Orphan of Creation (31 page)

What, exactly, makes a person a person?

Thursday whimpered in her sleep, thrashed about for a moment, and kicked the blankets off before she settled back down and began to snore.

<>

Pete knew they had found themselves an australopithecine. and also where they had stashed it. He had stumbled onto that one by tailing Grossington for three days when the story seemed to be dying as suddenly as it had appeared, when he had run out of leads. Grossington’s press conference had started out to be all that Pete could have hoped it to be, but when Grossington had stalked out, and then shut down any further access to his evidence, canceling the follow-up conference as well, that had smelled enough like fraud to convince everyone. By the second day, even Pete was starting to wonder if Ambrose was for real.

But there was no turning back now. Ambrose
had
to be real, or Pete was dead. He’d be out of a job, a laughingstock in his profession if anyone remembered him at all, suited only for work on the
National Enquirer
—and working
there
was his worst nightmare. So he set off on the desperate chance of tailing Grossington, with no clear goal in mind.

But sometimes even desperation pays off. Pete was on his tail when Grossington drove out to Andrews. Pete sat in his rental at the main entrance gate, and then, grinning with relief, tailed Grossington’s car on the way out as it followed an Air Force ambulance through the unfamiliar city, to some place called Saint Elizabeth’s—a mental hospital, apparently.

Obviously, Grossington had met a plane, but why would he be interested in a plane landing at an Air Force base, and why would they need an ambulance, and why drive directly to an insane asylum? He had collected the Gabon expedition and their cargo. What else could it be? What better place than a mental institution to stash a wild ape-man? Either someone had really cracked up, or they had found something. Pete sat in his rental and stared at the entrance to the expansive grounds of Saint Elizabeth’s. He
knew
that the ape-man was in there.

There was something else he knew—knew by feel and not by fact: Grossington was not the real key to this story. Barbara Marchando was. Pete had missed that because Grossington had the rank and the reputation—and because Marchando was a black woman and that still counted against her in Pete’s southern male-chauvinist subconscious.

But she had found the skull—and found it on her own family’s property. She had gone off to Africa to search for more, had been the one Grossington had singled-out for praise. All of which meant she was inside those gates in some outbuilding with the ape-man right now. He
knew
it, but he couldn’t prove it. And he couldn’t get much further staring at this gate.

And no one outside the operation besides himself would know where she was. That was an interesting point, and it gave him interesting ideas. He turned the key, started the car, threw it into gear and headed back downtown.

<>

Thursday woke up. She felt weak, sick, stiff, as if she had not moved in a long time. Slowly, she sat up and tried to stand. She nearly fell—not because she was dizzy, but because she was sleeping on a strange, soft sort of ledge or box, and not on the ground. Carefully, she swung her feet around and put them on the floor.

Nothing smelled right. The ground here was grey-white, impossibly flat and smooth, lifeless. She was in a hut—a big, empty hut, and quite alone but for a human who was staring at her. Where were the others? Where was the keeper, and why wasn’t he crying out for them to get to work—

With a shock, she remembered. The newcomers, the journey, the strange machines and wondrous things. Where was she? She looked again at the human who was watching her. B—B... Barbara! She remembered. And she remembered, no, more than remembered, she
knew
her own
name. She knew it to be a part of herself, like her hands. She stood up and looked at Barbara.
“Urs-ay”
she announced. Barbara smiled and nodded, and Thursday felt better. Thursday walked across the room to the window. She remembered the idea of windows—clear stuff that was still there even though you could see through it—though she could not remember the word. She looked out across the flat, barren, cold fields of February, the grounds of the institution looking grey and forbidding. She reached up and wrapped her hands around the iron bars set into the window frame. Bars on doors and windows were something else she knew without having to remember.

Where was she? How had she gotten here?

<>

“. . . You may recall that we opened the Nightly News a few nights ago with a report of a remarkable discovery in the study of early man. A skull named Ambrose, reputed to be about a hundred years old, and allegedly belonging to a pre-human species said to be extinct these past million years, was trotted out for the press. For those of our viewers eager for an update, we’re sorry to report that Ambrose has come down in the world since then. Amid cries of fraud, the scientist responsible has refused to defend his claim. Meanwhile, Jan Werkner, a Hollywood special effects man, took just two days to create the skull pictured on your screen now out of plastic and plaster. Result: a dead ringer for Ambrose. Werkner said he made the fake to demonstrate how easy it would be to commit such a hoax—provided no one was allowed to get a good close look at the skull. How have the mighty fallen. That’s our report for this evening. Good night.”

<>

Pete came up out of the subway entrance and looked around. There it was, across the street, pretty hard to miss. George Washington University Hospital. They had taken Reagan here when he was shot, he remembered.

He crossed the street and hesitated at the entrance. But this was the only lead he had. It had to go somewhere. Thank God there were only three Marchandos in the phone book—Barbara’s separated husband Michael had been easy to find. Pete was frankly amazed that Dr. Michael Marchando had agreed to an interview, but with the bad press the australopithecine story had gotten in the last few days, he would take what he could get. None of the principals in the case—Barbara Marchando, Maxwell, Jones, Grossington—were answering their home phones or returning messages left at their offices. He went inside.

There’s an unwritten law saying hospitals are easy to get lost in, and it took Pete fifteen minutes to find the cafeteria. Once there, however, Dr. Marchando was easy to spot—a black man in a doctor’s coat, sitting alone, a little bit nervous, glancing at his watch repeatedly.

Pete went up to him. “Dr. Marchando?”

“Mr. Ardley?” Michael asked politely.

“Yes. Thank you for agreeing to see me.” Pete sat down across from Michael, and wondered where to begin.

But Michael beat him to it. He picked up his coffee cup and took a fair-sized swig. “Listen, I want to come straight down to it. Do you know where she is? You hinted that you might on the phone.”

Pete looked his host straight in the eye. “Yes, I do. At least I’m fairly certain I do.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“For a few reasons. Maybe you know something about what’s going on. Maybe, if you knew where she was, you’d be able to help me get in to see her.”

“Maybe. We’re not on the best terms at the moment. Besides, why should I help you—” Michael looked up, past Pete’s shoulder.

Pete was suddenly aware that two people had come up behind him. He turned around in his chair, and got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew the faces of the two grim-looking men.

“Mr. Ardley,” the blonde one said. “I’m Rupert Maxwell and this is Livingston Jones. May we sit down?” The two of them sat down on either side of him, not exactly aggressive, but certainly not in a way you could say no to, either.

“Hello, Liv,” Michael said. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Maxwell.”

Pete suddenly felt that he wasn’t in control anymore. “What are you two doing here?” he asked.

“Dr. Marchando was good enough to call us and say you had contacted him,” Rupert said. “Liv and I thought we might sit in. In fact, I think you and I need each other.”

“So, Mike,” Livingston said. “Getting interviewed by Jimmy Olson here?” He turned to Pete. “Sell lots of newspapers since you did me the big favor back in Gowrie? You know, we were in Africa when we found out you had broken the story. What with all the publicity, we decided we had to drop everything and get the hell home,” he said, glaring at Pete. “Isn’t it a terrible thing, Mr. Ardley, the way a little headline-chasing can screw up so much important work?”

Rupert leaned in toward Pete, not saying anything, obviously doing his best to intimidate. Pete glanced nervously from Rupert to Liv. The two of them looked awfully damn big.

“He said he knew where Barbara was,” Mike said, “that he’d tell me where she was if I helped him get in to see her.”

“He’s lying,” Liv said coolly, “trying to trick you into something. He’s good at that. He doesn’t know squat, Mike. He doesn’t know where she is. No one could.”

Pete realized he was sweating heavily. “Saint Elizabeth’s,” he blurted out. “And not as a patient. She’s there watching over your new pet. I followed Grossington’s car until he went there.” Pete watched the newcomers’ faces as he spoke, and felt a little thrill of triumph as he read their shocked expressions. He was right. Knowing it for
certain
was worth losing his interview with Michael Marchando.

Besides, his little revelation seemed to have thrown Jones and Maxwell—and they were angry enough with him that deflecting that anger was extremely worthwhile. And the best time to pursue something was while the other guy was off balance. “But you said we needed each other, Dr. Maxwell. How so?”

Rupert cleared his throat and spoke, clearly a bit disconcerted. “Because we’ll all be out of a job if things keep up the way they are. On our side, our entire team is looking like a bunch of idiots and frauds. No one is that interested in listening to us, to put it mildly. And it’s not just reporters—our colleagues in the field are practically ready to burn us at the stake for putting the entire discipline in disrepute. We need to prove that we’re not lying, that Thurs—that, that
Ambrose
—is real, that we know what we’re talking about. You heard at the press conference that the National Geographic was supporting us—well, even they’re pulling back. To be blunt about it, we need a mouthpiece. And right now, you’re even less believed and look like even more of an idiot than we do. You need a story. If you get us decent coverage, we’ll cooperate, give you everything you need. You’ll win, and we’ll stop losing.”

“Barbara doesn’t know you’re here, right?” Michael spoke with flat confidence, knowing it was true. “You’re here behind her back, or else she’d be here with you.”

Rupert and Liv exchanged glances again, and then Liv shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right, she doesn’t know. But I doubt she’d care if she did know. She’s pretty far gone. Oh, she’s okay, she’s all right, she’s not hurt or anything,” Liv added hurriedly. “I just meant she’s so damned wrapped up in—in what she’s doing, she doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“She does have an australopithecine with her,” Michael said, wonderingly. “You didn’t deny it when
he
said it,” he went on, nodding toward Pete, “and you’ve both almost said it yourselves. My God.”

“Yeah, she’s got one,” Liv said. “Calls her Thursday. But I don’t even much care about that just now. Yesterday’s news for me. I’m worried about Barbara.” He turned to Pete. “I might as well tell you this stuff. You’ll hear it soon enough, anyway. I think she’s convinced herself that Thursday might be a kind of human, and she feels guilty as hell for bringing her here. I don’t know why. Maybe because guilt is supposed to be for humans, and to Barb, at least, Thursday is a person. Barbara
bought
Thursday—so if Thurs is human, that makes Barbara a kidnaper, a slave owner.”

“Well,
is
it—is she, Thursday—human?” Pete demanded. This was a touchy moment, but he had to know.

“We don’t know, Mr. Ardley,” Livingston said absently. “We’re in sort of a grey area there, to put it mildly. Human, ape, something in between. You look at her, say words to her, watch her move and act and
think
—and you still don’t know. But right now I don’t even much care about that. I’m just worried about Barbara. She’s in a bad way.”

Rupert nodded. “It’s not just my job I’m worried about here. It’s her. She’s a friend, and she cares a lot about something that’s tearing her up inside. I figure at the least, we can get her mind off things if there’s some publicity and hoopla to distract her—and she won’t have to handle this alone anymore. At first we thought it would be better to work in private, but Jesus, even without Barb’s problems, we’d need help. This is too big. Other people, specialists in all the pertinent fields, have to weigh in, examine the evidence. We need some positive publicity to pull them in.” Rupert leaned in close to Pete again, grabbed his shoulder hard enough that it hurt. “So we need you to help. But Barbara is very fragile right now. Play nice with her, play gentle. Or I’ll rip your lungs out.”