“I feel like a kind of tentacle just reached out and touched me. I hate to say it, Tom, it’s so subjective that it’s embarrassing. But I do feel it.”
“Miriam Blaylock is hostile to you?”
Her eyes widened, all innocent surprise. “No, not at all. She’s part of it, but so is Methuselah. It’s not a coincidence. I feel almost as if Miriam — I know that this is a subjective way of putting it — Miriam in some way sought me out after Methuselah. As if it’s somehow very important to her.”
“I thought we discounted telepathy a second ago. As of this moment only a few people knew about Methuselah, and Miriam Blaylock isn’t one of them.”
“Tom, what is she?”
Now he smiled. “You’re the genius in the family. You tell me.”
“Not from another planet. She’s too close to human. Another species, living right here all along. An identical twin.”
“Does that wash? Five thousand years of civilization and nobody’s noticed?”
“Maybe and maybe not. What about the Amazons? What were they?”
He raised his eyebrows, thinking of large, domineering blondes. “Maybe she ought to run for office. Keep the mobs in line.”
“You’re a master of the extraneous comment, you know that. It’s perfectly possible that a twin species would go unnoticed. Maybe they don’t want to be noticed. If I was hiding and you didn’t even know to look for me, you’d never find me — unless I wanted you to.”
He kissed the top of her head, knelt down beside the couch. The odor was less strong, or perhaps he wanted her more. “I love you,” he said again. The intensity of the past few days was still very much with him. The sense of devotion he was beginning to feel was a very new thing for him. Almost absently she stroked his head, pulling it down into her lap. He crouched there, afire with this terrible need for her that left him feeling utterly alone.
“Tom, I’m frightened.”
“It’s a frightening situation.”
“Something brought her out of hiding. Something about me.” The hand stopped stroking his head. He reached up and grasped it, then raised himself and slipped onto the couch beside her. She snuggled into his shoulder.
“I won’t let it happen.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you feel might happen. I’m slow but I feel it too.”
“Don’t let’s both panic!”
“I’m not scared. Concerned and protective. You’ve got my primitive male juices flowing.”
“Not here in the office.” She arched her back, ran her hand along his thigh. He kissed her. The office was quiet, the hubbub outside far away. Beyond the windows small white clouds sailed through the sky. Tom extended the kiss, finding an urgency in himself that he had not expected. There came a sweeping, aggressive wave and he took her in his arms and laid her on the couch. There was barely room enough for the two of them. Her face, framed by brown curly hair, caught in the crook of his arm, looked up at him happily. “Not here,” she said again. “Anybody could walk in.”
“Don’t you like danger?”
“I’m not the type.”
“I find it exciting.” He opened his trousers, let her see his eagerness.
“Tom, really, this is crazy!”
“We need it.”
“What if Hutch comes in? You’ll look like a fool.”
Her resistance drove him on, created in him a compulsion to the act. “Let him come. Exposure to a little human love would do him good.” He slipped his hands under her skirt and rolled her panties down.
“Tom, this is crazy!”
“You sound like a broken record.”
“Well, it is — oh —”
The relentlessness of his thrust excited him more. Her face flushed, she shook her head from side to side. “I love you,” he breathed, and whispered her name with the rhythm of their bodies. Voices rose outside the door but he chose to ignore them. When her eye flickered concern he smothered her with kisses. Then he pressed his lips close to her ear and whispered the sort of things she liked to hear, the words that excited her. It was silly, perhaps, certainly childish, but Tom knew that there had to be a certain dirtiness, a sense of evil, for Sarah to really enjoy herself.
He brought her to a climax, her thighs pumping, her face sweaty and surprised. He lost himself in the quivering pleasure of his own love, barely aware that the voices in the hall had not gone away. “For God’s sake, it’s Charlie and Phyllis out there! Hurry!” He pumped frantically. There came a tapping at the door. Sarah cleared her throat, changed her tone to one of businesslike precision. “One moment, please,” she sang out, “he’s on the phone.”
“You’re not a phone.”
“Hurry up! You’re a man, you’re supposed to be fast!”
“Don’t whisper so loud, they’ll hear you.”
Never before had he made love under such circumstances. Every movement, no matter how small, bore with it a sense of stolen delight. Taking Sarah here on the couch, with the door about to be opened on them, was delicious beyond belief. ‘A little of the exhibitionist in you,’ he thought.
They knocked again. “Who’s he talking to, God? We’ve got important business.”
“I know that, Phyllis,” Sarah said, her voice wobbling with his thrusts. She was now rubbing against him with all her might, trying to speed things up. The couch, the whole office was shaking. “Hurry dear, hurry dear,” she breathed in rhythm to their movements, “let it go, let it go —”
And he did, like stars exploding, huge and rich with a thousand wild tickling joys. They lay still an instant, both breathing hard, a moment’s deference. He rose off her, closed his pants over his still-enormous organ. “I’d better hide behind the desk, my love,” he said as she smoothed her skirt and went to the door.
“Sorry,” she said, swinging it wide, “come on in.”
Charlie and Phyllis glanced at each other. Tom controlled himself carefully. Sarah was sweating and flushed, obviously trying to control her ragged breathing. “Some phone call,” Charlie said in a nervous voice.
“Let’s get on with it,” Tom growled. “I haven’t got all day.”
“No,” Phyllis murmured, “obviously not.”
“Come on, come on.” He was pleased to see Sarah blow a kiss at him, roll her eyes in an exaggerated pantomime of ecstasy. He began to feel rather proud of himself.
“Briefly,” Charlie said, “we’ve been doing a little comparative analysis between Methuselah and Miriam Blaylock.”
“Why?” Sarah’s voice was sharp. She stood up and came to the desk where Charlie had laid out some glossy color photographs of various blood cells.
“We noticed that Mrs. Blaylock’s erythrocytes were the same color as Methuselah’s, when he was in his terminal phase.”
“Which means?”
“The color of his deepened right before the end. His need for oxygen seemed to be declining at that time.”
Sarah was literally sparkling. Maybe Tom ought to hit her under a restaurant table next time. She appeared to like the threat of exposure very well. “What are you driving at? Was the same pigmentation factor present in both bloods?” There was the brilliant scientist Tom knew and loved.
“It sure as hell looks like it. But that isn’t the whole story.” Charlie pulled out some more glossies. “Here you see Methuselah’s erythrocytes in a time series. They get darker and darker.” In the first photograph they were deep purple and misshapen. “Remember that Geoff took another blood sample after Mrs. Blaylock had been asleep a couple of hours? Well, look.” The purple pigmentation of her blood cells had faded to a healthy pink-white.
“Conclusion,” Phyllis added, “Mrs. Blaylock slept off something similar to what destroyed Methuselah.”
Tom spoke quickly, trying to cut the edge of panic that had flickered in Sarah’s eyes. “At least this means that there is no further question of the Gerontology budget being cut. I doubt if we’ll even need a meeting of the board now.” Nobody sm
iled. “Clap clap clap. I thought you’d be delighted.”
“We’re not surprised,” Charlie said. “It was obvious as soon as we compared the bloods.”
“Tell me, what does it all imply?”
“How should we know, Tom?” Sarah’s voice was high, nervous. “It suggests a lot of things.”
“Some of them downright strange,” Phyllis added. “Like why Mrs. Blaylock came here.”
“Smart girl,” Tom said. “That is indeed what Sarah and I have been trying to understand. It seems as if she somehow discovered Sarah’s work and was drawn to her — for some reason we do not know.”
Sarah’s face had become waxlike. Concealing. Sarah hid her feelings. “Your thoughts, Doctor Roberts?”
“That’s an unfair question, Tom.”
“You thrive on unfair questions.”
She tossed her head, her chin jutting up. Her lips were set in a line, her eyes glaring defiantly at him. It was pitiful to see how hard she had to work to hide fear.
“I think we’ll have to pull together,” Tom said. “I’m going to declare Miriam Blaylock a special project and get myself appointed director. We’ll budget it from the general fund, go around Hutch.”
“Why is that necessary? Hutch’ll cooperate completely. He might not agree with everything we say and do, but he’s a scientist, he sees the importance of this work.”
“Thank you, Sarah. May I remind you who it was just about destroyed your Gerontology lab? I can settle it all with a single telephone call to Sam Rush. He’ll confirm our request before he even thinks of Hutch.”
“Hutch founded this lab!”
“He’s as good as dead. I’m very sorry, but it happens.”
“I’m going to tell him —”
“No, ma’am. You have your job and I have mine. Let’s not let our differences come between us.” He held out his hand. “You don’t know a thing about front-office politics.”
There was a silence. “I get the impression that this meeting is concluded,” Charlie said into it. He gave a nervous laugh. “You can count on me boss.”
“I won’t talk to Hutch,” Sarah murmured. “I don’t have time.”
Charlie and Phyllis gathered up their materials and left. Tom sat, trying to feel the impassivity of a Buddha. He expected to get a real chewing-out from Sarah, but instead she went over to the couch and flopped down with her arm once again over her eyes.
Tom seasoned and lit a cigar. Now was a good time for his one shot of the day. He reached up and opened the window so that Sarah wouldn’t complain too much.
But she didn’t complain at all. Tom was surprised to see that she was asleep. So suddenly, poor, tired Sarah. He got his raincoat from the hook on the door and covered her with it. He would let her sleep, call Rush in an hour or so. There was no need to hurry. This latest discovery propelled him into a very strong position. Obviously the Blaylock project should be under a special administrator. He had no illusions about getting Hutch to resign, but he was sure that he could capture for himself management of the project, and take Gerontology along with it. That would leave Hutch on the trailing edge, administering the conventional parts of the clinic, the parts that were of absolutely no interest to the Dr. Rushes of this world.
Tom sucked his cigar, inhaling deeply, feeling the warmth of the smoke in his lungs. He exhaled. All forbidden, all dangerous. It was so typical of the human predicament that something as pleasurable as a cigar would have to be so damn unhealthy.
Largely to stop feeling guilty about the cigar he turned his mind to the more puzzling aspects of Miriam Blaylock. She had certainly had a hell of an effect on Sarah.
There was something about Miriam that recalled Granny Haver after her husband and all of her friends were dead. Granny had seemed as bright and spry as ever, laughing all the time, raising her flowers, baking pie after pie. And yet, if you really looked at Gran Haver — looked beyond the tantalizing hints of former beauty and the present ruins — you got a hell of a chill.
Late one winter she screamed horribly. Tom’s first waking thought was fire. By the time they had gotten upstairs she was dead, not of fire but of something else. Her eyes were wide, her hands like claws. Had she had a nightmare, died of fright?
Tom had helped his father carry her to the parlor. The wind had howled and he had felt presences. A nightmare — or a night visit?
Afterward he had always assumed that Gran Haver had died with some hidden thing on her conscience. That scream had been her last utterance on earth, her first in hell.
“Who are you, Miriam?” he asked softly, chuckling to himself. ‘OK, scientist,’ he thought, ‘here you are ready to believe that she can hear you, read your mind.’
Well, why not?
What was “this world”? The hospital? This office? The warm taste of the cigar? What, really?
Tom reassured himself that he was grounded in the practical. It was possible that this planet did indeed hold two species who were superficially similar. The perfect predator would be indistinguishable from his prey. That would be beautiful. Once in college someone had asked the question, what if the essence of reality is belief? That which is believed is real. What if real witches flew on wings of belief through the nights of fourteenth-century Europe and consorted with demons in a real hell? Or if the gods really walked among the Greeks?
Or Miriam Blaylock among us?
Sarah believed in Miriam, that was the source of her fear. Perhaps Miriam was what you wanted her to be — whateveryou wanted. Perhaps that was the definition of a monster.
SWABIA: 1724
It is freezing cold in the carriage. A candle guttering in a socket is the only light. Thick fog chokes the way. Trees pass like shadowy towers, their branches swishing down the sides of the coach.
Across from Miriam sit her three sisters. Her brother is in her arms. She found them in Paris, half-starved, subsisting on the flesh of diseased beggars, constantly on the run. The girls huddle in their broadcloth cloaks, their faces the color of stone. Her brother leans stiffly against her. She touches his cheek, wiping away the dew that has settled there.
Her hand snaps back, she comes fully aware. Trembling, she touches him again.
The skin is like a mask stretched on a skull. And the mouth is opening.
She screams, but the sound is choked by a violent lurch of the carriage. The driver has whipped the horses up. Wolves stand beside the road, dozens and dozens of them. The horses bolt, the carriage careens.
Without a word, their faces fixed in grief, Miriam’s sisters open the door and throw out their brother’s body.
Miriam protests. They are not yet animals! She unlatches her own door and jumps from the carriage. Her silks splash in the muddy road. The carriage sways off.
Suddenly, quiet. Ten feet away lie his huddled ruins. She can see the blowing breath of the wolves. There is such serenity in their faces. That, and death. She can smell it in the wet air, an exhalation of demons. One of them dashes up and worries her brother’s filthy gabardine cloak.
She drives it off, drags her brother from the sucking mud. Bearing him in her arms, she begins to plod down the road. Her heart is dull with hopeless sorrow. Ahead the carriage has stopped, rising enormous in the fog. She can hear the driver singing some lament of his wild Carpathian people.
Without a word she returns to her place, hugging the withered remains close to her. Her sisters sit bowed, their shame too great for them to bear looking at her.
A little before noon they arrive in a village. The driver climbs down and doffs his filthy cap. “Zarnesti,” he says. Miriam hands out a silver florin, holding it between her fingers so that he can take it without touching her.
Zarnesti is a poor place deep in Swabia. They have come here following rumors that their kindred have found a measure of safety in these wild regions. The village reeks, it is sick and starving. There are wattled houses here and there and in the center a church made of logs. Behind the church is a long building, an inn.
On all sides the forest threatens. In the shadows of the closer trees there are ruined cottages. Miriam’s sisters cross the clearing, their cloaks trailing in the muck. They are followed by hungry pigs.
Miriam leaves her brother in the carriage and hurries to catch up with his sisters. They are so desperate that she is afraid they will ignore her careful plan of attack.
They are negotiating with the innkeeper, their high voices mingling with the screams of birds in the forest. The innkeeper grovels when he is given a gold penny. He pulls back a greased cloth that covers the doorway, and the four of them stoop to enter. The odor forces Miriam to breathe in gasps. She sees that her sisters’ nostrils are dilating toward a young woman who is stirring a stewpot. Wicks gutter on the two tables in the room; the walls are slick with grease. When she notices them the young woman drops her spoon and comes over. She is covered with boils. Her mouth hanging open, she knees before them and stretches out her arms like a supplicant. She is asking to take their cloaks.
One of her sisters inclines her head, her eyes avid. Miriam frowns furiously. Would she really take this vile thing?
Her sisters ignore her. They move like shadows in the smoky darkness. Silently she pleads with them. Their hearts do not feel her touch. They continue searching the darkness for hidden treasure. Knives and eyes and teeth gleam in the flickering light.
It is a dance, Miriam moving from one to the other. Both turn away.
A shout of furious pain is suddenly stifled. The innkeeper has been taken. Then the coachman, too late in rushing for the door. Then, in a filthy corner, they descend on the girl. But something is wrong. A struggle starts, the girl squeals and skitters, knocking one of the wicks to the floor, spreading coals across the dirt to roll under her attackers’ dresses.
While they are jumping away from this danger she tears a hole in the wattled wall. Her gray form bobs among the ferns as she disappears into the forest behind the inn.
Now they must hurry, before she raises the alarm. All of this country lives in terror of their kind. Packs of them have been ranging through Swabia, Transylvania, Hungary, Slovakia, falling on villages and taking whole populations. They Sleep in graves to deter the superstitious, who will not approach a graveyard at night without much priestly preparation. When a village is depopulated they pull it down and throw the remains into the river, going on to the next town up the road.
The Hunger Page 19
