“How do you feel? Are you all right?”
Michael hesitated, then decided there wasn’t any reason for her to be as frightened as he’d been when the pain in his chest persisted throughout the day. “I’m fine,” he said. There was a flicker of something in his mother’s eyes, and when she spoke again, she almost sounded disappointed.
“You’re sure? You aren’t in any pain? You have plenty of energy?”
Michael’s smile faltered. “I—I’m okay, Mom. Really!”
For some reason, his words didn’t seem to make her feel better. She took a deep breath. “I brought you something,” she said.
Michael glanced at the helicopter, but saw nothing except Rob and Puna unloading some kind of box from behind the aircraft’s rear seats.
A Plexiglas box.
A Plexiglas box that looked big enough for him to get into.
Involuntarily, he took a step backward. His mother grabbed his arm. “No!” he said. “I won’t—” He fell abruptly silent when he realized the box wasn’t empty.
Inside it was a chimpanzee.
“She’s from the laboratory,” he heard his mother say as Rob unlocked the door to the Plexiglas box. “This morning I thought she was dying.”
Rob opened the lid of the box, and the chimpanzee, as if surprised to find its prison door open, hesitated, then slowly came out. It looked curiously around for a moment, and then its eyes fixed on Michael. In two short bounds it crossed the space between them and leapt up, its arms encircling Michael’s neck as it sniffed at his ear.
“But how can she breathe?” Michael asked, certain that at any second the chimpanzee would begin gasping. As if on cue, the chimp began to wheeze. “Put her back in the box,” Michael pleaded. “She’s going to die!”
Katharine shook her head. “She’s not, Michael. She’s going to be fine.”
Michael blinked. “I don’t understand—” he began, but then his mother’s arms were around him again, hugging both him and the chimpanzee.
“It’s over,” she said. “The reason the animals in the lab have been dying is because the effect of the Seed doesn’t last! It wears off, and when it does, the animals can only survive on oxygen again. Even this morning I was afraid this baby wasn’t going to make it through the day. But in the middle of the morning, someone changed her atmosphere and started giving her oxygen again. And look at her! She’s all right!”
As the words slowly sank in, Michael pulled away from his mother and looked into her eyes. “How long?” he asked. “How long before me did they give it to her?”
“Not quite two weeks,” Katharine told him. “And it was just about a week ago that she started failing. We thought she was getting sicker, but it was just the opposite. She was getting better, but we kept on poisoning her.”
Michael was no longer listening. Instead, he was gazing up at the nova, and remembering what Rob had told him about how long it would take before it began to die.
A couple of weeks.
Perhaps a month, or even more.
But now it no longer mattered, for long after the star had died, he would still be alive.
A sheepish smile came over his face. “Mom?”
Katharine looked at him.
“When you asked me if I was okay and I said I was fine?”
Katharine nodded.
“Well, I lied. Actually, I’ve been feeling kind of lousy all day, and breathing fumes and smoke hasn’t helped much at all!”
Darkness was falling as the helicopter took off from the Big Island for the last time, carrying Michael, Katharine, and Rob back to Maui.
Below them the glowing vents of the volcano were brightening, and the flames above the caldera were beginning their nightly dance, but Michael could see that the lake of lava was beginning to recede, and the writhing serpents of molten rock were slowing in their progress toward the sea. The eruption was ending; the mountain was slowly dropping back into an uneasy slumber.
Above them the nova hung alone in the sky, but other stars were beginning to appear as well.
And soon—very soon—the nova would fade away.
Unlike the volcano, it would never awaken again.
AFTERWORD
More than a year and a half ago the idea for The Presence came to me while I was walking on the beach near my home on Maui. Here, on this island paradise, exists one of the finest astronomical observatories in the world, as well as one of the most powerful computers on earth. And, within a few short miles, an active volcano, Kilauea, sends forth continual lava flows. From these intriguing, disparate-seeming ingredients, the basic concept began to take shape for a book of “speculative fiction.”
Little did I know as I began to write that my “speculative” fiction might turn out to be not quite so speculative. First it was discovered that there may well have been life on Mars, and the remnants of that life may have been carried to Earth within the core of a meteorite. On the heels of that discovery came new photos from the spacecraft Galileo, revealing that Europa, a moon circling Jupiter, may well have water and volcanic action beneath its covering of ice. More than one scientist has theorized that these conditions could presage the presence of life.
Just three months prior to publication of The Presence, Smithsonian Magazine reported that at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings in Seattle, there was discussion of very unusual life-forms living on the floors of our own oceans, near hydrothermal volcanic vents: life-forms surviving and developing with no oxygen, no sunlight; life-forms thriving in 500° F heat, on gases such as hydrogen sulfide—the very “poisonous” gases that would terminate life as we have previously known it. Additionally, many scientists now believe that volcanoes deep under the ocean may not simply harbor life, but be the very place where life began.
Suddenly, all our presumptions about the source of life have been turned upside down. So, now that I have finished writing The Presence, and you have finished reading it, the question arises: Is this truly speculative fiction?
Or is it possible that perhaps things might have happened just this way?
Somewhere in the Arizona desert
April 30, 1997
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks go to John L. Africano, Astronomer and Senior Engineering Specialist at Rockwell International Corporation, and Paul W. Kervin, Chief Scientist at Phillips Laboratory, for their assistance and time. Mahalo, guys, for the tours, the stories, and your work.
Much appreciation is extended to David Fisher, Center Director of the Small Business Development Center at the Maui Research and Technology Park. Thanks for showing me around and introducing me to a group of fascinating people.
I am grateful to A. Keith Pierce, Designer of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, for the time he spent guiding me around Kitt Peak. Thanks, Keith, it was lots of fun.
Special thanks also go to Les Horn and William Longacre, who connected me to the right people.
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More chilling tales of suspense from
JOHN SAUL
GUARDIAN
A telephone rings in the dead of night with shocking news for single mother MaryAnne Carpenter: Her friends, the Wilkensons, are suddenly, inexplicably, dead, leaving MaryAnne’s godchild abruptly orphaned. But was it an accident that killed her friends, or something else?
As MaryAnne rushes to the Wilkensons’ ranch to embrace her young charge, blinding, dangerous winter storms batter the ranch. And a series of horrific murders bearing the marks of a wild animal draws
ever closer.…
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After years away, Karen Spellman is returning to her hometown of Pleasant Valley with her daughters to marry her high school sweetheart.
But something sinister awaits her. A shadowy menace once stalked the residents of Pleasant Valley, and it has returned. Now Karen must struggle to save her daughters from a preternatural force seeking to satisfy its thirst for innocent prey.
BLACK LIGHTNING
For five years Seattle journalist Anne Jeffers has pursued the horrifying story of a sadistic serial killer’s bloody reign, capture, trial, and appeal—crusading to keep the wheels of justice churning toward the electric chair.
Now the day of execution has come. A convicted killer will meet his end. Anne believes her long nightmare is over. But she is dead wrong.…
The Blackstone Chronicles
by JOHN SAUL
Serial terror in six parts.
Come to the New England town of Blackstone and witness the dark wrath of an unspeakable evil, a frightening force unleashed from deep within the old Asylum. Seemingly harmless gifts begin to materialize out of nowhere to menace unsuspecting recipients.…
And each gift has a dark, horrifying past that returns with a vengeance and threatens to engulf the entire town of Blackstone in terror and misery.…
AN EYE FOR AN EYE: THE DOLL
The project to demolish the old Blackstone Asylum, which has cast its shadow over the town since the 1890s, is stalled, and contractor Bill McGuire feverishly works to set the wrecker’s ball in motion. Then a lovely antique doll arrives for his daughter from sources unknown.
And a murderous menace begins its rampage through Blackstone.…
TWIST OF FATE: THE LOCKET
Jules Hartwick, president of the local bank, discovers a pink beribboned package in his wife’s car. The silver locket inside will unleash a murderous, maniacal rage and shatter the picturesque calm of a town called Blackstone.…
ASHES TO ASHES: THE DRAGON’S FLAME
Rebecca Morrison unearths a stunning cigarette lighter emblazoned with a dragon at Blackstone’s sprawling Saturday flea market—an exotic item the salesperson doesn’t remember seeing before. This seems to be the perfect “welcome home” gift for Rebecca’s wayward cousin, Andrea, but the dragon’s flame will ignite the darkest side of human nature.…
IN THE SHADOW OF EVIL: THE HANDKERCHIEF
Newspaper editor Oliver Metcalfe, son of the last superintendent of the Asylum, finds an exquisite linen handkerchief in his father’s attic. Meant as a gift for another woman, the handkerchief ends up in the possession of librarian Germaine Wagner. And then Germaine begins to see frightening visions that propel her into the mouth of madness.…
DAY OF RECKONING: THE STEREOSCOPE
When attorney Ed Becker decides to restore a dusty antique dresser, he does not realize that he has invited an unspeakable evil into his home. His daughter finds old pictures and a stereoscope—an old-fashioned device that allows you to see images in three dimensions—in the dresser.
As the images inside the stereoscope begin to take on a vivid, terrifying life of their own, a long-buried secret emerges that brings destruction and death.…
ASYLUM
Unexplained death. Horrifying accidents. Murderous rages. The baffling disappearance of an innocent. No one in Blackstone has escaped the evil force that has spread through the town.
When Oliver Metcalfe suggests that there may be a curse on Blackstone, the community is outraged. Then a final, devastating gift appears on the front porch, and now Oliver must confront the gruesome truth of the past—one that threatens to destroy all the inhabitants of Blackstone in one final grip of terror.
Don’t miss a single installment of
The Blackstone Chronicles
by John Saul
A serial novel that brings to terrifying life a small New England town—and the secrets and sins that lay buried there.
Published by Fawcett Books.
Available wherever books are sold.
John Saul Page 34
