Where was she? How had she gotten here?
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“. . . You may recall that we opened the Nightly News a few nights ago with a report of a remarkable discovery in the study of early man. A skull named Ambrose, reputed to be about a hundred years old, and allegedly belonging to a pre-human species said to be extinct these past million years, was trotted out for the press. For those of our viewers eager for an update, we’re sorry to report that Ambrose has come down in the world since then. Amid cries of fraud, the scientist responsible has refused to defend his claim. Meanwhile, Jan Werkner, a Hollywood special effects man, took just two days to create the skull pictured on your screen now out of plastic and plaster. Result: a dead ringer for Ambrose. Werkner said he made the fake to demonstrate how easy it would be to commit such a hoax—provided no one was allowed to get a good close look at the skull. How have the mighty fallen. That’s our report for this evening. Good night.”
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Pete came up out of the subway entrance and looked around. There it was, across the street, pretty hard to miss. George Washington University Hospital. They had taken Reagan here when he was shot, he remembered.
He crossed the street and hesitated at the entrance. But this was the only lead he had. It had to go somewhere. Thank God there were only three Marchandos in the phone book—Barbara’s separated husband Michael had been easy to find. Pete was frankly amazed that Dr. Michael Marchando had agreed to an interview, but with the bad press the australopithecine story had gotten in the last few days, he would take what he could get. None of the principals in the case—Barbara Marchando, Maxwell, Jones, Grossington—were answering their home phones or returning messages left at their offices. He went inside.
There’s an unwritten law saying hospitals are easy to get lost in, and it took Pete fifteen minutes to find the cafeteria. Once there, however, Dr. Marchando was easy to spot—a black man in a doctor’s coat, sitting alone, a little bit nervous, glancing at his watch repeatedly.
Pete went up to him. “Dr. Marchando?”
“Mr. Ardley?” Michael asked politely.
“Yes. Thank you for agreeing to see me.” Pete sat down across from Michael, and wondered where to begin.
But Michael beat him to it. He picked up his coffee cup and took a fair-sized swig. “Listen, I want to come straight down to it. Do you know where she is? You hinted that you might on the phone.”
Pete looked his host straight in the eye. “Yes, I do. At least I’m fairly certain I do.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
“For a few reasons. Maybe you know something about what’s going on. Maybe, if you knew where she was, you’d be able to help me get in to see her.”
“Maybe. We’re not on the best terms at the moment. Besides, why should I help you—” Michael looked up, past Pete’s shoulder.
Pete was suddenly aware that two people had come up behind him. He turned around in his chair, and got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew the faces of the two grim-looking men.
“Mr. Ardley,” the blonde one said. “I’m Rupert Maxwell and this is Livingston Jones. May we sit down?” The two of them sat down on either side of him, not exactly aggressive, but certainly not in a way you could say no to, either.
“Hello, Liv,” Michael said. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Maxwell.”
Pete suddenly felt that he wasn’t in control anymore. “What are you two doing here?” he asked.
“Dr. Marchando was good enough to call us and say you had contacted him,” Rupert said. “Liv and I thought we might sit in. In fact, I think you and I need each other.”
“So, Mike,” Livingston said. “Getting interviewed by Jimmy Olson here?” He turned to Pete. “Sell lots of newspapers since you did me the big favor back in Gowrie? You know, we were in Africa when we found out you had broken the story. What with all the publicity, we decided we had to drop everything and get the hell home,” he said, glaring at Pete. “Isn’t it a terrible thing, Mr. Ardley, the way a little headline-chasing can screw up so much important work?”
Rupert leaned in toward Pete, not saying anything, obviously doing his best to intimidate. Pete glanced nervously from Rupert to Liv. The two of them looked awfully damn big.
“He said he knew where Barbara was,” Mike said, “that he’d tell me where she was if I helped him get in to see her.”
“He’s lying,” Liv said coolly, “trying to trick you into something. He’s good at that. He doesn’t know squat, Mike. He doesn’t know where she is. No one could.”
Pete realized he was sweating heavily. “Saint Elizabeth’s,” he blurted out. “And not as a patient. She’s there watching over your new pet. I followed Grossington’s car until he went there.” Pete watched the newcomers’ faces as he spoke, and felt a little thrill of triumph as he read their shocked expressions. He was right. Knowing it for certain was worth losing his interview with Michael Marchando.
Besides, his little revelation seemed to have thrown Jones and Maxwell—and they were angry enough with him that deflecting that anger was extremely worthwhile. And the best time to pursue something was while the other guy was off balance. “But you said we needed each other, Dr. Maxwell. How so?”
Rupert cleared his throat and spoke, clearly a bit disconcerted. “Because we’ll all be out of a job if things keep up the way they are. On our side, our entire team is looking like a bunch of idiots and frauds. No one is that interested in listening to us, to put it mildly. And it’s not just reporters—our colleagues in the field are practically ready to burn us at the stake for putting the entire discipline in disrepute. We need to prove that we’re not lying, that Thurs—that, that Ambrose—is real, that we know what we’re talking about. You heard at the press conference that the National Geographic was supporting us—well, even they’re pulling back. To be blunt about it, we need a mouthpiece. And right now, you’re even less believed and look like even more of an idiot than we do. You need a story. If you get us decent coverage, we’ll cooperate, give you everything you need. You’ll win, and we’ll stop losing.”
“Barbara doesn’t know you’re here, right?” Michael spoke with flat confidence, knowing it was true. “You’re here behind her back, or else she’d be here with you.”
Rupert and Liv exchanged glances again, and then Liv shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right, she doesn’t know. But I doubt she’d care if she did know. She’s pretty far gone. Oh, she’s okay, she’s all right, she’s not hurt or anything,” Liv added hurriedly. “I just meant she’s so damned wrapped up in—in what she’s doing, she doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“She does have an australopithecine with her,” Michael said, wonderingly. “You didn’t deny it when he said it,” he went on, nodding toward Pete, “and you’ve both almost said it yourselves. My God.”
“Yeah, she’s got one,” Liv said. “Calls her Thursday. But I don’t even much care about that just now. Yesterday’s news for me. I’m worried about Barbara.” He turned to Pete. “I might as well tell you this stuff. You’ll hear it soon enough, anyway. I think she’s convinced herself that Thursday might be a kind of human, and she feels guilty as hell for bringing her here. I don’t know why. Maybe because guilt is supposed to be for humans, and to Barb, at least, Thursday is a person. Barbara bought Thursday—so if Thurs is human, that makes Barbara a kidnaper, a slave owner.”
“Well, is it—is she, Thursday—human?” Pete demanded. This was a touchy moment, but he had to know.
“We don’t know, Mr. Ardley,” Livingston said absently. “We’re in sort of a grey area there, to put it mildly. Human, ape, something in between. You look at her, say words to her, watch her move and act and think—and you still don’t know. But right now I don’t even much care about that. I’m just worried about Barbara. She’s in a bad way.”
Rupert nodded. “It’s not just my job I’m worried about here. It’s her. She’s a friend, and she cares a lot about something that’s tearing her up inside. I figure at th
e least, we can get her mind off things if there’s some publicity and hoopla to distract her—and she won’t have to handle this alone anymore. At first we thought it would be better to work in private, but Jesus, even without Barb’s problems, we’d need help. This is too big. Other people, specialists in all the pertinent fields, have to weigh in, examine the evidence. We need some positive publicity to pull them in.” Rupert leaned in close to Pete again, grabbed his shoulder hard enough that it hurt. “So we need you to help. But Barbara is very fragile right now. Play nice with her, play gentle. Or I’ll rip your lungs out.”
Pete swallowed hard. “You drive a interesting bargain, Dr. Maxwell. Look, ah, this isn’t the right place to talk, and we’re all a bit riled up. Why don’t I meet you at your office at the Museum at noon? That’d give us all time to cool off, and you’ll have the materials there I’ll need to do the job you want.”
Rupert glanced from Liv to Mike and nodded. “Fair enough. Besides, I think we three have a few things to talk about in private anyway. But make it at Saint E’s. Barbara will want to stay there. Ask the guard to direct you to Dr. Marchando in Building 3-K. I’ll have all the materials and information you’ll need. Right now, why don’t you take off?” he asked blandly. “Mike and Liv and I need to talk.”
Pete nodded, stood up, and pushed back his chair. “Fine. Fine. I’ll see you there.” He found his way out of the cafeteria, out of the hospital, greatly relieved that they hadn’t beat him to a pulp.
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It was not a comfortable silence at the table. “Mike, she’s not in good shape,” Livingston finally announced. He pushed back in his chair a bit and drummed his fingers on the table top. “She’s torturing herself with worry, wondering if she did the right thing, wondering what else she could have done, what she should have done. She’s got herself convinced that Thursday is just going to be tested and tortured and studied to death, that she’s brought the poor thing back here to be a slave to science or something.”
“I don’t understand,” Mike said. “This is a big discovery for her. She should be happy and excited. Why is she upset?”
“Because—” Liv sighed and drummed his fingers on the window glass. “I don’t know. But I can tell you some stuff—stuff you ought to know already. She went off to Gabon in a pretty fragile state, thanks to the kind treatment of a certain person. You had her tied up in knots. I dunno what was in your letters, what you said in person when you saw her, but they sure as hell didn’t make her happy. You two are separated, Mike. You have no claim on her, no right to say thing to make her feel bad. She did her best. Over in Africa, she seemed okay on the outside, but inside, I think she was just barely holding together. I think you had her convinced she had failed in some obligation to you, that she owed you something big.
“And then Thursday comes along, a poor miserable creature that needs a very clear-cut kind of help, instead of demanding some vague kind of endless support. I think she’s taking all the pointless guilt you made her feel about you and redirecting it onto Thursday.”
“Listen,” Mike said abruptly, nervously. “I let this reporter guy come here and talk to me because I thought I could find out what he knew and pass it on to you guys, because I wanted to help, because I was worried about Barbara. I let you guys come and talk to him—I didn’t have to tell you when or where we were meeting. I’m trying to help. I know I treated her bad,” he went on, talking rapidly, wondering if he was babbling as much as he thought he was. “The last few weeks, I’ve thought about a lot of stuff—all those damn fool whining letters I sent her when you guys were in Mississippi. They were bad, I know, really unfair. And they didn’t help me any.
“I spent our whole marriage pushing her away and then demanding things. But the first time Barbara really rejected me, instead of just walking away from a mess, was after those letters, just before she left for Africa.
“The last I saw time I saw her, she was happy because she was leaving me. I had thought I could bring her around again, get her to see things my way again, but none of the old crap was working. I couldn’t understand it. It hit me, really hit me how much I must have hurt her if leaving me felt that good. I owe her. And she still feels something for me—you guys both know that. I don’t say she should feel it, or that I’ve earned it, or that I’ve got rights here. I’m just saying maybe I can help because of how she feels. Let me help her. Let me give back some of what I took.”
Liv shook his head. “You got one thing right. You’ve got no rights here. But Barb needs help, and we need help. Act like a decent guy, and you’re in. Doing what, I don’t know exactly. None of us knows what happens next. But we’ll need some warm bodies, that’s for sure.”
Mike offered up his hand, and Liv took it after a moment’s hesitation. Rupert looked at both of them and shrugged. “I predict,” he said, “some interesting times ahead.”
Chapter Twenty
Barbara glared at Pete Ardley as she led Thursday out into the visitors’ room. No doubt she had been told all the sensible, logical reasons why they had to tolerate the man who had caused them so much trouble, but she didn’t have to like it. And her ex-husband Michael was here, too. Plainly she had no idea how she should handle her former husband. From what Pete understood, there hadn’t been a chance for the two of them to talk alone since Gabon. Judging from the expression on her face, she was glad to see him—but also pretty upset by it as well.
At least so far as Pete himself was concerned, her emotions were clear and uncomplicated. At a guess, there were lots of worse things she wanted to do to him, but she contented him with a look that should have killed at twenty paces.
Pete took all that in within half a heartbeat, and knew he ought to worry about soothing Barbara Marchando’s feathers—but he found his attention otherwise occupied. He had eyes only for Thursday, the reality, the creature, the ape-man—no, make that ape-woman—at the center of the fuss. He felt a strange twisting in his stomach as he looked at her, a sense of fascinated revulsion.
This creature walked almost the way a human did, and the difference was—disturbing. He remembered the feeling he had had as a child when he saw some poor misshapen person, twisted by disease or injury, hobbling or lurching along on limbs that didn’t move in quite the right way. You tried not to look, you tried not to pity, you tried to treat the unfortunate person as a person, not a crippled freak or a monster. You worried about trying too hard to be solicitous . . . Pete shook his head and blinked, pulling his eyes off Thursday’s strange and graceful stride. But this was a freak, was a monster. Not a human being. Look at that head, that face, the forehead that sloped back to nothing, the apish muzzle. Not a human. Remember that. Thursday pulled up a hard wooden chair and sat down in it, a bit awkwardly. Sitting in chairs like that is what people do, isn’t it? Pete asked himself.
“Here she is, Mr. Ardley.” Barbara’s voice cut into his reverie, harsh and angry. “Your front page story. Your headline. Feel up to exploiting her?”
Easy now, Pete thought. She wants to fight, but you don’t. Remember that. He was disconcerted enough by Thursday without picking fights with Dr. Barbara Marchando. “No one’s interested in exploiting her, Dr. Marchando. Your own team invited me in here to do a story, and that’s all I want to do.” Pete took a good hard look at Barbara, and decided she looked bad, besides looking angry. She hadn’t had enough sleep or food for a long time.
“We need more than a newspaper story, Mr. Ardley.” Dr. Grossington looked no happier to see Pete than Barbara did, but he was in better control of himself. “We need your sage advice, your public relations work to get the rest of the press to pay attention. We’re like the little boy who cried wolf. You have to get them to believe us again.”
“Right, right. I know. We need to put together a press kit, then. Photos of—ah, Thursday here, bios of all of you, a statement explaining where you found her, that sort of thing. But the key is the photos. They have to be the best possible. Sharp, clear, no blurred-out stuff t
hat could have been faked up. We release that material, then schedule a second press conference and bring her out, present the skeletons and other evidence, and issue an open invitation for the media and the scientists to study it all as closely as possible. And, ah, we have to prove that Thursday isn’t simply someone in a really good gorilla suit.”
Barbara seemed ready to explode. “Gorilla suit! For God’s sake, look at her! How could you possibly fake that?” Thursday looked around nervously, wondering what was wrong.
“Easy, Thurs. Easy, it’s okay. Barb, you go flying off the handle like that too often, poor Thursday is going to have a nervous breakdown,” Livingston said. “But someone could fake Thursday—the same way that Hollywood guy faked the skull to prove Ambrose was a fake,” he said gently. “Didn’t you ever see Planet of the Apes?”
Pete hesitated a moment before going on. Barbara didn’t look happy, but she didn’t say anything more. “Okay, then. We’ll have to stand ready to provide tissue samples, hair, blood, that sort of thing. I realize that we’ve got to control it or else she’ll be sampled to death, but we have to be prepared to cooperate with that sort of request. I think the best we can do to absolutely nail it down is a CAT scan—one of those high-tech super-duper x-rays. These guys are going to be suspicious. Dr. Grossington and I agreed that camera flashes might scare Thursday, so we’re going with bright TV lights and not allowing flashes. They’re even going to resent that, assume that we’re hiding a gimmick a flash would reveal. We need all the proof we can get, and a CAT scan showing she’s real is pretty damn good proof.”
Orphan of Creation Page 29
