Finally, when his circulation was again flowing normally, Remo regained control over his lower body. He ignored the tingling residual pain and found his feet.
Remo ran to the main entrance. There he found a yellow hump on the pink marble floor that looked like half a grapefruit fringed with cotton. As he watched helplessly it sank from sight, silently, soundlessly, and completely.
“Chiun!”
Remo was swatting at the glass door. It might as well have been a hologram.
Carefully, he put one leg in. It went through without sensation. He let the toe of his Italian leather loafer touch the lobby floor. It dropped down and out of sight. He felt nothing. Not warm, not cold. Simply...not there.
Remo withdrew the leg. He moved back and looked around frantically. The biggest thing in sight was a light pole. He went to it and began kicking the concrete base with controlled fury.
The pole shattered and began to tip. Remo raced to meet the descending light housings. There were two. The streetlights along this stretch of Fifth Avenue resembled two-headed serpents. He caught one, laid it down on the ground. Going to the base, he chopped away at the cables and copper wiring until they came loose.
