Even this far away, smoke still soiled the air from last night’s fire; but the animals did not seem to mind. A fawn stooped to drink from the rainwater that had collected. Subtly as Cable moved when she sat up, she still startled the deer and it bolted away.
If a deer could drink that water, it ought to be safe, Cable thought. She cupped her hands and drank, then wiped the mud from her face.
She tried her legs. They worked again, none too rigidly, but they worked. She made her way around to the east of the peninsula. She saw where the helicopter had set her down in a sea of water lilies, where Bill Darkow had docked their boat. She remembered seeing the steeple of the church rising over the trees. It wasn’t there now; a thin column of smoke rose in its place. She heard motors starting; they sounded like automobiles. If they were cars, where were the roads?
Staying out of sight as much as possible, she waded and swam across the inlet that served as a boat channel for the camp. As well as she could determine, no one saw her.
She pulled herself up onto mossy land. As she did so, a dozen water moccasins just ahead of her slithered into the water she had just vacated. She nearly fainted with horror. Her unwanted imagination gave her an image of thousands that had been coiling around her legs as she swam. After a moment she pulled herself together and went on.
Inland, she came upon two overgrown ruts that once had been a road of sorts; this she followed until it reached a flatter road more recently traveled.
She stopped for a minute to rest and heard—from somewhere behind her—a sound that belonged in an African jungle, something inhuman and more powerful than any swamp animal’s. A deep, angry, agonized growl. She cut her rest short and ran down the newly found path.
11
The headquarters of the man who called himself Arcane was not far from the unsettled expanse of swampland in which Holland’s camp had been located—not far as the helicopter flies. Even while impersonating Ritter, the camp’s organizer and security chief, Arcane had been able to spend time at the estate that was his home, laboratory and retreat.
The estate—an antebellum plantation with modern structures grafted on—was self-sufficient, independent of any community, distant from any traveled highway, and never stumbled upon by accident. The civil documents that had once revealed its existence had long ago been purchased for a good sum, and had been destroyed. Deliveries for the estate—which included unusual furnishings and sophisticated scientific instruments and components—were made to a warehouse in Georgia, from which they were trucked by Arcane’s own staff and vehicles.
The estate was, except to Arcane’s associates, unknown. Yet many a monument with less to show has charged tourists for visits. The forty-seven rooms in the old main house were furnished with treasures that could fill a museum; the gardens were in competition with those of palaces, and contained dozens of species no botanist could identify; and the laboratory . . . But the public would never be allowed to visit the laboratory or the rooms beneath it.
For all its opulence, the estate had no unifying theme, no essence. Anything and everything, provided it was valuable and/or one of a kind, could be given a niche there.
Once, Ferret had dined with him and joined Arcane in extravagant wine-tasting. Intoxicated, more candid than usual, Arcane had told Ferret: “The estate holds more than one man’s taste, don’t you see, because each of my moods has the potency of an average man. I have universal tastes and that means, of course, my good Ferret, that I have none. Preferences become trivial, don’t they, when one’s paramount goals are as boundless as mine? The estate is everything because I am everything. It’s a mess, actually, valued at, oh, roughly two hundred million.”
He sometimes called the place Arcane, as if he and it were interchangeable.
Holding companies, dummy corporations, foreign bank accounts, smuggling, stolen patents, government corruption and murder made it all possible. A large staff nourished it, and a small army protected it. He paid his people well and housed them on the estate; they gave him loyalty and surrendered for him any hope of winning prizes from the outside world. In this, he was not much different from many a leviathan corporation with its cradle-to-grave benefits and stringent rules of conduct.
These rules of conduct, even in light of the generous pay and the benefits, would never have appealed to Dr. Alec Holland, Arcane—a student of human behavior—knew. He had never bothered making Holland an offer. Instead, he had spent most of two years maneuvering Holland into a position of importance in Washington while convincing Holland that several of the Arcane dummy corporations had serious interest in the humanitarian implications of his work in recombinant DNA.
“I’m not proud,” Arcane once told an acquaintance in Washington; “I know it when I see a brain superior to my own in a special field. In Holland’s case, the brain is not for sale, so I must tap it on the sly.” He added, “legally, of course.”
Masquerading as Ritter, Arcane had watched Holland’s progress keenly. He had known precisely when to send in Ferret’s men—when to close down the operation—before Holland could reveal his discoveries or the government could grow curious about its investment.
All in all, Arcane had thought to himself as his helicopter approached the estate the night before, it had worked out rather better than expected—if what he saw in Holland’s lab meant what he suspected it did. He had carried the notebooks in his lap as others might protectively hold the mystic testaments of a new religion, or a newborn child.
He had carried them directly to his combination study and laboratory where he had begun with book one. It was a struggle to make out the family shorthand in which Alec and Linda had communicated; by dawn, however, he had been managing fairly well.
He called for a tranquilizer at seven; he was inordinately excited.
At eight, Caramel brought him his breakfast.
“The rain’s stopped,” she said softly, easing the door shut behind her. She stood just inside waiting for him to finish his thought and invite her in.
Caramel Kane. Senator Michael Kane’s missing daughter, was twenty-four. She was an efficient secretary, an excellent listener, and one of the very few humans who could enter Arcane’s study without being summoned. She was also quite beautiful, though she wore too much makeup to suit Arcane; he particularly hated the blue streak she insisted on maintaining in her otherwise splendid blonde hair. But he loved her for wearing glasses—as he loved anything that symbolized intellectuality.
Though the sky outside was brightening, Arcane’s mineshaft of a laboratory remained gloomy. He alone sat in a pool of artificial brilliance—the result of several concealed spotlights aimed at his workplace from the two-story-high vaulted ceiling. Slatted wooden shutters were closed over the tall Tudor windows—admitting only slivers of hazy sunlight. The large room’s walls were irregular, some flat, some curved; some angles were right and some not. Those surfaces not decorated with bookshelves were covered with wildlife trophies—heads of peculiar creatures mounted on mahogany. There were matching heads of something that looked to be a cross between a rodent and a wild boar; tusked, snouted, whiskered; a moose with antlers that were gnarled and unnatural; a gray lion and an albino bull; snarling dogs; horses; and hideous men: a child with two heads, aborigines laced like shrunken heads but, if anything, larger than normal, an ancient woman whose white hair hung down ten feet like some decorative tapestry.
The vines that snaked toward the ceiling spotlights were of a new dark green, leafy variety that could survive with little light and less attention.
When Arcane set his notebook down, stretched and turned to smile at Caramel, it was for her as if the shutters had suddenly swung open. “Is it morning?” he asked with a sigh. “Is that coffee I smell?”
“Yes, sir,” she said beaming; “yes to both. Coffee with cinnamon and chicory, the way you like it, and grapefruit juice, dry toast, and crayfish with mayonnaise.”
“Did you bring something for yourself? I’d like to have you join me.”
/> She said coyly, “There’s an extra coffee cup.” She set the jingling silver tray ever so carefully on his black-topped work table.
The apparatus and variety of instruments and vessels on the table strongly resembled those Alec Holland had been working with—down to a duplicate of his special electron microscope. When Caramel lighted a Bunsen burner to slip under the carafe of coffee, the faint light was reflected along hundreds of glass tubes, coils and appliances. When she ran water from the cold tap of the lab sink into glasses of ice she had brought, the rattling and ringing echoed in the high-ceilinged chamber.
“You really should get some sleep,” Caramel said with concern and devotion.
“It does the soul good to work through the night now and again,” he said. “Elevates one’s self-esteem, one’s feeling of power. Don’t you think so?”
“I imagine it would,” she said.
He chuckled. “Do you know how honest you are, Caramel darling?”
“To a fault?” she hazarded.
“Probably, though I find it refreshing—and unusual.” He sipped the coffee she had just poured. “Let’s have a little music.”
She smiled and rustled softly over to a tape player on one of the bookshelves. She selected a cassette and began a program of Viennese waltzes.
“You would be absolutely fascinated with Holland’s work,” Arcane said.
She returned and sat beside him. “I wonder if I’d understand it?”
“In the broadest sense, the whole world will understand it. His work with recombinant DNA is not so new anymore, but his combining of plant and animal cells is revolutionary—more even than he realized. It’s astonishing. Simple. And so beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like it,” she said, watching him peel and dip a crayfish into the egg-cup of mayonnaise. “I mean, I’m happy to see you pleased.”
“Pleased,” he repeated with a laugh. “I was close to his discoveries in my own studies, Caramel, but I lacked the spark he found to ignite it all. Genius, even in the hands of a fool like Holland, is power. He’d have let it slip through his fingers.”
“But in your hands, sir, how overpowering! How magnificent it will be.”
He nodded. He ran his fingers over the distinguished gray at his temples and then down, with a regretful frown, over his unshaven cheek. “I must look disheveled,” he muttered.
She snuggled close as if to say she loved him for it.
He rested a hand on her thigh, just under the edge of her light-lavender spring dress. “How magnificent it will be,” he repeated, dreamily. He held a crayfish by the tail and let it dangle halfway to his mouth.
Caramel waited patiently for him to come back to her.
“Lovely not to sleep,” he said, “knowing that soon I’ll develop Holland’s substance with my own hands. This afternoon I’ll give you a list of test specimens I’ll need—animals, plants. I think we will eliminate the overcautious microbe stage Holland experimented with and go directly to . . . higher forms of life.”
His coffee was half gone; Caramel filled his cup to the brim for him.
“It’s exciting,” she whispered, awed. “I want to be with you every step of the way.”
“You see where it’s taking us?”
“To the top of the world,” she said with idealistic certainty. “The world will come to you—or starve.”
He squeezed her leg. “I suspect that’s largely true.”
While he ate, Caramel picked up notebook number fourteen and strained to make some sense of it out.
“What’s photosynthetic combustion?” she asked. “Sounds like a new engine.”
“Let’s see that,” he said, taking the notebook from her. “These are the final notes; I haven’t read them yet.” He frowned at the page, then his mouth dropped and his eyes danced.
“It is an engine, my darling. A new engine for the essence of life!” He laughed in amazement. “Don’t you see? Plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen; animals do the reverse. But in a cell comprised of elements both plant and animal—nothing is lost! The efficiency of it staggers the imagination! The strength of it! The regenerative power!”
She gasped.
“You see it? You see it? No, I suspect not; you see only that I see it. Isn’t that so? That was an empathetic gasp, n’est-ce pas?”
“Nest what? No sir, I’m sure that, compared to you, I don’t see anything at all. But . . . but I had a thought. A frightening—”
“What is it, my child?” he said, rubbing her leg indulgently.
“Uh, if all the plants become like this, what will the animals breathe?”
Arcane was surprised by the question; he sagged against the springy back of his lab stool. “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “my dear, you’ve made a deduction! But carry it further. See the reverse. Flip the coin. What new sort of animal will be immune to a diminishing oxygen supply? God! The idea excites me so I’ll require another tranquilizer to see me through the morning. Will you see to it, darling?”
“Yes sir, of course. More coffee?”
“A wee bit, yes.”
The soft waltzes playing in the background were interrupted by a melodious bell from the estate’s intercom.
Caramel jumped to her feet, ran to the console by the tape deck and switched on the squawk box.
“Sir, Marsha’s on her way to you with an important message,” said a woman’s voice.
“Thank you,” Caramel said.
At that moment there was a hasty knock at the door, and Marsha—a dark-haired young woman with a lusty voice—hurried in.
“Sir,” she began breathlessly, “I’ve come from the communications center—”
“One moment, Marsha,” Arcane interrupted curtly. Something in notebook fourteen had caught his attention, something he seemed not to like. He closed it slowly. “What is it?” he asked the messenger distractedly.
“Ferret has just radioed, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Something’s happened.”
“What?”
“He wants to speak to you personally, sir.”
Arcane nodded. “Very well. Call him back and patch him through to me here.” She turned to do as he asked. He stopped her. “Marsha, my dear, why don’t you wear glasses?”
“Glasses? But, well, I have perfect vision.”
“But not much of an imagination, evidently. That’s all, Marsha. Thank you.”
The door clicked shut behind the beautiful brunette.
Caramel set the intercom for a two-way patch to the radio and returned to Arcane. She rubbed his shoulders, his upper back. “Something you read disturbed you, sir,” she said. “What was it?”
Arcane relaxed into her soothing ministrations. “It could be a disaster,” he said languidly. “I don’t want even to think about it!”
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry,” she purred. “What is it?”
“The final entry in book fourteen is dated almost two weeks ago. Are we to assume Alec and Linda Holland were too busy making discoveries to keep notes? Not from their past behavior; no, we can’t conclude that. Linda was overly conscientious about note-taking—some of these books are positively tedious—and Alec was not blessed with eidetic memory. No. It means that another book exists—or existed. The final book, the most important one.”
“Perhaps that’s what Ferret is calling to tell you. Perhaps he found it.”
He moaned with pleasure and leaned his head back into her breasts. “You’re why I surround myself with optimists, Caramel darling.”
Ferret’s voice, harsh and clipped, echoed from the intercom. “We’ve had some trouble, Arcane,” he began.
“Who was left to give you trouble?” the great man said, diving to the heart of the question.
“Uh, we don’t know. I’d prefer not to discuss this over the airwaves, Arcane—even though we’re scrambled and rescrambled. I’m mainly calling to tell you that Bruno and I will need transportation back to the estate.”
&nbs
p; “You had a jeep.”
“Uh, when we reached it . . . it was half buried in a quicksand bog.”
“Who did that?”
“We don’t know.”
“How many of you need transport?”
After a pause, Ferret said, “Two.”
After a longer pause, Arcane repeated the word. “Two?”
The gaps grew longer—as if interstellar distance imposed time lags. Ferret said, “Travis was wounded. I suspect he bought it in his way to the pickup point. Sperry was right behind us for a while, but . . . something got him.”
Arcane downed his entire cup of coffee. “The others?”
“Dead.”
Arcane’s eye landed on notebook number fourteen. “Did you, by chance, find yet another notebook in the rubble? We’ve decided—that’s the royal ‘we’—that there has to be a fifteenth.”
“No, we didn’t,” said Ferret. His tone was slightly incredulous; he failed to understand why Arcane had turned to such an unimportant topic.
“Where are you and your muscleman?” Arcane asked.
“The highway. The usual spot.”
Arcane sighed and got to his feet. “I hope you brought a picnic lunch. You’ll have a bit of a wait. I simply must shave and shower before I set foot out of here.” He unbuttoned the top of his black silk shirt; Caramel took over and unbuttoned the rest.
Ferret said, “Whenever. We have no place to go and no way to get there.”
“Over and out,” Arcane said.
12
The shattered ribbon of concrete Ferret referred to was a “highway” only by comparison to gravel and ruts and ditches. Once a major bridge across solid land areas surrounded by swamp, the road had been replaced a dozen years ago by three lanes of asphalt farther north, which was not much of an improvement technologically but did better serve the huts and hovels and tiny towns of the few traditional swamp dwellers. The northern road connected to bona fide highways that carried one to civilization.
Mainly hidden by trees and hanging moss, the old road could be spotted from the air in separated places. It looked like a narrow, healing scar—which it was: grass pushed up through it and chipped away its edges, reclaiming the land for the swamp. Had an aircraft been flying over that day, an observer up there might have seen the only two vehicles on the road. Two fast-moving black dots. The observers would have missed the two pedestrians waiting at roadside, however; they were too thoroughly concealed by the trees.
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