by Kai Meyer
Instead of continuing to search manually, she typed her father’s name into a field at the top of the monitor. His entry appeared a few seconds later.
Davide Alcantara. Followed by a date fourteen years ago. The day of his death as told to her by her mother had been just under a week earlier, so the date on the screen must be for the arrival of his body at the station here. It was followed by the same kind of jumbled figures and letters as the other entries. She was sure now that they indicated the place in the archive hall where a container with his heart in it would be found. Or what was left of his heart, after Sigismondis and Apollonio had finished their investigations.
She stared at the display on the screen for some time, until her attention was distracted by a news picture on the laptop. Wobbly images filmed through the window of a helicopter flying over a gray sea, with a pillar of smoke on the horizon. Then the picture switched to a woman reporter with a microphone in her hand, trying to shout in competition with the noise of the rotors. The sound on the laptop was switched off. Rosa didn’t understand what it was about. Never mind.
She looked back at her father’s catalog entry. Hesitantly, her fingertips hovered over the keyboard, and then she deleted his first name from the search window. Now it said only Alcantara. Once again she pressed Enter.
Eight names came up. Davide first, then a couple of others that meant nothing to her. Their dates were several decades back. Probably family members who Costanza disliked, so she had handed them over to TABULA.
The last name on the list was her own.
Eyes closed, she leaned back in the chair. What Apollonio had said just now ran through her mind, distorted like a defective soundtrack: He had returned from New York a good year ago. The date after her name matched that span of time.
Her rape was farther in the past, sixteen months ago. Had he stayed in New York for several months until he returned to Sicily? Or had he flown to the States again later?
She would never in her life forget what had happened a good year ago, exactly one day before the date next to her name.
When she jumped up, the chair rolled back with a clatter. She looked at the numbers and letters once more, then she ran out into the corridor and through the opaque glass door, into the archive hall. She glimpsed the locked cold storage room out of the corner of her eye, ran on, and concentrated on the markings of the shelves. Each was numbered, and the compartments on them meticulously identified by letters.
The one she was searching for was in the back part of the hall. She turned into the narrow aisle and, holding her breath, looked for the right place. Tears were streaming down her face, and her vision was blurred—it passed over dozens of glass jars, with strange eyes staring back at her from some of them.
At last she stopped in front of one container, at shoulder height and in the third compartment.
With shaking hands, she took it off the shelf. It was cylindrical, with a screw top, and no larger than a jam jar. She hugged it to her chest, fell to her knees, and bent her upper body over it, because she had a feeling that she had to protect it with her life.
She stayed kneeling like that for a long time, maybe an hour. At some point in that space of time Apollonio must have died behind the steel door, drained of blood and frozen rigid, but she hardly wasted a moment’s thought on him.
The jar was no longer cold against her body, and she felt her heart beating against it, first at high speed, then more and more steadily and calmly.
At last she rose to her feet, left the pistol behind in the laboratory, climbed up through the echoing stairway, and carried Nathaniel out into the light of day.
SINKING THE SHIP
ON THE FAR SIDE of the huts, Rosa climbed to the rocky top of the hill. A rock formation as high as a house stood there, a structure of fissured limestone with crevices and furrows running through it. She made her way along one of the deep indentations up to the highest point and reached a small plateau. Soil had accumulated in many hollows there, and weeds and grass, even clover, grew where there was protection from the wind.
With the help of a flat stone, she dug a hole no broader than her fist, but twice as deep. Then she opened the lid of the glass jar, ignoring the pungent smell of the chemicals in it, let the clear liquid run away, and with infinite care lifted out the tiny thing that lay inside. She placed it gently on the bottom of the grave she had dug, placed a cloverleaf on it, and slowly covered it with dirt. She placed the stone on top.
Once again she knelt, not moving, head bowed, while tears ran down her chin and moistened the soil. The liquid had drained away, she smelled the grass and the damp earth, felt the wind blowing over the hilltop and through her hair, and she thought this was a moment of closure that she could live with.
When she stood up, she did so in the certainty that he would rest in peace here, because it was one of those special places at the ends of the earth where no one ever came. She knew two of them already.
With one last look at the grave, she set off to climb down. Once again she followed the indentation in the rock until she reached the first huts on the base. Maybe she ought to set fire to the place, destroying the underground complex forever. But she didn’t know where to begin, or whether it was worth the trouble.
Deep in thought, she went down the alley between the huts, past the new cross-country vehicle that Apollonio had parked there. She had not closed any doors behind her when she left the underground complex with Nathaniel. Why bother? There were no keys around, and the doors couldn’t be bolted. But when she came out into the small square, she wished she had thought of some way to secure them.
Sigismondis was there, looking at her, and holding a stuffed fox in his arms.
Tangled strands of white hair fell to his shoulders. Half the buttons were missing from his dirty lab coat, and syringes stuck out of its pockets. He was supporting himself on an ax with a long handle painted red, acting as a walking stick. Her imagination conjured up the rhythmic clatter it must have made as he climbed up step by step, as if the echo of those sounds was only now coming up to them.
First Pantaleone. Then Trevini. Now him. Three old men who had influenced Rosa’s life. Two of them were dead, and she knew now that the dying wasn’t over yet.
Suddenly Sigismondis smiled and let go of the handle of the ax. Then he stroked the coat of the fox in his arms and whispered something to the stuffed animal. He reminded Rosa of all the odd old people she used to see as a child when she fed the pigeons in the park, men and women who talked to birds and animals because their links with the rest of mankind had been broken.
Was there anything left to say? The sight of him filled her with vague sorrow, and that was worse than rage. She could manage anger, she had lived with it so long, it had so often been what drove her—but melancholy caught her off guard.
Sigismondis patted the fox’s head, then crouched down and put it carefully on the ground. Off you go. His lips soundlessly framed the words. He gently gave it a little nudge. When the animal didn’t move the old man patted the fur on its chest and whispered, “You’re free now, little one.”
He straightened up and reached for the ax.
Rosa heard a metallic sound to her right, in the next alley between the huts. She knew what it was, although from here she couldn’t see whoever it was who had just loaded a gun.
“No,” she said quietly, and repeated it in a louder voice.
Sigismondis ignored her. Supported by the wooden handle of the ax, he took a step forward, toward Rosa, and raised the ax a little way from the ground, using it to support himself.
“He’s not going to—” she called, not sure why she was trying to protect him.
The gunshot tore the words from her lips.
The old man’s head jerked backward, thrown that way by the force of the impact. For an endless second he stood there as if frozen in midmovement, with his skull sticking out behind at the wrong angle. Then he fell on his back in the dust and lay there beside the fox. Its dark gla
ss eyes stared at him, while the syringes fell out of his pockets, and finally the ax also fell, as if in slow motion.
A slim figure not much taller than Rosa, and wearing a dark leather jacket, emerged between the buildings. In the sunlight, the skin of her face looked like coarse sandpaper.
“Mirella?” whispered Rosa.
The hybrid went over to the body of the old man and kicked him in the side. He did not move. Satisfied, she stood over him and watched a dark puddle forming around his head.
Rosa heard something rustling behind her, in the alleyway behind the car. She was about to turn around, shifting shape at the same time, when she felt a sharp pain between her shoulder blades. She staggered as she turned and fell to the ground, hoping that she would turn into the snake anyway, but at the same time she sensed that that wasn’t going to happen. Her vision blurred. She put a shaking hand over her shoulder to feel for whatever had struck her. Something was certainly there, but she couldn’t get at it.
Danai Thanassis clambered up on the BMW from behind and sat on its roof, like a spider the size of a human being. Her hooped skirt had slipped, and Rosa thought she caught a glimpse of the brown, horny scorpion’s legs that the Arachnid hid under it. She was holding a heavy pistol in one hand.
Was she smiling? Rosa was too dazed to be sure.
“Where’s Alessandro?” It was only a croak, and no one answered her. “What have you—”
Her head slumped powerlessly to the ground. She saw the blue sky above her, then a face coming into her field of vision from behind.
“She’s still awake,” said Mirella.
Danai replied, saying something that Rosa didn’t understand.
The color blue was gradually superimposed on the features of the hybrids. Rosa opened her mouth. No sound came out.
Where is he? she thought vaguely.
Where is
Where
A jolt awoke her. Her head jerked up, fell back, and painfully struck something hard.
The earsplitting grinding and droning were drowned out by a metallic drumming. Flickering twilight surrounded her, sometimes bright, then gloomy again.
She was lying on the floor of a small van. Daylight fell in a strobe effect through the gaps in a tarpaulin fastened over it.
Her arms and legs were bound, not only at the joints but to each other and her body. She was lying on her back, right beside a wheel. Small pebbles thrown up by the tires hit the metal housing of the wheel arch, causing the infernal noise. The van was driving over rough terrain, bumping through potholes. Her body felt as if it had been beaten, but that could be just because she had been jolted around, heaven knew for how long.
Cautiously, she raised her head, looked down at herself and then aside.
And there he lay. Warmth exploded in her breast. She felt as if she might go up in flames.
“Alessandro!”
Like her, he had a plastic cord wrapped tightly around him. There was sand in his dark hair. He, too, lay on his back. His eyes were closed, his face strained.
“Alessandro?”
He moved, but only because of the jolts underneath him as the van shook on the bumpy road.
She desperately tried to get closer to him. She had to bend her arm in the cords tying her up and spread her fingers to reach his hand. It was like an electric current when their fingertips finally touched.
“He’s out like a light,” said a female voice above the noise. “He has a triple dose of anesthetic in his blood, as well as a large amount of serum. He was rather difficult, lashing out as long as he could, and after a while I’d had enough of it.”
Only now did Rosa register the fact that there was a broad opening between where they were and the driver’s cab. She was lying with her feet pointing the way they were going. Danai, her beautiful doll-like face reddened by stress, was looking at her over the back of the seat. With all those legs, she couldn’t sit on it comfortably.
The hybrid was holding up something with a distant resemblance to a dart. She must have shot one like it from her pistol into Rosa’s back. “A combination of an anesthetic and TABULA serum,” she said, picking up a syringe in her other hand. “Until we reach our journey’s end you’ll both be getting a dose of it every fifteen minutes. I’m afraid you have quite a severe reaction to the injection on your lower leg. It’s probably itching badly.”
Rosa could feel it, but she had other problems.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said the hybrid. “He’s only unconscious. It would be a shame to lose him.”
Rosa’s fingers were still on his, and the warmth inside her was as strong as ever. It had nothing to do with shape-shifting. Only with him. Ultimately everything had to do with him: What she said, what she thought, what she felt. Even her hatred of Danai came more from her fear for him than for herself.
“How did you find me?” she asked hoarsely.
Danai pointed to the sky and an invisible satellite, then she picked up a laptop from the seat beside her. “We never lost sight of you. The boat, the church, your visit to the experimental station. We were with you the whole time.”
“Where are we headed?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“You’re really going to hand us over to him?” exclaimed Rosa. “To the Hungry Man? Maybe you can kill him, but with all the dynasties you’ll never—”
Danai interrupted her. “You can leave that to me.”
Rosa raised her head again and tried to see who else was in the van. Danai was alone on the backseat, but Mirella sat at the wheel.
“Are you two going to get rid of him on your own?” Rosa cast Danai a furious glance. “What a great plan!”
“You don’t understand.”
“He won’t—”
“For God’s sake, Rosa!” Danai interrupted her, and the stress marks were a brighter red than ever. “No one has any intention of killing the Hungry Man.”
Rosa closed her mouth and stared at her.
“It would never have worked,” said the hybrid. “My father was an embittered old man who didn’t understand that there’s no way we could win. He always did see everything in black and white; we were the good ones, the Arcadians and TABULA the bad ones. Think about it for a moment, and you’ll agree that it was downright ridiculous.”
“Your father . . . was?” asked Rosa.
Danai avoided her eyes, hesitated briefly, then turned away and looked at the windshield.
“What happened?” Rosa braced herself against her bonds in vain. “Come on, tell me.”
Fingers clasped hers. Cool fingers. His fingers. She almost bit her tongue, she was so relieved.
“They’re dead,” he whispered, barely audible through all the noise.
“How are you?” she asked quietly, while she felt a sensation like a rubber ball bouncing up and down inside her.
“They blew up the ship,” he whispered, still not fully conscious, almost as if he were talking in his sleep. “Danai and Mirella . . . they blew the Stabat Mater sky-high.”
Rosa’s glance went from him to the head of the young woman on the backseat, and the piled dark hair from which some strands had come loose and were falling to her shoulders. She didn’t seem to have noticed yet that Alessandro was coming back to his senses.
The news bulletin. The helicopter flying over the sea. The black smoke on the horizon.
“The ship.” Alessandro groaned. Only now did he open his eyes. His lids were fluttering, but the green under them glowed. “They set off explosives to sink it . . . they must have been planning it for a long time. The ship was mined from stem to stern.”
“But that makes no sense.” Rosa could hardly hear her own voice above the infernal noise on the payload area of the van. “Danai was—”
“Danai is a traitor.” His voice was getting a little stronger. “She got in touch with the Hungry Man . . . he’s promised to take her in, make her a full member of the dynasties. Who knows what else . . . no more games of hide-and-seek, no r
unning away, no more secret war against TABULA. She didn’t want to live the life of an outcast. Her father didn’t understand that. She saw herself as an Arcadian, while he was only a man.”
Rosa’s eyes wandered from him to Danai and back again. “He trusted her,” she whispered.
But couldn’t she have guessed it? She had seen Danai in New York, in Michele Carnevare’s club. Anyone who comes to the Dream Room sees things you don’t see anywhere else, he had said. The eyes of predators in the shadows of a private box. Transformations after midnight. Danai went to the Arcadians willingly; she felt at home with them. She wanted to be like them.
“She and Mirella took me off the ship in secret last night,” he said, “after they’d found the location of Lycaon’s tomb in Mori’s papers. They needed something to get the Hungry Man to take them seriously. They wanted to impress him with what they knew. And then, at a safe distance, they set off the explosives by remote control. I saw it, Rosa . . . the explosions on all the decks, the fire . . . burning hybrids jumping overboard. A few of the amphibians may have survived, but the rest . . .”
She wanted to clutch his hand in her fingers, but she couldn’t get close enough. She was being jolted violently about again. Only their eyes lingered on each other.
She wanted to kiss him so badly.
She had never wasted a thought on what it would be like to be on the way to her own wedding.
Now she knew.
A ROYAL TOMB
THE VAN WAS SPEEDING downhill around sharp turns. The light in the cracks of the tarpaulin had turned red; evening was coming. A strong gust of wind struck the side of the van, making the tarpaulin billow in as the vehicle lurched along the road.
They stopped once, briefly. Mirella spoke to someone outside the window. The tarpaulin was opened a little way; a man looked in, nodded, and let them go on.
The sharp turns were followed by a long stretch of straight road. The surface had been better for some time, and they were now driving over level asphalt. It was only the wind that gave Mirella trouble, and she had to steer sharply against the gusts several times.