Species II (13 page)

“That would kill a human!”

“Which she’s not,” Vikki reminded her coworker.

“Look at her,” Brea said in awe. “She’s sweating like an ice cube in the sun, and—
shit!”

Something cracked loudly inside the habitat, and both biologists froze, expecting the worst. Across the facility’s floor, the half-dozen guards had their H&Ks instantly pointed toward Eve’s enclosure.

Vikki’s gaze settled on something inside Eve’s glass walls, and she thumbed on the intercom to the main floor. “It’s all right,” she yelled into it. “It was just the baseball—it popped, that’s all.”

“She
broke
it?” Brea asked incredulously as the nervous SWAT women below reshouldered their weapons. “Do you have any idea of how strong you have to be to do that?”

“I don’t want to think about it,” Vikki said grimly. Her short bangs were plastered to her forehead and she was perspiring just as much as Eve. “All I want to do is get through the next few minutes without that thing breaking out—look at her electrocardiogram stats. She’s writhing around down there like she’s got a bad case of the hives. And she’s moaning.”

“Maybe she’s sick,” Brea said. “I think we should call Dr. Baker.” Her voice had risen a notch, the situation already headed out of the realm of their expertise. “She’s got a pager on at all times. The number’s right here—”

“Hold on a minute.” Vikki leaned forward and studied the screens across the Control console, then stared hard down at Eve’s glass home. “She’s stopped.”

“Stopped
what?”

“Whatever she was doing. Look for yourself.”

Down below, Eve sat tranquilly before the closing credits of the baseball broadcast—

“Strike three! Batter out!”

—while the remains of the baseball rolled away from her in a lopsided path.

“H
i, honey. We’re headed home,” Patrick said with wicked glee as he sat behind the wheel of his black Mercedes SL. Such a dark and beautiful night it had turned out to be—moonless, with the stars blotted out by just the right amount of cloud cover. Perfect for cruising back to the old home state, as the state sign whipped past the window—

Virginia is for Lovers!

—just to prove it. It seemed like only a few minutes more and Patrick was turning into the immense circular driveway that led to his mother’s Georgia-style summer mansion. Just a few lights shone through the windows; this late at night, it would be only in the servants’ quarters that the minimal staff members would still be awake. His father might be here, of course, packing away another few belts of Old Grand-Dad bourbon, or if his tastes were running a little more expensive tonight, some brand of hundred-year-old Scotch—as if he hadn’t gotten enough at the banquet earlier. If he was here at all, the elder Ross’s indulgences would be taking place in the library at the southern end of the house. In the front where he was, Patrick could count on the centerpiece of the old summer estate, a massive American flag flying and flapping in the wind at full mast on the lawn, to mask any noise he made. When he pulled the Mercedes around to the side of the house, that good ol’ red, white, and blue covered every bit of sound he made getting out of the car and opening the back doors.

It took only about five minutes to lead his two children, both sons, to the disused barn on the outer edge of the property. The boys could walk, but not very fast yet. At what looked like three years old, their legs were still too short to keep up with his longer stride. Patrick had no compulsion to carry them—they were quite capable of quick, strong movement on their own and all they needed from him was his protection for the first few days of their lives, just long enough to go through the helpless chrysalis stage before maturing into full adults.

He couldn’t have asked for a better, more secluded place than his mother’s summer estate. The barn, three stories high with a loft, was nearly two hundred years old and hadn’t been used in decades. But it was still sturdy enough to give him a dependable place in which to house and conceal his children. There was even a hexagonal marking in cracked and peeling paint on one side, reminiscent of an earlier time in which the family had taken such simple precautions against unseen evil spirits. That kind of forethought was so powerful and worked so well—in fact, Patrick had picked up on it by retrieving the key for the barn’s oversized padlock yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t understood why at the time, but now of course it was obvious. The evil spirits notwithstanding, Patrick figured that nowadays he could probably keep out most of what he considered evil by simply making sure he remembered to relock the barn’s double doors when he left.

The front of the barn loomed while around the trio there was nothing but silence—no sound at all, not even the night insects. Both of Patrick’s boys looked around with interest, taking in everything, learning at the astronomical rate that was so indicative of their superior species. But as with any species, some members would always be stronger, smarter,
faster,
than others of their own kind; before his brother could hone in on the nearly inaudible drone of the sleeping hornets’ nest across the top of the door, the firstborn boy had thrown back his head and snapped it down with a swipe of his barbed tongue. Faster than most men could think, the nest lay decimated on the ground at their feet.

Proud and pleased, Patrick led his sons into the darkness of the barn and pulled the door shut behind them.

10

“I
t’s a beautiful day for a drive and this is certainly a pleasant-looking place,” Laura said at her first view of the grand old mansion. “Right out of
Gone With the Wind.
But I’m guessing we aren’t here on a social call . . . unless it’s to visit a friend of yours?”

“Your sense of humor has always been tops,” Press said dryly. “Welcome to the Garberville Psychiatric Institute.”

“What are we doing here?”

“The telephone records at Goddard indicate that Dr. Orinsky’s last call was made to this facility. To save a little time, I had the background of every patient here cross-checked, and only one guy came up with any connection to Orinsky. His name is Herman Cromwell—formerly
Dr.
Herman Cromwell—and it seems that he taught classes with Orinsky at Stanford.”

Laura looked interested. “Really? Taught what?”

Press’s answer made her forehead lift in surprise. “Microbiology.”

She frowned and stared out the window, watching as they drew closer to the building. “From Stanford to here,” she mused. “That’s a pretty drastic change in career path. What the hell happened?”

“Ah,” Press said. “That’s the
really
interesting part. Whatever brought the fine Dr. Cromwell here is classified government information.” As the car passed through the wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to the grounds proper, the look he sent her was anything but comforting. “So classified, in fact, that no one on our team can get to it and tell us what it is.”

S
enator Judson Ross looked blankly at his son. “What did you say?”

“I said I blacked out after the fund-raising banquet last night,” Patrick repeated. His handsome face was pinched and pale, and his worried expression had aged him ten years overnight. At the same time, the senator thought there was an aura of . . .
robustness
about his son that he’d never noticed before. For some reason, it made him vaguely envious. “I know something happened, but I can’t remember any of it,” Patrick continued. “My mind is just a blank. I went from walking off the platform after my speech to waking up in bed at the townhouse this morning—I must’ve been
driving
like that, for God’s sake. And . . . and I don’t think it’s the first time that’s happened, either.”

Senator Ross rubbed a hand across his jaw as he considered Patrick’s words. It was good that the boy had come to his father, good that he’d come
here.
This senatorial office in Washington was where the political man always did his best thinking, solving problems for his voters in Virginia and, ostensibly, for his country while settled comfortably on his custom-leather chair. His massive oak desk was flanked by the United States and Virginia flags, while carefully arranged photographs of himself and presidents adorned the walls. Ross’s political rise had begun in the JFK administration, and the room reflected that accumulated power—men like Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and even Bill Clinton, showed it clearly in their images. Family life and problems—they weren’t so hard. A man just had to approach them in the same way he had to deal with any piece of bureaucratic red tape: with an eye toward trying to untangle the mess.

Or at least make it into a more attractive knot.

“The drinks are always made strong at these fundraisers, Patrick,” he said now. “You know that—it’s just another way to get those wallets to open. You probably had a few too many and didn’t realize it in the excitement. Next time you’ll know to eat more so the meal will soak it up—we all noticed that you hardly touched your food at the table.”

But Patrick only stared at him from across the expanse of the oak desk. Finally, he shook his head. “That isn’t it at all. I think there’s something wrong
—really
wrong—with me since I got back from the Mars mission. I’m not . . .
right
somehow.”

Senator Ross sighed. “It was a long, stressful journey, son. A man doesn’t recover from something like that overnight. Being separated for nearly a year from his family and friends, his girlfriend—that’s damned hard. Reclaiming and reorganizing your life can take weeks, perhaps even months. It’s a massive readjustment—”

“It’s not
normal.”

“But who knows what ‘normal’ is after an experience like that?” Senator Ross argued. “No one’s ever done it before—you and Dennis and Anne were the first. And as far as I know, those two are fine.” He paused and scrutinized his son’s anxious face. “Tell you what. Why don’t I call Doctor Swinburne over at Johns Hopkins? He’s head of Internal Medicine there. We’ll get you examined and see what he says.”

His son stared at the floor. “It’s not going to help.”

Senator Ross choked back a sigh of exasperation. “Swinburne is the best man over at Hopkins,” he said with false patience. “We need to shore you up, Patrick. If you think the trip to Mars was difficult, wait until you’re in the middle of a Senate campaign.”

The older man started when Patrick jumped to his feet. “No, no,
no!
Damn it, Dad—aren’t you
listening
to what I’m saying here?” Patrick strode to the end of the senator’s desk, then spun and went back, like an animal trapped in a cage. “Don’t you understand? You have to help me—I’m having some kind of . . . of a breakdown or something. Would you just stop thinking about your fucking Master Plan and
help me
for once? For God’s sake, I’m
scared—”

“Stop it right now!”
On his feet, Senator Ross put his full weight into slamming his open hand on the desktop; the sound was like a rifle shot cutting through Patrick’s outburst. His son pulled up in his tracks and stared at him, trembling, his expression a mixture of disbelief and pleading. But Ross kept going—Patrick had to be reined in
now,
and he couldn’t let himself be drawn into what was surely no more than a case of the jitters. There could be no more of these anxiety attacks or ridiculous little tantrums—what if he’d done this in public? Or, God forbid, at the fund-raiser last night? This kind of behavior could endanger everything, undercut way too many years of strategy and hard work.

“You stop acting like a child and listen to me, right
now,”
the senator ground out. “You are a
Ross,
damn it, and we can trace our lineage in this country all the way back to the people who came over on the
Mayflower.
The men in our family do
not
lose control, Patrick. Not
ever.”

“But—”

Senator Ross cut off his son’s protest with a wave of his hand, then came around to where Patrick was clutching the back of his chair. “The American people love you, Patrick. You don’t know—you can’t even
conceive
—how much this is true.” He stared hard at the young man in whom he’d invested so many years of training and grooming, and whom he’d taught through hard-learned examples of leadership. “What I’m telling you is something you should already know. You could be
president
of this fine country someday, Patrick, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything stand in your way. The rest of it has to come from you.” He gripped Patrick’s shoulders, fighting against the urge to shake him and reset whatever was out of place in his head.
“Don’t screw it up.”

For a long moment, Patrick stared at him, eye to eye and just a bit taller. When he spoke, the words were choked and barely comprehensible, obviously not at all what his son really wanted to say.

“Yes . . . Father.”

It would have to do.

Senator Ross released Patrick and found a smile, like he always did in unpleasant situations where he absolutely had to keep up an agreeable face. “That’s good,” he said heartily and clapped the younger man on the back. “You know what you need? Some support.” Smiling fully now, he turned Patrick and steered him toward the door. “Come on, m’boy. Let’s take a walk through the gallery. There’re quite a few of my illustrious colleagues who have been asking for your autograph, and it wouldn’t do at all to disappoint your friends and future voters.”