minerals, rock, and soil. What does it ex—”
“It eats dirt?” Clint asked.
“That’s an even simpler way to express it,” Manfred said. “Not precise, mind you, but simpler. We don’t yet understand how it breaks down those substances or how it obtains energy from them. There are aspects of its biology that we can see perfectly clearly but that still remain mysterious.”
“I thought insects ate plants or each other or ... dead meat,” Bobby said.
“They do,” the entomologist confirmed. “This thing is not an insect—or any other class of the phylum Arthropoda, for that matter.”
“Sure looks like an insect to me,” Bobby said, glancing down at the partly dismantled bug and grimacing involuntarily.
“No,” Manfred said, “this is a creature that evidently bores through soil and stone, capable of ingesting that material in chunks as large as fat grapes. And the next question is, ‘If that’s what it eats, what does it excrete?’ And the answer, Mr. Dakota, is that it excretes diamonds.”
Bobby jerked as if the entomologist had hit him.
He glanced at Clint, who looked as surprised as Bobby felt. The Pollard case had induced several changes in the Greek, and now it had robbed him of his poker face.
In a tone of voice that suggested Manfred was playing them for fools, Clint said, “You’re telling us it turns dirt into diamonds?”
“No, no,” Manfred said. “It methodically eats through veins of diamond-bearing carbon and other material, until it finds the gems. Then it swallows them in their encrusted jackets of minerals, digests those minerals, passes the rough diamond into the polishing chamber, where any remaining extraneous matter is worn away by vigorous contact with these hundreds of fine, wirelike bristles that line the chamber.” With the scalpel he pointed to the feature of the bug that he had just described. “Then it squirts the raw diamond out the other end.”
The entomologist opened the center drawer of his desk, removed a white handkerchief, unfolded it, and revealed three red diamonds, all considerably smaller than the one Bobby had taken to van Corvaire, but probably worth hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, apiece.
“I found these at various points in the creature’s system.”
The largest of the three was still partially encased in a mottled brown-black-gray mineral crust.
“They’re diamonds?” Bobby said, playing ignorant. “I’ve never seen red diamonds.”
“Neither had I. So·I went to another professor, a geologist who happens to be a gemologist as well, got him out of bed at midnight to show these to him.”
Bobby glanced at the would-be Irish Sumo wrestler, but the man did not rise from his chair or speak, so he evidently was not the geologist.
Manfred explained what Bobby and Clint already knew—that these scarlet diamonds were among the rarest things on earth—while they pretended that it was all news to them. “This discovery strengthened my suspicions about the creature, so I went straight to Dr. Gavenall’s house and woke him shortly before two o’clock this morning. He threw on sweats and sneakers, and we came right back here, and we’ve been here ever since, working this out together, unable to believe our own eyes.”
At last the round man rose and stepped to the side of the desk.
“Roger Gavenall,” Manfred said, by way of introduction. “Roger is a geneticist, a specialist in recombinant DNA, and widely known for his creative projections of macroscale genetic engineering that might conceivably progress from current knowledge.”
“Sorry,” Bobby said, “I lost you at ‘Roger is...’ We’ll need some more of that layman’s language, I’m afraid.”
“I’m a geneticist and futurist,” Gavenall said. His voice was unexpectedly melodic, like that of a television game-show host. “Most genetic engineering, for the foreseeable future, will take place on a microscopic scale—creating new and useful bacteria, repairing flawed genes in the cells of human beings to correct inherited weaknesses and prevent inherited disease. But eventually we’ll be able to create whole new species of animals and insects, macroscale engineering-useful things like voracious mosquito eaters that will eliminate the need to spray Malathion in tropical regions like Florida. Cows that are maybe half the size of today’s cows and a lot more metabolically efficient, so they require less food, yet produce twice as much milk.”
Bobby wanted to suggest that Gavenall consider combining the two biological inventions to produce a small cow that ate only enormous quantities of mosquitoes and produced three times as much milk. But he kept his mouth shut, certain that neither of the scientists would appreciate his humor. Anyway, he had to admit that his compulsion to make a joke of this was an attempt to deal with his own deep-seated fear of the ever-increasing weirdness of the Pollard case.
“This thing,” Gavenall said, indicating the deconstructed bug in the lab tray, “isn’t anything that nature created. It’s clearly an engineered lifeform, so astonishingly task-specific in every aspect of its biology that it’s essentially a biological machine. A diamond scavenger.”
Using a pair of forceps and the scalpel, Dyson Manfred gently turned over the insect that wasn’t an insect, so they could see its midnight-black shell rimmed with red markings.
Bobby thought he heard whispery movement in many parts of the study, and he wished Manfred would let some sunlight into the room. The windows were covered with interior wood shutters, and the slats were tightly shut. Bugs liked darkness and shadows, and the lamps here seemed insufficiently bright to dissuade them from scurrying out of the shallow drawers, over Bobby’s shoes, up his socks, and under the legs of his pants.
Hanging his pendulous belly over the desk, indicating the crimson edging on the carapace, Gavenall said, “On a hunch Dyson and I shared, we showed a representation of this pattern to an associate in the mathematics department, and he confirmed that it’s an obvious binary code.”
“Like the universal product code that’s on everything you buy at the grocery store,” the entomologist explained.
Clint said, “You mean the red marks are the bug’s number?”
“Yes.”
“Like ... well, like a license plate?”
“More or less,” Manfred said. “We haven’t taken a chip of the red material for analysis yet, but we suspect it’ll prove to be a ceramic material, painted onto the shell or spray-bonded in some fashion.”
Gavenall said, “Somewhere there are a lot of these things, industriously digging for diamonds, red diamonds, and each of them carries a coded serial number that identifies it to whomever created it and set it to work.”
Bobby grappled with that concept for a moment, trying to find a way to see it as a part of the world in which he lived, but it simply did not fit. “Okay, Dr. Gavenall, you’re able to envision engineered creatures like this—”
“I couldn’t have envisioned this,” Gavenall said adamantly. “It never would’ve occurred to me. I could only recognize it for what it was, for what it must be.”
“All right, but nevertheless you recognized what it must be, which is something neither Clint nor I could’ve done. So now tell me—who could make something like this damned thing?”
Manfred and Gavenall exchanged a meaningful look and were both silent for a long moment, as if they knew the answer to his question but were reluctant to reveal it. Finally, lowering his game-show-host voice to an even more mellifluous note, Gavenall said, “The genetic knowledge and engineering skill required to produce this thing do not yet exist. We’re not even close to being able to ... to ... not even close. ”
Bobby said, “How long until science advances far enough to make this thing possible?”
“No way of arriving at a precise answer,” Manfred said.
“Guess.”
“Decades?” Gavenall said. “A century? Who knows?”
Clint said, “Wait a minute. What’re you telling us? That this thing comes from the future, that it came through some ... some time warp from the next cen
tury?”
“Either that,” Gavenall said, “or ... it doesn’t come from this world at all.”
Stunned, Bobby looked down at the bug with no less revulsion but with considerably more wonder and respect than he’d had a moment ago. “You really think this might be a biological machine created by people from another world? An alien artifact?”
Manfred worked his mouth but produced no sound, as if rendered speechless by the prospect of what he was about to say.
“Yes,” Gavenall said, “an alien artifact. Seems more likely to me than the possibility that it came tumbling back to us through some hole in time.”
Even as Gavenall spoke, Dyson Manfred continued to work his mouth in a frustrated attempt to break the silence that gripped him, and his lantern jaw gave him the look of a praying mantis masticating a grisly lunch. When words at last issued from him, they came in a rush: “We want you to understand, we will not, flatly will not, return this specimen. We’d be derelict as scientists to allow this incredible thing to reside in the hands of laymen, we must preserve and protect it, and we will, even if we have to do so by force.”
A flush of defiance lent a glow of health to the entomologist’s pale, angular face for the first time since Bobby had met him.
“Even if by force,” he repeated.
Bobby had no doubt that he and Clint could beat the crap out of the human stick bug and his rotund colleague, but there was no reason to do so. He didn’t care if they kept the thing in the lab tray—as long as they agreed to some ground rules about how and when they would go public with it.
All he wanted right now was to get out of that bughouse, into warm sunlight and fresh air. The whispery sounds from the specimen drawers, though certainly imaginary, grew louder and more frenzied by the minute. His entomophobia would soon kick him off the ledge of reason and send him screaming from the room; he wondered if his anxiety was apparent or if he was sufficiently self-controlled to conceal it. He felt a bead of sweat slip down his left temple, and had the answer.
“Let’s be absolutely frank,” Gavenall said. “It’s not only our obligation to science that requires us to maintain possession of this specimen. Revelation of this find will make us, academically and financially. Neither one of us is a slouch in his field, but this will catapult us to the top, the very top, and we’re willing to do whatever is necessary to protect our interests here.” His blue eyes had narrowed, and his open Irish face had closed up into a hard mask of determination. “I’m not saying I’d kill to keep that specimen ... but I’m not saying I wouldn’t, either.”
Bobby sighed. “I’ve done a lot of research for UCI into the backgrounds of prospective faculty members, so I know the academic world can be as competitive and vicious and dirty—dirtier—than either politics or show business. I’m not going to fight you on this. But we’ve got to reach an agreement about when you can go public with it. I don’t want you doing anything that would bring my client to the attention of the press until we’ve resolved his case and are sure he’s ... out of danger.”
“And when will that be?” Manfred asked.
Bobby shrugged. “A day or two. Maybe a week. I doubt it’ll drag on much longer than that.”
The entomologist and geneticist beamed at each other, obviously delighted. Manfred said, “That’s no problem at all. We’ll need much longer than that to finish studying the specimen, prepare our first paper for publication, and devise a strategy to deal with both the scientific community and the media.”
Bobby imagined that he heard one of the shallow drawers sliding open in the case behind him, forced outward by the weight of a vile torrent of giant, squirming Madagascar roaches.
“But I’ll take the three diamonds with me,” he said. “They’re quite valuable, and they belong to my client.”
Manfred and Gavenall hesitated, made a token protest, but quickly agreed. Clint took the stones and rewrapped them in the handkerchief. The scientists’ capitulation convinced Bobby there had been more than three diamonds in the bug, probably at least five, leaving them with two stones to support their thesis regarding the bug’s origins and purpose.
“We’ll want to meet your client, interview him,” Gavenall said.
“That’s up to him,” Bobby said.
“It’s essential. We must interview him.”
“That’s his decision,” Bobby said. “You’ve gotten most of what you wanted. Eventually he may agree, and then you’ll have everything you’re after. But don’t push it now.”
The round man nodded. “Fair enough. But tell me ... where did he find the thing?”
“He doesn’t remember. He has amnesia.” The drawer behind him was open now. He could hear the shells of the huge roaches clicking and scraping together as they poured out of confinement and down the front of the cabinet, swarming toward him. “We really, have to go,” he said. “We. don’t have another minute to spare.” He left the study quickly, trying not to look as if he was bolting for his life.
Clint followed him, as did the two scientists, and at the front door, Manfred said, “I’m going to sound as if I ought to be writing stories for some sensational tabloid, but if this is an alien artifact that came into your client’s hands, do you think he could’ve gotten it inside a ... well, a spaceship? Those people who claim to have been abducted and forced to undergo examinations aboard spaceships ... they always seem to go through a period of amnesia first, before learning the truth.”
“Those people are crackpots or frauds,” Gavenall said sharply. “We can’t let ourselves be associated with that sort of thing.” He frowned, and the frown deepened into a scowl, and he said, “Unless in this case it’s true.”
Looking back at them from the stoop, grateful to be outside, Bobby said, “Maybe it is. I’m at a point where I’ll believe anything till it’s disproved. But I’ll tell you this ... my feeling is that whatever is happening to my client is something a lot stranger than alien abduction.”
“A lot,” Clint agreed.
Without further elaboration, they went down the front walkway to the car. Bobby opened his door and stood for a moment, reluctant to get into Clint’s Chevy. The mild breeze washing down the Irvine hills felt so clean after the stale air in Manfred’s study.
He put one hand in his pocket, felt the three red diamonds, and said softly, “Bug shit.”
When he finally got into the car and slammed the door, he barely resisted the urge to reach under his shirt to determine if the things he still felt crawling on him were real.
Manfred and Gavenall stood on the front stoop, watching Bobby and Clint, as if half expecting their car to tip back on its rear bumper and shoot straight into the sky to rendezvous with some great glowing craft out of a Spielberg movie.
Clint drove two blocks, turned at the corner, and pulled to the curb as soon as they were out of sight. “Bobby, where in the hell did Frank get that thing?”
Bobby could only answer him with another question: “How many different places does he go when he teleports? The money, the red diamonds and the bug, the black sand-and how far away are some of those places? Really far away?”
“And who is he?” Clint asked.
“Frank Pollard from El Encanto Heights.”
“But I mean, who is that?” Clint thumped one fist against the steering wheel. “Who the hell is Frank Pollard from El Encanto?”
“I think what you really want to know is not who he is. More important ... what is he?”
44
BY SURPRISE Bobby came to visit.
Lunch was eaten before Bobby came. Dessert was still in Thomas’s mind. Not the taste of it. The memory. Vanilla ice cream, fresh strawberries. The way dessert made you feel.
He was alone in his room, sitting in his armchair, thinking about making a picture poem that would have the feeling of eating ice cream and strawberries, not the taste but the good feeling, so some day when you didn’t have any ice cream or strawberries, you could just look at the poem and get that same good feeli
ng even without eating anything. Of course, you couldn’t use pictures of ice cream or strawberries in the poem, because that wouldn’t be a poem, that would be only saying how good ice cream and strawberries made you feel. A poem didn’t just say, it showed you and made you feel.
Then Bobby came through the door, and Thomas was so happy he forgot the poem, and they hugged. Somebody was with Bobby, but it wasn’t Julie, so Thomas was disappointed. He was embarrassed, too, because it turned out he’d met the person with Bobby a couple times before, over the years, but he didn’t remember him right away, which made him feel dumb. It was Clint. Thomas said the name to himself, over and over, so maybe he’d remember next time: Clint, Clint, Clint, Clint, Clint.
“Julie couldn’t come,” Bobby said, “she’s babysitting a client.”
Thomas wondered why a baby would ever need a private eye, but he didn’t ask. In TV only grownups needed private eyes, which were called private eyes because they looked out for you, though he wasn’t sure why they were called private. He also wondered how a baby could pay for a private eye, because he knew eyes like Bobby and Julie worked for money like everyone else, but babies didn’t work, they were too little to do anything. So where’d this one get the money to pay Bobby and Julie? He hoped they didn’t get cheated out of their money, they worked hard for it.
Bobby said, “She told me to tell you she loves you even more than she did yesterday, and she’ll love you even more tomorrow.”
They hugged again because this time Thomas was giving the hug to Bobby for Julie.
Clint asked if he could see the latest scrapbook of poems. He took it across the room and sat in Derek’s armchair, which was okay because Derek wasn’t in it, he was in the wreck room.
Bobby moved the chair from the worktable, putting it closer to the armchair that belonged to Thomas. He sat, and they talked about what a big blue day it was and how nice the flowers looked where they were all bright outside Thomas’s window.
For a while they talked about lots of things, and Bobby was funny—except when they talked about Julie, he changed. He was worried for Julie, you could tell. When he talked about her, he was like a good picture poem—he didn’t say his worry, but he showed it and made you feel it.
Thomas was already worried for Julie, so Bobby’s worry made him feel even worse, made him scared for her.
“We’ve got our hands full with the current case,” Bobby said, “so neither one of us might be able to visit again until this weekend or the first of the week.”
“Okay, sure,” Thomas said, and a big coldness rushed in from somewhere and filled him up. Each time Bobby mentioned the new case, the one with the baby, his picture poem of worry was even easier to read.
Thomas wondered if this was the case where they were going to meet up with the Bad Thing. He was pretty sure it was. He thought he should tell Bobby about the Bad Thing, but he couldn’t find a way. No matter how he told it, he’d sound like the dumbest dumb person who ever lived at The Home. It was better to wait until the danger was coming a lot nearer, then TV to Bobby a real hard warning that’d scare him into looking out for the Bad Thing and shooting it when he saw it. Bobby would pay attention to a TVed warning because he wouldn’t know where it came from, that it came from just a dumb person.
And Bobby could shoot, too, all private eyes could shoot because most days it was bad out there in the world, and you knew you were going to meet up with somebody who was going to shoot at you first or try to run you down with a car or stab you or strangle you or, once in a while, try to throw you off a building, or even Try To Make It Look Like Suicide, and since most good guys didn’t carry guns around with them, private eyes who watched over them had to be good shooters.
After a while Bobby had to go. Not to the bathroom but back to work. So they hugged again. And then Bobby and Clint were gone, and Thomas was alone.
He went to the window. Looked out. The day was good, better than night. But even with the sun pushing most darkness out past the edge of the world, and even with the rest of the darkness hiding from the sun behind trees and buildings, there was badness in the day. The Bad Thing hadn’t gone out past the edge of the world with the night. It was still there, somewhere in the day, you could tell.
Last night, when he got too close to the Bad Thing and it tried to grab him, he was so afraid, he pulled away quick like. He had a feeling the Bad Thing was trying to find out who he was and where he was, and then was going to come to The Home and eat him like it ate the little animals. So he pretty much made up his mind not to get real close to it again, stay far away, but now he couldn’t do that because of Julie and the baby. If Bobby, who never worried, was so worried for Julie, then Thomas needed to be even more worried for her than he was. And if Julie and Bobby thought the baby should be watched over, then Thomas had to worry about the baby, too, because what was important to Julie was important to him.
He reached out into the day.
It was there. Far away yet.
He didn’t get close.
He was scared.
But for Julie, for Bobby, for the baby, he’d have to stop being scared, get closer, and be sure he knew all the time where the Bad Thing was and whether it was coming this way.
45
JACKIE JAXX did not arrive at the offices of Dakota & Dakota until ten past four that Tuesday afternoon, a full hour after Bobby and Clint returned, and to Julie’s annoyance he spent half an hour creating an atmosphere that he found conducive to his work. He felt the room was too bright, so he closed the blinds on the large windows, though the approaching winter twilight and an incoming bank of clouds over the Pacific had already robbed the day of much of its light. He tried different arrangements with the three brass lamps, each of which was equipped with a three-way bulb, giving him what seemed an infinite number of combinations; he finally left one of them at seventy watts, one at thirty, and one off completely. He asked Frank to move from the sofa to one of the chairs, decided that wasn’t going to work, moved Julie’s big chair out from behind the desk and put him in that, then arranged four other chairs in a semicircle in front of it.
Julie suspected that Jackie could have worked effectively with the blinds