The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (12 page)

Lane did know that, and it pained him. Someone would buy the place for sure. Some couple would think it was the pinnacle of rustic charm, and that would be the end of it. And his dad kept dropping the price, just to make sure.

“Okay, but let’s be quick,” Lane said. They walked across the partially mown lawn to a buffer of tall grass that marked the edge of the Simmons property.

They followed a narrow path that cut through to the far side, and stopped to take in the house, a Cape Cod bungalow with white siding and powder-blue trim. Simmons was ex-Navy and ran a tight ship. His grizzled flattop looked just like its nautical namesake. He seldom spoke and never smiled. A permanent scowl creased his mouth, and his pale eyes assessed you with merciless calm whenever you encountered him. But on this day, Simmons was absent. Only the brown oil spot in the empty driveway remained.

“Okay, let’s go,” Johnny said, and they moved quickly across the lawn and down some stairs to a wooden boathouse. Halfway down its side was a door, and on this particular day it was secured with a big padlock.

Lane felt a flood of relief. Johnny’s ill-advised expedition was now over. Old man Simmons’s boat dwelled safely out of reach. And what a boat it was. A classic speedboat, sporting a fifteen-foot white hull of plywood reinforced with fiberglass. The mahogany topside held fore and aft seating spaces, with a big curved windshield and a car-size steering wheel. When Simmons took the boat out, you could hear the snarl of the big engine all over the bay. It threw off a mighty wake, with twin ridges of foaming white cutting a big, violent
V
into the water astern.

But today, the craft floated in silent repose inside the boathouse. And the padlock barred their entry to admire it. “It’s all locked up,” Lane observed. “Let’s go.”

“Don’t think so,” Johnny said, and started for the door. A large paper clip extended from his thumb and forefinger. Big trouble. Lane knew it instantly. Johnny was a mechanical wizard. Machines became nearly transparent in his presence. In no time at all, the lock was sprung, the
door was open, and Johnny was inside.

“Come on, chickenshit,” he called out to Lane. “Check it out.”

After a cautionary glance up at the house and driveway, Lane stepped into the structure’s dim recesses. The craft floated pointing toward the shore, and Johnny was already in the stern, reaching out over the motor. Lane heard sliding wood as the front doors opened to a great blast of marine light. “Now, that’s a little better, isn’t it?” Johnny said.

And indeed it was. The polished varnish on the mahogany topside caught the gleam of summer sky and dazzled Lane’s young eyes.

Johnny climbed forward, plunked himself down in the driver’s seat, and looked up at Lane with a febrile smile.

“So let’s take her out.”

“What?”

“I said, let’s take her out.”

“Are you fucking crazy?”

“Don’t think so, bro.” Johnny leaned over to examine the little panel on the dash where the ignition key went.

“I’m outta here,” Lane declared.

“Okay then, you’re outta here.” Johnny had already pulled a few wires down from under the panel.

“You’re on your own, dickhead. You’re very seriously on your own,” Lane said, and spun and stalked out the door. He made his way to the stairs leading up to the yard.

Just then, he heard the big outboard motor fire up.

The boat came into view, with Johnny standing at the wheel. He maneuvered the craft over to the dock’s edge, where he looked up at Lane with supreme confidence and conviction.

“Just a quick spin. That’s all. Then we can say we did it.” He paused. “Or maybe you just want to remember how you sweated over the lawn mower, like a good little boy.”

It wasn’t the taunt that tore at Lane. It wasn’t the transparent manipulation. It was the thought of abandoning his brother in this moment of supreme recklessness. He simply couldn’t do it. From the dock, he stepped down into the rear compartment and worked his way up to the passenger seat.

Johnny said nothing. The engine murmured in a low hum and burble as he rotated it to point the boat toward the center of the bay. He stood with one hand on the rim of the windshield and the other on the wheel, and looked straight ahead. His head once again fell into that birdlike thrust to a rhythm of some unknown internal origin.

Soon they were entering the bay’s mouth, where the water turned from green to blue and the waves went from modest ripples to the whitecaps of the open waters of Puget Sound.

“Hang on,” Johnny commanded from where he stood. He took his hand off the windshield and shoved the throttle all the way forward. The motor spun up to an angry howl.

Lane felt the surge as the bow lifted and the acceleration shoved him back into the seat. The waterline disappeared and only sky remained.

“Yes!” Johnny shouted as he held the windshield’s rim to steady himself.

The boat picked up speed at an alarming rate. The bow settled back down to reveal the choppy water, all blue and gray and white with waves.

Bam!
The hull smacked a wave crest and shuddered as it sailed high in the water.

“Yes!” Johnny screamed. The wind tossed his hair back.

Bam!
The hull smacked another wave crest. Spray flew. Lane felt the mist on his face.

“Yes!” Johnny screamed. He made no attempt to ease the throttle back. The motor roared like a cornered beast.

Bam!
The hull smacked yet another crest. This time, they nearly went airborne. Lane knew he had to act. Sooner or later, they were going to lose it. He shot his hand out to pull the throttle lever back.

Johnny caught Lane’s move out of the corner of his eye. “No!” he yelled and reached down to stop Lane’s hand.

At that moment, he took his eyes off their forward motion and unintentionally pulled the wheel to the left.

Bam!
The hull caught the white cap just as the boat veered to the port side.

Lane instinctively held on to the lip of the topside to secure himself against the violent twisting and rocking. The boat nearly flipped and came down hard. Lane reached out, grabbed the throttle lever and pulled it all the way back. The engine descended to a low growl and the craft quickly lost headway.

But Johnny was gone. Only the empty seat and gently oscillating steering wheel remained.

Lane looked up and fought panic as he took his bearings. The boat pointed toward the shore north of the sand spit. He turned and scanned the water to his left rear, toward the mouth of the bay.

And there he was. Just a dot on the rolling waves, a pitifully small dot in an ocean of trouble. “Stay right there! I’m coming!” Lane screamed. He crossed to the driver’s side, spun the wheel to port, and thought about the cold as he closed the distance. The stunning, numbing, paralyzing cold of the waters of Puget Sound. Johnny might already be slipping into shock.

At ten yards out, he saw that his brother’s jaw was already shuddering as he treaded water. “Are you okay?” he yelled. Johnny only nodded. A bad sign.

Lane had to be careful. He had no experience controlling the boat, and he’d lose precious
time if he overshot. He lined the boat up to intercept Johnny on the starboard side, and pulled the throttle all the way back. He desperately scanned the craft’s interior. No ropes, no life jackets, nothing of any use.

Johnny was coming up fast. He had to act. He might not get another chance. In a moment of blind inspiration, he leaned over the edge and locked his left leg into the spoke and column of the steering wheel. His arms reached the water just as Johnny came sliding slowly along the side of the hull. He plunged his hands into the freezing water, shot them under Johnny’s armpits, and clasped them together on his brother’s chest.

“I’m cold,” Johnny declared softly. “Jesus, I’m cold.”

“I know you’re cold,” Lane said. “But you gotta help me. I’m going to twist you around, and you have to reach up and grab the side. You got that?”

“I’m cold,” Johnny repeated. “I’m really cold.”

“Yeah, if you don’t do what I just told you, you’re also going to be dead. Here we go.” Lane twisted his torso as far as he could without losing his foot lock through the steering wheel. “Do it.”

His nose was just inches from the back of Johnny’s head. His brother’s arms remained limp in his grasp.
“Do it!”

Johnny’s right arm came up, grabbed the topside, and held fast.

From that point on, it was a clumsy struggle, but a manageable one. The boat tipped to port under their combined weight, but that made Johnny’s crawl to safety somewhat easier. Once he tumbled into the interior, they both sank into mute exhaustion.

The big outboard engine burbled along merrily at idle, as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.

Lane blew up halfway back to the boathouse. “What the fuck did you do that for? What the fuck were you thinking? You didn’t know shit about this boat, and you took off like a fucking maniac! What the hell were you thinking? Are you crazy? What’s going on with you?”

The answer would play out over the years to come. The euphoric highs, the paralyzing lows. But not today. Johnny’s eyes gleamed and he went into that avian thrust with his head.

“I’m fine. I’m even better than fine.”

They reached the boathouse with Lane at the wheel. They both surveyed the Simmons house and driveway up above, but it looked clear. Lane sighed. It was their first break since this whole horrible business started. He gingerly maneuvered in through the open doors, which Johnny closed while Lane secured the boat to the mooring cleats. They climbed out into the semidarkness broken only by the softly lapping water. Lane led the way outside onto the dock, and Johnny stopped to secure the padlock. “Just like new,” he said, as if that somehow fixed everything. Lane refrained from comment. They started down the dock.

They were a couple of paces from the end when Old Man Simmons stepped out from behind the back of the boathouse.

They froze in terror. Simmons wore his perennial Hawaiian shirt, with a pattern resembling burning embers fanned by a breeze from the depths of hell. His burly arms hung in a cloud of gray hair and his pale eyes bore down on them with no trace of compassion, empathy, or pity. He let the silence nearly suffocate them before he spoke in a snarly rasp.

“You’re gonna do exactly what I tell you.”

Exactly what ripped three weeks out of the twilight of their adolescence. Under the sun of late summer, they chipped, scraped, sanded, and painted the boathouse and then put on a new roof, one shingle at a time. Their parents thought it was a paying job, but of course it was nothing of the sort. They served as a de facto work crew on a penal site that had also served as the scene of the crime.

They seldom spoke during the exercise. Hours would pass without a word. Johnny threw himself into the work. His brush glided back and forth with an incessant rhythm. His head would begin to bob in time with the brush strokes.

Lane consoled himself with an internal justice. His rescue of Johnny absolved him of any guilt. Had he not gone along, his brother would most likely have drowned. Sometimes, he paused and looked over at the beachfront next door, the site of their cabin. It had just been sold, to someone from a software start-up that had just gone public, someone looking for a little timeless charm.

The pilings of the old dock marched out, one pair at a time, into the chilly waters. A white encrustation of barnacles marked the high-water point on their circumference.

The planking they once supported had vanished entirely.

In Johnny’s lab, Lane scans the rest of the cubicle wall. No other artifacts of humanity. No kids, dogs, girlfriends, wives, uncles, or buddies. Only charts, diagrams, spreadsheet printouts, and presentation graphics. One of the graphics catches his eye, the only comprehensible document of the bunch. It’s the first slide of a progress report of some kind, and it addresses the Institute for the Study of Genetic Disorders. It includes six bullet points that delve into technical arcana. Lane moves closer and checks the date in the slide’s bottom right corner. It’s only a few weeks old. It appears that the Institute holds Johnny’s current research contract, and that he’s giving them an update.

Lane had never paid much attention to the organizations that Johnny worked with. They came and went, and after a while he’d lost track. Bio this and bio that. Lots of gens and more than a few zymes. But, obviously, this one deserves a closer look.

He looks at the photo again, at the beach and sky. Both boys seem so happy. Could he
ever be that happy again? He removes the picture, puts it in his pocket, and leaves.

“I had a hit today on one of your plane victims.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Anslow. John Anslow.”

“And who was asking?”

“His brother, Lane Anslow. He’s a contract cop. I couldn’t just blow him off.”

“I understand. So tell me this: Have you managed to identify Dr. Anslow’s remains?”

“It’s a real mess out here, Mr. Khan. I doubt that we’ll ever identify Dr. Anslow.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sure you’re doing your professional best.”

“Yes, we are.”

“And I’m sure you will continue to do your professional best.”

“Absolutely. You can count on it.”

“Well, goodbye then.” Arjun hangs up. So now they may have a competitor in their search for Dr. John Anslow. But the incident seems a minor nuisance compared to what he sees on the CT scan up on the big display on his office wall. The cancer has metastasized. He’s not a radiologist, but his powers of professional observation are extremely keen, built up over many years in the medical industry. The originating tumor is plainly visible in the left lung, and now new growths have popped up in the opposite lung, the colon, and various lymph nodes.

Arjun is Hindu, if anything at all. The tumors could be construed as the forces of the god Yama, who prepares to command them in a final assault. He gets up from his desk and looks down the long corridor at the numbered doors of the subject bays.

Yama, the lord of death, will soon pay a deadly and unexpected visit to this place.