Petrified (23 page)

Torchy himself had grown by at least a third since Nathan had last seen him – and Kavita had been right about the transformation of his beak and his plumage. In fact, she hadn't done him justice. His beak had now flushed a deep rosebud pink, and the feathers around his neck were gleaming in crimsons and yellows and iridescent greens, while the feathers on his body were gradually turning into burnished gold. His tail looked like a fine spray of yellow broom.

Nathan approached the cage and as he did so Torchy cocked his head on one side, and shuffled his claws uneasily on his perch.

‘Take it real easy, Professor,' said Kavita. ‘He doesn't remember who you are, and he's very suspicious of strangers.'

‘OK,' said Nathan, lifting up both hands to show Torchy that he meant him no harm. ‘No need to get edgy, son. I'm your father, after all.'

Without looking up from his microscope, Aarif said, ‘That is no guarantee. Whenever
my
father comes into the room, he always makes
me
feel edgy. I know he loves me, but he is such a demanding man. In Egypt we say that a father curses his son, but is just as angry with anybody who says amen.'

‘Amen to that,' said Nathan.

Kavita held up a test tube. ‘I've already extracted the stem cell sample for this evening's injections. So – just as soon as I've finished all of these readings, we'll be ready to go.'

‘That's great,' Nathan told her, and laid his hand on her shoulder. Instantly, the phoenix let out a shrill, furious screech and beat his wings, so that his cage was filled with a storm of golden feathers. Still screeching, he threw himself toward the open door, but Kavita managed to slam it shut and latch it before he could burst out of it.

‘Please, Professor – please back off!' Kavita begged him. ‘Torchy is so-o-o protective.'

‘You're not kidding, are you? It looks like you've got yourself a guard-phoenix there. He hasn't hurt himself, has he, crashing against his cage like that?'

‘Scavenger hawks are known for the fierceness with which they defend their young,' said Aarif. ‘I have heard of men who have been blinded by scavenger hawks when they accidentally came too close to their nests.'

Nathan approached the cage again, and the phoenix ruffled its feathers and warbled in its throat as if it were warning him off. ‘The question is,' he said, ‘what are we going to do with Torchy if we have to close this project down?'

‘That's a question for later,' said a deep, harsh voice. ‘For the time being, it looks like the project is staying active.'

TWENTY-THREE

Friday, 1:26 p.m.

N
athan turned around. Ron Kasabian had walked into the laboratory. He was wearing a tan suit that was almost the same color as his face, and tan Gucci loafers.

‘Well, well! How are you feeling today Nathan?' he said, with that lopsided grin that he put on to convey sincerity. ‘Kavita told me that your hand is almost completely healed up.'

Nathan lifted it up to show him, turning it this way and that and wiggling his fingers. ‘See – I told you that this phoenix project would work.'

‘So you did. But then again, you can hardly blame me for being skeptical. You were eating up so much budget, with nothing to show for it but this chicken here.'

‘Oh, I don't think you were being skeptical, Ron. I think you were being short-sighted and unimaginative rather than skeptical.'

Ron Kasabian tried to look amused. ‘Maybe you're right, Nate. Maybe I was too hasty in cutting off your funding. It looks like there could be some profit in this phoenix project after all.'

‘Not for
you,
Ron, unfortunately,' said Nathan.

There was a dead silence, except for the phoenix warbling. Ron Kasabian said, ‘Excuse me?'

‘You heard me. I said that you won't be getting anything out of it. I'm through here. I quit. I'm closing the project down. At Schiller's, anyhow.'

Ron Kasabian's grin disappeared, and his voice grew harsher. His words were conciliatory, but his tone was distinctly threatening. ‘You burned your own hand just to prove me wrong, Nate, which was a very brave thing to do. OK, I admit it, I might have made a misjudgment, but now I'm willing to recommend a temporary resumption of funding. So why would you quit now?'

‘Because nobody exploits the loyalty of my research assistants. You understand what I'm saying?'

‘I'm not so sure that I do.'

‘Well, let me spell it out for you,' said Nathan, walking across to him and poking his chest with his finger. ‘You took advantage of Kavita because you knew how devoted she is to this project, and you knew how devoted she is to me.'

Ron Kasabian turned to Kavita, his jaw working as if he were masticating a particularly gristly mouthful of steak.

‘You told him? You
told
him? What kind of a stupid slut are you?'

‘She's not any kind of slut,' Nathan snapped at him. ‘What you did to her, that practically amounts to rape. And if you think I'm going to continue working on a project that's been financed by sexual harassment, then you have another think coming. It's over, Ron, and you'll be lucky if I don't report you to the cops, and Schiller's board of directors, both.'

Ron's nostrils flared. For a moment, Nathan thought that he was going to be able to control his fury, and simply stalk back out of the laboratory. But then he lost it. His face reddened and his eyes bulged like Theodor Zauber's gargoyle. The veins in his neck stood out as thick as ropes.

‘You fucking stupid slut!' he bellowed. He pushed Nathan roughly to one side and went for Kavita, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her so hard that her face became a blur.

‘Didn't I tell you not to say anything to anybody? That was the
deal
, you slut! What did I tell you?' His voice rose to a barely-comprehensible scream. ‘
What did I fucking tell you
?'

Nathan hooked his arm around Ron Kasabian's neck, trying to pull him away. Aarif came around the laboratory bench and grabbed his right arm. But Ron Kasabian was a big man, and he was incandescent with rage. He swung his right arm sideways, with his fist clenched, and he punched Aarif so hard in the face that Nathan heard his nose crack. Blood sprayed out Aarif's nostrils and he staggered backward, stumbling over a stool.

‘Get off her, Ron!' Nathan shouted. ‘Let go of her! Are you crazy?'

Ron Kasabian didn't hear him. He was deafened by his rage. Nobody disobeyed Ron Kasabian, ever – especially women. He slapped Kavita's face one way and then the other. Kavita started to scream – an urgent, piping scream that sounded like a kettle boiling over.

Nathan jumped on Ron Kasabian again, and managed to force his head back. Ron Kasabian released his grip on Kavita, and twisted himself around, so that he could punch Nathan hard in the ribs. Nathan gasped, but punched him back. Without hesitation, Ron Kasabian head-butted him, so hard that their skulls knocked together –
klokk
! – and Nathan toppled backward on to the floor, hitting his shoulder. Dark stars swam in front of his eyes.

Half concussed, he saw Ron Kasabian going after Kavita again, and forcing her back over one of the benches. Kavita tried to bring her knee up between his legs, but Ron Kasabian slapped her again, even harder this time. He was shouting something at her, but by now he was so angry that he was incoherent. ‘You – fucking – swore to me – never – do that –
ever
– betray me – nobody – fucking –
ever
! Do you hear me?
Evaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh
!'

Nathan grabbed the stool nearest to him and heaved himself back on to his feet. He took two steps toward Ron Kasabian, but as he prepared to jump on him again, he saw a bright flare of light from Torchy's cage – like a white flower opening up, a flower with petals made of incandescent magnesium. It was almost too dazzling to look at directly, and Nathan had to shield his eyes with his hand.

Inside his cage, the phoenix had raised his head and spread his wings wide, and he was on fire. Not in the sense that his feathers were alight. He
was
fire, he had
become
fire. First of all, he had been a dragon-worm, then a bird. Now he had transformed himself into pure white flame, a flame that was hissing like a pressure lamp.

Ron Kasabian lifted his head to stare at it, although he kept his grip on Kavita's throat. Kavita herself tried to wriggle herself free, but Ron Kasabian clutched her throat even more tightly and banged her head against the bench. ‘Stay there, you fucking slut!' Nathan guessed that however angry he was, he must have realized by now that his outburst had lost him his job, and possibly his marriage, too, if his wife got to hear what he had done, and there was nobody more dangerous than a man who has nothing else to lose.

‘Ron!' he shouted. ‘Let her go, Ron! It's over!'

‘Go screw yourself, Nathan!' Ron Kasabian shouted back, without even turning to look at him. He was transfixed by the white feathery fire in the phoenix's cage, which was blazing brighter and hotter with every passing second.

Suddenly, the fire-bird flapped his wings – once, twice, three times – and then flew right through the bars of his cage as if he were made of nothing more substantial than flames. He flew at Ron Kasabian with a soft roaring sound, and then he let out a screech that made Nathan's scalp prickle.

Ron Kasabian tried to dodge to one side, ducking his head down, but the phoenix caught his shoulder pad in its claws, clinging so ferociously that there was nothing he could do to beat it off.

‘
Get it off me
!' he screamed. ‘
For Christ's sake, get it off me
!'

But the phoenix flapped its fiery wings on either side of his head, again and again, so that his hair caught alight, and his cheeks were seared scarlet. He lurched toward the door, knocking over stools and colliding with workbenches, but the phoenix flapped its wings harder and harder, until his entire head was enveloped in fire, and then the sleeves and lapels of his suit began to burn.

‘
Get it off me
!
Oh God, get it off me
!
It hurts
!
It fucking hurts
!
I can't take it
!
God,
I can't take it
!
It hurts
!'

The smoke alarms began to sing
meep-meep-meep-meep-meep
. Nathan hurried across to the door, and hoisted the bright yellow fire extinguisher out of its rack. Ron Kasabian was flailing around and around with the phoenix perched on his shoulder, blazing from the waist upward. It looked as if the phoenix was flapping its wings in order to create a downdraft, so that the flames were licking at Ron Kasabian's thighs and down toward his knees, greedy for more and more oxygen.

Nathan punched the button that started the extinguisher and white foam spurted out of the nozzle. But this fire was just like the fire in which the phoenix had first been created: it was so hot that it seemed to swallow the foam and evaporate it. Within a few seconds, Ron Kasabian was burning from head to foot, a sacrificial figure made out of nothing but flames. He collapsed to his knees, his arms by his sides, and then he keeled over sideways and lay burning on the floor.

The phoenix let out another screech, but this time he sounded more triumphant than vengeful. He lifted itself up into the air and hovered for a moment over Ron Kasabian's body, a bird made out of nothing but brilliant white fire. Nathan could just make out his eyes, as pale as glass. Then the phoenix tilted toward his cage, and flew back in through the bars. He settled on his perch, and as soon as he settled his incandescence began to dim, and his flames died down, and within a few moments he was back to his substantial self, with his rose-pink beak and his gilded feathers and his yellow tail. He let out a self-satisfied
skrarrrkkk
.

‘Call nine-one-one,' said Nathan, in a croak as dry as Torchy's. Smoke was still rising from Ron Kasabian's body and the laboratory reeked of his half-cremated flesh.

‘I did already,' said Aarif. He was dabbing his bloody nose with a white hand-towel. ‘Fire, police and ambulance.' The smoke alarms were still
meep-meeping
as if they were peeved at being ignored.

Nathan went over to Kavita. She was rubbing her neck where Ron Kasabian had tried to throttle her. Both of her cheeks were crimson and bruised, and Nathan could tell that she would probably have a black eye tomorrow. She was trembling with shock.

‘How did that happen?' she coughed. ‘I mean, that was
impossible
. How did Torchy change like that? He flew right through the bars of his cage as if they weren't even there.'

‘Are you OK?' Nathan asked her. He was shaking, too. ‘Jesus – if I'd thought for a moment that Ron would go apeshit like that—'

Kavita glanced toward Ron Kasabian's blackened body and then looked away.

‘He's dead, I'm afraid,' said Nathan.

Kavita gave a complicated shrug. ‘He was a bully and a pig. He didn't deserve to die like that, but he brought it on himself.'

She paused, still trembling, and then she said, ‘In bed, he was just the same. Trying to make me do things that I didn't want to do. Shouting at me when I refused.'

She paused again. ‘He even expected me to—'

She started to say something more, but then she thought better of it and closed her lips. Ron Kasabian was dead now, after all.

Nathan walked across to Torchy's cage and peered in through the bars. Torchy clawed his way along his perch to the far side of the cage, as far away from Nathan as possible.

‘He definitely doesn't like me,' said Nathan.

Kavita said, ‘Don't worry. He will grow to like you, when he sees how well you take care of me.'

‘We need to run some more tests, but I think you'd better do the honors until I'm sure that he's not going to burn me to a cinder, like Ron here.'