Vitals (39 page)

I watched in horror, thinking they must be drowned corpses, arranged in an awful parody of modern art. No hoses supplied air to their noses and mouths. No bubbles rose from their masks. But their fingers twitched. Their limbs flexed weakly against the straps. They could not breathe, but they were alive.

The lavender pool smelled like a nursery, milky-sour and as nitrogenous as a soaked diaper. But these were adults, not children, chests hairy or breasts prominent, genitalia fully formed and flossed. I shaded my eyes to make out more detail. Regular rows of fleshy bumps studded their shoulders and backs. Each bump had a tiny dimple with one or two central black pits. Far too small to function as gills. Still, I thought I could see the pits opening and closing like little mouths.

In the main tank, pipes stretched from the black mounds to the steel wall below the windows. Small valves at the ends of the pipes sucked in clouds of white curds, like the floe surrounding the deep-sea vents. The curds flushed into the lavender pool, where they swirled around the twins like snow in a glass paperweight.

"Listeners 1," Tammy's map said. If these were the Listeners, what in hell could they possibly be listening to? How many others were there, on the ship or elsewhere? I tried to imagine Golokhov collecting unwanted children from around the globe, taking in the handicapped along with the firm, selecting with strange acuity for special talents, extraordinary patience. Creating a biological Shangri-la, a preserve where everyone had his or her (or its) place, doing something basically incomprehensible to the rest of the world, and certainly to me. An empire based on microbes.

Then it struck me. Golokhov had isolated the doubled figures from respiration. They did not suck oxygen from the water like fish; they did not use oxygen at all. They no longer relied on mitochondria to fuel their cells and tissues.

The Siamese twins had become anaerobes.

I can't actually recall my thoughts at that moment. I imagine that I felt anger, indignation, even jealousy, but shock may have topped the list and blanked all the others.

The problem of our ancient reliance on mitochondria had been solved. But the solution seemed to be a passive, motionless slavery. Or the awful, endless hell of the prisoners on the top floor of Anthrax Central. Or the shriveled eccentricity of Mrs. Golokhova, who had suffered years of madness.

Lissa had warned me that what Rob and I were searching for was nasty. How right she was.

I straightened and looked for a ladder at the opposite end of the catwalk. There wasn't one. A blind bulkhead blocked the way. I walked back to the middle, swiveled, my shoes grabbing at the grating, and knelt to peer through the blue water, into the lavender pool, at a steeper angle, to see if there was a gallery, a viewing area, on the other side of the conjoined twins. Between the water and the thick windows, I discerned a ribbon of some lighter color that might have been a floor. Then I made out a flat, ghostly figure like a damp paper cutout stuck to the glass, barely evident through the ripples and optical compression, the squeezing of sight lines.

It stood with arms folded.

I dropped to all fours on the catwalk.

A face steadied between two long waves in the main tank. It had a down-angled left eye, and its lips bent into an interested gape as it examined the twins. I had seen that face in a mirror so often, I thought I was catching an impossible reflection. But the image moved out of sight, walking or simply rippling away.

It was Rob.

It was Rob. I couldn't believe my luck. He was still alive. I could speak to him and apologize. I felt a surge of something approaching ecstasy.

Then I remembered Ben waiting for Janie.

I got to my feet and wiped my eyes, ashamed at giving in so easily to this swindle of emotion.

"Who's there?" a female voice called out behind me.

I turned and grabbed both handrails, fully expecting to feel another slug, the one that would blow through my ribs and kill me.

A woman with dark hair climbed onto the catwalk and stood in the dim blue light. I recognized Betty Shun, once again wearing an abbreviated black-knit dress and running shoes. A fire ax swung from one hand. For a moment, she seemed to know me. She relaxed and smiled, then studied my clothes, the cut on my cheek. She tensed.

"You!" she said. "How did you get this far?"

"Someone gave me a key," I answered, smiling, but my armpits dripped. "How's Owen?" I watched the ax head slow in its pendulum motion.

"I hope he rots in hell," Betty said. "Come with me. You shouldn't be up here."

She waited for me at the bottom of the steep stairs, lips tight, ax held in a bloodless grip.

"I'm okay," I said. "I'm not crazy."

Shun nodded but did not seem to believe me. She pointed for me

VITALi to go around the tank, around the forest of piping, opposite the way I had entered,

"I'd like to see Dr. Golokhov," I said. "I've come through hell. I deserve at least that much."

"Dr. Goncourt left the ship a week ago," Betty said. She led me out of the tank room into the inner sanctum of the main lab, big clinical spaces with stainless-steel counters and sinks, incubators, sequencers, a phalanx of proteomizers linked to connection machines. All these rooms were deserted, but I saw unpacked crates waiting in a corner, stacks of DVD-RW disks in plastic drawers, journals, cardboard boxes full of textbooks.

"I'm really not sure how much you know," Shun said. "I've just arrived here myself."

"I know it all," I said, my throat threatening to close.

"Well," she said. "Many of the others have left. Dr. Goncourt paroled a lot of them as soon as Irina died in New York. No need to be so vigilant now."

"Mrs. Golokhova?"

Betty nodded.

"I didn't know her first name."

Shun smiled. I had lied. There was a lot I did not know. "Dr. Goncourt has always planned to retire and pass on his operations to others. It's important that there be continuity."

"Where is he?"

"Dr. Goncourt?"

"Golokhov."

She shook her head. "He no longer uses that name. It brings back bad memories."

"He put up quite a fight... didn't he?"

"You should know," she said.

"Who won?"

"You did, of course," Betty Shun said.

"Of course. Who are the Siamese twins?"

"They are Listeners. They were Dr. Goncourt's main concern in the negotiations."

"Negotiations? You call all of that negotiations!"

"Now they will stay and continue their work. The circus will go on, too."

"What are they listening for?"

"The voice of the Little Mothers, so we've been told. But the Little Mothers speak slowly. Dr. Goncourt investigated life extension so he could live long enough to understand what they were saying." She looked at me with a sad expression, as if to add, and look at all the trouble.

"They're listening to bacteria?"

Betty Shun lifted one eyebrow. "Don't we all, in our way? Isn't that what you were telling Owen?"

Out on the black ocean, rescue boats, fishing smacks, yachts, Coast Guard cutters, tugboats, even a big container ship, all converged on Lemuria with floodlights waving, outlining the huge hulk in the early dawn.

Betty Shun left me in a flight lounge on the top deck of Aristos Tower, in the charge of two strong, tall young men in sweaters. They were polite but said little. When she returned, she took me aside, and whispered, "You are leaving now."

"What about the others?"

"I don't know anything about them."

"What about Ben Bridget?"

She shook her head. "Maybe the boats will take them all away. You will use the helicopter."

"Where am I going?"

"To meet with Dr. Goncourt," Betty said. "It's an honor, don't you think?"

I watched from the side window of the small business helicopter as it lifted off the pad. The two young men in gray accompanied me. I was leaving behind Delbarco, Breaker, Ben, Carson, Candle, and all the others, alive or dead, probably dead.

I was sure I was being taken somewhere to die. The only consolation I had was that I would meet the greatest man of the twentieth century. My brother's real murderer.

I would be able to ask a few questions, and maybe, if he was kind, and if I was lucky, I would get a few answers.

Part of me said it was a betrayal of all my past principles not to scream and shout and claw and hang on to every second of life, but a larger self had control now, and it was calm.

And curious. Not even flying scared me. Do lambs count the butterflies as they're tugged to the knife?

No one noticed our departure. Everyone was too busy trying to figure out what in hell had happened aboard the world's most sophisticated and expensive cruise ship. Why so many had died. I doubted anyone would ever get to see the hospital, the clinic, the labs, and the Listeners. Somehow the investigators would all be distracted, faked out, sent elsewhere. Or mysteriously killed.

Silk would live on.

The helicopter flew east. I asked the pilot where we were going.

"Exuma Cays. Lee Stocking Island," he said with a Russian accent. "A resort. Nice. You'll like it."

"I'm sure I will."

"Pity you can't stay for too long," he added. "There's a tropical depression brewing. Might even get a name soon."

AUGUST 21 LEE STOCKING ISLAND, THE BAHAMAS

I walked in late-morning brilliance toward the white-sand beach. A cool, moist breeze luffed at my hair and my fresh white shirt. A mass of towering gray clouds walled off the eastern ocean, and it was from the east that the wind blew.

I had eaten a light breakfast of oatmeal in the resort restaurant, lubricating it with hot coffee, then had asked where the estate of Dr. Goncourt was located. The staff all knew of it. It was a mile away, a bellhop said, down a paved road toward the Atlantic side of Lee Stocking Island and through a private gate that was always open.

I was free to do what I pleased, to leave the island--the men in gray had dropped me off with several thousand dollars in my pocket--or to stay and accept the invitation. Apparently, I was no longer a threat to anybody.

On the island, Dr. Goncourt's estate was famous for having the only private beach with its own stromatolites. Stromatolites made up one of the prime attractions on Lee Stocking Island.

The house was medium in size, wood frame, concrete foundation, large windows with wooden shutters, mostly open. It blended in with the rustling palm trees. I avoided the house and walked straight toward the beach, as I had been instructed. It was ten o'clock.

A blond woman in a swimsuit with a turquoise shawl draped over her legs sat in a lounge chair away from the driftwood and sea wrack of the high-water mark. A sun cap hid her face. As I approached, she heard the slap of my sandals, shaded her eyes, and half rolled in the chair to look back at me. She stood to meet me, without a touch of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

"Hello, Hal," she said.

"Lissa," I said. "Surprised?"

"No," she said. "Should I be?"

"You did your best to kill me."

"Not my very best, obviously," she said. "But now it's over. A request was made, and Dr. Goncourt is waiting for you. I doubt you want to stay and chat with me."

"I've been thinking about you a lot, actually."

"I've been thinking about you not at all," she said.

"Rob would have loved to see this," I said.

"How considerate of you to think of your brother."

"We went through a lot of misery because of you. I hear somebody's replacing Golokhov after all these years."

"Dr. Goncourt. Indeed."

"Are you guarding him?" I asked.

"He doesn't have long to live. We decided it would be best to let him work and save his dignity, away from the mess."

"Is it finished? The control, the tagging, the runners? The government is shivering like a big dog now, throwing it all off, don't you think?"

"Of course, Hal," she said, as if humoring a child. "You can just walk out there, through the water. The waves are light. No more than a few minutes, though. He tires quickly, and we're leaving soon for the mainland. We won't stay for the storm."

"Moving to another estate? More hidden riches?"

Lissa shrugged.

I wanted to reach out and strangle her, or just touch her face, to discover whether she was a phantom. I could not be sure anything I saw was real.

"Why am I here?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "But don't do anything rash." She lifted her arm and crooked it, then pointed her finger into the trees beside the house. I turned and saw four men in gray suits. Three of the men were young and athletic. The fourth was much older, in his seventies.

He wore a Hawaiian shirt and Dockers. He was the man Ben had stared at in Anthrax Central.

Stuart Garvey.

I turned away then, hating the thought that Lissa would see me so confused. I stalked over the dry sand, onto the hard wet sand, then into the blue water. Stromatolites are not pretty, just stunted forests of little brown lumps in the water, surrounded by shifting sand. The brown towheads broke the gentle waves for thirty or forty feet before the ocean overtopped them.

A thin old man with a shock of white hair knelt in the water, a canvas bag slung around one shoulder. He looked up as I sloshed closer. His face was pale, heavily wrinkled, but his eyes were bright. He did not seem to have suffered from the same affliction as Irina Golokhova, and in fact he looked at least a hundred years old, though still spry. His wrinkled, spotted, but otherwise normal hands stroked the damp upper round of a stromatolite. Algae clung to his fingers.

He looked up. "Hello," he greeted. "Are you a student of things biological? Do you know of these marvels?"

"Dr. Golokhov?"

He looked at me more critically. "Goncourt, please. Golokhov should have died decades ago."

"I'm Hal Cousins. You killed my brother," I said.

"Did I?" He made a regretful face. "I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me."

This reaction brought all the blood to my face, but it also took me by surprise. "You damned near killed me."