The sound of engines was deafening, but that noise soon died down and the sound of voices yelling followed. From his hiding place behind the store's counter, Freedman listened in for clue to what he could expect from these people.
A voice came in answer to an unheard question, "Don't worry about the man, he's expendable. Only the girl is important. She can't be damaged in any way."
Was he the man? Freedman wondered. If he was, then who was the girl? He decided he couldn't take any chances. He worked his way to the back of the store and, cautiously opening the back-door, checked for passing patrols. There weren't any. Edging his way out the back-door, Freedman saw a girl appear from out of a side street, walking resolutely past him. Her hair was matted, her skin blemished, and she wore only a hospital gown, badly stained.
"Wait a minute," he said, running up to her and trying to grab her.
She just brushed him aside as if he were the branch of a tree. A wave of dizziness struck from nowhere, and he thought seriously for a moment that he might be a tree. There were enough of them around.
He shook his head and reminded himself that he was in a ghost town, being pursued by Blackfist's troops. A second's inattention was enough. On the opposite end of the street, a group of them appeared, searching each building one by one. To Freedman's shock, they took no notice of either him or the girl, who walked on in total ignorance of her surroundings.
Not knowing what else to do, he simply followed her. He seemed to be invisible to the others, and he assumed he had the girl to thank for that. She walked on, following a path visible only to her, but until now, conveniently parallel to visible paths.
The path she followed soon led out of town, into the brush, and Freedman, watching the open back of her gown flap over a bare, scaly buttocks, followed also. Freedman was still unable to shake the feeling that he was in a forest, or possibly a jungle. He could almost feel his feet sinking slightly into soft, moist moss and fungus-covered earth, rather than the hard, rocky prairie dirt that he could see beneath him -- a ground that must be tearing the poor girl's bare feet to shreds, Freedman thought.
The girl walked toward the hill for several miles. As they approached, Freedman could tell by its symmetry that it was a medicine hill, built a thousand years ago by an ancient southwestern civilization for unknown purposes. As she neared its base, he felt dizzy once again. He could just barely see her begin her ascent of the medicine hill when he was overwhelmed by the thought of being in the forest, a rain-forest in the heart of darkest Africa....
Freedman realized with considerable disappointment that he hadn't made it to the tombs. If it wasn't one thing it was another -- if it wasn't a nosey Venusian Transformer, it was Hashford and Fillmore's bungling. It was like a dream: each successive delay leaving him right where he'd started. Now he lay, unable to move any part of his body, as if paralyzed by some drug or a fracture of his spine.
"What's gone wrong this time?" he cried out. "Now I'll never make it to the tomb!""Oh, I don't know." A voice that was Oscar's voice said, from the farthest reaches of a deep, dark mist. "You might make it to the tomb sooner than you'd like, if anything else goes wrong.
Oscar's voice cut through the mist like a great knife and through this laceration of his dream-state came the hard bright rays of waking consciousness.
"Oscar!" he cried. "What the hell are you doing here?!""If you must know, I work here. But, that was supposed to be my question for you. What the hell are you doing here...if it isn't too rude of me to ask?"
Freedman, infuriated by Oscar's tone of voice, tried to rise, to knock some sense into him if need be. But he couldn't. He was completely immobile. That part at the end of his dream had been real. He could move his head just enough to see that his limbs and torso were securely tied to the bed on which he lay. He could move his head to the point where he could just barely see Oscar over his own feet. He was sitting at the opposite side of the room, wearing an expensive grey suit and smoking a pipe as he leafed nonchalantly through a black notebook. He chuckled occasionally as he read.
"What's so funny?" Freedman asked angrily."Oh, this," Oscar answered, holding up the black notebook. It was the guide to the Fort Knox security system, the very book he'd held in his own hands a few days ago. "It's all worthless, last year's edition, but I suppose you know that by now, don't you. The old girl's holding out on you, isn't she? I'd offer to get her knocked off for you, but she is the President's daughter. You must tell me sometime how you got up the nerve to seduce that officious pig.... Oh, but, you were going to tell me why you wanted to come and visit us at our humble abode for...weren't you?"
"I'm not telling you anything until you untie me and learn some manners. Do you always insult people who have no way of punching you in the nose? When did you decide you were so damn superior, anyway?"
"When you started acting so damn inferior, Freedman!"
Oscar was losing his temper. He stood up, threw the notebook into a corner wastebasket, and walked over to the side of the bed.
"From the start of this operation, Freedman, you've done nothing but screw up. You bought phoney plans, you used a sociopath and an idiot for accomplices and then you came here, the last place you'd be welcome after as big a botch as this. Look, I'm sorry about the straps, but there's no getting around it. I've used up just about all of my privileges and everybody else's good humor just keeping you alive. A lot of people have a lot of things on their minds right now, myself included, and there are a few of them who are a little less patient about minor distractions than I am.""It wouldn't have anything to do with a girl in a filthy hospital gown, would it?" Freedman interrupted.
Oscar stiffened, instantly.
"What do you know about her?" he asked.
It was the reaction that Freedman had hoped for. He was beginning to reconcile himself to the fact that the guileless, easy-going Oscar had been replaced by a total stranger and he was going to have to change his approach.
"I thought you wanted to know what I was doing here. Now you want to know about some strange girl."
Oscar sighed, relaxed, and even chuckled a little.
"That's it, Freedman, try to get me flustered. Aren't you going to realize that those old tricks don't work anymore? Tell me what you're doing here first -- we'll talk about the girl later. Does it have something to do with Norman? Were you planning to rescue him from my evil clutches, or was this just a family visit?"
Freedman could think of nothing to say.
"Now that we've got that out of the way?" Oscar continued, "let's get to the girl. What did you see?"
This was the limit. Now the ignorant dentist was keeping the master thief off guard. All Freedman could do was tell him his dream.
After it was over, Oscar sat, looking into space, mumbling to himself. "Venusian Transformers... interesting. Venus, the Goddess of Love. What could transformers be? Shiva, God of destruction and transformation? Hmm... she's been mixing her archetypes again.""Who?"
"Oh, Tornado Girl. That's who you followed. Well, that ties in -- we found you a few hundred feet from an old medicine hill outside of town. And the jungle motif--that ties in with some of the things Norman's written lately. Oh, yes, Freedman, they're tied together, somehow, in all of this. Just how, is what I've been trying to figure out. You see, it's a little more complicated than you probably guessed."
Oscar's superior manner had once again put Freedman at the end of his patience.
"You've gotten pretty damned clever in the last year or so, haven't you?""Maybe."
"Maybe? Don't be so modest. Last time I checked, you were working for the Element Kings. I'd assumed they hired you out of charity. Now I see you're high up on Blackfist's list. That would make you a double agent, or are you working for the government too?"
"What do you mean by government? Wildwood, the Dongs, the President, or his daughter? They're not the same, you know. Don't bother asking, I've had business with all of them, and a few you don't even seem to know about."
"Oscar, do you have any idea how far in over your head you are?"
Oscar was silent for a moment. He paced the floor a few times, and then he stood still and began to speak.
"Poor Oscar. Poor easy-going, try-to-forget-about-it, stupid Oscar, who never quite knew what happened back there at Ratland, who tried to avoid getting involved in this mess, until this mess rose up and swallowed him whole. Freedman, yes, I know precisely, to the centimeter, how far in over my head I am. Do you know how far in you are? Do you know why that poor bitch, who would've blown the world all to hell for you, sent you phoney plans to Fort Knox? Do you know what Wildwood is going to do to all your friends within the next forty-eight hours? Do you even know who your friends are? Where they've come from? What they've done? What they've been through? No, you think you know, but you don't. Sure you have your connections, but they only tell you enough to let you think you know what's going on. They never tell you what Wildwood does in his basement every night, and it doesn't involve a jar of vaseline. They never tell you who the Element Kings talk to out on the beaches, the deserts -- deserts like this one -- or up in the mountains, on the wildest nights. I don't suppose anyone'e ever told you who Leoda Dunwoodie's father was...or is. Take a guess, Freedman, Leoda's father? Believe me, no one's ever asked you a more important question."
Oscar paused, but Freedman didn't speak. He couldn't.
"Even if you knew the answer, you'd still be wrong. Think about that sometime. Freedman, you're the one who doesn't know how far in over his head he is, and frankly, it's pathetic."
Oscar turned to leave the room.
Freedman called meekly to him and asked, "Does this mean you're not going to untie me?""No, my friend, not tonight, at least."
He turned to a cabinet, and pulled out a doctor's bag.
"I will give you something to help you rest, though."
Then he pulled out a hypodermic needle and began to prepare it.
"Wait a minute!" Freedman was frantic. "You have no right! You're just a horse doctor!""Then this won't be the first horse's ass I've put to sleep, will it?"
He quickly swabbed Freedman's arm and injected the needle.
"Relax, this is probably the last good night's sleep you're going to have in a long time."