From Black Rooms (2 page)

offering his services in exchange for their promise to accumulate the unattainable col ection he craved. Wax lingered before each item in the gal ery as he made his way around the vault, attempting to delay the inevitable. After more than fifteen years of effort, his work for the Corps was near an end, which meant that so was he. Ironical y, success rather than failure spel ed his doom. As soon as the NAACC obtained what it

wanted, it would take his family away and eliminate him to protect its secrets.

He paused in front of da Vinci's Madonna of the

Yarnwinder, raised the goblet to his lips, but found only
a dribble of wine left. Once again, he toyed with the idea of sealing himself up with his treasures like a pharaoh in his tomb. But Wax knew better than anyone that you could take nothing into the afterlife. The Corps would no doubt breach the vault sooner or later, and Wax could not bear to think of his children ending up in the hands of a ghoul like Carl Pancrit.

He contemplated Leonardo's rendition of Mary and the Christ child, which had once adorned the home of the Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland. In the painting, the baby gazed at the T-shaped wooden spindle in his

hands, a symbol of the cross that awaited him--the end prefigured in the beginning. Mary's right hand hovered uncertainly over the infant, as if she longed to hold her son back from his destiny yet knew she could not. Certain sacrifices had to be made.

Wax approached the final and most recent acquisition in his col ection with reluctance. His time was almost up, but that was not why he dawdled. The last picture frightened him. Although he had seen countless copies and parodies of The Scream, none had prepared him for the terror portrayed in the original, brought here al the way from the Munch Museum in Oslo. Beneath a sky as red and fluid as an arterial hemorrhage, a solitary androgynous figure shivered on a bleak seaside

boardwalk, its eyes and mouth gaping, its grotesque, distended hands pressed to its temples.

Most people who saw the picture did not realize that it was not the humanoid figure screaming. No, Wax

mused, the mutant being was struck dumb with fear as it vainly covered its ears to shut out the eternal, cosmic wail of the universe--"a loud, unending scream piercing nature," as Edvard Munch had put it. With its indigo eyes and bald, skul -like head, the figure might have been a Violet, its scalp shaved to

accommodate the electrodes of a SoulScan device.

The resemblance fil ed Bartholomew Wax with both

revulsion and a renewed sense of urgency. What would it be like to hear that awful shriek of transcendental agony...and never be able to shut it out? What if everyone could hear it? Would the human race be able to withstand the constant sound of its own inescapable mortality?

The questions preyed on Dr. Wax, hastening him into action. Tying his hair back into its ponytail with the twist-tie, he did not take the trouble to clean up the remains of his last meal, but left the cheese and pate to rot on the silver tray beside the wine. His remaining time was too valuable, and he would never return to this place, anyway.

Instead, he began taking the paintings off the wal one at a time, meticulously packing them into the special reinforced shipping crates he'd accumulated in the cel ar for that purpose. Custom-cut Styrofoam brackets held each frame motionless within its box, ensuring that nothing touched the surface of the canvas, while wood inserts prevented the cardboard sides from being

crushed or punctured. The crates al bore shipping labels with the name "Arthur Maven" and a false return address as wel as the packages' destinations: the Munch Museum in Norway, Drumlanrig Castle in

Scotland, and, of course, the Gardner, among many others.

Wax actual y smiled as he imagined the astonishment on the recipients' faces when they opened the boxes and discovered their long-lost pictures inside. The thought made him happy. Unlike human beings, artworks had no afterlife in which to perpetuate their existence. A painting that no one saw ceased to be, and his children deserved to live.

The CD changer on his stereo system switched from Vivaldi to Mahler's Ninth. Opening the vault door, Wax began the laborious task of carrying the crates up the stairs and out to his Ford Explorer. He left the engine running and the air conditioner on ful -blast while loading the SUV, which barely contained his col ection. At last ready to depart, he grabbed the antique black doctor's bag that usual y carried only his lunch. The afternoon sun cast the vertical ridges of the Organ Mountains in sharp relief, the craggy gray range

resembling the pipes of a church organ as its name implied. Dr. Wax lived in a desert housing development a few miles outside Las Cruces, and had to hurry to make it to the shipping office before the cutoff time for overnight delivery.

"You want more than fifty bucks' insurance on any of these?" the thick-fingered clerk asked him when she weighed in the packages.

Wax smiled at the fol y of assigning a dol ar value to an irreplaceable work of genius. "No, that'l do." With the members of his adopted family safely on their way back to their original owners, Dr. Wax drove his SUV back onto U.S. 70 headed east. He now had to

attend to his other progeny--the misbegotten ones. Dusk tanned the chaparral along the road a dirty orange, and the scattered houses at the city's edge grew more infrequent. Wax wound his way through the deepening shadows of a cleft in the mountains until he passed the turnoff for Route 213 South, which brown-and-white signs indicated would lead to White Sands National Monument. He turned instead on the restricted road that served as entrance to the missile range, pausing at the guardhouse to display his I.D. badge to the soldier on duty. The G.I., a crew-cut beanpole of a boy whose face stil broke out in zits, waved him on with barely a glance. He knew mousy Dr. Wax. Everyone here did. A herd of oryx grazed along the road toward the

military base, adding a surreal touch to an already alien landscape. Distinguished by the black-and-white

coloration on their heads and their long, straight horns, these African antelope had been imported here as part of a program to introduce exotic game into the region, and they had thrived in the New Mexican desert. The animals scattered as Wax veered down an unmarked

offshoot of the main road.

Before long, the desert gave way to an even more

desolate landscape: stark dunes of granular gypsum, as white and coarse as ground bones. In places, the

windswept mounds of sand had crept over the fringe of the pavement, attempting to reclaim the path and bury it. The SUV's tires bounced over and crunched through the occasional hil ocks, which the Army would plow aside like drifting snow. At last, Wax arrived at a large, windowless gray building that resembled military

barracks. No sign identified the structure; only those who already knew its purpose were al owed inside. Wax parked in the adjacent asphalt lot amongst a few civilian and military vehicles and carried his black bag up to the structure's only door, which required him to slide his I.D. into a slot and press his thumb on a touch pad for authorization.

"Dr. Wax!" The corporal on duty at the front desk smiled as the scientist entered the foyer. "We weren't expecting you today. How are you feeling?"

"Much better, thanks." He smiled back, embarrassed that, although he saw her practical y every day, he'd never bothered to remember the corporal's name. "Just came by to check on the subjects."

"Sure thing. You want me to cal an orderly?" She nodded toward the building's auxiliary wing, where the staff lounge, offices, and laboratory were located.

"No, that won't be necessary," he replied, although he could have used the help. He'd never had to deal with the patients alone before.

"Whatever you say." The corporal tapped in a code on her computer keyboard, and the door behind her

buzzed. Wax opened it and passed through into a

corridor lined with identical gray doors, each with a round glass portal at eye level.

The doctor donned the white lab coat that hung on a rack to his left, but waited until the security door swung shut behind him and the buzzing ceased before opening his black bag. Instead of his usual bagel, lox, and cream cheese, it held a pneumatic vaccine gun and dozens of glass vials fil ed with clear liquid.

Wax drew a deep breath and set the bag on the floor.
Do no harm, he thought. But it was far too late for
Hippocrates now.

He took the first vial and inserted it top-down into the circular tube on the vaccine gun. It was the same device he'd used to inject the carrier virus into the subjects to commence their gene therapy. He hoped the gun's

familiarity would keep it from spooking the patients. The doctor wouldn't be strong enough to deal with them alone otherwise.

With the gun loaded, Wax went to a wal panel beside the corridor's entrance and turned on the

preprogrammed classical music he used to calm the patients during his visits. The hal fil ed with the sonic balm of Pachelbel's Canon in D. Although Wax himself detested the piece, he found it had the soporific effect of elevator music upon the test subjects.

Holding the gun behind his back, Dr. Wax approached the first room and peered through the porthole. When he'd satisfied himself that the occupant was not waiting to attack him, Wax entered the security code on the door's keypad to unlock it. The music was not quite loud enough to drown out the scream that burst forth as the door opened.

"G
et away from me! Leave me alone!"
Dr. Wax knew that the patient was not shrieking at him. The plump man lay curled in the far corner of the room between the mattress and the toilet and did not even seem to register the doctor's presence. But Wax could not help fretting that the subject knew what he had come to do.

"Hel o, Harold. How are you today?" Although he knew perfectly wel how Harold was, Wax employed

his usual bedside patter to avoid upsetting the patient as he advanced, the gun concealed behind him.

Harold pounded on his head with his fists, which were bound in padded cotton mittens. Scabs and scars stil streaked his face and shaved scalp where he'd clawed the skin with his fingernails. "GO AWAY! ALL OF

YOU!"

Fecal matter smeared the back of his loose hospital smock as he squirmed against the vinyl upholstery of the wal s and floor. Unlike a true Violet, Harold could neither al ow a dead soul to inhabit his body nor shut out the souls who tried. He lived, therefore, in a gray zone between this life and the next, constantly

bombarded by spirits that knocked and knocked and knocked.

"Easy, Harold." Wax knelt and brought his arm from behind his back. "I can make them go away." He jammed the point of the gun into Harold's upper arm and pul ed the trigger. With a spitting sound, the needle shot the fluid under the skin, and Harold's eyes snapped open to stare at Wax.

"Y
ou." His pupils, flecked with both violet and robin's-
egg blue, became an electric shade of lavender. "You did this to me. I'l --"

Wax stumbled back as Harold lunged for him. But the convulsions dropped Harold onto his bel y, where he quivered like a salted slug. Not one to take chances, Bartholomew Wax had put almost ten times the lethal dosage of procaine in the vaccine gun's solution. The doctor returned to his bag and replaced the empty poison vial with a fresh one before proceeding to the next room. Through the door's circular window, he could see a young Hispanic girl pacing the tiny cel and hugging herself. Her scalp, like Harold's, had been shaved and tattooed with the twenty node points that showed where to attach the SoulScan electrodes.

Her resemblance to the figure in The Scream eased his conscience over what he was about to do. It was for the best--for her, and the whole world.

When Wax entered the room, the patient darted her eyes toward him. One was violet, the other brown, like mismatched marbles. "Hel o? Who are you? Where am I?"

"Don't worry. Everything's going to be al right." With the vaccine gun hidden behind him, Wax edged toward her, waiting for some indication of how dangerous the soul that inhabited her might be.

The girl swiveled her head to take in her surroundings.

"Is this a hospital? I remember being in an accident." She looked down at the smooth brown skin of her arms.

"What's happened to me?"

"You'l be fine," Wax assured her. "I'm a doctor." The problem in handling Marisa was that the person she had been no longer existed. The quantum connection in Marisa's brain that had once moored the

electromagnetic energy of her soul inside her body had eroded away, leaving her an empty receptacle for any dead soul to inhabit. Another spirit might displace the current one at any moment, but if Wax could keep the present soul at bay long enough for the injection...

"You've got to cal my husband," she beseeched him.

"You've got to tel him where I am."

"Of course. But, first, let me give you something to help you relax."

Before he could administer the poison, Marisa's body jerked right as if yanked. She waggled her head, her face twisted by tics, and when the fit passed, she stood with her feet spread apart, fists clenched at her sides, her brows lowered in a glare. "So help me, I'l kil you,
Wax."

Marisa launched herself at him, seizing his throat. Strangulation starbursts blurred his vision, and he stabbed the gun's needle blindly into her torso and pul ed the trigger. Only when her hands fel away from his neck and she col apsed to the floor did he look down to see that he'd pierced the thin cloth of her hospital gown, injecting her right over the heart.

Harold, he thought, rasping to restore his breath. Wax
hadn't counted on the poison working so quickly,

although he'd heard that procaine in sufficient

quantities could cause cardiac arrest. He couldn't risk having the patients he'd kil ed inhabit the other subjects; he'd have to work faster.

Hurrying back to the doctor's bag, Wax transferred al the remaining poison vials to the deep pockets of his white coat. He paused only long enough between rooms to put a new dose in his gun. Each victim added bites, bruises, or bleeding scratches to his wounds, yet he kept on. He saw Edvard Munch's pitiful, haunted creature in each skul -like countenance, and he was determined to silence once and for al the scream they heard.