Avenging Fury

by John Farris

  CHARLESTON MOUNTAIN • 9:24 A.M.

  In a large, so-called clean room in the wing of Lincoln Grayle’s aerie dedicated to Dr. Marcus Woolwine’s work, a room that was for now lit only by ultraviolet light, Eden’s doppelganger floated nude and sedated in a shallow bath of liquid twice as buoyant as seawater that bubbled into the glass tank through an aerator. In spite of the sedatives and the presence of black light, which weakened the physical body and kept her immobile, Gwen’s eyes were open. The expression in those eyes was one of pure rage.

  Bronc Skarbeck sipped coffee and studied the dpg through an observation window.

  “What seems to be the problem?” he said to Woolwine.

  “You may recall that we talked about Gwen’s purpose in traveling through time.”

  “So you think she actually pulled it off?”

  “I have no doubt. But the Gwen that has returned to us isn’t who she used to be. She apparently acquired, while in Jubilation County, an entity who has made herself known to me as ‘Delilah.’ ”

  “Entity? The feminine half of Mordaunt’s soul? Wasn’t that how you put it?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You seem afraid, Doctor.”

  “I admit to some trepidation. I’ve been exposed to—certain unnerving phenomena in the past forty-eight hours. Not the least of which is a persistent effort to encroach on my own brain.”

  “But you have her under control, don’t you?”

  “For now. I’m obliged, however, to increase the entity’s dosages on an accelerating schedule.” Woolwine rubbed his bald head nervously, as if something were crawling around up there, trying to gain entry into his skull.

  “Doses of what?”

  “We have her on Depakote, trazadone, and klonopin.”

  “Jesus. All three at once?”

  “Yes.”

  “If, let’s assume, you should lose control of the dpg, what then?”

  Woolwine’s shrug was like a clonus. “You know what he was like. Even in his human persona. Well. This little lady is the rest of Mordaunt. Perhaps the worst half, who can say? And she’s not happy.”

  Skarbeck turned for a look at the EEG monitors, at moving pens that recorded on a scroll the steeps and falls of Gwen’s brain waves.

  “What I don’t need right now is another Mordaunt,” he said, frowning. He looked at Woolwine.

  “Are you suggesting—?”

  “I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you. The mind may be immortal, but the body is flesh and blood. Kill her.”

  “I thought perhaps a chemical prefrontal lobotomy might—”

  “Results uncertain. Kill her. Do it today.”

  The four recording pens on the EEG scroll began moving at earthquake speed.

  NYE COUNTY, NEVADA • 10:34 A.M.

  Harlee Nations and Devon O’Flaherty arrived at the high gates of Ferdie Younger’s desert homestead in the candy-apple red Humvee that Devon had borrowed from Honeydew to make the rough trip down rocky defiles to the eastern edge of the Mojave, a few miles from the California line. Several unmarked miles from anything resembling a road. Ferdie Younger’s avocation demanded both seclusion and privacy.

  In front of high chain-link gates midway through a canyon Harlee made a phone call. Presently the lock on the gates clicked open. They proceeded the rest of the way, the passage becoming as narrow a squeeze as a birth canal, and suddenly popped out into Ferdie’s valley within ocher cliffs cut and shaped by surging waters of ages past. On the floor of the small valley were four interconnected steel buildings painted desert tan, a windmill, and a squat adobe house with bits of colored glass embedded in the walls, a slant pole roof over the dooryard.

  The girls got out, lugging two big hampers filled with deli treats for Ferdie, who came up out of his rocker in the shadows of his veranda and ambled toward them, rancher’s frayed straw hat angled down to shield his eyes, thumbs hooked inside his unbelted Wranglers. He circled the Humvee with a grin, admiring it.

  “Bitchin’ wheels,” he said in his high-pitched voice. His own vehicles were a beat-up Land Rover and a five-ton refrigerator truck for transporting sensitive specimens to his hideaway. Ferdie had had a lifelong fascination with small, deadly things. He was small and deadly himself; slim, with a nearly unlined, beardless face, only five feet tall in his scuffed calf-roper boots. He had been able to pass for a teenager well into his thirties, which, along with a knack for making himself unnoticeable, had contributed to success in his vocation. Ferdie was a contract killer of nerve, stealth, and accuracy. He specialized in political wipeouts—although only the occasional victim of one of his assassinations was acknowledged or even rumored to have been murdered. All politicians hated the idea that they were not invulnerable.

  When he wasn’t doing such work, for which he collected millions, Ferdie spent a lot of time in swamps, rain forests, deserts. A self-taught herpetologist and entomologist, he had published scholarly monographs. For obvious reasons he preferred not to lecture, and except for nightly Internet chats he was largely unknown to his peers. Harlee felt fortunate to have found him at home.

  “Snakes or bugs?” Ferdie asked her, after they’d enjoyed a round of delicatessen tidbits and lemonade on his veranda. He showed his gums when he laughed.

  Devon shuddered delicately. Harlee said, “You told me when I called that you had something special I might like to see?”

  Ferdie nodded delightedly. “They arrived from Japan three weeks ago. Japanese hornets from the pristine forests of the Ashio-Sanchi highlands. Nothing like them has ever been found in this country, of course. Importation for any purpose is strictly banned. Just as well, just as well. Whether they might propagate beyond their natural habitat is an open question. My educated guess is that they have the potential not only to quickly adapt to alien habitats, but to change the world’s ecology. The world’s ecology.” He helped himself to more lemonade. He wasn’t alone in his valley. There were housemaids, caretakers, associates, and technicians who worked in the joined buildings, which maintained diverse simulated environments, but they kept out of sight when Ferdie had visitors. “Almost any species can be controlled, of course. Except our own, and the cockroach.” Ferdie laughed and laughed, smacking a knee with the palm of one hand, concluding their assassins’ picnic.

  Inside each of the steel buildings on his property was another complete building, accessible through airlocks. Behind glass walls of large vivariums with their own diurnal cycles were such specimens as recluse spiders, Australian brown snakes, scorpions from five continents, and his latest acquisitions.

  “The expense, don’t ask,” Ferdie said as they paused outside a translucent container the size of two truck trailers. “This is an exact duplicate of a section of Japanese forest, including transplanted chestnut trees. It is now just a few minutes past sunrise within, but soon you’ll be able to see them. The queen was dormant ’til just recently, overwintering. Now she’s begun to fulfill her natural function. I’ve released the male hornets to fertilize her, which is their only raison d’être. They’ll live just a few days. The female Japanese hornet is the deadly one. Isn’t that so often the case?” Ferdie showed his gums again; the girls smiled politely. “Oh, here come a few of them now; they’ve detected our presence. Be very still or they’ll dash themselves to death against the glass trying to get at us. They’ll soon go about their business, which is to gather their favorite food—the sap of the young chestnut trees we imported clandestinely.”

  Devon was fascinated by a couple of the giant hornets, five times the size of ordinary honeybees, as they hovered a foot from where she stood.

  “They even look Japanese!” she whispered, as if there weren’t a half-inch-thick barrier between her and the hornets. She didn’t want the glass to vibrate.

  Ferdie Younger also spoke softly. “Surprisingly so, with those gaudy orange and yellow heads, shaped like the masks of warriors. But as I mentioned, the warriors are all female. I’ve heard that about thirty Japanese ho
rnets can destroy a hive of as many as three thousand of the small European honeybee in a matter of three hours. They have powerful mandibles, as you can see, for slicing and dicing. Slicing and dicing. And they may sting repeatedly, although they themselves are well armored against the stings of other aggressors.”

  For a couple of minutes they watched the flight of the hornets inside the slowly brightening vivarium. “Too bad they don’t seem to do well in captivity. But it has been worth the expense and aggravation of the smuggling process to have this opportunity to record their daily lives for a few weeks. And once they die, they provide delicious meals.”

  “You eat them?” Devon said, making a yechy face.

  “Japanese epicurism. Deep fried, the hornets have the succulence of tempura shrimp.”

  “How do human beings react to their venom?” Harlee asked, getting down to the core business of their visit.

  “Ah.”

  “You said something the other day about intolerable pain.”

  “Oh, you liked that part.” The gums again. And a wink.

  “It would be fitting.”

  “Shouldn’t ask, I suppose, whom you have in mind for such biblical tribulation?”

  “Her name is Eden Waring.”

  “Hm. Not familiar.”

  “Also known as the Avatar. A psychic witch. She’s the one who killed Lincoln Grayle.”

  “She must have unusual powers. So the Magician is dead.”

  “But not the Great One. He’s surviving. Somewhere.”

  Her tone precluded further inquiry. “Well, as to your question. Their venom consists of eleven different chemicals that, among other things, dissolve human flesh. If one is stung about the face, the face will soon decompose. No matter. By then the victims are usually dead from anaphylactic shock. The victims, however, needn’t be stung at all.”

  “No?”

  “One mode of attack employed by the hornet is to squirt venom, like a spitting cobra, into the eyes.”

  Devon hung her head, looking faint.

  Ferdie said to Harlee, “So you’d like to acquire a small amount of venom?”

  “Uh-uh,” Harlee said, with a gesture to the vivarium. “I want them.”

  “Harlee, you’re not serious!” Devon said.

  “Bet I am.” To Ferdie she said, “Can I have, like, half a dozen of the females? By themselves they’re no threat to the ecology.”

  “The discovery of even one dead Japanese hornet in this country would set off alarms. Alarums.”

  “So what?”

  Ferdie shook his head. “Besides, I don’t know how long they could be expected to live, outside their preferred environment. Twenty-four hours? Thirty-six?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Harlee—” Devon said in weak protest.

  “But how do I transport them without getting stung to death myself? Is there a method of tranquilizing the hornets until I’m ready to put them to use?”

  “You are really asking too much of me this time, Harlee.”

  “You’ve got dozens of those beasties in there. Can’t you spare six? Doesn’t smoke knock out honeybees without killing them?”

  “The accepted method of dealing with them when hives must be moved. And, yes, it worked with our hornets too. Less than twenty-four hours after combs with queen were removed from their forest hideaway, they were installed here. They traveled by chartered jet freighter; the well-being of the hornets was constantly monitored. Still many died en route. So how would you propose to—”

  “How about in one of the picnic hampers like we brought?”

  “That’s it,” Devon said. “Risk your own neck, but I am having no part of this! Smoked hornets in a picnic hamper? Harlee, you have lost it!”

  “Hm,” Ferdie said. “It would take some experimentation, but I am curious.” He smiled. “What are you offering in return, Harlee?”

  “Two tickets to O. Harder to get than my own sweet pussy.”

  Ferdie had a good laugh, attracting angry hornets to their corner of the vivarium as the glass panels vibrated.

  “And?”

  “Ferdie, do you know how much a gold brick weighs?”

  “Do you mean the standard size, Johnson Matthey refinery ingot? One kilo.”

  “You like gold, don’t you, Ferdie?”

  “You know I do.” Ferdie wet his lips. “As it happens . . . I find myself a little short of reserves these days. All that mordida, and no one wants dollars anymore.”

  “As much gold as you can haul from the Great One’s vault inside Grayle’s Mountain in thirty minutes. I’ll use a stopwatch. You can use a wheelbarrow.”

  “What a surprise you are sometimes, Harlee. So you have access?”

  “For now I’m the only one who does.”

  Ferdie nodded. His decades-old baby face creased in thought and took on a rosy glow as he considered the challenge proposed and the benefits to be reaped.

  “If it proves to be doable—moving the hornets by the means you’ve described—I’ll certainly take you up on that. Payment in advance.”

  Harlee folded her hands at her waist and smiled, eyes downcast.

  “I was kidding about my pussy. But, purely as a businessman, you wouldn’t be so foolish as to try to fuck with me, would you, Ferdie?”

  Ferdie looked uncomfortable. “In spite of the mendacity in the world around us, I’ve always been a square dealer. A square dealer. Let us say—one kilo of gold for expenses? I’ll need to try more than one method for temporarily rendering the hornets hors de combat. Remaining payment will depend on your satisfaction. Let me caution that you may count on having only a few hours of live, lethal hornets at your disposal. I can’t guarantee longevity beyond that. Or your safety.”

  Devon groaned softly.

  “Cautious is as cautious does,” Harlee said blithely. “So we have a deal. I’ll work out the itinerary for my hornets. The kilo of gold will be ready for pickup in town this afternoon.”

  “Lovely doing business with you, Harlee,” Ferdie Younger said.

  ABOARD THE VLCC CULEBRA • 1236 HOURS ZULU

  We’ll be making port at Terminal Island in just under three hours,” Captain Dellarovere said to his Person in Addition to Crew as they were finishing lunch in the officers’ dining room of the huge tanker ship. “Authorities will board us along with the pilot at the sea buoy. I’m sure there will be many questions about the tragic loss of the Stella Salamis.”

  Holding his coffee mug in both hands, Tom Sherard sipped slowly, eyes narrowed against the sun coming in through a port window. It made the captain’s face hard to see. They were alone. The junior officers, as was their habit, had eaten quickly and scattered to prepare for shore time: visits home, waits for new ships.

  “I won’t have any more to tell the Coast Guard or a board of inquiry than I’ve been able to tell you,” Sherard said. “We took a pounding and were breaking up. The sounds of a ship’s plates being pulled apart isn’t something I’ll ever forget. But they’re about the last thing I remember. How I survived when the others weren’t so lucky—” He put his mug down and shrugged, feeling sharp pain on his left side where his ribs were heavily taped.

  Captain Dellarovere nodded sympathetically. “I’ve wondered, during your days as a safari guide in Africa, did you have any—how should I say?—close calls? I couldn’t help but notice two rather prominent scars like claw marks when our ship’s doctor was attending to you.”

  “There were always those moments of miscalculation,” Sherard said dryly, “for which one paid dearly. So there I was on a peaceful sea voyage when my number came up again.”

  They both seemed to ponder the odds, implications of the miraculous, dark ironies of luck. The captain had a broad weather-creased olive face and a fondness for religious tokens on chains, one of which he fingered now as if a blessing was called for.

  “If you have changed your mind about getting in touch with someone before we make port, in order to reassure—”

&
nbsp; “I haven’t.” After a few moments Sherard shifted his gaze and smiled slightly at the captain. “I’ve always been a loner. My parents are long dead. There is no one in particular in my life. I take companionship where I find it.”

  “I have been married thirty-one years myself. So you have no plans.”

  “Only to ‘kick back,’ as they say in America. Give myself a chance to recover. I feel as if I’m one large bruise.”

  A seaman came in with a fax that he handed to Dellarovere, who after a few seconds passed it on to Sherard. He tried to read it but found his vision blurring from headache.

  The captain helped him out. “Good news, it seems. The consul-general of Kenya in Los Angeles will himself be at the terminal to assist in the process of getting you off the ship. Depending on how long it takes for the U.S. State Department to process a new visa, you could be on your way within forty-eight hours. Meanwhile I’m pleased to have your company on board. I look forward to a tale or two of stalking wild game. Lions, leopards, tigers—but there are no tigers in Africa, are there?”

  For an instant the captain glimpsed the chill of an alien spirit sequestered in the hunter’s gaze.

  “Once there was a tiger,” Tom Sherard said. “It had the face and jaws of a hyena.”

  “Oh,” Dellarovere said delightedly. “A tall tale!”

  CHARLESTON MOUNTAIN • 3:10 P.M.

  There was no forewarning of trouble in the Magician’s aerie, no terrifying cries for help when it happened. Nothing at all disturbed the tranquil atmosphere in and around the cliff-dwelling house. Of course it was a very large house—twenty thousand square feet, two wings, five cantilevered levels. And Dr. Marcus Woolwine’s facility was well apart in one wing from the most populated areas. Whatever the servants were doing, they went on doing without a moment’s pause to look up, listen to something alien to that hour or outside the daily established routines of housekeeping. They carried on just as if the master of the house were still in residence, or was soon expected home.