Swamp Thing 1

by David Houston

“I was afraid of that. Go to the greenhouse and get me the smallest samples of, oh, Dracaena marginata—they’re along the right wall; Taxodium distichum, in the back; and a Helxine solierolii or two.”

  “How’m I ever going to—?” she whined.

  “They’ve a skinny cane that looks like a palm tree, a cypress sapling, and some of that baby-tears fern we’ve got in the kitchen.”

  Waiting for her, he absently dropped his ballpoint into one of the key test tubes. The plastic softened and melted, combined with the substance, hardened and cracked the test tube. The metal ink-cylinder was unaffected. What he held up looked like some kind of blue popsicle. As he held it, the metal stick got warmer. He could not be sure, but the transluscent blue test-tube-shaped stuff seemed to be getting fatter as he watched it. He poked it with a stirring rod. The material gave; it was not perfectly hard.

  While he could still hold the heating stick, he ran with his accident to the door to the outside and flung it out into the tailored yard.

  It stuck a magnificent broad live-oak and exploded with a bright blue flash. The tree was engulfed in flame—Arcane could feel the radiant heat—and soon crackled as its own wood caught fire.

  The intercom chimed, and Arcane said, before he was asked, “It’s all right, I suspect; but have a team make sure that fire doesn’t spread. We’ve just stumbled upon an extraordinary weapon potential, Marsha. One old tree is not too much to sacrifice. Over and out.”

  Secretly, Arcane breathed a sigh of relief that he had had the notion to throw the thing away rather than put it under a microscope. He made a note of the brand name of the ballpoint while he could still remember it.

  Caramel arrived with a tray of small potted plants.

  Arcane broke a single leaf from the fern and dropped it in a culture dish that looked empty of formula. He planted a cypress sprout, roots and all, in one of the test tubes; and he dropped another such sprout in another tube sans its roots. The palm-like cane received similar treatment, with various parts of it treated to various concentrations of formula and water.

  An hour later, every sample had grown. He took pinches of new leaves and in turn dropped them into other solutions. Shoots grew from them. He took one of the new super leaves and floated it in ordinary distilled water. It, too, sprouted, though more slowly.

  After two hours, the work table looked like a potting shed—only there were no pots and no soil.

  He trimmed off the taller growths and gave Caramel a handful of greenery. “Take this to the furnace room and burn it up. Quick. And don’t drop any of it or take time to talk to anyone along the way.”

  The cypress sprouts had snapped through their glass containers and sent roots like sluggish earthworms in search of soil. He tried hydrochloric acid on them, half expecting it to fail, but it did kill the rampant growths, shriveling them under a white vapor.

  Caramel returned and said, “All done.” She tightened the sash of her lab coat and waited for instructions.

  “You’ll find an arm labeled Darkow in the refrigerator. Bring that out,” he said after due deliberation. “It’s reasonably fresh.”

  He cleared a work area in front of him and poured enough formula to just cover the bottom of a culture dish. It glowed when he poured it; its light diminished after it rested a moment.

  The arm was intact, neatly disjointed at the shoulder socket. The sample was much too large for the small dish. He positioned the stiff arm so that a gauze pad could be placed over the sliced flesh and bone.

  He poured the formula onto the gauze.

  Almost at once, the gauze brightened and began to smoke. A yellow life sped through the veins and capillaries of the dead gray arm until the whole arm took on the sunny color. With a mild foomph the arm caught fire. Cold flames flickered over it, like alcohol on a Christmas pudding, and then winked out. The yellow arm was left with streaks of black.

  The elbow joint softened, and the arm moved slightly. The fingers of the hand curled. Skin began to blister, bubble, and the gas that escaped from the sores smelled of death.

  Arcane watched it for thirty minutes, spellbound. The formula had drastically hastened the process of decay. Within a few minutes maggots crawled in and out of the exposed layers, and by the end of his study flies swarmed around it.

  Caramel walked over and caught Arcane staring at the putrid arm. “Ugh,” she said. But knowing Arcane, she added, “Is this good or bad?”

  “Oh,” he said with a sigh, “probably neither. I just don’t know its principle of behavior. What if the arm had been living, for instance, just cut? No, perhaps that would make no difference. The arm still would not have what it needs—apart from the formula—to support life. An arm is an arm is an arm.”

  “You’re tired,” she observed. “Why don’t we go get ready for dinner?”

  “That’s hours yet.”

  “Uh huh. We can get in that big tub of yours, take a little nap, have a drink or two, and be a bundle of energy when the guests arrive.”

  He put his arm around her. “You know exactly how to please me.”

  She chuckled pleasantly. “Sure. You gave me a college course in how to do it.”

  “You learned well.” He turned to face her so she could begin to unbutton his shirt. “I’ll bet you’ve already run our bath water.”

  “I asked Marsha to do it.” She tugged his shirttail out of his trousers.

  “Caramel . . . don’t you have a thin white gown, something Ophelia-like and innocent and sexy?” He stuck out a shoe for her to untie.

  “I guess so; want me to wear it to the party?”

  “I want you to lend it to Cable for the evening. You mind?”

  She unfastened his belt. “I don’t mind.” And unzipped him and let the pants fall.

  As she led him naked from the room, he said:

  “You, Caramel, will be my queen tonight. Wear ermine, and black polyester.”

  25

  All but one of those invited came to dinner; the straggler, it was discovered when the guests compared notes, had died a year earlier.

  Ten of the twenty-six were residents or guests of the estate; the outside sixteen flew to small local airstrips in chartered or privately owned aircraft, from the Americas, Africa and Europe. They began to arrive in the early evening in Arcane’s limousines and two shuttle copters whose pilots knew how to file misleading flight plans. The guests were accustomed to subterfuge and cunning. As he boarded a copter, the turban-topped Hajj even asked the pilot:

  “Are we not to be blindfolded?”

  The pilot said graciously, “Arcane only invites those he can risk trusting.”

  The swarthy North African bobbed his head in approval.

  An Oriental from San Francisco disapproved. “Then I must risk trusting those whom Arcane risks trusting.”

  The pilot laughed as he lifted his four passengers into the dark sky. “Arcane respects those who take risks,” he said.

  The copter banked away from the small landing field, skirted a bayou town, and then left the lights of civilization entirely. The earth was blacker than the cloudy, moonless sky—except for occasional weird smudges of blue phosphorescent marsh gas.

  In time, after a flight in a sense-deprivation chamber, they saw Arcane’s estate, his little galaxy, as an oasis of electricity in the void.

  The helicopter whipped Spanish moss in its storm as it descended past the tops of towering cypresses and landed on the postcard-perfect lawn of the estate near the not-so-perfect black skeleton of the recently incinerated oak. Not a word had been spoken during the trip. As he disembarked, Hajj chuckled, “Blindfolds would have been redundant.”

  Under the descending whine of helicopter rotors, they heard the nighttime baying of alligators and the evocative screams of ghost birds. And then there was the sound of the second copter approaching.

  Marsha and two of the commandos led the guests to their rooms. In the mansion’s great echoing foyer, Marsha told them: “Cocktails at ten, dinner at eleve
n.”

  There was a shattering crash from somewhere in the house.

  Marsha continued unflappably: “Make yourselves at home. There’s a game room with billiards and pinballs on this floor. We’ll have cocktails in the atrium, and dinner . . . you’ll have no trouble finding the dining room.”

  The crash had come from the lab. One of the plants had not been completely destroyed by acid. A tree had grown out of a wastebasket and knocked over a glass cabinet. Arcane had the tree cut into pieces and burned.

  Arcane did not appear at cocktail time, but instead chose to greet each guest as he or she filed in for dinner. He wore a black suede tuxedo, and exquisite bespectacled Caramel, in a stretchy black gown with ermine collar, stood with him.

  They were seated around an immense antique table that was inlaid with tortoiseshell and covered by a clear-plastic tablecloth—on which were place settings in a mixture of modern and traditional silver, china and crystal. The chandelier over all was large enough for a theater lobby—of brass, crystal and parchment shades over small electric bulbs.

  Arcane was the last to sit. He addressed his guests from the head of the table (Bruno was at the foot).

  “I trust you have all met over cocktails; if not, you can attend to omissions later. I know you all, and I know how you can be helpful to me in an endeavor I believe will quite literally alter the living habits of each individual on this planet.”

  Every eye was glued to him as lovely waitresses distributed Wedgewood bowls of cold cucumber soup, and an ancient wine steward set out wine goblets. As if presenting party favors luau-fashion, one of the waitresses presented each of the ladies present with a gardenia.

  “You all know I have been at work with the megapotentials of recombinant DNA—the creation of artificial life forms—and that I have placed particular emphasis on the work of Dr. Alec Holland.” He leaned forward. “Holland has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. And I have his formula. He doesn’t.” Arcane saw that the implications of that were dawning on twenty-five faces.

  A commando—dressed in dark suit and tie for the occasion—entered the dining room and leaned to whisper to Arcane.

  “Fine,” said Arcane. “Bring her in.”

  Cable, scrubbed and with only a few bruises and scratches showing, looked extraordinarily out of place among the revelers. Her face was not in their world; it was in a world of pain and loneliness and fear. The gown Caramel had lent her was of several layers of a fine white silk. She was barefoot. One of the men—a Britisher named Bailey—got to his feet, moved by her vulnerable beauty.

  Two formally dressed commandos led Cable—who seemed either drugged or profoundly weary—to a tall metal and leather desk chair that was an alien among the Louis XV chairs around the table. She was set apart from the table, apparently not to eat.

  Arcane cleared his throat and reclaimed his audience’s attention. “We have several reasons to celebrate this night. Not the least of which is that we have captured a dragon and rescued a damsel in distress. That’s the damsel you see before you, not the dragon.”

  Bruno, key gunmen, and their ladies laughed and applauded. The foreign guests looked at their host patiently, awaiting more of an explanation.

  The commandos clamped irons around Cable’s ankles and the legs of her chair. The chair was clumsily bolted to the floor.

  The waitress handed a flower to Cable and asked, “Would you like a gardenia?” in precisely the uncaring voice of a stewardess offering cocktails.

  Cable took the flower and looked at the girl as if she had to be an escaped lunatic.

  Arcane said, “Ladies, take a moment to enjoy your gardenias. Smell them; pin them onto your dresses; slip them into your man’s buttonhole.” His eyes met Cable’s.

  If looks could kill, hers would have destroyed Arcane in that instant; but looks are powerless when aimed at an indifferent face. Arcane smiled at her and shook his head.

  He stood and signaled to the wine steward to begin pouring. “My friends, my unpleasant duty is to propose the first toast to one who will never join our gatherings again. I think you all knew Ferret.”

  There were a number of murmurs and surprised looks at Arcane’s use of the past tense.

  “His frayed and volatile temper has finally destroyed him. He died in heroic and stupid combat earlier today. But he was a valuable cog in the wheel that finally turned Holland’s notes over to me. We all regret his loss. Regret it deeply.” He smiled a funeral-parlor smile and lifted his glass. “To Ferret.”

  The assembly echoed his sentiment. “To Ferret!”

  Suddenly one of the women jumped and pushed back from the table. “Oh!” she said, alarmed. She acted as if a spider or a mouse were crawling on her. “Get it off!” she said, trying to stay calm. She pulled at the gardenia she had pinned to her blouse.

  Arcane stepped over to her. “Don’t get excited,” he advised sternly. He removed her pin. The gardenia stayed in place. Tiny roots had filtered through the fabric and were growing inside against the woman’s breast. He easily pulled the flower off and laid it on the table by her plate. “Just a root,” he said.

  She laughed, embarrassed at her foolishness, and took her seat again.

  Arcane walked around the table as he talked. “Our real guest of honor tonight is Bruno!” he said with a flourish. He stopped and leaned against the portable mirror-and-marble bar. But for the fact that the muscles around his eyes seemed dead, Arcane was a handsome and powerful figure—proud, straight-laced and casual at the same time, exuding intellectuality. He had just enough gray in his hair to suggest wisdom. “Bruno is our man of the hour.”

  He took a bottle from the steward’s hand and filled his own goblet. As an afterthought, he filled another and walked to Bruno’s end of the table carrying both. “If it were not for Bruno, there would be nothing to celebrate. He and he alone found the final Holland notebook, the Rosetta stone that unlocked the future.”

  The steward bent over Bruno and poured his goblet full.

  “To Bruno!” said Arcane.

  “To Bruno!” they agreed.

  When they had drunk, Arcane handed his extra goblet to Cable, whose chair was near Bruno’s. He said to her, rather privately, “I could not imagine you toasting Bruno; instead, you’d have thrown it in his face. But wouldn’t you like this, now?”

  “Yes,” she said numbly. She took it, trying not to touch his flesh.

  Hajj said, “Arcane, you are a generous man, we know; but as always with you, the real guest of honor at an Arcane gathering is Arcane. What toasts are you reserving for yourself?”

  “Yes,” another man agreed; “have you tested this formula, created it for yourself?”

  Arcane left the bar and strolled back to his seat thoughtfully. “There’s no reason to keep anything from any of you—except the formula itself, of course. I have a remarkable and strange tale to tell. I’ll tell it while we dine. And meanwhile, you keep an eye on your gardenias.”

  “Ah!” said a dark woman with a thick accent. “You treat these gardenia!” She raised her fork. The flower and stem had sent out tiny tendrils that had fastened themselves around the tines.

  The guests laughed and applauded. They immediately checked the gardenias nearest them.

  “Each flower,” said Arcane, “was sprayed with a solution of one part formula to ten-thousand parts water—which, offhand, seems to be a manageable measure.”

  Between salad and the main course (catfish with Creole sauce and truffles) Arcane told the story of Alec Holland’s development of the formula, his accident with it, and his transformation.

  Cable tried not to listen. His perspective on the tragedy was obscene, and his plan for the use of the formula was the greatest crime she could imagine.

  She sipped red wine from the Deco goblet Arcane had given her and thought instead about the past three days. Somehow it was easy, now, to separate the good from the bad—the time with Jude, and the cathedral of cypresses with Alec, and not the pain and t
he horror. A recurring memory flitted through the rest like a katydid among real leaves: the feel of his skin. Moss on oak. Gentleness and strength. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, the greatest tragedy of all is that Alec has had to become a killer to survive.

  She felt fairly certain that he was alive and somewhere on Arcane’s property, but she had not been told where.

  “How about you, Bruno? More wine, guest of honor?” Arcane’s tone of voice was so different it caught Cable’s attention.

  “No, I’m fine,” Bruno said.

  The woman sitting at Bruno’s right, a brunette with sad eyes and not much of a smile, leaned to Cable and said softly, “Listen, do you want some food? I think I can get you some.”

  Cable took the kindness as genuine and replied, “No—really. I’m just not hungry.”

  The woman nodded.

  “The really interesting experiment, it seems to me,” said Hajj, including the whole table in his statement, “is that which might be done with animal subjects.”

  A woman shrieked and lifted her gardenia suddenly. “Look! There are two buds—and look at the stem, the new leaves!”

  Her specimen was passed from hand to hand while Hajj continued his line of reasoning: “And the ultimate animal test, of course, will be with man.”

  Several objected—they felt that such experimentation was beside the point. The point, of course, was world domination by means of control of the food supply.

  Arcane laughed. “We control the eaten; why not control the eaters as well?”

  Hajj stopped the laughter with an angry “No! I have not made myself clear. Under your words, Arcane, under your . . . your almost religious admiration of this swamp thing, there is a suggestion of . . . of . . .”

  Arcane supplied it for him in a whisper: “Immortality.”

  Utensils and wineglasses around the table stopped in mid air.

  Arcane said, “Self-sustaining and self-renewing cells. Gentlemen and ladies, I have heard the swamp thing talk! It is Alec Holland.”

  Hajj nodded and asked, his dark bushy brows low over his eyes, “When, Arcane? When do we see the result of human experiment?”