“This will hurt a little,” Mark said. He’d wheeled his chair over to the sink and filled a basin with cold water, grabbed a washrag, and turned back to the kitchen table, where Artie was huddled in a chair clutching a cup of coffee. Mark soaked the rag in the water and wrung it out. “Lean back—I’ll wipe away the blood and pull out any splinters.”
It hurt like hell, but Artie held his head still and let Mark mop his face. He could feel Mark’s hands tremble. After a minute, Mark asked in a strained voice, “What happened out there?”
Mark was frightened, Artie thought. Afraid of what he’d just seen, afraid of him. He was probably convinced his father was losing it. What the hell did he tell Mark? Or did he tell him anything?
“I was staring out over the city and—Jesus, be careful with the goddamned rag!”
“Sorry.”
“I was staring out at the city and I was feeling depressed—” He stopped. It was coming out lame and weak and sounded more like an admission than he wanted it to be.
Mark didn’t meet Artie’s eyes. “You … can get
help,” he said, picking his words, not sure what was appropriate.
Artie took a deep breath. “I wasn’t so depressed I wanted to go off the railing, for Christ’s sake.” He was talking to Mark like they were equals, something of a novel sensation, though it had to happen sometime. He picked up a dish towel and dabbed at his wet face. The towel came away streaked with blood, but he wasn’t bleeding too badly; no need to go to Emergency.
Mark rolled over to the sink to rinse out the washrag. “I knew you were going through a downer the last few days.” He was trying very hard to sound adult.
“Somebody was watching me from the street,” Artie said slowly. “They … got inside my head.” He started to shake with reaction.
Mark stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
Artie thought of telling him everything that had happened at the office when Connie had been off the wall, and then what Paschelke had told him and Mitch. But it was going to be tough enough trying to explain his sudden desire to imitate a seagull. He changed the subject.
“Larry Shea was killed last night. He was in the Tenderloin and a pack of dogs got him. Feral dogs.”
Mark was shocked, the expressions fleeing across his face like shadows.
“You can read about it in the morning paper,” Artie said. He got up from the chair, grimacing at the sudden pain. He’d twisted his leg when Mark had pulled him back from the railing and it hurt to walk. He limped over to the sliding doors that opened onto the rear porch. Mark wheeled after him, alarmed.
“What the hell you going to do?”
“I want to see if they’re still out there. I’ll be on guard this time.” He wondered if it would do any good even if he was.
It took all the courage he had to step back onto the porch and walk to the railing. But the evening was still, the rain a steady drizzle, the wind a quiet murmur in the trees. Artie shivered. Somewhere down the block a dog barked and then there was nothing but the small noises of the night. There was no sense of anybody on the street below, no feeling of being watched, no feeling of something slipping into his mind.
When he came back in, Mark wheeled over to the doors and locked them. “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?”
“I may be, Mark—you aren’t.” He wondered if that was completely true. “I don’t know.” Artie suddenly ached with exhaustion. “Honest to God, I don’t know what the hell’s happening.” It was true, but it was an admission and he was ashamed because it made him sound weak in front of Mark.
Mark put a pot of coffee on the stove. “Sleep on the couch. I’ll take the first watch.” His voice was calmer now, his hand steadier when he lifted the pot.
“Against what?” Artie asked sarcastically.
Mark rolled to the desk and rummaged around in the bottom drawer where Artie kept his old army automatic. It had been special issue for Intelligence, small and easy to conceal, the grandfather of the Saturday night specials that soon followed. Not good for long range, deadly at short. “Neither of us knows, do we?” It was a brave, smart-ass answer and oddly cheering. Mark was sounding more like himself. And besides, he was right. Mark took out a magazine from another drawer. He loaded the gun quickly, efficiently.
“I told you never to go into the desk,” Artie said, surprised not so much that Mark knew where the gun was but at the obvious familiarity with which he handled it.
Mark hesitated. “You want me to put it back?”
“Hell, no.”
Artie stumbled over to the living room couch, only
half aware when Mark spread the afghan over him. There was a lot of his mother in the boy, Artie thought, and right at the moment he was desperately grateful, though a sense of shame lingered. Mark was protecting him, not the other way around, and that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
So much for a terrifying night, Artie thought, slipping off. The hard questions would come the next day, and he didn’t know how he was going to answer them. Or if he wanted to.
In the morning, they ate in silence. Artie’s face hurt when he chewed, and he’d passed on shaving. Mark hunched over his bowl of cereal, not looking at him.
“You don’t want to tell me anything more?”
“Not at the moment, sport.” Mark was at the age where you first realize your parents have feet of clay, but there was no need to hurry the process. He wouldn’t be able to make sense of the truth, even if he was told it. On the other hand, if he asked a specific question, Artie knew he couldn’t lie to him.
“You going to call Mom?”
“Yeah. Find out how your grandfather is. And when your mother’s going to come home.” Christ, he wanted to talk to Susan so bad it hurt. He pushed aside his cup of coffee. No time like the present.
Five minutes later, he sat back down at the table and poured himself some more coffee. Mark had been watching him like a hawk, picking up on his end of the conversation and trying to fill in his mother’s end.
“She’s not coming back, is she?”
“Not right away. Your grandfather’s doing worse; she’s going to have to stay. She wants you to fly to Eureka as soon as possible. She’ll meet you there and drive you to Willow. She was pretty insistent.”
Mark went back to chasing the last Cheerio around the bottom of the bowl. “What about you?”
“This weekend. I’ll take some sick leave. I’m working on a project with Connie Lee, but she can carry it for a few days.”
Mark nodded. “I’ll go up with you. There’re two more days of school left and I want to finish. If you can wait until the weekend, so can I.”
Susan had been definite about that—she wanted Mark up there now. She hadn’t been nearly so definite about him.
“Your mother wants you today, sport.”
Mark’s face set. “I’ll go up with you,” he repeated.
He should make him go, Artie thought grimly. He’d told Susan about Larry Shea’s death without going into any of the details, but she’d sensed something in his voice. After fifteen years, she could read him all too well. She knew something was going on and she wanted Mark out of there.
Another milestone, Artie thought. When your son develops a mind of his own and he’s too big and too determined for you to use either force or argument.
“Suit yourself. We’ll drive up on the weekend.” Then, casually, “Stick around the house after school tonight.” Mark was popular; his friends from school were always driving over to pick him up. “And stay away from the porch.”
Mark hesitated and Artie would have bet he was going to say “I can take care of myself.” He probably wanted to, but they both knew he couldn’t.
“Sure, Artie.”
After the school van had left, Artie packed his briefcase for work. Touching, Artie thought. Mark had wanted to stay because he was worried about him. But not nearly as much as he was worried about Mark. He hesitated at the door, then turned and walked back to the living room, taking the automatic from the drawer where Mark had put it and slipping it into his pocket. From now on there would be very few places he would go without it.
On the way out he wondered if he should call Susan back, tell her that Mark would be coming up with him on the weekend. But that would be a long conversation, and right at the moment he wasn’t up to it. He’d call that night.
He got the car out of the garage, pausing a moment before getting in. There wasn’t the same presence he’d felt the night before. There was no electricity in the air, nobody trying to open his head like they might open an oyster.
But something was out there.
Something very watchful.
Something very still.
“Hey, Jerry, catch.”
Jerry Gottlieb plucked the floppy out of the air and glanced at it. “No name—mysterioso, right? What do you want me to do with it?”
Artie shucked out of his coat and threw it over his shoulder. “Print it out. Everything that’s on it.”
Jerry groaned. “One-point-four megs—that could be close to eight hundred pages.”
Artie made a guess. “It’s not full—maybe thirty, forty pages at best.”
“You got it, but don’t bug me for a while.” Gottlieb disappeared down the hallway to his own cubbyhole, which was jammed with printers and computer gear. Artie headed for the glass booth, where he could see Connie already at the desk, thumbing through some pages.
“You’re ten minutes late, Banks.” She said it with a smile, but Artie didn’t smile back and Connie looked uncomfortable. “I’m joking, Artie—just trying to make up for things.”
Artie hung his coat on a hook and pulled over a chair. “I hope you’re going to try harder than that.” An image of a seagull fluttered through his mind and he felt some of his anger evaporate. He had a very
good idea of what Connie had gone through yesterday.
“So just what happened?” he asked, deliberately trying to keep his voice bland.
A light coating of sweat covered Connie’s forehead. “It’s getting hard to remember, Artie. I was talking to you and then … it was like somebody else was using my mouth and my tongue. I swear to God, it wasn’t me.”
“Somebody else,” Artie repeated, feigning skepticism.
“It sounds nuts, I know.” Connie nodded toward the newsroom on the other side of the glass and shivered. “I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I talked with Security to find out if we had any visitors. The usual messengers and such and then one guy who signed in from our ad agency. Nobody checked—who would? I called the agency and they’d never heard of him.”
“What’d he look like?”
She shrugged. “The guard didn’t remember anything. Just a guy in a coat. Not skinny, not fat, not tall, not short. Had hair, don’t ask what color. He signed out shortly after you left.”
“Nobody else saw a stranger in the newsroom?”
“Nobody I talked to.” She shivered again. “Fucking creepy … Look, Artie, it wasn’t me. I swear to God.”
Artie got out his own pad of paper. There was nothing he could do, not until the Grub came back with the printout. And there was still the series. Probably a saving grace, take their minds off everything that had happened.
Connie shivered for the last time and penciled something on her tablet. “I think I know how to go with it. Extinctions.”
Artie looked up, suspicious. Connie shook her head, her expression gray. “It’s still me.” She cleared her throat. “Extinctions,” she repeated.
“What about them?”
She hunched forward over the desk, as if she were about to confide a secret. “Whole species are dying, Artie, and more of them are endangered. More extinctions are happening now than since the dinosaurs vanished. There’ve been five big extinctions before this—this is the sixth.” She hesitated a moment, trying to read the expression on his face, then continued, a little defensive. “People are the cause; there’re too many of us. Nobody’s covered it except the science shows. And it gives us an overall view.”
Even though Connie sounded like the old Connie, it still wasn’t quite her, Artie thought. The old Connie would go for the immediate: the spotted owl, the whatever-you-call-it frog. Not for the philosophy of it, not for the big picture. She usually went for the little things that could give the viewer a perspective on the whole. Like the image of a child rooting around in a Dumpster for a feature on hunger among the homeless.
“You have been boning up, haven’t you, Connie?”
She looked blank. “I don’t follow you.”
“When did you first think of ‘extinctions’?”
She put her pad down on the table and looked out at the newsroom. “When I was talking to you yesterday,” she said slowly. “I was going to bring it up but you were getting angry and I didn’t want to push it.” She turned back to Artie. “But whether I thought of it or … somebody gave me the idea, I thought it was worth following up on. So I had the Grub search the Internet.”
Her voice started to trail off and Artie looked at her sharply. Connie was preoccupied with the idea. Normal enough.
“They’re dying out there, Artie. Four thousand plants, five thousand animals at fifty to a hundred times the expected rate. Shit, we’re not fishing these days, we’re sifting the sea with filament nets. We don’t
catch many dolphins anymore but that’s because so few are out there—”
“Throw your pad over, Connie. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He was halfway through her notes when Jerry Gottlieb knocked on the door and opened it. “The assignment desk says to get your ass over there, Connie—we’ve got a breaker.” He stood to one side to let her out, then handed Artie a sheaf of paper with a heavy binder clip at the top. “You were off by thirty pages, Artie—came to seventy-three, single-spaced.”
Artie casually riffled through the pages. Text and diagrams and formulas, very little straightforward exposition—so far as he could see. It wasn’t easy to read—gaps in a lot of the lines, pages with no paragraphing, type characters he’d never seen before.
“What the hell’s wrong with it, Jerry?”
“Some sort of oddball format. When I get a chance tomorrow, I’ll go back in and try and clean up the disk, print out a decent copy.”
“You read it?”
Jerry shrugged. “I didn’t get very far. The first few pages were grisly and after that, the writer lost me. What’s your interest in it?”
“Favor for a friend of mine.”
Jerry looked offended. “Always willing to help a friend of a friend, Artie. But don’t ever make it a friend of a friend of a friend.”
“So I owe you one.”
Just before closing the door, Jerry turned, frowning. “That was bullshit about your friend, right? If you want it deciphered, I’d try one of the anthropologists at the science museum in the park—they’re more user-friendly than the ones at UC Berkeley.”
Artie raised an eyebrow.
“Then you read it through?”
“Are you kidding? It was hard to read and I only
understood every fifth word anyway—your secret’s safe with me.”
After he’d left, Artie spread the pages out in front of him and glanced through them. The details of the accident, sketches and photographs that Shea must have scanned in, were just as grisly as the Grub had said. Then there were lists of measurements and descriptions of how the skull set on the spinal column, complete dental charts—and comparison charts of just how the knee bone connected to the thigh bone, he thought irreverently, not only in Talbot but in a list of controls. Measurements of bone thickness, the size and shape of the teeth, the thickness of the orbital ridges …
And all of it harder than usual to read.
The Grub had made a good suggestion: take the printout to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park and let a professional guess at what Shea had been up to. Artie juggled the pages back into a neat stack and slipped them into a heavy envelope. He’d call the museum and make an appointment for later that morning, see what he could come up with for a bribe. It would have to be a hefty one to get anybody to try to puzzle out this mess.
A slight movement in the newsroom outside caught his eye and he turned. He had a vague memory of a brightly colored silk scarf and searched for it. Adrienne Jantzen—she’d been watching him. Now her head was down and she was busy at her computer, probably writing notes for the noon news. Attractive woman, he thought, then felt a sudden flush of guilt. Jesus, real macho.
He dialed the museum and a Dr. Richard Hall said he’d be glad to see him. Especially if Artie could help out with publicity for their new exhibit.
Golden Gate Park was an upper, even in the cold and the drizzle. The Academy of Sciences had
been a favorite hangout when Artie was a kid. A planetarium, an aquarium, and halls full of stuffed animals all rolled into one. Plus a bookstore where you could buy books about dinosaurs and kits you could put together to make your own pterodactyl and a restaurant in the basement that served hamburgers that weren’t as tasty as McDonald’s but were probably better for you.
The director’s office was hidden behind a gallery they were renovating for a new exhibit—according to the sign, it would be the world’s first virtual reality diorama. The walls were blank. In the middle were a dozen cubicles with a chair in each, a computer workstation and a VR helmet and gloves hanging on hooks. Not very inviting, Artie thought, but then they weren’t finished. Paint some dinosaurs on the walls, add some sound effects, and it would pull in the kids.
“Mr. Banks?”
The man was younger than Artie had been expecting. Short and muscular, kinky black hair in a modified Afro, horn-rimmed glasses, light brown skin, and teeth so white they made his smile seem bigger than it was.
He held out his hand. “Richard Hall, assistant curator.” Artie shook it and was led into a cramped office. Hall motioned to the chair on the other side of an ancient wooden desk. “You said over the phone you were willing to do an article on Visions of the Past—that’s what we’re going to call the room outside—and you also wanted a favor. Quid pro quo?”
Artie started to apologize and Hall waved it away. “We could use the publicity—though the room won’t be open for another month—and I’ve got some free time on my hands. So. What can I do for you?”
Artie opened the envelope and shoved the papers across the table: The work of a doctor friend, he said, who’d recently died. Apparently research on a body he’d autopsied, but Artie hadn’t the slightest idea what it was about except it had something do with anthropology … .
He let his voice trail away and looked at Hall expectantly.
Hall picked up the pages and thumbed them quickly with a slight frown. “It’s readable, but just barely. What’s wrong with your computer?”
Artie looked apologetic. “The technician said the copy was in an oddball format. He’s going to clean up the disk tomorrow, but time’s important.”
“You’re a relative, I take it?”
“Close friend.” Artie hesitated, then added that the information was connected with the estate and if he could have some idea today—
Hall sighed. “If they’re paying for it, they’re seldom in a hurry. If they get it for free, they want it the day before yesterday.” He grinned. “Okay. A feature story when we open the room. Deal?”
Artie thought about it a moment, then nodded as if the decision were a hard one to make. Hall pointed to the room outside. “The first booth is set up to go—you might as well try it out while I go through this stuff. The software’s already in the machine—just put on the helmet and gloves, turn the computer on, and you’re all set. The full program runs about an hour. When we’re up and operating we’ll slice it into five-minute segments—just about the attention span of kids these days.”
In the Visions of the Past room, the cubicle setup looked as simple as Hall had said. Artie fumbled with the gloves a moment, slipped on the helmet with the virtual reality goggles and headphones, and flicked the computer’s On switch.
The scene was blurry at first, taking a few seconds to swim into focus. Artie gasped. He was back in his dream, lying on the hillside, naked except for a piece of hide tied around his waist. White clouds floated slowly overhead and he could even smell the faint fragrance of the wildflowers. How the hell could
they program odors? Or was he imagining the smells that would naturally go with the scenery?
There was a buzz of conversation in the air and he rolled to his knees, then stood up and turned to the caves behind him. Gathered in front were maybe twenty members of the Tribe, mostly young adults with half a dozen kids plus a middle-aged giant of a man with a dirty white beard. Just coming out of one of the caves was an old woman of forty winters, half supported by her young daughter. The kids were naked, the adults not wearing anything more than he was. A piece of hide around their waist, nothing binding the breasts. A husky-looking group, all of them with tangled hair and several with livid scars and limps, including the white-bearded giant.
He knew them all, Artie thought with wonder. Purple Flower, Deep Wood, Soft Skin, Clear Stream—the old woman, White Beard. He knew the kids even better; he was only a little older than they. Few of them had been named yet because so many, like Little Fox, died early.
White Beard grunted at him and he had a sudden mental image of a small pile of chipped rocks. The image faded and he scurried back into the cave and picked up a rush bag filled with a dozen flints. He was the most proficient in the Tribe at making scrapers and cutters, and he was responsible for them. They were moving to another set of caves and they couldn’t afford to leave anything behind, least of all the flints.
He came out in the bright sunshine blinking. Deep Wood laughed at him and he laughed back and pegged a stone at his feet. White Beard scolded him again, and the Tribe got in a ragged line and started off down the path that wound along the side of the stream. It was time to move on; game was getting scarce and the berry bushes had been pretty well picked over. The new caves were closer to bigger game, which both excited and frightened him. A lot of meat for the effort,
but you had to get in close to kill the larger animals and it could cost you your life.
He looked back only once, to glance at the spot where Little Fox had been given to the Spirit of the Flames the previous evening, after coughing for the last time. When they reached the riverbank, Clear Stream scattered the ashes from a leather pouch and Little Fox was returned to the Mother of Waters.
Artie shivered, then concentrated on Soft Skin walking in front of him, admiring the sway of her ample hips and imagining them both in a dark corner of the cave. She picked up on his thoughts and emphasized the swing of her hips even more. He grinned, delighted. Then Tall Tree noticed his arousal poking out from under his strip of hide and hooted and the rest of the Tribe turned and laughed. He reddened and resolved to get Tall Tree alone when they reached the new caves and teach him some manners.
It was a warm day and they’d broken once for a rest when Clear Stream noticed some new berry bushes still full with fruit. Shadows were just beginning to appear when they picked up their few belongings and continued on, their lips and fingers now dyed a deep purple. Cliffs were starting to rise along both banks of the stream and Artie noticed animal tracks breaking off from the path to lead down to the water. Game would be plentiful; White Beard had made a wise choice.
The path had narrowed, the cliffs rising to Artie’s right. They were maybe twenty feet high, their shadows almost reaching to the water. But it was still warm, even in the shadows, with no wind—a beautiful day.
The attack came without warning. There were shouts from the cliffs above, and some Flat Faces appeared at the top to heave rocks down at them. The Tribe scattered along the pathway, some of them already clutching broken arms and showing leg wounds. Artie noted with amazement that Tall Tree had fallen to the ground, moaning, a stick jutting from his back.
White Beard whirled his club above his head and let it go. There was a scream from above and one of their attackers tumbled down to the path. Then a dozen of the Flat Faces were swarming down on them, either climbing across the rock face or sliding down on vines they’d thrown over the edge.
The Tribe managed to get together in a group with the cliff at their backs and clubbed down two more of the attackers. Suddenly one of them, who had been shouting commands in a language that seemed far more complex than White Beard’s grunts, stepped forward, holding up his hands and smiling. The Flat Faces withdrew down the path and the leader came up to White Beard, still smiling and this time speaking in their own tongue, though he wasn’t very good at it. They could go in peace if they left their flints behind.
White Beard nodded at Artie, who stepped forward with his rush bag. Then he stopped, alarmed. Around a curve in the path ahead he could see more of the enemy sliding down their vines. They were trapped now, Flat Faces in front and behind. Their leader in his speaking had been … had been what? Artie couldn’t think of a word for it.
The leader noticed his expression and sprang back while the others leaped toward them, thrusting with their sticks and clubbing those in front. Two of them clung to White Beard, stabbing at him. He went down, his throat cut. Artie was horrified. There might be nobody left to make a pile of twigs and branches and place White Beard and his favorite club on it as an offering to the Spirit of the Flames.
Deep Wood had floundered into the stream, which was now rapidly turning red, splashing frantically toward the other side. He almost made it before a stick cut into his side and he fell, holding his wound with both hands and screaming. Ahead of Artie, Soft Skin had been knocked to the ground, scratching at the Flat Face on top of her who’d torn away her strip of hide.
He hit her in the head with a rock and she suddenly lay still, but he didn’t get off. Clear Stream was already dead, lying alongside the path, blood oozing from her mouth, her eyes blank.
Artie was the only one left standing now, bleeding from a dozen different wounds and screaming because of the pictures that kept flashing through his head and then fading and going black. In his mind he saw the death of every member of the Tribe while all around him he could hear the screams of the children and the cries of the injured. Then two of the Flat Faces grabbed him and threw him on his belly in the dirt, kneeling on his arms while they spread his legs apart and stripped away his bit of hide. He was filled with sudden fear because he knew they were going to use him the same way they had used Soft Skin. He tried to twist away but the one on top grabbed his hair and yanked his head up while the other held a cutter to his throat.
He was forced to watch while they slaughtered everybody, including the young children; he couldn’t even move his head to look away. The cries were dying down now and soon the air was filled with silence and there were no more images flitting through his mind. He knew the Flat Faces were the enemy and he wanted to kill them all, but then he suddenly felt ashamed because compared to the members of the Tribe he thought they were … beautiful.
Just before his throat was cut he realized with horror that they were treating the Tribe like animals. Everybody’s throat had now been slashed or their heads crushed by rocks, and the Flat Faces were hard at work with the cutters and scrapers they had taken from his rush bag.
They were butchering the Tribe for meat.