"They did?"
"Yes. I don't know what's happened on that. I just know the organization is extremely interested in the history of the Mayfair family. They seem to feel they have a proprietary interest. They've been calling me night and day about this since I contacted the family. I'll see one of them--Aaron Lightner--tomorrow morning in New Orleans. I'll find out if they know anything else."
Lark opened the door and walked towards the elevator, Mitch coming behind him hastily and awkwardly and then staring in his usual confused and unfocused way as Lark pressed the button and the elevator doors opened.
"Gotta go now, old boy," said Lark. "You want to come with me?"
"Not on your life. I'm going right back into the lab. If you don't call me tomorrow--"
"I'll call you. In the meantime, this is all--"
"--totally under wraps. I mean totally. Is there something in the Keplinger Institute that isn't under wraps? It's a secret buried in a forest of secrets. Don't worry about that part. No one has access to that computer in my office but me. No one could find the files if they did gain access. Don't worry. This is regular for Keplinger. Someday I'll tell you some of our stories...with names and dates changed of course."
"Good man. I'll call you tomorrow."
Lark took Mitch's hand.
"Don't leave me dangling, Lark. This thing could breed with Rowan! And if this thing did..."
"I'll call you."
Lark caught one last glimpse of Mitch, standing there, staring, before the elevator doors closed. He remembered Rowan's words on the phone. "There's one guy at the Keplinger Institute who can be trusted with this. You have to get him. Mitch Flanagan. Tell him I said this is worth his time."
Rowan had been dead right on that one. Mitch was that man all right. Lark had no fears there.
But as he drove to the airport he had plenty of fears about Rowan. He'd thought she had gone insane when he first heard her voice long distance and her warnings that the call might abruptly be cut off.
The whole problem was, all this was very exciting to Lark. It had been from the start. Rowan's phone call, the samples themselves, the subsequent series of discoveries, even this bizarre New Orleans family. Lark had never experienced anything like this in his life. He wished he could feel more worry and less exhilaration. He was off on an adventure, taking an open-ended holiday from his life at University Hospital, and he couldn't wait to see these people in New Orleans--to see the house there that Rowan had inherited, and the man she had married--the family for whom Rowan had given up her entire medical career.
It was raining harder by the time he reached the airport. But Lark for years had traveled in all kinds of weather and this meant nothing to him, any more than snow in Chicago, or monsoons in Japan.
He hurried to the First Class counter to pick up his ticket and was on his way to the gate within minutes, timing it just exactly right. The flight to New Orleans was boarding now.
Of course there was the whole problem of this creature itself, he realized. He had not begun to separate out that mystery from the mystery of Rowan and her family. And for the first time, he had to admit to himself, he wasn't sure he believed that this thing existed. He knew Rowan existed. But this offspring? Then he realized something else. Mitch Flanagan absolutely believed this being existed. And so did this Talamasca which kept calling him. And so did Rowan herself!
Of course this thing existed. There was as much proof of its existence as there is of bubonic plague.
Lark was the last one to reach the gate. Great timing, he thought again, no waiting, no standing.
Just as he handed his ticket to the young stewardess, someone took his arm.
"Dr. Larkin."
He saw a tall robust man, very young, blond with near-colorless eyes.
"Yes, I'm Dr. Larkin," he answered. What he wanted to say was Not now.
"Erich Stolov. I spoke to you on the phone." The man flashed a little white card in front of Lark. Lark didn't have a free hand to take it. Then the stewardess took his ticket and he took the card.
"Talamasca, you told me."
"Where are the samples?"
"What samples?"
"The ones Rowan sent you."
"Look, I can't..."
"Tell me where they are, please, now."
"I beg your pardon. I'll do nothing of the sort. Now if you want to call me in New Orleans I'll be seeing your friend Aaron Lightner there tomorrow afternoon."
"Where are the samples?" said the young man, and he suddenly slipped in front of Lark, blocking the entrance to the plane.
Lark dropped his voice to a whisper. "Get out of my way." He was instantly and irreparably furious. He wanted to shove this guy against the wall.
"Please, sir," the stewardess very quietly said to Stolov. "Unless you have a ticket for this flight, you'll have to leave the gate now."
"That's right. Leave the gate," said Lark, his temper cresting. "How dare you approach me like this!" And then he pushed past the young man and stormed down the ramp, heart pounding, sweat pouring down under his clothes.
"Damned son of a bitch, how dare he?" he muttered aloud.
Five minutes after takeoff, he was on the portable phone. The connection was abominable and he could never hear a thing on airline phones anyway, but he managed to reach Mitch.
"Just don't tell anybody anything about any of it," he said over and over.
"Got you," said Mitch. "No one knows anything, I assure you. I have fifty technicians working on fifty pieces of the puzzle. I am the only one who sees the picture. No one will get into this building, this office, or these files."
"Tomorrow, Mitch, I'll call you." Lark rang off. "Arrogant bastard," he whispered as he replaced the phone. And Lightner had been such a nice man. Very British, very Old World, very formal when they'd spoken on the phone. Who were these people, the Talamasca?
And were they really friends of Rowan Mayfair as they claimed? Just didn't seem so.
He sat back; he tried to think through his long conversation with Mitch, tried to relive his phone conversation with Rowan. Molecular evolution; DNA; cell membranes. All of it frightened and enthralled him.
The stewardess put a fresh drink in his hand; nice double martini for which he had not even had to ask. He drank a good icy swallow.
Then he remembered with a start that Mitch had told him he could produce a three-dimensional computer projection of what this creature looked like. Why the hell hadn't he taken a look, for god's sakes? Of course all he would have seen was some crazy neon drawing on the screen, an outline. What did Mitch know about the way the creature really lo
oked? Was it ugly for instance? Or was it beautiful?
He found himself trying to picture it, this thin reed of a being with the large brain and the incredibly long hands.
Four
ONE HOUR UNTIL Ash Wednesday. All was quiet in the small house on the Gulf with its many doors open to the white beach. The stars hung low over the distant dark horizon, a mere stroke of light between heaven and sea. The soft wind swept through the small rooms of the house, beneath the low ceilings, bringing a tropical freshness to every nook and cranny, though the little house itself was cold.
Gifford didn't care. Bundled in a long huge Shetland wool turtleneck, and legs snug in wool stockings, she enjoyed the chill of the breeze as much as the fierce and specific heat coming from the busy fire. The cold, the smell of the water, the smell of the fire--all of it was Florida in winter for Gifford, her hideaway, her refuge, her safe place to be.
She lay on the couch opposite the hearth, staring at the white ceiling, watching the play of the light on it, and wondering in a passive, uncurious sort of way, what it was about Destin that made her so happy--why it had always been such a perfect escape from the perpetual gloom of her life at home. She'd inherited this little beach house from her Great-grandmother Dorothy, on her father's side, and over the years, she had spent her most contented moments here.
Gifford wasn't happy now, however. She was only less miserable than she would have been if she had stayed in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and she knew it. She knew this misery. She knew this tension. And she knew that she could not have gone to the old First Street house on Mardi Gras, no matter how much she might have wanted to, or how guilty she felt for running away.
Mardi Gras in Destin, Florida. Might as well have been any day of the year. Clean and quiet, and removed from all the ugliness of the parades, the crowds, the garbage littering St. Charles Avenue, the relatives drinking and arguing, and her beloved husband, Ryan, carrying on as if Rowan Mayfair had not run away and left her husband, Michael Curry, as if there had not been some sort of bloody struggle on Christmas Day at First Street, as if everything could be smoothed over and tightened up, and reinforced by a series of careful legal pronouncements and predictions, when in fact, everything was falling apart.