Reliquary (53 page)

Margo stared at the shadowed figure in the chair, his features invisible in the darkness, the only observable movement the slight flexing of thick fingers. The chanting ebbed, then swelled again, taking on an unmistakable undertone of anticipation. The figure raised his hand suddenly, and the chanting ceased in an instant. Then, as he leaned forward, the flickering firelight slanted across his face.

For Margo, it was as if time itself were suspended for a brief, terrible instant. She forgot the fear, the aching knees, the detonation timers relentlessly ticking in the dark corridors above her head. The man who sat on the litter made of lashed human bone--dressed in the familiar gabardine pants and paisley tie--was Whitney Frock.

She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came.

“Oh, my God,” Smithback said behind her.

Frock gazed across the assembled throng, his expression impassive, devoid of emotion. The huge hall was deathly silent.

Slowly, Frock’s eyes swept forward to the prisoners before him. He looked at D’Agosta, then Smithback, then Pendergast. When his gaze reached Margo, he started suddenly. Something kindled in his eyes.

“My dear,” he said. “How truly unfortunate. Frankly, I didn’t expect to see you as science advisor for this little outing, and I am indeed sorry. No--it’s true, and you needn’t look at me like that. Remember how, when it came time to get rid of that meddlesome Irishman, I spared
your
life. Against my own better judgment, I might add.”

Margo, reeling in shock and disbelief, could not speak.

“However, it can’t be helped.” The flicker in Frock’s eyes died away. “As for the rest of you, welcome. I think some introductions are in order. For example, who is this hirsute gentleman with the ragged clothes?” He turned to Mephisto. “He has the face of a wild animal caught in a trap, which I suppose is exactly what he is. One of the natives, I imagine, brought along as a guide. I will ask you again, what is your name?”

There was a silence.

He turned to one of his lieutenants. “Cut his throat if he doesn’t answer. We can’t tolerate rudeness, now, can we?”

“Mephisto,” came the sullen reply.

“Mephisto, indeed! A little learning is a dangerous thing. Especially in a derelict. But ‘Mephisto.’ Really, how banal. No doubt meant to strike fear into the hearts of your scabby little followers. You don’t look like much of a devil to me, just a pathetic, drug-addled bum. I should not complain, however: you and your likes have been exceedingly useful, I will admit. Perhaps you will find an erstwhile friend amongst my children ...” He swept his hand across the gathered ranks of Wrinklers. Mephisto drew himself up, saying nothing.

Margo stared at her former professor. This was like no Frock she had ever seen before. He had always been diplomatic and soft-spoken. Now there was an arrogance, a cold lack of emotion, that chilled her even beyond the fear and confusion she felt.

“And Smithback, the journalist!” Frock sneered. “Were you brought along to document this intended victory over my children? Pity you won’t be able to tell the real outcome in that scandal sheet you write for.”

“The jury’s still out on that,” Smithback said defiantly.

Frock chuckled.

“Frock, what the hell is all this?” D’Agosta said as he struggled. “You’d better explain, or--”

“Or what?” Frock turned toward the police officer. “I always thought you a crude, ill-bred fellow. But I’m surprised it’s necessary to point out you are in no position to make demands of
me.
Are they disarmed?” he asked one of the hooded figures closest to him, who nodded slowly in reply.

“Check that one again,” Frock said, pointing to Pendergast. “He’s a tricky devil.”

Pendergast was hauled roughly to his feet, searched, then shoved back to his knees. Frock slowly scanned them with his eyes, smiling coldly.

“That was your wheelchair, wasn’t it?” Pendergast asked quietly, indicating the platform.

Frock nodded. “My
best
wheelchair.”

Pendergast said nothing. Margo turned to Frock, finding her voice at last. “Why?” she asked simply. Frock looked at Margo for a moment, then signaled his lieutenants. The cloaked forms moved into position behind the huge cauldrons. Frock stood up, jumped down from the sedan chair, and approached the FBI agent on foot.

“
This
is why,” he replied.

Then he stood proudly, lifting his arms high above his head.

“
As I am cured, so shall you be cured
!” he cried in a clear, ringing voice. “
As I am made whole, so shall you be made whole
!”

A loud answering cry came from the assembly. The cry went on and on, and Margo realized it was not an inarticulate cry, but a kind of programmed guttural response.
The creatures are speaking,
she thought.
Or trying to
.

Slowly, the cry died away and the chanting resumed. The deep, monotonous beat of the drums began again, and the lines of Wrinklers came shuffling forward toward the semicircle of cauldrons. The lieutenants brought delicate clay goblets out from within the hut. Margo stared, her mind unable to connect the beautifully formed implements with the hideous ceremony. One by one, the creatures came forward, accepting the steaming cups in horny-nailed hands, drawing them up into their hoods. She turned away, repelled by the thick slurping sounds that followed.

“
This
is why,” Frock repeated, turning toward Margo. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how
this
would be worth anything, anything in the world?” There seemed to be something almost imploring in his tone.

For a minute, Margo didn’t understand. Then it hit her: the ceremony, the drug, the wheelchair pieces, Pendergast’s reference to the Lourdes shrine with its miraculous healing powers.

“So you could walk,” she said quietly. “All this, just so you could walk again.”

Instantly, Frock’s face hardened. “How easy for you to judge,” he said. “You, who have walked all your life and
never
given it a second thought. How can you begin to know what it is like not to walk? Bad enough to be crippled from birth, but to know the gift and to have it snatched away, when the greatest achievements of your life still lie before you?” He looked at her. “Of course, to you I was always just Dr. Frock. Dear old Dr. Frock, how
unpleasant
for him to contract polio in that African bush village in the Ituri Forest. How
unfortunate
he had to give up his field work.”

He brought his face closer to hers. “Field work was my
life
,” he hissed.

“So you built upon Dr. Kawakita’s work,” Pendergast said. “You finished what he started.”

Frock snorted. “Poor Gregory. He came to me in desperation. As you surely know, he’d started taking the drug prematurely.” Frock waggled his finger in an uncharacteristically cynical gesture. “Tut, tut. And to think I’d always taught him to follow strict laboratory procedure. But the boy was simply too eager. He was arrogant and had visions of immortality. He took the drug before all the unpleasant side effects of the reovirus had been negated. Due to the rather, ah,
extreme
physical changes that resulted, he needed help. A surgical procedure had left him with a plate in his back. It was beginning to cause him acute pain. He was hurt, lonely, and scared. Who could he turn to but me, in my stifling, wasting retirement? And, naturally, I was able to help him. Not only in removing the plate, but in further purifying the drug. But of course, his
cruel
experimentation”--here Frock spread his hands at the multitude--“his selling of the drug--was his demise. When his subjects realized what he had done to them, they killed him.”

“So you purified the drug,” Pendergast said, “and took it yourself.”

“We did the final work at a rather untidy little lab he’d set up along the river. Greg had lost the conviction he needed to go forward. Or perhaps he’d never had that kind of courage, that intestinal fortitude a truly visionary scientist needs to see things through to their conclusion. So I finished what he’d started. More accurately, I
perfected
what he’d started. The drug still creates morphological change, of course. However, those changes now
heal,
rather than disfigure, what nature has corrupted. It is the true destiny, the truest iteration, of the reovirus. I am living proof of its restorative power. I was the first to make the transition. In fact, it is now clear to me that no one but myself
could
have made it. My wheelchair was my cross, you see. Now it is venerated as a symbol of the new world we shall create.”

“The new world,” Pendergast repeated. “The Mbwun lilies growing in the Reservoir.”

“Kawakita’s idea,” Frock said. “Aquaria are so expensive and take up so much room, you see. But that was before ...” his voice trailed off.

“I think I understand,” Pendergast went on, as calmly as if he was debating with an old friend at a comfortable coffeehouse table. “You’d been planning to drain the Reservoir all along.”

“Naturally. Gregory had modified the plant to grow in a temperate environment. We were going to drain the Reservoir ourselves and release the lily into these tunnels. My children shun light, you see, and this makes the perfect warren. But then, friend Waxie made it all unnecessary. He is--or rather
was
--so eager to take credit for other people’s ideas. If you recall, it was
I
who first suggested the notion of draining the Reservoir.”

“Dr. Frock,” Margo said, trying to keep her voice under control, “some of these seeds will make it out to the storm drain system, and from there to the Hudson and the open ocean. When they hit saltwater, they’ll activate the virus, polluting the entire ecosystem. Do you know what that could mean for the world’s food chain?”

“My dear Margo, that is the
idea.
Admittedly, it’s an evolutionary step, a step into the unknown. But as a biologist, Margo, you surely realize that the human race has become degenerate. It has lost its evolutionary vigor, become grossly maladaptive. I am the instrument for the reinvigoration of the species.”

“And just where were you planning to hide your fat ass during the flood?” D’Agosta asked.

Frock laughed. “No doubt you foolishly assume that, by virtue of this little excursion, you know all there is to know about this underground world. Believe me, subterranean Manhattan is far more vast, more terrible, and more wonderful, than you could imagine. I’ve wandered again and again, glorying in the use of my legs. Here I’m free from the dissembling I must continue aboveground. I’ve found natural caverns of incredible beauty. Ancient tunnels used by Dutch smugglers in the days of New Amsterdam. Snug little places where we can all retire while the water rushes past on its way to the sea. You won’t find them on any maps. When twenty million cubic feet of water drains through here shortly, delivering the very ripe seeds of
Liliceae mbwunensis
into the world, my children and I will be safe in a tunnel just above the flood. And when the flood is over, we will return to our freshly scoured quarters to enjoy the fruit left behind. And, of course, to await the arrival of what I like to call the Holocene Discontinuity.”

Margo stared at Frock in disbelief. He smiled in return: an arrogant, distant smile she had not seen before. He seemed supremely confident. It occurred to her that Frock might not know of the charges they’d placed.

“Yes, my dear. It’s my theory of fractal evolution, taken to the logical extreme. The reovirus--‘glaze,’ if you will--inserted directly into the bottom of the world’s food chain. How fitting, don’t you think, that I myself will be its vector, its activating agent? The mass extinction at the K-T Boundary will seem minuscule by comparison. That simply made way for mammals by removing the dinosaurs. Who knows what this transformation will make room for? The prospects are tremendously exciting.”

“You’re a very sick man,” Margo said, feeling even as she said it a chilling despair grip her heart. She’d had no idea just how much Frock must have missed the use of his legs. It was his secret obsession. He must have seen the potential for the drug’s restorative effects, even from within Kawakita’s misery. But he had clearly discounted the drug’s potential for poisoning the mind. He could never understand--he would never believe--that in perfecting the drug’s action on the body, he’d increased exponentially its ability to stimulate mania and violence, to magnify buried obsessions. And she sensed there was nothing she could now say that could bring him back.

The processions continued to shuffle up to the cauldrons. As the Wrinklers raised the cups to their lips, Margo could see shudders ripple their cloaks--through pleasure or pain, she could not tell.

“And you knew our moves all along,” she heard Pendergast say. “As if you were conducting them yourself.”

“In some ways, I was. I’d trained Margo here too well to hope that she could leave well enough alone. And I knew your busy mind would always be spinning. So I made sure the draining of the Reservoir couldn’t be stopped. Finding one of my wounded children here, the one you shot, merely cemented my conviction. But how clever of you to send your little frogmen in as a precaution. Luckily, my children were all on their way to the Ceremony and prevented them from crashing our little party.” He blinked. “For one so clever, I’m surprised you thought you could come down here and defeat us with your pathetic weapons. But no doubt you misjudged just how numerous my children have become. As you’ve misjudged so much else.”

“I think you’ve left something out of the story, Doctor,” Margo said suddenly, as evenly as she could.

Frock stepped closer to her, an enquiring look on his face. It was very difficult, seeing him move so nimbly on his feet; it made it hard to think straight. She took a deep breath of the noxious air. “I think it was you who killed Kawakita,” she said. “You killed him, and left his body here to look like just another victim.”

“Indeed,” Frock replied. “Why, pray tell?”

“Two reasons,” she said, speaking louder now. “I found Kawakita’s journal in the wreckage of his laboratory. He was clearly having second thoughts. It mentioned thyoxin. I think he had learned about the effect salinity would have on the reovirus, and he was planning to destroy the plants before you could flush them into the Hudson. He may have been warped in mind and body, but in him, at least, some small voice of conscience must have remained.”