The Frankenstein Factory (9 page)

“Sure.”

Hobbes covered the hole with the piece of plywood, welding it into position with an ultrasonic gun. “That should hold long enough to get us across. Of course, it’s no hovercraft.”

“You going to try it today?” Earl asked, glancing out at the whitecaps on the gulf. If anything, the wind was increasing.

“Only if it calms down. I wouldn’t feel like a swim today, even with my sharkstick along.”

“Sharks?”

Hobbes nodded. “They come up from the ocean. A sharkstick will give them a nasty shock, but sometimes they come at you so fast there’s no chance to use it.”

“What about Phil Whalen?” Earl asked, returning to the subject of the pennant. “He fired at someone last night. Maybe he saw the person who raised the flag.”

“Or maybe he wanted us to think he saw him.”

“You don’t trust Whalen, do you?”

Hobbes shrugged. “He’s a good surgeon. But there’s never a need for an honest man to carry a gun. He’s hiding something.”

Earl grunted. “I wonder what.”

They left the boathouse and headed back toward the path through the trees.

For the rest of the morning Earl made a special point of keeping an eye on Whalen. It wasn’t difficult to do, since they decided after breakfast to try the buddy system Earl had suggested the previous night. While Armstrong and Hobbes stayed close to the house with Hilda—or Hidalga, as Earl now thought of her—the others went off to make another search of the small island. Tony and Vera headed toward the north curve of the horseshoe, while Whalen and Earl went south.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the others Whalen said, “He’ll probably take her up the beach a ways and screw her behind a bush. Can’t say I blame him, though.”

“You’re beginning to sound like the late Freddy O’Connor. I doubt if they’d bother with anything so crude when they’re sleeping together every night.”

“I suppose not,” Whalen agreed. “You married, Jazine?”

Earl shook his head. “These days in New York nobody under thirty gets married unless he’s going into politics. A wife’s picture is still good for the campaign posters.”

“How’d you get into police work?”

“It’s a far cry from police work, I’ll tell you! We have to be experts on computers, lasers, holograms, cryosurgery—just about every phase of the new technology. The purpose behind the Computer Investigation Bureau is to handle crimes the regular police forces aren’t equipped for.”

“And that’s what brought you here?”

“There are a number of unanswered questions about ICI’s financial setup.”

“Hobbes found me back East earlier this year,” Whalen said. “I had a number of questions too, and I figured the surest way to get answers was to come out to Horseshoe Island with him.”

They walked through the last of the tall grass and came to the tip of the island. “No one here,” Earl said, “unless he’s gone underground.”

“You don’t believe me about the person I saw last night, do you?”

“Not especially. Frankly, I think you hoisted the pennant to keep the hovercraft from delivering supplies this morning. Then you fired those shots so we’d all think someone was out there.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Earl had to admit.

They walked back toward the house in silence for a time, feeling the warm breeze on their faces. He had the feeling that Whalen wanted to ask him something, and after a couple of false starts the bushy-haired man said, “I don’t think someone like Hobbes should have a monopoly on this sort of operation.”

“Certainly not. But I don’t think medical monopolies have ever been much of a problem. In heart transplants, for instance, almost as soon as Christiaan Barnard performed the first operation in South Africa, doctors around the world were doing it.”

“Correct, as far as you go!” Whalen said. “But while doctors are quick to share operating techniques, certain technological advances are not always so readily admitted. We all know how heart transplants were replaced by the mechanical heart, for instance. But when the mechanical heart proved defective, there was a certain reluctance on the part of surgeons to discuss it, or to reveal their own personal steps for overcoming the defects. Perhaps they feared malpractice suits if the device misfunctioned in one of their patients. Something similar happened a hundred years ago, in the early days of brain surgery. Doctors developed their own special instruments, and it was some years before standard techniques came into being.”

“Just what are you getting at?”

“Well, Hobbes chose surgical transplant over the other possibilities—mechanical heart, liver, kidney, and the like. Why?”

“I’m sure he has a reason.”

“MacKenzie went along with it. I’ve lived with them here for the last few months, but they have never discussed it with me, never told me a damned thing except what I really had to know. You think that’s fair?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“The knowledge gained here should be made available to all the peoples of the world, including those in other countries.”

“I see.” The light was finally beginning to dawn for Earl. “And that’s why you wanted to buy a copy of my film record, right?”

“Right.”

“Who’s paying you, Whalen?”

“Paying me?”

“Because someone is. I’d guess the Russians. They’re the furthest along in cryosurgery. They could put the knowledge to the most immediate use.”

“Look, Jazine—we’re not talking about military secrets! We’re not even talking about Venus colonies or Mars probes. We’re talking about human life—how to prolong it, how to reactivate it. The Russians have as much right to that knowledge as the Americans.”

“I agree. But a pistol-packing surgeon in the pay of the Russians makes a pretty strange picture.”

“Speaking of that, how about returning my gun?”

“I think not. Not right now, at least.”

“Where is it?”

“In my room, safely locked away.”

“Anyone could get at it.”

Earl shook his head. “The killer hasn’t needed a gun so far. Why should he bother with one now?”

They were in sight of the house again, and Phil Whalen had no time to answer. Tony and Vera came into view, laughing and clowning like a pair of young lovers. Which was exactly what they were, Earl admitted. “Any luck?” Tony called out to them.

“Not a thing,” Earl answered. “How about you two?”

“Oh, Tony had some luck,” Vera said as they drew nearer. “But probably not the sort you mean.” She looked quite lovely just then, with the wind catching her long blond hair and gently tugging it from her face. Earl could have taken her up to bed and to hell with the case.

“I told you,” Whalen snickered to Earl. “Behind a bush.”

They went inside and found Lawrence Hobbes working on the wiring for his radio telephone. “Whoever messed this up knew what they were doing,” he said.

“No chance to fix it?”

“Not without supplies from the mainland.” He glanced toward the door. “Wind gone down yet?”

“Not much.”

“Generally it drops in the late afternoon, toward dusk. But I’d hate to get caught out there in a patched-up boat after dark.”

“We can wait till tomorrow,” Earl suggested, “if we have to.”

He saw Vera coming out of the kitchen and went to intercept her. “I was sorry you left the room last night. I came back as soon as I could.” He spoke in a low voice so that the others couldn’t hear.

“Was I supposed to just lie there waiting for your return, like some maiden whose knight is off to the Crusades?” Her mouth was hard, but her eyes were laughing, enjoying his discomfort.

“How about later?”

“Next time it’ll be in my room. And I’ll make certain you don’t run away.”

He went into the living room and looked around, suddenly aware that the others had gone off on their various tasks. After a moment Hobbes appeared. “You look perplexed.”

“I was just wondering where everybody was. I’m supposed to be teamed up with Whalen and I’ve lost him.”

“He was talking to Armstrong a few minutes ago. Your boy scout buddy system doesn’t work too well in actual practice.”

“I can see that.”

“How about a drink? I’ll have Hilda mix some martinis.”

“Fine.”

He pressed the button by his side but no one came. “She’s probably out in the garden,” he said, pressing it again.

“I’ll go see,” Earl said. “If she’s not around I’ll mix them up myself.” Drinking early in the day was getting to be a habit around there.

As he pushed open the door of the big, Moorish-style kitchen Hobbes’s insistent buzzer sounded from high on the wall. But there was no one to answer the summons. Hilda was on her knees by the sink, her elbows holding her in a bizarre position of supplication. She’d been stabbed in the back with a long-bladed butcher knife.

Earl took one look at the scene and ran from the room. He knew that the killer was only moments away, and this time he had to find out.

“What’s the matter?” Hobbes called out from the living room, but Earl didn’t pause to answer. He ran down the steps to the basement, hurrying along the corridor to the operating amphitheater, not knowing quite what he might find.

As he burst in the place seemed empty. The lights had been lowered and the ceiling merely glowed with a sort of twilight dimness.

Then he saw that Frank still slept on the concave operating table.

But the straps that had bound him now hung loose to the floor.

“Number four,” Dr. Armstrong commented quietly. “Four down and six to go.”

“Come now!” Phil Whalen said. “You can’t believe someone is trying to kill everybody on this island!”

They were upstairs with Earl and Vera, talking over the latest killing. On seeing the body Lawrence Hobbes had collapsed, and Tony had helped him to his bedroom. Now he returned, looking grim. “I’ll swear the old guy is taking this one harder than the others.”

Whalen snorted. “Think he was laying her on the side?”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Vera objected.

Earl agreed. “I told him he was sounding like Freddy.”

“Hell, these Mexican women—”

“Cut it out!” Tony Cooper said. “The lady doesn’t have to listen to your nasty speculations.”

Whalen settled into a sullen silence and Earl took the floor. “I think you all can agree with me that the killing of Hilda brings home the seriousness of the situation. The first three deaths could have been motivated in some crazy manner, but there’s not a reason in the world why anyone would have wanted to kill a middle-aged Mexican cook who couldn’t speak or hear. Not a reason in the world, that is, unless someone is trying to kill us all.”

“Frank?” Tony Cooper asked.

“He was unstrapped, but there’s still no evidence that he’s been off that table.”

“Could he have unstrapped himself?” Vera asked.

“I’d say no, but I suppose anything’s possible. If he managed to slide one hand out of the straps the rest would be easy.”

“Let’s examine this rationally,” Tony Cooper said. “Assuming that Frank is able to be up and about, what could be his motive for killing us all? We’re the ones who reanimated him!”

“He may not like the idea of being reanimated in a different body. The records show he may be a murderer already. To wake up in strange surroundings in a different body might be enough to make anyone murderous. We just don’t know.”

“He couldn’t move through the house like that in broad daylight without being seen,” Armstrong argued. “I just won’t buy it.”

“The unpleasant alternative is that the killer is one of us,” Earl pointed out. As if to punctuate his remark, a sudden gust of wind sent a dead branch rattling against the window.

“Couldn’t there be an unknown intruder on the island?” Vera asked.

“Same argument. Why haven’t we seen him? And why haven’t we found him on our searches?”

“Are we to suppose that a man just revived from the dead could have deactivated the alarm systems and the radio telephone?”

“It seems unlikely, I know.”

Tony Cooper was standing behind Vera’s chair, gently massaging her shoulder. “There is one other possibility, of course. Hobbes might have done the damage himself, to keep us from spreading word of the operation to the outside world.”

“I’ve considered that,” Earl admitted. “He didn’t seem too concerned about the damaged boat.”

“He didn’t seem too concerned about anything until just now when we found Hilda’s body.”

“Perhaps that didn’t fit in with his plans,” Vera said.

Outside, the wind continued to blow, reminding Earl of a time in California when a sudden storm had stranded him on Catalina Island with a girl he’d known in college.

But that time had been fun. And this wasn’t.

“T
HERE ARE THINGS ABOUT
this island we don’t know,” Tony Cooper was saying later as he and Earl walked down to look at the water.

“Like what?”

“Well, for one thing, did Hobbes give you that line about his freezing equipment being responsible for the vegetation here?”

“Yes,” Earl admitted.

“Well, that’s so much bull! The bodies are frozen by liquid nitrogen, which is actually surrounding the bodies within each capsule. The-liquid nitrogen must be replaced from time to time, but there’s no other upkeep. There are no freezing coils or refrigeration equipment down in those vaults.”

“Then how did all these trees and greenery get here?”

“They must have been brought in, planted, and irrigated.”

“That would be an expensive undertaking,” Earl murmured. He felt that he might be on the verge of justifying his journey out here.

“Of course it would be! This whole island is money!”

“Money from where—Emily Watson?”

“But she was only on the scene the last few years. Where did it come from before that?” Tony looked him in the eye. “Isn’t that what you were sent here to find out?”

“More or less,” Earl admitted. “The whole ICI setup seems highly irregular. Cryonics is so open to abuse that it seemed wise for us to investigate this place more closely.”

“I’ll give you all the help I can.”

“You can start by telling me why you’re here,” Earl suggested. “As I understand it, you’re a bone specialist, and no bone work was necessary.”