Basilisk (23 page)

‘“Why were you in such a hurry to get there, when the desert gets us all in the end?”’

He closed the book. It must have taken him nine hours to read it from cover to cover but Grace hadn’t shown the slightest reaction. Not the hint of a smile when it was humorous and wry, not a single tear when it was sad. He looked up: Patti was standing in the doorway, watching him. She was wearing a fluffy white sweater and very tight blue jeans.

‘Hi, Professor.’

‘Come on in,’ he told her, and stood up to bring a chair across from the corner of the room. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Did you get the link I sent you? “Paleontology Prof In Rest Home Rescue Drama”?’

‘Yes, thanks, I did. I meant to get back to you, I’m sorry. That was great, that appeal to anybody who might have seen Doctor Zauber.’

‘That’s OK.’ Patti nodded toward Grace. ‘You have more important things to worry about.’

‘Did you get any response?’

‘No, not a single one. Well, two or three, but they were obviously hoaxes. Somebody said they saw Doctor Zauber eating a cheesesteak in Geno’s, and somebody else saw him selling fake designer purses on Chestnut Street. But look what just came up.’

She handed him a computer printout. It was a news item from the international media site EINnews.com. The headline read, ‘Sixteen Pensioners Die In Polish Bus Blaze’. It was accompanied by a color photograph of a burned-out bus, which had been reduced to a blackened skeleton on four charred wheels.

‘Read it,’ Patti urged him.

Nathan laid aside his book. According to the printout, sixteen elderly people from a residential home in Skawina had been heading to O
ś
wi
ȩ
cim for a social evening and dance with the residents of another residential home. They had failed to arrive, and when police eventually went to look for them, they were found in their burned-out bus in a forest to the north of highway forty-four.

Nobody had yet been able to explain why they had turned off the main road into the woods, or how the bus had caught fire, or why none of the elderly people had made any attempt to escape.

Patti reached over and tapped the last paragraph with her pink sparkly fingernail. ‘This is the clincher, right here.’

Nathan read it. ‘Forensic investigators in Kraków have reported that although the bodies of the sixteen bus passengers were badly burned, none of them died as a result of smoke inhalation, which has led detectives to conclude that they were all dead before the bus was set alight.

‘Police commissioner Grzegorz Schetnya said at a news conference yesterday that he believed that the elderly people could have been the victims of one or more assailants, who subsequently burned the bus in an attempt to conceal any evidence of their crime.

‘He could not understand why anybody should have wanted to kill so many elderly people, none of whom were carrying money or any items of value. “I can only theorize that it was an act of wanton butchery,” he said. “A thrill killing, for its own sake.”’

‘What do you think?’ asked Patti. ‘I mean – that sounds exactly like the Murdstone Rest Home fire to me. OK – it was a bus, and not a building. But all of those old folks were dead before they were burned, just like the old folks here.’

‘You could be right,’ said Nathan. He read the printout again. Then he said, ‘Kraków . . . that’s where the original basilisk was supposed to have come from. So that kind of fits. If there were any basilisk remains to be found . . . any bones or skin that could have yielded DNA . . . Kraków is the first place
I
would have started looking for them, before I looked anyplace else.’

‘It’s Doctor Zauber, isn’t it?’ said Patti, excitedly. ‘The second I read that story, I
knew
it was Doctor Zauber.’

‘Well, hold up a minute. There’s no way of telling for sure. Maybe the bus had a leak in its muffler, and all those old folks died of carbon monoxide poisoning.’

‘It’s Doctor Zauber, you know it is! He’s gone back to Poland to make himself another basilisk!’

Nathan couldn’t help smiling. ‘You know something, you’re even crazier than me.’

‘I’m not crazy, I’m unprejudiced, that’s all. I’m prepared to believe that anybody is capable of absolutely anything, and that’s how I find all my best stories. I put two and two together and make six-and-a-quarter. It was me who broke that story about the man who tried to kidnap Punxsutawney Phil – you know, the groundhog from
Groundhog Day
– and eat him.’

‘What? I never heard about that.’

‘It’s true. He wanted to broil him and eat him so that he could forecast the weather, and get a job as a weatherman on NBC.’

‘That
is
crazy.’

‘Yes, but it happened, and it was true. Just like the basilisk is true.’

Nathan was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I saw him again – Doctor Zauber. I heard him again, the same way I did before. I saw a new basilisk, too. Right in here.’

‘When was this?’

‘Three days ago.’

‘Three days ago? Why didn’t you tell me? You promised to keep me up to date.’

‘I know. But it was only a nightmare. Or a daymare, rather. And I haven’t had another one since.’

Patti tapped the printout again. ‘Look at the date that happened. That was three days ago, too.’ She paused, and then she said, ‘Did you actually see Doctor Zauber’s face, like you did on the ceiling? Did he say anything to you? What did he say?’

‘Pretty much the same thing. He says he wants us to work together, to breed more mythological beasts. He says he needs me. He obviously knows how to bring these creatures to life, and how to
keep
them alive, but he doesn’t know how to control their cell growth.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘They don’t develop properly. You know, like kids who are born with only one eye, or spina bifida, something like that. The basilisk that Grace and I saw at the Murdstone was very badly deformed, but if we’re going to use mythological beasts for stem-cell therapy, they’ll have to be pretty well perfect. We don’t want to cure somebody’s multiple sclerosis but give them some other affliction that’s even worse.’

Patti frowned at him. ‘You sound like you’re thinking of actually doing it.’

Nathan looked across at Grace. ‘Doctor Zauber said that he could bring her out of her coma, if I did. And I have to admit that I was tempted, for a moment. But only for a moment.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’

He held up the printout. ‘I’m going to call my friend Rafał Jasłewicz, from the Museum of Zoology in Kraków, in Poland. Well, I say “friend”. I only met him once, at a zoological seminar in Chicago, but he’s like the world’s leading expert on basilisks and chimeras and gargoyles, and he’s a really great guy.’

‘I thought
you
were the world’s leading expert on all that stuff.’

‘The biological side of it – yes, maybe. But Rafał knows all about the history, and the mythology. He was incredibly helpful when I was starting up my gryphon project. He agrees with me: he believes that most mythical beasts actually existed, but he doesn’t believe that they were the result of natural evolution.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, gryphons and basilisks didn’t evolve naturally like apes and horses and elephants – or
us
, for that matter. They were bred deliberately by alchemists who had discovered how to cross one totally different species with another.’

He stood up, and took down his coat from the back of the door. ‘Do you want to come along? I’m going home to make this call, and then Denver and I are going out to eat. You’re welcome to join us.’

‘Sure,’ said Patti. She looked across at Grace and said, ‘Any improvement?’

Nathan shook his head.

‘Don’t you worry,’ said Patti. ‘Wherever she is, God’s taking care of her.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were religious.’

‘Of course I am. When you’ve seen how evil people can be, you know that there must be a Devil. And if there’s a Devil, there has to be a God. QED.’

It was nearly nine thirty in the evening in Poland when Nathan called Rafał Jasłewicz. He hadn’t spoken to him for over three years, but Rafał greeted him as if they had gone out drinking together only the week before.

‘Nathan! I hear about your disappointment with your gryphon! I am very sorry for this! Maybe you have better luck with the next try!’

‘There isn’t going to be a next try, Rafał. Not just yet. The Zoo canceled my funding.’

‘This is ridiculous! Don’t they understand how difficult it is, this work? This is not like rearing chickens! It takes many years!’

‘That’s for sure. But, listen, Rafał. I have something serious to ask you. Did you ever hear of a cryptozoologist called Doctor Zauber? He’s German, but he’s been living and working in the States for quite a few years.’

‘You mean
Christian
Zauber? Yes, of course! He was once at the Jagiellonian University here in Kraków, maybe fifteen years ago. He wrote several papers on medieval magic. I remember one of them very well because it was all about mythical beasts, which of course is one of my specialties. And they were very notorious, these papers, at the time.’

‘Notorious? Why was that?’

‘Christian Zauber said that black magic was completely misunderstood, and that if we studied it scientifically, we would discover that it was not really magic at all, but a practical way to harness the existing powers of the world around us.
That
was not very popular with the university faculty, as you can imagine! And especially not the church! But it was his paper on the mythical beasts that caused such an outrage, and he was asked to leave the university before he brought it into further disrepute.’

‘Really?’ asked Nathan. ‘What was so outrageous about it?’

‘He called it
De Monstrorum
, which was the title of a very rare sixteenth-century treatise which was written by the monks of Leipzig University. As far as I know, only two copies exist, although I have never seen one. The monks had been trying to breed extraordinary creatures, but in secret they had been using local women to procreate with horses and birds and reptiles, and some of their experiments were monstrous.

‘Zauber was convinced from what he had read in
De Monstrorum
that the monks had actually succeeded in recreating several mythical beasts. They had also created some new ones of their own, such as a child with the tentacles of a squid instead of arms and a woman with a horse’s legs, like a centaur. He said it was essential that we try to repeat their experiments, using modern technology, because there was no reason why different species should not intermingle, to make the best of all of our attributes. In the final analysis, he said, we are all God’s creatures. Men should be able to swim like dolphins. Women should be able to give birth to dogs.

‘Maybe Zauber was not completely serious about his ideas. Maybe he was simply trying to be provocative. But he was German, and his suggestions brought back too strongly the medical research at Belsen and Auschwitz. And, of course, he upset the Roman Catholic bishops.’

‘Sure. I can understand that. I got enough flak from the church myself. What happened to Zauber after that?’

‘He stayed in Kraków for a year or two. I know, because I used to see him almost every week sitting alone at the Nostalgia restaurant on Karmelicka Street, eating his lunch. Always the same, potato dumplings with mushrooms, and a glass of white wine.

‘I saw one article about him, in the
Dziennik Polski
newspaper. He said that he had turned from medieval mythology to medieval archeology. He was exploring the cultural history of Kraków by digging down through the many layers of buildings which had been built on top of buildings, churches on top of churches, cellars on top of cellars.

‘That must have been eight or ten years ago. After that, I never saw him again, and there was nothing about his archeology in the papers. Until you call me tonight, my friend, I never thought about Christian Zauber once.’

‘Rafał, I really need to find him. I’ll explain why when I get to Kraków.’

‘You are coming to Kraków? For real? This would be excellent! I will take you to my favorite restaurant and fill you with
bigos
!’

‘I look forward to it, whatever
bigos
is.’

He put down the phone. Patti said, ‘Well?’

‘I think I’m going to Poland,’ he told her.

‘So I was right?’

He nodded. ‘I think so. I think he’s gone back to Kraków and he’s trying to breed another basilisk – and God knows what other monstrosities.’

‘Well . . . if it was him who offed all of those old folks, it sounds like he might have done it already.’

‘We can’t jump to any conclusions. Like I say, we don’t have any evidence that he had anything to do with it. But I think you’re right. I think it is him. I just don’t understand how this life-energy thing works. How do you take somebody’s life-energy? Like, where is it, exactly? My cousin Jack is a neurosurgeon at the Temple University Hospital and he said that even after twenty years of poking around in people’s brains, he still hasn’t managed to locate anybody’s soul.’

‘Maybe Doctor Zauber does it by black magic,’ Patti suggested.

Nathan said, ‘I don’t believe in that.’

‘Doctor Zauber’s face comes out of the wall and talks to you, and a seven-foot basilisk appears in front of you, and you don’t believe in black magic?’

‘It was a nightmare, like I said. Or if it
wasn’t
a nightmare, there must be a perfectly good scientific explanation for it.’

‘Oh, for sure! Except that you don’t have the first idea what that perfectly good scientific explanation could possibly be. Like you don’t have the first idea why your wife is in a coma, just because she was stared at by some shambling collection of old sacks.’

‘Do
you
believe in black magic?’