Firechild (21 page)

“All I want is help to get back there. The loan of your car. Cash for gas and whatever else I’ll need. Rope, I guess. Maybe digging tools. Is that—” His voice tried to tremble. “Is that too much?”

“Take a minute, Doc.” Billy frowned judicially. “Let’s think this through. I know your professional situation—Miss Hearn came to me while you were out of pocket. Your—let’s call it your odd behavior is going to make people wonder if you weren’t exposed to whatever hit Enfield. Unless you shape up and stick to business, your medical practice is dead.”

“I’ll get back when I can. But Meg’s dying in that pit right now. I’ve got to move—”

“Doc! Look at the facts!” Billy stabbed that skinny forefinger at his nose. “Your practice is already gone to hell. Cash flow down to nothing. Bank balance gone and bills still rolling in. The insurance people and the law asking too many questions about that fire. Your only chance is to stay right here. Forget this Alphamega and your wonder-working brother and whatever you say is going on back there in Enfield. Open up the office and explain what you can to the cops—but I wouldn’t tell anybody what you’ve just been telling me.”

“Billy, I can’t—”

“One thing more.” Billy raised his hand. “Personal, not professional. I called Midge last night to tell her you were home; she knew you were missing, and she’s been anxious. I heard her sobbing when she tried to thank me for the call. She was happy you’re back, upset when I had to tell her you were hospitalized. Distressed with what I felt forced to say about the story you’ve been telling to cover your absence.

“She wants to talk to you, Sax. She says there’s never been anybody else she really cared about. She misses you and the house and Fort Madison. I think she’d agree to try again. If you’ll just settle down to business like that wise old M.D. you say your father was—”

“Call her for me. Tell her I’m terribly sorry. But the fact is, Billy—” He shook his head. “It’s something I guess I can’t really explain. You won’t understand. I know Midge wouldn’t. Nobody would without knowing Meg. But the fact is I’m more concerned for her than I’ll ever be for Midge. I guess you think I’m crazy, but I’ve got to pull her out of that well.”

“Really, Sax!” Billy looked hurt. “I can’t let you throw away all you’ve got and all you can ever hope to have, just for this wild dream. It does seem crazy, if you’ll let me say so.”

“Crazy or not, I can’t let her die.”

“I won’t play shrink.” Billy shrugged. “I think you ought to talk to Mathis or Meissen. I guess you’re in no mood for that, but there are facts you’ve got to face. You’re a patient here, still under treatment for shock or whatever. You can’t leave till you’re discharged.

“And something else.” Billy stopped to squint at him, bleary features suddenly tight. “If you really think there’s somebody out to kill you, you’re in big trouble, Sax. Bigger than you seem to realize.”

“I do realize.” He nodded unhappily. “But I’m desperate to get Meg out of the pit.” Voice shaking, he caught at Billy’s arm. “You’re my lawyer. You can cover for me. Let me have your car and whatever cash—”

“Suppose I do?” Billy’s frown bit deeper. “Look at what can happen. I don’t know who blew up your house. If you really didn’t do it, some very clever person is out to get you. No matter who did it, you’re under suspicion of arson. They haven’t got evidence to nail you, but skipping out now would look like an open confession.

“Driving with no license, you could be picked up for any cause or none. If you’re caught lending aid to this Alphamega—assuming your little synthetic friend is real—your friend Clegg will hang you up by your thumbs and use your hide for dart practice.”

Owlishly, he scowled.

“Want to risk all that?”

“I do.”

“If you really do—” Billy got to his feet. “It’s your own funeral. Personally, I don’t think this genetic wonder exists anywhere outside your sick imagination. That will be my own defense, if I’m accused of anything. But we’ve been good friends, and I don’t judge my friends.”

“Thank—” His voice caught. “I hope you’re never sorry!”

“Thank my parents, Sax, if you thank anybody. They swear you’ve saved both their lives. They can’t wait to see you back at the office.” Billy was digging into his pockets. “The front doors are locked at this time of night. I left the car in back, parked to the right of the emergency entrance. The tan-colored Buick I bought last year—a sweet little car, and I hope to get it back.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“I see why.” Billy gave him the keys, and dug again. “Here’s one stroke of luck for you. I played poker last night. Pulled in nearly three hundred. Just leave me a five for taxi fare back to the house. Here you are.” Billy thrust the roll of bills at him. “Wish I could to believe your dream creature is all you say she is.”

Tears in his eyes, he stuffed the money into his pockets and reached to grip Billy’s hand.

“Better check the gas. And luck to you, Sax!” Billy opened the door. “I’ll walk down the hall and try to occupy the nurses. Tell ‘em how keen you are to get back to your practice and ask ‘em when they think this new doc will let you go. You walk out back; you know the way.”

26

Homo

Ultimus

H
e knew the way, and nobody stopped him. Outside, the early summer dawn was already breaking. He found nobody .waiting to trap him in the parking lot. Driving out, and on through empty streets to the highway, he watched the rearview mirror. Nobody followed. Nobody he could see. Maybe he was lucky.

The Buick was a sweet little car, but the gas gauge stood on empty. He pulled off the road at the first truck stop to fill the tank and drink two cups of coffee. Driving on, afraid of cops and afraid for Meg, he set the cruise control at a safe-seeming fifty-nine and kept an eye on the little mirror. Cars seemed to follow, but never for long. A few were farm vehicles that soon left the road. Most passed and disappeared ahead. Perhaps his luck would hold.

The day was fine, but it dragged on forever. He wasn’t so fit as he had felt. Reaction, he thought, from the blast and whatever medications that eager young doc had ordered for him. His hip ached from a bruise he hadn’t felt before, and he got groggy at the wheel. At midmorning, he stopped at a hardware store in a little town beyond the Missouri to buy a flashlight and a hundred feet of nylon rope and a shovel.

He caught nobody watching him, yet his unease clung. If somebody had blown up the house, intending him to die, they must know the effort had failed. If Watchdog had set him free, hoping he would lead them to where Meg was hiding, they could easily be tracing him by some sophisticated means.

Yet, whatever the risks might be for him, it was Meg that mattered. The gas tank full again, a container of coffee and a hamburger to go lying forgotten on the seat beside him, he drove on. On. On. He caught the car swerving toward the other lane. Shaking, he stopped at the next service station to top off the tank and use the rest room and drink the cold coffee.

It was late afternoon when he came to sign that read
ENFIELD
20. The perimeter gate, not yet in view, would be another four or five miles ahead. He pulled off the highway on a narrow side road and bumped west through rocky pastures that must have been forest till the trees were cut, and prosperous farmland till the topsoil was gone. The few homes he passed looked deserted, fallen into slow decay and abandoned now since the panic.

Nobody followed. Nobody he saw.

At the bottom of a shallow valley, he crossed a flimsy-looking bridge and pulled off the road into the cover of a clump of trees beside the creek. He left the car there. Walking on, carrying the flashlight and shovel, the rope coiled over his shoulder, he heard a chopper’s heavy throb and soon found it low ahead, cruising along the perimeter.

Maybe alerted to watch for him? Not that it mattered. Whatever the danger, he couldn’t turn back. He dropped flat until its beat had faded, and then hiked on. Except for that hamburger, gone soggily clammy before he remembered it, he hadn’t eaten anything. Suddenly, now, he felt weak with hunger and fatigue. Though the spot where Meg crossed the fence must be somewhere ahead, he found no landmarks he recalled from the dream. The fence must be farther than he had thought.

Another chopper came out of the east. Or perhaps the same one, circling the perimeter. He dropped again into a thicket until it was far away. The release of tension nearly overwhelmed him. His whole body aching, he needed all his will to drag himself back to his feet and stumble on. The sun was low before he came in view of the fence, barb-spiked wire strung on tall steel posts, glass insulators gleaming. He stopped on the crest of a barren hill to look for anything he could recall from the dream, but the land still looked strange. Perhaps—perhaps she had crossed farther ahead.

He tramped on west, staying away from the marching fence, following the bottom of a brush-tangled valley. The day was still hot. He needed a cold beer. A beer and a rare steak and a hot shower and a good night’s rest. A sticky bitterness filled his mouth. His skin felt parched as if from fever. The bare hills looked strange around him.

The chopper came back. He fell to the ground, listening to the fading thud of its blades. The rest felt too good. He lay there too long, and the sun was down before he could spur himself back to his feet. In the twilight, he failed to see a rain-cut gully until he was sliding into it.

But he recognized its shape!

The same arroyo into which he had fallen with Meg in the dream. He clambered out and stopped to look around him. No chopper near enough to hear or see. No sound or motion anywhere. Perhaps—perhaps his luck still held.

The stony slope ahead was the same one he recalled. And there—there was the mass of brush where she had tried to hide. It had grown up around a broken concrete slab and a few twisted sheets of rusting steel. Relics of a stock tank, he thought, that once held water from the well.

He found the well. A narrow pit, half hidden under the brush. Dropping on his face to peer into it, he shrank back from a cold reek of stagnant mustiness. The flashlight picked up its wall, not quite straight but falling forever, shrinking down toward a small dark point. Nothing at the bottom that he could see.

“Meg! Meg! Can you hear me?”

A strange hollow echo came back from his hoarse yell. When that faded, there was nothing else. Uncoiling the rope, he fed it into the pit. Coil after coil, it went down, down, down. Now and then he stopped to shine the light after it. It dwindled into darkness. Listening for a cry, for breathing, for any hint of life, he heard nothing at all.

A hundred feet of thin nylon, and still no sign. When it was all paid out, he began to pull it up again. It came too easily, lifting nothing. Yet he knew this had to be the spot. He knew Meg was down there. Dead?

The rope tightened!

Trembling, he pulled on it. Gently at first, slowly harder. Too hard, at last. Something held the rope, a force too much for her weight, too much for her strength. Unless, perhaps, she was really more than human. Frightened, trembling, he pulled with all his own strength.

The rope went slack. Staggering backward, he almost fell. If she had somehow caught the rope or tied it to herself, he had lost her.

But no!

He felt weight on the line. Carefully, fearfully, chilled with his own sweat in the thicking dust, he hauled and hauled and hauled, still wondering at the strength he sensed, wondering how she could be alive, wondering if Vic had really launched a new human evolution. Could she be the first specimen of a wholly new species?
Homo ultimus?

Something came out of the well.

Something he failed to recognize till he blinked in the dimness and knew it had to be Meg. Nothing like the fat pink worm he had known. She had the look of a human child, aged three or four, but far too small for that age, her head too large. She had grown long hair, very fine, cotton-white except where mud had clotted it. Her eyes were closed. She wore a thin cotton dress, torn and soiled, too big for her. Her feet were bare, bruised and lacerated.

Her arms were stretched above her head, her hands knotted into tiny fists on the rope, her teeth clenched on it. Her skin looked deathly white, scratched deep by the walls of the well, yet with no blood showing. She felt very light when he lifted her, her body stiff and cold as if already in the rigor of death. He heard no breath, felt no pulse.

Yet she had been alive to clutch the rope—

The chopper was sudden thunder overhead. Its wind was a hot engine-reek. A blinding light glared down on him, and a bullhorn was bellowing: “Don’t move, Belcraft! Stand where you are!”

27

Tradecraft

O
ld Martha Roman’s funeral drew even fewer mourners than her husband’s. A handful of loyal servants and aging family friends. The tearless daughter and her lawyers. Attorneys for the dismantled corporation and the new foundation. An officious mortician who was probably reporting to the CIA.

For Anya and Shuvalov, the occasion offered cover for a twice-delayed contact. They stood in the cemetery with the foundation attorneys, well apart from the glaring daughter. When the service was over, Anya drove Shuvalov back to the airport.

Sitting under the Florida sun, the car was stifling. The air conditioner took a long time to cool it, and Shuvalov’s strong cologne failed to mask the reek of his sweat. He looked jittery and haggard, dark stubble showing on his heavy jowls. Fingers twitching nervously, he lit a rank-odored Russian cigarette and sat staring at her in a wary silence.

“We’re safe,” she assured him. “Unless the CIA is keener than I think. They could have got to the Avis car I had reserved in Miami, but I dropped it off at Ft. Lauderdale and picked this one up at the Hertz counter there, with no reservation. It can’t have been bugged.”

“Safe?” A harsh grunt. “Comrade, I have news for you.” He waited, but she wouldn’t ask what it was. “The Center is recalling us.”