“Looks like the plants in my apartment,” Cable muttered. “I may be neat, but everything I water dies.”
Cable watched as Alec scrupulously measured the solution and reported to note-taker Linda: “One part formula to one hundred parts water.”
Linda glanced at her watch and included time and date with her notes. “Anything special about the flower?” she asked.
“Just call it a cut orchid blossom, damaged but recently bloomed, stem about thirteen and a half centimeters.” He dropped the orchid into the beaker of preparation and carefully, tenderly, set it—a decoration—on a round wooden table. Cable suspected the table served as a dining table when it was needed for that.
Her eyes wandered up the bookshelves to the glass grid of a ceiling. She saw, through the naked beams of the old church roof, several bright stars and a gibbous moon. A small meteor streaked across the sky.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“What?” Alec asked absently.
Cable realized suddenly that nothing as mundane as a shooting star would compete with this exotic yellow liquid that had just been fed to the orchid. “Nothing,” she said, sloughing the matter aside. “How long before you’ll see some effect?”
Alec tore his blank stare away from the orchid and looked at Cable. “Do you expect it to leap out of its pot and dance a fandango? It could take a week or longer.”
Somehow, she wanted to hurt him, wanted to hurt this man she considered a courageous and benevolent genius. Before she could talk herself out of it, she said caustically, “Your work has all the thrills of watching grass grow.”
He said angrily, “There’s nothing much more thrilling than watching grass grow.” He took the notebook from Linda and slapped it shut as he crossed the lab to the wall safe and then tossed it in.
“Ooops,” Cable said.
Linda shrugged and said, “Forget it. Despite his jokes he’s ridiculously sensitive. I suppose I should have warned you. Our dad was the same—religious about his work.”
Cable wasn’t sure she heard properly. “Your dad?”
Linda said, “Haven’t you ever heard of Walter Holland, the biophysicist? Nobel Prize?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him, but I thought—”
“He used to throw a mean bunsen burner, I can tell you. His temper flared so suddenly. Alec and I spent half our childhood cleaning up after his tantrums. Perfectionist till the day he died. Alec’s the same—only he doesn’t usually throw things.” Linda had been speaking casually, unaware of the startled expression on Cable’s face. She turned to switch off the various instruments associated with the electron microscope. With the last switch, the room lights brightened noticeably.
Cable looked at Alec’s back and said to herself: Playing a little game, were we, Dr. Holland? She asked Linda in a whisper, “Is he married?”
Linda shook her head with a smile that seemed to say: He’s all yours; but are you sure you know what you’re asking for? She said, “Excuse me for a minute or two; I’m going to wash up and call it a day. Join us for supper, why don’t you? One of the twins bagged some wild turkey and dressed one for us. You can help me figure out how to cook it.”
Cable laughed. “That will be a challenge. I’m not much of a cook.”
“Alec’s a whiz in the kitchen. He’ll help,” Linda said, as she disappeared behind one of the towering bookshelves. Cable heard a door shut on the other side.
“Oh, my God,” Alec said suddenly in an intense quiet voice. “My God, my God . . .”
Cable looked over by the wall safe and saw Alec staring at the floor.
“What is it?” Cable asked, alarmed by the shock in his voice.
“Look,” he said.
She stood beside him and saw what he saw. Five bright green shoots, two to three feet high, had sprouted out of the floorboards. It seemed to have happened without benefit of sun, water, nourishment or time. They were walnut saplings—new and healthy.
Alec bent to the floor, knelt, then sat on the hard, dead wood. “Cable, I don’t believe this! They’re still growing. You can watch them!” He reached out his hand and touched a bud as it unfurled into a leaf.
“Jesus,” Cable whispered, “you can see them grow!” She sat beside him and reached out to touch one of the sprouts—as if to convince herself it was real.
Alec said, “The places where Linda threw the drops of formula. Look, you can see the charred marks around the bases of the stems.”
Cable gasped. “Of course! Alec, it’s fantastic!”
The two of them had a thought simultaneously; the orchid had been soaking in the solution of formula. Both leapt to their feet and ran to the dining table.
Instead of the crushed, withered thing that had been there before, now there was a plant that was thickly leaved with an enormous, flawless bloom and a powerful, wiry root that had found its way out of the beaker and wrapped around the table so powerfully that the wood’s veneer was buckled.
Alec stared at it, transported. “I don’t believe this!” He yelled, “Linda! Get in here quick!”
While they watched, the beaker cracked; the trunk had grown too fat for it, A splinter sprang out of the strained tabletop.
Alec grabbed Cable and kissed her. It was at first meant to be a fleeting gesture, but it held; Cable kissed him back.
“What is it?” Linda asked excitedly. “Oh,” she said when she saw them, “I hope you weren’t expecting to surprise me.” Then she saw the orchid, and her mouth dropped.
“And look!” Alec said pointing at the shoots rising from the floor. They were now nearly as tall as Linda.
Linda yanked open a wide metal drawer under a workbench. “Take measures, clippers, scalpel, slides for samples—what else do I need?”
“Get the notebook back out of the safe.”
Cable asked, “Can I do anything?”
Alec chuckled, allowing himself the luxury of taking his mind off work for a second. He said, “I bet you can do anything you set your mind to, Cable.”
“I’ve generally found that to be true,” she said with a grin.
“I want Charlie to see this—because he’s a friend—and Ritter, because the bastard’s always acted as if we’re somehow throwing his money away. Want to go get them?”
“Sure,” said Cable. She hurried to the door.
“Hell,” said Alec, “I feel like busting that damn security door down so the whole world can come take a look!”
Cable considered the spirit of his remark and answered seriously, “I don’t think that would be a great idea, Alec. Not yet.”
She left them and ran out into the night.
It was dark. For some reason, the floodlights that had illuminated the camp earlier were not burning.
7
Cable stopped short. The only light she saw came from her own quarters. Probably just Charlie or Ritter, she thought; maybe both. Checking the perimeter sensors.
The night sounds of the swamp were, oddly, both frightening and tranquilizing—the piping of treefrogs, bullfrogs croaking in the tall sawgrass by the bridge, the ringing of a million insects. She began to make her way across the dark clearing.
She tripped over a loop of sassafras root, stumbled but did not fall. Her eyes were adjusting to the moonlight. She saw someone standing in the middle of the clearing—a big man, a rifle under his arm. “Hello,” she called ahead to him.
He did not answer; he did not move.
He was huge, with arms like those of a circus strong man. In the moonlight his face looked smooth, boyish. She was sure she had not seen him before. She asked him, “Is Ritter back? And do you know where Charlie is?”
The man looked at her oddly, and for a moment she wondered if he spoke English. He gestured toward her shack and said, “Go to the the command shed, miss.” He gave her half a salute.
“What’s your name?”
“Bruno, miss.” He looked away, not interested in her.
“Thanks,” she said with a
shrug. “Why are the floodlights out?” she asked as an afterthought.
“I don’t know,” he said.
As she approached the command shed she wondered if Alec’s use of the powerful microscope had blown a fuse or a generator. “Charlie?” she called when she reached the porch. “You there?” There was no answer. “Ritter?”
The screen door screeched open and banged shut. She saw no one inside. The sounds of night were diminished indoors, and the hum of instruments—all operating—blended with the swamp noises like some new breed of insect. Apart from the instruments, only one lamp burned.
“Who left everything running?” she wondered aloud. She was nervous. She half-expected someone to answer her.
She looked at the displays. The monitor was flashing a series of messages. “SENSOR OUT/SECTOR THREE” turned into “SENSOR OUT/SECTOR FOUR” which gave way to “SENSOR OUT/SECTOR FIVE,” and so on. The only operating sensors, according to the repeating cycle of messages, were one, two, and six.
Hair stirred on the back of Cable’s neck. She knew, almost with certainty, that the sensors had been deliberately cut—that the camp was in some quiet way under attack.
She noted a blinking red light and the label under it: “Penetration.” But she did not yet know the system well enough to guess where defenses had been penetrated.
There was an infrared picture on the video monitor. It wasn’t just dark lines and shapes. It looked like two men lying on the ground. One of the bodies was brighter than the other—hotter. She sat at the workbench.
Her hand shaking, she operated the zoom control to enlarge the image as much as possible. One of the men had white hair. Neither was moving.
Cable reached for the shortwave. She switched it on and grabbed for the microphone. It came away in her hand; its cord was severed. She stared at the cord in disbelief.
She didn’t hear him, although the man had to have been standing behind her near the door, waiting. He grabbed her arm and violently yanked her out of the chair, slung her around until she slammed into a wall.
Dazed, she slid to the floor, watching him lift the heavy radio and smash it like a watermelon against the workbench.
The man was surprisingly strong for someone so emaciated; he was enraged for no visible reason, terrifying. His eyes and his mouth were open wide, and he wore a gold earring.
He swooped down to grab Cable again, but she scrambled to her feet and out of his way. She ran for the door.
He caught her easily and hauled her at a run back through the cabin, into the small galley at the back.
She screamed as he spun her around and raised his arm to strike her. Instinctively she raised an arm to stop the blow and he grabbed her wrist, laughing gutturally. Miraculously she remembered her training in self-defense—training she had never had to put to the test—and she knew to push toward him instead of pulling away. With all her strength, she smashed her head straight into the bridge of his nose.
He reeled back, stunned, clutching his face. This gave Cable the time she needed to search for a weapon. She swept a propane fuel tank off the kitchen stove and whirled it through the air into the side of her attacker’s head. There was a tremendous ringing concussion, and the man staggered and fell over a chair.
Cable made it out the door of the cabin.
The big man she had spoken to before no longer stood there in the moonlight. She had a hunch she could not trust him anyway. She ran toward the guard house but stopped short: the bodies of two guards lay face down in the high grass near the shack.
“Alec!” she screamed, but she knew that he would be unlikely to hear her. She yelled for him again and again as she ran toward the church.
A lumbering shape stepped out of the shadow of the church façade and stopped her the way a tree stops a runaway car. The wind was knocked out of her, but Bruno was off balance, too; and as she bounced off him her legs tripped him and the two fell together.
She got to her feet, and instead of entering the church she ran back to the guard house.
Another of Ferret’s men charged at her from the darkness, chased her, but was not fast enough to stop her before she reached the bodies of the guards and pulled away an automatic rifle. She squeezed the trigger—three sharp shots—and the mercenary tumbled backward. Flocks of sparrows rustled out of trees into the black sky. Cable turned her sights on Bruno.
‘Hold it!” she ordered.
“I’m holding,” said Bruno, skidding to a stop. “I’m holding.” He dropped his revolver and raised his hands.
She had to get to the church, and Bruno was still in the way. “Back off,” she instructed as she circled him, the rifle aimed from her hip.
“Drop it,” growled a voice behind her. She felt the barrel of a gun hard against her back and saw a dozen more mercenaries coming at her from the shadows.
Her ears were ringing—not from the sounds of the swamp but from a dread screaming through her bloodstream; her legs tingled. The camp had been massacred, she assumed, except for herself and the Hollands. Charlie had to be dead. Ritter. All his men.
“Arcane,” she said to her captor, the gray scarecrow with the earring.
He laughed. “The name’s Ferret,” he said, his lips curling back like a wild animal’s. “Thinking can get you in trouble. It’s going to get you killed, in fact.” He laughed again—an angry, forced, mirthless sound.
She had lowered but not dropped the automatic. One of Ferret’s men took it from her, cautiously, with a jerk; and two others grabbed her arms painfully.
“Take her along,” said Ferret contemptuously; “we’ll need a key.”
They marched her, half-carrying, half-dragging her, through the double doors of the church.
A green-shaded ceiling fixture burned brightly; the big generator purred; the guard there lay on the floor, a knife protruding from his ribs, his dead eyes open.
“Your right hand, I think,” Ferret said as he lifted it and aimed it at the fingerprint slot of the security lock. “Pretty hand,” he said approvingly; “useful hand.” He thrust it in. “I wonder if it has to be attached to work?”
She struggled, tried to curl her fingers; but she heard the solenoid thunk that signaled the motors to pull back the door.
“Alec!” she screamed. “Look out!”
Ferret cracked the butt of his .45 across Cable’s skull, and she fell unconscious to the floor.
Alec and Linda had heard the three bursts from Cable’s automatic. The sounds had been remote, but clearly gunshots. The scientists were absorbed so utterly by their new discoveries that the barest excuse had satisfied: Linda had said, “Another turkey shoot.” And they had bent back over their notes and test tubes, wherein their minds dwelled like astral travelers, apart from the world the rest of humanity inhabits.
If they heard Cable yell before the door opened, it was no more than another of the animal sounds of the night, perhaps a blue heron taking to the air.
The door hissing open could not mean anything important.
The men standing there with guns were not real at first; then Alec’s mind was wrenched back, shocked back to reality.
Ferret’s wide, almost lidless eyes were on the orchid. It had continued to grow; its roots now crawled over and gripped the whole table. The table itself had sent tiny shoots into the air where the formula had spilled onto it from the broken beaker.
Linda moved close and gripped her brother’s arm.
“Interesting specimen, Dr. Holland,” said Ferret. “I’m sure I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” He stepped toward it. “How long did this take to grow—a few days? Does it live up to expectations, do you think. Doctor?”
Ferret viciously broke petals off the huge bloom and closed his fist around the stem.
Alec lurched forward automatically, enraged; but he was pushed back by the barrels of half-a-dozen guns.
Ferret tugged at the plant but could not dislodge it from the misshapen table. He lifted the table into the air, using the orchi
d stem as a handle. The plant seemed made of steel.
“Phenomenal!” Ferret squawked. “You’re to be congratulated—if not rewarded. Phenomenal. Phenomenal.” He dropped the table with a bang.
“What do you want?” Alec asked dully.
Ferret smiled; it was an ugly smile that did not reach his eyes. He looked around approvingly, admiringly, even up to the living quarters on the balconies above, up to the glass ceiling and the starry sky beyond. Alec had the nonsensical notion that this villian was about to announce: It’s simple, Dr. Holland, I want to be you.
But Ferret said, “I represent a private party that wants your formula so badly they will give an arm and a leg for it.” He leaned against one of the posts supporting a balcony. “You can make a successful deal if you’re imaginative; even keep your life, if you’re lucky.”
Alec frowned, his thoughts racing, tumbling uselessly over one another. He shook his head.
Ferret said, “They’re willing, however, to give your arm and leg—if necessary.” He pointed his pistol at Alec’s face. “You won’t be given a few days to think this over.”
“Get out of my lab,” Alec said flatly.
Ferret cocked the gun. “The formula,” he said grimly.
“Why?” Alec asked. “What do you want with it?”
Ferret shook his head. “Perhaps you don’t have the imagination we credited you with, Dr. Holland.”
Linda moved closer. “Alec,” she said in a low voice, “the door.”
Ritter stood there. He was silently surveying the situation. His pistol was drawn, and he seemed to be awaiting a chance to move, to turn the tables. Alec tried to conceal the feeling of hope he was afraid might show on his face, and he looked away from Ritter, wondering frantically how he might increase Ritter’s chances, stall for time, diminish the odds against Ritter’s one gun.
“The notebooks,” Alec began, “they’re . . . if I give them to you, you’ll kill us.”
“If you don’t,” said Ferret, “we’ll kill you and tear this place apart.”
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