The Hunger (31 page)

Sarah clapped her hands over her face. Tom Haver’s arm came around her. Miriam was pulled forward. She moaned, sank in the arms of her captors, and allowed herself to be dragged sobbing through the ugly little door and down the hallway beyond.

The cell was not padded, but it was no hotel room. It stank of despair and madness. There was no further need to act. Miriam sat down on the miserable little bed. She closed her eyes,
touching
for any faint contact with Sarah that she might pick up.

She thought of the French king and his dungeon, and the sounds of the starving.

* *  *

Sarah was upset. Tom had become virtually monosyllabic. Now he was forcing her back to Geoff’s lab just as certainly as he had forced Miriam to the Psychiatric Clinic. “I’m fine, Tom. I feel marvelous, as a matter of fact.”

“You look rotten. You’re gray. There must be some sort of cyanosis setting in.”

“Maybe I’m a little shocked! This place is turning into the Third Reich. You just threw that woman in a cell without so much as a trial!”

“We need her. Anyway, the commitment is perfectly in order.”

“She’s sane!”

“Define your terms! I don’t think so. Sam doesn’t think so. In view of the fact that she’s not even a human being — and we have proof that she carried out a totally irrational assault against you — I think we’re doing the right thing. Now come on.”

When he tugged at her arm, anger flared in her. Before she could think, she had slapped him so hard she all but lost her balance. He gasped, shook his head. For a long moment he was absolutely still. She thought he was going to hit her, then he seemed to shake it off.

“If you’re up to it, darling, I think you’d better come.” She didn’t argue further. She was too astonished with herself.

Geoff hardly greeted them. He simply started talking, bringing them up to date.

His eyes were red from the hours he had been spending at the microscope. He extracted a smeared yellow sheet from a pile of papers on his lab bench. “I’m calling this the curve of transference. It shows the amount of time by blood volume that it will take for the native blood to be completely replaced.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tom’s voice was sharp. Sarah tried to take his hand but he moved away.

“The transfused material will replace the natural blood. No question about it. The native blood is now nothing more than a nutrient bath for the new tissue.”

“The body produces blood. Replaces the whole volume eventually.”

“New blood is the stuff’s food supply. It’s a parasite except that it carries nutrients and performs gas transference.”

“Poorly. She looks gray.”

“It isn’t very efficient yet. But the receptivity is changing. A gas chromatograph shows oxygen uptake subnormal but improving.”

This was bizarre. Sarah rubbed her fingers against her face. Her skin was slick and cool, like Miriam’s. “What color are the leukocytes?”

“Purple. Deep, as if they were oxygen gorged.”

“Miriam’s leukocytes were deep purple before she slept. Methuselah’s were before —” She stopped. Methuselah had torn his cagemate to pieces.

“I think we’ve got to deal with it as an invasive organism. Parasite. I can’t see how we can avoid the conclusion that it’s going to come to dominate your system.”

“Get it out of her!”

“We might try a blood replacement. If we do it right away it just might work.”

“So do it!”

“I intend to, Tom! But I’ve got to get more blood. It’ll be a few more hours. That’s the best I can do. I hope we’ll be in time. I think we will.”

Silence fell. A few more hours. Tom’s arms came around her. She felt his trembling body, saw the fear in his eyes. “I feel just fine,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll all work out perfectly well.”

But when he clutched her more tightly, she let him.

MIRIAM STOOD AT THE barred window of the dingy little room. Evening was becoming night. She was growing more and more hungry. Her fingers touched the bars once lightly, then ran along the sill. If only Sarah would come!

Miriam had allowed them to lock her up to give Sarah the chance to come and free her. Sarah’s loyalty was the issue. Miriam wanted it, and the best way to win it would be to get her to volunteer herself on Miriam’s behalf.

Miriam was relying on the strongest aspect of Sarah’s personality, her sense of independence. Surely Sarah would not be able to countenance the idea of someone being unjustly imprisoned.

Miriam shook the bars. The more hungry she got, the more the minutes counted. She imagined the hunt, the kill. Her head throbbed, her body began to feel heavy. Without quite realizing it she had examined the whole window frame. The bars were bolted into the brickwork on the outside. The frame itself was hardwood.

As she was now, Miriam could probably bend back the bars. But in another two hours she would be too weak. Is that how the victims of Charles IV had died, by waiting too long for deliverance from outside? Miriam threw herself onto the bed, then jumped up and went to the door. All she could see through the barred peephole was an expanse of white wall on the opposite side of the hallway.

A powerful, delicious scent was entering the room through the tiny cracks around the door. There must be a guard posted just out of sight, probably sitting in a chair beside the door. That would be another of Haver’s precautions.

At first she had discounted Haver as a threat to her relationship with Sarah, but the more she understood about him the more formidable he became. Deep inside that man there was something strong. That was the part of him Sarah loved.

Such a love was powerful. Miriam could see why Sarah endured the outer man with his arrogance and his manipulative nature, as long as there was hope that the inner man would eventually emerge and sweep the rest aside.

She wished that the guard would leave his post and give her some peace! She dreamed of the hunt — where she would go and whom she would take. There was a couple living in the top floor of a house on West Seventy-sixth Street, in an apartment Miriam had entered a few years ago. By now the last disappearance from the place was forgotten. It was time for another couple of tenants to jump their lease. No advance planning would be necessary. Miriam already knew her route and the locks she would encounter.

“Please, Sarah,” she moaned. She
touched
.

In the emotional silence, there was an angry stirring. Somewhere in the building, Sarah was upset.

The attic grew darker as evening took the last glow from the westward-facing dormer windows. John had been lying on the floor of the tiny room that contained the remains of his predecessors, listening for Miriam to return to the house. He was almost too weak to stand. For hours he had been motionless.

This was going to be his last act. The steel box that would contain him stood bulky and black in the center of the room. Slowly John’s hand rose until he could grasp the edge of that box. Then he pulled himself up to full height, tottering, fighting to keep his balance.

Dizziness washed over him. The room retreated farther and farther away. Only his burning hunger remained, like a fire in the center of his body.

By slow degrees the room swam back into focus. He felt like stone. His head lolled as if his neck were broken. His knees wobbled, forcing him to lean heavily against the wall of sealed boxes.

It took him an hour of agonizing effort to break the locks on five of them.The others were too strong. Those he had been able to break were at the bottom of the stack, the most ancient ones. He threw his weight against the ones on top, sliding them to the floor, allowing the ones below to open.

The room was now pitch dark and choking with dust. But it was not quiet. Everywhere there was seething, hissing motion. John threw himself out the door and closed it. He leaned back against it and turned the lock. After a few minutes the door began to creak, then to groan and rattle, finally to shake.

Sarah stared sightlessly at the electroencephalogram. The mass of complex lines would not become clear. She was so tired. But she was also terribly angry. Her mind was in turmoil. Time after time she had looked up from her work startled, thinking that Miriam was coming into the office.

They had wronged Miriam. The trumped-up commitment was an evil thing. It made Sarah question the real value of her own work, but more the truth of what she loved about Tom. He had conceived of the idea, managed its realization, and executed it with the dispassionate precision of a police officer.

Through it all he had been as cold as death. And now that poor creature sat up there, her dignity — her very rights as an intelligent being — stripped away.

Sarah glanced up at the clock. Nearly eight and time for the so-called Blaylock Group to meet and share findings. The Cytogenics Lab was preparing a chromosome analysis. Osteology was working on bone structures, Cardiology on heart and circulatory systems.

Sarah tried again. She had to have something to show at the meeting. The EEG was radically disturbed. It offered few real comparisons to a human encephalogram.

Sarah could not stop thinking of Miriam, nor could she stop wanting food. It was absurd, but her hunger was really getting obscene.

When Miriam had been near her, she had felt greatly comforted. There was something kind about that woman. Of course, it had been stupid for her to carry out the transfusion, but one should not forget that Miriam’s thought processes were not human. In her mind it was probably a perfectly logical act.

Until now Sarah had not allowed herself to consider whether or not she would really stop aging. Was that the effect of Miriam’s blood?

If so, it was a gift not only to Sarah Roberts but also to all mankind. Miriam had said that she was the last of her species. The more Sarah thought of it the more the nobility of the act became clear.

Noble captive. What suffering Miriam must be enduring right now, four floors above.

Ten minutes to the meeting.

Her mind had to come back to the problem at hand. The EEG was a mess, she realized, because Miriam’s brain had more than one voltage level where a human brain displayed only one. The needles of the EEG machine had each been picking up at least two signals; thus, the hodgepodge.

Sarah swept the graphs off her desk. She had her damn conclusion. Most of a human brain was inactive, mysteriously turned off, apparently unneeded. Not so with Miriam. This was a picture of a fully functioning brain, so active it was beyond the capacity of the instrument to record.

What an extraordinary mind must be there. The commitment was more than a moral lapse, it was the blackest of sins, an obscenity. Sarah was ashamed for them all.

The Hutch that now sat across from Tom was a changed man. Miriam Blaylock had been severed from his control and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Too late he had realized the importance of the case. Not only had he lost status at Riverside, he had lost something else — something Tom himself couldn’t have borne to lose — his authority.

“I want to help,” he said.

Tom was shocked. In Hutch’s position he himself would have resigned on the spot. “OK,” he said, “be my guest.”

“We’ll pretend to be teammates for a little while longer, if it’s all right by you.”

What was he implying? “Of course,” Tom said with an assurance he no longer felt. He never underestimated the enemy. That was his cardinal rule.

“I worry about Sarah,” Hutch said.

“So do we all.”

“Why doesn’t she check in for observation? Let’s not forget that we have a top-flight hospital attached to this place.”

“I’ve discussed that with Geoff and we both feel it would be better not to alarm her. Anyway, she’d never go.”

“Intervene. You can convince her.”

“Short of an armed guard —”

“Then get one! She’s in trouble. I’d expect that you of all people would want to help her!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t you realize what’s happening to Sarah?”

“Sarah’s busy with her work. And she’s not reporting any symptoms. Geoff’s going to do a blood exchange within the hour.”

“Didn’t you see the effect that . . . thing had on her when they were together?”

“She was awed. I think that’s a very appropriate reaction. Miriam Blaylock
is
awesome.”

“She was seduced! It wants her, Tom. Surely you can see that!”

“Wants?”

“Didn’t you feel it? Sarah was being hypnotized or some such thing. I’d put Sarah in the hospital for observation and I’d post guards —”

“Commit them both? Come on, that’s absurd.”

Hutch leaned forward, gripped the edges of the desk. Tom had never seen him so agitated. “I would post guards to keep that creature away from her. At all costs!”

Tom could only shake his head. He had always suspected Hutch of a paranoid streak. Now, under pressure, the weakness was surfacing. That was always the way when people faced pressure. Some of them caved in, others did their best work.

“Look, I’ll take all this under advisement. But the project group is due to meet at eight and I want to make sure everybody’s on schedule.”

That was enough of a dismissal to make Hutch stalk out. Fine. Calling the labs could wait five minutes. Tom needed some time alone. So many contradictory thoughts were pouring through his mind. It had been a matter of pride to reveal nothing of his feelings to Hutch, but in truth he also was frightened. Sarah had a much more serious problem than she would admit, that was obvious from the tests. Geoff’s analogy comparing Miriam’s blood to a parasitic organism was proving to be correct. Soon Sarah would be suffering from all the effects of massive parasitization. Terminally, if it came to that, she would starve, her body overwhelmed by the nutritional needs of the parasite.

That possibility, however, was not what most bothered him. He had almost unlimited confidence in Riverside. If all else failed, they would save Sarah. The thing he could not understand was why Miriam had done it. He remembered that she had been reading Sarah’s book in the sleep cubicle two nights ago. Numerous times she had made reference to doing “research” on them all.