Field Study (2 page)

Michaels of the N.M.A. shook his head. "A man from an adjacent office was carried in to him a couple of days ago with every symptom of a burst appendix. This 'faker' protested at first, said he wasn't a Doctor. Then he asked to be left alone with him. Ten minutes later, that man walked out unaided."

"Nicely stage-managed," said Frend. "He was a stooge."

"We checked. It's difficult to believe there was collusion. The patient is a solid, decent citizen. He said the pain began to go when Trancore had been looking at him for a while. In his own words, he felt something moving in his guts, and then the pain stopped."

"I find it less difficult to believe that he was a stooge," repeated Frend obstinately.

Pake's chief intervened. "Gentlemen, my department has received instructions to give you every assistance in obtaining information about this man. Mr. Pake will be in charge. We are. not concerned with the medical side of the case, but only with its legal aspects."

HE paused, dropped diplomatic language. "Though why in hell it should be my department instead of the police, or the D.A.'s office, or the Bureau of Public Welfare, or the Bureau of Immigration is something I still haven't figured."

Sir Greville Gray said, "In every instance where a direct law-enforcement agency was about to investigate, even before his identity papers could be asked for, the man has disappeared. His nationality is unknown. He operates only for as long as he can escape wide-spread notice and police attention. That's why the few newspaper stories that have appeared are quite disconnected and based solely on speculation. Your approach must be very discreet."

"Seems it'll have to be invisible, too," Pake said. "He knows I'm an operative already. But he cured my — "

Pake stopped. Maybe his post-nasal drip had cleared up of its own accord. It was a comforting thought. He wished he could believe it.

IN HIS office— "I'm sorry, sweetkin," he told the phone. "Just can't make it tonight. I've got to stay on this case. It's — er — detective work. The police are helping me."

The nerve-edged vehemence of his wife's voice grated on his ear. He held the receiver an inch away.

"So you think you're a real G-man now, a big tough hero running around with a bottle of rye and a blonde. Well, listen, hero, I hope they shoot first. I'm through."

"It's nothing like that, hon. You're getting mixed up, anyway. Bureau men don't drink on duty. And you're pretty hard to please — you called me an accounting machine this morning. But look, lovesome, I'll be home around seven. It's just that I have to stay near a phone. We could play checkers. And I promise I'll grab me a day off— "

He held the receiver six inches from his ear. "I'm sorry," he said again loudly and lowered the phone, which was still angrily vibrating, to the cut-off.

There was a note on the kitchen table when he got home.

"An old school friend called. Anyway, that's my story, hero. And we're going places. Don't wait up."

Pake sighed. Hero ... He curled his lean body up in a chair by the phone with a book.

The call came at midnight: "He's skipped."

"I was waiting for that. I've seen the papers. Keep on it."

Pake turned back to the midnight editions. There were few facts. Three patients had been interviewed. From the descriptions, one was the Eurasian with leprosy he had seen that morning.

The word-of-mouth snowball and the inevitable newspaper swoop had taken just two weeks this time. In Paris, Trancore had lasted a month.

One newspaper admitted that they had an anonymous call claiming a miracle cure, days previously, but had put it down to a cultist bid for publicity.

The phone rang again. The caller said, "If this guy doesn't come out of his office soon, these newspapermen will bust the door down. What shall I do?"

"You're on loan from the police, aren't you? If they try that, identify yourself and threaten to book 'em. You don't need to mention that Trancore isn't in that office anyway."

The phone spluttered disbelief.

Pake grimaced. "I know how you feel, sergeant. Maybe he flew out of the window. He was picked up as he came out of the front entrance, and I'm waiting to hear where he holes up. But spin those reporters some yarn and keep then there if you can."

Pake shook his head as he put the phone down.

He took a freshening shower. Past twelve was a fine time for newspapermen, police and miracle healers to be about their business — did Trancore ever sleep, or had he gone in for all-night sessions? — but Accountancy Branch men worked office hours.

Discreet investigation guaranteed, every cent traced through the best-cooked books. That was probably Washington's line of thought: if Accountancy could do it with embezzled cents, they could do it with elusive fake Doctors.

But these cents didn't add up. It didn't make sense.

Nonsense. A whole row of thaumaturgical non-cents.

Accountancy could trace a cent: So, logically, they could scent a trace. And sense a non-scent . . .

Uh-uh. Pull yourself together, hero . . .

Pake lolled his tongue at the mirror. Clean and pink, no fuzz or sign of civilized costiveness.

Constipation. Post-nasal drip. And leprosy.

He leaned forward until his forehead touched the mirror. His eyes showed red tracery beneath drooping lids. What did real Government men — not the office-bound type — do to stay awake?

Pake recalled Betty's crack about rye and a blonde. And he remembered a nearly full bottle.

He answered the insistent phone with a glass in one hand.

He jotted the address of a cheap rooming house, dressed and left, thoughtfully putting the bottle in a pocket.

THE man on watch said, "Room five. Going in?"

Pake shrugged. "I don't know. If I do, he'll probably float out of a back window: This kind of thing isn't up my alley."

The watcher looked surprised. "Why, you're F.B.I., aren't you?"

"Not so's you'd notice," said Pake gloomily. He shivered a little in the after-midnight chill.

Someone was emerging from the building. The watcher drew Pake into the shadow of an unlighted shop doorway. "It's him, anyway." Then he frowned. "No. Sorry. Same build, but — "

"For my money," Pake murmured, peering across the road, "you were right first time. The norm of a crowd."

"Hey, whadya doing?"

Pake shook off the restraining hand. "I don't know," he said again. "Ask him for a light, maybe. This can't be played according to the Detectives Manual. If there is such a thing. I wouldn't know. If he vanishes in a puff of smoke, call the psychiatric ward ambulance — for me."

Pake's lanky strides quickly overtook the slow-moving man.

"Pardon me — "

The man turned. "Good morning, Mr. Pake. I congratulate you on your acuity of perception and your imagination. How are your nasal passages?"

The world reeled a little on its axis.

"Walk with me," said Trancore, and took Pake's arm. "But first signal to your policeman that he needn't follow us."

Frankie Pake flapped a limp, dismissing hand at the watcher in the shadows, and walked on into a dream.

"Am I mad?" he asked simply, after a while.

"No. You're saner than most. Your higher cortical centers are momentarily dulled by fatigue and alcohol, giving full reign to intuition. 'Hunch' you term it. An endearing quality when allied with imagination. A saving grace, indeed, of your race."

"You're from India?"

"Trancore is a good Indian name. Incidentally, fatigue is a disease."

Pake said, "Don't cure me; I couldn't bear to wake up. When do we start running like hell to stay in the same place? Pardon me."

Trancore shook his head as Pake, still walking, upended a bottle to his lips. The side-walk was crowding up and the lights brightening in nagging neon as they neared Broadway.

Pake lowered the bottle. "You still here?"

"You expect me to disappear? I could, quite easily, by convincing you of my non-presence, as I did when I walked past those men outside my office. Or I could slip into a crowd and, within limitations, alter the apparent cast of my features to conform seemingly with an average. But don't you want to ask me some questions?"

Pake pondered this. "Maybe I do. Why do you want to answer them?" He was feeling less like a real G-man and more like an Accountancy Branch investigator every moment. "You figure I'm harmless, huh?" he added resentfully. "Like my wife?"

"By no means. If I weren't about to conclude my own particular investigation, I would say that you were most dangerous to me. Your imagination is quite highly developed."

Pake stopped. He grabbed Trancore's sleeve. "I can't walk and think," he announced. He dumped the empty bottle by a fire-plug.

THEY sat on high stools in the garish light of an open-fronted soft-drinks bar.

"If this is going to be a jag," Pake said, "I suggest we lay a foundation of milk."

Smells wafted in from the street, the delicate and the insistent intermingled: rubber, hot oil, burned gasoline, cheap perfume, sweat, dust, peppermint: astringent tang of warm steel, of leather, even of stone. It had been a hot day before the sun went down.

Pake sniffed appreciatively.

"It's a sense we abuse and neglect," he said as the milk was served. "You did cure my post-nasal drip, didn't you?"

Trancore had been watching him with a half-smile. "All those questions in your mind, yet you relish this rediscovery above all. I don't despair of you." Trancore sipped his milk. "The infection was cured by your body. I helped. I can't tell you how, unless you have five hundred years to spare."

"Hardly," Pake said. "I haven't twelve hours to spare, if I'm to save my job. Or my reputation. Which, or either, I'm not sure." He caught Trancore's amused eye. "All right, that's not true. But I need answers to a pretty lengthy questionnaire. Who, when, what, why, where — you know."

"You're convinced I'm a telepath?"

"Aren't you?"

"Not in your sense of the term, which is a semantic misnomer in any case. As a diagnostician, I sense abnormalities in physiological functioning. As a psychologist, I sense — difference. In purpose and function. When you came into my waiting room, I knew you were not there as a patient.

Your presence was a disharmony. The same with your colleagues. As for your name and your occupation, they are naturally blazed so clearly on the surface of your mind that even your native clairvoyants could read the information."

"That," Pake breathed, "takes a load off my mind. You don't, for instance, know what I'm thinking about that dark-haired ex-blonde who just served us those shakes?"

"The one with the excellent pectoral development? No. Your own muzzy picturafe and thalamic concepts are your own. I can't interpret them."

Pake said, "Fine. You know all about the aphrodisiac effects of alcohol, though. Are you too big for me to understand, or can I see you clear and self-explanatory against the background of Broadway?"

Trancore did not reply for a moment. He was looking at the other occupants of the bar. There was something like pity in his eyes. Not pity, though, Pake decided, searching hard for another word. Something bigger; less human, perhaps. Or more human. Compassion? Trancore said, as if to himself,

"The girl with the bright face laughing at the febrile witticisms of her unpleasant escort: three-quarters of her right lung has gone."

Pake felt he was overhearing something he shouldn't. But he said, "You could put her right?"

"I could stop the rot in that lung, Pake. But she would return to that back room full of smoke and dust. She would still travel on a crowded subway to an overheated office. She'd still starve herself to buy clothes to keep in fashion. I don't have a cure for those things."

"That's the first time you've admitted you have a cure for anything."

Frankie Pake felt confused, despite his acceptance of the situation — which still surprised him. And he felt grudgingly humble. He saw, as if for the first time, the face of the man who called himself Trancore.

It had been the norm of the crowd, a pale blur in a flash-light shot of a moving mob. Now it was individual, seen clear and not through a wavering mask. The underlying personality was revealed, strong, but with no desire for domination.

There were those once-precious pulps that Betty had scornfully banished to an out-of-the-way cupboard when they'd moved into the apartment. Clues there, maybe? Mutant superman in hiding? Spy from a far galaxy? — ouch! No rayguns, no squirming, tentacled horrors, no —

A little sanity, a little sobriety, little hero . . ,

"What are you, Mr. Trancore?"

"A healer. That is my profession."

"And now suppose you answer the question."

"Is your head clear?"

PAKE, remembering the rye, said, "Strangely, it is. But I'm a little drunk from the neck down, and the dream-state persists."

"I wish," said Trancore — and it seemed the most foolish, yet the most significant thing that Pake could remember hearing him say — "I wish sometimes that I could escape reality so easily, by imparting to it the patina of a dream. You all do that." He got up. "I'm going to work now. I have about eight hours. You will be my guide."