The swamp then made a deep sound, a mournful sound that could not have been the wind.
Jude said casually, “On th’other hand . . .”
15
In a wild cypress grove, a conspiracy in nature grew a ring of perfect trees, draped each with looping vines and a lace of moss, and nurtured each from the deposits of a nitrogen-rich flowing stream.
Among the searching roots of the thriving trees, roots that resembled human limbs, stately egrets and flamingos waded in serene safety. A hundred species of orchid were in riotous bloom.
The water encircled by the trees was clear, over a smooth-pebbled bottom.
The uppermost leaves of the cypresses caught the red-orange of the lowering sun; the water of the round pond was orange with the image of clouds, and flecked with black from the deep shadows of the coming night.
A bulky, lumbering shape waded into the pond. Syrupy amber tears oozed from amber eyes; it was like the fluid that bled from his numerous wounds. His mountainous shoulders sagged; his head looked down at the rainbow of washed pebbled under the orange and black surface. His tears blurred the image already fragmented by the rippling water.
When he reached the center of the ring of trees he stopped.
He looked up.
The red disc of the sun sat on the trees of the horizon which were a dimensionless cut-out, a light gray silhouette torn from the paper of twilight.
His legs were weak. He wanted to sit, perhaps to lie under the water and become nourishment for the beautiful trees.
But the sun . . . he could not tear his eyes from it; it would not let him move. Faint as was its power at sunset, he could feel its life-bringing heat on his face, his arms, his body.
While he stood thus transfixed, transported, the symphony of creatures preparing for nightfall began to interrupt its songs. The bullfrogs stopped and the treefrogs subsided; one last bird caaawwwwed long and loud as it flew away carrying its cry with it; a large animal splashed into the water somewhere and then the water calmed again; cicadas signaled a time of vespers to one another, and the last of them—somewhere in the distance—ended its grating whistle.
It was absolutely quiet.
The swamp thing looked at its ungainly hands, its pain-torn arms, its inhuman body, and bellowed into the silence. The sound came not from a throat or a mouth but from an entire being, from deep within him. It was a broadcast of agony such as the world of man has never heard.
He stared again at the sun—as a man might search out the face of God, or a child his mother’s eyes.
The sun, too, was silent.
It continued its relentless drop into the light-gray trees, its dimming, its betrayal. The red of human blood seemed a personal mockery.
The swamp thing cried out again. Root-like cords in his neck strained and vibrated. His hands became fists.
This time he was answered.
It was not the sun who answered.
It was the swamp.
The trees.
His sound came back to him—deeper, older, a million voices no man could hear. He looked around him. The water at his thighs rippled in the silence as he moved abruptly.
The last of the sun’s red touched the trees, touched their uplifted arms, rimmed their leaves and edged their roots. It was a marvel, a revelation!
Though only a fraction of the sun remained above the distant row of trees, still he could feel its heat; he was growing more and more aware of it, sensitive to it.
Its servant.
His eyes widened and his granite mouth opened in astonishment.
He looked at his arms. The bleeding had stopped. The sun was healing him.
Again came the sound of the trees, low, comforting; and he heard branches rustling in the breeze. But the air was deathly still.
The water rippled again as he turned to look at the trees all around him; their generous lower branches were waving.
A voice in his head said: “I think like a tree sometimes. I know how they feel about sunlight and wind and rain and chills. See these cypresses? They’re the happiest trees in the world.”
The largest cypress seemed to beckon to him. He took a sloshing step toward it, stopped and turned back to look at the sun.
He saw the sun now as a tree sees it. He nodded in tribute as the last rays winked into eclipse behind the horizontal row and sent up a wide hand of farewell.
The cicadas began to sing again.
The swamp thing waded to the big cypress and leaned against its ample trunk, one knee bent and a giant foot against the smooth wood. He crossed his arms—which no longer hurt him—and watched the sky. He watched the orange dry-brushed under the clouds retreat slowly from east to west, following its master.
Then he watched twilight lavender follow the orange and the clouds dim from gray to charcoal.
Stars appeared between drifting clouds.
He was aware of a pressure against his side.
The tree was trying to hold him.
He curled up among the roots, and slept.
16
The concealed ceiling spotlights singled out a plush conversation alcove in Arcane’s laboratory and study. Ferret and Bruno lounged in semi-reclined cradles facing Arcane—who sat stiffly, alone, on a loveseat dating from more straight-laced times. They had come together for drinks after each had bathed, dressed and dined in their separate quarters.
“Some of the men say it’s one of those abdominal snowmen come to the swamp,” said Bruno.
“Interesting opinion,” Arcane said with a derisive snort.
“I’ll tell you, it was like hitting a tree,” said Ferret. “And bullets hurt him, but they didn’t stop him.”
Caramel Kane wheeled a mirror-and-marble motorized bar into the soft circle of light. “The usuals, gentlemen?” she asked so rhetorically that she had begun to mix before the three didn’t bother to answer.
“My goodness, Bruno,” Caramel said, handing him his beer and vodka, “what happened to you? You’re all bruised! You, too, Mr. Ferret!” Ferret got straight bourbon.
“Lovely lady,” said Arcane smoothly, “we encountered a beast today, and as a matter of fact, the boys and I were just about to discuss what to do about it.” He waited with his hand outstretched till she slipped the stem of his brandy snifter into it. “What would you do, Caramel darling, if there were a dragon residing between you and your heart’s desire?”
She grinned. “Ask you to slay it for me.”
Arcane chuckled. “I wonder if Ferret and his sidekick here will be as rational.”
Ferret shook his head; his long, gristled neck twisted like a turned rope. “I say we forget this damn notebook. It’s not worth it. What are we killing ourselves for?”
Arcane laughed. “Eternal life,” he answered.
“Seriously,” Ferret pressed on, “all for the formula for some new plant fertilizer?”
“Ferret,” Arcane said sadly, “you disappoint me. It’s nothing so ordinary as that.” He stood and strolled toward the outer edge of the pool of light. His trousers and shirt were black; Ferret and Bruno watched his floating head and gesturing arms. “Something extraordinary has come out of Holland’s experiments—something I had no notion of. Gentlemen, would you recognize immortality if it knocked on your door?”
The two looked at him dumbly.
“Well, obviously you wouldn’t. But that’s beside the point.” He put his hands behind his back. His head floated at the edge of darkness like a talking balloon. “I believe we have over- or underestimated Holland’s potential—depending upon one’s ethical point of view.”
A strange dog with long toenails clicked across the floor and curled up with a plop at Areane’s feet. He stooped and lifted the creature into his arms. “Ah,” said Arcane, “my little friend, Scruffy.” He mussed the dog’s long straight hair and set it down again. The fellow had front legs much shorter than his normal rear ones and a neck narrow as a broom handle. His head bobbed as he walked. “Poor chap will die before long,” Arcane
told his listeners. “His rib-cage is much too limited to permit development of an adult heart and lungs. As if you, Bruno, had built-in limitations prohibiting your development past, say, the age of 15.”
Bruno said, “I got an extra-big rib cage.”
Arcane downed the last drop of brandy and handed Caramel his glass for a refill. “I wonder what your score will be tonight, Bruno. Will you miss every point I try to make?” He stepped back into the light and took Bruno’s empty glass. “Here, let me have that freshened for you.”
The intercom chime sounded.
Caramel switched it to loudspeaker.
“Arcane here,” he said for the intercom’s microphone.
The compressed voice said, “You have a guest, Mr. Arcane. A government agent named Bill Darkow.”
“I’ve been expecting him,” Arcane told the woman’s lovely voice. “Send him to the laboratory.”
“Very well, sir,” said the voice.
“Hey!” said Bruno loudly, “you caught—!”
Arcane shut him up with a withering look. “Over and out,” Arcane said amiably. The loudspeaker went off with a faint pop.
Ferret laughed at Bruno. “Arcane hasn’t told the bastard what the set-up is; Darkow doesn’t know he’s caught.”
“Quite so,” said Arcane. “He called via Washington—just as Cable did. He allowed our driver to fetch him so he could make his report to Ritter. Remember Ritter?”
“How much does he know?” Ferret asked.
“Little or nothing, I should think,” said Arcane. “He’s just a loose end, one we mustn’t leave dangling. There is a chance, however, a small one, that he’ll know what happened to the final notebook.”
“How important is he, aside from that?” Ferret asked.
“Not at all. Not to me, or you, or the world. Government agents are interchangeable. Like ball bearings. Ready for another, Ferret?”
“Wouldn’t mind,” he said, handing Caramel his glass. “Also wouldn’t mind taking care of Darkow for you, when you’re finished with him.”
Arcane said, “Your games are going to get you killed, Ferret.”
Ferret grinned a cadaver’s grin. “Can’t think of a better way to go.”
“Oh?” Arcane let his eyes drift to the ceiling. “I can.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Let him in, will you, Caramel?” Arcane asked. To Ferret and Bruno, he said, “To continue with my point, I suspect our friend Dr. Holland was more unscrupulous than we knew. I believe that swamp thing might be a creature of Holland’s design—one of his failures.”
“You said he only experimented with plants,” Ferret said.
“That ambulatory green superman is no plant,” said Arcane.
“What’s ambulatory mean?” Bruno asked.
Arcane ignored the question. “That is to say, he’s no plant in any ordinary sense. If I interpret Holland’s work aptly, that monstrosity could well be immortal, its cells forever regenerative. Think . . . think! If I—or you, Ferret, or you, Bruno—could incorporate its kind of cells in our own bodies! Immortality!”
Bill Darkow had been brought in and stood by the bar observing Arcane and his two listeners, puzzled.
“Make our guest a drink,” Arcane said. He did not offer a chair. “I want that swamp thing,” he said to Ferret.
“Don’t worry,” Ferret said with narrowed eyes, “I’ll blow him away for you.”
“I want him alive,” Arcane said.
Darkow pointed to the bottle of Scotch; Caramel poured and signaled for him to say “when.” He made a “cut” swipe with his flat hand when the golden liquid had covered the ice.
“Excuse me,” Darkow interjected during the lull, “I need to see Colonel Ritter. Is he—?”
Arcane affected his Ritter voice and posture and said, “There’s been a drastic change in plans, Darkow. You’ll get new instructions.”
Bill looked pale; he said nothing.
Arcane ignored Darkow and continued talking to Ferret. “I want that thing alive. I want to study his living flesh. He carries in his veins pure elements of the formula that determined him.”
“All right,” Ferret said reluctantly. “How do we find it, and how do we catch it?”
Arcane wheeled on Darkow suddenly and demanded loudly, “Tell me about the fifteenth notebook!”
“What?” Darkow asked incredulously.
Arcane studied him acutely. “No, you don’t know,” he decided.
“Who are you?” Darkow asked.
Arcane waved aside the question with a flick of his wrist, as one might get rid of a fly. He had no more interest in Darkow—neither to inform him nor to confuse him.
“Is your name Ferret?” Darkow asked him.
“No,” Arcane said. To Ferret, he said, “How do we catch it? I think that’s just the sort of sporting proposition that would appeal to you. Think back. Every time you’ve seen Beauty, you’ve seen the Beast. Right?”
“Huh?” Bruno said, bewildered.
“Right,” said Ferret thoughtfully.
The pathetic little dog sat at Darkow’s feet, whimpering for attention. Darkow looked down at it in horror. He returned the drink he had barely sampled to the portable bar. It had occurred to him that he might need all his wits to leave this place alive.
Caramel noticed the rejected drink, misinterpreted it and asked Darkow in a whisper, “Would you rather have something to eat?”
He shook his head. His body was flushed with fear; his mind was on red-alert.
“All we have to do,” said Arcane, “is catch Cable and keep her alive long enough to draw the monster out. Take Beauty; the Beast will follow.” As an afterthought: “It doesn’t exactly maintain a low profile.”
“No,” said Ferret, “but she does.”
Arcane turned to Darkow and asked him, in a friendly voice, as if the government man were one of his associates, “I don’t suppose you know where the lady would hide, do you, Darkow? You were one of the few out there who seemed to know your way around. You and your brother.”
Darkow didn’t answer.
Arcane answered for him. “No, you couldn’t find her. She, after all, only arrived yesterday, and you hardly know her. Besides, she doesn’t know where she is, as you would in her place. Hmmm.”
“That means she could be anywhere,” said Ferret.
“It means she’s lost; but she’s on foot and within a certain radius of that gas station.”
Darkow, though a diligent student and dedicated soldier, was not equipped to deal with the situation he found himself in. His thoughts swirled in a solution of fear and confusion. The aristocratic hawk-faced man—how could he have Ritter’s voice!? Was it murder these men were contemplating? Did they have the insane impression that Darkow would help them? Had they destroyed the camp and killed his brother? Probably—but why? Were they working for Washington? Did Cable get her call through? If so, why wasn’t she caught, too? Who were they kidding about this monster of the swamp? Was this all just a game? Could it be a nightmare, unreal?
I’ve got to get out of here! Darkow thought suddenly. He jumped a little at the thought—as one jerks sometimes falling asleep—but immediately composed himself and resolved to take it easy, take it one step at a time.
There were high windows up under the vaulted ceiling, he saw, but no noticeable way to reach them. Unless—could one climb the bookcases? In the gloom up there, Bill could not at first see what the knobs and larger protrusions on the wall might be; then he realized that they were trophy heads. But what kinds of animals—?
He shook his attention back to the center of the problem. Even though these men were apparently paying no attention to him, he kept his movements to a minimum so as not to betray his inner workings. He took a single step back into greater shadow.
There were several doors and windows around the large room; he could see them through mounds of lab equipment and towers of glass tubing. It looked like the Hollands’ lab. Was this
guy working on the same—? He wrenched his curiosity away again.
He thought: If I can get out of here, if those doors lead to freedom, why are these nuts ignoring me?
“More drinks all around, Caramel,” Arcane said, “then you may be excused.”
“Not me,” said Bruno; “I’ve had my limit.”
“Yes, yes, you would be one of those people with limits,” Arcane said absently. He switched to Ritter’s voice and said gruffly to Darkow, “Hey man, you not drinkin’?” He picked up the scarcely touched Scotch. “Drink up. Puts hair on your chest.”
Darkow said, “No, thanks. Are you going to let me go?
Arcane ignored the question and said, back to his own voice again, “Now let’s see, who was at the gate this evening? Alicia, wasn’t it? Pretty brunette with a cruel mouth?”
Darkow nodded.
“Did she search you for weapons?”
Darkow licked his lips. He had no idea how to answer the question, so he told the truth. “She asked me to leave my pistol with her as a courtesy.”
“And you did, of course. Fine. Fine. You must have imagined you were under the protective wing of the great American Eagle. Well—not exactly.” He lifted Bill’s drink from the bar and held it out to him. “Here, take this. I really insist.”
Bill did as he was told.
Ferret rose to his feet and stepped toward Darkow. Bill’s hands and feet tingled. The man was monstrous: grayish skin stretched tight over bones and stringy muscles, broad-shouldered, half a foot taller than Bill, his eyes smiling one kind of smile and his mouth another. His gold earring glinted in light from high above.
Bill felt that if he didn’t drink from the ice-cold glass in his hand he would drop it. It seemed to make no difference which he did. He drank a deep draft and caught his breath as it burned down to his stomach.
Ferret said to him, “You’re a healthy-looking boy. Do your calisthenics every morning?”
Bill nodded, his mouth open; terror and disorientation had hypnotized him.
“Before or after your shit, shower and shave?”
“Before.”
Arcane took another brandy from Caramel and held the bourbon she had poured for Ferret. He blew her a kiss—which was her signal to go. She blew one back and started the electric whine of the motor in the bar. She let it pull her toward the door.
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