Dark Matter (48 page)

Dee broke into their conversation. “And if
you find him? What then? Rasputin, he’s a strong man―we know that. You’re a
cripple.”

For the thousandth time, Rasputin cursed
his ineffectual hibernation.

To Dee he said, “But I have this.” He
withdrew Cain’s gun and mimed taking a pot shot at her.

“It’s empty,” she said.

“He doesn’t know that.”

“But—”

“Enough talk,” he said, stuffed the gun
beneath his belt, and exited the corridor.

Escape from the outer lab required only
that a button be pressed. They soon emerged onto the darkened front steps of
the biology faculty. The night air was balmy, and full of the scent of exotic
flowers.

“What am I supposed to do?” said Dee. “Sit
here, wave a handkerchief? Wring my hands?” Her hands were planted on her hips,
elbows ajut, normally a sure sign he had kicked the hornet’s nest. But tonight
he would not yield.

“No. Go make sure of Jordy. Call a taxi.
Break a window, if you have to, and get him out. With luck the cops might be
waiting when you get there.”

Her rigidity evaporated, and she suddenly
looked small in the gloom.

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,”
she said. “If you find him, stay out of sight until help comes.”

“Sure. I’m an Arts student. If I find him,
I’ll hang back and ponder the paradox of the paralysis of violent emotion.” He
flashed her a grin.

He left her, a prayer on his lips for her
safety, and struck out toward Winthrop Hall. Even for one unfamiliar with the
campus, even at night, the hall was an easy mark. Its square tower loomed above
the buildings and trees.

He tested the gun, making sure it sat snug,
and hurried as best he could over a lawn slick with moisture from sprinklers.

His heart thumped louder than he recalled
it ever having done. He strained for touch with his identity―the night, his
flight through it, his destination, felt surreal. All conspired to render him a
stranger to himself, a watcher of someone else’s plight.

When he reached the tropical grove just
south of the hall, he sunk onto his haunches in the deep dark beneath its
boughs, amidst perfumed blooms like ragged paper, and cast a searching eye over
the grounds. The hall lay no more than fifty yards away. Between it and the
garden lay a bare lawn. It took little effort to imagine the hall an old keep,
the garden, where he crouched, an encircling forest, and the lawn a
glacis
,
a buffer to thwart besieging armies.

But tonight there were no armies, just one
man versus another, and the order of the day was stealth not force―at least,
that was his hope.

It was only when his leg began to complain,
and he hauled himself upright on his cane, that he saw the movement. Beneath
the hall was an undercroft, a long low room. Light spilled from its windows,
and people were milling near an entrance. Peals of laughter like thunder
filtered out, and the unmistakable ring of glass on glass.

“A party?” he whispered. The festive mood,
so near yet as untouchable as a parallel universe, threatened him with that
overwhelming sense of surreality. He fought it and focused his gaze on the
people milling at the far fringe of the lawn.

He interpreted their groupings: one huddle
of men and a woman were workmates; one, two couples in farther orbits were
yearning for the seclusion of darkness; one man alone, warming himself with his
arms, had a melancholic stance―another New Year’s and what have I done with my
life, perhaps?

The coast looked clear. He straightened up
to his full height and forced himself to walk as casually as he could on his
cane up a gentle slope toward the hall’s entrance. He padded along a colonnade
of carved limestone to where the hall’s double-doors stood open. He paused in
the deep darkness of its anteroom and considered the best course. Cain could be
anywhere in there―and what on earth was he doing?

On instinct, he ducked across the threshold
and snuck up a flight of steps that accessed the gallery level. It afforded a
view of the whole hall and, he hoped, the alcove behind the organ.

The going was hard. He was hunched below
the rim of the balcony wall at the front of the gallery level, straining to be
quiet, and all the while dredging his mind for remembrance of the hall’s exits.

An urge took him suddenly, to throw himself
into the eye―surely it held schematics of the hall by which he might examine
any conceivable breakdown. Resisting the temptation took such an effort he was
forced to halt until it had passed.

It was when he moved again that a vague
memory―a memory of the old-fashioned sort―of having passed into the hall from
the undercroft came to him. The occasion had been a book sale held down there.
He had discovered the passage that communicated with the hall while carrying a
box of books too heavy to be exploring with.

He held the thought of that passage to a
room lit and peopled, like a child grasping a torch beneath the covers—help was
near.

He reached a point on the gallery level
overlooking the stage. On one side of it sat a keyboard, and reaching up behind
it, standing in diminishing ranks, were the pipes that gave voice to the keys.
The deepest notes would come from tubes thicker than a man. (Perhaps Cain would
stuff his dead body in one, to be discovered when someone next attempted The
Ride of the Valkyries.) Rasputin knew from having attended Dee’s graduation
that the instrument possessed an overwhelming power of soul-sapping
lugubriousness―a reality-check for bright-eyed graduates.

He realised then that the end of the
gallery on his side terminated not in a dead-end, but a flight of stairs. He
guessed they landed somewhere behind the keyboard and its alcove.

He went down on all fours, slowing almost
to a halt. His cane rapped lightly on the wooden floor.

May as well sound the organ
, he thought, grimacing. He laid it aside and went on without it.

He reached the lip of the stairs.

I just need a glimpse. Just to lay eyes
on him and that’ll be enough. Then hunker down, surveil. Make sure he doesn’t
scarper before help comes.

It was as he inched himself down the first
stair, hands planted and lowering his rump from one to the next, that he heard
the faintest
click
.

He froze.

Silence stretched out. He lowered himself
down another step, stopped, straining to listen, and soon heard another
clicking, scratching sound.

He had reached the stair’s only right
angle. Once he rounded it, he would have a direct path into the alcove. He drew
a steadying breath and lifted himself, head tilted, till he could see over the
balustrade and into the alcove.

Starlight came warped through a massive
wheel of stained glass above the pipes. White keys gleamed in the dark, lying
in terraces, and broken by half-tone blacks. Rasputin was still, poised,
feeling his arms begin to tremble with the strain, willing his eyes to see into
the pool of darkness.

He could not be sure, but he thought it was
empty.

He lowered himself down the remaining steps
carefully, and froze in the process of peering round the stair’s foot. The
scritching, scratching sound had to be coming from within the alcove.

Was Cain holed up under the keyboard? Was
he injured? Perhaps he had run into the police?

Rasputin poked his head round the corner,
and this time saw a small bundle sitting beneath the keyboard, on the foot
pedals.

He let a guilty sigh leach through his
teeth. Cain wasn’t here.

He rose, crossed the few feet to the
keyboard, stooped and grasped the bundle. He drew it out and held it close to
see it in the poor light. As he did so, the bundle emitted a scratching sound.
It startled him and he almost dropped it.

He paused.

It became silent.

He took a step backward. Three seconds
later, the bundle emitted another sound.

He dug his hand into its soft folds and
found something hard. He drew it out, and light began to dawn―and on its heels
fear.

He held in his hand the phone that was
partner to his. Through it, he had been hearing echoes of the motion of the
phone in his own pocket, sent through the cell network to the laptop at Reim’s
house, then bounced back to this phone. It had been wrapped in a woollen
cardigan. Reim’s woollen cardigan.

He turned in time to see someone approach,
their silhouette disappearing as the door to the undercroft swung closed
behind. It had not looked like Reim’s.

“You’ve changed,” said Rasputin.

Cain shivered despite the warm evening. It
stuttered his speech. “No point being a dead professor, wanted for the theft of
a biological weapon.”

“What are you talking about?” said
Rasputin, and, to his surprise, felt a flush of anger heat his face. He ripped
the gun from his belt and brandished it.

“Talk. I’ve got a gun.”

Cain raised his hands, but Rasputin saw his
smile glint.

“Shot with my own gun. How embarrassing.”

Rasputin flicked the gun with a theatrical
gesture.

“Okay,” said Cain. “When the police raid
your professor’s home tonight they will find him not-long dead, the victim of
someone else’s greed. He was, after all, playing a high-stakes game. The virus
will be missing, and the police will not know if he hid it before he died, or
if it has been stolen for the second time this evening.”

The point of the gun dropped as Rasputin
struggled to process what Cain was saying. He didn’t like the way he spoke of
the thing as accomplished. Coming to himself, he jerked the barrel upright
again.

His eyes were finally adjusting to the
darkness. He began to make out Cain’s new face.

“Who are you?” said Rasputin.

“I’ve already told you, at great length I
might add.”

“What mask is this?”

“You are looking at the form of a man once
known as Gottfried Schürmann.”

“Why that face?”

“Because it is the easiest for me to find when
in a hurry. Your little stunt in the lab caused that hurry.”

Fear jabbed Rasputin’s guts.

“Adapt or die,” said Cain. “Your professor
had a lab within a lab. I have a bug within a bug. The one who invented it is
the best, or so he brags.”

The smile on Cain’s Teutonic features
touched his entire face.

He went on. “The police have been informed
of Jordan’s hoax call. I convinced them not to press charges. I suppose they
will scour the recording of my call in weeks to come for clues to the thief and
murderer at-large. You and I know it won’t help a great deal, will it.”

“Where will you be?”

“Mourning my best friend and my
girlfriend.”

Rasputin took a moment to comprehend, and
then shouted, “I’ll do it. I’ll shoot.”

“Hush! If you must threaten idly, do it quietly.”

Rasputin jabbed the gun forward.

“You think I won’t?”

“I think you can’t.”

Cain reached and inserted his index finger
into the gun’s barrel.

“I dare say you could give me a nasty
bruise if you threw it at me, but it would be much more effective if loaded.”

Cain withdrew his finger from the gun. The
movement made a faint sound, like a bubble disappearing down a drain.

He said, “Wouldn’t you expect the ultimate
chameleon to be able to play dead? I heard you dispose of the bullets.”

Cain’s genial tone was beginning to wear
thin. Beneath it, Rasputin could hear naked spite.

“Do you hate me that much you’d kill so
many people just to spite me? Why not finish the job now. Then run, hide, lay
low. You don’t need to go on murdering.”

“I don’t hate you any more than the next.
And I do intend to hide, lay low. Running would be disastrous. I’m no idiot.
This”—he patted his pockets—“will jangle bells right at the top of the tree.
Perth, Australia, might be the rear-end of the world, but when the shit hits
the fan, your little city won’t know itself. There will be a frenzy. They
trusted to obfuscation to hide Pandora’s Box, and will now see how foolish that
was.”

He chuckled. “To think, all I wanted in the
beginning was a dweomer to kill. Do you know how many reports of savant-like
behaviour I sifted through before I found you? Thousands. The gift inexorably
manifests―your name appeared on an application for a medical procedure for
research, submitted by a Professor Thorpe, if I remember correctly. I
dispatched over a hundred phones, and surveilled them for the telltale signs of
an imago.”

“And here I am,” said Cain. “Such are the
twisted skeins of Fate.”

“No. Tomorrow there will rise a storm, but
I will be sitting in the last place they will think to look: right in the
middle. I will adapt. As Jordan I will mourn. I’ll try to piece together how
and when the people dearest to me became entangled in a plot so dark. Folks
will mark the deadness of my gaze, and gossip about it over café lunches. I
will travel. And when I disappear, they will suspect suicide, and the gossip
will shift to Jordan’s parents.”