‘Could a reptile really possess that level of intelligence?’
‘Not intelligence,’ the professor corrected. ‘What it possesses is insight. It knew the effect the chloroform would have and it also knew the inner workings of its captive environment. It could not have come to that knowledge by way of cognitive thought. Something compelled it to act the way that it did. ‘
‘Could it have been trained? I mean, they have snake charmers in India.’
‘Nothing more than a clever illusion. I’d sooner be inclined to believe in an Indian rope trick than the ability to tame a snake with music. I’m guessing that the answer we are looking for is likely to be more biological than psychological.’
‘Some kind of smart drug?’
The professor was growing weary of the lesser man’s limp theories. He needed time alone; time to think.
‘I’m going to my study to see if I can research any comparable incidents. I want you to stay and take a blood sample. Have a full forensic analysis on my desk by this afternoon.’
He left Charlie to finish up with the snake. When he got to his study, rather than look for unusual stories involving reptiles he brought up the data from Emmy’s experiments on his laptop. There was one possibility that he was not yet ready to discuss with the junior scientist.
He ran a time lapse analysis of all of the periods when Emmy and Charlie were in their astral form. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then as the intensity of the experiments increased, he did manage to detect an anomaly that had previously been overlooked. It did not take long for him to see a pattern emerge.
Jackson Fox had a good idea as to what caused the alarming change in the snake’s behaviour. If his theory was correct, he also knew that this would not likely be an isolated incident. His greatest concern was not how to stop or reverse the process that was taking place. His greatest concern was how to make sure nobody else found out.
Chapter 12
Lucy lay in for much of the morning. In spite of her low expectations, the guestroom bed was surprisingly comfortable. It was maybe even more comfortable than the bed she slept in at home. She could certainly get used to penthouse living.
After a quick shower, she got dressed and then went downstairs to the bar. The pub was yet to open, but Mindy made her some breakfast of scrambled egg on toast. If all went to plan, her next meal would be cooked on an open camp fire, just like dad used to do it.
After finishing her food, she handed back her room key, settled the bill and went outside to see what time she could collect her car. The garage was closed up and there was no light coming from inside when she got there. She knocked on the door, but received no answer. After walking around the building, hoping to find evidence of somebody inside, but finding none, she went back to the front door. Rather than knock this time, she turned the handle. It was not locked.
‘Hello?’ she said, as she crossed the threshold into the darkened shop floor.
No response came. Instead of leaving it at that, she decided to continue on into the back office. First, she needed some light to see what she was doing. She could just make out the outline of the office door and figured that the switch would be close by. When she got there, she began to feel around the wall. Something brushed against her arm and there was a clatter as whatever she had touched hit the floor.
Her fingers eventually found three switches, which she pressed in turn. The first two had no apparent effect, but as the third clicked into place the shop floor was flooded with light. A picture frame lay face down on the floor by her feet. She reached down and picked it up. Thankfully, no damage was done. At least not by her; the glass front had already been removed.
She held the picture for a moment. The couple looked so happy, so content. It was a scene Lucy hoped she would be part of one day. She wondered who the happy couple may be. Was the mechanic father of the girl, the guy or neither? Where was the pair now? A picture can reveal so little information, but at the same time raise so many questions.
Lucy kept a single photograph in her purse. It was not unlike the one that she held in her hands. It was taken some years previous on her final camping trip with dad. She wondered what that picture would reveal to a stranger’s eyes; a proud father with his happy young daughter. There was not the slightest clue to suggest the horror of the illness that would soon separate them.
Lucy placed the picture back on the shelf and knocked on the office door. When she received no response, she tentatively turned the handle and entered. The room was in darkness, but a quick feel by the doorframe revealed another light switch.
The mechanic was seated at a desk with his head slumped forward onto the tabletop. He did not react to the light. There was no paperwork on the desk; nothing to have kept the man so occupied that he had fallen asleep on the job. There was only a bottle of whisky and a single empty glass.
She walked over and picked up the bottle, holding it to the light in order to accurately gauge its contents. There was about a fifth of the bottle left, but without knowing how full it had been to start with, Lucy had no way of knowing how much the man had drunk. She put the bottle back on the table, hoping the sound of which would stir the sleeping mechanic. It did not.
The office was sparse, but it did not appear to be in neglect. Some files were stacked on an otherwise empty bookcase that did at least allude to actual work being done. There was a CD player on top of the bookcase and a small red LED light told Lucy that it was switched on, although the music had long since come to an end. She flicked the switch to the off position. Before continuing her exploration of the office, she lifted up the lid to see what the man was listening to when he fell asleep. It was an album called Use Your Illusion by Guns n’ Roses. This was the same band on the poster in the garage. She had heard of them, but they were well before her time; back in the days before MP3’s replaced CD’s.
In the corner of the room was a small portable TV. It was not plugged in. She ran her finger along the top of the set and found no dust. The same could be said of the rest of the office. It had been cleaned recently, perhaps no longer than two or three days. Whatever sent this man into his destructive spiral must have been recent. At least that explained why Lucas recommended the mechanic to her. The policeman obviously did not know the extent of this man’s problems.
She tried to think more positively of the mechanic as she carried on with her exploration. Apart from the expected manuals and a few packaged car parts, the rest of the area was pretty bare. There was a calendar tacked to the wall. A date was circled with red ink with a small cross inscribed next to it. The cross was a depiction of a crucifix rather than an X. She quickly counted down the days in her head and realised that this particular day was less than a week away.
‘Flick?’
The voice startled her and she let out a little yelp.
‘Who are you?’ the mechanic asked. ‘Where’s Flick?’
She turned around, hoping he would recognise her from the day before. If recollection had dawned, it did not show on his face. The vulnerability of her situation suddenly occurred to her. She was alone with a strange, older man, who may have drunk up to eighty percent of a bottle of whisky. There was no telling what he may be capable of.
‘My name is Lucy, I came by yesterday. Lucas; that friendly policeman, brought me here. Don’t you remember?’
She felt better after mentioning Lucas. Just saying his name made her feel safe. The mechanic shook his head. He seemed to be wrestling with his thoughts rather than refuting what he had been told. It appeared that the most dangerous period of drunkenness had passed and he was now well into hangover territory.
‘The busted fuel tank?’ he asked, uncertain by the vagueness of his memory.
‘That’s right. You said that you needed to get the parts in from Alice Springs. Is it ready?’
‘Is what ready?’
Lucy was starting to get inpatient.
‘My car. You were supposed to repair my car for today. Hav
e you done this or not?’
He shook his head, but did not look at her. She was not happy, but the feelings she was experiencing were more of disappointment than anger. Despite this man letting her down and doing himself no favours with his obvious binge drinking, Lucy could not help but feel pity for him. It was just a gut feeling, but something told her that he had suffered a great loss. Maybe that loss was recent or maybe it was not. The circled date on the calendar could be an anniversary or an upcoming funeral. There was simply no way for her to know without asking and it was not the right time for that.
‘Do you have a kettle?’ she asked.
‘It’s in the main garage.’
She went back onto the shop floor and located the kettle next to a sink, which looked like it was mainly used for cleaning up after the mechanic had done work on his cars. The basin and the taps were covered with oil. She quickly filled the kettle and turned it on. Whilst she waited for it to boil she looked around for some mugs. Although she managed to find two, one of them was being used to contain a variety of loose screws and bolts. It was thick with dirt and after seeing the state of the sink, it was pointless to even try and clean it out. The other was stained only from the previous brew it had contained and she gave this one a quick rinse before spooning in three large tablespoons of coffee.
When she returned to the office the mechanic had pulled round slightly. He was now able to sit upright and no longer made the effort to avoid her gaze. He thanked her as she handed him his drink.
‘Did you not want one for yourself,’ he added. ‘You’re more than welcome, of course.’
She smiled, awkwardly.
‘You couldn’t find another clean cup, could you?’ he said, recalling what a state the place was in. ‘You must think me pathetic, mustn’t you?’
‘Not at all. Everyone goes through hard times. I am sure that whatever it is you are dealing with will soon pass. I’ve experienced a great loss of my own recently. You could say that’s how I came to end up here.’
‘I take it you’re referring to more than just the loss of your fuel tank?’
‘I wish that were the case. My father passed away just a week ago. I decided to take a road trip in order to try and put things into perspective. To help me move on with my life.’
He glanced down into his coffee.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How did he go?’
It was the first time she had talked about it since the funeral. She took a deep breath, but the words were not as difficult to say as she thought they would be.
‘It was cancer. He tried to fight it at first, but at his age the chemotherapy hit him harder than the disease. In the end, he decided to come off the treatment and let nature take its course.’
‘That must have been hard for you.’
‘The most important thing was that he kept his dignity and when the end came he was not alone. I suppose I can be grateful that I had time to prepare myself. At least I got to say goodbye.’
The mechanic did not say anything. Lucy could see that he was struggling to hold back his tears. She thought again to the circled date on the calendar; was this man now alone? Would he have anybody to hold his hand when his final moments came?
‘I’m sorry if I have upset you,’ she said. ‘I can see that you obviously need time to come to terms with whatever is troubling you. I can arrange for my car to be picked up and taken to Alice Springs for repair. I will reimburse you for anything that you may already have spent on parts.’
‘That’s not necessary. I can still complete the job. I’ll just need a little more time, that’s all.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea. You are in no fit state to get any work done today and I am supposed to be leaving this afternoon.’
‘I can have it ready by Monday.’
‘I dunno. I have already spent longer than anticipated in this town.’
‘Please, let me do this for you,’ he pleaded. ‘You will be doing a miserable old man a favour.’
She did not want to say yes, but she would have found it so much more difficult to say no. Reluctantly, she agreed to give him one more chance.
***
Emmy called in to see how Charlie was doing. She was curious about what new assignment her grandfather had him working on, but most of all; she just wanted to make sure he was not getting cold feet about their experiments following the near encounter of the previous evening.
‘Did the professor ask you about last night when you were with him?’
‘He never mentioned anything. If you saw the trouble we had trying to sedate our new pet here, you would understand.’
She ignored his attempt to redirect the flow of the conversation.
‘Are you sure? It need not be by way of a direct question. Perhaps he made a sly or slightly off kilter comment or remark?’
‘Uh-huh. Not a word. Why are you so worried; I mean, apart from the obvious?’
‘That short power outage is going to show up on the event logs. Pops reads those as soon as they are available to him. Trust me; he knows that something out of the ordinary happened last night. If he hasn’t said anything then he could be waiting for us to go to him. The fact that we haven’t is going to make it appear even stranger.’
Charlie took a brief break from collecting tissue samples in order to give his colleague his full attention. Although Emmy exceeded him in many ways; she had earned her PhD at a younger age – one of the youngest in the nation’s history, she was still only twenty two and carried all of the baggage that came with that.
‘You need to relax, Emmy. Given the nature of those experiments, everything that we do is out of the ordinary. A brief power surge is probably the most mundane thing that has happened to us all week. At least if you are oblivious to the cause it is. If the professor asks, I’ll just tell him that we overloaded the circuits. It’s no big deal.’
‘So you’re still in?’
‘Of course. Just try and be more cautious next time. Make sure that we are the observers and not the subjects.’
‘I’ll try,’ she replied and then finally turning her attention to what he was doing, she asked: ‘Is that a snake?’
‘Very observant, Dr Rayne. Are you sure you don’t want to lend your expertise?’
‘I don’t think I’d be much help. I’m more of a mongoose kind of girl - if you know what I mean.’
He did and he chose to ignore her crude innuendo.
‘Well, it is your loss. I just hope you do not get too jealous when I pick up my Nobel Prize. What I have here may well be the world’s smartest reptile.’
I can beat that; look, what I have here is the world’s least impressed face.’
‘Seriously, you would like this. It may even provide your grandfather with a much welcome distraction. Anything that keeps him off our back has to be good, right? Lucas found it in town. It’s instincts, reflexes, whatever you want to call them; they are way off the chart. We’re still trying to figure out the cause.’
She briefly considered helping, but compared to what she was already working on, even the discovery of the Abominable Snowman would not tempt her away. Charlie would simply have to get by without her on this one.
‘Just try not to forget about your day job,’ she told him. She turned to leave, but stopped briefly in the doorway. ‘On second thoughts, do let me know how you get on with these blood tests. If there is some kind of pathogen that can create a smart snake, we could do a lot worse than isolate it and add it to the town’s water supply. Anything that raises the IQ of the bogans around here would be mightily handy.’
‘Goodbye, Emmy,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget to take your prejudices with you when you leave.’
Her prejudices? She knew Charlie was joking with her, but he certainly knew which buttons to press. After leaving him to finish his work she went to call on the houseguests. The Americans had woken in a terrible state and Mike in particular was suffering from an even fouler mood following the double blow of his parki
ng ticket and DUI charge. To cheer him up, she was going to give him exactly what he wanted. She was going to let him take a ride in her machine.
***
Lucy felt foolish going back to Mindy and asking to extend her room for a couple more nights. It had crossed her mind that the mechanic was playing her for a mug, but she thought it prudent not to pry too deeply into local matters. For all she knew; Mindy and the mechanic could have been related and with that in mind she decided not to ask any questions unless the information was offered to her freely. As it turned out, Mindy was to offer her something a lot more interesting than mere small town gossip.
‘You’re offering me a job?’ Lucy asked. ‘You do realise that I will still be leaving here on Monday.’
‘I’m not asking you to commit your life to the place. No contract, no obligation, just a couple of shifts to help me out and give you something to do. We don’t have a skimpies night so you won’t have to take your shirt off. What do you say; it’s certainly more fun than paying rent?’
‘I don’t know. I did a bit of bar work when I was at college, but that was a long time ago.’
‘No worries, this place is so quiet during the day that you will have plenty of time to get back into the swing of it.’
Mindy offered Lucy her most enticing smile, which she was finding increasingly hard to resist.
‘If it is so quiet, why do you need me?’
‘I need you precisely because it is so quiet. You’re not the only one who gets bored around here. Come on, it will be fun.’
Lucy tried to think of anything else she could do to fill her time; she came up with nothing.
‘Okay, but don’t hold it against me if I break the odd glass or two.’
They finally shook on a deal. She agreed to complete two shifts, each in exchange for one night’s full board in the penthouse. Mindy set her to work straight away. The first customer in was Ned who had come to deliver some meat for the kitchen and upon seeing Lucy decided to stay for a beer. He sat down on a stool at the bar.
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 11