Free Ballroom of the Skies by John D. MacDonald Page A

lobby at nine.”
    Karen waited. When Miguel released Lorin she caught him deftly. There was a split second of release in whichLorin stirred and made a faint sigh, almost a moan. Then she had him. As she went through the wide doors into the main room and toward the elevator, she looked back and saw him following her with that odd walking-on-eggs stride of the controlled. There was always a pathetic vulnerability about the controlled which touched her. It seemed particularly poignant in this case, all the tall hard strength of the man following as docile as a lamb.
    She took the elevator up two levels and walked him down a corridor to an empty room. Lorin sat on the edge of the bed, turned stiffly, lifted his feet up, and lay back, eyes open and staring, arms rigid at his side.
    Karen sat on the edge of the bed and quickly took him through all the mechanical actions of returning to New Jersey, talking to Kelly, listening to the man’s protestations, accepting the refund, returning to the city. She took him on an aimless walk, had him eat a solitary meal, decide to take Miguel’s offer, and return to the apartment. She stopped the visualization the moment he stepped through the door, through the barrier. It was the work of but five minutes to give him the entire visualization, and it took another few seconds to push consciousness even further back so that he would remain in stasis until she called to get him.
    With an impulse that surprised her a bit, she bent over and kissed his unconscious lips lightly. Poor big oaf. Poor bewildered earthling, torn this way and that. Pawn in a game he’d never know. She kissed her fingertip, touched the middle of his forehead, smiled down at him, and left the room, shutting the door quietly, even though it would have made no difference at all if she had slammed it.

CHAPTER SIX
    Kelly stubbornly pushed the money back across the desk.
He said, “Now take it, Mr. Lorin. I already told you. I’ve reconsidered. I don’t think that disclaiming the article would give me enough immunity. They’d wonder why I accepted it.”
    Dake wearily pocketed the money, stood up. “I guess there’s nothing I can do but look for someone else.”
    Kelly leaned back in his chair. “Now if you’d come to me with a little better backing. Say with a note from Mig Larner, or somebody like that …”
    “What made you mention his name?”
    “I was just using him as an example. If Mig says you won’t get in trouble, you won’t. He keeps all the right wheels greased, that lad does.”
    Dake left Kelly’s place. It was after six. He had a long search for a cab. Once he was back in Manhattan he got off at New Times Square. Strange day. Darwin … or what was supposed to be Darwin … dying like that. He felt strange. Almost unreal. It was an odd sensation, as though his side vision were impaired, as though he could only see straight ahead, and everything else was a grayness, a nothingness. It was the same with sounds. He kept hearing sharp individual sounds, but the background noise of the city seemed to be missing. It seemed to him as though there were some serious impairment of all his senses. Yet, oddly, he could not seem to bring himself to stop and check that impairment—to turn his head quickly, to listen consciously for all the background noise. And those people he did see, those normal characters of the streets were subtly altered. Colors had slightly differentvalues. And his instinctive and automatic appraisals seemed distorted.
    He saw a lovely girl looking into a cluttered shoddy store window, examining the ersatz fabrics. He found himself looking at her with a peculiar feeling of envy and jealousy. And he was conscious of the breadth of shoulder of the men. He could not be certain, or even investigate the fact, but he had the wry idea that he was mincing along rather than walking. The world had a dreamlike aspect, and it seemed to him that, almost on an unconscious level, he was trying to