Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder
Page 37
certain that he owned no article of clothing on which was printed a
photo of Madonna with her breasts bared.
He said his name was Peter Waxhill, and he was probably telling the
truth. He was high enough in the organization to know Oslett's and
Clocker's real names--although he had booked them into the hotel as John
Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes--so there was no reason for him to
conceal his own.
Waxhill appeared to be in his early forties, ten years older than
Oslett, but the razor-cut hair at his temples was feathered with gray.
At six feet, he was tall but not overbearing, he was slim but fit,
handsome but not dauntingly so, charming but not familiar. He handled
himself not merely as if he had been a diplomat for decades but as if he
had been genetically engineered for that career.
After introducing himself and commenting on the weather, Wax hill said,
"I took the liberty of inquiring with room service if you'd had
breakfast, and as they said you hadn't, I'm afraid I took the further
liberty of ordering for the three of us, so we can breakfast and discuss
business simultaneously. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," Oslett said, impressed by the man's suaveness and
efficiency.
No sooner had he responded than the suite doorbell rang, and Waxhill
ushered in two waiters pushing a serving cart covered with a white
tablecloth and stacked with dishes. In the center of the living room,
the waiters raised hidden leaves on the cart, converting it into a round
table, and distributed chargers-plates-napkins-cups-saucers
glassware-flatware with the grace and speed of magicians manipulating
playing cards. Together they caused to appear a variety of serving
dishes from bottomless compartments under the table, until suddenly
breakfast appeared as if from thin air, scrambled eggs with red peppers,
bacon, sausages, kippers, toast, croissants, hot-house strawberries
accompanied by brown sugar and small pitchers of heavy cream, fresh
orange juice, and a silver-plated thermos-pot of coffee.
Waxhill complimented the waiters, thanked them, tipped them, and signed
for the bill, remaining in motion the whole time, so that he was
returning the room-service ticket and hotel pen to them as they were
crossing the threshold into the corridor.
When Waxhill closed the door and returned to the table, Oslett said,
"Harvard or Yale?"
"Yale. And you?"
"Princeton. Then Harvard."
"In my case, Yale and then Oxford."
"The President went to Oxford," Oslett noted.
"Did he indeed," Waxhill said, raising his eyebrows, pretending this was
news. "Well, Oxford endures, you know."
Apparently having finished the final chapter of Planet of the
Gastrointestinal Parasites, Karl Clocker entered from the balcony, a
walking embarrassment as far as Oslett was concerned. Waxhill allowed
himself to be introduced to the Trekker, shook hands, and gave every
impression he was not choking on revulsion or hilarity.
They pulled up three straight-backed occasional chairs and sat down to
breakfast. Clocker didn't take off his hat.
As they transferred food from the serving dishes to their plates,
Waxhill said, "Overnight, we've picked up a few interesting bits of
background on Martin Stillwater, the most important of which relates to
his oldest daughter's hospitalization five years ago."
"What was wrong with her?" Oslett asked.
"They didn't have a clue at first. Based on the symptoms, they
suspected cancer. Charlotte that's the daughter, she was four years old
at the time--was in rather desperate shape for a while, but it
eventually proved to be an unusual blood-chemistry imbalance, quite
treatable."
"Good for her," Oslett said, though he didn't care whether the
Stillwater girl had lived or died.
"Yes, it was," Waxhill said, "but at her lowest point, when the doctors
were edging toward a more terminal diagnosis, her father and mother
underwent bone-marrow aspiration. Extraction of bone marrow with a
special aspirating needle."
"Sounds painful."
"No doubt. Doctors required samples to determine which parent would be
the best donor in case a marrow transplant was required.
Charlotte's marrow was producing little new blood, and indications were
that malignancy was inhibiting blood-cell formation."
Oslett took a bite of the eggs. There was basil in them, and they were
marvelous. "I fail to see where Charlotte's illness could have any
relationship to our current problem."
After pausing for effect, Waxhill said, "She was hospitalized at
Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles."
Oslett froze with a second forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth.
"Five years ago," Waxhill repeated for emphasis.
"What month?"
"December."
"What day did Stillwater give the marrow sample?"
"The sixteenth. December sixteenth."
"Damn. But we had a blood sample as well, a backup--"
"Stillwater also gave blood samples. One of them would have been
packaged with each marrow sample for lab work."
Oslett conveyed the forkful of eggs to his mouth. He chewed, swallowed,
and said, "How could our people screw up like this?"
"We'll probably never know. Anyway, the 'how' doesn't matter as much as
the fact they did screw up, and we have to live with it."
"So we never started where we thought we did."
"Or with whom we thought we started," Waxhill rephrased.
Clocker was eating like a horse without a feed bag. Oslett wanted to
throw a towel over the big man's head to spare Waxhill the unpleasant
sight of such vigorous mastication. At least the Trekker had not yet
punctuated the conversation with inscrutable commentary.
"Exceptional kippers," Waxhill said.
Oslett said, "I'll have to try one."
After sipping orange juice and patting his mouth with his napkin,
Waxhill said, "As to how your Alfie knew Stillwater existed and was able
to find him . . . there are two theories at the moment."
Oslett noticed the "your Alfie" instead of "our Alfie," which might mean
nothing--or might indicate an effort was already under way to shift the
blame to him in spite of the incontrovertible fact that the disaster was
directly the result of sloppy scientific procedures and had nothing
whatsoever to do with how the boy had been handled during his fourteen
months of service.
"First," Waxhill said, "there's a faction that thinks Alfie must have
come across a book with Stillwater's picture on the jacket."
"It can't be anything that simple."
"I agree. Though, of course, the about-the-author paragraph on the flap
of his last two books says he lives in Mission Viejo, which would have
given Alfie a good lead."
Oslett said, "Anybody, seeing a picture of an identical twin he never
knew he had, would be curious enough to look into it--except Alfie.
Whereas an ordinary person has the freedom to pursue a thing like that,
Alfie doesn't. He's tightly focused."
"Aimed like a bullet."
"Exactly. He broke training here, which required a monumental trauma.
Hell, it's more than training. That's a euphemism. It's indoctrination
, brainwashing--"
"He's programmed."
"Yes. Programmed. He's the next thing to a machine, and just seeing a
photograph of Stillwater wouldn't send him spinning out of control any
more than the personal computer in your office would start producing
sperm and grow hair on its back just because you scanned a photograph of
Marilyn Monroe onto its hard disk."
Waxhill laughed softly. "I like the analogy. I think I'll use it to
change some minds, though of course I'll credit it to you."
Oslett was pleased by Waxhill's approval.
"Excellent bacon," said Waxhill.
"Yes, isn't it."
Clocker just kept eating.
"The second and smaller faction," Waxhill continued, "proposes a more
exotic--but, at least to me, more credible hypothesis to the effect that
Alfie has a secret ability of which we're not aware and which he may not
fully understand or control himself."
"Secret ability?"
"Rudimentary psychic perception perhaps. Very primitive . . .
but strong enough to make a connection between him and Stillwater, draw
them together because of . . . well, because of all they share."
"Isn't that a bit far out?"
Waxhill smiled and nodded. "I'll admit it sounds like something out of
a Star Trek movie--" Oslett cringed and glanced at Clocker, but the big
man's eyes didn't shift from the food heaped on his plate.
"--though the whole project smacks of science fiction, doesn't it?"
Waxhill concluded.
"I guess so," Oslett conceded.
"The fact is, the genetic engineers have given Alfie some truly
exceptional abilities. Intentionally. So doesn't it seem possible
they've unintentionally, inadvertently given him other superhuman
qualities?"
"Even inhuman qualities," Clocker said.
"Well, now, you've just shown me a more unpleasant way to look at it,"
Waxhill said, regarding Karl Clocker soberly, "and all too possibly a
more accurate view." Turning to Oslett, "Some psychic link, some
strange mental connection, might have shattered Alfie's conditioning,
erased his program or caused him to override it."
"Our boy was in Kansas City, and Stillwater was in southern California,
for God's sake."
Waxhill shrugged. "A TV broadcast goes on forever, to the end of the
universe. Beam a laser from Chicago toward the far end of the galaxy,
and that light will get there someday, thousands of years from now,
after Chicago is dust--and it'll keep on going. So maybe distance is
meaningless when you're dealing with thought waves, too, or whatever it
was that connected Alfie to this writer."
Oslett had lost his appetite.
Clocker seemed to have found it and added it to his own.
Pointing to the basket of croissants, Waxhill said, "These are
excellent--and in case you didn't realize, there are two kinds here,
some plain and some with almond paste inside."
"Almond croissants are my favorite," Oslett said, but didn't reach for
one.
Waxhill said, "The best croissants in the world--"
"--are in Paris," Oslett interjected, "in a quaint cafe less than a
block off "--the Champs Elysees," Waxhill finished, surprising Oslett.
"The proprietor, Alfonse--"
"--and his wife, Mirielle--"
" are culinary geniuses and hosts without equal."
"Charming people," Waxhill agreed.
They smiled at each other.
Clocker served himself more sausages, and Oslett wanted to knock that
stupid hat off his head.
"If there's any chance that our boy has extraordinary powers, however
feeble, which we never intended to give him," Waxhill said, "then we
must consider the possibility that some qualities we did intend to give
him didn't turn out quite as we thought they did."
"I'm afraid I don't follow," Oslett said.
"Essentially, I'm talking about sex."
Oslett was surprised. "He has no interest in it."
"We're sure of that, are we?"
"He's apparently male, of course, but he's impotent."
Waxhill said nothing.
"He was engineered to be impotent," Oslett stressed.
"A man can be impotent yet have a keen interest in sex. Indeed, one
might make a good argument for the case that his very inability to
attain an erection frustrates him, and that his frustration leads him to
be obsessed with sex, with what he cannot have."
Oslett had been shaking his head the entire time Waxhill had been
speaking. "No. Again, it's not that simple. He's not only impotent
He's received hundreds of hours of intense psychological conditioning to
eliminate sexual interest, some of it when he's been in deep hypnosis,
some under the influence of drugs that make the sub conscious
susceptible to any suggestion, some through virtual-reality subliminal
feeds during sedative-induced sleep. To this boy, the primary
difference between men and women is the way they dress."
Unimpressed with Oslett's argument, spreading orange marmalade on a
slice of toast, Waxhill said, "Brainwashing, even at its most
sophisticated, can fail. Would you agree with that?"
"Yes, but with an ordinary subject, you have problems because you've got
to counter a lifetime of experience to install a new attitude or false
memory. But Alfie was different. He was a blank slate, a beautiful
blank slate, so there wasn't any resistance to whatever attitudes,
memories, or feelings we wanted to stuff in his nice empty head.
There was nothing in his brain to wash out first."
"Maybe mind-control failed with Alfie precisely because we were so
confident that he was an easy mark."
"The mind is its own control," Clocker said.
Waxhill gave him an odd look.
"I don't think it failed," Oslett insisted. "Anyway, there's still the
little matter of his engineered impotence to get around."
Waxhill took time to chew and swallow a bite of toast, and then washed
it down with coffee. "Maybe his body got around it for him."
"Say again?"
"His incredible body with its superhuman recuperative powers." i Oslett
twitched as if the idea had pierced like a pin. "Wait a | minute, now.
His wounds heal exceptionally fast, yes. Punctures, gashes, broken
bones. Once damaged, his body can restore itself to its original
engineered condition in miraculously short order. But that's the key.
To its original engineered condition. It can't start to remake itself
on any fundamental level, can't mutate, for God's sake."
"We're sure of that, are we?"
"Yes!"
"Why?"
"Well . . . because . . . otherwise . . . it's unthinkable."
"Imagine," Waxhill said, "if Alfie is potent. And interested in sex.
The boy's been engineered to have a tremendous potential for violence, a
biological killing machine, without compunctions or remorse, capable of
any savagery. Imagine that bestiality coupled with a sex drive, and
consider how sexual compulsions and violent im
pulses can feed on each
other and amplify each other when they're not tempered by a civilized
and moral spirit."
Oslett pushed his plate aside. The sight of food was beginning to
sicken him. "It has been considered. That's why so damned many
precautions were taken."
"As with the Hindenburg." As with the Titanic, Oslett thought grimly.
Waxhill pushed his plate aside, too, and folded his hands around his
coffee cup. "So now Alfie has found Stillwater, and he wants the
writer's family. He's a complete man now, at least physically, and
thoughts of sex lead eventually to thoughts of procreation. A wife.
Children. God knows what strange, twisted understanding he has of the
meaning and purpose of a family. But here's a ready-made family.
He wants it. Wants it badly. Evidently he feels it belongs to him."
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