Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts (37 page)

She hurried to the bedroom where she changed into khaki pants and a chambray shirt. She gathered up the stethoscope and diagnostic kit she'd brought along in case she needed them for Jeanette—that was a laugh—and stuffed them into her oversized shoulder bag.

"Good-bye, Jeanette," she said, more from reflex than anything else, as she headed for the door.

Jeanette said nothing. She still stood where Kate had left her in the kitchen, staring at the wall, her brows knitted.

11

"Take another breath, Jack," Kate said. "Deeper this time."

Clad only in damp boxer shorts, he lay sprawled on a rumpled double bed. Jack didn't respond so she had to be satisfied with listening to his tidal respiration.

Kate pressed the diaphragm of her stethoscope more firmly against the perspiration-beaded skin of his mid back. She hadn't realized how sleekly muscular her brother had become. His almost total lack of body fat left the muscles close to the skin. The way he dressed gave no hint that this sort of body moved within his clothes. Men in Jeanette's end of town who had bodies like Jack's tended toward tank tops and skintight muscle shirts; their object was to attract attention; Jack's seemed to be to deflect it.

She strained to hear the crinkling cellophane rales that would signal fluid in the alveoli. She heard none.

"No sign of pneumonia," she said.

Gia sighed. "Thank God."

Not necessarily good hews, Kate thought. Means we're dealing with something else. And if Jeanette had told the truth, that something else was most likely the contaminant virus.

"What do you think it is?" Gia said.

Kate looked at this pretty blond woman and thought back to the night—Lord, had it been only two nights ago?—that she and Jack had come over. Kate might have found herself attracted to her if not for everything that had been happening. She remembered how she'd been struck by the easy camaraderie between Jack and Gia, the way they laughed with each other and, when listening to Gia speak of Jack, how deeply she cared for her brother.

And now she saw the near panic in Gia's eyes, and thought, You're so lucky, Jack, to have someone who loves you this much. Don't ever lose her.

She decided to tell Gia part of the truth. "It's most likely a virus."

"Is it catching? Vicky's been in and out, helping me. Bad enough Jack's this sick. But Vicky's so little. What if—?"

"She should be fine."

Kate had met the dark-haired, blue-eyed child on the way in and her pigtails had made her ache for the days when Lizzie had been that age. Life had seemed so simple back then.

"I hope so," Gia said. "I've had to change his T-shirt three times. Finally I stopped. He pulls the covers over himself when he chills and throws them off when he sweats."

"That's part of the infection-fighting process."

But why is his system fighting it when mine didn't?

Kate felt a tug in her mind, a nanosecond of scrambled thoughts, and then a question leaping out before she could stop it.

"Has he ever been sick before?"

"This sick? Yes, once."

"When?"

She couldn't control her voice!

"Last summer. After…"

Kate tried to lock her throat, succeeded, but not before she said, "After what?"

"I don't know if I should go into that. Maybe Jack should tell you."

Now Kate herself wanted to know what Gia was talking about but was determined not to let the Unity hear the answer. She sensed fear and uncertainty in the Unity and that worried her. What might they do to wring the answer out of Gia?

She fought to regain control of her voice, and squeezed her eyes shut with the effort.

"Kate, are you all right?"

She felt beads of sweat pop out on her forehead… and then suddenly she was back in the driver seat… but she could still feel other hands reaching for the wheel.

"I'm okay. Just a bad headache."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Can I—?"

"You know what?" Kate said. "On second thought, it might be better, for Vicky's sake, if you go."

"Oh, no." She was shaking her head. "I couldn't leave Jack. I'll just keep Vicky in the other room and—"

"I'm concerned that if you catch whatever this is you might pass it on to her, and then…" Kate let the sentence hang and watched Gia chew her upper lip. She added, "I'll look after him, Gia. I've had a bit of training in this sort of thing."

"I know." She shrugged, her expression unhappy. "But I still feel like I'm abandoning him."

"I promise to watch over him as if he were a member of my own family."

This earned a smile. "Yes, I guess I can count on that, can't I." She sighed. "Okay. I'll take Vicky home. But you'll call me as soon as he comes out of this, won't you?"

Kate sensed increased efforts in her head to make her stop Gia from leaving but she beat them back.

"Of course."

Gia started for the door, then stopped and turned. Keep going! Kate wanted to shout. She didn't know how long she could hold out.

"Just one thing."

"You really shouldn't stay here any longer."

"I know, but I just want to warn you that Jack might not be too happy to find you here."

"I don't understand."

"It was my idea to call you over. When I told him he didn't respond, so I'm not sure it got through."

"Why would that be a problem?"

"He's a little quirky about this place. He… well, he doesn't like anyone to know where he lives. Hardly anyone does. And as for being here, Vicky and I are the only regulars. This is his sanctum."

"But I'm his sister."

"But you didn't know the address, right? I had to give it to you. See what I mean?"

"I think so."

"So if he's upset that you're here, don't take it personally."

Kate glanced at the sprawled sleeping man. "Strange guy, my brother."

Gia's lips said, " 'Unique' is more like it," but her eyes seemed to say,
If you only knew
.

Minutes later, when the door had closed behind them, Kate felt the pressure ease. The Unity was still desperate to know how Jack was reacting to the virus, but must have realized it could only watch and wait right now.

Was this what it had been like for Jeanette—fighting minute to minute, losing ground inch by inch? Maybe not. At least Kate knew she was in a war. Jeanette had probably had no idea. Most likely she wrote off any early alien feelings or thoughts as part of the healing process, a side effect of the tumor's shrinking. And when finally she'd realized that her mind was being usurped, it was too late.

When will it be too late for me? Kate wondered.

She thought of what was developing inside her head, the Unity virus running free through her brain, inserting its own genes into more and more of her brain's neurons until it had nibbled away everything that was her and replaced it with someone else, someone with viral ethics, another drone like Jeanette.

That possibility pushed up a bubble of acid to the back of her throat. She had to find a way to stop it. And bring Jeanette back. But first she had to save herself.

She looked at Jack. If his immune system truly was fighting the virus, it would be producing antibodies. If she could isolate those globulins and inject them into her own bloodstream…

Her excitement died aborning. If-if-if… even if it were true, the process would be lengthy. She'd be a born-again member of the Unity by then.

She'd have to find another way. Maybe Fielding would come up with something. Whatever happened, Kate sensed that Jack would be the key. But everything was stuck on hold until he pulled through this, if he did.

She checked him again—still sleeping but less sweaty—then wandered into the dizzying clutter of his apartment's front room. She stopped when she saw something that looked like a gun on an end table. Dear Lord, it
was
a gun. She stepped closer. Did Jack own a gun? Obviously. Kate hated guns. Bad enough for her brother to own one, but she couldn't believe he'd be so careless as to leave it out like this with a child around. Gia's little girl could have—

Wait. It had a red plastic handle and the rest of it looked made of tin. The knob of a power dial bulged from the side next to a pair of words framed by lightning bolts etched into the metal:
Atomic Disintegrator
. Kate smiled and shook her head. A toy raygun—no, a cap gun. Ancient, too.

She did a slow turn. Look at this stuff. What did he do, go through flea markets and pick up everything that wasn't nailed down? And none of it seemed less than fifty years old. A Daddy Warbucks lamp, a Dick Tracy alarm clock—
lots
of clocks, all old, none working. Framed certificates and more clocks, their pendulums arrested in final swing, hid the walls. She stepped closer to check out the certificates—all from clubs and secret societies devoted to the Shadow, Captain Midnight, Doc Savage… what on earth did he see in this junk?

The only thing she could find that belonged in the Twenty-first Century—or in the latter half of the twentieth, for that matter—was the computer monitor atop the oak rolltop desk. And a vaguely familiar-looking black object resting on the monitor. Kate leaned in for a closer look and stiffened when she recognized the timer clock from the bomb Jack had found yesterday. She knew it was the same clock by the four cut ends of the wires snaking out from its casing. The only difference now was that the display was lit, showing the time.

And next to it were those silvery little AAA-battery-size things with the rest of the cut wires that had been attached to the clock. What had Jack called them? Blasting caps. But where was that clay-like explosive?

She checked the rest of the desk top and hunted through the room but didn't see it. Must have hidden it away. She didn't like poking through Jack's desk drawers but she'd feel better if she knew the explosive was here too. She suspected that Jack had used it to blow up that car this morning, and she hated the thought.

But the drawers in the old rolltop held nothing but papers and video catalogues. She made a point of not reading any of the papers and moved on to the equally old oak secretary. And there in the top drawer, next to what looked like another toy gun, she found it—still wrapped in cellophane, with the empty holes where the blasting caps had been inserted.

What a relief. When he recovered, maybe Jack could explain how that car exploded, but at least now she could be sure this stuff hadn't been used. Meanwhile, she didn't want to have to look at that timer and the blasting caps whenever she was in this room, so she put them in the drawer with the explosive.

As she wiggled the drawer to push it back in it slipped out of the desk. She stood there holding it, wondering why it was so shallow—only half as deep as the base of the secretary. She peered into the slot and saw what was obviously a false rear wall.

Curious, Kate replaced the drawer and angled the secretary away from the wall. She felt around the weathered rear panel until she found a recessed catch. A gentle tug released the board; it fell toward her, revealing a hidden compartment with three shelves.

And on those lay at least half a dozen pistols of varying shapes and sizes and finishes, extra clips, boxes of bullets, knives, blackjacks…

A miniature armory.

She stared for a dry-mouthed moment, then replaced the panel and pushed the secretary back against the wall. She opened the drawer again and took out the tiny pistol she'd seen before. Heavy… too heavy for a toy. She dropped it back in and shoved the door closed. Shaken, she retreated to the center of the room and stared around her.

She had to face it: Jack was a gun nut or worse. Some sort of criminal. Had to be. What other reason could he have for owning all that weaponry?

Who was her brother? What on earth had he become?

She'd thought he was exaggerating when he'd said his closet was deeper and darker than hers. Now she knew he wasn't.

And yet… he was still her brother. And despite all this damning evidence, she sensed a core of old-fashioned decency within him. A man you could trust, a man whose word meant something.

Was that the key to all this pulp era junk? Memorabilia from a time before he existed, relics of an antiquated obsolescent code of honor to which he still hewed?

Or was she reading too much into this? Not every idiosyncrasy had to have deep psychological overtones. How did the saying go? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe Jack simply thought this stuff was cool—or "neat," as he liked to say—and picked it up whenever he came across it.

Kate heard a sound from the bedroom and stepped back inside. Jack was tossing back and forth under the covers, moaning, mumbling, whining. He seemed frightened.

She watched him closely, wondering what terrible sort of nightmare would scare a man like Jack…

12

… Jack looks up as the girl in the middle of the store check-out line coughs. He watches from the rear as people ahead and behind her back away.