Ellery
Ellery awoke with a start. Staring around her darkened bedroom, she half expected to see nameless forms lurking in the corner shadows. Her eyes focused on the glow of the clock sitting on her dresser.
Five-thirty.
Listening to the silence of the house, she closed her eyes and tried forcing herself back to sleep. Matthew's in Washington, Vickie and the baby are safe in Kansas, and John? She turned onto her side. Somewhere in the Amazon Basin fighting for a cause he believes in. Three months now since Matthew managed to get a message through to a known party member. Whether it reached John's hands or not, only God knew. She rolled onto her opposite side. Go back to sleep. You have no reason to get up so early.
But her mind wouldn't rest. Why hadn’t the Pope responded to her request for a private audience? Surely he is curious, she thought. It was not like Munoz to let an opportunity to gather information slip by. Something was wrong. Unable to quiet her troubled thoughts, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat quietly for a moment.
Five-fifty.
Sighing, she slipped on her robe and padded to the light switch. Since she couldn't sleep, she might as well work on the DNA analysis. After the joining, she had taken blood and tissue samples from those of the Dakotan descendants who would agree, as well as from Vickie, the baby, and Matthew. She had even drawn a sample from her own arm for analyzing. So far, she had found nothing that could have produced the Dakotan anomaly. Even Papa's journals had given no clue. She sighed. It was there, the singular essence of the BH, and when she found that, she would find the gene.
Knowing the effects Bianca's serum would have on George, Ellery feared that somehow Bianca would find a way to introduce the horror into the Dakota strain. She didn't like to think about what kind of consequences such a mutation could produce. Brushing her hair, a mental picture of unspeakable creatures with impeccable memory rushed into her thoughts. Her jaw tightened at the idea. Her arm slowed its rhythmic movement.
"You're letting your mind run rampant, Ellery Jensen," she said, shaking her finger accusingly at her reflection. "You have more important things to do." She turned off the light and strode down the hallway to her working wing. Six-forty wasn't a bad hour to begin, she thought, now that she was awake.
Seated at her console, she turned on the power and reached for the speech pad. Her hand stopped in midair as her eye caught the small silver blip on her view screen. It spiked twice.
"Oh, no," she cried. Only a life-threatening urgency would have broken Leann's silence. Her fingers brushed the voice pad.
"My friend Jerico called," the console droned. "It's urgent. Do you want to read the message or do you want me to speak it?"
"Read," Ellery shouted. Words flashed on screen. You and yours in terrible danger. Swe . . . swe . . . swe . . . The message, broken by static, repeated over and over.
"Decipher static," Ellery intoned. She watched tracers of light cross the screen.
"Signal shut down, Doctor Jensen. Message unable to complete," the computer hummed.
"Voluntary or involuntary?" Ellery squeezed her hands into tight fists as she waited for the answer. If Leann shut down because her screen was in danger of being seen, the signal would so indicate.
"Involuntary shutdown, Doctor Jensen. Involuntary shutdown." The screen glowed red.
"Dear God in Heaven. She was caught sending." Ellery glanced upward. "Please, help her to escape. Send her to me." Slowly, she retraced her steps to the door and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. With unseeing eyes, she prepared breakfast and set it on the table, watched it grow cold.
Sometime later, the flat shape of the morning paper lying on the lawn caught her attention as she stared vacantly out the kitchen window. News, any news, was better than this awful waiting.
It was on the second page.
Staring into Ellery's eyes, Leann's picture—a dimpled smile on her lips. "Long time Tartarus staff member drowns in trip-and-fall accident," the story began. With tear-misted eyes, Ellery skimmed through the article, then crumpled the sheets into a tight ball.
The time she had invited Leann to see the foam tunnels from the cliff overhang flashed into her mind; the terror on the girl's face, the sound of her voice. Even as she adamantly refused, she had smiled that smile of hers that brought the deep indentations to her cheeks.
No way, she thought. Leann would never have gone out on that overhang, much less trip on some damned rock. Her thoughts, whirling in and out of possible alternatives, settled on one. She knew it was right: someone pushed Leann off that ledge. Or threw her off. Either way, she was murdered.
Her lips pulled to a thin line. What had the girl discovered that was so important she broke the silence? The message replayed in her mind. Danger—swe—static. Word combinations peculiar to Leann's vocabulary raced through her mind as she vocalized the sound. Sweeeee . . . ping! Sweeping out the Coliseum.
Her hand flew to her chest. They're going after the Dakotans! That could only mean one thing. They knew Dakotan males had photographic memories. No wonder Pope Munoz hadn’t responded. There was nothing she could tell him that he didn’t already know, except for the one thing she had planned to reveal in hopes it would remove Bianca from Tartarus. He had no way of knowing about the perpetual continuity of that memory and now, he would never know.
Their next step would be what? Death for all was the logical answer, but Bianca's mind didn't work that way. Her way would be—exquisite. She shuddered at the images invoked. Whatever their intention, it had cost Leann her life and would cost Dakotans theirs unless she acted quickly. Of that, Ellery had no doubt.
She called Matthew. After a terse explanation, she said, "You know the drill, son. Be careful."
"You too, Mom," he said. "You too."
Placing the phone into its cradle, she turned to the window and watched a gull wheel against the horizon. With wings folded, it dove to the ocean waters, then lifted smoothly, holding a fish in its beak. How beautifully the gull takes the wind, she thought. But so deadly when it strikes the water. Munoz is like that. Ellery whirled around. The man had started his dive, but his fish wouldn't be waiting for the strike. She'd see to that.
After a quick call to each of her sisters, Ellery gathered a handful of round, green stickers bearing the slogan "We Care About Breathing—Ride A Bike." She placed one on the porthole garage window facing the street and another on the French doors facing the beach. Pulling on an old sweater, she let herself out of the house. In other parts of the city, she knew that her sisters, too, were putting on sweaters and gathering stickers.
When she returned, her small green stickers had been strategically placed: the all-night newspaper stand that carried major city dailies, the neighborhood convenience market, the Ocean Beach Library, and the branch post office in the squat brown building behind the library. Last, the funds depository at the back of the souvenir shop five streets south. The depository had been specially set up for the city's antique buffs and was visited daily by hundreds of tourists and San Franciscans.
The slogan signal had been agreed upon by the Dakotans after the joining. Even though all had acknowledged that such a course of action would more than likely never be needed, no possibility could be overlooked where Munoz and Bianca were concerned. The signal would be seen, the word would pass, and by this time next week, Bianca Raborman would think Dakotan descendants were nothing more than figments of her imagination.
There was one more thing she had to do. She felt certain that Bianca's habit of putting her thoughts in writing would extend to journalizing the plan for a Dakotan hunt down.
She had to know what that plan was.
Rummaging through her dresser drawer, she found the smooth white disc that would get her into Tartarus and into Bianca's lab. Jack Harmon would try to talk her out of it, but in the end, she would prevail. Tonight, she would be on board the Pelican when it crossed to the island.
Just like old times.