She crossed the road and found a hollow where she could crawl under the wires. Though she tried not to touch anything, the wires shone suddenly redder. She squirmed on through and ran on across the dark field beyond. Once it must have been a farm, but it was abandoned now, slashed with deep gullies where the soil was gone, scattered with rocks and clumps of brush and broken machines that tried to strip her.
A chopper was suddenly roaring low behind her, coming fast along the fence. Red mist wrapped it, and the redness thickened around her. A strange light that was no light, it didn’t help her see which way to go. She fell into a gully. Dazed and aching, she struggled for her breath and fumbled for the precious bag of food. It was gone, lost in the clotting redness.
The chopper thundering near, she dragged herself out of the gully and stumbled on. It followed, as if the gringos aboard it could see her in the dark. Blinded by the redness, she tripped and fell again, and crawled on stinging hands and knees into a dark mass of brush. Groping, she felt a hollow in the rocky ground.
Perhaps—perhaps it could hide her.
She slithered into it, and suddenly fell. It had no bottom. She slid down past narrow rocky walls into chilling dampness and the suffocating dark.
25
Better than
Human
Dreaming again, yet somehow aware that it was more than just a dream, Belcraft became one with Alphamega. In flight from the gringos, he shared her grief for Vic and cringed when she felt Panchito’s pain. The red-haloed chopper roaring close behind, he crawled with her under the fence and tumbled with her into the arroyo. They hid together in the clump of brush, scrambled together into the little cave.
Together, they dropped into the pit. It was narrow and bottomless, cold and wet and black and dreadful, and the rough walls shrank around them as they fell. It snagged and scratched and bruised them, squeezing closer till it stopped them cruelly, held so tight they could barely breathe.
He woke in the hospital bed, chilled with the sweat of her terror, ‘gasping for his own breath. He must have made some outcry, because a nurse hurried in to feel his pulse and ask what was wrong.
“Just dreaming,” he told her. “Jittery, I guess, from that explosion.”
But the thing had been too real for a dream. Meg had been her paradoxic self, her trouble desperate. Vic dead, Panchito wounded and probably under sedation in some Army hospital, he was the only friend she could reach. However she had reached him—he tried not to wonder about that.
She had to be helped.
As soon as he could get there. A whole day and more must have passed since she fell into what she called el hoyo. An abandoned well, perhaps, which should have been plugged or covered. Wedged there, hurt, barely able to breathe. How long could she live?
He had no notion. Vic had equipped her with resources no merely human being had ever possessed. Her survival in the dust was proof enough of that. Yet, clearly, she had come to the end of what she knew how to do for herself. When the nurse was gone, he looked at his watch. Four-eighteen. He dialed Billy Higgs. The phone rang a long time before he heard Billy’s groggy-sounding voice.
“Sax? What the hell?”
“Billy, I hate like everything to wreck your sleep at this time of night.” He tried to sound sane. “But something has come up. Terribly urgent. Can you get down here? PDQ!”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“Please, Billy. I need help—bad! Nothing I can try to explain on the phone. Just get into your duds and come on down.”
“Sax, old man, I had a late night—”
“Listen, Billy! If I ever needed you, it’s now!”
“Okay,” Billy muttered. “But you’d better make sense.”
He washed his face and got into the clothing Miss Hearn had brought. He was sitting by the bed when the nurse let Billy follow her in. Unshaven and puffy-eyed, he looked as if his night had been far too late.
“What’s up, Doc?” He managed a feeble grin for the nurse. “An OB emergency?”
Belcraft waited for the nurse to go.
“A pretty grim emergency,” he said then. “Back near where Enfield was. I’ve got to get there as fast as I can. Billy, I want to borrow your car—”
He saw Billy’s startled dismay.
“They say the fire totaled mine. I need the car and whatever cash you happen to have on you. You know I got out of the house in just my pajamas. Wallet gone. Credit cards. Everything.”
“Driver’s license?”
He had to nod.
“Really, old man—” Billy stopped to frown as if he had been a difficult witness on the stand. “I can’t guess what’s got into you, but you sure as hell ain’t fit to drive again. Not without a license. Or unless you can do some pretty tall explaining.”
“Sit down, Billy. Please!” He gestured at the other chair. “It’s nothing you’ll want to believe, but here’s why I’ve got to get there. You see—You see—”
He had to search for some sane way to say it.
“I found a—found a little being there in the dust of Enfield that had survived after everything else was dead. Something—well, synthetic, though the word seems too cold for her. She’s a creation of genetic engineering. There’s evidence that the engineer was my brother.”
Billy’s eyes had narrowed critically.
“My kid brother, Victor.”
“I never heard of him.”
“Guess I never talked about him. We weren’t close, not in recent years. But I did have a brother. We both studied medicine. Brought up to it. But Vic never practiced. Went into molecular biology. Following a crazy dream that he could create better kinds of life than nature did.”
“Or God?”
“He never put it quite that way, but General Clegg does.” Jarred off the track, he had to recover himself. “Vic was never satisfied with what we are. Dreamed of something that might repair all our defects, make us better than we are. One notion was a benign Virus. An artificial organism that would repair defects, heal every illness. Maybe even reverse the decay of age. He was at EnGene for years. Too busy, I guess, to keep in touch with me.”
Billy was frowning, gingerly shaking his hung-over head as if the shaking hurt it.
“Anyhow, there’s this new being—” In the face of that stubborn doubt, he had to collect himself again. “No way to tell you what she is until you’ve known her, but she’s different in a lot of ways from any natural being I know about. In some ways at least, certainly superior. Whatever hit Enfield didn’t touch her. She called me for help just now, across a good many hundred miles—don’t ask me how.”
Looking blank, Billy grunted.
“Call her Meg. Vic named her Alphamega. Not human at all, but maybe—maybe better. You have to feel what she is. Good—the first thing you feel is a sort of warm, total goodness. Intelligent. Lovable—really lovable. And in dreadful trouble now.”
“Huh?” Billy squinted blearily. “What sort of trouble.”
“You see, the military connects her with whatever wiped out Enfield.” He looked into Billy’s unbelieving face and slowed his voice, trying hard to make some kind of sense. “General Clegg wants to get his hands on her because he thinks she could be the key to a biological super-weapon. She does have powers—gifts I don’t understand. But they aren’t enough to save her now.”
“What’s all this got to do with you?”
“I’m a suspect, because I brought her out of the ruins and then let her go. Not that I’m sorry I did it, because they’ll kill her in the lab if they ever catch her. Cut her up and analyze the tissues, trying to find out what she is.
“She has been hiding somewhere inside the military perimeter. Night before last she got out. Crawled under the fence. Running from a chopper, she dived into a hole that turned out to be an abandoned water well.”
“Sax, you haven’t been drinking?”
“Not here.”
“If you expect anybody—” Billy shook his head, scowling li
ke a judge on the bench. “If all this happened after you left, how do you keep up with—whatever you say she is?”
He had to shake his head.
“I wish I could explain. I guess I could say telepathy, but I never took much stock in Joseph Rhine and all the claims for ESP. Now I just don’t know. It is some sort of mental contact. Seems to happen only when I’m asleep. But, Billy—” He wanted to grab Billy Higgs, shake out the disbelief. “It’s real. She used it last night to save my life.”
“If all this happened while you were asleep—”
“Listen, Billy! I wouldn’t be here if that hadn’t happened. Meg knew—I can’t imagine how, but she knew the house was going to burn. She warned me—in what did seem like a dream—to get out fast. I woke up, and knew it was more than a dream. I got out, barely in time. One more reason I’ve got to help her now.”
“Why you?” Billy stabbed a knobby finger at him. “If you say she has fallen in a well, why can’t you get somebody on the spot to pull her out? Be reasonable, Sax. Get on the phone. Call the local sheriff. The state police. The fire department. Whoever—”
“Billy!” He tried to smooth his desperation. “I can’t do that. Not .with Clegg hunting her. He has already called in the FBI and the local cops and everybody else. She’d rather die in the well than let him butcher her. You are the only person I feel like trusting.”
“Don’t trust me too far.” Billy stiffened. “I’m your attorney. No co-conspirator. I’m sorry, Sax, but if I thought all this was something more than the shock of whatever happened to you in Enfield and the effects of that blast and the drugs they’ve had you under—” He squinted like an unconvinced judge. “If you don’t realize what you’re asking, any aid to you in this time of emergency could be construed as conspiracy to commit high treason.”
“All I want is help to get back there. The loan of your car. Cash for gas and whatever else I’ll need. Rope, I guess. Maybe digging tools. Is that—” His voice tried to tremble. “Is that too much?”
“Take a minute, Doc.” Billy frowned judicially. “Let’s think this through. I know your professional situation—Miss Hearn came to me while you were out of pocket. Your—let’s call it your odd behavior is going to make people wonder if you weren’t exposed to whatever hit Enfield. Unless you shape up and stick to business, your medical practice is dead.”
“I’ll get back when I can. But Meg’s dying in that pit right now. I’ve got to move—”
“Doc! Look at the facts!” Billy stabbed that skinny forefinger at his nose. “Your practice is already gone to hell. Cash flow down to nothing. Bank balance gone and bills still rolling in. The insurance people and the law asking too many questions about that fire. Your only chance is to stay right here. Forget this Alphamega and your wonder-working brother and whatever you say is going on back there in Enfield. Open up the office and explain what you can to the cops—but I wouldn’t tell anybody what you’ve just been telling me.”
“Billy, I can’t—”
“One thing more.” Billy raised his hand. “Personal, not professional. I called Midge last night to tell her you were home; she knew you were missing, and she’s been anxious. I heard her sobbing when she tried to thank me for the call. She was happy you’re back, upset when I had to tell her you were hospitalized. Distressed with what I felt forced to say about the story you’ve been telling to cover your absence.
“She wants to talk to you, Sax. She says there’s never been anybody else she really cared about. She misses you and the house and Fort Madison. I think she’d agree to try again. If you’ll just settle down to business like that wise old M.D. you say your father was—”
“Call her for me. Tell her I’m terribly sorry. But the fact is, Billy—” He shook his head. “It’s something I guess I can’t really explain. You won’t understand. I know Midge wouldn’t. Nobody would without knowing Meg. But the fact is I’m more concerned for her than I’ll ever be for Midge. I guess you think I’m crazy, but I’ve got to pull her out of that well.”
“Really, Sax!” Billy looked hurt. “I can’t let you throw away all you’ve got and all you can ever hope to have, just for this wild dream. It does seem crazy, if you’ll let me say so.”
“Crazy or not, I can’t let her die.”
“I won’t play shrink.” Billy shrugged. “I think you ought to talk to Mathis or Meissen. I guess you’re in no mood for that, but there are facts you’ve got to face. You’re a patient here, still under treatment for shock or whatever. You can’t leave till you’re discharged.
“And something else.” Billy stopped to squint at him, bleary features suddenly tight. “If you really think there’s somebody out to kill you, you’re in big trouble, Sax. Bigger than you seem to realize.”
“I do realize.” He nodded unhappily. “But I’m desperate to get Meg out of the pit.” Voice shaking, he caught at Billy’s arm. “You’re my lawyer. You can cover for me. Let me have your car and whatever cash—”
“Suppose I do?” Billy’s frown bit deeper. “Look at what can happen. I don’t know who blew up your house. If you really didn’t do it, some very clever person is out to get you. No matter who did it, you’re under suspicion of arson. They haven’t got evidence to nail you, but skipping out now would look like an open confession.
“Driving with no license, you could be picked up for any cause or none. If you’re caught lending aid to this Alphamega—assuming your little synthetic friend is real—your friend Clegg will hang you up by your thumbs and use your hide for dart practice.”
Owlishly, he scowled.
“Want to risk all that?”
“I do.”
“If you really do—” Billy got to his feet. “It’s your own funeral. Personally, I don’t think this genetic wonder exists anywhere outside your sick imagination. That will be my own defense, if I’m accused of anything. But we’ve been good friends, and I don’t judge my friends.”
“Thank—” His voice caught. “I hope you’re never sorry!”
“Thank my parents, Sax, if you thank anybody. They swear you’ve saved both their lives. They can’t wait to see you back at the office.” Billy was digging into his pockets. “The front doors are locked at this time of night. I left the car in back, parked to the right of the emergency entrance. The tan-colored Buick I bought last year—a sweet little car, and I hope to get it back.”
“I can’t promise anything.”
“I see why.” Billy gave him the keys, and dug again. “Here’s one stroke of luck for you. I played poker last night. Pulled in nearly three hundred. Just leave me a five for taxi fare back to the house. Here you are.” Billy thrust the roll of bills at him. “Wish I could to believe your dream creature is all you say she is.”
Tears in his eyes, he stuffed the money into his pockets and reached to grip Billy’s hand.
“Better check the gas. And luck to you, Sax!” Billy opened the door. “I’ll walk down the hall and try to occupy the nurses. Tell ‘em how keen you are to get back to your practice and ask ‘em when they think this new doc will let you go. You walk out back; you know the way.”
26
Homo
Ultimus
He knew the way, and nobody stopped him. Outside, the early summer dawn was already breaking. He found nobody .waiting to trap him in the parking lot. Driving out, and on through empty streets to the highway, he watched the rearview mirror. Nobody followed. Nobody he could see. Maybe he was lucky.
The Buick was a sweet little car, but the gas gauge stood on empty. He pulled off the road at the first truck stop to fill the tank and drink two cups of coffee. Driving on, afraid of cops and afraid for Meg, he set the cruise control at a safe-seeming fifty-nine and kept an eye on the little mirror. Cars seemed to follow, but never for long. A few were farm vehicles that soon left the road. Most passed and disappeared ahead. Perhaps his luck would hold.
The day was fine, but it dragged on forever. He wasn’t so fit as he had felt. Reaction, he tho
ught, from the blast and whatever medications that eager young doc had ordered for him. His hip ached from a bruise he hadn’t felt before, and he got groggy at the wheel. At midmorning, he stopped at a hardware store in a little town beyond the Missouri to buy a flashlight and a hundred feet of nylon rope and a shovel.
He caught nobody watching him, yet his unease clung. If somebody had blown up the house, intending him to die, they must know the effort had failed. If Watchdog had set him free, hoping he would lead them to where Meg was hiding, they could easily be tracing him by some sophisticated means.
Yet, whatever the risks might be for him, it was Meg that mattered. The gas tank full again, a container of coffee and a hamburger to go lying forgotten on the seat beside him, he drove on. On. On. He caught the car swerving toward the other lane. Shaking, he stopped at the next service station to top off the tank and use the rest room and drink the cold coffee.
It was late afternoon when he came to sign that read ENFIELD 20. The perimeter gate, not yet in view, would be another four or five miles ahead. He pulled off the highway on a narrow side road and bumped west through rocky pastures that must have been forest till the trees were cut, and prosperous farmland till the topsoil was gone. The few homes he passed looked deserted, fallen into slow decay and abandoned now since the panic.
Nobody followed. Nobody he saw.
At the bottom of a shallow valley, he crossed a flimsy-looking bridge and pulled off the road into the cover of a clump of trees beside the creek. He left the car there. Walking on, carrying the flashlight and shovel, the rope coiled over his shoulder, he heard a chopper’s heavy throb and soon found it low ahead, cruising along the perimeter.
Maybe alerted to watch for him? Not that it mattered. Whatever the danger, he couldn’t turn back. He dropped flat until its beat had faded, and then hiked on. Except for that hamburger, gone soggily clammy before he remembered it, he hadn’t eaten anything. Suddenly, now, he felt weak with hunger and fatigue. Though the spot where Meg crossed the fence must be somewhere ahead, he found no landmarks he recalled from the dream. The fence must be farther than he had thought.
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