The Last Nightfall
The Night finally came.
The four thought of it that way: the Night, upper-case “N”. That made it a special time not recognized as so by any social or historic records, other than the closeness of it to the traditional Christmas Eve, but to the four it was special just as the dates of August 18, September 17, October 16, and November 14. Except that this time, December 14, the Killer was in custody and they would be allowed to watch as the change came over him in whatever physical or mental form that it took.
Gerald Cummings was being held by the California authorities (his extradition to the state had been swiftly carried out so that he might stand trial for the six murders carried out there) and examined to ascertain his mental standing, in preparation for the legal measures which would be taken against him. Everyone in the nation and most of the people throughout the world knew that he claimed to be an actual werewolf, and though that possibility was yet largely dismissed, the powers had decided that special actions were called for on this full moon night. Under heavy guard, he had been transferred to the relatively new and extensively equipped Institute of Natural Sciences and Research for close observation by some of the world’s top specialists in practically all areas of medicine, and the best time for studying the self-professed lycanthrope was naturally on the next night of the full moon.
This was an event from which the world press would not be excluded. While the federal agency in charge of the facility had scored a triumph of sorts over public desire by forbidding the live transmission of any material from the Institute (on the grounds that it might be prejudicial in any future trial, if Cummings was proven to be fit for such, even though the prisoner himself gladly gave his permission for live broadcasts), major television networks and news services from all about the globe were assured that they would be allowed to have representatives in the building when the time arrived. Various newspapers and magazines were also permitted to send reporters and photographers to cover the occurrence, if there were one; and Talley, Corbett, Morgan, and Grundel were provided with passes which their work and notoriety had earned for them. The official opinion—or hope—was that the troublesome group would finally and thoroughly be exposed as hysterical fable spinners.
Cummings had told anyone who would listen that the transformation always occurred at midnight, rather than moonrise, just as Blake had come to suspect, so the press interview with the murderer was set for nine p.m. on December 14. The newspeople were to be allowed to remain in the building to witness whatever was to happen.
Nick Grundel considered himself to be a loner and cultivated that image. The few people who were able to gain any sort of intimacy with him only gradually saw through the veneer to the actual heart of a complicated man. He had many acquaintances who, if they could not be labeled “friends” were amenable enough to be used to various purposes when matters required.
Meg Talley was really quite social and popular within her large sphere of friends, though her almost total dedication to the solving of the mystery at hand had drastically cut back on any type of socialization since August. She dated often under standard circumstances, but had not come near to serious consideration of marriage, yet, which was understandable in light of her youth. It would be hard to call her a loner.
Blake Corbett was hardly an overwhelming presence in the circles of culture and amusement, but he did not conform to the general concept of the absent-minded writer hunched over his typewriter and surfacing only sporadically to mail off another manuscript. He was interested in various activities and had relationships with intelligent women whom he met through these activities, including his appearances at various literary conventions and workshops around the nation. And, of course, there was always Beth, loving, beautiful, pneumatic, and ultimately unforgettable Beth …
So, of the four, perhaps the least likely candidate to be rated as being a loner, on the surface, was the happily married forty-two year old father of two well-adjusted adult offspring, Douglas Morgan. But, at the heart of the matter, that was just what he was. A large portion of his life had been spent in the pursuit of goals which many of his fellowmen regarded as spurious images of natural phenomena or even completely non-existent, and the biting sarcasm of his associates toughened his resolve even as it insulated him from much of the cooperative spirit of scientific advancement. The Loch Ness Monster was only a finned slug with a malfunctioning pituitary gland, if it existed at all, “they” told him; Sasquatch had to be a lumberjack with plywood cutout feet or maybe an incredibly shy ape; and people were still being picked up and put down by unidentified flying objects, but those people never seemed to disembark with any solid, irrefutable proof of participating in these jaunts, and consequently the work of Douglas Morgan was futile and the man himself merely an amusing diversion in the business of “hard” news.
And just as soon as some conjecture such as six-foot long worms living on the ocean bottom or plesiosaurs swimming around off of the coast of modern New Zealand turned out to be more than “hysterical” expulsions of stomach gas, why, then, they had to be rationally acceptable facts all along, didn’t they? (Id est, Corbett’s Axiom: “The supernatural inevitably becomes the natural upon being identified and accepted.”)
This feeling of having so long bucked the tide, having gone against the System—System, hell, against ninety percent of everything believed by everybody!—having fought the recognized prejudices of society practically alone, and having witnessed the few committed professionals in his unrespected field either giving up in disgust or drifting from all realms of sanity into the Adamski fringe, repelled any thoughts of his joining in the media blitzing … even though his three companions over the last few months were dazzled enough by this high-flash world to agree to act as commentators and comic relief. Douglas Morgan was going to attend the undeniable arrival of primitive terror into the smug Twentieth Century, all right, but he was going on his terms as his own boss, not as some network’s performing monkey; and he was going alone. Except maybe for Bradley Ferguson.
Morgan had assumed that Ferguson would be covering the event for KXLR, the Los Angeles television station at which he was employed, but the CBS affiliate had decided to use network coverage of the supposed “transformation” (as had a number of stations throughout the country) rather than send in a team of their own, which would have entailed battling with the federal boys for press passes. Brad had taken the day off, and by the time Morgan tracked him down in a hair styling salon, it was mid-afternoon and getting later by the moment.
Ferguson was eager to accept the invitation to be Doug’s cameraman on the assignment—a post he had occupied several times in the past without conflict with his television job—and he left the salon in the crucial stages of his haircut to rush home and gather his own filming equipment. This was another hedge against any contesting of his work for Morgan by KXLR. For all of his hurry, however, it was still almost six p.m. before they rocketed out of LA, and they had over one hundred and eighty miles to cover before nine, as Morgan pointedly informed the other man a number of times.
“This Institute is over halfway to Stockton,” the reporter muttered as he maneuvered the car through traffic on Interstate 5 and scanned ahead for a thinning of the vehicles where he could really let out the engine.
“I know, Doug, it’s up on the Diablo Range, away from any hint of settled and civilized areas; I’ve been there,” Ferguson replied from the backseat, where he sat among his expensive camera equipment, ostensibly getting it ready for the interview but actually protecting it against Morgan’s wild lane-changing. “The way you drive, three hours is plenty of time to get to the far side of Oregon.”
“They probably won’t admit anyone after the show starts. I wonder why the hell they built the stupid place so far out in nowhere?”
“Safety,” Brad answered, glad to direct the conversation away from how late his inclusion in the trip had made Morgan. “The government denies it, of course, but the scut has it that at least one of those five buildings will be devoted to the enterprise of genetic manipulation, creating new lifeforms, that sort of stuff, and pressure groups sprang up like weeds all over the state against its construction—when was it?—uh, six years ago. So, they compromised by isolating it in the mountains, though if some hellbent new germ escaped into the atmosphere, the location would probably give us only an hour to ninety minutes to say our prayers.”
“It’s going to be the scene of some pretty drastic gene transformation tonight,” observed Doug. The interior of the car fell into silence.
All remained quiet for five minutes and six miles before Brad perceptively asked, “Convincing yourself that this is the real one, huh, Doug?” He’d known the reporter for some time and had been on various stories of related import with him. He laughed to lighten the mood. “I figured you’d be hyped like Bozo the Clown on a pure electric diet. This Cummings guy is our best bet since that saucer came down in Oroville.”
“That woman was not lying about that,” Morgan grunted through clenched teeth.
“The lie detector said she was,” Ferguson stated.
“So the machine was wrong. Somebody should have paid some attention to her and maybe she wouldn’t have done … what she did. But it’ll be different this time.” He whipped the car over to dart by a green Volkswagen with a motor that reminded him of a worn out lawnmower. “It’s going to happen tonight.”
“Sure, at twelve o’clock, bingo! Cummings is going to personally reestablish the legends of the past three thousand years on a firm scientific basis.” Ferguson paused while tinkering with a high speed telephoto lens, and much of the humor left his face. “Don’t do it, Doug. I don’t like to see you fall after getting so pumped up.”
“My, aren’t we suddenly solicitous. I thought all you cared about was the two hundred bucks a print, Brad.”
“Aw, hell, I just think you’re expecting too much again! Why not consider the other possibilities and go into tonight with an open mind so you can hold on to some of your integrity if this falls through just like all the rest of them? And if it is true, you’ll be the Prophet of the New Age. If you ask my opinion, this guy is no more a ‘monster’ than I am, at least not in the purely physical sense. He’s in the league with Speck, Whitman, and the others as far as being a psychopathic murderer goes, but he’s just a man. What kind of real proof do you have?”
Proof? Morgan asked himself sardonically. His mind slipped into the memorized files that pertained to Charles Gerald Cummings:
Stanley Gretler, forty-eight, Victoria Gretler, forty-nine, Lawrence Mitchell, seventy-two, Clarence Mitchell, forty-one, Shelly Mitchell, forty, April Mitchell, eighteen, Harvey Burnett, twenty-three, Arthur Dukes, fifty-five, Carl Jurgens, thirty-nine, Etta Jurgens, thirty-three, David Jurgens, eight, Eileen Villachaise, twenty-seven, Andrew Paul Forrester, approximately sixty, Lester Justin Dunkenhorst, approximately forty-five, Peter Eichmarr, fifty-six.
Some resume, Morgan thought, fifteen unbelievably savage killings performed with apparent exhilaration by a man who had been a respected college instructor less than a year before. What’s more, each murder, whether accomplished by strangulation, beating, biting, or other means, had been done by the man himself; there was no evidence of a club, knife, or bullet wound on any of the fifteen bodies.
Morgan smiled grimly. “Brad, if this man’s not as much a monster on a personal level as Hitler was on an impersonal one, the North Pole is a beach and palm tree resort, and you know it. How can you even claim that an ordinary human being could have done anything like this?”
“I didn’t call him ordinary, Doug. He’s as mad as anyone ever has been, but I doubt that that makes him a werewolf.”
“Come on!” Ferguson had never been so openly skeptical on their previous jobs together, and Morgan was hard-pressed to see why he was being so obstinate this time. Maybe the apathetic old elephant really was worried about Doug’s mental state should this case fall meekly into the realm of the mundane. Don’t even think that …
“He has to have some sort of unnatural condition about him! My god, he was shot by handguns and shotguns, slashed with a meat cleaver—”
“Or so say the only two terrified witnesses to survive, and they admit that the entire incident in each case was like a fast, shadowy dream, with objective observation an impossibility,” Ferguson grunted. “Neither can so much as describe the thing that they supposedly saw.”
“All right, all right!” Doug repeated hotly. “Forget the invulnerability, then, and explain to me how a college professor tore apart all of those bodies with nothing other than his hands and teeth!”
“Insanity will find a way,” Brad answered calmly.
“Damn, you’re acting shitty,” spat Morgan. “Just like a couple of hundred other stone-headed Neanderthals I know.”
The big man sighed audibly. “I didn’t say that you aren’t right, Doug, and maybe deep down I agree with you, but you’re the one who’s not facing all sides of this thing. He could be a normal nut case, and you’re not leaving yourself an out. Before the big show tonight, why don’t you make a few disclaimers for the TV folks; nothing strong, just admitting the possibility. And then if it doesn’t prove out, you’ll be on visual record as having had an open mind in the matter. You’ll retain some of your credibility as a newsman, even if you are so wrapped up in your own little portion of reality that you don’t remember one of the biggest civilian protests ever to hit the state.”
“I remember it!” Morgan snapped, hoping that Ferguson was alluding to the outcry against the construction of the Institute of Natural Sciences and Research. “It’s just that this present story has wiped out everything that’s gone before it. And it is going to happen tonight: he is a werewolf.”
“Doug,” admitted Ferguson wearily, “I almost hope that you’re right.”
The sun had set before they left Los Angeles, so the entire trip had taken place after dark, but Morgan was never troubled by the soporific rhythm of the road which regularly tried to seduce him when he drove at night. One large, silver, glaring diversion that rescued him from fatigue was the moon overhead. It wasn’t going to set tonight until a minute before twelve, as if hiding from the creature for which it was responsible. This sight in turn raised his adrenalin level with the reaffirmation of what he was going to witness that night.
Finally, after breaking the speed limit into shards, Morgan swung off of the interstate and onto a relatively recently constructed road which seemed to lead to the end of the earth. He followed this road until a diffused glow of bright outdoor lighting was distinguishable at the foot of the mountains waiting ahead of them. The Institute was well away from any settlement of a size large enough to be called such, and though its isolation made it difficult to locate and reach for the average citizen (whose tax money had constructed and was maintaining it, of course), an airstrip which had been laid out on a nearby level and open stretch of ground permitted official arrivals and departures without any major problems. Tonight, the Institute was experiencing a number of arrivals at this airstrip, as well as by the long, circuitous, two-lane highway.
Morgan and Ferguson first saw the compound as a floodlit post nestled against the foot of one of the smaller mountains in the range, but both could tell that it had been cunningly positioned to resist the most common California disasters: swift summer fires, resultant mudslides, and the ever-possible earthquakes. A huge metal fence enclosed the entire area, and the road led them to one of the two visible guard posts; here Morgan stopped the car and produced his official press pass, hoping that he could bluff Ferguson through, as well, since the photographer had not been previously cleared for admission.
The uniformed guard took the offered I.D. card from Doug and thoroughly examined it in his own good time, even though it was no more than three minutes until nine and Doug was nearly panting with urgency. “Come to watch the Lunatic change at midnight, huh?” he asked with some evident sarcasm.
“That’s right,” Morgan answered quickly. “Morgan and Ferguson from the L.A. Chronicle.”
“So it says, so it says,” mumbled the armed man. “This has been the busiest blamed night this place has ever seen, I’ll tell you. We got vans and limos and sports scars from all over the country and eight or ten foreign places, counting those coming in on planes. Me, I don’t understand what it’s all about, because you know what’s going to happen: at midnight, that bastard’s going to start jumping around and acting like King Kong in a hospital gown, and the doctors are going to shake their heads and call him ‘disturbed,’ and he’ll go into a bughouse without any trial. Probably get out in five, six years. You kill one person, and you go to the joint; kill fifty, and you get a free vacation in the insane asylum.” He leaned out of the open window of his box to stare through the back windows at Ferguson. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Bradley Ferguson,” Brad answered. “I’m acting as photographer for Doug and the Chronicle.”
“Got a pass?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Brad, thinking quickly. “It’s here someplace, in one of my pockets.”
“Forget it,” advised the guard, as both men in the car had hoped he would. His breath spewed vapor streams into the cold air, but he didn’t seem to mind the chill. “Sure is a lot of equipment for a few pictures, though.”
“You know how it is, the more any business learns about a thing, the more complicated that thing gets. Anyway, I’m not trying to smuggle in a gun or anything.”
The guard laughed. “I ain’t worried about that. The state police will shake you down before you get anywhere near that nut.” He punched a button within the post box, and the gates slid open easily. “See that green line on the road?” he asked.
Doug peered over the hood of his car to see five colored bands painted on the concrete street inside the compound. They were lying together at the gates, but split in different directions beyond. “Yeah.”
“Follow it, the green one, and it’ll take you to the parking area for building number four, on the other side there, and that’s where your mental case will be on display tonight.”
“Thanks a lot,” Morgan said, as he rolled the auto through the drawn-back gates. He wanted to add, “Thanks for wasting five minutes that I can’t spare,” but he held off so as not to complicate matters at this late stage of the game.
Up close, the Institute had as little resemblance to any military post as it had to an urban shopping center. Lit to near-daylight brightness by large lamps placed about the perimeter, its initial impact on the visitor was made by the eleven floor, block-sized building at its center and the domed observatory atop this huge structure; the other four primary buildings (a number of smaller office-like constructions were scattered throughout the compound) surrounded it like chicks about a hen, and none were more than three stories in height. The green track led Morgan through this outwardly quiet community to the medical center located close to the bulk of the mountain behind the post. Though this building stood only one floor aboveground, it was also impressive in its overall size. It covered the entire rear portion of the compound in a roughly pentagonal shape that reminded Doug of the Department of Defense in Arlington.
The parking area was located on the right side of the structure and, while not a small lot by any means, looked to be more than half-filled by vehicles belonging to reporters who had already beaten the two of them inside. Where the paving left off just a half-dozen feet away from the heavy fence set into the mountain, a concrete buttress rose fifteen or sixteen inches to protect the lot against washdown from the hillside beyond.
This then was the “clearing house” which had been constructed by the government six years earlier in an effort to keep up with the dizzying progression of scientific knowledge throughout all of the world. Here, computer technology combined with some of the best minds working in practically every pertinent field to collate hundreds of thousands of items, research and extrapolate in virtually any sphere of thought, and even experiment and produce new knowledge over a wide band of studies. It had already justified its existence a number of times in everything from medicine to energy production; but certain consumer and private interest groups were still violently opposed to its existence and occasionally went so far as to picket against supposed genetic engineering. On at least two occasions, they had attempted to shut down the Institute by acts of sabotage.
While the Cummings affair was the most important event of the decade (and perhaps of his life) for Morgan, he realized as he left the car that certainly not all of the vehicles parked there belonged to people involved with the matter. There would be many types of research and observation going on inside this building, even so late at night. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that his was by far the most important reason for attending the performance within tonight. Okay, maybe Brad was right, maybe this man was just a massively psychotic son of a bitch who would collapse into catatonia at the stroke of midnight, but if, by some incredible chance, he was what he claimed and what all of the circumstantial evidence pointed to … what a night this would be, what a damned beautifully terrifying night would pass for the smugly knowledgeable world.
“See, I told you we’d get here,” Ferguson said after sliding his large frame and paraphernalia-stocked shoulder bag out of the car. A blatantly overweight man at a time when physical imperfections were socially uncouth, Brad Ferguson enjoyed spitting in society’s eye during his seven course meals. Even if he huffed and sweated in his normal movements, when fast action was required to secure a vital picture, Ferguson was generally the first on the spot, flashing his strobe.
“Your precognitive powers dazzle my small mind,” Morgan responded. He was subtly trying to reestablish the easy, almost telepathic relationship that usually existed between the pair on assignments. “You’ll be the subject of my next column.”
“After we dispose of tonight’s changeling, I take it.”
“Of course.”
Getting into the medical research building had made Blake Corbett imagine that he was trying to board a spaceship in transit, and Doug had it no easier.
The first room that he and Brad entered upon buzzing the entrance bell was a spacious, sedately furnished foyer complete with current magazines spread across an expensive coffee table, three comfortable leather couches, and a beautiful receptionist behind a large wooden desk. The room also boasted three items that are not found in the average business foyer: a trio of sidearmed, hard-eyed Institute guards.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the receptionist said in a musical voice. “May I ask what portion of the building you would be interested in visiting?”
“We’re here to cover the interview with Gerald Cummings for the Los Angeles Chronicle,” replied Morgan. He dug the pass from his coat pocket and handed it to her.
The woman consulted a file atop the desk. “Ah … yes, Mr. Morgan, here you are.” She withdrew a nametag from a drawer and typed his name over its face in large letters.
“Please remove that slip of paper covering the gummed surface on the rear of the tag and press it to your coat or shirt in some easily seen position; it is guaranteed not to hurt the fabric. Your pass, sir?”
Ferguson turned his hands upward. “I lost it?” he said hopefully.
“He doesn’t have one,” Morgan told them, figuring that the time for deception had passed. “The newspaper didn’t apply for a photographer’s pass, but I asked Mr. Ferguson to come along in hopes that you would allow him admission.”
“Well, I don’t know …” the young woman began.
“I can vouch for his position with station KXLR in Los Angeles, and if you’d like to make a call to the Chronicle to confirm the fact that he has worked for them before, I would be glad to pay any charges.” Doug glanced nervously at his watch. “But I would like to get inside before the interview begins.” If it hasn’t already.
“Matt,” said the girl, “what do you think?”
“Markinson would bust a gut if you called him out of the lab for this,” replied one of the two male guards. “I don’t see any harm in letting him through.”
The receptionist shrugged. “Your name, sir?” she asked.
Brad told her, and she swiftly typed out a second tag for him. The men were then ready to move into the building—they thought—but the guards instead led them to one side of the room behind a tall screen. Here they were directed to walk through a metal detection device much like those found in airports, while their equipment was handchecked by one of the security officers.
“Hey, man!” called Brad when a guard broke open one of his still cameras and exposed an entire roll of unshot film.
“Oh, sorry, man,” the guard said, though his expression contradicted this.
Following this check, they were further subjected to pat-down searches just to make certain that they were not carrying any forbidden materials that had not been detected by the earlier device. It was all swift and polite, but very thorough.
“Jeeze, I’ve gotten into prisons without this much trouble,” Ferguson said.
“It’s all because of that fellow you’ve come to see,” answered a guard. “The state of California can’t take the chance that you are smuggling in any weapon to spring him loose or kill him. He is going to get all of his constitutional guarantees, if we have anything to do with it.”
“I guess we’ve missed ten or fifteen minutes of the interview already,” said Doug disgustedly.
The first guard glanced at his watch. “Nope. It’s been shoved back to accommodate the arrival of the governor, and he can’t get here before ten.”
Ferguson whistled. “This is a high-class affair if the Governor is going to make an appearance in a non-election year.”
“And I’ll bet that he doesn’t have to go through all of this,” Doug said.
“You win,” laughed the guard.
Finally, the examination was over and the two were shown out of the foyer into a connecting room. This was little more than a hallway with an unusual grid system on either wall and below their feet. A row of radiant panels covered the ceiling, numerous gas or water nozzles dotted the area around these panels, and six closed circuit television cameras were mounted high on the walls to give visual blanketing of all thirty feet of the room. Doug and Brad walked quickly through this, each unable to suppress a mild feeling of paranoia and an association with tales of Nazi gas ovens.
The next door, like the first, was steel, windowless, and opened by sliding to the right into the wall at the touch of a bright green button located on the left side of the door. The corridor that met them was wide, with a high ceiling and a black tile floor that shone with the glossy cleanness of the hospital hallway.
The color-coded direction lines seemed to have worked so well in the street outside that the designers of the compound had decided to reuse the idea indoors, though in this case the lines were painted on the inside wall and ran to six numbered “conference rooms.” The receptionist had told them to turn left and follow the red line, which they did all of fifteen yards before coming across the open door of a very large lobby teeming with chattering and eager newscasters and reporters. A number of these people were recognizable at a glance, but Morgan was too intent on the moment to do any celebrity watching. He scanned the large assemblage in order to pick out a more welcome face and came up with three after a few seconds.
“Good evening, old boy,” shouted Nick Grundel over the hubbub. “We had almost decided that the government had finally come to its senses and deported you to the land of the excessively gullible.”
“Hello, Grundel, Meg, Blake,” Morgan replied, ignoring the gibe. “This is Bradley Ferguson, photographer extraterrestrial.”
The three people were standing near a refreshment table, sampling the offerings like many of those in the room, and they greeted him with sincere pleasure.
“You really should have been left out of the first portion of tonight’s fun, Doug, since it’s nearly nine-thirty now,” Corbett pointed out, “but the schedule has been shoved back to conform to the wishes of some big cheese or other.”
“It’s the Governor, I think,” supplied Meg. “He’s at a state function of some kind, but he wants to be here for the interview and then the transformation, if there is one.”
“‘If there is one’?” echoed Brad. “Is this then the faithful flock which hath preached lycanthropy to the nation for, lo, these many months?”
“I think that one of your friends has almost converted her to the ranks of the unbelievers,” Nick said.
“Oh, she has not,” Meg hurriedly asserted.
“Which friend?” Morgan asked.
“Powell, Loraine Powell, of the MetroNews Weekly, which is in the league of the ritzy-shitzy magazines,” Grundel stated in thinly-disguised surprise. “How’d you ever meet anybody in that tax bracket?”
“We bumped into one another at last year’s Nobel awards presentation,” Morgan returned in kind.
Big Brad Ferguson neatly sidestepped the interference and slipped up to the nearest table, where he selected a handful of cupcakes and a paper cup filled with greenish punch. “Is there a cover charge for this or is it stab and swallow?”
“Enjoy,” said Corbett. “They’ve kept us waiting so long already that any of the food that’s left by the time this is over will be three-quarters of the way to penicillin, anyway.”
William Pembroke was only a dozen feet from Morgan and the others, but he didn’t hear any of their conversation, just as he didn’t hear any of the other trifling natter filling the room about him. Pembroke was there as a legitimate representative of the San Francisco youth-directed newspaper Cassandra’s Voice, but his real purpose had nothing to do with interviewing some psycho mass murderer or the doctors who would soon decide to lock him away for the rest of his life. He didn’t have any intentions of gathering the information pertaining to that case which would be needed for an article.
Pembroke had dedicated himself to stopping the advancement of science into any of the dangerous areas that he recognized as being threatening to the human race. He had already displayed his dedication in marches against nuclear power, the indiscriminate dumping of chemical wastes, the killing of whales, and fifty more causes facing the modern American citizen. There had been a time, five years before when he was eighteen, that he had questioned his own reasons for becoming involved in such demonstrations because he recognized himself as a “frontrunner” in the situation, a man who sprang, claws unsheathed, into the dramatics of the moment but who never bothered to engage in the less satisfying work that came after the initial blast. But now he saw himself as the bugler running down the slope and sounding the alarm for the troops follow; first the statement had to be made, and then the corrective work could begin.
This night, the most devious, enraging, and potentially devastating matter facing the world, in his opinion, was the insidious birth (and the word was both a pun and an indictment) of the new money-making industry dealing in genetic manipulation. While these socially-isolated brains could produce a microbe which would eat the too-frequent oil spills throughout the world’s oceans, what was to stop them from engineering another germ which would sweep through the planet’s atmosphere selectively eliminating all of the races but those who showed the characteristics of the Hilterian ideal? Or if this was somehow too premeditated an occurrence, was there really any way of guaranteeing that some minor disease, which should have been no more serious than a variant cold, would not escape these vulnerable walls and ravage the unprotected populace outside?
It had to be stopped, and to do that the ire of the people had to be incited. The swiftest manner in which to accomplish this public outcry would be to clearly show just how easily the walls could be smashed from within and the virulent artificial monsters loosed to do their worst. That was what Bill Pembroke intended to do tonight.
The Institute security had been competently tight, as he had expected, but it had been porous enough to be breached, also as he had expected. He needed several bombs to most affirmatively make his point, and since he could hardly have carried them assembled in his camera bag, he had compensated by bringing in the components which would be required to make the simple, yet powerful devices.
In a belt-like contrivance about his waist were several ounces of a moderately stable plastic explosive. The camera which he carried could not have photographed so much as a basket of fruit because its insides consisted of four miniaturized timing mechanisms designed to set off the explosive. Upon slipping away from the main group of people, he would set these four bombs to explode in various spots about the installation—in order to warn a passive nation of what any real fanatic could easily duplicate—simultaneously.
To keep from instigating a self-fulfilling prophecy, he planned to hide the charges in fairly “safe” places, such as stairwells, auditoriums, offices, and other areas away from any labs which might actually contain dangerous experiments. Pembroke had no doubts that some people within the building would die, perhaps as many as a dozen or so, but it didn’t bother him. They were part of this outpost which was his target, and, if anything, their deaths would serve to dramatize the circumstances.
The innocent die in every war.
Bill Pembroke took a cup of punch from one of the long tables and sipped it with a quiet, attentive smile while a network journalist endlessly recounted the ponderously boring details of some previous assignment in the U.S.S.R. But his mind was free of this smothering entanglement, soaring into tomorrow’s headlines and reading of how some brave and nameless individual had stood up to the all-devouring maw of capitalism and screamed, “No!” with a vehemence that had rescued the race once again.
The music coming from the hidden speakers throughout the building was low and soft, almost enough so to be subliminal, Blake Corbett decided while nervously awaiting the next development in this, maybe the most important night in the existence of the human race. It was instrumental music, lulling, designed to soothe the listener in the manner of a steady breeze or a light, soft hand stroking one in a dark bedroom (Beth was the world’s all-time expert at that); and though it was far too low in volume to interfere with conversation, a person could never really get away from it, either, whether in the conference rooms or the hallways. It was probably piped in from some easy-listening FM station.
“Gosh, I never expected this sort of reaction,” Meg was saying in undisguised and unrepentant awe. “Even when the networks were sending crews to do interviews before the last full moon, I figured that interest in the murderer would fade out after he was caught. But there are people here from CBS, NBC, ABC, AP, UPI, Reuters, Scripps-Howard, CNN—”
“And most of the rest of the alphabet,” interrupted Nick. He was attempting to appear smugly above all of the hullabaloo and doing a good job of it. “You can blame our little group for this pervasive interest in what, on the face of it, should have been no more than another rampage by a headcase. We provided the air of exotic mystery that every great murderer must have to capture the fancy of the public.
“Remember Jack the Ripper? Sure, everybody does, but what was he other than a killer of six, maybe ten pitiful whores over a period of three or four months? Gossip made him immortal, gossip that he was ‘a member of the royal family,’ ‘a mad Polish Jew,’ or ‘a Russian doctor.’ The same goes for Leopold and Loeb, because they considered themselves to be ‘superior human beings’ and tried to commit the ‘perfect murder.’
“But who recalls Susi Olah, who probably killed more than a hundred people in Hungary from about 1909 to 1929? Or the Axeman of New Orleans? Or Howard Unruh, who, in the late ’40s, took a gun from his war collection and walked into a New Jersey street and killed thirteen people in twelve minutes?”
“How do you spell that last name?” asked a little man with a pad and pen.
Grundel had never seen the guy before, and as he looked around he noticed that a number of fidgety reporters had decided to fill in the waiting time for Governor Druitt by recording his ad lib lecture on the appeal of certain murderous individuals. He was pleased.
“We provided this special hint of mystery by pointing out on television, in the newspapers, and to anyone who would listen that the man responsible for these savage killings displayed all of the characteristics that might be expected if he were a real werewolf, and we were convincing. Now, the confessed murderer has corroborated the theory and promised to provide the proof tonight, at midnight. You tell me of a scenario which will attract more attention, world-wide, than the quite possible transformation of a human being into a hybridized monster from ancient mythology.”
“It’s more than quite possible,” Morgan said defensively.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Nick smiled widely for the cameras.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, excuse me, please!” said a voice from the front of the room. The group looked up to see four young women, none apparently over twenty, standing together and looking professionally attractive. “If I may have your attention, please,” said one, “it is now nine-thirty, and it seems clear that Governor Druitt will not be able to join us before ten o’clock, so it has been decided that you may wish to take a short tour of this part of the Institute to familiarize yourselves with the building and the work which is being carried on here.”
“It would beat standing around here,” Doug commented.
“Can we take the refreshment tables with us?” asked Ferguson.
The girl continued, “Since there are so many of you here this evening, it would appear that such a tour would be made much easier if we divided you into four companies, as it were, and spaced the departures a few minutes from one another. If those of you from this point back to the left-hand door would go with Audrey …”
Morgan and Friends found themselves included in this initial selection, and they followed about a dozen other visitors out into the hallway at the direction of the slender, blonde-haired young girl. Ferguson snatched up a handful of cakes as he passed the table.
“Before we begin, let me introduce myself,” the guide said as they clustered behind her in the corridor. “I am Audrey Tucker, and, yes, I am rather young to be employed at this installation. I have just turned seventeen—”
“Oh, mama!” whispered Nick, and Meg sharply elbowed him.
“… I have connections, you see. My father is Dr. Lyman Tucker, one of the world’s top biologists and researchers, and he is employed by the Institute.” Polite smiles greeted her explanation. “I’m sure that most of you have read our pamphlets concerning the successes boasted by the medical center, but I would like to briefly point out a few of the more important projects.”
As she began to relate various figures dealing with the available floor space within the building, the highly sophisticated machinery, the self-sustained electrical generating plant which fed its power, and many other details that Blake was certain he would forget inside of a minute, Audrey also began a slow walk down the hallway, which would allow for a second tour to begin in a similar fashion in minutes. The other two groups would make circuits of the huge building from the opposite direction.
“The center is laid out very much like a gigantic watchface, with one corridor, this one, running about the inside of the circumference and separating the large lecture halls and data-processing terminals in the ‘watch’s’ middle from the finely-equipped individualized laboratories lining the outer edge. I see that the majority of you have brought along photographic equipment, and while we at the Institute invite public interest and coverage, I must ask that you refrain from taking pictures or films at any time within this compound unless you are advised that such actions are permitted.”
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid that we’ll panic the populace by showing them what kind of unholy experiments you folks are really carrying out in here?” asked a man in a mockly horrified tone. Doug recognized him as Max Coslo, a reporter from The American Disclosure, a weekly rag that ran headlines like: “30,000 YEAR OLD FROZEN MASTODON GIVES BIRTH UPON EXCAVATION.” “Is that why you won’t allow any live transmissions, too?”
“No, sir,” answered the girl with a smooth smile. “The nature of the work carried out here sometimes falls into the area of military classification, and many private concerns regularly rent our facilities to further develop their products. I’m sure that you can see the reason for our discretion.”
“God bless America,” Grundel sang in a low voice.
“If you will observe some of our efficient, double-lock safety precautions …” Audrey walked to one of the labs on the outer side of the hall and touched a large button much like the one which had opened the doorway into this corridor. Just after her fingers left it, an outer panel (which practically all of the visitors had thought to be the entrance to the laboratory) slipped silently aside to reveal a small room about the size of an elevator car.
“An air lock,” someone said.
Audrey Tucker nodded. “In a practical sense, that’s correct. Should anyone handling dangerous material within this particular lab suffer an accident, perhaps unleashing a virulent form of bacteria, they could be removed without risking further contamination by dressing in a special pressure suit supplied inside the room, coming into this chamber, and going through a radiation decontamination process mixed with various sprays of disinfectant, all automatically instigated by the computer mechanism built into the ceiling of the lock. Each lab has an identical safeguard. You can get into the lab itself by pressing that second button beside the inside door. The chamber can be securely locked against entrance from a panel inside each lab, or, if need be, all of the chambers can be locked against entrance or exit from a central security system at another point in the building. You may take pictures of this, if you wish.”
Over half of the tour group took advantage of the opportunity. They brusquely moved their camera-less companions out of the line of sight.
“This is just a miniature version of that skinny room we passed through into the center, isn’t it?” a reporter asked.
“That’s right,” Audrey answered. “We’re well-prepared for just about any contingency.”
“That’s the thing to take care of any slipups that occur during your gene altering experiments, isn’t it, hon?” said tall, sardonic Max Coslo.
The guide retained her glittering smile, but only with an obvious effort. “There are no genetic engineering projects taking place in this building,” she responded non-commitally.
With this stop duly recorded in photographs, the tour moved on to other points of interest along the clockwise stroll. These included more over-sized auditoriums (designed for the reading of scientific papers, lectures to interested professionals on important topics, bull sessions, and the like), strategically located rest rooms, an excellent photo lab (open upon request to the visiting photographers for the entire night), an operating room-like amphitheater, and isolation facilities for the examination and lodging of unusual medical or mental patients under treatment or observation (Cummings undoubtedly was being held in one of these rooms, Corbett and the others realized), a number of small alcoves stocked with couches and quick food machines for the convenience of the visitors, and a spotless cafeteria which also would be open all night for the benefit of the newspeople and from which emerged warm, tempting odors. Ferguson whined in anticipation.
Twice during the circuit, a youthful-appearing man dressed much more casually than most of the newsmen in attendance seemed to wander almost stealthily from the assembly only to be called back by the sharp-eyed Audrey. Morgan figured that the young guy was some sort of antiestablishment reporter out to sneak forbidden pictures or an industrial spy.
At five minutes before ten, they completed the circle, passed the main lobby, and proceeded into one of the auditoriums, where they all gratefully sat in the cushioned fold-down chairs. The only people to have beaten them into the room were Governor Barry Druitt and his entourage of bodyguards and lackeys. He graciously declined to give any interviews before the night’s attraction.
“What’s the matter?” Nick whispered to Meg while the other newspeople filed into the room. “Hard up for a fear fix?”
Meg hadn’t realized that she was shivering so perceptively. “I guess I just went back to August and discovered that I’m not as brave as I thought I was,” she tried to say with a light tone.
“Hell, you’ve got everybody in this place beat by the Olympic mile.”
“So how come I’m the only one with the heebie-jeebies?”
Grundel surveyed the growing crowd, deciding that it would come to at least seventy in number before the influx exhausted itself. “They … us … me, too, we don’t really believe it, as yet. Some of us, like Doug, are totally convinced that the Professor is a werewolf, just as some like Loraine Powell laugh at the suggestion, but none of us, except you, has seen what will happen at midnight, and no matter how much we try to convince our psyches, we don’t believe it, not deep inside. You don’t have any doubts, do you?”
She sighed. “I had nearly convinced myself that it had been some sort of hallucination after the quiet night in September; but as it gets closer … I just know that the creature I saw trying to pull me out of that car that night was not a human being.”
“Pretty convincing,” he admitted. “And we’ll all have the chance to find out how true it is in just about two hours.”