Next, she slipped a credit card into the crack between the door and the jamb and used it to press back the tongue of the lock. The door swung partway open and she replaced the credit card with duct tape. Now for the night latch. Another length of piano wire, this the heavier Number Six, was used to work around the end of the latch and move it along its track. As it slid she pulled the door closed. After a moment there was another click and a rattle. The night latch had fallen out.
At once she got out of the hall, remembering to remove the duct tape so that nobody passing would see the edge of it. She followed her long-established procedure on entering an occupied dwelling. First, she shut her eyes tight and listened. She heard breathing off to the left. That would be Sarah and Tom in the bedroom, and in stage three sleep judging from the rhythm of their breath. Sarah’s own book had taught her that. Next, she looked around. In the time her eyes had been closed they had adjusted to the darkness. She made a note of a chair in the way of a fast escape via the living room, noted the lab coat on the hall floor. This was a simple one-bedroom apartment with a separate dining room. Sarah and Tom were alone in it, as she had already ascertained they would be.
She carried out the last test of her surroundings: smell. She inhaled deeply, identifying the faint odors of Chinese food and wine and sweaty bodies. They had banqueted and made love.
She moved toward the bedroom, pausing every few steps. Absolute care was necessary. Mistakes could not be covered up by killing the victims of this intrusion. She knew a good deal about Sarah Roberts, right down to her height and body weight. But there had been no time to study her personal habits. About Tom Haver she was even more vague. Hopefully, she had enough information to serve her purposes. He was not useful to her because he lacked the deep bloody instincts of the true predator, but he would have to be dealt with. Like many of his nature, he covered his inner softness with a cloak of aggressive bluff. As she reached the bedroom door she could smell the powerful musks of human sex. Their lovemaking had been intense, full of passion. She cursed it. Sarah was needed for other loves; the presence of Haver was a distinct inconvenience.
Miriam went to the bed, sat down beside it, and contemplated her victim. She was like a ripe little apple, this one. Very carefully, Miriam slipped back the bedclothes and revealed the woman’s neatly curved body. She longed to draw the life out of it but rather she hovered close, inhaling its sharp, humid aroma, listening to its little sounds: the breath soughing in and out, the heart beating slowly, the slight shifting of the torso on the sheets. Beside Sarah, Tom Haver stirred, but it meant nothing. His sleep remained undisturbed.
To begin the touch that would enter Sarah’s dreams, she took her hand, which dangled off the edge of the bed, and ran her lips across the back of it, kissing lightly, brushing it with her tongue. Sarah inhaled a long breath. Miriam stopped awhile, then leaned close to Sarah and breathed her breath, smelling its sharp warmth, mingling it with her own. Sarah’s head moved and she moaned. Her right breast was exposed and Miriam held it briefly in her hand, then slid her palm back and forth across the nipple until it became erect. She took the nipple between two of her long fingernails and squeezed until Sarah tossed her head. The girl’s mouth hung slackly opened. Miriam covered it with her own, pressing her tongue against Sarah’s with the utmost care. She remained like that for fully half a minute, feeling the faint movements of Sarah’s tongue that indicated her unconscious excitement. She drew back and listened once again. Tom was still in stage three sleep. Sarah was nearly awake, making little noises as she dreamed. Miriam now felt powerfully drawn to her, could almost see her glowing dreams in her own mind’s eye.
Soon Sarah’s sleep deepened again. Slowly, gently, Miriam slipped her hands between Sarah’s thighs and parted her legs. Moving quickly, ready for an immediate departure, she bent her head and kissed the hot, odorous flesh, pressing her tongue once hard where Sarah would feel the most intense pleasure. Sarah arched her back and cried out, and at once Miriam retreated to the living room.
Her heart was pounding. She glanced quickly toward the front door. In a few moments, after they settled down, she could escape. But not now. The least sound would alert them both.
“Tom? Oh . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, I love you —”
“Mmm.”
There was a creak, the sound of one of them shifting position. Miriam’s mind now touched Sarah’s, sensitive to the recent contact of their bodies. She could feel the blazing intensity of the passion she had awakened in her and could also feel the confused question that surrounded it.
“Tom? Are you awake?”
“If you say so.”
At that moment a shaft of light burst across the room, hitting Miriam in the face like a blow. Instantly she stepped into shadow. The little fool had turned on her bedside lamp. She could have slapped her.
“I feel odd. I had a funny dream.”
“It’s four A.M.”
“I feel kind of sick.”
Sarah got up and came down the hall, throwing another light on in the bathroom. She was a handsome creature naked. Miriam liked her a good deal more than she had thought she would. There was a certain quality about her — an obvious hunger for pleasure that Miriam found very appealing. She felt more comfortable around people who could not control their lusts, because they could most easily be brought within her power.
She watched Sarah sitting on the toilet, her chin cradled in her hands, staring with a frown at the wall before her. In the fluorescent light Miriam could clearly see the blush of excitement in her face.
After a moment Sarah spread her legs and laid her hand over her vagina. Sensuously, rubbing her legs back and forth, moving one hand over her vagina and with the other stroking her breasts, she masturbated.
From the darkness six feet away Miriam touched and touched, forcing images of soft female flesh, smooth flesh, into Sarah’s mind, making her writhe with longing even as she satisfied herself. At the end Sarah threw back her head and whispered, “Kiss me.” Then, hunched, her robe clutched at her neck, she hurried back to bed with Tom.
So that was what lay beneath the brilliance and the independence. Hunger, raw and unfulfilled, for a truly passionate lover. Miriam was proud of herself. This had been a most successful beginning. Now that her inner self had been aroused, Sarah’s hunger would grow and expand, as beautiful in her heart as a flower, as relentless as a cancer, until her present life would seem like a desert.
Then Miriam would come to her and Sarah would feel as they always felt, that she had met the most wonderful, the best friend of her life. John had said it many long years ago, standing in the abandoned ballroom at his ancestral mansion, naked amid the rotting silks, shivering as the evening wind came down the moor and through the gaping windows: “Miriam, you make me feel as if I’ve come home.”
Sarah awoke just before the alarm buzzed. Knowing Tom as she did, she let it ring. He fortified his head with pillows. Throwing the covers off them both, she got up and began to get dressed, leaving him to cope with the clock.
After about thirty seconds he groped out and turned it off, then sat up in bed. He emitted a groan, complex with woes. They had had wine with the spicy Chinese food and then spent a restless night.
More or less dressed, Sarah went to the kitchen and put on some coffee. She stood amid the details of their world: hissing old percolator with charred handle, Chinese food cartons tumbled in the sink, the refrigerator humming, the wind rattling the kitchen window. Her mind slipped suddenly to a chilling memory, the intense residue of a dream.
It was disquieting to have dreamed with such lust of a woman. All that remained was an image of bright flesh, sultry eyes and wet lips, and the sweet smell of her. Sarah shuddered. She poured an experimental half-cup of coffee. Still weak, but she wasn’t willing to wait. Cup in hand, she went back to the bedroom to busy herself with preparations for the day. At least the dream had given her an urge to plunge with even more than usual en
ergy into her work, if only to forget the damn thing.
“Hurry up, Doctor,” she yelled at the closed bathroom door.
“I need a cigar,” he said coming out.
“So eat one.”
He took her in his arms. She was not sure of him; his eyes seemed angry and loving at the same time. With elaborate nonchalance she drew away from him, went to brush her hair and put on some makeup.
“I really would like a cigar.”
“You’re on your way to a neoplasm of the mouth. Anyway, a cigar will make you sick on four hours of sleep.”
“I love you, damn you.”
He would say it at such a moment, as a means of walling off the anger beneath the banter. Love seemed to Sarah more and more an urge to containment, a hunger to fill oneself with another. As she pulled her brush through her hair she wondered if there could ever be anything more than the desire to fill the hollowness inside. She winced; she had brushed too hard, pulled out some hair. “I love you too,” she said. Her voice was quick with duty. She remembered how she had recited in school the responses to prayers in which she had no faith. He came, trying to seem gently forceful, sexy. He appeared behind her in the mirror, lifted her hair, and kissed the back of her neck. How wooden could a man get? He needed her, though, which was fascinating. They kissed, his lips crushing hers. She felt deep twinges of response, the secret pleasure of the thief. He was trembling, his hands feverishly caressing her back. Then he lifted her off the floor and she felt a wild thrill of helplessness, a powerful urgency to let someone do his will with her. Someone . . . beautiful.
By abandoning herself to him she closed herself off. He carried her, as easily as he might a child, to their rumpled bed. When he put her down she slipped dutifully out of her clothes. “I’ll be quick,” he said with the assurance of the beloved.
As they swung together in their groaning bed she allowed her mind to drift, and it inevitably drifted to that glowing dream-body. When her imagination was at last possessed by those smooth and exotic images, when she could taste the taste of that dream-skin and smell the dream-being’s musty secrets, she experienced a moment of pleasure, rare and stunning. He kissed her afterward, assuming that her wide look of surprise belonged to him.
Tom’s heart continued to swell with love as they dressed and went to the kitchen. It seemed so simple and so right. Last night and now this morning had banished all his doubts and angers; he was in a kind of ecstasy. If she needed, then he would offer. He felt that they belonged to each other. It was incredibly good to think, ‘I belong to her.’ He watched her pour him coffee, butter some toast for him. He almost hoped that he would have to give everything up for her. The nobility of it fascinated him. An awesome proof of love. This thought led him to the problems he was going to face at the clinic. It was time to discuss the board meeting. Almost past time, as a matter of fact. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that you ought to give me something to work with at the meeting. Some kind of definite statement about what you think happened to Methuselah.”
“You don’t need it. Just show them the tape.”
“Give me something — even the raw computer printouts. Show them you’re on to something.”
“You know what’s available.”
“Sarah, your work is precious. Let’s not allow any chance of failure. None.”
“In other words, you’re getting cold feet. If the board turns you down, if it doesn’t reverse Hutch, you can’t bear the humiliation. You’d have to resign and you’re afraid. I thought you were so sure you’d win.”
“I’m doing this for you,” he said miserably. He couldn’t explain it better than that.
“Finish your toast, we’ve gotta get moving. Who knows, maybe a miracle occurred and the statistics prove something. Best thing to do is get down to the lab and find out.”
The tonelessness in her voice was almost cruel. She was still punishing him for his ambition. The growth of love he had felt apparently meant little to her. She didn’t really understand the situation. Perhaps it was beyond her understanding. Her every gesture, every look and movement, radiated betrayal. The jeopardy that he had accepted in going over Hutch’s head to the board was a matter of indifference to her.
He ran his hand along the table, closed it into a fist. “I should have squeezed Hutch out a long time ago. Before I met you.”
She nodded, barely glancing at him. “You’ve got to be careful, darling.” There was something obviously false in her tone. He was seized with a desire to explain.
“If Hutch wins, I’m out. I don’t see any other alternative.”
“You wouldn’t.” She pecked him on the cheek, smiling too brilliantly. It seemed at least possible that she was not indifferent to his sacrifice at all, but rather so guilty about it that she couldn’t bear to acknowledge it. Perhaps he was fooling himself, but it felt better to believe this than the other, cold thing.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do.” An image from the past floated into his mind: school play, eighth-grade year. Before them all he had forgotten his lines. He remembered his silence, and the way the faces of his jealous and resentful audience lit up when it was realized that the faculty’s darling was failing, and the roar of delighted laughter when his silence did not end.
Miriam’s visit to Sarah Roberts had worked well. A vestige of what Sarah had experienced remained in Miriam’s own heart. It had been a strong touch. The next phase of the plan was very much more problematic.
She would have to “meet” Sarah, and the only fast way she could do it would be to become a patient at the Sleep Research Clinic. It would be the most dangerous thing she had done in a very long time. For the first time in history human scientists were going to get a chance to study a member of her species. They didn’t exist in human scientific literature, only in mythology. What would the scientists do when they tried to take the measure of her mystery?
Most of all, she dreaded captivity.
She was terrified by bars, such as the ones that surrounded Sarah’s ape, the one that had touched so powerfully as it died.
Miriam did not like the feeling of being menaced by humankind. And the thought of being studied by them was even more disquieting. They might consider her to be without human rights and cage her just like an ape.
The risks were frightening.
But Sarah could solve the problem of transformation, could make it permanent. That made all the risks seem trivial. If Miriam could only have known what was going to happen to John, she would have captured the doctor earlier. There might have been some small chance . . .
At the thought, her mood shifted to gray sorrow. But she refused to live in grief. Her life must be rebuilt. She would comfort John and protect him if she could, but she would not obsess herself with his suffering. Life was full of tragedies. You buried the dead.
The touch that had been broadcast through the vast emotional babble of the city by Sarah’s experimental ape was like a beacon to Miriam. It told her how very close Sarah had come to inducing transformation, and therefore to understanding it.
Miriam’s next move had been carefully planned. As soon as she successful touched Sarah she went home and made an appointment for an interview at the Sleep Research Clinic. Now that Miriam had hidden a part of herself in Sarah’s heart the next step was to engage her mind.
A part of Miriam might have enjoyed the danger of all this, just as she might have enjoyed fox hunting with John. There was something exhilarating about jeopardy. Safe air was stale, but dangerous air was silver clear. Love your enemy, her father used to say, for without him you would never taste the flavor of victory.
Yes, the noble sentiment of the past.
Forget the past. Go upstairs, change clothes; you’ll be late for your ten o’clock appointment. She had made it of necessity at the last minute. “We’ll fit you in, but please expect a delay.”
She wore her blue silk Lanvin suit for the occasion. As she dressed she reviewed all she had reh
earsed for the sleep clinic interview. She would enter as a patient suffering from night terrors of adulthood. Before branching off into gerontology, Sarah had specialized in this rare disease. Even yet she was the clinic’s only expert. The three or four cases they got in a year didn’t justify a full-time staff position. Sarah would certainly be called in.
Sarah. Miriam thought of her, huddled in her robe, shaking with passion that she could not possibly have understood. It was going to be most interesting to contend with somebody as intelligent and spirited as Sarah.
Miriam did not scorn human intellectual achievement. She had developed a keen interest in science. She had identified her own animal ancestors. She belonged to mankind and mankind to her, just as the saber-toothed tiger and the buffalo had once belonged to each other.
She put the finishing touches on her outfit. It would do: she looked beautiful, just a bit tired, eyes rather sad.
Eyes rather sad.
Time was passing, time could not be stopped. If only . . . but it was no use thinking about it. John was a dead man. “Dead.” What mockery there was in that word.
The doorbell rang. Miriam looked through the peephole, observed a man in uniform. Her chauffeur, appearing at nine thirty-five as requested. When she had to do any driving in the city she used a limousine. Her own car would be an inconvenience and taxis were too unsafe; she used them only when necessary.
As she walked out the front door, she noted with approval that the car provided was a dark-blue Oldsmobile. It was foolishly risky to use the more pretentious cars; they only attracted unwelcome attention. The driver, who was young, clear-eyed and sober, opened the car door for her. She fastened the seatbelt and settled back, locking her door but leaving her hand near the catch in case it was necessary to exit quickly. Her analysis of automotive design led her to conclude that this make was safer than most, and less prone to explode if hit from the rear. The driver started the engine. She sat well back, relaxed and yet attentive, ready if her luck ran out and there was an accident. Her ride was so pleasant that she found herself envious of those who could afford such transportation full time.
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