The Hunger (24 page)

Poor Sarah! Above all, she treasured her professionalism. If she and Miriam had gone to bed together it meant that Sarah had violated every professional standard in the book — and right at the start of the most important case she or anybody else had ever had.

No wonder she was distraught. She might well have good reason to be.

He returned to his office to find her lying in a more relaxed pose, with eyes closed, one arm loosely across her face.

“I have the Valium.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I dislike weakness, you know that.” She sat up, a rush of motion. “Tom, she’s very beautiful. Almost magical. A magical being.” She smiled. “Can you
believe
this?” The tears of a few minutes before still shone on her face. But now she smiled.

“No. But I have no choice. The data is there.” Tom could hardly believe it was the same Sarah. Were the contradictory emotions she was displaying even real? Was this how Sarah broke down — swinging between extremes?

“It’s been quite a week,” she said with enthusiasm. “First Methuselah, then this. I keep thinking there must be a connection.”

He had wondered that himself, refused to entertain such a seductive and unscientific notion. “No, Sarah. Don’t start thinking like that.”

“Perhaps there’s something about what happened to Methuselah that . . . attracted her.”

“Moth to flame. What was the mode of attraction? Scent?”

“A mode we know nothing about. She is an unknown, after all.”

She was being cryptic. Tom wished that he didn’t always have this sense of sparring with her. “Telepathy, then. But why? Methuselah was maybe a relative of hers?” Sarcasm. Did she deserve it? Possibly.

“Come on, be serious. Help me.”

“You won’t accept my help.” He held out the Valium. She was under extreme stress. This latest mood swing proved it, or so he willed himself to believe.

“I don’t like palliatives. I’d rather face myself.”

“Noble. Just don’t go bathing around. It doesn’t help your reputation. Not to mention the fact that you seem to have gotten perfumed in the basement of Kleins.”

“Kleins is out of business.”

“My point exactly.”

She grasped his hands, intense, an undertone of fear in her face. “Tom, am I in danger?”

The question had a nasty impact. He wanted to push it away but it remained there, demanding an answer. “Of course not,” he said and instantly cursed his own guilty lie. How could he be so sure? Paradoxically, he was angry with her. She had confused and upset him. He wanted his hard-driving professional back again, not this vague, dreamy creature off taking baths in the homes of her patients and failing to serve the vital interests of Riverside. Especially with Sam Rush peering over their collective shoulder.

“I
feel
like I’m in danger. I feel menaced. That incident at Miriam’s was very odd, Tom. I haven’t told you the half of it.”

“Is that an opening?”

She told him all that had happened, her voice curiously absent of emotion. “I think your own supposition was right,” Tom said when she was finished. “We’re dealing with an unknown. There isn’t yet any way to evaluate Miriam Blaylock or her behavior.”

“But it’s directed at me.”

“You don’t know that.” Why did he lie so? To make her feel better, or perhaps to delude her into staying with it? Yes, that was it. He needed Sarah to keep after Miriam — she was their only established link. That, beneath it all, was his true motive. He felt dirty and crass, seeing such a thing in himself. But he didn’t try to change it.

She grew silent. He waited through a minute for her to respond to him but she only sat there, hunched, almost contemplative. He wanted to press her for more information, but hesitated to do so. There was very little to be gained by cross-examining Sarah, he had long since learned that.

“I
do
know it,” she said at last. “Miriam Blaylock’s actions
are
directed at me.”

“Yes,” he said, hoping to draw a little more out of her. He became aware of a tension in the room, almost a charge, as thick as the air before a storm. In his mind’s eye he saw sick green clouds shot through with lightning. Sweat tickled his eyebrows and he wiped it impatiently away. She sat forward on the couch, grasped her hands around her knees.

“I feel like a kind of tentacle just reached out and touched me. I hate to say it, Tom, it’s so subjective that it’s embarrassing. But I do feel it.”

“Miriam Blaylock is hostile to you?”

Her eyes widened, all innocent surprise. “No, not at all. She’s part of it, but so is Methuselah. It’s not a coincidence. I feel almost as if Miriam — I know that this is a subjective way of putting it — Miriam in some way sought me out after Methuselah. As if it’s somehow very important to her.”

“I thought we discounted telepathy a second ago. As of this moment only a few people knew about Methuselah, and Miriam Blaylock isn’t one of them.”

“Tom, what is she?”

Now he smiled. “You’re the genius in the family. You tell me.”

“Not from another planet. She’s too close to human. Another species, living right here all along. An identical twin.”

“Does that wash? Five thousand years of civilization and nobody’s noticed?”

“Maybe and maybe not. What about the Amazons? What were they?”

He raised his eyebrows, thinking of large, domineering blondes. “Maybe she ought to run for office. Keep the mobs in line.”

“You’re a master of the extraneous comment, you know that. It’s perfectly possible that a twin species would go unnoticed. Maybe they don’t want to be noticed. If I was hiding and you didn’t even know to look for me, you’d never find me — unless I wanted you to.”

He kissed the top of her head, knelt down beside the couch. The odor was less strong, or perhaps he wanted her more. “I love you,” he said again. The intensity of the past few days was still very much with him. The sense of devotion he was beginning to feel was a very new thing for him. Almost absently she stroked his head, pulling it down into her lap. He crouched there, afire with this terrible need for her that left him feeling utterly alone.

“Tom, I’m frightened.”

“It’s a frightening situation.”

“Something brought her out of hiding. Something about me.” The hand stopped stroking his head. He reached up and grasped it, then raised himself and slipped onto the couch beside her. She snuggled into his shoulder.

“I won’t let it happen.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is you feel might happen. I’m slow but I feel it too.”

“Don’t let’s both panic!”

“I’m not scared. Concerned and protective. You’ve got my primitive male juices flowing.”

“Not here in the office.” She arched her back, ran her hand along his thigh. He kissed her. The office was quiet, the hubbub outside far away. Beyond the windows small white clouds sailed through the sky. Tom extended the kiss, finding an urgency in himself that he had not expected. There came a sweeping, aggressive wave and he took her in his arms and laid her on the couch. There was barely room enough for the two of them. Her face, framed by brown curly hair, caught in the crook of his arm, looked up at him happily. “Not here,” she said again. “Anybody could walk in.”

“Don’t you like danger?”

“I’m not the type.”

“I find it exciting.” He opened his trousers, let her see his eagerness.

“Tom, really, this is crazy!”

“We need it.”

“What if Hutch comes in? You’ll look like a fool.”

Her resistance drove him on, created in him a compulsion to the act. “Let him come. Exposure to a little human love would do him good.” He slipped his hands under her skirt and rolled her panties down.

“Tom, this is
crazy!
”

“You sound like a broken record.”

“Well, it is — oh —”

The relentlessness of his thrust excited him more. Her face flushed, she shook her head from side to side. “I love you,” he breathed, and whispered her name with the rhythm of their bodies. Voices rose outside the door but he chose to ignore them. When her eye flickered concern he smothered her with kisses. Then he pressed his lips close to her ear and whispered the sort of things she liked to hear, the words that excited her. It was silly, perhaps, certainly childish, but Tom knew that there had to be a certain dirtiness, a sense of evil, for Sarah to really enjoy herself.

He brought her to a climax, her thighs pumping, her face sweaty and surprised. He lost himself in the quivering pleasure of his own love, barely aware that the voices in the hall had not gone away. “For God’s sake, it’s Charlie and Phyllis out there! Hurry!” He pumped frantically. There came a tapping at the door. Sarah cleared her throat, changed her tone to one of businesslike precision. “One moment, please,” she sang out, “he’s on the phone.”

“You’re not a phone.”

“Hurry up! You’re a man, you’re supposed to be fast!”

“Don’t whisper so loud, they’ll hear you.”

Never before had he made love under such circumstances. Every movement, no matter how small, bore with it a sense of stolen delight. Taking Sarah here on the couch, with the door about to be opened on them, was delicious beyond belief. ‘A little of the exhibitionist in you,’ he thought.

They knocked again. “Who’s he talking to, God? We’ve got important business.”

“I know that, Phyllis,” Sarah said, her voice wobbling with his thrusts. She was now rubbing against him with all her might, trying to speed things up. The couch, the whole office was shaking. “Hurry dear, hurry dear,” she breathed in rhythm to their movements, “let it go, let it go —”

And he did, like stars exploding, huge and rich with a thousand wild tickling joys. They lay still an instant, both breathing hard, a moment’s deference. He rose off her, closed his pants over his still-enormous organ. “I’d better hide behind the desk, my love,” he said as she smoothed her skirt and went to the door.

“Sorry,” she said, swinging it wide, “come on in.”

Charlie and Phyllis glanced at each other. Tom controlled himself carefully. Sarah was sweating and flushed, obviously trying to control her ragged breathing. “Some phone call,” Charlie said in a nervous voice.

“Let’s get on with it,” Tom growled. “I haven’t got all day.”

“No,” Phyllis murmured, “obviously not.”

“Come on, come on.” He was pleased to see Sarah blow a kiss at him, roll her eyes in an exaggerated pantomime of ecstasy. He began to feel rather proud of himself.

“Briefly,” Charlie said, “we’ve been doing a little comparative analysis between Methuselah and Miriam Blaylock.”

“Why?” Sarah’s voice was sharp. She stood up and came to the desk where Charlie had laid out some glossy color photographs of various blood cells.

“We noticed that Mrs. Blaylock’s erythrocytes were the same color as Methuselah’s, when he was in his terminal phase.”

“Which means?”

“The color of his deepened right before the end. His need for oxygen seemed to be declining at that time.”

Sarah was literally sparkling. Maybe Tom ought to hit her under a restaurant table next time. She appeared to like the threat of exposure very well. “What are you driving at? Was the same pigmentation factor present in both bloods?” There was the brilliant scientist Tom knew and loved.

“It sure as hell looks like it. But that isn’t the whole story.” Charlie pulled out some more glossies. “Here you see Methuselah’s erythrocytes in a time series. They get darker and darker.” In the first photograph they were deep purple and misshapen. “Remember that Geoff took another blood sample after Mrs. Blaylock had been asleep a couple of hours? Well, look.” The purple pigmentation of her blood cells had faded to a healthy pink-white.

“Conclusion,” Phyllis added, “Mrs. Blaylock slept off something similar to what destroyed Methuselah.”

Tom spoke quickly, trying to cut the edge of panic that had flickered in Sarah’s eyes. “At least this means that there is no further question of the Gerontology budget being cut. I doubt if we’ll even need a meeting of the board now.” Nobody smiled. “Clap clap clap. I thought you’d be delighted.”

“We’re not surprised,” Charlie said. “It was obvious as soon as we compared the bloods.”

“Tell me, what does it all imply?”

“How should we know, Tom?” Sarah’s voice was high, nervous. “It suggests a lot of things.”

“Some of them downright strange,” Phyllis added. “Like why Mrs. Blaylock came here.”

“Smart girl,” Tom said. “That is indeed what Sarah and I have been trying to understand. It seems as if she somehow discovered Sarah’s work and was drawn to her — for some reason we do not know.”

Sarah’s face had become waxlike. Concealing. Sarah hid her feelings. “Your thoughts, Doctor Roberts?”

“That’s an unfair question, Tom.”

“You thrive on unfair questions.”

She tossed her head, her chin jutting up. Her lips were set in a line, her eyes glaring defiantly at him. It was pitiful to see how hard she had to work to hide fear.

“I think we’ll have to pull together,” Tom said. “I’m going to declare Miriam Blaylock a special project and get myself appointed director. We’ll budget it from the general fund, go around Hutch.”

“Why is that necessary? Hutch’ll cooperate completely. He might not agree with everything we say and do, but he’s a scientist, he sees the importance of this work.”

“Thank you, Sarah. May I remind you who it was just about destroyed your Gerontology lab? I can settle it all with a single telephone call to Sam Rush. He’ll confirm our request before he even thinks of Hutch.”

“Hutch founded this lab!”

“He’s as good as dead. I’m very sorry, but it happens.”

“I’m going to tell him —”

“No, ma’am. You have your job and I have mine. Let’s not let our differences come between us.” He held out his hand. “You don’t know a thing about front-office politics.”

There was a silence. “I get the impression that this meeting is concluded,” Charlie said into it. He gave a nervous laugh. “You can count on me boss.”

“I won’t talk to Hutch,” Sarah murmured. “I don’t have time.”

Charlie and Phyllis gathered up their materials and left. Tom sat, trying to feel the impassivity of a Buddha. He expected to get a real chewing-out from Sarah, but instead she went over to the couch and flopped down with her arm once again over her eyes.