Lasher (53 page)

“Go on, now, thanks.” She slammed the cab door. But she heard him hollering from inside.

“Ma’am, your purse. Here. No, no, that’s OK, you already give me plenty money.”

The truck wouldn’t move on. She cut across the ditch, hurriedly, and climbed up into the high grass on the other side, and passed into the dense bank of trees, into the soft relentless chorus of the tree frogs. Up ahead she saw light, and she moved towards it, at last hearing the sound of the truck drive away and vanish within seconds in the silence.

“I’m finding a place, Emaleth, a soft dry place. Be quiet, and be patient.”

Mother, I cannot. I must come out
.

She had come through the trees into a clearing. The lights she’d seen lay way far away to the right. She did not care about them. It was the great grassy place that lay ahead, and a beautiful oak, immense in size and leaning tragically on its long arms as if reaching out to the woods beyond in a futile effort to join with it.

The oak broke her heart suddenly, its giant knuckled branches, its great sweeps of dark moss, and in the soft glowing starry night, the sky was so bright behind it.

It’s beautiful, please, Emaleth. Emaleth, if I die, go to Michael
. Once again, she registered the vision of Michael’s face, the numbers of the house, numbers of the phone—data for the tiny mind inside her, which knew what she knew.

Mother, I cannot be born if you die. Mother, I need you. I need Father
.

The tree was so distinct, massive and graceful. Some lovely vision came to her of the forests of olden times when trees like this must have been the temples. She saw a green field, hills covered with forest.

Donnelaith, Mother. Father said I was to go to Donnelaith, that we were to meet there
.

“No, darling,” she said aloud, reaching out for the trunk of the tree and then falling against its dark, good-smelling rough surface. Like stone it felt, no hint that it was alive, not here at the craggy base where the roots were like rocks, only up and out there where the small branches moved in the wind. “Go to Michael, Emaleth. Tell him everything. Go to Michael.”

It hurts, Mother, it hurts
.

“Remember, Emaleth, go to Michael.”

Mother, do not die. You must help me be born. You must give me your eyes and the milk, lest I be small and useless
.

She wandered out from the trunk, to where the grass was soft and silken under her feet, between a pair of the great sprawling elbow branches.

Dark and sweet here.

I’m going to die, darling
.

No, Mother. I’m coming now. Help me!

It was dark and sweet here, with heaps of leaves and moss like a bower. She lay on her back, her body pulsing with one
shock of pain after another. Moss above, soft moss hanging down, and the moon snagged up there, and so beautiful.

She felt the fluid gush, warm against her thighs, and then the worst of the pain, and something soft and wet stroking her. She lifted her own hand, unable to coordinate, unable to reach down.

Dear God, was the child reaching out from the womb? Was the child’s hand against her thigh? The darkness above closed in as if the branches had closed, and then the moon shone bright again, making the moss gray for an instant. She let her head roll to the side. Stars falling down in the purple sky. This is heaven.

“I made an error, a terrible terrible error,” she said. “The sin was vanity. Tell Michael this.”

The pain widened; she knew the causes of this, the mouth of the womb wrenched open. She screamed, she couldn’t help it, and she felt nothing but the pain grow worse and worse and then suddenly it stopped. Slipping back into ache and sickness, she struggled to see the branches again, struggled to lift her hands to help Emaleth, but she could not do it.

A great warm heaviness lay on her thighs. It lay on her belly. She felt the warm wet touch on her breast.

“Mother, help me!”

In the vague sweet darkness, she saw the small head rising above her, like the head of nun, its long wet hair so sleek, like a nun’s veil, the head rising and rising.

“Mother, see me. Help me! Lest I be small and useless!”

The face loomed above hers, the great blue eyes peering down into her own, and the wet hand suddenly closing on her breast, making the milk squirt from the nipple.

“Are you my baby girl?” she cried. “Ah, the scent of Father. Are you my baby girl?”

There was the burning smell, the smell of the night he was born, the smell of something heated and dangerous and chemical, but nothing glowed in the dark. She felt the arms encircling her, the wet hair on her stomach, the mouth on her breast and then that delicious suckling, that wondrous suckling, sending the pleasure all through her.

The pain was gone. So beautifully and wholly gone. The darkness of the night seemed to enfold her, and lock her down to the fallen leaves, to the bed of moss, beneath the delicious weight of the woman who lay on top of her.

“Emaleth!”

Yes, Mother. The milk is good. The milk is fine. I am born, Mother
.

I want to die. I want you to die. Both of us now. Die
.

But there was no longer much to worry about. She was floating and Emaleth drank the milk in deep hearty gulps and there wasn’t anything now that she could do. She could not even feel her own arms and legs. She could feel nothing but this suckling and then when she tried to say…it was gone, whatever it had been; I want to open my eyes. I want to see the stars again.

“They are so beautiful, Mother. They could guide me to Donnelaith if the great sea didn’t lie between us.”

She wanted to say, No, not Donnelaith, and to say Michael’s name again, but then she couldn’t quite follow it, couldn’t quite remember who Michael was, or why she had wanted to say that.

“Mother, don’t leave me!”

Her eyes opened for one precious second, yes, see, and there was the purple sky and a tall willowy figure standing over her. It could not have been her child, no, not this, not this woman rising out of the dark like some grotesque growth from the warm, verdant earth, something monstrous and…

“No, Mother. No. I am beautiful. Mother, please, please, don’t leave me.”

T
HE POSITION WASN’T
embarrassing. It was flat-out crazy. He had been on the phone for forty-five minutes to the Keplinger people.

“Look,” said the young doctor on the other end. “It says you came yourself, you took the files, you said that it was top secret.”

“Damn it, I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana, you fool. I was here all day yesterday. I’m at the Pontchartrain Hotel. I’m with the Mayfair and Mayfair people now! I didn’t pick up anything! What you’re saying is, the material is gone.”

“Absolutely, Dr. Larkin. Gone. Unless there’s a copy somewhere filed in such a way that I can’t access it. And I don’t think there is. I can keep…”

“About Mitch. How is he?”

“Oh, he’s not going to make it, Dr. Larkin. If you could see him, you wouldn’t want him to. Don’t pray for that now. Look, his wife’s on the other line. I’ll call you back.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll run for cover. You know what’s happened. Somebody’s walked out of there with all the material Rowan Mayfair entrusted to me, everything Flanagan was working on. You guys slipped up! And Flanagan is critically hurt and unable to communicate.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then the same young, brittle voice again:

“Correction. Dr. Flanagan’s dead. Died twenty minutes ago. I’ll
have
to call you
back
, Doctor.”

“You better find the records, you better find the complete and entire computer record of every experiment made by Mitch Flanagan on behalf of Dr. Samuel Larkin for Dr. Rowan Mayfair.”

“You have a record of sending us these things?”

“I brought them.”

“And that was you, the real you, who brought the stuff—not
somebody apparently pretending to be you? Like this doctor yesterday who wasn’t you. But said that he was? Oh, yeah, OK. Now, I’m looking at a videotape of this man. Yesterday four p.m. Pacific Standard Time. He’s tall, dark-haired, smiling, and he’s holding up to the camera his identification, a California driver’s license: Dr. Samuel Larkin. And you say you are Samuel Larkin and that you are in New Orleans?”

Lark was speechless. He cleared his throat.

He realized he was staring at Ryan Mayfair, who had been watching from the shadows of the office for some time now. The others still waited in the conference room—a distant and solemn ring of faces around the mahogany table.

“OK, Dr. Barry whoever-you-are,” Lark said. “I’m going to have my lawyer send you a full description of me and copies of my passport, driver’s license, and ID card from University. You’ll see I’m not this man on your tape. Please hold on to the tape. Don’t surrender it to somebody who comes in and smiles and tells you he is the reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover. And indeed, yes, I am Samuel Larkin, and when you speak to Martha Flanagan, please convey my sympathies to her. Don’t bother to call the San Francisco police about this. I will call.”

“You’re wasting your time, Doctor. If there’s been a misunderstanding, there was no way we could know that this man was not who he said he was. Just forget about the police because you know as well as I do…”

“Better find those records, Doctor. There have to be copies!”

He hung up before the young jerk could answer.

He was steaming. But he was also stunned. Flanagan was dead. Flanagan struck by a car crossing California Street. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever heard of anybody being killed downtown on that corner, unless it was an out-of-state driver on a rainy day who tried to race a cable car.

He looked at Ryan, but he volunteered nothing for the moment. Then he punched in the 415 area code again. And a number he knew by heart.

“Darlene,” he said, “this is Samuel Larkin. I need you to send flowers to Martha Flanagan. Right. Right. Nearly instantaneous. Not quite. That would be fine. Just sign it ‘Lark.’ Thank you.”

Ryan moved out of the shadows, turned his back on Larkin and walked into the conference room.

Lark waited for a moment. His face was wet and he was
tired, and he could not think what he meant to do. There were so many conflicting thoughts in his head, so much outrage, so much impatience, so much…so much pure astonishment He and Mitch had made that dash together so many times, heading up to Grant Avenue to find their favorite little Gooey Louie’s for egg rolls and cheap fried rice, the kind they’d loved since the New York days and med school.

He stood up. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He didn’t know how to explain all this.

He heard the door behind him open, and he saw with relief that it was Lightner, and Lightner had a manila folder in his hand. He looked drawn and tired, about as out of sorts as he’d been in the car this afternoon on the way down here.

That seemed like centuries ago. Flanagan had died in the interim.

They went into the conference room together. How calm these people looked, how incredibly calm, both men and women red-eyed from crying, and all in their lawyerly tropical wool and oxford cloth.

“Well, this is…this is very disturbing news,” Lark said. He could feel the blood rushing to his face now. He laid his hands on the back of the leather chair. He didn’t want to sit down. He caught a disconcerting reflection of himself in the distant windows. The lights of the city were a smear beyond. What he saw was mainly all this—the floor lamps, the ring of high-backed leather chairs, the figure of Ryan standing in the corner.

“All the material is gone,” said Ryan, quietly and without recrimination.

“I’m afraid so. Dr. Flanagan is…is dead, and they can’t find the records. Also someone…and I can’t for the life of me…”

“We understand,” said Ryan. “The same thing happened in New York yesterday afternoon. All the genetic records were removed. Same thing at the Genetic Institute in Paris.”

“Well, then I am in a very very embarrassing position,” said Lark. “You have only my word that this creature exists, that the blood and tissues sampled revealed this mysterious genome…”

“We understand,” said Ryan.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to get the hell out of this office and never come south of the Mason-Dixon Line again,” said Lark. “I wouldn’t blame you if…”

“We understand,” said Ryan and for the first time he forced an icy smile. He gestured for calm. “The superficial and immediate autopsy results on Edith Mayfair and Alicia Mayfair indicate they miscarried. The tissue is abnormal. There is every indication, even at this early stage, that it corroborates what you’ve told us about the material you received. I thank you for all your help.”

Lark was flabbergasted.

“That’s it?”

“We will of course pay you for your time, and all your expenses…”

“No, I mean, wait a minute, what are you going to do?”

“Well, what would you suggest we do?” Ryan asked. “Should we call a news conference and tell the national media that there is a genetic mutant male with ninety-two chromosomes preying on the women in our family, attempting to impregnate them and apparently killing them?”

“I won’t let this go,” said Lark. “I don’t like people impersonating me! I’m going to find out who this was, who…”

“You won’t find out,” said Aaron.

“You mean it was one of your people?”

“It if was, you will never prove it. And we all know that it had to be one of my people, didn’t it? No one else knew this work was being carried on at Keplinger. No one but you and the deceased Dr. Flanagan. And Mayfair and Mayfair after you told them. There isn’t much more to it. I think we need to see you back safely to your hotel. I think I have to help the family now. This is really a family matter.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“No, I am not, Dr. Larkin,” said Lightner, “and I want you to stay at the hotel, with Gerald and Carl Mayfair. They’re outside waiting to take you back. Don’t leave the hotel, please. Just stay in the suite until you hear from me.”

“Are you implying that someone is going to try to harm
me?”