“Please,” she said politely. “Come sit down.” She led them into what was obviously Professor Davi’s office, which reminded Key of many a professor’s office he had seen over the years. Amid piles and piles of papers and books crammed everywhere in the small rectangular room, two simple, inexpensive school chairs flanked a small desk.
“What is the problem?” she asked, her voice the same modulated, lightly accented English it had always been, as she rested against the edge of the desk. Gonzales stood by the door, naturally, and seemingly automatically, assuming the role of a lookout. Key, however, tiredly and gratefully thudded into the chair nearest her.
As Key and Gonzales had come through the halls, they had seen students, both male and female, wearing black pants, white lab coats, and running shoes. There were even coeds without headdresses. But Rahal wore Omaniya, the national dress of the country, only hers was a deep red, and her waqaya headscarf was dark and beautifully embroidered with what looked like representations of constellations. Despite it covering her from her forehead to the ankle of her five-foot-four-inch frame, he could tell she was a fit, very poised young lady.
“The problem”—Key sighed—“is that something is making people explode.” Despite his tiredness, Key carefully noted her reaction of shock. Key’s admission was so blunt that the normally reticent Gonzales stepped forward.
“It’s true,” Gonzales informed her. “I witnessed it. First in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait.”
Rahal’s mouth opened and closed several times as she blinked. To her added credit in Key’s mind, she didn’t even suggest the two were joking. “Explode—exactly how, if I might ask?”
Key nodded in satisfaction. “Good question,” he answered appreciatively, then plunged ahead without reservation. “It wasn’t as if there were a bomb in their chest or anything like that. It didn’t explode outward in that pattern. Their entire bodies seemed to be afflicted. Every limb and every joint.”
“The eyes bulged, tearing just before the detonation,” Gonzales said. “Hot, dark, lumpy liquid came out of every orifice we could see.”
“Hot?” she echoed.
“It was smoking,” Key added.
“Light or dark smoke?” she asked.
The soldier and mechanic looked to each other for corroboration.
“Not sure,” said Gonzales.
“Neither light nor dark,” Key decided. “Somewhere in the middle.”
That didn’t faze her. “Tell me about the detonation,” she urged. “How long did they convulse before it happened?”
Key and Gonzales shared another collaborative look.
“Less than a minute,” Gonzales offered, and Key didn’t dispute him.
“Go on,” she advised. “Every detail you can remember.”
For the first time since entering the room, Key lowered his gaze from hers. He looked at nothing in particular to see into his memory.
“The first explosion happened in my peripheral vision,” he said. “A piece of the skull hit my forehead and knocked me out for a few seconds.”
Rahal’s luxurious, well-shaped eyebrows rose.
“I had to take cover from the second,” Key continued, raising his gaze back to hers. “But I’ll never forget the sound.”
Her eyes held an equal mix of curiosity and concern. Key went on because she said nothing.
“It was as if every internal part of their body was erupting,” he told her.
“Every part?” she asked. “Bones, fingernails, body hair?”
“No,” Key said while Gonzales nodded in agreement. “I heard the bones shattering into shards, but I’m certain they weren’t exploding. If they were, the skull piece that hit my forehead would’ve behaved differently.”
Rahal nodded, her lips tightening, then she spun off the desk and grabbed a scroll that was wedged atop two piles of files. She spread it on the desk, motioning with her head for the two to join her. Key approached her from the right, and Gonzales from the left, though he kept his eyes mostly on the door.
She was holding open a biological chart of a male anthropoid body. “The human circulatory system consists of three parts,” she said intently, her eyes darting around the complex map. “The cardiovascular, pulmonary, and the systemic.”
Key remembered it from his mother’s teachings. “The heart, lungs, arteries, and veins,” he said, following her eyes.
She glanced at him, her look of impressed approval reminding him of his mother. “You missed the coronary and portal vessels,” she said, “but yes. The system controls the flow of blood, gasses, hormones, nutrients, oxygen, and other vapors to and from the cells.”
“Other vapors?” Key echoed, looking directly at her.
She returned his gaze. “Yes. This system stretches for about ninety-six thousand kilometers.”
Gonzales automatically translated it for Key. “Sixty thousand miles.”
“So if one of those other vapors turned poisonous—” Key asked.
“Not poisonous,” she corrected. “Not even venomous.”
“There’s a difference?” Gonzales interjected, his mind reeling from all the new information.
“A big difference,” she stressed, looking up at him.
“Yes, the unnatural element would have to be volatile,” Key said. “As if the blood had been replaced with nitroglycerine.”
When he looked back to her, she met his gaze with an expression that mixed concern with growing certainty. “And you want to know how that could have happened?” she asked him directly.
“Yes,” he answered just as directly. “But maybe more importantly, whether it’s contagious, and if so, how it travels. Because we’ve been in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait. Now we’re here.”
The import of his words were not lost on Rahal. Her eyes widened, but she neither recoiled nor became flustered. “How long ago did this last happen?”
“Twelve hours ago.”
“Male or female?”
“What?” Gonzales reacted in surprise.
“The victims,” Rahal elaborated. “Male, female, or both?”
“Male,” Key answered, again glad that Daniels hadn’t come along. He probably would have, in his standard operating chauvinism, asked if that was important. Gonzales knew, like Key did, that it might be.
“Do you have any possibilities that—” she started, but then the trio was surprised by a fourth voice.
“Assistant Professor Rahal?”
The three behind the desk looked up, Gonzales cursing himself for not maintaining his self-appointed lookout responsibility. It was a student, holding his books, looking at them all both expectantly as well as regretfully.
Rahal recovered briskly. “Yes, Malik?”
The student looked sheepish. “We had a meeting about my grades,” he said. “I’m sorry again that I had to schedule it so late in the day, but my make-up classes—”
“Of course, of course,” Rahal said apologetically. She raised her right hand and the chart rolled up to her left hand. “Yes, your graduation depends upon it, doesn’t it?”
The comment was for Key and Gonzales’s benefit, letting them know that she would not have truncated their talk if it wasn’t important. But she seemed to know that a young man’s future might be null and void if the problem Key was chasing wasn’t solved.
As she started to follow the student out she quickly returned her attention to Key. “Where are you staying?” she whispered urgently.
“The Five Centses Restort,” Gonzales answered, having to enunciate the unusual name carefully, and Key didn’t miss the way Rahal’s eyebrows raised in response. “Staff Suite Two-A.”
“I will be there as soon as possible,” she assured them. She continued for the student’s benefit. “Thank you so much for conferring with me. From what Professor Davi tells me, you can find your way
out without problem, yes?”
“Yes,” Gonzales assured her, taking a reluctant Key by the crook of his arm. “Thank you, Assistant Professor.”
The two made their way out the three-story, rose-colored building flanked by palm trees.
“Everybody speaks English,” Key marveled.
“Not everywhere,” Gonzales reminded him. “But Oman Medical College is in an academic partnership with West Virginia University. That’s why I saved it for last. I thought its rep as something of a ferenji—outsider—wouldn’t help us as much.” He shrugged. “Live and learn.”
Once outside, despite everything on his mind, Key was again impressed by Muscat’s relaxed, charming, peaceful energy and beautiful surroundings. Gonzales had told him that the Sultan had decreed that new buildings couldn’t be more than seven stories, and everything had to be designed beautifully and traditionally, as well as compliment the mountains beyond.
It would be a shame, Key thought, if all the residents started exploding.
They stayed silent, that very possibility foremost in their minds, as they neared the parking lot.
“Five Cent-ses Rest-ort?” Key finally repeated, just as carefully as Gonzales had said it to Rahal. “That should come with an automatic ‘sic’ after every mention. What are they trying to do, attract the hipster, who-gives-a-shit-about-spelling-anymore crowd?”
“Good guess,” Gonzales said, “but they’re trying to be different. You’ll see.”
“Assistant Professor Rahal’ll be okay there?”
“She’ll be fine,” Gonzales assured him as they reached the Yaris. “She’s everything my contact said.”
“And more.” Key ruminated as he waited for Gonzales to unlock his door.
The mechanic was struck by the comment, so he just stood for a moment between the driver’s side open door and the wheel. “What do you mean?”
Key halted his own descent into the passenger seat then rose and faced him. “You happen to notice her reaction when I first told her?”
Gonzales considered the question. “Yeah,” he finally said with a tinge of defensiveness. “Shocked, speechless, maybe even a little scared.”
“All of that,” Key agreed. “But you missed one ‘s’ word.”
“Huh?” Gonzales reacted. “What ‘s’ word?”
“Surprised,” Key informed him.
Gonzales reflected on that, shaking his head as he failed to grasp the other man’s meaning.
“She was everything but surprised,” Key clarified. “My friend, she has heard about this before.”
Chapter 10
Key had not intended to take a power nap, but his body had other ideas. He slept for the entirety of the drive from the college to wherever the hell they were staying. He only woke because the vehicle stopped with a lurch.
As always, Key was wide awake and ready for anything, but all he saw was a dark, narrow boardwalk, an iron bar fence, and some shuttered shops facing the Gulf of Oman. According to the dashboard digital clock, only about thirty minutes had passed.
“Where are we?” Key asked mushily, his dry lips sticking together.
“Seeb beach,” Gonzales reported as he parked and exited the car. “Fishing village, northwest in Muscat, northeast in Oman. You missed the gardens, palaces, and Royal Stables on the way here. Also, the horned viper I just ran over.” He shook his head. “Very venomous.”
Key was out the passenger side, breathing deeply of the warm, water-scented air. He was both impressed and concerned by the lack of lighting on the quiet street. It informed him that they were nowhere near tourist traps.
“We’re staying where, exactly?” Key asked.
“You’re looking in the wrong direction.” Gonzales twice-tapped the air to his left.
Key looked in that direction and saw the modest sign, in both Arabic and English, attached to a clay wall. The Arabic words were in black, but the English letters were in blue, red, yellow, and green. They read Five Centses Restort above an arrow pointing them around the corner, down a wide alley.
“Oh man.” Key nearly groaned as he came around the car. “Google colors, really?”
“Really,” Gonzales said, joining him as they approached the alley. “They got two 2010 PCs in the lobby, so they advertise the place as a net-loving paradise. But it’s not easy finding a funky joint in Muscat. Even in this fishing village, the rest of the resorts are all four stars.”
“I get it now,” Key admitted as he walked beside Gonzales up the fifteen-foot-wide alley to the main, side door. “Five cents, as in inexpensive, Five Centses as a play on ‘senses,’ and Rest-ort, as in a place to rest, not party.”
“Right,” Gonzales said, passing the simple, but elegant, main door, and walking toward some white stone steps going up a brown stone hill. “But, in reality, out of sight, out of mind, out of the way.”
Key remembered the address Gonzales had told Rahal, so naturally figured they were heading to the Staff Suites. He followed the mechanic around the corner to what looked like a cross between a bunker and a prefab motel wedged in the back of the tan, beachfront, stucco structure. Gonzales went to the second door, tapped it three times with his forefinger and once with the back of his pinky, before twisting the latch and stepping in.
“Baby!” Gonzales said. A young woman had leaped onto him.
Key stilled in the doorway until he heard Daniels’s memorable bark-laugh.
“That’s my Joe.” The sergeant laughed from his place on a pile of pillows, holding a beer bottle in one paw. He grinned at Gonzales, who was swinging the girl in his embrace back and forth over the rugs. “Watch him next time he goes into any new room, Speedy.” Daniels looked back at Key with approval. “Watch his eyes. They go everywhere, and he won’t step in until he knows everything.”
Key stepped in, knowing the thickly covered sleeping mats were to the left, the living area took up the rest of the room, the bathroom was to the left in a back hall, and the kitchen was to the right. Rugs covered the floor, drapes covered the walls and ceiling, and pillows were the predominant furniture. The only real sop to the twenty-first century was a flat-screen television in the center of the right wall.
For his part, Daniels didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. He wore his biggest shit-eating grin as he reclined near a simple yet ornate table topped with a Turkish coffee set, and, of all things, a hookah.
“Wow.” Key sighed. “You sure we’re not at the Moroccan exhibit in Epcot?”
Gonzales laughed. “What can I say, Corporal—I mean, Joe. My girl is a real antiques nut. Come on in, close the door, set a spell.”
Key followed orders, taking the time to study the girl closer as well. Ironically, she wasn’t even Middle Eastern. She was Asian, with a wide, friendly, happy face, and a slim build. He also correctly guessed that she was a hotel staffer, and saw the remnants of her Omani dress uniform lying over the side of one of the sleeping cushions.
At the moment all she wore was the traditional sarwal pants, which were loose at the hips and tight at the ankles, and a T-shirt. Since she was inside, her head was uncovered and her black, shining, long hair was loose.
“Joe, this is Chona,” Gonzales said, still holding her. “Chona, this is Corporal Josiah Key.”
The girl extracted herself from Gonzales’s embrace and extended her hand to Key with a smile. “Oh, I know all about you,” she said, glancing at Daniels.
Key grinned at the sergeant before returning his attention to the girl and shaking her hand. “Believe half.”
“Less!” Daniels barked.
The girl smiled at them both. “You are truly welcome here,” she said to Key, before turning her head toward Gonzales as she moved toward the kitchen. “And now I’ll prove it.”
She disappeared around the corner as Key looked at Gonzales as if he expected an army of dancing girls to appear.
>
“Just cardamom-scented coffee and sticky dates,” Gonzales assured him. “The traditional hotel greeting for weary travelers.”
Key nodded and took a second survey of the room. “We’re all staying here?”
“Nah,” Daniels said as if it were obvious. “We’ve got our own room and bath next door.”
“Temporary quarters for seasonal employees,” Gonzales said.
“Better than a brig,” Daniels said, “but not by much.”
“I thought Professor Rahal would be more comfortable in this apartment, with another woman present,” Gonzales continued.
“Probably right,” Key agreed. “But I thought women can’t stay in a hotel alone.”
“There are laws for all Omanis,” Gonzales said. “Then there are unwritten laws for Filipinos. They have to watch their steps different ways, but otherwise—” He motioned toward the comfortable, well-appointed, if somewhat dated, room.
“Oh, yes.” Chona entered the room with a tray of cups and dishes filled with different colored and shaped dates. “I have more freedom to be a ‘loose woman’ than natives, as long as I’m not in-your-face about it.” She set the tray in the middle of the floor, kneeled there, and motioned for the men to join her.
“And the further you are out in the burbs the looser it can get,” Gonzales elaborated. “This place has gotten scruffy enough to be called ‘The Two Centses.’” He smiled happily at the girl. “But that’s the way I like it, don’t I, cariño?”
She smiled back as she poured the savory-smelling coffee. “You do, indeed, palanggâ.”
“Oh yeah,” Daniels said as they settled in a small circle around the tray, and Chona passed around a plate of dates. “I’ve been learning all sorts of interesting things from her while you were all out goose-chasing.”
Key took a careful bite of the caramel-flavored fruit, then spoke as he brought the small cup to his lips. “All right, Morty, you’ve been wanting to rub something in since we got here. What is it?”
Arachnosaur Page 7