robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (9 page)

She ran for the door. No one moved to stop her. She kept going.

Had she actually seen what she thought she'd seen? Was it her imagination? It must have been a trick of the light, an illusion based on fears and congruities. It couldn't have been real.

But what if it was?

If L'Hereaux was Bennett in disguise, had he always been, or had the elf only recently displaced the true L'Hereaux? In either case, why? What did the elf prince want? Had he wanted her to recognize him? And if so, why?

Thinking about Bennett's involvement made her head hurt. She didn't have time to deal with it now; she had to worry about herself. She had to get out, or waste the effect of her spell. She headed topside, longing for the clear air and open sky. No one moved to stop the angry doctor. They knew better; she had top clearances. For a few minutes more, anyway.

No one barred her way at the entrance, but the wary-eyed guards watched her as if she were some kind of wild animal. She didn't care what they thought as long as they let her go.

She left the complex.

They weren't going to be happy with her after this. They'd wanted to know what she had learned in the otherworld, and she'd given them a demonstration of what she could do now. Maybe she'd best consider it her resignation.

Would they let her resign?

They could try to stop her. She was still hot with anger and indignation as she stamped down the lane toward her cottage. Let them try!

CHAPTER

4

Time had passed.

How much?

It was hard to tell without sight or sound or scent.

Dust was a taste familiar. Motion a feeling grown strange over... time. How strange time had grown.

Time passed.

He knew he was drifting. He knew he was hungry. He knew he needed nourishment.

There were auras around him, nearing him and drawing away, darting about like hummingbirds seeking nectar.

Too fast, too fast.

He waited. Time was his. Patience was his. The reward, when it came, would be his.

The bright hummingbirds brought him to a place of cold and dark. Abandoned him, taking away their light and heat. A ploy to entrap him? No. They returned with a cold artificial light that he felt though he could not see it.

His hunger returned as well. He felt its heat.

He felt their heat. The light beckoned him.

He wanted.

He needed.

One flickered close, lingering.

Unaware.

There was no sign to avoid on this one.

He rejoiced.

He took the light, sucking it down, feeding his hunger, warming his self.

Light beat against lids long closed. He had sight again. He declined to use it. He had strength again, but so very little. He was still so very weak.

The hummingbirds flitted about, still too quick.

He could wait.

Pamela Martinez was surprised that Nakaguchi invited her to attend the installation of his prize. Presumably he wanted to demonstrate his command of the Project. Pamela had considered finding something else to do, but Nakaguchi was going to be using the Nieumann Lab at the Brookfield Chemogenics Facility, a lab which, prior to Nakaguchi's usurpation, she had shepherded. She had personally approved the purchase orders for every item of equipment that had gone into the lab. She had seen to it that the Nieumann Lab was one of the best in the world, a cutting edge facility for biochemical and biomedical research. She wanted to know what Nakaguchi had done to it.

And now, standing in the observation bay of Lab 1, she did. The dark and shriveled thing Nakaguchi had hauled back from the Andes looked totally out of place on the shining lab table. Its ugliness dominated the chamber. It looked as dead as any mummy she'd seen in a museum. Deader, possibly. Or maybe it was just the contrast with so much shining machinery dedicated to life.

A bevy of technicians in green medical scrubs complete with masks were scattered around the periphery of the lab, setting up monitors, manning workstations, and adjusting machines. Some stood in clumps, discussing things in voices that carried over the interphone as no more than a buzz. One figure separated itself from a clump and walked toward the observation window. The man bowed toward the observation bay. Pamela noted the caduceus symbol on his greens and read the name tag: Hasukawa.

"I am ready to begin the preliminary examination, Nak-aguchi-sama," Hasukawa said.

"Proceed, Hasukawa-san."

"Is that Matsuo Hasukawa?" Pamela asked.

Without taking his eyes away from the scene in the lab, Nakaguchi replied, "None other."

Hasukawa was a world-renowned geriatrics specialist. What expertise did he bring to the examination of a centuries-old corpse? Why was he here at all? "Just what are you trying to prove here, Nakaguchi? Your 'sleeper' hasn't shown any sign of being more than a well-preserved mummy."

"You're mistaken, Ms. Martinez."

"Unfortunately," Hagen said.

Hasukawa moved to the table and began his examination. Whatever the doctor was doing, it wasn't particularly visible from the observation bay. She turned her attention to the others in the lab, trying to make sense out of the collection of machines and the contents of the displays. One of the untended monitors blipped to life, a green squiggle tracing a sluggish path across the screen.

Someone in the lab shouted.

Hasukawa was staggering away from the examination table, clutching at his chest. He fell to the floor. Technicians abandoned their stations and rushed to the fallen doctor.

"It looks like a heart attack," said someone. "He's fading

fast."

Nakaguchi leaned over the mike for the interphone. "Get him to the hospital."

One of the green-coated men around the fallen Hasukawa looked up at the window. He had a caduceus on his greens. "I don't think there's time. Best we work on him here. We have everything we need."

"Respiratory arrest," one of the others said.

The doctor started to turn back, but Nakaguchi's shout froze him.

"I said get him to the hospital. That is standard procedure. That is what you will do. You may accompany him if you wish."

The doctor gave the window a last glance and went to work on Hasukawa. Nakaguchi turned to one of his aides, Kurita, the security specialist. "See that my orders are carried out."

"Ho!"
Kurita said with a sharp bow. It was the sort of precision you saw in old samurai vids and it chilled Pamela. The aide left the observation bay at a run. In seconds he was in the lab with a squad of security men and a gurney. They pulled the doctor away from his resuscitation attempt and loaded Hasukawa onto the gurney. The doctor glared at the window for a second, then ran after the departing security men.

Pamela stared at Nakaguchi. The doctor in the lab was right; by the time they reached the hospital, it would likely be too late to revive Hasukawa. Nakaguchi was condemning him to death.

"You'll be to blame if he dies."

Nakaguchi turned to look at her. "Doctor Hasukawa was an old man. It is unfortunate, but old men die."

Pamela had a sudden realization. "You knew this was going to happen."

Nakaguchi maintained an infuriatingly bland expression.

"Was it something about the corpse? Is that it? Is it some sort of bacteria?"

"First of all, Quetzoucoatl is no corpse. Second of all, there are no bacteria involved. That should be obvious even to someone of your limited vision. We were all exposed to him in his resting place and none of us fell ill. How could you even imagine that bacteria might be the explanation?"

"If it's not a disease, then what's going on?"

Hagen mumbled something so softly that Pamela wasn't sure that the man had actually spoken, although it sounded as if he said, "Evil."

Nakaguchi snorted. "The sleeper awakes."

He had been slow, locked in the sluggishness of sleep. He was still slow, torpid from the time of deep dreams. He could feel the hummingbird lights flitting about him. He wanted their heat, needed it, but he was slow and they so quick, so vital.

What he needed fluttered just out of his sluggish reach, as yet unattainable. The hummingbirds danced near, tantalizing him, then flitted away out of reach. He ached with frustration, thwarted by their confounding speed.

He needed.

He waited.

He hungered.

He waited, preparing himself.

One of the hummingbirds approached him. Slowing its rushing flight, it lingered. He felt its feathery touch upon his paper-dry skin. The touch was enough.

He struck as the viper strikes, uncoiling with unexpected speed.

The little bird crumpled at his touch. His first taste of the warmth tingled, exciting him. Ravenously, he pulled harder until the heat flooded him. He almost heard the hummingbird's cries. He drained it dry. His hunger was barely slaked, but he was stronger than he had been in—

Centuries!

How could it have been so long?

Frightened by what he had done, the hummingbirds dragged the husk of their companion away. They were still too quick for him. The strength he'd gained was greater than any he'd had from the little fires that had sustained him for so long, but he was still weak and slow. Still half-adream.

He knew how to wait.

In time—not so much as before but strangely seemingly longer—they returned. They had armored themselves against him. Foolishly so. They used dead, flimsy stuff that barely covered the beckoning light of themselves.

He took the first to present itself.

The hummingbird sang, a warbling song that had little of intelligence about it, but did occasionally strike a familiar chord. A mistake, it seemed to be saying. He wasn't sure what it was saying; its language was strange.

Had so much time passed that language itself had changed?

What did it matter? The little bird's struggles grew feeble. He felt stronger as the fire infused his veins. His sense of the surroundings grew clearer.

The hummingbird was pleading, promising. What? More than it could deliver certainly.

Was he making a mistake? Perhaps. It wouldn't be the first time.

Strength first, subtlety at leisure. It was an excellent paradigm to impress; it had served him well in the past. It had served best when applied in accordance with current circumstances. But what were current circumstances? In so much time, much was sure to have changed.

Reluctantly, he ceased draining the little bird. Its light flickered, but did not gutter and go out. Satisfactory. Before he released it, he put his mark on it, to keep it true. He didn't have enough strength to make the mark truly effective, but this one was weak. What he had done would serve for now.

He opened his eyes to gaze upon the first of his new servants.

Pamela gasped when the mummy opened its eyes. She stared in frozen horror as it reached out a withered hand to lay upon the brow of the technician slumped against the table. Gaunt-faced, the technician rose unsteadily to his feet.

"Joel, you okay?" one of the others asked.

Joel didn't answer her. Instead he said, "Bring in the first subject."

The technicians looked to one another in consternation and confusion. A few looked to the observation window.

"Do as he says," Nakaguchi ordered.

A few minutes later, the "first subject" arrived. By the look of him he'd be one of the homeless derelicts Chemogenics sometimes used in medical testing. He would have been required to sign a consent form, releasing Chemogenics, and the whole Mitsutomo Keiretsu from all responsibility should there be some unfortunate occurrence during the unspecified medical experiments in which he agreed to take part. From the way the derelict turned his head around and grinned idiotically, she doubted he had the competence to understand what he'd been told, let alone make a voluntary decision. His two attendants wheeled the chair up beside the examining table. The derelict grinned at the mummy and said, "Howd'ya do, pal. Ya sign up too?"

The attendants backed away with unseemly haste when the mummy's dark hand rose quivering.

Joel stepped forward and released the restraining strap on the derelict's right arm. He brought the man's hand up into the path of the mummy's groping fingers. The derelict started to squirm as soon as the gnarled fingers closed over his wrist. He began to struggle, bucking in his chair and tugging against the iron grip. Within seconds he was panting. He slumped, exhausted. Pamela could see the sweat coating the derelict's face as he rocked his head back, mouth open to scream. Only a tortured moan emerged. The old man's head slid to the side, turning his face from her view. For several minutes nothing visible occurred, then it was over.

Pamela wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew.

The mummy opened its hand and let the derelict's limp arm fall. Hitting the arm of the wheelchair, it made a sound like a dry stick hitting metal. Pamela half expected the limb to shatter; it merely fell, lifeless, into the dead man's lap.