Supermind Part 31

The two lumpy-faced men goggled. Petkoff did not move.

Malone turned, and saw a tall, thin civilian with dark gla.s.ses.

"Cease," the civilian repeated. "It is the girl we are to arrest! The girl!"

"This is not a girl," one of the lumpy men said. "Sir. We are to arrest this man. Our orders say distinctly--"

"Never mind your orders!" Petkoff said. "Go and reduce your orders to shreds and stuff them up your nostrils and die of suffocation! My orders say--"

"The girl!" the civilian said. "Where is the girl?"

Malone darted forward. Petkoff caught him neatly with one arm as he went by. "Until we decide what to do," the MVD man said, "you stay here." Malone bucked against him, but could get nowhere. "Meanwhile,"

Petkoff said, "I am for letting you go."

"I appreciate it," Malone said through his teeth. "How about proving it?"

"If you let him go," a lumpy man said, "you will answer to our group head."

Petkoff tightened his hold protectively. Meanwhile, the civilian was climbing up into a stratospheric rage.

"You are dolts, imbeciles, worms without brains and walking bellies filled with carrion!" he said magnificently. "I have orders which I am sworn to carry out!"

"You are not alone," Petkoff said.

Malone took another try at a getaway, and failed.

"We take precedence," a lumpy man said. "We can talk later. Arrest comes first."

"But who?" the civilian snapped. "I insist--"

"There shall be no arrest!" Petkoff screamed. "No one is to be arrested at all!"

"I swear by the bones of Stalin that my orders state--" the tall man began.

"The bones of Stalin are with us!" a lumpy man said. "Go and die in a kennel filled with fleas and old newspaper! Go and freeze to the likeness of an obscene statue of a bourgeois deity! Go and hang by the ears from a monument four thousand feet high in the center of the great desert!"

Inspired, the other lumpy man screamed "Charge!" and came for Petkoff and the civilian. Petkoff whirled, letting go of Malone in order to beat back this wave of maddened attackers, and Malone took the advantage. He ducked free under Petkoff's left arm and started around the gesticulating, screaming, fighting group for the door at the back of the restaurant. He took exactly four steps.

Then he stopped. The Mongol, his eyes red with a combination of vodka and bull-roaring rage, was charging toward him, his hands outflung and his fingers grasping at the air. "Warmonger!" he was shouting.

"Capitalist slave-owner! Leprous and ancient cannibal without culture!

You have begun a war you can not finis.h.!.+"

"Ha!" Malone said, feeling inadequate to the occasion. As the Mongol charged, he felt a wave of intense pragmatism come over him. He reached back toward the bar, grabbed a bottle of vodka and tossed several gla.s.sfuls into the giant's face. The Mongol, deluged and screaming, clawed wildly at his eyes and spun round several times, cursing Malone and all his kin for the next twenty-seven generations, and grabbing thin air in his attempt to reach the _Amerikanski_.

All of the customers appeared to have discovered urgent engagements elsewhere. There was little for the Mongol to collide with except empty tables and chairs. But he did manage to swipe one of the lumpy-faced men on the side of the head with one flail of his arms.

The lumpy-faced man said "Yoop!" and went staggering away into Petkoff, who spun him around and threw him away in the general direction of the bandstand. The diversion provided Malone with just enough time to start moving again.

Four uniformed men were making their way toward the ladies' room from the opposite side of the restaurant. They were carrying a stretcher, which seemed pitifully inadequate for the carnage Malone had just left.

He blocked their path. "Where are you going?" he said.

"You are American?" one of them said. "I speak English good, no?"

Behind him, Malone heard a yowl and a crunch, as of a body striking wood. It sounded as if somebody had fetched up against the bar. "You speak English fine," he said, feeling wildly out of place. "Have you been taking lessons?"

"Me?" the man said. "It is no time for talk. We got to get lady for hospital."

"Lady?" Malone said. "For hospital?"

"Miss Garbitsch her name is," the stretcher-man said, trying to get past Malone. The FBI agent s.h.i.+fted slightly, blocking the path. "We wait outside one revolution--"

"One what?"

"When hands revolve once," the man said. "One hour. Now we get call so we take her to hospital."

It sounded suspicious to Malone. He heard more yells behind him, and they sounded a little closer. The sound of running men came to his ears. "Well," he said happily, "goodbye all."

The stretcher-bearer said, "Vot?" Malone shoved him backward into the approaching mob, grabbed the stretcher away from the other three men, who were acting a little dazed, and swung it in a wide arc. He caught an MVD man in the stomach, and the man doubled up with a weird whistling groan, turned slightly in agony, and hit another MVD man with his bowed head. The second man fell; Malone heard more crashes and screaming, but he didn't find out any details. Instead, he threw the stretcher at the milling mob and turned, already in motion, racing for the ladies' room.

He had no notion of what he was going to do when he got there, or what he was going to find. Her Majesty and Lou were in there, all right, but how were they going to get out without being arrested, clubbed, disemboweled or taken to a Russian hospital for G.o.d alone knew what novel purposes?

His mind was still a little foggy from the vast amounts of vodka he had poured down, and he wasn't in the least sure that teleportation would even work. He tried to figure out whether Her Majesty had already carried Lou off that way--but he doubted it. Lou was quite a burden for the old woman. And besides, he wasn't at all sure whether it was possible to teleport a human being. A lump of inanimate matter is one thing; an intelligent woman with a mind of her own is definitely something else.

It seemed to take forever for him to reach the door, and he was panting heavily when he reached for it. Suddenly, another hand shot in front of his, turning the doork.n.o.b. Malone looked up.

It was impossible to figure out where she had come from, or what she thought she was doing, but a bulging, slightly intoxicated Russian matron with bluish hair piled high on her head, a rusty orange dress and altogether too many jewels scattered here and there about her ample person, stood regarding him with a mixture of scorn, surprise and shock.

Malone crowded her aside without a thought and jerked the door open.

Behind her he could see the melee still continuing, though it looked by now as if the Russians weren't very sure who they were supposed to be fighting. The Mongol's great head rose for a second above the storm, shouting something unintelligible, and dropped again into the crowd.

Malone focused on the matron, who was standing with her mouth open staring at him.

"Madam," he said with stern dignity, "wait your turn!"

He ducked inside and slammed the door behind him. There was a small k.n.o.b to bolt the door with, and he used it. But it wasn't going to hold long, he knew. If the mob outside ever got straightened out, the door would go down like a piece of cardboard, bolt or no bolt.

Undoubtedly the gigantic Mongol could do the job with one hand tied behind his back.

Malone turned around and put his own back to the door. Women were looking up and making up their minds whether or not to scream. Time stood absolutely still, and n.o.body seemed to be moving--not even the two directly before him: a frightened-looking little old lady, who was trying to hold up a semiconscious redhead.

And, somewhere behind him, he knew, was a howling mob of thoroughly maddened Russians.

8

The door rattled against Malone's back as a hand twisted the k.n.o.b and shook it. He braced himself for the next a.s.sault, and it came: the shudder of a heavy body slamming up against it. Miraculously, the door held, at least for the moment. But the roars outside were growing louder and louder as the second team came up.

Where was the Mongol? he wondered. But there was no time for idle contemplation. The scene inside the room demanded his immediate attention.

He was in the anteroom, a gilded and decorated parlor filled with overstuffed chairs and couches. There was a door at the far side of the room, and a woman suddenly came out of it holding a pocketbook in one hand and a large powder-puff in the other. She saw Malone and reacted instantly.