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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] foundation, and its multiple banks of computers had functioned as CURE's information-gathering brain. But a crisis in which CURE had been nearly exposed forced a major change. Folcroft became a sanitarium in fact as well as name. And its many computers, thanks in part to the march of technology, went into a concealed basement where a small bank of them could do the work of a roomful. With the change came new headaches. Medical staff. Patients. AMA oversight. Billing problems. And now this. A missing patient. Smith's preoccupation with the missing patient forced from his mind two messages that had come in over the office tape machine. Two separate phone lines accessed the machine. One was a dummy line to be used by Remo and Chiun for noncritical contact messages, and the other was known only to his wife. Smith had balanced the additional six dollar-and-twenty-two-cent cost of an extra line against any possible security risk and erred in favor of frugality. When he had returned to his office after a fruitless and frustrating search for the missing patient, whose name was Gilbert Grumley, Smith had replayed both messages. The first was from Remo. He had rattled off some breathless nonsense about mooing. Smith, not knowing the current whereabouts of Remo or Chiun, told himself that there was no problem as long as there were no assignments on the CURE agenda. And all was quiet there. The second message was from his wife, Maude. It was brief. It ran: "Harold, dear, could you please remember to bring home a package of those nice mashed-potato flakes you like so much? And by the way, I saw the oddest thing today. You know the-" The tape had not caught the entire message and Smith made a mental note to get a longer tape cassette if he ever saw one on sale. As he closed his briefcase and locked the office behind him, Harold Smith wondered what the odd thing Maude wanted to tell him was. Oh, well, he thought, he would know soon enough. In the lobby, the guard informed him that the missing patient, Gilbert Page 23 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Grumley, was still nowhere to be found. "It's just a matter of time," Smith said. He said good night to the guard, went to his personal parking space, and tooled his battered sedan out the gate. He stopped off at a convenience store and bought an economy-size box of Flako Magic Potato Mix, first examining every box to find the one with the latest freshness date. The package cost exactly $1.37 and Smith paid for it with a dollar bill and exact change, which he took, one careful coin at a time, from a little red rubber change holder. It took longer to give exact change, but Smith had once been short-changed twelve cents by a careless clerk in 1955, and was forced to drive seven miles back to the store and argue for twenty minutes before the proprietor agreed to rectify the error. Smith had only caught it when he got home and went through his wallet to budget his spending money for the next working day. At any time, he knew exactly how much money he had on his person. A penny's difference was usually enough to depress him. Maude Smith, frumpy and white-haired, greeted him with a perfunctory kiss at the door. "Did you bring it?" she asked. "Yes, of course," Smith replied, setting his worn briefcase on the table by the door. He settled onto the big stuffed sofa. "Don't get comfortable, Harold. The roast is ready. And these potatoes will take only a moment." Five minutes later, Smith had settled into his straightbacked wooden chair at the head of the dining-room table. He tasted the roast first. It was very dry. "Good?" asked Mrs. Smith. "Yes, very," Smith said, taking a sip of ice water. "And the peas?" Smith took a knife and herded some peas onto his fork. The peas tasted like peas. "Good," said Smith, who was indifferent to peas. Mrs. Smith beamed. She never got tired of cooking for her appreciative husband. "And the potatoes, Harold. How are they?" Smith tasted them. They tasted artificial. But of course, he wouldn't say that. As a matter of fact, after over thirty years of marriage to a woman who served mashed potatoes three or four times a week without fail, he had grown totally disinterested in mashed potatoes. But, of course, it would be the height of impoliteness to criticize his wife's cooking. When Maude Smith discovered artificial mashed potatoes, it was like going from bland to worse. But Smith consoled himself with the fact that at least these mashed potatoes were not lumpy. "The potatoes are very . . . smooth," he told her. And with the tasting ritual done, Mrs. Smith dug into her own food. She thought the potatoes tasted medicinal, the peas tinny, and the roast beef too dry. But if this was the way her Harold preferred his food, she was going to be a good sport about it. But the man did have odd tastes. Harold Smith got the potatoes out of the way as fast as possible. He mixed the peas into the white mush in a vain attempt to make them more flavorful. Then he washed them down with ice water. Smith was working on the dry roast beef when Mrs. Smith perked up suddenly. "Oh, what did you think of that strange thing I mentioned on the phone?" "Actually, the tape ran out before you finished speaking. All I got was something odd that you had seen or heard about." "We have new neighbors," Mrs. Smith said. "Oh, did the Billingtons move?" "The Billingtons moved out when Richard Nixon was in office. We've had two families in that house since." "That's nice, dear," said Dr. Harold W. Smith, wondering what was so odd about having new neighbors. He knew his wife would get around to telling him. Eventually. "There were the Reynoldses, who had too many children, and the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |