Xeno Sapiens (29 page)

She finally awoke to the feel of
Clifton’s warm hands on her shoulders.

********************

“
Are you still with us,” Clifton
asked.

She reached up with her right hand and
covered one of Clifton’s.

“
Just dreaming,” she said. “Wondering
if I’ll get through this. If I’ll ever get away from
here.”

“
I feel like that these days,
too.”

She stood and leaned against the
windowsill. Her eyes were distant in the reflection.

“
He’s still out there, isn’t he?” She
turned around and looked at Alex.

Clifton’s face couldn’t hide his worry.
“I’m afraid so.”

“
What do you hear from
Jon?”

Clifton’s lip curled.

“
Same old shit. They’re doing
everything they can.” His contempt faded. “They really are doing
what they can. All we can do is wait.”

“
Do you think Seth is the one who
attacked the old man?”

“
How do you know about that,” Clifton
asked.

“
Good God, Alex,” she said. “I’m not
under lock and key. Everybody’s talking about it. And they’re
talking about some nosy reporter and the infamous Josh Hall. Do you
think I don’t know why Jon told me to stay put this morning? Do you
think I don’t know the shitheel was here?”

“
I’m sorry, Ingrid,” Clifton said. “I
don’t know why I thought it should be kept from you. But to answer
your question, yes. I think it was Seth. It’s only
logical.”

“
He was just here,” she said with a
tiny smile. “I saw him, sort of. It was like a dream and I saw him
trudging through the snow. It’s like I said. He’s a child. He’s
innocent.”

“
Ingrid,” Clifton said with
difficulty. “I don’t quite know how to put this, but you have to
face the fact he might be killed.”

“
Who said that,”
Ingrid hissed. Her bloodshot
eyes thinned to dark, pillbox slits. “Jon? Did Jon say
that?”

“
As far as I know, nobody has said it
until now,” Clifton answered. “But you’ve got to look at this thing
rationally. He has faults. He’s not what we
anticipated.”

“
Do you want him killed,” Ingrid
demanded, enraged. “Is it your idea? Are you willing to throw away
everything we’ve worked for over the past two years?”

“
That’s hardly a fair question,
Ingrid.” Clifton fought to control his voice. “You know goddam well
I’ve put as much into this project as anyone. I gave my fucking arm
for this project, for Christ’s sake.”

“
And if it hadn’t been for this
project, you wouldn’t have it back now.”

“
What am I supposed to do? Fall on my
knees and kiss the famous Milner feet? Look, I didn’t ask you to do
what you did. I’m grateful, okay? No problem with that. But I
goddam well won’t let you hold it over my head.”

“
That’s just it,” she said bitterly,
wheeling away from him. “You’re willing to take the benefits of the
project, but not the responsibility.”

“
What a load of horseshit,” Clifton
snarled. “I wish you could hear yourself. Seth is a dead end.
Something went wrong and he’s fucked up. Nobody said this was the
end. We’ll just have to start over and get it right this
time.”

“
There’s nothing wrong with
him,”
Ingrid
cried hysterically. “Don’t you realize he knows nothing? He’s just
like a baby. Would you kill a baby just because it spilled it’s
bottle?”

Clifton opened his mouth to speak, then
shut it. He scrubbed a hand slowly across his face.

“
Why do we have to argue, Ingrid? It
seems like we argue every time we’re together.”

“
We don’t see things the same way,”
she said, in a tone that sounded despairingly like heartbreak. “I
don’t think we ever will.”

Clifton worked things over in his mind
before speaking.

“
So. What’s left for us?”

“
I don’t know,” Ingrid answered. “I
couldn’t say.”

Sedgefield Auditorium was an
unremarkable structure of aged red brick and mortar, standing in
the center of a traffic circle, appearing to rise like some hulking
beast from the very center of highway 38. The front entrance was of
newer, darker brick than the rest. A drunk had once come barreling
through the center of town at eighty miles per hour. In his
inebriated state he didn’t realize the building wasn’t actually in
the center of the road. He had skidded and squalled tires for
eighty feet in his effort to avoid a collision. He had bumped over
the curb, smashed and uprooted twelve Azalea bushes, and broadsided
a statue of some local confederate soldier on horseback before
completely smashing the front entrance.

Not since the local high school had
sponsored a professional wrestling match to raise money for the
prom had there been such a stir in the building. Heavy-bellied men
pushed pallets of lights back and forth across the cement floor,
shunting them into position for the best illumination of the hall.
Other men set up an elaborate sound system for the musicians and
singers Hall brought to all of his shows. Folding chairs were
placed at the front and back of the auditorium, augmenting the
fixed seats in anticipation of an SRO crowd.

Curious passersby, now recovered from
their fearfulness of the strange intruder from the place on the
hill, gravitated toward the new plate glass windows of the
building’s lobby. They stared in, shielding their eyes from the
window glare with cupped hands.

The main player was nowhere to be seen.
Josh Hall was sequestered at a local motel, studying his prepared
statements intently, committing them to memory. This was the most
important night of his life. The night he exposed Merrifield and
his ilk as a band of sinners who used their God-given intelligence
to create a monster that was the harbinger of others that might be
used to destroy them all. There was no margin for error or
slip-ups. He would preach tonight as he had never preached before.
He would have preferred to have TV cameras from the four major
networks there, but he knew he had only bare days if not hours
before Merrifield folded up shop and destroyed all evidence of his
activities. There was the element of risk, true, perhaps more than
ever before. Merrifield would be moving against him now and the
bullet Hall had so long anticipated might be fired
tonight.

But, if things went as planned,
Merrifield and Milner would lose their little feudal protectorate
here, then the destruction would come faster and faster as the
people demanded an investigation and discovered the true doings of
the science merchants. Hall knew only too well he might be forced
to take the action on his own, but he was prepared to do it. What
good was all he had if it meant that Merrifield and his band of
Philistines remained to do as they pleased?

Hall left his room and walked through
the lobby of the motel. He could go unremarked when he wished. A
slight slumping of his shoulders, a softening of his stride, a
downcast look. Any of these things could make him seem as ordinary
as the next person.

He stepped outside the motel and made
his way to a narrow alley. He slipped into it like a ghost. Had
anyone seen him, they might have been struck at how the sight of a
well dressed, apparently proper businessman slipping into an alley
like a tramp about to take a leak bothered them little. Hall had a
knack of making himself practically invisible.

Carefully placed in a section of
loosened brick at the foot of a building were two black cases. Hall
had placed them there himself, four hours after his phone call to
Merrifield. One case contained an M-16 with extra clips, blacksuit,
goggles, and a bayonet. The other held a Remington 700 bolt action
rifle with floating barrel, mounted with a fifty thousand dollar
Starlight scope. He rubbed his thumb delicately over the
inscription etched into its wooden stock, like a blind man reading
Braille.

Carriage Man.

Hall had hidden the weapons behind a
large drainpipe which ran down the outer wall of the motel. The
alley was blind on one end, and the protruding drainpipe hid him
from view at the open end. He’d had rare occasion to use the tools
of his chosen trade after leaving SecureCom. Once for a prostitute
who threatened to become too chatty about their relationship;
another for a pseudo-flash political type who wished to trade upon
Hall’s past as a stepping stone to a higher political office; and
third for a hired PR man who had covered up so much of the dirt
from Hall’s past that he had to be silenced for general
principles.

Hall checked his wares in the good
light of day, keeping an attentive ear tuned for anyone who was too
curious. The 700 was a good weapon and spotlessly maintained. When
you shot somebody with it, they stayed shot. The M-16 had been
smuggled out of South America. Though it was now more than twenty
years old, it could have shipped from the manufacturer
yesterday.

As Hall replaced the cases at the foot
of the building, the sudden jabbering of Smalltown, USA came to
him. He poked his head around the drainpipe and peered at the open
end of the alley.

Two teenaged boys had stopped by the
open end of the alley. One was tall, the other short. Hall couldn’t
help an amused smile as he listened to their
conversation.

“
Are you going to the meeting
tonight,” the short one asked.

“
I don’t know,” the tall one answered.
He wore his hair in a spiky, short cropped fuzz helmet that made
his head look like a piece of moldy fruit. “I’m not so sure he’s an
instrument of the Lord.”

“
If you would show up at bible study
class more often,” the short one chastised gently, “you might be
able to tell a true instrument of the Lord from a divinity
dealer.”

“
And if you would quit your beastly
harping on the Lord all the time, I might be able to make up my own
mind.”

The short one’s eyes flapped open and
his jaw mimicked them. Hall thought he could have tipped him over
with one easy breath.

“
Backslide Dan!”
he wailed, clasping his hands
and shaking them at the sky. Hall thought he was going to fall to
his knees in the middle of the sidewalk.

“
Backslide Dan! You dirty mouthed
demon, you!”

The tall one walked on, not giving his
companion another glance. After a bit, the short one began trotting
along to catch up. Hall went to the end of the alley and carefully
looked out. He saw the midget-sized creationist hoofing the dummy
strut to catch up with his agnostic buddy.

Unable to help himself, Hall chuckled
softly to himself.

The two National Guardsmen stood on the
side of the mountain, five thousand feet in the thin air. Sounds at
this elevation didn’t carry easily and Valentine Sheffield and Jay
Thomas felt the soothing noises of nature had been quelled in
deference to some stronger force. Some elemental field had subdued
the lesser parts into submission, as if in recognition of its
superior power.

They sat on their heels, squinting at a
dark hole that burrowed its way into the side of the mountain like
a trapdoor. Val was riveted by its dark allure. He was a big man,
standing well over six feet and weighing two hundred and forty
pounds. Those who worked with him understood discretion and any
smarting off about his name was kept bottled up in his
presence.

He removed his cap and wiped his eyes
with his shirt sleeve. Though the afternoon had nearly slipped away
above a cover of clouds, the rugged trek up the mountainside had
exacted its toll in sweat.

Jay was as tall as Val, but skinny as a
shriveled pod. His fatigues were spotted and stained with sour
sweat. Merrifield had made no secret of the fact he believed his
escapee was holed up in a cave somewhere. He also let it be known
that Scoggins had to be taken alive. If it meant shooting, shoot to
incapacitate, not to kill.

Val stood up, using the butt end of his
standard issue M-16 as a lever. He and Jay had poked their heads
into cave entrances all day, but had yet to venture into this one.
There was some tacit agreement between the two men that none of the
others had felt ‘right’. It was by that same telepathy that they
knew they couldn’t let this one alone. By now the sun had washed
out to blemished bronze and something had sprung to life just as
darkness began to steal the light from the sky.

“
Being in the guard ain’t what it used
to be,” Val said. He knew they would have to crawl into that hole
like a couple of amateur spelunkers, banging their heads and
scraping their shins raw. He was leery about what might be in
there. Rats for sure. Bats, probably, if the Scooby Doo cartoons
were to be believed. Not to mention all kinds of creepy-crawly bugs
and beetles skittering underfoot on the slime-coated cavern
floor.