Sole Survivor

‘Bite on this,’ the guard said, indulging in one last bleat of hopeless bravado, and then he did as he was told.

Three times, Joshua wound electrician’s tape around the guard’s head and across his mouth, fixing the Ace bandage firmly in place.

From the watchman’s belt, Mark unclipped what appeared to be a remote control. ‘This open the driveway gate?’

Through his gag, the watchman snarled something obscene, which issued as a meaningless mumble.

‘Probably the gate.’

To the guard, Joshua said, ‘Just relax. Don’t chafe your wrists. We’re not robbing the place. We’re really not. We’re only passing through.’

Mark said, ‘When we’ve been gone half an hour, we’ll call the cops so they can come and release you.’

‘Better get a dog,’ Joshua advised.

Taking the watchman’s flashlight, Mark led them toward the front of the house.

The confrontation had occurred and been successfully resolved, with aplomb and with as little injury to the watchman as possible, in slightly more than one minute. Whoever these guys were, Joe was glad that they were on his side.

The estate occupied at least three acres. The huge house was set two hundred feet back from the front property wall at the street.

In the eye of the wide, looping driveway was a four-tier marble fountain: four broad scalloped bowls, each supported by three leaping dolphins, bowls and dolphins diminishing in scale as they ascended. The bowls were full of water, but the pump was silent, and there were no spouts or cascades.

‘We’ll wait here,’ Mark said, leading them to the dolphins.

The dolphins and bowls rose out of a pool with a two-foot-high wall finished with a broad cap of limestone. Rose sat on the edge —and then so did Joe and Mark.

Taking the remote control they had gotten from the watchman, Joshua walked along the driveway toward the entrance gate, talking on the cellular phone as he went.

Dogs of warm Santa Ana wind chased cat-quick leaves and curls of papery melaleuca bark along the blacktop.

‘How do you even know about me?’ Rose asked Mark.

‘When any enterprise is launched with a one-billion-dollar trust fund, like ours,’ Mark said, ‘it sure doesn’t take long to get up to speed. Besides, computers and data technology are what we’re about.’

‘What enterprise?’ Joe asked.

The answer was the same mystifying response that Joshua had given on the beach, ‘In finna face.’

‘And what’s that mean?’

‘Later, Joe,’ Rose promised. ‘Go on, Mark.’

‘Well, so, from day one, we’ve had the funds to try to keep track of all promising research in every discipline, worldwide, that could conceivably lead to the epiphany we expect.’

‘Maybe so,’ Rose said, ‘but you people have been around two years, while the largest part of my research for the past seven years has been conducted under the tightest imaginable security.’

‘Doctor, you showed enormous promise in your field until you were about thirty-seven — and then suddenly your work appeared to come almost to a complete halt except for a minor paper published here or there from time to time. You were a Niagara of creativity — and then went dry overnight.’

‘And that indicates what to you?’

‘It’s the signature pattern of a scientist who’s been co-opted by the defence establishment or some other branch of government with sufficient power to enforce a total information blackout. So when we see something like that, we start trying to find out exactly where you’re at work. Finally we located you at Teknologik, but not at any of their well-known and accessible facilities. A deep subterranean, biologically secure complex near Manassas, Virginia. Something called “Project Ninety-nine.”

While he listened intently to the conversation, Joe watched as, out at the end of the long driveway, the ornate electric gate rolled aside.

‘How much do you know about what we do on Project Ninety-nine?’ Rose asked.

‘Not enough,’ Mark said.

‘How can you know anything at all?’

‘When I say we track ongoing research worldwide, I don’t mean that we limit ourselves to the same publications and shared data banks that any science library has available to it.’

With no animosity, Rose said, ‘That’s a nice way of saying you try to penetrate computer security systems, hack your way in, break encryptions.’

‘Whatever. We don’t do it for profit. We don’t economically exploit the information we acquire. It’s simply our mission, the search we were created to undertake.’

Joe was surprised by his own patience. Although he was learning things by listening to them talk — the basic mystery only grew deeper. Yet he was prepared to wait for answers. The bizarre experience with the Polaroid snapshot in the banquet room had left him shaken. Now that he’d had time to think about what had happened, the synesthesia seemed to be but prelude to some revelation that was going to be more shattering and humbling than he had previously imagined. He remained committed to learning the truth, but now instinct warned him that he should allow the revelations to wash over him in small waves instead of in one devastating tsunami.

Joshua had gone through the open gate and was standing along the Pacific Coast Highway.

Over the eastern hills, the swollen moon ascended yellow-orange, and the warm wind seemed to blow down out of it.

Mark said, ‘You were one of thousands of researchers whose work we followed — though you were of somewhat special interest because of the extreme secrecy at Project Ninety-nine. Then, a year ago, you left Manassas with something from the project, and overnight you were the most wanted person in the country. Even after you supposedly died aboard that airliner in Colorado. Even then . . . people were looking for you, lots of people, expending considerable resources, searching frantically for a dead woman —which seemed pretty weird to us.’

Rose said nothing to encourage him. She seemed tired.

Joe took her hand. She was trembling, but she squeezed his hand as if to assure him that she was all right.

‘Then we began to intercept reports from a certain clandestine police agency. . . reports that said you were alive and active in the L.A. area, that it involved families who’d lost loved ones on Flight 353. We set up some surveillance of our own. We’re pretty good at it. Some of us are ex-military. Anyway, you could say we watched the watchers who were keeping tab on people like Joe here. And now. . . I guess it’s a good thing we did.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘But you don’t know what you’re get­ting into here. There’s not just glory . . . there’s terrible danger.’

‘Dr. Tucker,’ Mark persisted, ‘there are over nine thousand of us now, and we’ve committed our lives to what we do. We’re not afraid. And now we believe that you may have found the interface — and that it’s very different from anything we quite anticipated. If you’ve actually made that breakthrough. . . if humanity is at that pivot point in history when everything is going to change radically and forever . . . then we are your natural allies.’

‘I think you are,’ she agreed.

Gently but persistently selling her on this alliance, Mark said, ‘Doctor, we both have set ourselves against those forces of igno­rance and fear and self-interest that want to keep the world in darkness.’

‘Remember, I once worked for them.’

‘But turned.’

A car swung off Pacific Coast Highway and paused to pick up Joshua. It was followed through the gate and along the driveway by a second car.

Rose, Mark, and Joe got to their feet as the two vehicles — a Ford trailed by a Mercedes — circled the fountain and stopped in front of them.

Joshua stepped from the passenger door of the Ford, and a young brunette woman got out from behind the steering wheel. The Mercedes was driven by an Asian man of about thirty.

They all gathered before Rose Tucker, and for a moment every­one stood in silence.

The steadily escalating wind no longer spoke merely through the rustling foliage of the trees, through the cricket-rasping branches of the shrubbery, and through the hollow flutelike music issuing from the eaves of the mansion, for now it also enjoyed a voice of its own: a haunted keening that curled chillingly in listening ears, akin to the muted but frightful ululant crying of coyote packs chasing down prey in some far canyon of the night.

In the landscape lights, the shuddering greenery cast nervous shadows, and the gradually paling moon gazed at itself in the shiny surfaces of the automobiles.

Watching these four people as they watched Rose, Joe realized that they regarded the scientist not solely with curiosity but with wonder, perhaps even with awe, as though they stood in the presence of someone transcendent. Someone holy.

‘I’m surprised to see every one of you in mufti,’ Rose said.

They smiled, and Joshua said, ‘Two years ago, when we first set out on this mission, we were reasonably quiet about it. Didn’t want to excite a lot of media interest. . . because we thought we’d largely be misunderstood. What we didn’t expect was that we’d have enemies. And enemies so violent.’

‘So powerful,’ Mark said.

‘We thought everyone would want to know the answers we were seeking — if we ever found them. Now we know better.’

‘Ignorance is a bliss that some people will kill for,’ said the young woman.

‘So a year ago,’ Joshua continued, ‘we adopted the robes as a distraction. People understand us as a cult — or think they do. We’re more acceptable when we’re viewed as fanatics, neatly labelled and confined to a box. We don’t make people quite so nervous.’

Robes.

Astonished, Joe said, ‘You wear blue robes, shave your heads.’

Joshua said, ‘Some of us do, yes, as of a year ago — and those in the uniform pretend to be the entire membership. That’s what I meant when I said the robes are a distraction — the robes, the shaved heads, the earrings, the visible communal enclaves. The rest of us have gone underground, where we can do the work without being spied on, subjected to harassment, and easily infiltrated.’

‘Come with us,’ the young woman said to Rose. ‘We know you may have found the way, and we want to help you bring it to the world — without interference.’

Rose moved to her and put a hand against her cheek, much as she had touched Joe in the cemetery. ‘I might be with you soon, but not tonight. I need more time to think, to plan. And I’m in a hurry to see a young girl, a child, who is at the centre of what is happening.’

Nina, Joe thought, and his heart shuddered like the shadows of the wind-shaken trees.

Rose moved to the Asian man and touched him too. ‘I can tell you this much . . . we stand on the threshold you foresaw. We will go through that door, maybe not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next week, but in the years ahead.’

She went to Joshua. ‘Together we will see the world change forever, bring the light of knowledge into the great dark loneliness of human existence. In our time.’

And finally she approached Mark. ‘I assume you brought two cars because you were prepared to give one to Joe and me.’

‘Yes. But we hoped—’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘Soon but not tonight. I’ve got urgent business, Mark. Everything we hope to achieve hangs in the balance right now, hangs so precariously — until I can reach the little girl I mentioned.’

‘Wherever she is, we can take you to her.’

‘No. Joe and I must do this alone — and quickly.’

‘You can take the Ford.’

‘Thank you.’

Mark withdrew a folded one-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to Rose. ‘There are just eight digits in the serial number on this bill. Ignore the fourth digit, and the other seven are a phone number in the three-one-oh area code.’

Rose tucked the bill into her jeans.

‘When you’re ready to join us,’ Mark said, ‘or if you’re ever in trouble you can’t ‘get out of, ask for me at that number. We’ll come for you no matter where you are.’

She kissed him on the cheek. ‘We’ve got to go.’ She turned to Joe, ‘Will you drive?’

‘Yes.’

To Joshua, she said, ‘May I take your cell phone?’

He gave it to her.

Wings of furious wind beat around them as they got into the Ford. The keys were in the ignition.

As Rose pulled the car door shut, she said, ‘Oh, Jesus,’ and leaned forward, gasping for breath.

‘You are hurt.’

‘Told you. I got knocked around.’

‘Where’s it hurt?’

‘We’ve got to get across the city,’ Rose said, ‘but I don’t want to go back past Mahalia’s.’

‘You could have a broken rib or two.’

Ignoring him, she sat up straight, and her breathing improved as she said, ‘The creeps won’t want to risk setting up a roadblock and a traffic check without cooperation from the local authorities, and they don’t have time to get that. But you can bet your ass they’ll be watching passing cars.’

‘If you’ve got a broken rib, it could puncture a lung.’

‘Joe, damn it, we don’t have time. We’ve got to move if we’re going to keep our girl alive.’

He stared at her. ‘Nina?’

She met his eyes. She said, ‘Nina,’ but then a fearful look came into her face, and she turned from him.

‘We can head north from here on PCH,’ he said, ‘then inland on Kanan-Dume Road. That’s a county route up to Augora Hills. There we can get the one-oh-one east to the two-ten.’

‘Go for it.’

Faces powdered by moonlight, hair wind-tossed, the four who would leave in the Mercedes stood watching, back dropped by leaping stone dolphins and thrashing trees.

This tableau struck Joe as both exhilarating and ominous — and he could not identify the basis of either perception, other than to admit that the night was charged with an uncanny power that was beyond his understanding. Everything his gaze fell upon seemed to have monumental significance, as if he were in a state of heightened consciousness, and even the moon appeared different from any moon that he had ever seen before.

As Joe put the Ford in gear and began to pull away from the fountain, the young woman came forward to place her hand against the window beside Rose Tucker’s face. On this side of the glass, Rose matched her palm to the other. The young woman was crying, her lovely face glimmering with moon-bright tears, and she moved with the car along the driveway, hurrying as it picked up speed, matching her hand to Rose’s all the way to the gate before at last pulling back.