The Presence [011-05-5.0]

By john Saul

Category: Fiction Horror

Synopsis:

Beyond the sparkling Hawaiian beaches, masked by the
deceptive beauty of the rainforest, evil awaits
sixteen-year-old Michael Sundquist and his mother,
Katharine, an anthropologist who has come to the
Islands to study the unusual skeletal remains
unearthed on the volcanic flanks of Haleakala,
Maui.
Yet far below the black depths of the Pacific a
mysterious substance snakes through undiscovered
fissures in the ocean floor, as nature itself
seems to portend the terror to come.
Then, with the sudden, unexplained death of Michael's
friend, a disturbing truth dawns: the corporation that is
funding Katharine's dig has a far greater investment
than she ever imagined-an investment in medical
terror. And her son may be part of their hideous
grand plan-


Praise for John Saul's previous
New
York Times bestsellers
GUARDIAN
"All the right scares in all the right places." -
The
Seattle Times
"Tension and terror ... A suspense-filled and
logical tale." -
Rocky Mountain News
The HOMING
"Intense action . . . The sort of old-fashioned
terrors that have made him the most consistently
bestselling horror writer next to King and Koontz."
-Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
"[A] fast-paced thriller ... Creepily compelling."
-Kirkus Reviews
BLACK LIGHTNING
"Electrifyingly scary."
-San Jose Mercury News
Other Titles By John Saul:
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
PUNISH THE SINNERS
CRY FOR THE STRANGERS
COMES THE BLIND FURY
WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
THE GOD PROJECT
NATHANIEL
BRAINCHILD
HELLFIRE
THE UNWANTED
THE UNLOVED
CREATURE
SECOND CHILD
SLEEPWALK
DARKNESS
SHADOWS
GUARDIAN*
THE HOMING*
BLACK LIGHTNING*
THE BLACKSTONE CHRONICLES:
Part 1-AN EYE FOR AN EYE: THE
DOLL*
Part 2-TWIST OF FATE: THE LOCKET*
Part 3-ASHES TO ASHES:
THE DRAGON'S FLAME*
Part 4-IN THE SHADOW OF EVIL: THE
HANDKERCHIEF*
Part 5-DAY OF RECKONING: THE
STEREOSCOPE*
Part 6-ASYLUMININ THE PRESENCE*
*
Published by Fawcett Books
  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing
Group are available at quantity discounts on
bulk purchases for premium, educational,
fund-raising, and special sales use. For
details, please call 1-800-733-3000.
THE PRESENCE
JOHN SAUL
FAWCETT CREST NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be
unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may
have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or
destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may
have received payment for it.
  A Fawcett Crest Book
  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
  Copyright [*copy] 1997 by John Saul
  All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the United States by The Ballantine
Publishing Group, a division of Random House,
Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto.
  httpccwww.randomhouse.com
  Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number: 97-97181
  ISBN 0-449-00241-1
  Manufactured in the United States of
America
  First Hardcover Edition: August 1997 First
Mass Market Edition: June 1998
To all my friends on Maui, and especially to the
Maui Writers Conference and School, which has
enriched my life not only as a writer, but in every
other way as well.
As all of us know,
Maui No Ka Oi
-Maui truly is the best, a paradise
on earth.
DISCOVERY
From above, the day was perfect.
A sky of sapphire blue, a sea of sparkling
turquoise. A scattering of marshmallow clouds
drifted across a vast expanse of azure.
The wind had died, and the ocean rose and fell gently
against the shattered end of a lava flow that extended from the
sea to a vent nearly halfway up Kilauea on
the island of Hawaii.
The Big Island. Bigger by far than all the rest
of the Hawaiian islands put together.
And growing bigger every year.
Today, though, even the earth seemed to have fallen in with the
torpor of the air and water. The fires burning
deep within the island's core seemed to have settled to a
slight simmering, as if waiting for another time to push
up through the rocky crust above and send trails of
glowing magma snaking down the mountain's flank
to push farther into the sea.
The kind of day for which the diving team had been waiting.
An hour after dawn, they were aboard the tug and barge
that carried them out of Hilo Bay. Now the barge was
anchored two hundred yards off the end of the lava
flow, held in place by three anchors
chained to heavy hawsers. The tug itself needed nothing more
than a lunch hook to hold its position, and the
surface crew-with little to do until the divers in the
water signaled them- relaxed on deck, drinking
beer and playing cards, as somnolent as the weather
itself.
Perhaps if the wind and the sea hadn't conspired against
them, someone would have felt the seismic blip and
realized that the idyllic day's serenity was an
illusion.
Beneath the thick tongue of lava that wound down from the
distant vent, the pressure from the hot core far below
the crust of the earth had built, cracking apart a great
slab of rock.
It wasn't an explosive crack-nothing like the
displacement that occurs when the locked edges of
continental plates suddenly break free and
hundreds of miles of solid-seeming earth jerk
abruptly in opposite directions.
Nor was it the kind of crack in which, without warning, the
floor of the sea heaves upward, sending a great
tidal wave thousands of miles in every direction,
towering over land, to drown whatever stands in its way.
This crack, occurring just below the surface, caused
only the smallest of blips on the
seismographs that monitored the mountain's
movements. If anyone on the island felt it at
all, it was to wonder a moment later if perhaps he had
merely imagined it.
Beneath the lava flow, the fissure in the rock
provided just enough room for a glowing column of molten
rock to begin its rise to the surface, heat and
pressure widening its path as it went, until at
last the white-hot magma broke into the empty
tunnel under the broad strip of lava on the top,
where years ago the still-molten interior of the
flow had simply drained out of the tube formed by its own
fast-cooling surface.
Now, as the tug bobbed peacefully at the end of the
flow, and the divers below worked in blissful innocence, the
liquid fire streamed downhill, both hidden and
insulated by the black rock above it.
Coming to the end of the tube, to the closed chamber where the
last flow had finally been frozen by the sea, the lava
pooled, more and more of it pouring in every minute, its
weight building against the interior of the cliff's
face, its heat relentlessly burning away the wall
of stone that kept the boiling magma from the sea.
One hundred feet below the surface, the two
divers, a man and a woman, worked with intense
concentration to retrieve the object they had discovered
a week ago.
Embedded in the layer of lava that covered the ocean
floor, it was almost perfectly spherical, its
color so close to that of the lava itself that the divers,
coming upon it for the first time, almost missed it completely.
Its shape was what had caught the woman's eye-a
curve caught in her peripheral vision.
She had paused to take a closer look, because it
struck her as an interesting formation of lava.
Seconds after she bent to investigate it, her
partner, sensing that she was no longer in her customary
position to his right, turned back to make certain
she was all right. Within less than a minute, he had
become as interested in the sphere as she.
For nearly ten minutes they'd examined it. Though it
was firmly anchored in the lava, they could see that it
was not quite part of it. A geode of some sort. After
photographing it and recording its exact position,
they finished their dive, and later on that day reported
the find to their employer.
Now, they had returned to the site of their discovery.
They had been underwater for nearly an hour,
carefully working a custom-made net around the sphere
and fastening the net itself to a hook suspended from
the end of a large crane mounted in the center of the
barge's deck. The basket net, designed
specifically for this purpose, resembled the
macrame seines that generations of Japanese
fishermen had once secured around glass floats,
but it was woven from a plastic fiber stronger even than
steel.
Having secured their net, and satisfied that the heavy
mesh would not slip, the woman activated a
signaling device fastened to her weight belt.
On the tug, the crew set to work to lift the geode
from the ocean floor.
One of the men, catching a whiff of sulfur in the
air, wrinkled his nose, then decided it was nothing more
than the noxious odor the tug's bank of
batteries sometimes threw off.
As they concentrated on operating the crane, none of the
crew noticed the smoke that was starting to drift through the
first tiny rifts in the face of the cliff two
hundred yards away.
A hundred feet down, the two divers backed
thirty feet away from the geode, then turned
to watch as the cable from the crane tightened. For a
breath-held moment nothing moved. Then the
geode-nearly three feet across-
abruptly came free from the lava, shooting upward
a few yards before dropping instantly back almost to the
bottom, like a yo-yo on a string. A momentary
pause. Then it began a slow, steady vertical
journey toward the surface, while the two divers
made their way back to the place where it had lain.
The crane was just swinging the geode onto the deck
of the barge when the face of the cliff gave way. As
a gout of brilliant yellow lava spewed out,
exploding into millions of fragments when it hit the
surface of the sea a split second later, the
crane operator screamed a warning. Within seconds
the hawsers had been cut, the anchors and their chains
abandoned, and the tug was running directly out to sea.
The water, dead calm only a few seconds before,
churned around the tug, reacting to the explosive force
of the fast-growing gush of lava now pouring forth from the
crumbling face of the cliff.
"What about the divers?" someone yelled.
But even as he spoke, the terrified crewman
knew the answer to his question.
The divers were just peering into the depression in which the
geode had rested when they felt the first subsonic
vibration. In the instant that surprise became
panic and they reached for their belts to release
their weights and make an emergency ascent, it was
already far too late.
A rift suddenly opened in the ocean floor, and as
the boiling magma burst into the sea, the water itself
seemed to explode into a hellfire cauldron of
sulfuric acid, boiling water, and steam. A
fusillade of shrapnel-size fragments of
volcanic glass shot in every direction. An
instant after the divers had been killed by the steam,
acid, and boiling seawater, their bodies were shredded
by the silicate fragments, which tore through them like
millions of white-hot scalpels.
Within seconds, nothing was left of them.
A mile out to sea, the crew of the rug gazed in awe
at the spectacle behind them.
The shoreline had disappeared, lost in a dense fog
of steam mixed with poisonous gases and volcanic
ash that hung like a curtain where only a few
minutes ago the face of the cliff had been. The
sea, whipped by a building wind, was heaving, and
overhead dark clouds gathered as if the forces that had
unleashed the fury of the mountain now had summoned a
storm.
Using binoculars, the crew scanned the water for
any sign of the two divers, but even as they
searched, they knew they were bound to fail. They had
barely escaped with their own lives. As the storm
built and the seas became great, heaving swells, the
captain of the tug turned back toward Hilo and the
safety of the harbor.
On the barge, three men secured the geode to the
deck, silently wondering if it had been worth the
lives it had cost to collect it.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Everything was supposed to be getting better, not
worse.
They'd promised him
-
everyone had promised him.
First the doctor: "If you take the pills, you
'II feel better."
Then his coach: "Just try a little harder. No pain,
no gain."
Even his mom: "Just take it one day at a time, and
don't try to do everything at once."
So he'd taken the pills, and tried harder, but also
tried not to do too much. And for a while last week things
actually seemed to improve. Although smog had
settled over the city so heavily that most of his friends
had cut out of school early and headed for the
beach, where an offshore wind might bring fresh air
in from the ocean, he'd gone to all his classes. After
the last bell he'd stripped out of his clothes in the
locker room and donned his gym shorts before jogging out
to the track to do the four warmup laps that always
preceded the more serious work of the high hurdles.
II
The event that just might, with a little more work, make him a
State Champion on his eighteenth birthday.
One day last week, when he was alone on the
field, the pills had at last seemed to kick in.
He'd been expecting to lose his wind halfway
around the first lap, but even as he rounded the final
turn, he felt his body surging with energy, his
lungs pumping air easily, his heartbeat barely
above normal. On the second and third laps
he'd kicked his pace up a notch, but still felt good
comreally
good. So on the fourth lap he'd gone all out, and it
was like a few months ago, when he'd still felt great
all the time. That day last week, he felt greater
than ever: his lungs had been sucking huge
volumes of air, and his whole body had
responded. Instead of the slow burn of pain he
usually felt toward the end of the warm-up
mile, his muscles had merely tingled
pleasurably, his chest expanding and contracting in an
easy rhythm that synched perfectly with his steady
heartbeat. His whole body had been functioning in
harmony. He'd even taken a couple of extra
laps that day, exulting in the strength of his body,
euphoric that finally the pills and the exercise were
working. He'd set up the hurdles then, spacing them
precisely, but setting them a little higher than
usual.
He'd soared over them one after the other, clearing the
crossbars easily, feeling utterly weightless as
his body floated over one barricade after another.
When he'd started back to the locker room two
hours after he began, he was barely out of breath, his
heart beating easily and his legs feeling as if
he'd only been strolling for half an hour instead
of running and jumping full-out for two.
The next day it had all crashed in on him.
A quarter of the way around the first lap, he'd felt
the
familiar constrictions around his lungs, and his heart
began pounding as if he were in the last stretch of a I
OK run. He kept going, telling himself it was
nothing more than a reaction from the day before, when
he'd worked far harder than he should have. But by the time
he finished the first lap, he knew it wasn't going
to work. Swerving off the hard-packed earth of the track,
he flopped down onto the grass, rolling over
to stare up into the blue of the sky, squinting against the
glare of the afternoon sun. What the hell was wrong?
Yesterday he'd felt great! Today he felt like an
old man.
He'd refused to give in to the pain in his lungs, the
pounding of his heart, the agony in his legs. When his
coach had come over to find out if he was all right,
he'd tossed it off, claiming he'd just gotten a
cramp, then rubbing the muscles of his right calf as
if to prove the lie. The coach had bought it
-
or at least pretended to, which was just as good
-
and he'd gotten up and gone back to the track.
He made it through the four laps, but by the last one
he'd only been able to maintain a pace that was little more
than a fast walk.
The coach had told him to try harder or go home.
He'd tried harder, but in the end he'd gone home.
And each day since then it had grown worse.
Each day he'd struggled a little harder against
the pain.
The day before yesterday, he'd gone to the doctor for the
fourth time since New Year's, and once again the
doctor hadn't been able to find anything wrong.
Once again he'd answered all the questions: Yes, he
was fine when he came back from Maui with his mom after
New Year's. No, his father hadn't been there;
he'd gone to Grand Cayman with his new wife and their
baby. No, it didn't bother him
that his dad hadn't gone to Maul with them
-
in fact, he was glad his mom had dumped his dad,
since his dad seemed to like hitting both of them when he
got drunk, which had been practically every night the
last couple of years before he finally left. No,
he didn't hate his dad. He didn't like him
much, and was glad he was gone, but he didn't hate
him.
What he hated was the way he felt.
The doctor had said maybe he should see a shrink,
but he wasn't about to do that. Only geeks and losers
went to shrinks. Whatever was wrong, he'd get over
it by himself. But over the last two days the pain had
become almost unbearable. He was having nightmares,
and waking up unable to breathe, and his whole
body had started hurting all the time.
This afternoon, when he started feeling like maybe it might
be better just to die if he couldn't get away from the
pain, he'd cut out after school and driven around for a
while, until a cop stopped him and gave him a
ticket for having a broken muffler. So now what the
hell was he going to do? He couldn't afford to pay for the
ticket, let alone get the damn muffler on the
car fixed. Besides, what was the big deal? It
didn't make that much noise, and hardly stank up
the inside of the car at all. But his mom was going
to give him hell for the ticket anyway, and his dad
would only launch into an endless lecture about how much
it costs to raise two families if he asked
to borrow the money to fix the muffler.
What a mess!
Turning into the tree-lined block on which he'd lived
all his life, he pressed the button on the sun
visor that would activate the garage door opener
while he was still two houses away, and turned into the
driveway just as the door

opened fully. Automatically starting the game he
played against himself every afternoon, he pressed the button
again, trying to gauge it so the descending
garage door would just clear the back end of his car as
he pulled it inside.
Today he missed, and the car jolted sharply as the
garage door glanced off the rear bumper. So now
there would be scrapes on the car and the garage door, as
well as the ticket and the bad muffler.
And he still hurt.
Maybe, instead of going into the house, he'd just sit
here awhile.
Sit here and see what happened.
A feeling of warmth began to spread through him, washing
away the pain he'd been enduring, and suddenly
everything began to seem better.
Maybe he'd finally found the answer to his
problems.
Without his mother.
Without his coach.
Even without his doctor.
The boy closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and for the
first time in weeks felt no pain.
For the woman, the day had been no better than it had
been for her son, starting with an early call from her
ex-husband suggesting that they renegotiate his child
support payments. Translation: the bimbo he'd
run off with wanted more money to spend on
herself. Well, she'd disabused him of that idea
pretty quickly. At noon she'd discovered that an
associate who was a full year junior to her was
going to get the partnership slot that should have been hers.
So now she was faced with a decision: Sit it out for
another year, or start job hunting? But she
knew the answer to that one: she wasn't going to be
made a partner, ever, so she might as well start
checking with the headhunters.
Then, when she'd decided things couldn't get any
worse, the doctor called to recommend a good
psychiatrist for her son. Well, before she sent him
off to a shrink, she'd have him checked out by someone
else. Except the HMO probably wouldn't pay
for it, and the trip to Maui at New Year's had
strained the budget as far as it would go.
Still, she'd figure out something.
Turning into the driveway, she jabbed the remote on
the visor, bringing the car to a complete stop as she
waited for the garage door to open.
It was the noise of the engine more than the fumes that
poured out of the garage that told her something was wrong.
Slamming the gear lever into Park with one hand as she
opened the door with the other, she slid out of her car and
ran into the garage.
She could see her son slumped inside his car, his
legs up on the front passenger seat, his back
resting against the driver's door. His head was lolling
on his chest.
Stifling a scream, she grabbed the driver's door
handle.
Locked!
She ran around the car and tried the other door, then
called her son's name.
Nothing!
Wait!
Had something moved inside the car?
She cupped her hands over her eyes and peered into its
shadowy interior.
His chest was moving! He was still breathing!
Coughing as the fumes in the garage filled her
lungs, she fumbled for the extra key that hung from a
nail under
the workbench, shoved open the door to the kitchen, and
grabbed the phone. "My son!" she cried as soon
as the 911 operator answered. "Oh, God, I
need an ambulance! his
A carefully measured voice calmly asked for her
address.
Her address!
Her mind was suddenly blank. "I can't
-
oh, God! It's
-"
Then it came back to her and she blurted out a
number. "On North Maple, between Dayton and
Clifton. Oh, God, hurry! He locked
himself in the car in the garage and
-"
"It's all right, ma'am," the calm voice broke
in. "An aid car is already on its way."
Dropping the phone on the counter, she raced back
to the garage. She had to get the car open
-
she had to! A hammer! There used to be a
sledgehammer at the end of the workbench! Squeezing between
the front of her son's car and the wooden bench, she
uttered a silent prayer that her ex-husband hadn't
simply helped himself to the big maul. He hadn't
-
it was right where she remembered it. Grasping its handle
with both hands, she hoisted it up, then slammed its
huge metal head into the passenger window of her
son's car. The safety glass shattered into thousands
of tiny pieces, and the woman dropped the
hammer to the floor, snaked a hand through the broken
window, and pulled the door open. Reaching across her
son's body, she switched the ignition off, and the
loud rumble of the motor died away, only to be
instantly replaced by the wail of a fast-approaching
siren. She grasped her son's ankles and tried
to pull him out of the car, but before she'd managed to haul
him even halfway through the door, two white-clad
medics were taking over, gently easing her aside,
pulling the boy out of the car and
clamping an oxygen mask over his face. As he
stirred, her panic at last began to ease its
grip.
"He's coming around," one of the medics assured her as
they carried him out of the garage and put him on a
stretcher. "Looks like he's going to make it
okay."
Her son began struggling as the medics put him into the
ambulance and started to close its rear door.
"I want to come," the woman begged. "For God's
sake! He's my son!"
The door to the ambulance reopened, and the woman
scrambled inside. With the siren wailing, the ambulance
raced toward Cedars-Sinai Hospital, nearly
twenty blocks away.
The ride seemed to take forever, and the woman watched
helplessly as her son struggled against the two
medics, one of whom was trying to hold the boy still
while the other kept the oxygen mask pressed
firmly over his nose and mouth. Clutching her
son's hand, the woman tried to soothe him, and finally
his struggles eased. But just as the ambulance pulled
to a stop at the hospital's emergency entrance, she
felt his hand suddenly relax in hers. His whole
body went limp on the stretcher.
She heard one of the medics curse softly.
Her body went numb, and when the doors were yanked
open from the outside, she climbed out of the ambulance
slowly, as if she'd fallen into a trance.
The crew rushed her son into the emergency room, where
a team of doctors waited to take over for the
medics.
She followed the stretcher into the hospital.
Silently, she watched the doctors work, but already
knew what was coming.
And in the end, she heard the same words she'd heard
first from her son's doctor, then from the ambulance
crew: "I don't understand
-
he should be doing fine!"
But her son
-
her sweet, handsome only son
-
wasn't doing fine.
Her son was dead.
"Whatcha tryin" ta do, Sundquist? Kill
ya'self?"
A harsh laugh followed the mocking words, ricocheting
off the bare concrete walls of the high school
gymnasium, echoing louder in Michael
Sundquist's ears as it resonated. What should he
do? Abandon the bench presses he was doing and
confront the jerk?
Not a good idea. The jerk, whose name was Slotzky-
first name unknown, at least to Michael-was about a
foot taller than he, and outweighed him by maybe
fifty pounds, all of it solid muscle.
Confronting Slotzky would be a good way to get his
ass whipped, and getting his ass whipped was
definitely not high on Michael Sundquist's
priority list this morning.
Finishing the bench presses, however, was very high on the
list, as were doing fifty push-ups and fifty
chin-ups, followed by as many laps around the
track on the gym's mezzanine as he could manage
before the ten-minute bell sent him to the showers. If
he ignored Slotzky, avoided a fight, and
kept his mind firmly on his work, he could easily
achieve his goal.
A varsity letter.
That was all he really wanted.
He would never be tall enough for basketball, or
heavy enough for football. He suspected it was way
too late for him to take up baseball. That left
track. And the thing he'd always been best at was
running. Even when his asthma had been so bad he
could barely breathe, he'd still been able to beat the rest
of the kids in his class in short sprints. In
fact, it had been kind of a joke: don't bother
trying to beat Sundquist off the block, just keep
trotting along behind him and sooner or later he'll
run down like a broken watch.
The joke had been all too true. Only a year
ago he'd often found it impossible to run more than a
quarter of a mile. Though he invariably led at the
beginning of races, he never quite managed to win a
fifty-yard dash, and in the hundred he always came
in dead last.
But even when the asthma was at its worst, he
never
ever
gave up. When his mother claimed it was no big
deal-that no one on either side of his family had ever
been an athlete-it only made Michael more
determined. What did she know, anyway? It was a
guy thing. The kind of thing his father would have understood if
his father were still alive.
Whenever Michael ran, battling for breath, forcing his
body beyond its capacity, determined to conquer the
frightening condition that had held him in its power ever
since he'd been a little boy, he imagined his dad
cheering him on. Though his father's face was becoming
cloudy, and sometimes he could barely remember that
deep, booming voice, Michael clung to his
vision of his dad. And kept at it until finally,
last year, he'd begun to outgrow the asthma.
Finishing the bench presses, he dropped to the floor
to
do fifty quick push-ups-still barely breathing hard- then
started toward the high bar to begin his chin-ups, glancing
as he passed at his reflection in the wire-mesh
window that separated the gym from the coaching room.
Yes, his chest was deepening-he could see it.
Every day, bench press by bench press,
push-up by push-up, lap by lap, his work was paying
off.
The other guys weren't laughing at him anymore,
except for Slotzky. And even Slotzky would
stop tormenting him if he could actually make the
varsity track team.
And not as a sprinter, either.
No, Michael had set his sights on a higher
goal-longdistance running, where endurance counted every
bit as much as speed, if not more.
He finished the last of the chin-ups and checked his
respiration again. He was breathing a little harder than
at the start of the hour, but he wasn't anywhere near
panting, no sign of the onset of those terrible
attacks that used to grip him in clammy, gasping
terror. He loped over to the metal stairs leading
up to the track that was suspended from the walls twelve
feet up, just below the rafters and well above the
basketball hoops. Taking the stairs two at a
time, he glanced at the clock on the far wall.
Twenty minutes left. He could run a couple of
miles before heading for the showers.
He broke into an easy jog, pacing himself
carefully so he wouldn't have to break his stride as he
approached the sharp turns at each of the
gym's four corners. There was no one else on the
track; the rest of the class was on the floor below,
some of them playing a game of basketball, a few
lifting weights, but most of them just sprawled out on
the floor, waiting for the hour to end.
"Hey, Sundquist," Slotzky yelled, an
ugly grin
splitting his lips. "Ain't ya afraid ya might
pass out up there?" As Slotzky's friends laughed
obediently, Michael, stopped by Slotzky's
shout, spontaneously raised the middle finger of his
left hand.
Big mistake.
Slotzky's grin disappeared. He rose from the
floor and started up the stairs, three of his friends
following him. As he searched for an escape route,
Michael wondered what misguided impulse had
led him to do something so stupid.
He also wondered if there were any truth to the rumor
that Slotzky had once thrown someone off the roof of a
building.
As Slotzky and one of his friends approached him from
one direction, the others circled around the opposite
way, catching him in a heavy-duty pincers.
"Whatcha gonna do, chickenshit?"
Slotzky taunted as he advanced on Michael,
closing the distance between them.
Michael glanced at Slotzky, then at the
bully's friend. There was only one way out. Dropping
down onto his stomach, he swung his legs out over
the edge of the track, then lowered himself until he was
hanging by his fingers. Slotzky was running toward
him now, and though the bigger boy was still thirty feet
away, Michael could already feel the soles of
Slotsky's Nikes grinding down on his
fingertips. Without so much as glancing down at the
floor below, he released his grip and let himself
drop, falling into a rolling tumble the moment his feet
touched the hardwood planks.
A twinge of pain shot through his shoulder, but he
ignored it, scrambling to his feet and looking up
to see what his pursuers would do.
Slotzky leaned over the rail, glowering at him.
Then,
with a skill perfected by years of practice, he
spat on Michael. "See ya after school," he
said.
Wiping Slotzky's slimy glob from his face,
Michael backed away a few paces, then turned
and trotted off toward the showers.
He wondered if Slotzky would be carrying a
knife or a gun after school today.
Or both.
Katharine Sundquist knew she should be concentrating
on the work at hand. Before her, on the desk in her
office in the Natural History Museum, was a
fragment of a hominid jaw that had arrived from a dig
in Africa a week ago. Not that there was much work
to be done: she had tentatively identified the
specimen as
Australopithecus afarensis
the moment she'd seen it, and her subsequent
examination failed to suggest that it might be anything
else. It had been discovered in an area where
Australopithecus afarensis
was, if not common, certainly not unheard of, and
excavated at a depth that, barring something unusual
turning up in the carbon dating of the site, generally
corresponded to the level where that particular
precursor of Homo sapiens might be found. The
problem was, she kept getting distracted by a
series of photographs that had arrived the day after the
australopithecine jaw.
There were half a dozen pictures, along with a letter
describing the site more fully. The name on
the letterhead -Rob Silver-had caught Katharine's
attention immediately, for though she'd seen Silver only
a few times in the twenty-odd years since they'd
been in graduate school together, she still had a clear
mental image of him: tall, muscular, with an
unruly mop of light brown hair and blue eyes
that had-at least for a while-never failed
to set her heart beating faster every time she saw him.
The romance, though, had quickly faded when his interest in
Polynesian culture and hers in early man had
sent them in opposite directions, putting not only
a scientific gulf between them, but an entire
planet as well. Within four years she'd met and
married Tom Sundquist and given birth
to Michael.
When Michael was six, Tom Sundquist had
died.
Died in Africa, on a perfect summer morning,
a decade ago. But the image of it was as clear in
her mind now as if it had happened only yesterday.
Tom was leaving for Nairobi to catch a flight
to Amsterdam, where he was scheduled to read a paper on
the dig they'd been developing together for the past five
years. She and Michael were staying on at the dig,
where Katharine would supervise the work in
Tom's absence while Michael happily played
with the African children with whom he'd made fast friends.
She and Michael had stood together, hand in hand, as
Tom's single-engine Cessna accelerated down the
dirt landing strip and rose into the morning sky. As
always, the pilot swung around to pass over them one
final time, but that morning he'd decided to show off.
As Katharine and Michael watched-she with growing
apprehension, he with growing excitement-the pilot
put the little plane through a series of twists and
loops, then sent it straight up until it went
into a stall, flipped over, and plunged toward the
earth in an accelerating nosedive.
Katharine had seen it before-it was one of the pilot's
favorite stunts-and it always terrified her. At the
last second the pilot would pull out of the dive,
waggle his wings, and head off toward Nairobi,
flying low enough
to send the herds of animals below him into panicked
stampedes.
But that morning, as she and Michael watched, the
plane smashed nose first into the ground, instantly
exploding into a ball of fire.
She and Michael had left the dig that day and never
returned.
Within a year Michael's asthma attacks began,
triggered, Katharine was convinced, by what he'd seen
on the morning his father died. In the years since
Tom's death, Katharine had concentrated on only
two things: her son's health and her work. For most of
that time, it had been enough. But lately, especially
the past few months, when Michael seemed finally
to have freed himself from the crippling attacks, she'd
been wondering if she wasn't turning into just another
of the fossils she spent so much of her time studying.
And then, last week, the letter from Rob Silver
arrived, along with the photographs. The site, he
explained, was on the flank of Haleakala, on
Maui. For the last five years he'd been working in
Hawaii, studying the evolution of Polynesian
architecture as it moved from the South Pacific
into the Hawaiian Islands. But the site in the
photographs, he wrote, bore no resemblance
to anything he'd ever seen in Hawaii. He had
money in his budget for a consultant, and wanted to know
if Katharine would be interested.
She kept returning to the pictures, peering at the
images of the site that had been discovered beneath a thick
layer of vegetation.
She'd gone through the museum's library,
comparing the photographs to every other image she could
find of early Hawaiian ruins.
There was no comparison.
Yet the only way she could truly analyze the
site would be to see it.
Now, once again putting aside the drab grayish
fossil, and the photos of the equally drab grayish
site from which it had been excavated, she again picked
up the pictures of the site on Maui.
Though the site itself appeared to be little more than a
collection of rough stones, it was surrounded by a lush
forest of towering trees and flowering shrubs and vines, and
while in some of the pictures the turquoise-blue
of the Pacific Ocean could be seen in the distance, in
others there were glimpses of a waterfall tumbling
into a crystal-clear pool, a setting so beautiful
it could have come straight from a Hollywood set
designer's vision of Eden.
Had Rob deliberately given her those
seductive glimpses of the paradise surrounding his
site?
And why was she even daydreaming about tropical flowers
and trade winds? It was the
site
that counted!
But as she glanced around the windowless cubicle in the
dismal cave that was her office, and remembered just how
miserable the weather outside was, she knew
exactly why she was as tantalized by the lush
surroundings of Rob Silver's site as she was by the
discovery he had made.
She picked up the letter once more.
Thirty thousand dollars.
Rob Silver was offering her thirty thousand dollars
to spend three months working with him on Maui.
Plus expenses.
She remembered the tense meeting she'd had with the
museum's director last week. Her budget
alone was about to be slashed by thirty percent.
The grant from the National Science Foundation- the
grant she'd been counting on to fund field work this
summer-was "approved but not funded."
So there, but for the offer on her desk, was the future:
no fieldwork and a budget that was all but
nonexistent.
The major problem was that Rob Silver needed her
by the first of the month, which was as long as he could hold up
his dig. That would mean taking Michael out of
school-and away from the track team he'd become so
enamored of lately-which she suspected he
wouldn't like at all. Well, maybe when she told
him where they were going, his objections might
evaporate.
She picked up the phone and called the director.
"I may want to take a leave of absence," she
said. "Three months." She hesitated, then
spoke again. "Without pay, of course." As she
hung up the phone five minutes later, she
wondered if Michael would be as easily convinced as
the director had been.
When she got home that afternoon, though, and saw the cut
on his arm and the ugly yellowish purple bruise that
surrounded her son's painfully swollen left
eye, Katharine knew that the decision was made.
Three months away from New York was just what
both of them needed.
Pedro Santiago's eyes snapped open as the
747's altitude changed slightly, beginning its
descent into Honolulu. Pedro hadn't meant
to sleep on the flight; ever since the moment the man
in Manila had handed him the locked Louis
Vuitton makeup case, he'd been determined
to stay wide-awake through the entire trip
to Hawaii. Not that he had actually been asleep,
he reassured himself. Not really. His eyes
had perhaps been closed, and his mind might have slipped
into that state of relaxation that was almost as refreshing as
true sleep, but he'd still been perfectly aware of
his surroundings.
He'd heard the woman across the aisle order a
third mai-tai, then a fourth, and, a few minutes
ago, a fifth.
He'd listened to the man in the row ahead of him
snoring.
His feet had rested against the makeup case tucked
beneath the seat directly ahead of him, where the sleeping
man unknowingly guarded it from the front as securely
as Pedro himself guarded it from his position.
He'd bought two first-class seats for his trip.
He hated having to make polite conversation with
strangers on airplanes, but more important, an
empty seat acted as one more buffer in his carefully
unobtrusive security system.
An occupant of the seat next to him might, if he
-
or she, Pedro carefully reminded himself-were
extraordinarily clever, be able to lull him into lowering
his guard just long enough to .. .
To what?
Kill him?
Possibly. Certainly such things had happened before.
Two members of his fraternity had died in the last
three years, suffering "heart attacks" on
airplanes, expiring quietly in their seats with no
one but their killers any the wiser until the planes
were preparing for landing. Poison could be delivered in so
many ways:
A fresh drink, prepared by a stewardess who was
momentarily diverted from her work by an overly friendly
passenger.
A tiny needle, expertly placed in the neck
by someone who seemed accidentally to lose his footing
while making his way to the rest room.
Pedro Santiago always took a window seat, and
drank only from cans he opened himself.
Still, the instincts of his profession had told him that this
would be an easy run. If danger awaited him, it
would strike on the return trip, after the delivery,
when the fee had been paid.
He raised the window blind and peered out into the bright
morning. Far below, a solid bank of clouds
obscured the sea and all but the very tops of three
large volcanoes. Pedro shrugged; Hawaii's
scenic splendor was of no interest to him. As the
intercom came alive, announcing the
imminent landing of the plane, Santiago picked up
the makeup case and cradled it in his lap.
"All carry-on items must be stowed under the seat or
in
the overhead bin, Mr. Jennings," the flight
attendant reminded him as she moved down the aisle
with the last tray of empty cocktail glasses.
He smiled, nodded, put the case back under the
seat in front of him.
The plane touched down, slowed, then taxied to the
gate.
Pedro Santiago emerged from the jetway into the
gate area and ignored the sign that directed him
toward Customs.
One thing Santiago had never done in his
professional career was risk carrying one of his
packages past a Customs inspector. That kind
of work was reserved for the mules
-
the stupid college students who would risk years in
jail for less money than he could spend on an
evening with a whore in Amsterdam.
While the other passengers flooded toward the
Customs area, Santiago approached a man in
a blue uniform who stood a few yards from
the flight's arrival gate. "I believe you might
be waiting for me," he said in an English as
accent-free as was his Spanish, his Portuguese,
and his Turkish.
"I believe you might be right, Mr.
..."
The man let the end of the sentence hang between them.
"Jennings," Pedro Santiago finished, completing
the innocuous code that had been established when he'd
agreed to deliver the Vuitton case.
"If you'll follow me."
The man in the uniform led Santiago to a locked
door, punched a series of numbers into the combination
plate, then held the door open to allow the courier
to pass through ahead of him.
At the foot of a short flight of stairs, an
electric golf
cart waited. The man in the blue uniform steered it
toward a helicopter waiting a quarter of a mile
away. Following the man's lead, Santiago
climbed into the chopper, pulled the door closed, and
strapped himself securely into the seat. The engine
ground for a second or two, then caught and roared
to life. Above him the helicopter's huge rotor
began to turn.
The pilot revved the engine, the rotor's speed
increased, and the aircraft lurched up, tipped
forward, and sped off across the field, staying low as it
crossed the shoreline. Once over water, it
shifted course slightly, briefly following the
coast toward Honolulu before veering off to the southeast
toward Molokai and Maui.
Forty minutes later Pedro Santiago peered
down through the Plexiglas bubble in front of him as
the helicopter swept across the rugged southeast coast
of Maui and the dark blue surface of the sea was
abruptly replaced by the undulating green carpet
of the rain forest. The chopper dropped low, until it
seemed to Santiago as if it were barely clearing the
treetops. Then the trees gave way to a clearing
dotted with several buildings whose green-tile roofs
would make them invisible from any altitude higher
than that at which the helicopter hovered.
Quickly, expertly, the pilot let the big
aircraft settle onto a lawn surrounded
by several buildings. As Santiago unstrapped
himself from the seat and opened the door beside him, a man
emerged from one of the buildings, but did not come toward the
helicopter.
Instinctively recognizing his employer,
though he'd never met him before, Santiago ducked
his head protectively low as he dashed out from under the
helicopter's downdraft, cradling the Louis
Vuitton case in both his arms.
"Mr.
-
Jennings," the waiting man said, hesitating just long
enough before using the alias to let Santiago know he
felt the use of the code name bordered on the
moronic. Santiago couldn't have cared less
-
code names had kept him alive and fattened his
Swiss bank account beyond the dreams of most men who
had been born in the slums of Sao Paulo.
Nodding curtly, he followed the other man into the
building, down a corridor, and into a small,
windowless room bare of any furniture save a
small table on which sat a case identical to the one
Santiago carried.
The man nodded toward the table, and Santiago set
his case down, then tried the lock of the duplicate.
The latch snapped open and he lifted the case's
lid. Though his instincts told him all the money would
be there, he nonetheless took the time to count it.
It was in fifty-dollar bills, as he'd
requested.
He'd had no particular interest in whether the serial
numbers of the bills were sequential, but as he began
counting them, he noted that they weren't.
Whoever he was dealing with knew what he was doing.
He finished his counting and looked up. "Two
hundred thousand."
"Exactly as we agreed," the man replied.
Pedro Santiago packed the money back into the
makeup case, changed its combination, and snapped its
latch closed. "Then we're finished."
The man nodded and extended his hand. Santiago
ignored the gesture, turning back toward the single
door that provided the only access to the room.
Accepting that Santiago had nothing more to say, the
man escorted him
back to the outside door and waited while the courier
got back into the helicopter, closed the door, and
strapped himself in. As the craft rose up from the
lawn and moved back toward the sea, the man
remained near the door, watching.
The moment the man disappeared from Pedro
Santiago's view, Santiago began thinking about
his next job, a run from South Africa.
That job, he suspected, would be a lot more
interesting than this one had proved to be.
As the helicopter disappeared over the green
horizon of the rainforest, the man reentered the building
and closed the door behind him. Returning to the room
where he had completed his transaction with the person he
knew only as "Mr. Jennings," he closed and
locked the door, then opened the Louis Vuitton
makeup case.
His hands trembled as he lifted the lid.
Inside the makeup case there was a single object.
A skull.
Its empty eyes stared up at him.
The hairs on the back of Pedro Santiago's
neck suddenly rose and a tiny alarm sounded in his
head.
Danger!
The helicopter was five miles off the coast of
Maui, and though he couldn't have said what it was that set
off his internal alarm, something had changed inside the
cabin.
Not a movement
-
at least not a movement of the aircraft itself.
The pilot?
He couldn't be certain.
Being careful to give no sign that he was now on
full alert, Santiago glanced over from the
copilot's seat, but the pilot was staring straight
ahead, seeming almost to have forgotten his passenger's
presence.
Or was he looking for something?
Santiago's eyes left the pilot, sweeping the
panorama of sea and islands that lay beyond the
Plexiglas bubble that formed the cabin's front. A
few boats were scattered over the ocean's
surface, and except for a single airliner far in the
distance, the sky was empty.
Yet Pedro Santiago's internal alarms were
sounding louder than ever.
His body tensed, though he still had no idea what the
threat might be, nor from what direction it would come.
Once again his eyes darted toward the pilot, and now
he could see the tension in the other man's body: the
narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his grip on the
helicopter's joystick.
Suddenly, a flicker of movement was reflected in
the curve of the Plexiglas, a flicker so faint and
distorted that Santiago almost missed it. Then, as his
body tensed, he understood.
Behind him!
Someone was behind him!
But it was already too late. Even as Pedro
Santiago instinctively started to duck away, the
man who had hidden himself in the back of the helicopter
during the few minutes the craft waited in the
clearing released the latch on the door with one hand,
while he freed Santiago's safety belt with the
other.
At exactly the same instant, the pilot pulled
hard on the joystick, and the chopper yawed over
to starboard.
36 JOHN SAUL
Even before he quite realized what had happened, Pedro
Santiago was tumbling toward the sea, four
hundred feet below.

Michael stared down at the islands that had finally
appeared out of the endless expanse of sea. Three
months! Three whole months! What was he
supposed to do here for three months? A couple of
weeks, sure! But three months? He could barely
believe his mother had actually yanked him out of school
just as he was about to make the track team. Still, he
sort of knew why she'd done it.
It was the black eye and the cut on his arm that
had made up her mind. If he'd just managed
to give Slotzky the slip that day ...
But he hadn't, so now here he was, out in the middle
of the ocean! He didn't know anybody at all, and
he'd never really been very good at making friends, always
afraid that his asthma would get in the way. So what
was he supposed to do while his mom was working the dig?
From what she'd said, there wasn't even a city on
Maui- only a couple of little towns, and they
weren't even going to be living in one of them! On the
other hand, the islands
did
look beautiful, and there was always the possibility that
maybe his mom would finally let him learn to scuba
dive. Even now, he could remember his father
promising to take him diving as soon as he was strong
enough to pick up the tanks. But then .. .
A vision of the burning airplane in which Tom
Sundquist had died filled Michael's mind, and
he felt the familiar sick sensation that still came
into his stomach whenever he remembered that morning when
his whole life had literally blown up in front of
his eyes. And now, just when it seemed like things were starting
to go okay, his mom had made him come out here! "Will you
at least let me learn to dive?" he
asked, peering out the window at the islands below.
There was a bleakness in her son's voice that twisted
Katharine's heart. It hadn't been as easy as
she'd hoped to convince him that this was going to be a great
adventure. Still, Michael had finally accepted the
fact that they were going to go, and switched from trying
to talk her out of the trip to attempting to convince her
he should be allowed to go scuba diving. Rather than
refuse outright, she'd taken the coward's way out.
"We'll see," she now said yet again, wondering how
much longer she could put off the inevitable confrontation
that would occur when she finally told Michael she
hated the idea of his risking his life under a hundred
feet of water. But when he winced at her
equivocation, she knew he'd already figured out what
her final answer would be. Now, trying to steer him
away from the subject, she leaned across her son and
looked out the window.
A chain of islands lay spread beneath the plane. The
day was perfectly clear, and a snowcapped mountain
peak glistened against a sky that was somehow even bluer
than the sea. As the plane began its descent, the
islands grew clearer, and then the pilot's voice
came over the intercom, identifying them.
"To the right of the plane, we're getting a
terrific view of Oahu today, while passengers
on the left can see the
peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the
Big Island of Hawaii. In a few minutes
we'll be able to look down into the craters of both
Mauna Loa on the Big Island and Haleakala
on Maui. I doubt any of you will have trouble
figuring out which one is the active volcano."
As the plane descended, Katharine glimpsed the
smoke boiling up from one of the active vents on the
flanks of Kilauea, but then her attention was
diverted by the pilot's voice.
"As we make the turn around Maui, passengers
on the right side of the plane will be able to see the
southwest coast of the island, with the resort areas of
Wailea and Kihei stretched along what many
people-myself included-believe to be the best string of
beaches in the state. For those of you who are visiting,
may I be the first to wish you aloha. For those lucky
enough to live here, welcome home."
The plane swept lower and banked into the final
turn. Through the window Katharine could see the
coastline winding up toward Lahaina, and then the
wildly rugged, green-clad buttresses of the
West Maui mountains came into view.
Below, a carpet of green spread across the valley
floor.
The plane touched down, slowed, and turned to taxi
up to the long, low building that housed the airport at
Kahului. Michael was out of his seat the moment the
DC-10 came to a stop, working his way around
Katharine's legs in his anxiety to retrieve their
carry-on bags from the overhead compartment. Three
minutes later, Katharine stepped out of the plane and
felt the first naturally warmed air she'd experienced
in months. She walked quickly through the jetway into the
gate area. Michael was already outside the glass
doors, and when he turned,
she could see the wide grin on his face. She took
a deep breath as the doors slid open in front of
her, and as the fragrant air filled her lungs, a
single word came into her mind.
Soft.
It was the only word to describe the caress of the
gentle breeze.
Soft.
"We're sure not in New York anymore, are
we?" she heard her son say.
She glared at him with an expression of exasperation
that was only slightly exaggerated. "I
don't believe it! We're in paradise for three
months, and all you can say is it's not New
York?"
"Come on, Mom! I didn't say it was terrible!
Actually, the weather's not too bad. It's-was
But Katharine was no longer listening to him, for she'd
spotted a familiar figure at the far end of the
long walkway.
A figure she hadn't seen since graduate
school, but whom she nevertheless recognized
instantly.
Rob Silver.
He was as lithe and muscular as he'd been twenty
years earlier, but his face had weathered into a rugged
handsomeness, and his mop of unruly hair had grayed
slightly. His eyes, however, sparkling as they fixed
on her, were every bit as blue as she'd remembered
them. As he dropped a sweet-smelling lei over
her shoulders, he echoed aloud the words that had popped
into her head the minute she'd seen him: "My God,
you're even more gorgeous than I remembered!"
While she tried to cover the flush that had come into
her cheeks, he stuck his hand out to her son. "Hi,"
he said. "You must be Michael. I'm Rob
Silver."
Michael hesitated, his eyes moving from Rob
to his mother. He frowned, as if trying to puzzle
something out, and when he at last took the hand that had
been extended to him, Katharine could sense his
reluctance. "Nice to meet you," he said.
As they headed toward the baggage area, Katharine
knew that despite his words, Michael wasn't
sure if he was pleased to meet Rob Silver or
not.
She suspected that he was leaning toward "not."
"They actually pay you to work out here?" Katharine
asked as Rob Silver turned his dusty Ford
Explorer onto a four-lane highway that seemed
to lead straight up the vast mountain that made up the
southeastern half of Maui. The car's windows were
wide open, and though the trade winds were blowing, the
breeze held none of the bite of the harsh winter gale
that had been lashing through the streets of Manhattan
when they'd left the day before.
Rob gave her a mischievous glance. "Can I
take that as an offer that you'll work for free?"
"Fat chance," Katharine replied. "I'm a poor
working mother, remember? The happily starving student you
used to know is long gone."
"Oh, I don't know," Rob drawled.
"Doesn't seem to me like you've changed at all."
Catching the look that came into Michael's eyes in
the rearview mirror-a look made up of equal
parts suspicion and disapproval-Rob dropped the
flirtatious note from his voice. "Actually,
I'm not sure what'll happen when I'm done with
my project out here. I've got some feelers in
at the university, but
I suspect there are at least ten people I'd have
to kill to get to the top of the list."
"How much longer does your grant run?" Katharine
asked.
In the backseat, Michael turned and gazed out the
window at the cane fields that lined both sides of the
road, tuning out the conversation droning on in the front
seat. Couldn't they ever talk about anything but money?
Sometimes it seemed like that was the only thing his mother and her
friends were really interested in.
Except for Rob Silver. From the moment he'd
seen the way Rob Silver looked at his mother,
Michael was pretty sure he knew what that man
was interested in. And he was very sure that Silver and his
mother hadn't just been friends back in college. He'd
also understood that as far as Rob Silver was concerned,
nothing had changed.
Funny how his mother hadn't said anything about
that
when she'd been trying to convince him that coming to Maui was
such a great idea. Now, as the Explorer rolled
through the fields, he was beginning to understand what she'd
meant. Sure it was great for her-she got a good
job, and plenty of money, and a man he could tell
she was interested in, based on the way she'd looked
at him at the airport.
So here he was, in a place where he didn't know
a single soul except his mother, and with only about three
months of school left. Too much for him to talk his
mom into letting him skip the rest of the year-he'd
already tried that one-but not enough to give him time to make
any friends, despite what his mother had said. He could
still hear her: "Of course you'll make friends. It's
not like New York. It'll be easy."
But it wouldn't be easy. Easy? Michael wished his
mom could understand how hard it really was to meet a whole
new bunch of kids. Kids who might not like him.
Or who might make fun of him the way they used
to when he was sick all the time. Well, he wasn't
sick anymore, so maybe things would be different.
Maybe he wouldn't be quite as lonely as he thought.
He sure hoped not.
His reverie was interrupted by the sight of a great plume
of smoke billowing off to the left. "What's that?"
he asked.
"Sugarcane fire," Rob Silver explained.
"They burn the fields to make it easier to harvest
the cane. That way they're not hauling a lot of
extra vegetation around. You'll get so you
automatically close the windows whenever you see it."
"How come? It's gotta be half a mile away."
Just then a blob of black soot blew in the open
window, smearing across Michael's shirt as he tried
to brush it away. As he heard Rob laughing in the
front seat, he felt his face redden.
"It's called Maui snow," Rob told him.
As the car climbed the flank of Haleakala, the
cane fields were replaced by pineapple, and a few
miles farther on, the pineapple, in turn, gave
way to pastureland. But they were pastures that looked
nothing at all like the farms of upstate New
York. Here the pastures were an emerald-green, and
dotted with jacaranda trees covered with lavender
flowers.
A few miles farther on Rob turned off to the
left. "That's where you'll be going to school," he
said, tipping his head toward a cluster of
buildings that lay off to the right. Peering out the window,
Michael saw a campus that bore no resemblance
to the school he'd attended in
New York. Instead of a huge brick block of a
building with a fenced-in, asphalt-paved lot next
to it that served as an athletic field, this school
consisted of a group of single-story buildings shaded
by enormous trees, set in a spacious lawn.
Beyond were a baseball field, basketball and
tennis courts, and a full track as well as a
football field.
Half a dozen guys were on the track, and as they
drove past, Michael studied their speed and pacing,
measuring his own abilities against the runners'.
His mother turned in the front seat. "Do I get
credit for being right about them having a track team?"
Michael tried to suppress the grin that was threatening
to lighten his mood, but failed miserably. "I
guess so," he admitted. "And I guess I
can't really say the school in New York had a
nicer campus, can I?"
"Hallelujah!" Katharine exclaimed. "Maybe
there's going to be life after New York after all."
Less than a mile farther on they came to a tiny
town. "This is Makawao," Rob said.
"It used to be a cowboy town, but now it's the New
Age capital of Maui. More different kinds of
therapy than there are residents. All the most
interesting people live up here, myself included." As the
Explorer slowed to make a right turn, Katharine
looked to the left and saw a two-block-long
stretch of false-fronted buildings that looked as
though they'd come out of a Western movie.
"Are they real?" she asked.
Rob nodded. "They've been fixed up, but they're
pretty much the way they were when they were built.
Except instead of selling saddles and bridles,
now they have herbal teas and homeopathic remedies."
Just beyond Makawao, the street they took narrowed and
wound steeply up the mountainside in a series of
hairpin curves. Soon the tropical growth around
the town yielded to groves of eucalyptus, then
pines and cedars began cropping up. "Where are we
going?" Katharine finally asked.
"To your house," Rob replied "I found a place
for you pretty close to the site. It's not very grand,
but the school bus stop is only about a quarter of a
mile away." He glanced in the rearview mirror
once again. Michael, if he was even listening, said
nothing, and when Rob looked over at
Katharine, she only shrugged. "I hope you'll like
it," he said.
"It seems like it's kind of far away from everything,
doesn't it?" Michael asked from the backseat.
"I mean, I can't drive, and it seems like it's
an awful long way from the town, doesn't it?"
"How about a bicycle?" Rob suggested.
Michael gazed out at the steepening road. "That
might work going downhill, but how do you get back
up again? You'd need about fifty gears, wouldn't you?"
Rob winced as he realized Michael had a point,
and that when he'd looked at the house, he hadn't
thought about how Michael might get around. "Maybe
I goofed," he admitted. "Actually, I guess
I just picked the one I liked best. So if you
hate it, you can find something else. Okay?"
Michael shrugged, but didn't say anything more.
Emerging from the cedars, they slowed for yet another
hairpin curve, and finally turned onto a long,
narrow, eucalyptus-shaded lane. Along both
sides were scattered a few small, weathered wooden
houses. After a quarter of a mile they came to the end
of the lane, where a narrow driveway had been cut
through a fence constructed entirely of eucalyptus
logs stacked between the trunks of still-living
trees. Inside the fence was a shady clearing, in the
middle
of which stood the most charming house Katharine had ever
seen.
A single story, it was completely surrounded by a
wide veranda. The roofline over the porch broke and
became slightly steeper as it rose to a peak over
the center of the house. Even at first glance Katharine
could see that the building was perfectly rectangular,
each face of the roof pierced by a small dormer. The
posts and beams that supported the veranda were all
adorned with latticework that gave the house a
Victorian aura, despite its essentially
Polynesian architecture.
Inside, there was a large living room, a kitchen,
two bedrooms, and a bathroom. Outside the kitchen
an area of the veranda had been closed in to make a
makeshift laundry room.
Beyond the house, and the eucalyptus grove, a
pasture spread down the mountainside like an
undulating carpet, broken here and there by stands of
eucalyptus and a few jacarandas. Beyond the pasture,
the vista widened to include both coasts of the island,
the valley that separated them, and the West Maui
mountains, their wind-and rain-eroded flanks
carved into a rugged wilderness.
Katharine stood on the veranda, exulting in the cool,
eucalyptus-perfumed air. The sun was lowering in the
western sky, birds were singing, and everywhere she looked
there was a rainbow of colors provided by a lush
profusion of tropical flowers.
She turned to Michael, who was just coming out of the house,
a folder clutched in his hand. "Well?" she asked.
"What do you think?"
Michael glanced at the view, and she could see him
struggling to resist the beauty of the panorama spread
beneath them. But finally he gave up and shook his head.
"Okay, so maybe I was wrong," he said.
"Maybe this isn't the worst place in the world after
all. Okay?"
"So you don't hate your old mother?"
"I don't hate you," Michael replied, smiling
at her exaggerated expression of relief. "And
you're not old. Okay? And if you really want me
to throw in the towel and agree you were right about this whole
idea ..." He let his voice trail off as he
held out the folder. "Can I sign up for it?" he
asked. "Please?" His voice held a plaintive
note, half hopeful, half already resigned to the
answer he expected.
Katharine took the folder. She knew, even before
she looked at it, that it had to be an advertisement
for scuba-diving classes. Her first instinct was
to refuse flat out, but before she could speak, Rob
appeared in the doorway behind Michael.
"It's really very safe," he said. "Hundreds of
tourists do it every day, from little kids to people in their
eighties."
Katharine looked up from the brochure, briefly
meeting Rob's gaze before turning to Michael.
Memories churned in her mind-nightmare
memories of her son waking up in the middle of the
night, gasping for air, barely able to breathe. What
if he had an attack while he was fifty feet
underwater? What would he do? If anything happened
to him...
It was as if Michael had read her mind. "I'm not
gonna drown, Mom. And I'm not going to have an
asthma attack, either. I promise."
Still Katharine hesitated, but then she remembered
something else: Michael's father, who had fallen in
love with scuba diving long before his son had been
born. Tom Sundquist had loved skiing,
surfing, and skydiving, and
half a dozen other sports that terrified
Katharine. And if he were here now, she knew
exactly what he would say. Taking a deep
breath, she spoke the words that Tom could not: "Go for
it. You only live once, right?"
Michael, with a gleeful war whoop, gave her a
bone-crushing hug, then disappeared into the house to set
up a scuba lesson.
Rob spread his hands apologetically. "Maybe
I shouldn't have picked up that brochure-was he began,
but Katharine shook her head.
"I'm glad you did, Rob. He hasn't been
at all happy about this move. Maybe this will
help."
"I think I know where he's coming from," Rob said.
"What is he, fifteen? Sixteen?"
"Sixteen."
"Tough time for a boy. I was just about his age when my
mom met my-was Falling silent, Rob seemed
to fumble for a moment, then awkwardly changed course:
"Well, with a kid that age, you just have to cut him a little
slack, you know? Part of him wants to try new
things, but part of him doesn't want anything
to change."
In her own mind Katharine finished the thought that Rob
himself had been unwilling to say.
When my mom met my stepfather,
he'd been about to say. As the sun began to drop
toward the horizon she stood on the veranda, gazing
at him.
Rob's blue eyes searched her face.
Neither of them spoke.
Neither of them had to.
It was nearly two a.m. when Katharine awakened from
a restless sleep. For a moment she didn't know where
she
was, but as she realized the traffic noises of
New York had been replaced by the quiet sounds
of chirping insects, and the parched air of the apartment had
been displaced by a soft tropical fragrance, she
remembered. Getting out of bed, she shivered in the
chill of the high altitude as she pulled on a
thick terry-cloth robe. On the veranda, she found
that Michael had awakened and come outside, too.
She stood quietly next to him for a moment, gazing
up into a sky strewn with more stars than she'd seen
since she had been in Africa. Finally she reached
out and put her hand on Michael's shoulder. "It's
not really so terrible, is it, sweetheart?"
Michael hesitated, then shrugged, and when he
spoke, there was more pain than anger in his
words. "No, it's not terrible. In fact, it's
beautiful. But it's just that things were finally going good in
New York, Mom. I mean, really good! And
what if I can't make friends out here, or can't get
on the track team, or-was
"Or what if you just give it a chance?" Katharine
broke in. "Tomorrow you go scuba diving, so it isn't
all
so awful, is it?"
They stood quietly in the darkness for a few more
minutes, and Katharine finally decided that his silence
was at least better than the answer he could have given.
When he didn't pull away from her good-night
kiss, she decided that maybe, after all, things were
going to be all right.
Michael, though, remained leaning on the veranda
railing for a long time after his mother had gone back to bed,
a confusion of emotions warring inside him. He
hadn't meant to complain to his mom, and he was a little
ashamed to have revealed his fears like some big baby.
But he was still scared of facing a whole new school
on Monday. And how was he going to live all the
way up here for a whole three months?
Couldn't they at least have found a place at the beach?
Michael glanced surreptitiously at the
half-dozen people gathered around the diving instructor and
wondered if any of them felt as nervous as he
did. Yesterday, even this morning-hell, even half
an hour ago!-diving in the ocean had seemed like a
cool idea. But this morning he'd been in a
swimming pool, where there was no surf, the water was
shallow, and all that was in it were three novice divers
and Dave, who instructed them while someone else
stood on the edge of the pool, watching, just in case
something bad happened.
Something bad, like starting to drown.
Now there were six people besides himself, which meant Dave
wouldn't be able to watch everyone, and the Pacific was a
lot bigger than a swimming pool. Plus, the wet
suit had been pretty hard to pull on, its fit
was uncomfortably tight, and it was getting really hot
with the sun beating down on the black rubber. He was
already starting to sweat and get itchy where the tiny
rivulets of perspiration were creeping down his back.
The equipment looked a lot clumsier now than it
had this morning, too. The tank was heavier than he
remembered it, and once it was strapped onto his
back, it seemed to pull him way off balance. Still,
he'd come this
far, and he wasn't going to chicken out now.
Picking up his fins and mask, he checked the air
regulator one more time, then started down to the beach.
The waves, which hadn't looked like much of anything a
few minutes ago when they'd climbed out of the van and
started carrying the equipment down to the little park above the
beach, seemed suddenly to have swelled into huge
crests, even though he was sure they hadn't.
Pretty sure, anyway.
Behind him, someone spoke: "This is your first dive,
isn't it?"
Michael stiffened as he heard what sounded like a
hostile note in the speaker's voice, and an
image of Slotzky's sneering face rose in his
mind. But Slotzky wasn't here-he was back in
New York, where, Michael hoped, he was
freezing his ass off. Still, Michael wasn't about
to admit that this was his first dive and that he'd only had
his pool training this morning. "I've done it a
couple of times."
"I've been diving since I was ten," the voice
said, and now Michael heard the lilt that he'd already
come to recognize as the local accent. "The first time
I was scared shitless, though. I mean, except for
when I learned in the pool."
They were on the beach now, and finally Michael
got a good look at the guy. He wasn't part of
their group, and Michael could tell right away he
wasn't a tourist, either. Though the guy was about his
age, he was a little shorter and had a body that looked
wiry even under the bulky wet suit. His eyes were
almost as dark as his black hair, and when the boy
grinned at him, his teeth looked almost unnaturally
white.
Michael couldn't tell whether the grin looked friendly
or not. "You diving by yourself?" he asked.
"Sure," the other boy said. "I do it all the
time."
Michael remembered what Dave had said this morning
about never diving without a buddy, but the boy didn't
look like the kind who wanted to hear any advice from
a beginner. He was pulling his fins on now, and
Michael leaned down to follow suit. But even before
he'd gotten his foot into the fin, it had filled up
with sand, and by the time he struggled both of his feet
into them, he'd almost lost his balance twice.
At least he hadn't collapsed onto the beach like
one of the other guys had.
"See you in the water," the dark-haired guy said.
Pulling on his mask and clamping his regulator in
his mouth, the boy walked backward down the
beach until he was waist-deep in the surf, then
lay back in the water, rolled over, and disappeared.
Five minutes later Michael and the rest of the group
were finally ready, and Dave led them into the water.
Michael was paired with a man named Les, who was about
thirty and barely acknowledged his presence. Turning
around to back into the water the same way he'd seen it
done only a few minutes earlier, Michael
nearly tripped three times before he finally got
deep enough to try submerging himself. He put the
regulator in his mouth, checked the valves to make
certain everything was operating properly, and finally put
his face mask in place. Then he took a deep
breath, lowered himself, and rolled over.
In an instant the world changed.
The wet suit no longer felt the least bit
clumsy-in fact, it felt like a second skin,
protecting him from the
cold of the water, but hardly restricting his movement
at all.
The water was crystal clear. Sand moved and swirled
over the bottom, making it look almost as if the
ocean floor had turned to liquid.
When he felt a slight pain in his chest, he
realized he was still holding his breath. He
forced himself to let it out, then slowly breathe in. His
lungs filled with fresh air from the tank on his
back. Taking a second breath, he looked around
and spotted Les about twenty feet ahead of him,
already swimming away from the beach. Michael's first
instinct was to yell at him to wait up, but he
realized that even if he could have shouted, there was no
way the guy was going to hear him.
Better just try to catch up.
Michael swam, kicking hard with his legs, his hands
clasped across his stomach just as Dave had taught them
in the pool this morning. Aided by the fins, he surged
ahead, leaving a small stream of bubbles from the
regulator behind him. As he left the surf line,
the bottom came into focus, the sand showing a gently
rippled surface that sloped slowly deeper as he
swam farther from the beach. With each stroke, he felt
the tension inside him drain away, and a quiet
peacefulness he'd never had began to enfold his spirit.
The water around him glowed brightly with diffused
sunlight, and suddenly a pair of fish, perhaps
eighteen inches long, swam lazily across his path,
coming so close that Michael could reach out and touch them.
Then they darted away with no more than the slightest
twitch of their tails.
He was closing in on Les now. The older man was
turning to the right, and when Michael, too, made a
turn, he caught his first glimpse of the reef.
From the surface it had looked like a finger of nearly
black lava reaching out into the sea, but from below,
Michael could see the bright reds and blues of coral
heads, with hundreds of fish darting among them, some of
them so pale they were nearly translucent, some so
brilliantly colored they seemed to be acting as
beacons in the sea. As he neared the reef, a
group of parrot fish gathered around him, looking for
food. When he produced nothing, they quickly swam
off, heading off toward a woman who was floating on
the surface a few yards away, breathing through a
snorkel tube and holding out a handful of frozen
peas that the fish snatched right out of her fingers.
Michael watched the feeding fish for several
seconds, wishing he'd brought something along
to attract them as strongly as the peas obviously
did. The fish finished the food, then, as if
by magic, disappeared. He had no feeling of having
watched them go; it was as if they'd been there one
second and vanished the next. He turned, looking
for them, but saw only empty water.
Water empty even of Les, the man who was
supposed to be his dive buddy.
Michael's first impulse was to surface and call for
help, but then he realized that was exactly the wrong
thing to do.
"Never let panic scare you to the surface," he
remembered Dave telling them this morning. "On the
first dive this afternoon, you won't be going deep, so there
won't be any danger of getting the bends. But on
a deep dive, a fast rise is the worst thing you can
do. Come up too fast, and the best you can expect is
pain like you've never felt before. The worst is that you
could die." Dave had paused, letting the warning
sink in. "But it's not just that," he went on. "If
you find yourself alone, it could mean that
your buddy is in trouble. Don't go looking for
help. Remember, you're supposed to
be
the help. Only go to the surface if you have no other
choice."
Throwing off the panic that was starting to coil around him,
Michael filled his lungs with air, as much
to reassure himself that he could still breathe as to gain the
steadying effects of a deep breath.
Calmer, he looked around for Les. There was no
trace of his assigned buddy, which could mean
either of two things: Les was in trouble, or had
simply gone his own way, never bothering even to glance
back to see if he was still with him.
Either way, it wasn't a good situation, for if
Michael got in trouble now, there was no one to help
him.
Panic, sensing another opportunity, crept
closer, but Michael brushed it away more easily this
time. He had plenty of air, he wasn't in deep
water, and his fins made him a much stronger swimmer
than he normally was.
He turned toward the reef a dozen yards away,
an expanse of lava covered with bright orange
coral. There were several snorkelers hovering above
it, and three divers at its base.
Three? Maybe he'd finally found Les!
He kicked his legs, and the fins sent him smoothly
and quickly through the water. A few seconds later he
was with the divers and recognized Les through his face
mask.
And a second after that, without even acknowledging
Michael's presence, Les moved farther down the
reef.
The fear that had reached out to Michael earlier congealed
into anger. What was the bastard up to?
Whatever it was, it obviously didn't involve
keeping an eye on him. What should he do? Give
up the dive and head back to
the beach? Or stick with Les, even though it was
obvious he couldn't count on him if he himself got
into trouble?
Then he remembered the other guy his own age, who was
diving alone. Maybe he could find him, and the two of
them could buddy up. He looked around. Les had
disappeared.
Should he go look for him again? He told himself he
shouldn't bother, then decided it didn't matter
whether Les was going to watch out for him or not. He'd
agreed to accept Les as a buddy-not that he'd been
given much choice-and that was that.
Once again he started looking, this time moving higher in
the water to swim over the top of the reef. There were
fish everywhere now, triggerfish moving in large
schools, a few brilliantly colored
humahumas searching for food in the coral, and the
ever-present parrot fish, nibbling at the coral
itself.
But no sign of Les.
He dropped deeper in the water, swimming along the
base of the reef, but still found no sign of
Les. He was about to turn to search the other side of the
reef when he suddenly saw something.
The end of a swim fin. It was just a single flipper,
sticking out from the reef, its bright neon-green strip
glittering in the sunlight. Had someone lost it?
Then it moved, kicking violently.
What the hell?
And suddenly Michael knew.
Someone was in trouble. It wasn't Les-his dive
buddy had been wearing a pair of black fins
identical to his own.
Kicking hard, Michael swam toward the fin, then
came around a finger of the reef that jutted out from the main
flow and saw what had happened. There was a hole in
the reef, and the person whose foot was in the fin must have
gone inside to take a look and gotten stuck. Now
that he was closer, Michael could make out the
person's legs. The second fin was dug into the sand
in what Michael could see was a useless attempt
to gain leverage. The sand was only swirling away,
leaving a depression where the fin was searching for a
toehold. Reaching out, Michael took hold of one
of the fins. Sensing that help had arrived, the person
caught in the small cave stopped kicking.
Nothing.
Michael moved up and reached into the cave, then knew
why the diver couldn't get free: his tank was wedged
in the coral lip at the top of the small cave.
Moving cautiously closer, Michael tried to work
the tank free, but the cave was so dark that he couldn't
see it at all; indeed, he could barely reach it.
Finally he did the only thing he could do: feeling for the
buckles on the tank's straps, he worked them
loose, then took a deep breath, braced his feet
against the reef on either side of the small opening,
grasped both of the diver's ankles, and pulled.
The person trapped in the cave slid out from under the
tanks, and by the time he was out of the cave, Michael was
ready. Taking one more deep breath, he pulled the
regulator out of his mouth and pushed it toward the other
diver's face.
It was the kid he'd talked to on the beach.
The kid who was diving by himself.
The other boy's face mask had come off as
Michael pulled him out of the cave, but he felt the
regulator Michael was offering him, slipped the
mouthpiece between his lips, took a deep breath, and
returned the regulator to
Michael, pointing to the surface as he pulled the
emergency cord on his life vest, inflating
it. As the Hawaiian boy started to rise through the
water, Michael inflated his own vest. Seconds
later he was bobbing on the surface,
face-to-face with the other boy.
A frightened gasp erupted from the guy's mouth.
"You okay?" Michael asked. "Can you make it to the
beach?"
The boy nodded. "Where's your buddy?"
"He kept disappearing. I was looking for him when I
found you."
They started swimming, the boy he'd rescued pacing
himself in order to allow Michael to stay close to him
until they were near the beach. Then the boy ducked his
head under the surface. When he reappeared, he was
standing in water that was only chest deep, although they were
beyond the breaker line.
"Take your fins off," the boy told him. "Then
we'll get your tank off your back."
Michael dropped in the water, pulled both his fins
off, and stood up. He felt the other boy lift his
tank so he could slip out of its straps. "What about
yours?" he asked.
The boy shrugged. "I'll go get it later. At
least I know where it is, and it's sure not going
anywhere." As they plowed through the surf toward
the beach, the boy stuck out his hand. "I'm Josh
Malani."
"Michael Sundquist," Michael replied.
"Mike?"
"Michael," Michael corrected him. "Nobody
ever calls me Mike."
Josh Malani's face lit into a wide grin.
"Someone calls
you Mike now. Get used to it. How long you gonna
be on Maui?"
They were on the beach now. Dropping Michael's
tank on the sand, they started peeling out of their wet
suits. "I just moved here."
Josh's eyes lit up. "You mean you're not a
tourist?"
Michael shook his head. "My mom's working here.
We just got here yesterday."
"Not too bad, man," Josh told him. "Only
here a day, and you already got a best friend!"
Michael bent down to pick up his tank, but Josh
already had it and was starting across the beach toward the small
park. Michael stayed where he was. "What if I
don't Like you?" he called after Josh. "What if
you turn out to be a complete jerk?"
Josh glanced back over his shoulder, his
trademark grin even broader. "Lots of people think
I'm a jerk. But my grandfather's Chinese, and in
China, if you save someone's life, you're
responsible for him. You're stuck with me. Get
used to it."

Katharine was just putting the last suitcase on the
shelf in her closet when she heard a horn honk
and glanced out the window to see Rob Silver's
Explorer emerging from the eucalyptus grove into the
clearing. Her eyes flicked to the clock on the
nightstand, and she noted with satisfaction that Rob's
habit of perfect punctuality hadn't changed
since graduate school. Two o'clock was what he'd
said, and two o'clock it was, right on the dot. She
picked up the battered canvas backpack that had
served as her field purse since her days in
Africa and went out to the veranda just as he swung out
of the Explorer's cab.
"Let me guess," he said, with a wide smile.
"You just put the last of the suitcases away as I was
driving in, right?"
"Okay, so we're still the two most compulsive people
we know." Katharine laughed as she got into the
Explorer. "Although I still prefer to think of
it as perfect timing. Do I need to lock the
house?"
Rob shook his head. "Not up here. Did you find the
keys? They were on the kitchen counter, I think."
"Got "em," Katharine replied. "Let's go.
I'm dying to get a look at this mysterious site of
yours."
Rob swung the car around in a wide U-turn,
maneuvered it along the narrow track through the
eucalyptus grove, and turned down the hill.
"You'll have a car this afternoon," he told her as they
came to Makawao a few minutes later and he
turned right to drive out toward Haiku. "Actually,
it's pretty much like this one, just a little more beat up.
But it's free."
Katharine's brows arched. "A salary that's twice
as much as I usually get paid, travel expenses for
me
and
my son, a house, and now a car. Who's funding
you? It sure isn't the National Science
Foundation!"
"You're right," Rob agreed. "It's not the NSF.
It's a guy named Takeo Yoshihara. Ever heard
of him?" Katharine shook her head. "His
headquarters are in Tokyo, and he operates all
over the world, but he spends a lot of his time here."
"How'd you find him?" Katharine asked. "And is
there another one just like him who's interested in early
man in Africa?"
"He found me," Rob explained. "He's
interested in everything having to do with the Pacific Rim,
including the native cultures. He's got quite a
setup, which you'll see on the way to the site."
They'd passed through the loose collection of
buildings that formed the town of Haiku, and a few
minutes later emerged onto the Hana Highway.
Rob turned right. After a few miles the road
narrowed severely, winding through a series of tight
turns that hung perilously close to a straight
drop into the sea one minute, then plunged deep
into the rain forest the next. "This is the weather side
of the island," Rob explained. "The road's like this for
another thirty-five miles. In the rainy season
there are waterfalls and streams in every ravine you go
through."
He turned sharply off to the right, into a narrow lane
that Katharine was certain she'd have missed entirely
if she'd been driving herself. Paved only with two
strips of concrete, the track wound through a
dense forest of vine-covered trees, finally coming to a
gate constructed of heavily patinated bronze and
copper in bamboo forms that blended almost perfectly
with the surrounding vegetation. The gate opened as the car
approached, apparently of its own volition.
"All the cars that are authorized for entry carry
beacons that activate the gate," Rob explained
in answer to Katharine's unspoken question. When she
turned to look back, the gate was already silently
closing.
"What's he afraid of?" she asked.
Rob smiled. "I have a feeling Takeo
Yoshihara isn't afraid of anything. He just
likes his privacy. Believe me, he can afford
it."
Katharine settled back in her seat as the car made
one more turn and emerged from the rain forest into a scene that
nearly took her breath away, not only in its
unexpectedness, but in its sheer beauty.
The area that spread before her covered perhaps five
acres. It seemed as if nature itself had
sculpted the landscape out of the forest, though Katharine
knew that was impossible. Still, the basic contours had
to have been there from the start. Takeo Yoshihara's
estate had been constructed on a broad
terrace backed by a sheer face of fern-covered
rocks, down which cascaded three separate
waterfalls-bright silver ribbons that flowed from a
ledge high above, filling the air with soft, babbling
music as they tumbled into a pool below. In front
of the pool was a lawn as perfectly kept as the
fairways of the most
exclusive golf course, an expanse of
emerald interspersed with vividly colored beds of
tropical flowers. Banks of towering red flowering
ginger were counterbalanced by the most delicately
colored stems of orchids Katharine had ever seen.
There were rocks, too, great lava boulders, placed
so artfully that for a moment Katharine was certain that
nature herself must have laid them out. But as the
Explorer moved along the gravel drive to which the
twin concrete strips had now given way, she
realized that she was seeing a Zen garden laid out on
an enormous scale, for as the car passed among
them, the rocks almost seemed to move, appearing and
disappearing in an ever-changing pattern.
There were several buildings scattered around the
perimeter of the huge garden, which she now realized formed
a large courtyard. The buildings had an
Oriental cast to them, but reflected the old
Hawaiian culture as well. While the roofs were
tiled in a green harmonious with the lawns and
surrounding rain forest, she could easily imagine them
thatched with palm fronds, and though the walls were
covered with stucco, the huge supporting posts,
exposed at every juncture, hinted at the ancient
Polynesian boathouses from which the structures had
taken their inspiration. As the car rolled to a stop in
front of the largest building, a man stepped out
onto the wide veranda that ran along the building's
entire length.
Katharine knew without being told that this was Rob's
benefactor, Takeo Yoshihara. He was tall and
lean, and even before he strode down the two broad
steps to meet her, his right hand outstretched in
greeting, she sensed that she would find little of the rather stiff
formality she'd come to expect in the few dealings
she'd had with the Japanese over the years. Part of
it, she knew, was the way
he was dressed: a brightly flowered shirt, open at
the throat, white cotton pants, and sandals.
"Dr. Sundquist!" Yoshihara's voice was as
warm and friendly as the grip that closed on her hand as
he stuck his own hand through the open window of the
Explorer. He grinned as he added two more
words: "I presume?"
Yoshihara's smile made up for the weakness of a
joke Katharine had heard so many times before that it had
long ceased to elicit more than a polite chuckle from
her. This afternoon, though, as her eyes swept the dense
rain forest that protected Takeo Yoshihara's
estate from the outside world, she found herself breaking
into a genuine smile. "Finally uttered in the proper
surroundings," she offered. "And I suspect I'd
be as lost as Livingston if I ever ventured very far
into that forest."
"Why do I doubt that?" Yoshihara asked. "Could it
be because Rob tells me you're one of the best field
people he's ever met?"
Katharine saw no point in mentioning that she and Rob
had barely seen each other for twenty years. "I
hope I don't disappoint!"
Yoshihara stepped back from the Explorer. "I'm
sure you won't. And I shall be very interested in hearing
what you think of our little discovery."
After maneuvering the Explorer another mile along
a pair of ruts so rough that they tested even the
four-wheel-drive vehicle's toughness, Rob
pulled to a stop in a second clearing in the rain
forest. This one, though, bore no resemblance
to the one they'd just left. Here there were no traces of
manicured lawns, artfully arranged rocks,
perfectly planted gardens, or beautifully
designed buildings, but the scene that presented itself
to Katharine was far more familiar:
There were a couple of large tents, little more than
tarpaulins strung between trees, with additional sheets
of canvas lashed to their edges to form makeshift
walls that could be folded back whenever the weather was good
enough. This afternoon, with the sky having turned leaden with the
threat of a tropical shower, most of the walls had
already been lowered, though in the wide gaps between the
hanging canvases, Katharine could easily see the
same kind of plank-and-sawhorse worktables that she
herself had used so often. The clearing itself looked
newly created, dotted with fresh-cut stumps of
trees. At its edges there were piles of cuttings that
were just beginning to rot, and on the opposite side of the
clearing from where Rob had just parked the Explorer a
shirtless man was hacking away at the undergrowth with a
vicious-looking machete. A few yards to the
man's left Katharine spotted what looked like a
trailhead. "Does that lead to the site?"
Rob nodded. "From here, we walk. It's about
another two hundred yards farther, but there's
no way to get a headquarters any closer to the
actual dig."
"Before we go up, may I take a look at what
you've found so far?"
"Absolutely." He led her into one of the tents,
where two large tables had been set up. One of them
was still empty, and the other displayed only a dozen
artifacts, consisting of little more than roughly worked
pieces of lava.
"How long have you been working here?" Katharine asked,
picking up a smoothly worn oblong object that
looked no different from hundreds of other
primitive grinding stones she'd seen.
"Two months," Rob told her. "And I've
been pretty
much on hold since you agreed to come. Been spending
most of my time in a village out past Hana."
Katharine picked up another of the objects, turned
it over, and again saw nothing particularly unusual
about it. "Let's go up and see what you've got."
The path leading up to the site was steep and rocky.
"How'd you ever find it in the first place?" Katharine
asked as she stepped over a rotting log and tested the
solidity of the ground on the other side before she
shifted her full weight to it.
"I didn't. One of Yoshihara's gardeners was
looking for a particular kind of fern up here, and he
found one of the artifacts you saw back in the tent.
Even after he brought me up, it took us a week
before we were really sure we'd found something."
Fifty yards farther on they came into yet another
clearing. This one, though very small, had been carved
meticulously out of the rain forest, and Katharine could
tell at a glance that the crew who had cleared it had
been careful to disturb nothing on the floor of the forest.
Except that the site wasn't actually on the
floor of the forest at all, but on a ledge high up
in one of the myriad tiny ravines that scarred this side
of the mountain. A few yards farther up Katharine could
hear the sound of a waterfall cascading into a pool-the
alluring cascade in Rob's photos, she
decided. The stream that drained the pool twisted through
the bottom of the ravine.
"There was a vent up here, back when Haleakala was
active," Rob explained. "Most of the ravines in
this area are the result of erosion, but this one's
different. It seems to have been formed by the volcano
itself." He pointed to some yellowish deposits on
an overhanging rock. "You
can see the sulfur, which wouldn't be here if it
had been formed by erosion."
Katharine moved closer. "You can still smell it! Are
you sure the vent isn't active?"
"This is the year they declare Haleakala extinct,"
he told her. "There hasn't been any activity
for two hundred years."
"Two hundred years is nothing, geologically
speaking," Katharine reminded him.
"A nanosecond on an archaeologist's clock.
But if the volcano boys say it's extinct, who
am I to argue?"
Shrugging, Katharine shifted her attention to a rough
circle of stones. It had not yet been completely
uncovered, but even half buried, it was clear the
rocks formed a fire pit. "You're going to want
to be careful excavating that," she warned Rob. "You
should be able to get some very datable material out of it."
"What do you mean, 7 should be careful"?" Rob
asked. "I specialize in architecture,
remember? Polynesian
architecture."
His glance scraped the rough rocks. "And I don't
call this architecture. I call this a
campsite." He smiled, his eyes taking on their
mischievous twinkle. "Which is why I
called you, and why I am paying you a king's
ransom. Time to get out your little picks and brushes,
Kath." His smile broadened into a wide grin.
"And be careful as you excavate it," he added.
"Someone told me there might be some very datable
material in it. But the real reason you're here is
this," he said, his tone serious now, as he stooped
down to peel back a sheet of plastic that had been
spread over an area a few yards from the fire
pit.
Katharine exhaled sharply.
Bones.
No more deeply excavated than the fire pit, they
barely showed above the surface, but even what little
earth had been peeled away revealed what Katharine
instantly recognized as the occipital area of a
skull and part of a jaw. When she dropped down to her
hands and knees to explore the bones with a slender
dental pick she fished out of her backpack, Rob
crouched down next to her.
"What do you think?" he asked.
Katharine, already concentrating on the nearly buried
bones, hardly heard him, and several seconds
passed before she answered his question.
Seconds during which a strange feeling
gripped her.
Though she had no clear idea why, and though she could
barely see them yet, she was certain that there was something
wrong with these bones.
Something very wrong.

"You're sure you don't want me to drive you?"
Katharine asked.
Michael stifled a groan. It had been bad enough
on Friday, when she insisted on going with him to the
school to register. It wasn't like it was any big
deal-all he had to do was fill out a couple of forms,
and then they transferred all his records from New
York through the computer. She'd only had to sign one
form, and he could have brought it home, had her sign it
over the weekend, and taken it back this morning. But
no-she'd had to stand there peering over his shoulder like he
was in the fourth grade or something, while all the
kids who'd come into the office stared at him like he was
some kind of geek who couldn't even get himself
into school without his mommy holding his hand.
And now she wanted to drive him to school on the first
day.
"I think I can walk to the bus stop, Mom," he
said. "It's right at the end of the driveway,
remember?"
"Just asking," Katharine told him, glancing at the
clock and picking up her backpack. "I can drop
you at the bus stop if you're ready."
Michael shook his head. "I've got half an
hour before the bus."
"Then you can clean up the kitchen, okay? And I'll
see you tonight." Kissing him on the cheek, she made
her exit before Michael had a chance to argue.
A moment later he heard the engine of the nearly
worn-out car that Rob Silver had loaned them
grinding in protest as she tried to start it. For a
minute it sounded as if the battery was going to give
up before the engine caught, but then he saw a great
puff of exhaust burst from the tailpipe, and the
battered four-wheel-drive Explorer jerked down
the drive toward the road.
Finally safe from the embarrassment of having his mother
drive him to school, Michael cleaned up the
breakfast dishes, ignored the mess in his room,
stuffed his gym clothes, running shoes, and a
notebook into his book bag, and got to the end of the
driveway just as a mud-streaked yellow bus
appeared around the uphill bend.
Climbing onto the bus, he spotted an
empty seat near the back of the crowded vehicle and
started down the aisle.
He felt every eye on the bus watching him.
Watching him, and sizing him up.
He could almost hear the word that was going through their minds:
Haole.
"White."
Josh Malani had warned him it was going to happen.
"Some of the kids even got a special day here,"
he'd said on Saturday while giving Michael his
first lesson in body surfing. "Kill a
haole
day. "Course they don't actually kill guys with
skin like yours. They just sorta try to change its
color. Make it black and blue, instead of
white."
"You're kidding," Michael had replied, though he
was pretty sure Josh wasn't kidding.
Josh shrugged. "Hey, you guys came out here and
stole everything, and ran everything your way for a couple
hundred years. Times have changed."
Still, Michael had hoped Josh wasn't serious.
Now he knew he was.
Walking down the aisle, he suddenly felt like he
was back in New York, with Slotzky
looking for an opportunity to pick a fight.
Except now there were half a dozen Slotzkys just
on this bus, and God only knew how many waiting for
him at school.
Should he look them straight in the eye?
That was the last thing you ever wanted to do in New
York. If someone was looking at you, you just looked
the other way, avoiding any direct eye contact.
Meeting someone's eyes was a challenge.
Better assume it was the same here, he decided.
Keeping his eyes carefully on the floor ahead of
him, Michael worked his way down the aisle to the
nearest vacant seat, slid onto it, and tried
to make himself inconspicuous.
The bus continued down the hill, making three more
stops. Though he could feel every single person who
got on the bus staring at him, no one spoke to him.
It was going to be every bit as bad as he'd thought.
The bus finally pulled to a stop in the school parking
lot, and as it began disgorging its passengers,
Michael sighed with relief: maybe nothing as bad
as Josh had predicted was going to happen.
Maybe they were only going to ignore him.
But then, as he started up the aisle toward the door,
he stopped. Two boys-each of them much
bigger than
him-had hung back, apparently looking for something
they'd stuck under the seat in front of them.
How dumb did they think he was?
And why the hell couldn't Josh Malani have been on
the bus with him?
Finally deciding they weren't going to leave until he
did, Michael started for the door again. As he
approached their seat, one of the boys moved into the
aisle. For a moment Michael thought he was going
to block him.
Instead, the other boy started toward the door.
Michael hesitated. He didn't want to look
as if he were afraid of them. So what if they were
both three inches taller than he was and outweighed
him by at least forty pounds apiece? Looking scared
was just what they wanted.
Michael kept moving. The second boy fell in
behind him.
Right behind him-so close he could feel the boy's
breath on the back of his neck.
"Why don't you pricks stay where you belong?" he
heard the boy behind him mutter, not quite loudly enough so the
bus driver would be able to hear. As the guy behind him
spoke, the one in front of him stopped
short.
The one behind him gave a hard shove.
"What the fuck you doin", asshole?" the guy
ahead of him demanded, whirling around to cast
malevolent eyes on Michael. "You
haoles
all think you own the world. Well, you can eat my
shit!"
Michael knew nothing he said was going to get him out
of this. He braced himself for the fist that was about to plunge
into his gut. Then he heard another voice.
"Not till you're off my bus," the driver said,
standing and fixing Michael's tormentor with a baleful
glare.
The boy in front of Michael hesitated a
moment, then turned and got off the bus. Michael,
with the second guy crowding him from behind, had no choice
but to follow. He readied himself for the confrontation and
prayed that Josh Malani might appear. Even if
Josh turned out to be no better than he at
fighting guys twice his size, he might at least
be able to talk these creeps out of killing him.
By the time he was out of the bus, the situation had changed,
if only slightly. For the moment, at least, they were
surrounded by a couple dozen other kids.
Whatever Michael's two tormentors were planning
seemed to get put on hold, at least
temporarily. The bigger one gave Michael the
same kind of stomach-churning stare he'd seen in
Slotzky's eyes the day he'd gotten his black
eye and the cut on his arm. "After school," the boy
said in a grating voice. "Or maybe tomorrow. But
don't worry,
haole
comwe're gonna put your face in it." Then he
turned away, and both he and his friend disappeared into the
crowd of milling students.
As he watched them go, Michael wondered how much more
of a punch this guy packed than Slotzky had back
in New York.
Probably a lot.
The slight shift in the crust of the earth beneath the island
of Hawaii was so small, and occurred so slowly, that
for several hours it went unnoticed by anything
except the machines.
The machines, of course, noticed everything, for that's
what they had been designed to do. Sensitive
instruments perceived the small tremors that resulted
as a new fissure opened deep in the bowels of the
great volcano Mauna
Loa, recording those tremors and reporting them
to other machines.
No alarms sounded, no sirens wailed warnings of the
tidal waves that can be generated by the sudden major
shifts that sometimes occur on the ocean floor.
Instead, the machines whispered among themselves, passing
the news of the activity beneath Mauna Loa from one
information nexus to another, until, long before any
man was aware of the movement, the computers of the world were
already building models to project what the slight
shifts might mean for the future of the planet.
Deep beneath the mountain, the magma, molten and
seething, made its way toward the surface, oozing
through the cracks and crevices the pressure from below
had caused, widening them and filling them, gathering force
from below to propel the climb upward to the surface.
And as the magma moved, the mountain gave way to it,
and the tremors increased.
Men, as well as machines, began to notice.
Among the first on Maui to note the trembling in the
earth beneath their feet were the technicians tending the
array of telescopes at the top of Haleakala.
Their computers were programmed specifically to alert
them to volcanic activity. Despite the massive
concrete blocks on which the telescopes
sit and the shock absorbers that are designed
to protect them from the smallest vibrations, tremors
in the earth wreak havoc with observation of the universe
beyond the planet's bounds.
When the earth moves, nothing stops it.
And astronomical observation stops instantly.
Phil Howell was annoyed. Experience told him
that these tremors almost certainly would continue, at
least for the next few days. It meant there would be no
more
observation of a star he'd been watching deep in the
Whirlpool Galaxy, fifteen million
light-years away.
Howell was fascinated with the star for two reasons. The
first was that it seemed to be the source of a signal that
various radio-telescopic antenna arrays had
begun picking up a few years ago. So far the
signal existed only in fragmented bits and
pieces that he was only now beginning to assemble into a
whole.
The other reason for Phil Howell's fascination with the
star was that it was going nova. The radio signal, he
was almost certain, would eventually prove to have been a
precursor to the star's impending destruction.
But now the computer had alerted him that the
unrest in the earth was going to postpone his observations
of the sky indefinitely. Leaving the computers to continue
their work on the fragments of radio signal, he
decided to take the rest of the day off and drive out
to see the site Rob Silver had been talking about
for the last month. Rob's discovery was intriguing;
even more intriguing was the opportunity to meet
Katharine Sundquist, the woman who seemed
to fascinate Rob Silver every bit as much as the
distant star fascinated Phil. Leaving the computers
to tend to the universe, he locked his office and headed
out toward Hana.
Click!
The shutter snapped, the automatic film advance
hummed, and Katharine adjusted her position
slightly, as oblivious to the flies that were hovering
around her as she was to the sweat that was running down her
face in muddy rivulets. Every bone in her body
ached from the hours she'd spent crouched over the
skull-now nearly
fully exposed-but she was no more aware of the pain in
her joints than of the heat and the insects.
The important thing was to get the pictures, to have the
visual proof of the position in which the skull, and the
rest of the skeleton, had been found.
She pressed the shutter release again.
Click!
Another whir, another painful adjustment in her
position.
Another photograph.
Another document to prove eventually that despite the
fact that what she was uncovering made no sense, it
had, in fact, been found in exactly this position,
at exactly this location.
She'd been laboring on the excavation for two days
now, carefully scraping away the deposits
to expose the remains, with no sense yet of when the
body had been buried. From what she'd seen so far,
it could have been a year or a decade or a
century.
A thousand years? Four thousand years? Certainly
no more than that, for man hadn't been on Maui-or
anywhere else in Hawaii-any longer than that, and
no animal except man built fire pits.
Undoubtedly the site was much younger than a thousand
years-probably only a few hundred, given how
shallow it was.
She'd refused to let Rob's crew help with the
excavation of the skeleton, assigning them to the area
around the rudimentary fire circle. The
contents of the circle itself were still undisturbed. Having
decided to work on the skeleton first, Katharine
immediately ordered the fire pit covered and declared it off
limits. Once she'd exposed every one of the bones,
photographing them at every stage of their excavation
until she was satisfied that
she
had a complete record of their recovery and would
feel comfortable about moving them to a lab, she'd turn
her attention to the fire pit.
"I want every layer kept separate," she'd
explained to Rob. "Even if I have to peel it down
a millimeter at a time."
"What is it you think you've got here?" Rob
asked, realizing she was dead serious about doing all the
excavation herself.
When he first asked the question, she had no answer for
him. She'd been acting purely on instinct-that
intuition born of experience that told her that she'd
never seen a site quite like this one.
As she began exposing the skull, though, her
motives for not telling Rob what she was thinking had
changed.
The fact was, what she was thinking made no sense.
As she'd first begun uncovering the skull,
it had been clear that it was some sort of primate.
That alone was strange enough, because she was well aware
that there were no primates native to Hawaii.
In addition, the positioning was problematic: you wouldn't
find a chimpanzee or gorilla-or any
species of primate, for that matter-next to a
fire circle. Not unless someone had killed the
animal and left it there.
A scenario, she knew, that was possible, but
unlikely, given the location.
But as she kept digging, patiently cleaning the
skull with dental tools and brushes, she began
to realize that it didn't look like a primate at
all.
What it most closely resembled, in fact, was some
of the early hominids.
That, of course, was impossible.
First, early man hadn't existed in Hawaii.
Second, this particular site hadn't existed at the
time of early man.
Therefore, the skull had to be something else. Whatever
it turned out to be, she was determined to have a perfect
scientific record to back up the assertions she
would eventually make.
She took one more photograph, and as the
camera began rewinding, she stood, stretched, and
took a deep breath, wincing as her nostrils
filled with the sulfurous odor that seemed to be hanging
over the site more strongly than usual today. She was
reloading the camera when she heard Rob's voice.
"Kath? Got a visitor who wants to meet you!"
Looking up, Katharine saw Rob step into the
clearing. Behind him was a second man the same age
as Rob. "This is Phil Howell. He's the head
stargazer up at the top of the mountain. Phil, this is
Katharine Sundquist."
Phil Howell stepped forward, extended his hand, then
lifted his brows as he got a whiff of the scent of
rotting eggs. "My God! What are you excavating
with, sulfuric acid?"
Katharine shook her head. "Just deposits around an
old vent. But it seems to be worse today."
The astronomer frowned. "Are you sure?"
Something in his tone set off an alarm in Katharine's
head. "I think so," she said. "I assume it has
to do with the rain we had this morning."
"Or maybe the earthquakes opened up a pocket
of gas," Howell replied.
Katharine's gaze shifted worriedly to Rob.
"Earthquakes?" she repeated. "What's
he talking about?"
"The volcano," Phil Howell said before Rob could
speak. "Looks like it's getting ready to kick up
again."
Katharine's heart skipped a beat and she looked
at Rob again. "You said it was extinct!"
"It is," Rob assured her. "He's talking about
Kilauea on the Big Island." He could tell
by the look on her face that Katharine wasn't
convinced. "Tell her, Phil. She obviously
doesn't believe me."
Katharine listened silently as Phil Howell
explained the volcanic movement under the Big
Island. "It's not just the earthquakes," he finished.
"If it really gets going, it spews so much dust
into the air you can't see anything even if the scopes
are holding still." He paused. "Makes you wonder
if mountaintops are really the best places for
observatories, doesn't it?"
Katharine made no reply, but as she began showing the
site to the astronomer, she found herself glancing toward
the hole in the side of the ravine that marked the ancient
volcanic vent. All but lost in the tangled
vegetation of the rain forest, it certainly looked
harmless enough.
As she tried to concentrate on what she was saying,
she kept thinking that the smell of sulfur was growing
stronger.
Should she mention it to Rob and Phil? But no, they
seemed unconcerned.
It must be her imagination.
It had to be.
The hostility from the two guys on the bus followed
Michael around all day long. Wherever he was, they
seemed to be there, always together, always watching him.
During the break between his last two classes, they'd
shoved him up against a locker.
"Another hour," the bigger one had growled. "Then
you're dead meat,
haole"
So far, though, they hadn't
actually tried anything, and if they were planning
to wait for him after school, they were going to have to wait a
long time, for today Michael was going to do something he'd
never done before. Today, for the first time in his life, he was
actually going to go out for a team.
He made up his mind during gym class. He'd
been checking his breathing all day, and there hadn't been
any problems. In fact, he felt better than
ever. "Just wait," Josh Malani told
him as they'd jogged around the track. "Sometimes the
trades die down, and they start burnin' the cane
fields, and the mountain on the Big Island goes
off. Man, you could choke to death around here!"
But his breathing had been deep and easy, and even after
he'd finished three laps, he barely felt it.
So when he'd seen the track team practice
schedule posted on the bulletin board in the locker
room, he decided. Today was the day.
Now, as the final bell sounded and he left his last
class, instead of heading out to the side of the school where
the buses-and the two guys-would be waiting, Michael
went the other way, toward the locker room.
Stripping off his clothes, he put on his gym
shorts, still damp from RE. class that morning. He
laced up his shoes carefully, making sure they
weren't so tight his feet would start swelling before he
even got warmed up, then left the locker room and
trotted out to the field, where the track team was already
starting their warm-up calisthenics.
Should he go over and join them, or warm up by himself?
What if he went over just like he was one of them, and
then didn't make the team when he tried out?
Better just to take a couple of laps around the
track.
He finished the first lap and was a hundred feet into the
second when he felt a sharp elbow dig into the
ribs on his right side.
"What do you think you're doin', jerk?" a familiar
voice said.
Michael glanced over without turning his head. It was
the bigger of the two guys from the bus. And he was wearing
a track suit.
Saying nothing, Michael kept running.
The other boy, towering half a foot over
Michael, shortened his stride enough to match
Michael's pace. "Can't you talk, asshole?"
Michael remained silent, but kept running,
concentrating only on his pace, determined neither
to change it nor to break stride. If the guy was
going to shove him off the track, so be it. But he
wasn't going to quit.
They rounded the last turn. As Michael dropped his
pace back to a walk and approached the coach, the
other boy kept going, stepping up his own stride with
an ease that made Michael question whether he shouldn't
just head back to the locker room, take a shower, and
go home. Then he saw the other guy from the bus, his
lips curled into a contemptuous sneer, as if the
guy knew exactly what was going through his
mind.
With perfect clarity, Michael knew that if he
walked off the field now, he'd hate every single day
he had to come back to Bailey High. Taking a
deep breath, he walked up to the coach. "I'm
Michael Sundquist," he said. "I want to try
out for the team." He felt the coach look him over with
appraising eyes, and easily read the doubt in his
face. "I'm a sprinter."
"I think I can make up my own mind about what you
can do," the coach said. The team, except for the one
guy who was still running around the track, laughed, and
Michael tried to ignore the burning in his face.
But when he didn't flinch from the words, the coach
relented. "Okay, what do you want to try?"
"The hundred meter, or the two hundred,"
Michael offered.
"How about the four hundred?" the coach asked.
Michael bit his lip, then decided he'd better
tell the truth. "I had asthma. I'm not sure
I can last that long, full-out."
The coach raised a brow, but when he spoke, his
voice carried no note of judgment. "Okay.
I'll tell you when to go." Pulling a stopwatch out
of his pocket, he set it, then handed it to the
second of the guys from the bus. When the timer had
reached the mark a hundred meters down the track, the
coach nodded to Michael, who moved out to the starting
blocks. "On your mark."
Michael dropped to a crouch, putting his left
foot against the block.
"Set."
Michael tensed, ready for the coach to utter the final
word.
And waited.
What on earth was going on? Was the coach pulling some
kind of joke on him? His legs began to ache.
Jaw clenched, determination tensing every muscle, he
crouched low to the track. His left foot still braced,
he remained tensed to take off. Then, as he heard
feet approaching from behind him, he understood.
Sure enough, just as the guy who'd elbowed him a few
minutes ago passed him, the coach shouted, "Go!"
As Michael launched himself off the block, he could
see the bigger boy, already ahead of him, increase his
pace. Swell! Not only was he going to have to try
to
catch up with someone who had a head start and was bigger,
but he was going to have to eat dust, too.
Well, if that was the game they wanted
to play, fine!
Sucking air deep into his lungs, Michael
lunged forward, hitting his full stride in the first
two steps, then pouring on as much speed as he could
muster.
After he'd gone ten steps he realized the runner
ahead of him was no longer widening the distance.
In fact, the gap was narrowing.
Then he heard a voice yelling from the bleachers and
glanced over to see Josh Malani jumping up and
down. "Go, Mike! Go!"
Clenching his fists as if to squeeze even more energy out
of his body, Michael focused on closing the gap.
After they had run forty meters, there were only four
meters between them.
At seventy meters, Michael was only a foot
behind.
He came abreast of the other runner at eighty
meters, and when he crossed the finish line he was at
least a full meter ahead.
Slowing down, he waited for the consequences. The guy
already hated him just because of the color of his skin, and now
he'd beaten him in front of his friends. Great!
Josh Malani was out of the bleachers, jogging across the
track. "Way to go, Mike! You left
him in the dust!"
Without warning, the guy he'd just beaten, who'd earlier
looked as if he was ready to smash Michael's
face, stopped short, his expression confused.
"You're Mike Sundquist?" he demanded.
"Michael," Josh said immediately. "He hates it
if you call him Mike."
"So that's why you call him Mike?" the guy with the
stopwatch demanded. "I thought he pulled you out of the
reef!"
"He did."
"So show a little respect!" He turned
to Michael. "Malani gives you any trouble, you
let me know. I been wantin' to kick the shit out of
him for years, but he's too small to bother with.
Even smaller than you. But he can't run!"
Michael's head was swimming. What was going on?
"How'd you do that?" the defeated runner was asking now.
"Jesus, man! I was ten meters ahead of you, and
goin' full speed when you started!" Slinging an arm
around Michael's shoulders, he started back toward
the coach and the rest of the team, calling out to the boy with the
stopwatch. "Hey, Rick, how fast did he do that
hundred?"
"A little more than eleven seconds," the
timer replied.
"That's a whole second faster than anyone we've
ever had," the other one said. "I can do the long stuff,
but it's a bitch getting up to speed."
Michael eyed him suspiciously. "I thought I was
supposed to eat shit!"
The huge boy grinned. "That was when you were nothin' but
a stinkin'
haole.
I'm Jeff Kina." He stuck out his hand, then
turned to call to the coach, "Hey, Mr. Peters,
he's on the team, isn't he?"
"He is, but I don't know how much longer you will
be. How'd you get beaten by someone half a foot
smaller than you, when you had a head start?"
An enormous laugh rumbled from Jeff Kina's
throat. "Hey, I can't do everything, can I? So
what I can't do, Michael will take care of, and this
year we'll kick everyone's ass. Right?"
For the first time, Michael began to think that coming
to Maui might not have been such a bad idea after
all, and when he called home an hour later-his
first track practice behind him-he didn't even
bother to pretend to be cool.
"It's me, Mom," he said when the
answering machine picked up his call. "Guess
what? I did it! I made the track team! Can you
believe it? I
made
it!" He paused for a second, then rushed on, his
words spewing out in a torrent of excitement.
"I've met a whole bunch of new guys, and
they're really great. Except that one of them was
gonna-was He cut himself short, then quickly changed
course. No use getting his mother all upset
by telling her someone had threatened to beat him up this
morning. Besides, that was all over now. "Anyway,
I'm gonna go out with Josh and a bunch of guys from the
team. We're going over to Kihei and grab a
burger and go to a movie or something, to celebrate.
I'll be home by ten-thirty, maybe eleven.
Isn't it great that I made it? See you later!"
Hanging up the phone, Michael grinned at Josh
Malani and Jeff Kina, who were waiting for him by the
door. "Where're the other guys?"
"They took off already," Josh told him.
"Then let's go!" Michael said, picking up his
book bag. "Anybody know what movies are
playing?"
But as they were leaving the locker room and
heading toward the parking lot, Josh Malani came
up with another suggestion-one that had nothing to do with
movies. As he listened, Michael felt a knot
forming in his stomach.
Part of it, he knew, was excitement at the idea
Josh was proposing.
But another part of it was fear.
"Night diving?" he asked as he tossed his book
bag into the back of Josh's Chevy pickup.
"Isn't it dangerous?"
Josh grinned at him. "A little, maybe. But so
what? You're gonna love it!"
Maybe I should call Mom back,
Michael thought as he and the two other boys piled
into Josh's rusting pickup truck.
Maybe I should tell her what we're really doing.
After all, if something happens
...
Forget it,
he told himself.
All she "II do is worry.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Michael asked
again. He, Josh Malani, Jeff Kina, and two
other guys from the track team-Rick
Pieper and someone named Kioki, whose last name
Michael didn't remember-had grabbed
hamburgers, fries, and Cokes at a place
called Peggy Sue's. As they ate, Josh
explained how they would equip themselves at Kihei
Ken's Dive Shop: "He leaves the key under the
barrel behind the back door."
"What's that got to do with it?" Michael asked, though
by now he thought he knew Josh well enough to be certain
that whatever peculiar illogic his friend might come up
with, he would manage to make it sound reasonable.
"Ken's my friend, and he'd say it was okay."
"Why don't you just call him and ask him?"
Michael asked, which only netted him one of
Josh's patented looks of complete scorn.
"He's off-island, for Christ's sake. He's
over on Lanai and won't be back till tomorrow.
Come on, Mike, don't give me a hard time!
I'm your best friend."
"You're also crazy," Michael reminded him.
Josh's affable grin spread wide. "That's not
news. But you still saved my life, so I wouldn't
mess you up, would I?"
At the time, the final logic had seemed impeccable.
Now that he was actually standing at the back
door of Ken's Dive Shop with three guys he'd
known only since that afternoon, and one good friend who was-
according to everyone who had known him a lot longer than
Michael-certifiably crazy, he wasn't so
sure.
What if an alarm went off?
What if they got caught?
What if they got taken to jail?
But even as the questions rose in Michael's mind,
Josh Malani fished the key out from under the barrel in
back, unlocked the door, and flipped on the
lights.
"Jeez, Josh! Shut off the lights!" Jeff
Kina demanded.
"Why?" Josh asked. "We're not doing anything
wrong. Come on hi and help me find what we
need."
It didn't take nearly as long as Michael thought
it would: within ten minutes they had enough gear for all
five of them in the bed of Josh's truck. But as
Jeff Kina started loading air tanks, he
swore.
"What's wrong?" Michael asked.
"There's only one full tank," Jeff said.
"Any of you guys know how to work the
compressor?"
Everyone shook their heads and shrugged helplessly, and
Michael felt a moment of relief, thinking they
might have to bag the whole plan. But just as he was about
to suggest they haul the gear back in from the truck,
Josh found five more tanks on a shelf next to the
door that separated the back room from the shop. His
new friends loaded four of them into the truck, with the
full tank from the first batch of tanks they found, then
the boys all piled in.
They drove south on Kihei Road, through
Wailea and out past Makena Beach. The road
narrowed and grew
bumpy, and finally they came to a tiny cove where the
water glittered in the light of an almost full
moon. Michael began to relax, then realized
Josh wasn't going to stop. "What was wrong with that
bay?" he asked, peering back over his shoulder.
Even in the darkness, the inlet looked reasonably
safe.
"LaPerrouse?" Josh asked. "That's for tourists.
We're goin" to the goldfish bowl."
They kept moving farther south. Finally, the dense
thickets of kiawe that lined both sides of the road
gave way to what at first looked
to Michael like a huge field of freshly plowed
earth, hundreds of acres of it, spreading away from
the road in both directions. Then he realized he
wasn't looking at a field of earth at all: he
was looking at raw lava.
Lava so desolate that practically nothing grew
on it. In the darkness, it held a forbidding aura that
made him shiver despite the warmth of the air.
They were deep into the lava field when Josh pulled
the truck off the road into a narrow parking area.
Michael looked around, seeing nothing but the vast
expanse of lava. "Where's the goldfish bowl?"
he asked.
"At the end of the flow," Josh told him. "There's
a path a little farther down the road, but this is as
close as you can park to it. Practically nobody
knows about it." The five boys scrambled out of the
truck, slung their air tanks onto their backs,
and picked up the bags they'd filled with
regulators, masks, fins, and life vests.
Josh led them down the road two hundred yards,
then stepped over a pipe that ran parallel to the
asphalt pavement.
"What's that?" Michael asked.
"Water pipe," Jeff Kina told him.
"It's too hard to bury it in the lava, so they just
lay it along the surface next to the road."
They were picking their way through the lava now, but
Michael saw no sign of anything that looked like a
path until they came to a sign that warned them against
overnight camping. "This is really a path?" he
asked as he gingerly made his way across lava that
looked sharp enough to slash him if he so much as touched it
"That's the neat thing," Josh explained. "If you
don't know exactly where it is, you can't find it."
"I know where it is, and most of the time I still can't find
it," Rick Pieper muttered. "Last time I
came out here, I almost tore my feet off."
"Quit bitchin'," Kioki told him. "It's
easy." Then, a second later, he lost his
balance, instinctively put a hand out to steady himself,
and howled in pain. "Goddamn it, I hate this
stuff!"
"So go back and wait in the truck," Josh told
him.
"No chance," Kioki shot back. "I'm okay."
Forty minutes later they came to a small cove that
was almost completely landlocked by a long tongue of
lava that protected it from the open ocean. While the
pool itself lay serenely still, no more than
twenty feet away the heaving sea clawed at the
embracing arm of rock. It was as if a hungry
animal were attempting to dig its prey out of a
protective burrow. The surf snarled, and angry
fountains of foam spewed into the sky like the
anticipatory saliva of a beast about to feed. For a
long time Michael stared at the spectacle,
wondering how safe the pool really was.
"It's okay," Josh Malani told him, once
again accurately reading his thoughts. "There's only one
channel into the pool, and it's over on the other
side, in the lee. There's hardly even any
current, and I won't be more than a couple yards
away from you. Okay?"
Michael nodded, still unsure if he wanted to go
into the
water, which seemed to have darkened even as he stared at
it. He told himself it was only his imagination, since
the moon was shining as brightly as ever. The other guys were
already stripping their clothes off, and soon all of them
were naked and helping each other strap on their tanks
and check their regulators. Then, one by one, they
went into the pool, until only Michael and Josh
were still on the beach.
"You want to skip it?" Josh asked. There
was nothing of his usual mocking tone now, and Michael
guessed that if he decided to chicken out, Josh would
make sure the other boys thought it was his own idea
to stay out of the water. In fact, he suspected
Josh might even go as far as to slash his foot on the
lava, if he thought that's what it would take to convince
everyone that Michael hadn't lost his nerve.
He looked at the water once more, then punched
Josh on the shoulder. "Let's do it," he said.
They backed in until they were up to their waists, then
Michael checked his regulator one last time,
lowered himself, stretched out, and rolled over.
The water closed around him, and, as it had on his first
dive, the world changed.
It was nothing like the daytime dive. The sunlight was
gone, and with it the Day-Glo colors of the coral and the
fish. Now the water was infused with a silvery glow from
the moon, and the fish that darted among the shadows of the
pool appeared as no more than phantoms. Here and
there phosphorescent creatures glowed, and
occasionally a fish glimmered brightly as the moonlight
caught its scales.
Josh Malani turned on a flashlight, and
everything changed once more. The ocean came alive with
creatures attracted by the light, and the
water that only a moment ago seemed populated
by nothing more than a few ghostly floating shapes was
transformed into a whirling
Kaleidoscope of lemon tangs, damselfish,
and butterfly fish. Beyond the brilliant cone
emanating from Josh's flashlight, there was only an
inky blackness, and suddenly Michael wished Josh
hadn't turned on the light at all. He was about
to signal Josh to turn it off when a large shape
drifted into the light, startling Michael for a moment
before he recognized it as a sea turtle. The
turtle swam gracefully toward them, hovered in the
light for a few seconds, then turned away,
disappearing into the surrounding darkness. Maneuvering
close to Josh, Michael motioned for him to kill the
light, and a second later both boys were plunged
momentarily into total blackness.
Michael's night vision slowly returned as the
pale glow of moonlight filtered through the curtain of
black. With Josh just ahead of him, Michael
drifted through the water, feeling lazily disconnected
from the world beyond the crystalline basin. The water was no
more than fifteen feet deep, and even in the dim
moonlight the bottom was clearly visible. The
tendrils of anemones waved gently in the
nearly still water, and the dark spines of sea urchins
protruded from holes in the lava.
Time seemed to slow as the ghostly shapes offish
floated around him.
A large sea snail crept along the lava
floor of the pool, antennae extended, mantle
partially covering its bright shell. Michael dove
deeper, intent on getting a closer look at the
snail, when something else attracted his attention.
There was a crevice in the lava, with something
protruding from it.
Michael changed course, moved closer to the
crevice, then recognized what he was seeing.
A moray eel! Its rows of sharp teeth glistened
in the moonlight as it slowly flexed its jaw.
Carefully, trying to move slowly enough not to disturb the
eel, Michael inched closer.
The eel, seeing him coming, opened its jaw wide.
Its entire body seemed to tense.
It waited, watching, ready to strike.
Josh Malani hovered about six feet beneath the
surface, watching an octopus that appeared to be
staring right back at him. Twice he'd reached out
to try to touch the small cephalopod, but each time it
shrank away from him, and Josh had the eerie
sense that the little creature felt as strange in the
moonlit water as he did himself. The fact was,
he kind of wanted to turn the flashlight back on,
if for no other reason than to regain the sense of
familiarity that the bright colors of the coral and the fish
would bring him. Being in the dark was kind of like wandering in
a graveyard: he was sure there wasn't anything in
the pool that could really hurt him, but the shadowy water
alone was enough to make him nervous. Thus, when the first
touch came, he was so startled he almost yanked on his
emergency cord.
Then he realized it had to be Michael, letting him
know he was there.
Then the second touch came.
Not gentle like the first, but sharp-as if claws had
raked across his side.
Reflexively jerking away, Josh once again had
to resist the instinctive urge to jerk on the emergency
cord that would release the CO2 cartridge,
inflating his life vest and shooting him to the surface.
Forcing himself not to give in to the surge of panic that
shot through him at the clawing touch, he twisted around in
the water, searching for the source of the attack.
At first he saw nothing. Then, out of the comer of his
eye, he spotted a shape moving toward
him. For an instant he felt the strictures of
panic close once more around him. But then he
realized what the shape was.
A turtle! Nothing but the sea turtle coming back
for another look at the odd-looking creatures that
had invaded its environment. Probably the same
one he and Michael had seen a little while ago.
Michael!
Where was he? Josh looked quickly around but saw no
sign of his friend. He'd just been there, right behind him, just
a couple of feet to the right!
Hadn't he?
Suddenly he remembered the octopus. How long
had he been watching it? You tended to lose track of
time underwater; everyone did. And the darkness only
made it worse. Damn! How long had it been
since he'd actually seen Michael?
Josh twisted frantically in the water now, searching
for a glimpse of Michael. What the hell had he
been thinking of, bringing Michael out here in the middle
of the night? Just because Michael had managed to pull
him out of the reef didn't make him an expert
diver! He should have known better. And he sure
shouldn't have let Michael out of his sight, even for a
second.
He switched on his flashlight and shined it around.
Nothing.
Now he aimed the beam downward, raking it back and
forth across the bottom, silently praying that when the
light picked Michael out of the darkness, he would be
moving, not just-
Before the words could form in Josh's mind, he saw him.
Michael was twenty to twenty-five feet off to the
left, and ten or twelve feet below. And he was
moving.
Josh's panic subsiding now that he'd located
Michael, he automatically sucked in a breath of
air in preparation for the dive down to make sure his
friend was all right.
But the familiar pressure from the regulator had
disappeared, as if the tank had run out of air. That
didn't make any sense-they'd only been in the
water for maybe forty minutes, and the tank should have
held enough air for an hour.
Unless it hadn't been full when they'd started.
But he'd checked it! He could distinctly remember
checking the tank he was wearing, as well as
Michael's and Jeff Kina's.
He looked down again. Was Michael really moving?
Suddenly he couldn't tell.
What if Michael had run out of air, too?
What if he'd forgotten what to do, and panicked?
His fear for Michael flooding back, Josh reached
back and jerked the lever over to the reserve position,
then frantically dived down toward Michael. He
was just coming into the murky part of the water when he saw
Michael drop his weights and pull the cord that
activated the CO-I cartridge on his life
vest. The vest instantly inflated, and Michael
popped to the surface, shooting past Josh. Not
bothering with his own emergency cord, Josh swam
quickly to the surface, pulling the regulator out of his
mouth the second his head popped out of the water.
"You okay?" he asked. But even in the dim light
he could see that something had happened to Michael.
"I-I think so," Michael stammered. "I just-I
don't know-all of a sudden I couldn't breathe!"
"Damn it!" Josh Malani exclaimed. "Let
me see your
gauge." He maneuvered himself around behind Michael,
switched on the flashlight, and shined it on the
gauge. "It's the damned tanks," he told
Michael. "Mine's running out, too! I was going
down to get you when you pulled the cord. Let's get
back to the beach and make sure the other
guys are okay."
Inflating his own vest to make swimming on the
surface easier, Josh started toward the beach,
keeping pace with Michael. It wasn't until they
were scrambling out of the water onto the beach that they saw
Jeff Kina trying to get a small pile of
kiawe burning in a makeshift fire pit.
"What happened?" Josh asked. "How come you're out
already? You're always down till you start breathing
water."
"And that wasn't very long ago," Jeff replied.
"The gauge said the tank was full when I went in,
but I ran out of air ten minutes ago." He
scowled in the moonlight, then glared at the offending
tank. "And we can't even complain to Ken about it,
since he didn't exactly rent this stuff to us!"
He struck another match. The small pile of
kindling under the kiawe branches sputtered, then
burst into flame.
A few minutes later, as the fire crept up through
the kiawe, which burned brighter every minute, Rick and
Kioki emerged from the water, too. "What happened
to you guys?" they asked.
Josh shrugged. "Tanks weren't full."
Kioki frowned. "Yours, too? I
figured it was only mine."
Rick Pieper glanced at his buddy. "What are you
talking about? You had trouble, too?"
Kioki nodded. "I think the gauge on mine was
screwed up. I had to switch over to the emergency
real early on."
"Why didn't you give me a signal?" Rick
demanded. "My air supply was okay. Jeez,
Kioki, if we'd been down deep, you coulda been
in real trouble."
An expression of sudden fear came over
Michael's face, and Josh spoke quickly. "But
we
weren't
deep. We're all fine, and all we have to do is
put this crap back in the dive shop and make sure
that next time everything works right. Okay?" He
looked from one face to another, as if daring anyone
to challenge him.
"Don't you think we ought to tell Ken?" Rick
finally ventured.
"Tell him what?" Josh demanded. "That we snuck
in and borrowed his stuff?" His voice took on that
edge of sarcasm already familiar to Michael. "That'd
be a real good idea, wouldn't it?"
"So what do we do?" Jeff Kina asked.
Josh shrugged. "What we were always planning to do.
Nothing happened, so we take the stuff back,
clean it up, and go home. Or do you all want
Ken calling the cops on us?"
As they moved closer to the fire, letting its warmth
drive the chill of the water out of their bodies, no
one said anything.
No one had to.
Michael gazed past the campfire's flames at
the dark pool of water, and shivered as he realized
how close to danger they had come.
But nothing
had
happened. He hadn't panicked, and he'd gotten
the weights off, and ...
And he wished he'd never come on this dive.

Rick Pieper glanced at his watch-it was 11:35.
If his folks were still up, there'd be hell to pay,
since he'd sworn he'd be back no later than
eleven. But it had taken longer than they thought to get
all the equipment back into the dive shop, and even
when they were done he was pretty sure Ken would
notice in the morning, no matter what
Josh Malani had said. Well, if Ken figured
it out, Malani would just have to find some way to get them
all out of it. One thing about Josh-he could always
figure out something. Now, as Rick slowed his car
to make the left turn off the highway to the village
in the cane fields where Kioki Santoya lived,
he tooted his horn at Josh's beat-up truck,
which sped on up the mountainside.
"Want me to drive you all the way home?"
Rick asked a few minutes later as they
approached the intersection where he'd have to turn
to drop Kioki at his house.
The other boy shook his head. "My mom'll wake
up. Seems like she can hear a car a mile away.
Just let me out up here, and I'll walk the rest of the
way."
Rick Pieper pulled the car over close to the
ditch. As Kioki opened the door, he felt
something funny, like a wave of dizziness.
Hesitating, he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have
Rick drive him the rest of the way home
after all. But the feeling passed as suddenly as it
came on. Kioki slammed the door shut behind him.
"See you in the morning," he called. Rick
popped the clutch on his car, taking off with a
screech of wheels and a cloud of dirt that kicked up
into Kioki's face. Flipping his friend the finger,
Kioki started along the narrow road.
He hadn't gone more than a hundred yards when the
strange feeling came over him again, a dizziness,
then a pressure in his chest. Suddenly, he felt
just as he did when they burned the cane fields at
night and he forgot to close his bedroom window.
Coughing, he stopped and looked around, searching for the
fire, but saw nothing except the sweep of stars
across the sky and the sinking moon, dropping toward the
horizon.
Nor could he smell the acrid fumes that boiled
off the fields when they burned them, or hear the
crackling of the blazing cane that always sounded like it was
right outside the house even when it was a mile away.
His coughing subsided, but the pain in his chest got
worse.
What the hell was going on? He was never sick!
Kioki began to walk again, but within a few yards had
to slow down. His whole body was starting to hurt now,
and his breath was coming in short gasps.
Home!
He had to get home!
He lurched on, straining to make the
muscles in his legs work, but lost his balance and
pitched forward, sprawling facedown into the road.
He threw his hands out to break his fall. A rock
scraped the skin on his left hand, and a piece of
broken glass slashed deep into his right palm.
Kioki grunted at the stab of pain, pulled himself
into a sitting position, and tried to get a look at
his bleeding hand.
The cut extended from the base of his thumb across to his
little finger, and was already starting to throb.
Clutching his right hand with his left, Kioki struggled
back to his feet, staggering with the effort. Now his
heart was starting to pound, and every breath he took was
agonizing.
He tried to force his body into a run, but he felt
the dizziness descend again. After only a single step
his legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed onto the
ground. Falling too close to the edge of the irrigation
ditch that ran along the edge of the road, he slid
down its steep bank and sank into the stinking water and the
thick layer of mud that lay three feet beneath its
surface.
The shock of the water closing over him galvanized
Kioki for a moment, and he hurled himself back onto
the bank, clawing at the dirt with both
hands, ignoring the pain that was throbbing up his arm and the
blood gushing from his right palm.
His legs seemed mired in the mud, and he could
barely breathe, but at last he heaved himself free from
the muck, scrambled up the bank, and sprawled out
by the side of the road.
Kioki lay still, exhausted, his whole body hurting
now.
He stared up into the sky, waiting for whatever had
struck him to pass, his breath coming in ragged patches.
Now his vision blurred, and as he felt his stomach
cramp with nausea, he rolled over to keep from
puking all over himself.
As the retching began, the uncontrollable spasms
sent him sliding back into the irrigation ditch.
This time he couldn't find the strength to pull himself out,
and clawed ineffectually at the bank as the pain in his
chest and stomach spread through him, his dizziness grew
worse, and vomit began to boil up out of his
throat.
A few minutes later, alone in the blackness in the
middle of the cane field, Kioki Santoya
sank into the arms of death.
Ten more minutes.
Katharine decided to wait ten more
minutes-until the clock on the mantel showed
exactly midnight-before she started making her
calls.
She'd already written down the phone number of
Maui Memorial Hospital, as well as the
number for the main police station in Wailuku and the
substation in Kihei. So far, she'd been unable
to get a listing for Josh Malani's parents.
A movie. That's where Michael had said he was
going.
A perfectly reasonable and harmless thing to do.
But she knew why she was worried: Josh Malani.
Although she hardly knew him-and kept trying to convince
herself that she shouldn't judge a sixteen-year-old
boy on first impressions-all her instincts warned
her that the handsome teenager whose life Michael had
saved was a dangerous companion for her son. He'd
struck her as cocky, and the fact that he'd gone
diving by himself told her he was supremely lacking in
common sense. And who else was Michael with? Some
kids from the track team.
Kids whose names he hadn't even bothered to mention.
"Would it make any difference if he
had
left their names?" Rob had asked with a
logic that had done
nothing to allay her fears. "You wouldn't know any more
about them."
"It would have given me more people to call if he's
late!"
Rob had eyed her from across the table in the restaurant
where they'd had dinner. "That would make him real
happy," he observed archly. "Teenage boys
love to have their moms call their friends, looking for them.
Besides, this is Maui, not New York. He'll be
fine."
Through the rest of their dinner and during the drive home
she'd managed to hold her worries in check, but in
the house alone an hour later, when Michael
hadn't arrived home, she'd called Rob.
"Give him until eleven-thirty at least,"
he'd counseled. "If he's still not there, then call
me and we'll figure out what to do. Unless you'd like
me to come over?"
"No," Katharine had sighed. "I'll be okay.
But thanks for offering."
She'd done her best to stay calm, telling herself there
were any number of plausible reasons for Michael's
lateness.
The movie could have run later than they'd
thought, or the theater could be far enough from Makawao that it
was taking longer for him to get home than he'd thought.
After all, neither of them really knew their way around the
island yet, and if anyone had asked her how long it
took to drive from her house to Kihei, she wouldn't
have the slightest idea what the right answer might be.
By eleven-forty, though, all her rationales had
turned hollow. By a quarter to twelve, a
nightmare image had invaded her mind:
Michael trapped in a wrecked car, struggling
to get out.
When the clock's gears began to grind softly as it
prepared to strike midnight, Katharine reached for the
phone to dial the hospital. Before her fingers had
touched the first button on the keypad, however, the
glint of headlights coming down the driveway struck
the wall opposite the front windows.
Her hand dropped away from the telephone as the
clock chimed. As Michael came through the front
door, the bubble of fear that had been swelling inside
her broke, exploding into anger at his lateness.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she demanded
even before he'd closed the door.
Michael's eyes darted toward the clock, and he
winced as he saw how late he was.
"We just sort of lost track of time," he said.
"We were playing video games and-was
"Video games?" Katharine interrupted. "I
thought you said you were going to the movies."
"We were," Michael said quickly, improvising as
fast as he could. "But the only one we wanted to see
was sold out, so we started playing video games, and
just lost track of time. I'm really sorry, Mom.
I-was
"Why didn't you call me?" Katharine
interrupted. "Do you have any idea how worried
I've been?"
The repentance in Michael's eyes vanished.
"Jeez, Mom, I'm only an hour late!
What's the big deal?"
"The big deal, as you put it, is that I've been
worried sick!" Katharine shot back. "Anything
could have happened to you! You could have gotten into an
accident, or someone might have mugged you, or-was
"This is Hawaii, Mom, not New York! And
I'm not a baby anymore. Nobody else had
to call his
mommy!
"Maybe nobody else has a
mommy
who cares," Katharine snapped, deliberately
mimicking his tone. "I don't
even know who you were with, except Josh Malani, and
I can't say I'm nuts about him!"
Recoiling from the sting of his mother's words, Michael
struggled against the tightness that had suddenly constricted
his throat and the wetness welling in his eyes. "I was just
with some other guys from the team, okay? Jeez,
Mom! I made the track team, and I'm making
some friends out here. I thought you'd be happy for me!"
Katharine's anger dissolved in the face of her
son's pain, but it was too late. "I'm not dead,"
he went on. "And I'm not hurt." His eyes
fixed on her, as if challenging her to say anything
more. "And I'm going to bed!" he finished. Stalking from
the living room into his bedroom, he slammed the
door behind him.
Left alone, Katharine dropped tiredly onto a
chair. Why had she yelled at him? Why hadn't
she at least listened to his explanation before she'd
jumped all over him? In fact, now that she thought
about what he'd said, she realized he had a point.
Part of the reason he'd always been home on time in
New York was because he'd been by himself. The asthma
that had kept him out of school so much had
seen to that. Until a year ago, when he'd made
up his mind to make the track team, Michael had
never been part of a crowd, rarely even had friends
to hang around withfor more than a few weeks at a time.
And then, just as he'd been on the verge of realizing his
goal, she'd moved him out here.
And he'd succeeded. How could she have started in on him
before she'd even congratulated him on making the team
this afternoon? It had to have been one of the happiest days of
his life, and what had she done? She'd spoiled it,
simply because he was an hour late getting home.
Rob was right-she should have controlled her own
fears, and been happy that for once in his life
Michael was just one of the guys instead of the skinny,
wheezing kid who always stood on the sidelines.
He must have been so excited, she should count herself
lucky that he'd called her at all!
Katharine went to his door, knocked softly, then
opened it a crack. "Michael? May I come
in?" When there was no answer, she spoke again.
"Tell you what. I'll forgive you for being late if
you'll forgive me for forgetting that you made the team
today. I'm really sorry I yelled at you."
She waited, hoping he'd turn on the light and
tell her to come in, but after a long silence,
he only spoke briefly out of the darkness.
"Okay, Mom," he said. Then: "See you in the
morning."
Katharine pulled Michael's door closed again.
In his room, Michael lay staring up at the ceiling
in the darkness. Should he have told her the truth about where
he'd really been and what he'd been doing? But if
he had, she would have yelled at him some more.
Better just to leave it alone.
Still, it took a long time for him to get to sleep that
night.
He could feel nothing except the still coolness around
him.
It was dark, the kind of darkness that could wrap itself around
you like a shroud, bringing with it claustrophobia. All
around him was blackness, and he was suspended in
midair.
Slowly, just as the space around him started closing
in-so slowly Michael was at first uncertain that it was
happening at all-the blackness began to fade
into silvery gray.
The water!
He was back in the water again!
As if to prove the thought, a fish swam by. A
beautiful fish, striped in startling hues of
bloodred, electric-blue, and a green so bright it
was almost blinding.
Michael had never seen such a fish, and he turned
to look at it. As if sensing his interest, the fish
circled slowly in the water, almost as if it were
deliberately exhibiting itself to him. With a kick of
his fins, Michael moved toward the fish, but it
countered his move, pulling away from him at exactly
the same speed with which he was approaching.
He stopped.
The fish stopped.
He swam closer, and this time the fish hesitated before
moving away and dropping deeper into the water.
Michael tried the maneuver again, but this time moved very
slowly, hoping the fish wouldn't notice his careful
approach.
He got within a few feet of the fish before it dived
away and stopped below him, as if challenging him
to follow.
Michael stayed where he was. Time itself seemed
to slow as he floated in the water, gazing down at the
fish, now as immobile as he. In the ghostly
gray, silent water, he realized that his friends were
gone.
He was alone.
Slowly, inexorably, the fish drew him deeper
below the surface, moving closer to him whenever he
hesitated, backing away from him just before he could quite
reach it with his fingers.
Luring him.
The fish moved deeper into the water, and Michael,
powerless to resist, dived after it. Deeper. Deeper
and
deeper they went. Michael, mesmerized, followed
the brilliantly colored fish. Then it stopped,
abruptly twitched its tail, and disappeared.
Startled, Michael turned in the water, searching for the
fish, but it was nowhere to be seen.
And suddenly he realized that the bottom seemed to have
fallen away. No moonlight penetrated the water
from above. The darkness had returned. The sea itself was
pressing in on him. It was getting harder to breathe.
It felt as if metal bands were fastened around his
chest, squeezing him. He struggled against the tightening
bonds, but it didn't help.
Panicking, he struggled harder.
Breathe.
Breathe!
But he couldn't!
No matter how hard he tried, he
couldn't get any air into his lungs.
The tanks!
Something had gone wrong with the tanks!
He sucked at his regulator, trying to pull air
from the tank on his back into his lungs, but nothing
happened.
Empty!
The tank was empty!
But there was a reserve supply! All he had to do was
reach back and turn the lever and he would have ten more
minutes of air.
He started to reach back; his arms wouldn't move.
He was sinking now, dropping into the darkness, into the great
yawning void below-
He fought to reach the emergency valve, struggled
to suck more air out of the tank, but now his lungs began
to feel as if they were filling with water.
The surface. He had to get to the surface!
Drop the weight belt! Drop the weight belt,
and pull the cord on the CO

canister. His vest would inflate: he would pop to the
surface.
But he couldn't move!
He couldn't even feel his fingers
anymore.
Terrified, he struggled again, dislodging the
regulator from his mouth.
He had to get it back in!
But his hands wouldn't obey him. The regulator
dangled from the air hoses, just out of reach.
If he could just get his mouth close enough ...
He struggled to move his head, but even that was useless.
Now he could feel water seeping in through his nose.
He tried to exhale, but there was nothing left in his
lungs to expel.
His mouth opened and he tried to breathe.
Water flooded into his mouth, down his throat,
into his already choking lungs.
He was going to die.
Die here, alone, deep under the surface of the sea.
No!
Loose! He had to get loose!
Even as he felt his lungs flooding and the blackness
of death begin to close around him, Michael thrashed
against the milky shroud that was still tightening around him, and a
great scream built in his throat.
Frantic, he kicked out, twisting his body in a
futile struggle to escape, struggling to gather enough
energy for one last effort before the blackness
closed around him forever.
Then, suddenly, the shriek in his throat erupted.
Michael jerked awake.
He was tangled in the bedding; the panic still clutched
him. He could barely move, barely breathe.
Then, slowly, he began to understand.
A dream.
It had been nothing but a terrible dream.
The light in the middle of the ceiling flashed on,
blinding him.
"Michael?" he heard his mother say. "Honey, are
you okay?"
His chest still felt as if it were constricted by the bands that
had tightened on him in the dream, and Michael
wasn't sure if he could speak. When he finally
formed the words, his voice was barely audible. "A
nightmare," he said. "It was terrible. I-was He
cut his words short as he realized where the dream had
come from, what had triggered it.
"You were having trouble breathing," Katharine said, coming
over to the bed to gaze anxiously at her son's
face. "I was afraid you were having an attack-was
"I'm not," Michael told her, working himself loose
from the sheets and sitting up, sucking the fresh night
air so deep into his lungs that he started
coughing. A moment later, though, he got through the
coughing fit and flopped back against the pillow.
"It's okay, Mom," he insisted as she started
to speak. "It was just a bad dream, that's all."
Katharine leaned over and kissed his forehead. "You're
sure?" she asked, her eyes still worried. "I know
you thought you were all over it, but-was
"But nothing," Michael told her. "I'm fine."
He glanced over at the clock on the nightstand; it
was nearly five, and outside the window it was almost as
dark as it had been at the end of the nightmare.
"Let's just go back to sleep, okay?"
"Maybe you shouldn't have stayed out quite so late last
night," Katharine suggested, but laid a hand on
Michael's cheek to keep the words from stinging.
Michael sank lower in the bed. "I'm sorry,"
he said. "I guess when I knew I was going to be
late I should have found a phone. Okay?"
"And I'm sorry I overreacted," Katharine
told him. "And congratulations on making the team.
I'm really proud of you." For the first time since he'd
come home, a smile came to his lips. "Sleep
tight." She kissed him once more, and turned the
light off as she left the room. But as she went
back to her own room, the worry stayed with
her. Had it really been only a bad dream that
awakened him? Or was it the beginning of yet another
siege of the disease they both had thought he'd conquered?
She got back into bed, but for a long time didn't
sleep. Instead, she listened, silently praying not
to hear the rasping sound of asthmatic lungs struggling
to fill themselves with air.
In his room, Michael was no longer in his bed.
Instead he was sitting beside the open window, breathing
deeply of the fresh night air, trying to rid himself
of the terrible choking feeling he'd had in the dream.
Yet even now that he was wide-awake, he still
couldn't quite get rid of it, couldn't quite catch his
breath.

Alice Santoya slid the stack of pancakes
onto her son's plate, put the plate on the
table, then called out for the fourth time, "If you don't
get up right now, Kioki, you're never gonna get
the bus, and I'm not gonna drive you!" When she still
got no answer, she went to her son's door,
rapped loudly on it, then shoved it open.
"Kioki, I'm tell-was
The words died on her lips as she saw the empty
bed and realized that he hadn't come home at
all last night.
But Kioki always came home! He was a good boy,
not like that Josh Malani he hung around with sometimes.
And when he'd called, he promised to be home
early. He was just going to a movie with Rick
Pieper and Josh and-
Josh!
She'd bet every penny she had that Josh Malani had
gotten hold of some beer and talked Kioki into going
out to a beach somewhere and getting drunk. And then he'd
been scared to come home.
Just wait till she got her hands on him!
Going back to the kitchen, Alice picked up the
phone and called Rick Pieper's house.
"Maria?" she said when Rick's mother picked up the
phone. "It's Alice. Did Kioki
come home with Rick last night?" A moment later,
when Rick came on the line and told her he'd
dropped Kioki off at the intersection, her anger
dissolved into fear. If they'd been drinking ...
"Did you boys get drunk?" she demanded. "If
that Josh Malani got my son drunk-was
"He didn't," Rick Pieper insisted, then
Maria Pieper was back on the line.
"Rick came in just before midnight," she
told Alice. "Believe me, I know. I was
waiting up for him. He said they were playing video
games and lost track of time."
"Hah! If Josh Malani was with them-"
"They weren't drinking, Alice," Maria Pieper
assured her. "Rick was fine when he got home."
As she hung up the phone, Alice Santoya
tried to tell herself that there were a dozen good reasons
why Kioki might not have come home last night.
But she couldn't think of a single one.
The one image that kept flashing into her mind, though,
was of her husband, who had been walking home from the
night shift at the mill in Puunene. They'd
lived only two blocks from the mill, and it should have
been safe.
But that night as he'd been crossing the road from
Kihei-only half a block from the house-a car
had come out of nowhere and smashed into Keali'i, killing
him instantly.
Kids, getting drunk in the cane fields.
Like the cane fields all around this house.
Her anxiety mounting, Alice Santoya left
her house and got into her car. She was going to be
late for her job at the hotel out in Wailea, but
it didn't matter. If Kioki was lying
out there somewhere by the side of the road-
No!
He was all right!
Something else had happened, and he was fine!
But as she drove along the narrow track that led to the
road half a mile away, she began to get a
sick feeling hi the pit of her stomach, a feeling
of foreboding that she could not shake off.
It had rained during the night, and the road was slick
with red mud. Apprehension tightened her hands on the
wheel.
And then she saw him.
He was on the left, maybe fifty yards away.
He was lying facedown, his arms stretched up over his
head, his legs in the irrigation ditch.
Choking back a scream, she braked to a stop a
few feet from Kioki. Leaving the engine running,
she scrambled out of the car and ran over to her son.
"Kioki!" she cried. "You're all right! You're
going to be-was
Kioki didn't move.
Unconscious!
He was unconscious and couldn't hear her.
Dropping down onto her knees in the mud, she
reached out and touched him. "Kioki, it's
Mama...."
Her voice died away as she felt the coldness of
his skin.
"Kioki?"
For a long time Alice Santoya crouched on her
knees in the mud, willing her son to wake up,
to move, to whimper, to do anything that would be a sign
telling her that what she knew to be true wasn't
true at all.
An image of her husband flashed into her mind, but
now, instead of seeing KealiTs face, it was
Kioki who stared at her through a mask of death.
"No ..." she finally moaned. "Oh, no,
Kioki. Oh, no, please..."
Slipping her hands under her son's shoulders, she
pulled him from the irrigation ditch. Sitting in the
mud, she cradled his head in her lap, stroking his
forehead with her fingers, tears flowing down her face,
a keening sound issuing from her throat.
After a while a car approached, slowed to a stop, and
its driver got out. Then another car arrived, and
another.
A little while after that, the police arrived, and an
ambulance.
But Alice Santoya was barely aware
of the activity around her.
Her heart broken, her spirit destroyed, she sat in
the mud and cradled her dead son in her arms.
Ken Richter knew something was wrong the minute he
unlocked the back door of the shop that morning. A
methodical man-who had christened himself "Kihei
Ken" when he'd opened the dive shop two years
ago on the strength of his reputation and a loan from
Takeo Yoshihara-he had always believed that there was
a place for everything, and that everything should be in its
place.
This morning, everything was not in its place.
It was nothing obvious; indeed, when he first stepped
into the back room of his store, it was little more than a
feeling. But when he turned on the lights and looked
around, the feeling grew stronger.
Then he saw the puddle in the middle of the floor.
Ken Richter did not leave puddles in the middle of
floors.
Finding a towel, he began mopping the puddle up,
already rehearsing the speech he would give to Nick
Grieco for locking up last night without making
sure the place was clean.
He and Nick had arrived on Maui as surfing
buddies a dozen years ago, and though they
were still friends, Nick now worked for Ken, spending just enough
hours each day tending to the shop or taking tourists out
on dives to pay the rent on his one-room apartment in
Kihei and keep gas in the rusty Volkswagen
van that took him and his surfboard out to wherever the
waves were breaking best, the perfect wave being his
single-minded pursuit. Last night he obviously
hadn't been working much. Not only was there a puddle in
the middle of the floor, but the equipment that should have been
ready for this morning's dive didn't look as if it
had been checked over.
Which annoyed Ken Richter even more, since he'd
told Nick just before taking off for Lanai yesterday
afternoon to double-check everything. The last thing he needed was
to mess up a dive that had been arranged by Takeo
Yoshihara's office. This one was important enough that
a truck had arrived yesterday with brand-new
equipment.
Finished mopping, Ken Richter turned his attention
to the equipment, wondering if Nick had even looked
at it, let alone made sure it was all in
perfect condition. He was just starting to inspect the fins
and masks when the back door opened and Nick himself
appeared, along with Also Kalama, who was going to be
helping Nick with the dive.
"Am I asking you to do too much around here?" Ken
asked, his voice tight. "Because if I am, just
tell me, and I
can get someone else." His eyes fixed angrily
on Nick. "That would be instead of you, though, not in
addition to you."
Nick glanced uneasily at Also Kalama.
"What're you mad at me for?"
Ken Richter's eyes swept the storage room.
"Does this place look the way it should? I already
cleaned up the mess you left on the floor."
"What are you talking about?" Grieco asked. "There
was no mess!"
"Didn't I ask you to check all this stuff out before
you left last night?" Ken demanded, ignoring the
other man's question. "What did you think-I was
kidding?"
"I did check it out," Nick Grieco insisted.
"Fins, masks, regulators, tanks.
Everything!"
Ken Richter's gaze shifted to the five tanks that
he himself had lined up on the third shelf yesterday.
"You checked all of them?" he asked.
His tone was enough to make Nick Grieco's eyes
follow his boss's, and as he saw that four
of the tanks were registering empty, he felt a flash
of uncertainty.
Had
he checked the tanks?
He tried to think back.
It had been pretty quiet most of yesterday afternoon,
and he'd closed the shop up maybe half an hour
after the last of the rental equipment had been
returned.
And he'd had a couple of beers with his dinner.
Better not mention
that
to Ken. But he'd come back after dinner and opened up
again, just like he was supposed to.
He'd even sold a couple of bathing suits, and a
snorkel set.
Then, around seven, he'd closed up for the night, but
not until he'd inspected the equipment for this
morning's dive, just like Ken had told him to.
But had he actually checked every one of them, or-
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud banging on the
front door.
"That'll be the bunch Yoshihara set up. Go let
'em in, and see if you can stall 'em for a little
while. Maybe sell 'em some
sunglasses or something, while Also and I take
care of these tanks."
"I can do it-was Nick protested, but Ken cut him
off.
"Yeah, right. That's what you said yesterday, but it
didn't happen, did it?"
As Nick Grieco went into the front of the shop,
Also Kalama swung one of the tanks off the shelf
and took it over to the air compressor. "You know,"
he said cautiously, not certain quite how angry Ken
was, "it might not be Grieco's fault. If the
tanks are faulty-was
"Four faulty tanks?" Richter cut in.
"Get real, Also. One maybe, or even two.
But not four. Not from Yoshihara. Everything he's ever
sent down has always been perfect. Face
it-Grieco screwed up."
"But-was
"Can it, Also," Ken said. "Let's just get these
tanks filled and checked, and get these kids going.
The last thing I need is having them go whine to their
folks that they had to wait around for an hour because there was
something wrong with the equipment." When the first one was
filled, Ken nodded toward the barrel of water that
stood just outside the back door. "Sink
it in there for a minute, just in case. I've never sent
a leaky tank out yet, and I'm not about to start now."
Taking the newly filled air tank to the barrel,
Also
Kalama lowered it into the water, then searched for any
sign of air bubbles that would betray a leak.
Nothing.
He repeated the process with the other three tanks
after Ken had finished filling them. All four tanks
checked out perfectly.
There were no signs of leakage, and all the gauges
now read full.
"Take them," he said. "Who knows? The guys up
at Yoshihara's probably sent them over empty,
and Nick just didn't notice."
The tanks were packed into the van, the van departed for the
beach, and Kihei Ken proceeded with the business of the
day. But he'd still have it out with Nick Grieco later
on, because whatever else he'd done last night-or not
done-he should have made damned sure of the condition of
those tanks.
Faulty tanks could kill people.
Michael knew something was wrong the minute he got
on the school bus that morning. "What's going on?"
he asked, sliding into the seat next
to Jeff Kina.
Jeff glanced around uneasily, and when he spoke,
he kept his voice low enough that only Michael could
hear him. "Kioki didn't make it home last
night."
"What do you mean? Wasn't Rick going to drop
him off?"
Jeff shrugged. "Didn't happen. Rick said it
was gettin" so late, Kioki didn't want
to wake up his ma. So Rick dropped him at the
corner instead of taking him all the way home."
"When did you talk to Rick?"
"Just before I left for the bus stop. Kioki's ma
called his ma, and he called me right after they hung
up."
"What happened to Kioki?"
"Don't know," Jeff replied. "But it's only
like half a mile from where Rick dropped him to his
house, and there's nothin' out there."
"Maybe he got caught doing a drug deal," a
voice from the seat behind them said.
Jeff Kina turned and glared angrily at the boy
in the seat behind them. "Kioki? No way."
"What if he ran into some other people doing a deal?" the
other boy pressed.
Jeff scowled. "Get off it, Jimmy. Just because
you're always out there doesn't mean everybody else
is."
"I never did-was Jimmy began, but Jeff stopped
him.
"Don't give me that crap. Everybody knows
you're the biggest dealer in the school. But you never
sold anything to Kioki, did you?" Jimmy glowered
angrily, and Jeff rose out of his seat, turning
around to tower over the boy behind him. "Did you?"
Jeff demanded.
"Sit down back there," the bus driver called,
glaring at Jeff in the rearview mirror. As the
bus slowed, Michael pulled Jeff back into his
seat.
"Forget it. He's not even as big as Josh!"
Jeff sank reluctantly back into his seat,
and the bus sped up again. "Maybe Kioki was going
to meet someone," Michael suggested. "Does he have
a girlfriend?"
Jeff shook his head. "Never had one. He's always
real shy around girls."
As the bus pulled into the parking lot, Michael and
Jeff saw Rick Pieper waiting for them, his
face ashen. A crowd of kids had gathered
around him. Michael could see them whispering nervously
among themselves.
"Shit," Jeff said quietly. "Come on."
Rising from his seat, he wriggled past Michael and
surged down the aisle, with Michael right behind him.
"What happened?" he asked Rick as he stepped
out of the bus.
Rick seemed dazed as he looked at Michael and
Jeff. "His mom found him," he said. He
hesitated a moment, then spoke again, his voice
breaking. "He's dead."
Michael and Jeff stared blankly at Rick.
Though neither of them spoke a word, both of them were
experiencing exactly the same thing: an oddly sick
feeling, which spread through them, numbing their bodies as
well as their minds.
It wasn't possible-they'd been with Kioki only
a few hours ago, and he'd been fine.
And now he was dead?
Instinctively, Jeff, Rick, and Michael
drew closer together as they began moving slowly toward
the school. The whispering voices of their
classmates swirled around them, and though nearly every
person who whispered the news to someone else had an
explanation for Kioki's death, none of them
knew the truth.
Michael walked to his locker as if in a trance,
and stared stupidly at the lock, its combination having
vanished from his head. Then, from behind him, he heard
Josh Malani's voice.
"We gotta talk," Josh said. "All of us."
Michael turned and gazed at his friend. "What
happened?" he said. "What happened to Kioki?"
Josh Malani's eyes narrowed. "I don't
know," he said. Then he quickly looked around, as if
checking for anyone who might be listening. When he
spoke again, his voice was barely more than a whisper.
"But it's got nothing to do with us," he said. "Nothing
at all."

JOHN SAUL
Michael stared at his friend for a long time, wishing he
could believe him.
Deep down inside, though, he couldn't.


Katharine was genuinely annoyed with herself. The bones
of the skeleton, fully exposed now, were laid out in
precisely the position in which they'd been found.
She'd had to move a few of them as she'd
cleaned away the sediment that covered them, but in addition
to the endless rolls of 35mm film she'd shot, there
were dozens of Polaroids as well-a complete
photographic record of the excavation and an
essential aid to reconstructing the skeleton in
situ. Now, as she stared down at the skeleton,
her impatience with herself grew.
She should know what she was looking at.
In fact, she should have known what she was looking at
yesterday, right after the skull and mandible had been
fully excavated. But no matter what came
to mind- chimpanzee, gorilla, gibbon, or any
of a dozen other apes and primates-there was always
something wrong: the skull not prognathic enough, or the
mandible too wide, or the teeth showing the wrong
configuration. The devil, she decided, was
definitely in the details on this one, because it was the
details that didn't add up.
"So, have you decided what it is?" Rob Silver
asked, emerging from the rain forest to stand next to her.
"Well, I'm absolutely certain it's an
anthropoid,"
IB
Katharine said, attempting to mask the crankiness she
was feeling, but failing to fool Rob. "And
I'm fairly certain it died from a blow to the head."
Rob squatted down. "May I pick it up?"
"Be my guest," Katharine said, crouching down
next to him. "I have to tell you, right now I'm thinking
you're wasting a lot of Takeo Yoshihara's money
on me. Either that, or I'm missing something that's staring
me right in the face."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Rob told her.
"If this was going to be an easy one, I wouldn't have
needed you at all, would I?" He held the skull
up, rotated it, then stuck a finger through the hole that
had been pierced in the left parietal bone. "What
do you think caused this?"
That, at least, was something she felt confident about.
"A spear. I've seen exactly the same kind of
wound in hundreds of skulls in Africa. And you can
see by the position of the skeleton that while this head
wound appears to be the mortal blow, the body was
moved."
"You
can see that," Rob countered. "Explain, please?"
"For one thing, it's lying on its back. If you
assume someone threw the spear that killed it, it would
have just collapsed."
"So whoever threw the spear pulled it out."
Katharine nodded. "But someone also laid the body
out," she went on. "See how the arms are? They're
not just lying at its sides." With a forefinger, she
traced along the right humerus, which lay parallel to the
spine. But the arm bent at the elbow, with the radius and
ulna angling inward toward the center of the pelvis.
The bones of the left arm mirrored their counterparts on
the right, and the small bones that had made up the hands and
fingers were
jumbled together, as if one hand had been placed on
top of the other.
"Like it was laid out for burial," Rob suggested.
"Exactly," Katharine said.
"Sounds as if we have a murder mystery on our
hands," Rob said, laying the skull carefully back
in the exact position in which it had been resting.
"Someone killed this guy, and then his family brought
him up here and buried him."
Katharine shook her head. "Doesn't add up,"
she said. "First, he wasn't buried. Everything I
scraped away was natural debris, the kind of
stuff that builds up in a hurry in rain forests.
I don't find any evidence of burial. Just
laid out, and then left here. And the Hawaiians
didn't do that, did they?"
"Absolutely not. They have a great respect for their
dead. The burial grounds are sacred, no matter
how old they are. And bodies were always buried."
"So what went on here?" Katharine asked.
"Whoever killed this guy laid him out, then walked
away?"
"Maybe," Katharine agreed, straightening up from
her crouch, but keeping her eyes fixed on the
skeleton. "But that's not my biggest problem."
Rob looked up at her. "My biggest problem is
that I can't figure out what it is."
"It's human, isn't it?" Rob asked.
"Not from what I know of humans," Katharine
replied. "It's barely four feet long, which
makes it awfully small for a full-grown Homo
sapiens."
"Maybe it's a child."
"The skull doesn't look like a child's skull. It
seems to be fully developed." Stooping again, she
traced her finger along the seams between the parietal and
occipital plates.
"See? The bones are fully fused, which means the
head is pretty much full size. Yet it's no
larger than your average six-year-old's. Also,
look at the forehead-way too sloped for
Homo sapiens. The mandible's all wrong, too."
"So it's some kind of primate," Rob suggested.
Katharine fixed him with a withering look. "First, there are
not now, and never were, any primates on these
islands, except for the ones in the zoo in
Honolulu. But more important than that, when a
chimpanzee or a gorilla dies, you don't lay
it out as you do a human."
Rob chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "If it was
a pet-was
"Forget it," Katharine interrupted, her annoyance
toward herself now widening to include Rob. "Believe
me, I've thought about that. This was no pet."
"So what is it?" Rob asked, deciding to ignore
her annoyance. "Come on, you've got to have some
idea."
Katharine took a deep breath. "All right," she
said. "Since it's just you and me, I'll tell you.
But you have to promise not to laugh." Rob's brows
rose in a noncommittal arch, which Katharine
suspected was as far as he'd commit himself. "What it
looks like is utterly impossible. You won't
believe it any more than I do."
"Try me," Rob suggested.
"Early man," Katharine said.
Rob shook his head. "You're right. Not possible.
Aside from the fact that there was no such thing as early
man in this area, these islands weren't even formed when
early man was poking around the planet. Even if
Maui was here-which I seriously doubt-what we're
standing on wasn't. This is a volcanic island,
Kath. Layer after layer of lava. I'll bet the
layer we're standing on isn't more
than a couple of thousand years old, and probably
a lot younger than that."
"I didn't say I believed it," Katharine said.
"And I can add half a dozen other reasons why
it's impossible, starting with the fact that every early man
specimen I've ever seen-and I mean
every
one-is a fossil. And these bones, in case you
haven't noticed, aren't fossils. They don't
look more than a few hundred years old, if that."
"So what do we have?" Rob asked.
"I wish I knew," Katharine sighed. "What
I'd really like to get my hands on is a computer, so
I could check some things out on the Net."
"Well, at least that part's easy," Rob told
her. "Come on."
The funny feeling started almost the minute
Michael emerged from the locker room and trotted out
to the field for his fourth-period gym class. At
first he hardly noticed it, but as he jogged across the
grass toward the spot near the far end zone of the
football field where his class was falling in for the
morning's round of calisthenics, he felt it again.
It was like last night, when he'd awakened from the
nightmare and felt as if there was something in his lungs
that wasn't quite letting him catch his breath, or fill
his lungs with air.
Asthma.
But even as the word popped into his consciousness, he
rejected it.
It didn't feel like asthma, and besides, he was over
that-he hadn't had an attack in months!
Ignore it, he told himself. It'll go away.
He fell into place in the loose formation just in time
to yell out a loud "Yo!" when the teacher called his
name, then dropped down to the ground for the set of ten quick
push-ups that opened the gym class. The class was
quiet this morning, and everyone knew why.
Kioki Santoya.
All morning, people Michael didn't even know had
come up to him, asking if there had been anything
strange about Kioki last night. What was
he supposed to say? He'd hardly even known
Kioki-even this morning he had still been having trouble
remembering his last name. Now, as he did his
push-ups, he could sense the other guys watching him,
wondering if there was something he wasn't talking about.
He made it through the push-ups, and though the odd
sensation in his chest was still there, it didn't seem to be
any worse. Along with the rest of the class, he
scrambled to his feet and starting doing jumping
jacks. By the time they'd finished a set of
twenty-five, Michael was starting to sweat and he could
feel his muscles warming up.
"O-fozy!" the teacher said. "Run in place!"
Michael's arms dropped to his sides as he
began running, lifting his knees high with each step,
working his legs like two pistons. This was one of his
favorite exercises, for in the long months it had
taken to build his lungs, his legs had developed,
too, and he'd almost come to think of their strength as a
kind of barometer, proof positive that his entire
body was growing stronger every week, forever throwing off the
terrible grip in which his disease had held him.
This morning, though, after only a few steps, the
muscles in his legs started to burn. But that was
crazy- he was barely getting warmed up!
At this rate, a single lap around the track would
wear him out.
"Okay, let's do it!" the teacher yelled. "One
lap, and the first two around choose up sides for
baseball!"
The class broke ranks and headed out onto the
quarter-mile track that circled the football
field. Two of the guys-Zack Cater, who was in
Michael's English class, and someone whose name
Michael thought was Sky, and who lived down the road
from him-took off in the lead. Instantly, Michael
knew he had no chance of beating them. He might be
able to put on enough speed in the first hundred yards
to pull ahead of them, but by the second hundred he'd
have fallen behind. Then, most of his energy having been
spent on the first sprint, he'd wind up straggling in
at the very back of the class.
Not good for someone who had made the track team just
yesterday.
Worse would be the humiliation that followed when Zack
and Sky left him until dead last to be chosen for the
baseball teams.
Better to pace himself and finish somewhere in the middle
of the pack.
Glancing around, he saw that there were only
two other boys behind him, so he increased his pace
slightly, quickly passing three runners, then
closing on two more. Once he'd left all five
of them behind, he steadied his pace, falling into an
easy gait that should have carried him comfortably through the
turn at the end zone, then back along the
opposite side of the field.
Except that the strange feeling in his chest was getting
worse and the muscles of both his legs were burning like
crazy, and threatening to cramp up any second.
But he'd done a full lap yesterday, then whipped
Jeff Kina in a sprint! What the hell was
wrong?
Once again, as it had every few minutes this morning, his
mind went back to the dive last night.
But it wasn't just the dive he was thinking about. It was
also the long hike across the rough lava, stumbling with every
step.
And the fight with his mother, and the hours of sleep he'd
missed. So what did he expect? All his body
was doing was punishing him for last night.
A strange thought flickered through Michael's mind:
Was that what had happened to Kioki Santoya,
too? If they hadn't gone on the dive at
all-if they'd just gone to a movie, and then
come home early, as they'd first planned-would Kioki
still be alive?
But that didn't make any sense. It wouldn't have
made any difference what they'd done last
night-what had happened to Kioki... had just
happened.
For himself, though, the hike and the dive and the loss of
sleep were costing him. Well, fine. If he had
to pay for what he'd done, so be it. But he still
wasn't going to let himself finish last.
Determined to ignore the discomfort in his chest and the pain
in his legs no matter what, Michael held his
pace through the curve around the end zone, and started down
the long straightaway. One of the boys he'd passed
on the first stretch came up on his right and fell in
beside him.
"Thought you were supposed to be real hot shit," the
boy said. Laughing loudly, he pulled away from
Michael, deliberately twisting his feet to kick
up a cloud of dust from the cinders that paved the
track.
Michael tried to turn his head away, but couldn't
avoid sucking in some of the dust, and braced himself against
the fit of coughing he was sure would seize him. But
then he was through the gray cloud and suddenly
felt himself building up speed.
He'd been right! Whatever it was, all he'd had
to do was work his way through it! His legs were starting to feel
a little better, and his chest was getting back
to normal, so he notched up his stride and started
to close on the boy ahead of him for the second time.
They pounded down the track with Michael just a pace
behind, and though the dust behind the other boy was starting
to make Michael's eyes sting, he could feel his
strength surging back. As they headed into the last
curve, Michael pulled ahead.
Now the finish line was just yards away. Michael
poured all the energy he could muster into the final
sprint. He passed one more boy, then crossed the
line, his chest heaving and his legs burning again. It
wasn't until he dropped his pace back to a
walk and turned to join the rest of the class that he
realized the gym teacher had been watching him.
"What's going on, Sundquist?" he asked.
"Jack Peters told me how good you were yesterday
afternoon, but I'm sure not seeing it this morning. You
feel okay?"
Michael hesitated. Should he say anything about the
funny feeling he'd had his chest? Or the fire in
his legs? But if he did, it was a sure
thing the gym teacher would do the same thing the ones back
in New York always had: send him to the nurse.
He wasn't about to start that again. No way!
"I'm okay," he said. "I just stayed up too
late last night, that's all."
"Don't let Peters hear you say that," the teacher
told him. "You want to stay on the team, you keep
yourself in shape. Got it?"
"Got it," Michael agreed, silently
suspecting there was a rule somewhere that said gym teachers
had to be
jerks. He was about to turn away when the teacher
spoke again, and Michael wondered if he'd known
what he was thinking.
"Then take a few more laps. And while you're
running, you can think about the value of a good night's
sleep."
While the rest of the class split up into teams for
baseball, Michael started around the track.
He steeled himself against the pain as his legs began
to burn again, determined that no matter how bad it
got, he wouldn't give in.
He'd built himself up, and he'd made the track
team, and whatever was causing the funny feeling in his
chest, he'd get through it.
Or die trying.
CHAPTER

Katharine gazed in awe at the office Rob
Silver had been given on Takeo Yoshihara's
estate. Housed in a large pavilion that blended
almost perfectly with the hillside abutting its far
end, the two-room suite lay behind a beautifully
carved koa-wood door. The smaller of the two
spacious, airy rooms was equipped with a desk and
filing cabinets, while the larger was filled with tables
on which photographs, drawings, and models of
native Polynesian buildings were laid out in a
manner that was perfectly reflective of the innate
tidiness they both shared. Beyond a set of French
doors, she could see the gardens that spread across the
estate. Aside from the view, Rob's work space
was at least eight times the size of her office at the
museum in New York, and apparently whatever
equipment Rob might need, Takeo Yoshihara
supplied. Against one wall of the larger room was a
second desk, supporting Rob's computer, along
with several printers, a scanner, and an array of
other equipment Katharine didn't recognize.
"Can you get me online?" she asked. "I
want to start by looking at some files at the
museum. I remember something that looks a lot like
our skull-was
"I've got a better idea," Rob said. "Let
me have those Polaroids."
Puzzled, Katharine fished the pictures she'd
taken of the skull out of her bag, and watched as Rob
placed them on the bed of a scanner, brought up a
program that allowed him to manipulate images, and
began rapidly entering instructions on the keyboard
and clicking the mouse. A few minutes later eight
views of the skull they'd uncovered in the rain forest
appeared on the screen, each depicting it from a
different angle.
Six more depicted the mandible.
Rob stood up. "What I want you to do is pick
a few things that are unique, that you'd be looking for
if you were hunting for similar skulls and mandibles."
Lowering herself into the chair, Katharine experimented with the
mouse and soon got the hang of zooming in on first
one image, then another. Five minutes later
she'd made her choices, and Rob showed her how
to copy the small areas she'd outlined with the cursor so
they lay on a blank screen like so many pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle. "But they're just
fragments," Katharine objected. "Even if you
put them all together, you wouldn't get a complete
skull."
Rob grinned. "Want to bet?" His tone was enough
to warn her it was a bet she'd lose. "We're going
to tell the computer to search for graphic matches to these
shapes," he explained. "It'll comb every database
on the Internet and-was
"Are you crazy?" Katharine objected. "That'll
take months!"
"Maybe it would at your museum," Rob
placidly replied, "but this computer is hooked up
to one of the two most powerful computers in the world."
"You're kidding." But one look at his smug
expression said he was not.
"It was put in to handle all the data from the
telescopes
up on top of the mountain," Rob explained as he
typed in a series of instructions to initiate
Katharine's search for a match to the skull they'd
unearthed. "The Air Force has a big project
up there that tracks spy satellites and space
garbage and asteroids, and God knows what all."
He hit the Enter key to start the search, the screen
went blank for a moment, and then lines of
type began scrolling down so fast that Katharine
couldn't read them. Reaching out, Rob hit the Pause
key. The screen froze.
Katharine found herself gazing at a series of
Internet addresses, each of them ending in file
names that indicated one or another of half a dozen
types of graphic formats. Each was followed by a
percentage number.
On the screen Katharine was watching, the percentage
numbers ranged from 1 all the way to 100.
Rob hit the Enter and Pause keys again, and more
files appeared.
"My God, there's hundreds of them," Katharine
said.
"Bad search," Rob told her, hitting the
Escape key, then typing in more instructions. "It was
matching every image individually. We'll narrow it
down so it doesn't give us anything that doesn't have
at least four matches for the skull and three for the
mandible." He ran the search again. Within a few
seconds a list of 382 files appeared, each with
its attached percentage-of-match rating. "Let's
rearrange these according to the match rate," Rob said, his
fingers flying over the keyboard. A moment later the
screen blinked, and the list of files
reappeared, this time with the closest matches at the
top. "Okay, let's see what we've got,"
Rob said, double-clicking on the file at the top
of the list. A graphic image appeared of a large
fragment of jawbone very similar to the one they had
unearthed. It was
in a collection in a university in Sweden, and had
been discovered in Africa forty years earlier.
Katharine stared at it in shock. "I've never seen
that before." She studied the image and its caption, which
identified it as a hominid collected in the
Olduvai Gorge. Though the fossil was not
ascribed to a species, Katharine thought she saw a
definite resemblance to
Australopithecus afarensis.
She clicked on the second file.
This time an image of a skull appeared.
A skull that looked to Katharine very much like the one they
had unearthed.
The image bore no identification other than that it
had been collected on the slopes of Mount
Pinatubo, in the Philippines. Other than the
image and the brief notation, all that appeared in the
window was a link to another file.
Frowning, Katharine double-clicked on the
link. A second later a new window opened, and a
new picture appeared.
This one, though, wasn't simply an image.
It was a movie or video, obviously made
by someone whose skills with the camera were no further
advanced than Katharine's own. The crudeness of the
photography, though, did nothing to lessen the
fascination with which Katharine and Rob watched what
unfolded on the computer screen.
The camera was trained on something that looked unlike
anything either Katharine Sundquist or Rob
Silver had ever seen before.
It appeared to be some kind of humanoid, and though it
was impossible to be certain, it gave the impression
of being a young male.
His prognathic ridge jutted forward while his brow
sloped sharply back. His features were large and
coarse, his eyes peering fearfully from deep
sockets. His jaw looked underslung, and his body,
clad only in a loincloth, appeared to be almost
covered with a light coat of hair.
Formed in a loose circle around the boy-if they could
really call him a boy-was a group of perhaps
fifteen tribesmen. The men seemed to be warily
watching the boy they had encircled, as if
they weren't certain what to expect of him.
As Katharine watched, the circle tightened, and she
could see the boy in the center tense, his eyes darting
from one person to another. Then, in a movement that
came so quickly it was little more than a blur, the boy
darted out of the circle and disappeared into the jungle.
Stunned into momentary inaction by the sudden movement, the
tribesmen appeared to talk animatedly among
themselves for a few seconds, and finally vanished into the
jungle themselves, obviously intent on tracking the
fleeing boy.
The screen went black, and for a moment Katharine and
Rob thought the video had come to an end.
They were wrong.
After several seconds the computer screen filled with a
jungle scene. The village was gone, and for a moment,
as the image on the screen hovered in stasis,
Katharine wondered if perhaps whoever had made the
video was merely checking his camera. But then the lens
zoomed in, and finally Katharine saw it:
The face-the hominid face of the boy, if that was
truly what he was-gazed out from a thicket of
vines in a way that made Katharine shiver as a
wave of deja vu passed over her. Then she
realized what it was: not deja
vu at all. The image on the screen was triggering
a genuine memory, a memory of a museum
exhibit she'd seen years ago, depicting a
family of Homo habilis, perhaps the earliest of the
hominids to make tools.
The being on the screen, but for the color of its skin and the
pattern of hair on its face, might have stepped out
of that diorama and into the jungle scene she and Rob
Silver were watching.
But of course it was impossible; Homo habilis
had been extinct for two million years.
Therefore, what they were watching was a hoax.
"Can you pause it?" Katharine asked as the camera
lingered on the face.
Rob reached out and clicked the mouse on a button
on the screen. The image froze. Katharine leaned
forward, examining the face. This had to be an actor
expertly made up, a work of cosmetic wizardry
worthy of a Hollywood special effects team.
But how had they managed to slope his forehead so
perfectly? It would have been a simple thing, of
course, to add anything necessary to give the actor's
features the proper look, but enough prostheses to lend
the boy such authentic features should have enlarged his
head.
Yet it seemed to be in perfect proportion to the
body.
Reaching out to manipulate the mouse herself, Katharine
restored the picture to its former size and set it
running again.
A split second later the first spear struck.
The lens of the camera was still in close-up, and the look
of shock that came into the boy's eyes was perfect.
They widened, then moved, as if searching for the source
of the stick that protruded from his chest.
A second and third spear struck, and the boy's
expression of shock twisted into an agonized
grimace of pain so genuine that Katharine was glad the
video had no sound track-even in the silence of the
room she could almost hear the howl that must have torn from his
throat.
His mouth gaped open, and then he pitched forward onto
the ground, twitched spasmodically for a few
seconds, and lay still.
Rob reached over and took Katharine's hand as they
watched the rest of the video unfold:
The men and boys of the tribe gathered around the body,
poking at it until they were certain it was dead.
They tied it to a pole, securing it by its hands and
feet, letting it hang as they carried it
back to their village.
In the village, the men dressed the corpse,
slitting open its belly and throwing the entrails to a
pack of dogs who snatched them up, fought over them,
then settled down to gobble their feast in an
atmosphere of uneasy suspicion.
The men roasted the body over a fire as the tribe
gathered around to share in the unexpected delicacy.
For a moment the camera settled on the face of a
woman who stood apart from the rest, her eyes
glistening as she watched.
The tribe ate, but instead of throwing the bones to the
dogs, they tossed them into a large kettle, where the
remaining flesh would simmer into a rich broth.
The scene changed again, and now darkness had fallen
over the village.
A form moved in the darkness, and Katharine had to strain
to make out the details.
It was the woman. As Katharine watched, the woman
used a net to lift the bones from the kettle, and
piled them on a cloth she had spread on the ground.
She kept fishing until she was certain there was nothing
left to find. The
woman began folding the cloth around the bones, and for a
moment the camera lingered on the grotesque
pile.
The woman seemed to have found all the bones but one.
The skull was missing.
The window in which the video had been playing
abruptly closed. Once more, Katharine and Rob
found themselves staring in silence at the image of the
skull.
The implication was clear.
It was Rob who finally broke the silence. "What do
you think? Any chance at all that the film was real?"
Katharine shook her head. "Absolutely not.
Nothing like that has lived-was But then she cut her own
words off as she remembered the skeleton that even now
lay by the fire pit only a few miles away.
The skeleton that could have belonged to the very creature
they'd just seen on the computer screen.
Yet she still couldn't believe it. The video had
to be an elaborate fake. "Let's look at the
film again," she said.
Rob reached for the mouse to click on the link a
second time. But even as he was moving the cursor
across the screen, the window displaying the skull
closed. "Damn," he said softly. "Sorry about
that." Where the window had been a second ago, now
only the list of files appeared. Rob
once more manipulated the mouse, trying to highlight
the file name again.
The file name, like the window, had vanished.
"Where is it?" Katharine asked.
They hunted for the vanished file for an hour, but
finally gave up. It was almost as if the file had
never been there at all.
In his private office, Takeo Yoshihara leaned
back in his chair, staring at the skull that had been
delivered to him
by the courier from Manila. He'd photographed the
skull himself, using a digital camera, and
transferred the contents of the videotape that had
accompanied the skull into a digitized graphics
file. The videotape itself was now locked in the
safe in this very office, to which only he had the combination.
Before he left his office, the skull would join the
videotape.
The graphics files in his computer were equally
secure, protected by security codes known only
to himself and the few trusted lieutenants to whom he had
transmitted copies of the files an hour ago.
The money he had spent on the skull had been
well worth it. It was too bad, though, that the boy
had to die.
Still, no progress came without a price, and what
was the harm in spending a few lives, given what he
was trying to accomplish?

Sergeant Cal Olani had just come on duty that
morning when he'd gotten the call sending him out to the
lonely stretch of road where Alice Santoya had
found her son's body. As he'd driven out, he
assumed he'd find the victim of a hit-and-run.
Five minutes after he'd arrived at the scene,
though, he'd known that no hit-and-run had been
involved. The absence of tread marks, in itself,
didn't mean much, since the rain last night could have
washed them away. But the condition of the boy's body
revealed nothing to confirm such an accident.
Except for a gash on his right palm, the boy
exhibited none of the gross trauma that would have been
apparent if he'd been hit by a car hard enough to kill
him.
Olani had worked alongside the crew of medics who
attempted to revive the boy despite the fact that
it was obvious from his temperature alone that he'd
been dead for hours. He'd stayed at the site
until the photographer had come and gone, and searched
the area for any clues.
Olani had tried to take a statement from Alice
Santoya, but she'd been pretty incoherent as she
sobbed over the loss of her only child.
After an hour, he was finished at the scene, having
found no evidence that any crime had been committed.
But Kioki Santoya had stayed in his mind all
through the day as he'd dealt with one petty disturbance
after another. There'd been a domestic squabble up
in Paia. He solved that one by parking out in front
of the house and tooting the horn a couple of times
to let Lee and Rosie Chin know that if they didn't
settle down, he'd have to come in and do it for them.
Then there'd been a minor fender bender in which he had
to convince the owner of a rusted-out 1974 Chevy
Impala that he probably wasn't going to get much
of a settlement out of the tourist who "rear-ended me,
man! I got whiplash real bad!" The problem for the
Chevy's owner was that three witnesses backed up the
tourist's story that he'd been waiting for a light
to turn green when the car ahead of him suddenly
slammed into his front end. If he hadn't had his
foot firmly on his own brakes, he probably
would have crashed into the car behind him.
After sorting that out, Olani cruised up and down
Front Street in Lahaina for a while,
just showing the colors to let the troublemakers know he was
around.
Through it all, he'd been unable to stop thinking about
Kioki Santoya. Now, with only another hour
before the end of his shift, when he could go home
to Malia and the twins, he decided he might as
well swing by Maui Memorial on his way back
to the Sheriff's Department. The hospital was barely
a quarter of a mile from headquarters, and he knew
he wouldn't stop thinking about the teenage boy who had
died last night until he found out exactly what
had killed him.
He pulled the car into the nearly empty parking lot
next to the hospital, and went in through the emergency
entrance that was almost hidden in the L-shaped building's
corner. Jo-Nell Sims, the nurse on duty,
looked up.
"Ten minutes," she said as she recognized him.
"That's all I have left on my shift." Putting
on an expression of exaggerated annoyance, she
shook a finger at him. "Don't tell me you're
bringing someone in, Cal. Please, just don't tell
me that."
"Relax, Jo," Olani told her. "All's
quiet out there. I just stopped by to find out
what happened to the boy they brought in this morning.
Kioki Santoya."
Jo-Nell's eyes lost their sparkle. "Isn't
it terrible? I just feel so sorry for his mother."
"Have they finished the autopsy on him yet?"
Olani pressed.
Still shaking her head in sympathy for Alice
Santoya's loss, Jo-Nell scanned a
schedule. "Laura Hatcher was on it," she said.
Picking up a phone, she spoke for a moment, then
waved Cal through the doors leading to the examining
rooms. "She'll meet you in a couple of
minutes. First door on your left."
Five minutes later Laura Hatcher came in.
No more than five feet one inch tall, she couldn't
have weighed more than ninety-three pounds, and looked
to Cal Olani to be about twelve years old.
Except that he'd dealt with her many times before, and
knew that behind that incredibly slender and
innocent-looking facade was the tough mind of a very
well-trained pathologist.
"So what about Kioki Santoya?" Cal asked.
"Any idea what killed him?"
Laura Hatcher flipped open a metal-covered
clipboard she was carrying, riffled through a
few sheets, then found what she was looking for.
"Well, I can tell you what didn't happen,"
she said. "Nothing much in the way of external
trauma at all-a few minor abrasions on his
left palm, and a deep cut on his right one."
"I saw that. Looked more like the kind of cut you'd
get from a piece of broken glass than a knife
wound."
Laura Hatcher nodded. "No argument there. And it
wasn't nearly bad enough for him to have bled to death through
it."
"How about alcohol?" the policeman suggested.
"The way some of the kids drink these days-was
"I thought of that right away. Nothing."
"So what are you saying? He just died? Kids that
age don't have heart attacks, do they?"
"Actually, it's not impossible, but in this case there
wasn't any evidence of it. The only thing that
looked even slightly abnormal was his lungs, but
until I get some results back from the lab, I
won't even know if that's what killed him." She
spread her hands helplessly. "I wish I could be more
specific, but I can't tell you much right now. It
could have been a virus-one of these new bugs that have
been cropping up lately-but he doesn't
seem to have manifested any symptoms of illness
prior to death. His mother says he was fine."
"But you can't be sure of that, either." Olani sighed,
knowing the caveat the doctor was certain to add.
Hatcher nodded her agreement. "Sorry. I wish
I could be more help." She glanced down at her
notes. "Do the names Rick Pieper, Josh
Malani, and Jeff Kina mean anything to you?"
"There've been a couple problems with the Kina kid.
He's big, and has a chip on his shoulder when it
comes to
haoles.
And Josh Malani tries to act tough, but it's
mostly for show. Why?"
"According to Alice Santoya, her son was out with those
three boys last night. He left a message
saying he was going to a movie with them. Depending on
what
comes back from the lab, someone might want to talk
to them."
Cal Olani wrote the three names in his
notebook. Maybe he'd just drop by the school and
have a talk with those boys.
Ten minutes after Cal Olani finished his conversation
with Laura Hatcher, a man stepped into the
small room that served as the hospital's morgue.
Making certain no one had seen him come in, he
locked the door, then opened the drawer containing the
remains of Kioki Santoya. Having to deal with
dead people was the worst part of being an orderly. Elvis
Dinkins had never really minded the rest of the
job-emptying bedpans and changing linen didn't
bother him.
Even sick people didn't bother him.
But dead people ...
Despite his revulsion at having to deal with the
corpse-or maybe
because
of it-Elvis Dinkins's eyes fixed on Kioki
Santoya's face. The boy's eyes were open, and
his face looked bloated. His mouth was open, too,
and it looked to Elvis like the kid's tongue was all
swollen up. His stomach churned as he saw the
place where Dr. Hatcher had cut away a slice
of it to send to the lab.
As he pulled on the surgical gloves he'd
swiped from the scrub room, Elvis wondered if
maybe he should take a slice of the tongue, too.
But that would mean actually reaching into the dead boy's
mouth, and Elvis wasn't sure he could do
that.
It was going to be bad enough just taking pieces of
tissue from the wound that Dr. Hatcher had cut when
she'd
opened the kid up to do the autopsy. Elvis
shuddered. The sight of blood did tend to make him
feel sick.
In fact, it made him feel sick enough that he was
thinking about looking around for another job.
Maybe one working for Takeo Yoshihara, who he'd
heard paid a lot better than anyone else on
Maui.
And that, at least indirectly, was why he was in the
morgue today.
A few days after he started working at the hospital,
he'd been cleaning up one of the rooms when a
doctor came in. Although Elvis Dinkins had
been at the hospital less than a week, he'd
already known who this doctor was.
Stephen Jameson. Personal physician
to Takeo Yoshihara.
Someone to pay attention to.
Therefore, Elvis Dinkins had listened carefully when
Dr. Jameson suggested that if he ever came across
anything in the hospital that seemed
unusual, he would appreciate it if Elvis would
let him know.
At the time, of course, Elvis hadn't really known
what might be considered unusual in a hospital.
He'd waited, keeping a sharp lookout, but nothing
"unusual" had come his way. Until now.
A teenage kid who'd died for some reason that even
Dr. Hatcher hadn't been able to figure out-now that
was something else again! It was just lucky for him he'd
been in the emergency room a few minutes ago when
Sergeant Olani came in.
He'd hung around in the hall while the cop talked
to Hatcher, and then clocked out at the end of the shift,
right after Jo-Nell Sims. Except instead of
leaving, he'd waited until Dr. Hatcher left,
then printed out a copy of the autopsy report she'd
done. For a minute he'd thought maybe
that was all he would give Dr. Jameson, but then
he remembered the doctor talking about how the lungs
looked funny. That was when he'd decided
to collect a sample of the kid's lungs, too.
Now, though, as he stared at the loose stitches
Dr. Hatcher had used to close the huge
y-shaped cut she'd made to gain access to the
interior of Kioki Santoya's body,
he wondered if he could actually do it. His hands were
starting to shake, and he hadn't even cut the thread.
Gripping the handle of the scalpel he'd picked up
in the operating room, Elvis Dinkins steeled himself
and bent closer.
One by one he sliced through the stitches, until the
corpse's torso was gaping open.
Elvis Dinkins gazed down at the jumbled organs
that had been packed back into the body after the
autopsy was completed. His stomach churned again, and
he had to struggle to keep from throwing up right there. But
as he sank the scalpel deep into the tissue of the
left lung, he told himself it wasn't much
different from cutting up the liver his mother used to fry with
onions.
His nausea eased a little.
A few seconds later he had hacked a piece
of the lung out and dropped it into one of the plastic
specimen jars he'd found in the same cabinet as the
scalpel. Of course, he had no idea what
Jameson might find in the sample, but he thought it
might be important.
Really important.
And if it was . ..
As he slipped out of the hospital,
Elvis Dinkins was already dreaming about the future.
Maybe after he got a job working for Takeo
Yoshihara, he'd find a new apartment.
Hell, if he was lucky, the contents of the plastic
bag might change his whole life!
The thought that they might also end his life never entered
Elvis Dinkins's mind.
CHAPTER

Jack Peters wished he knew what to say to the
dozen teenage boys clustered around him. There was
none of the laughter and playful jostling that ordinarily
preceded track practice; this afternoon they all
seemed lost in their own thoughts, and as the coach's
eyes moved from one face to another, he saw one
common element.
Fear.
None of them knew why Kioki Santoya had died
last night, and because they didn't know, they were frightened.
He could almost hear what they were thinking:
What if Kioki had one of those new diseases, like
ebola, where if you got it, you were dead in a few
hours, puking your brains out, and bleeding everywhere?
What if someone killed Kioki?
What if...?
But there were so many "what ifs" that Jack Peters
knew there was no way to answer all of them; indeed,
until they
knew
what had happened to Kioki, there was no way
to answer any of them. "I guess none of us feels
like practice today," he finally said. "I know I
don't. And I know a lot of people say that when something
like this happens, the best thing is to stay busy, to do
anything just to keep from thinking about it. But I miss
Kioki, and ..."
His voice trailed off while he tried to clear the
lump that had formed in his throat. "I just want
to remember him, I guess. So I'm canceling
track practice today. Any of you who want
to hang around and just talk, I'll be here. If you
don't want to, that's fine, too." Once again his
eyes roamed over the team. "I guess that's all
I have to say," he finished.
For a few seconds no one moved; it was as if each
of them was waiting for someone else to act. But finally
Rick Pieper, shoulders slumped, hands in
pockets, started back toward the locker room.
Kioki, Peters knew, had been Rick's best
friend. A moment later, Jeff Kina and
Michael Sundquist followed Rick. As if
taking their lead from the three who had been the last
to see Kioki alive, the rest of the team began
drifting back toward the locker room. The silence
that had hung over the dozen boys on the field
stayed with them as they stripped off their gym shorts and
began pulling on their street clothes.
Ten minutes later, still together, Michael, Jeff
Kina, and Rick Pieper emerged from the gym. Josh
Malani was waiting for them.
"You wanta go get something to eat?" Josh asked, and
Michael could tell by the uncertainty in his voice that
Josh was wondering if any of them blamed him for
Kioki's death.
"I'm not very hungry," Jeff said.
Josh's eyes narrowed slightly. "Look, what
happened to Kioki wasn't our fault."
"No one said it was," Jeff replied. "I just
wish I knew what happened. I mean-was He
fell silent as he saw a police car turning
into the school parking lot. "Uh-oh."
The other three boys turned to follow Jeff's
gaze.
"You think they already figured out we broke into
Ken's Dive Shop?" Rick Pieper
asked as the squad car pulled to a stop.
"We didn't break in," Josh Malani said
quickly. The policeman was out of his car now and coming
toward him. "And there's no way he could know. All
we'll tell him is that we were at the arcade out in
Kihei. Okay? Just playing video games."
A moment later Cal Olani had ambled up to them,
and Michael saw a glint of hostility flare up in
Josh Malani's eyes.
Cal Olani saw it, too. "Take it easy,
Josh," he said. "I'm not here to hassle you. Just
wanted to ask you and your friends a couple of questions about
last night." He studied each boy's face in
turn, his eyes finally coming to rest on Michael.
"Don't think I know you." He stuck his right hand
out. "I'm Cal Olani."
"Michael Sundquist," Michael replied,
automatically shaking the officer's hand.
"So, were you with Kioki Santoya last night,
too?"
Michael nodded.
"Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
Michael shrugged.
"What'd you guys do?"
Michael felt a knot of fear tightening
in his stomach. He was certain the cop would know the
moment he told the first lie. But before he could say
anything, Josh Malani began talking.
"Come on, man, all we were doin' was hangin' at
the arcade over in Kihei."
"That true?" Olani asked Michael.
Michael could feel Josh's eyes boring into him.
Finally, telling himself that if he didn't actually
say anything it wasn't really a lie, he shrugged
noncommittally
and did his best to mimic the slightly sullen look
that had come over both Jeff Kina's and Josh
Malani's faces the moment the cop appeared.
Olani turned to Rick Pieper. "You were the one
who dropped the Santoya boy off?"
Rick nodded. "I offered to drive him all the way
home, but he didn't want my car to wake up his
mom. So I dropped him off at his road."
"He seem okay?"
Rick frowned. "You mean like was he sick or
something?"
When the cop nodded, Rick shrugged. "I guess
he was okay. I mean, he didn't say he
wasn't, and he didn't want me to take him all
the way home, so I guess he must have
been okay, huh?"
Cal Olani's eyes drifted from one boy
to another. "How about you guys? You okay?"
"Since when do you care how we feel?" Josh
Malani demanded.
Before Cal Olani could respond, Rick Pieper
cut in. "Is that what happened to Kioki? He was
sick?"
Olani hesitated, knowing any answer he gave
would race through the school-and from there through the whole
island-faster than an epidemic of flu. And
Laura Hatcher hadn't actually said what had
killed Kioki; she'd only been willing to rule
certain things out. "Don't know yet. But he
didn't seem to have any injuries." His eyes
fixed on Josh again. "Look, Malani, I
don't have any axes to grind. I'm just trying to find
out what happened to your friend so it doesn't happen
to anyone else. So just take it easy, okay?"
Josh shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his
pants. "I'm cool," he said. "We just don't
know anything."
Once more Cal Olani's eyes scanned the
faces of the four boys. There was something, he was
sure, that they weren't telling him. On the
other hand, he couldn't remember the last time he'd
talked to any kid on the island when he hadn't
felt the same thing, to one degree or another. And
until he knew exactly what had killed
Kioki Santoya, there wasn't any use in
trying to lean on them. Another day, maybe, but not
now. "All right," he said. "Stay out of trouble,
okay? I don't come back on shift until
tomorrow."
"What do you think?" Jeff Kina asked as Olani
drove out of the parking lot. "Does he know we
borrowed Ken's stuff?"
was "Course he doesn't," Josh insisted. "If
he did, he wouldn't have left." He turned
to Michael. "Want a ride home?"
Michael hesitated, still not sure they shouldn't have
told the officer exactly what had happened last
night. And when the guy had asked them if they were
feeling okay, he'd instantly remembered gym
class, when-
But he'd gotten over that!
Except he hadn't. At least not quite. Even now
he could still feel something in his chest-nothing bad,
really, but just not quite right. And if the other guys felt
okay, he wasn't going to be the whiner.
"Sure," he said, finally answering Josh's question.
"Let's go."
But five minutes later, as they were coming
into Makawao, he knew Josh had felt his
hesitation. "You pissed at me?"
Michael shrugged. "I don't know. I just-was
"You never had the cops hassle you, did you?" Josh
asked. Michael looked over at his friend, but Josh
was staring straight ahead. "You never had them want to
know what you were doin" on the beach in the middle of the
night, and not want to tell them "cause you didn't
want to admit your dad was drunk and you just didn't
want to go home."
Michael bit his lip.
"You never had to sit in the police station all night
because your folks wouldn't come and get you, did you?"
Michael shook his head, but still said nothing.
"Okay, so maybe we should have told him," Josh
finally admitted. "But I just get tired of being
hassled, you know? So don't be pissed off at me,
okay?" He paused, then: "Come on, Mike,
let's just go do something!"
"Like what?" Michael asked warily.
Josh hesitated. When he spoke, his voice
sounded almost shy and he continued to stare
straight ahead out the windshield. was 'Spose your
mom would mind if you showed me what she's digging
up?"
Michael turned to stare at his friend. "You're kidding.
You
want to see an archaeological site?"
Josh Malani reddened. "Why wouldn't I?" he
demanded. "I'm not stupid, you know."
Michael started laughing. "Well, sometimes you sure
act stupid," he said. Then he spotted a pay
phone outside one of the buildings in Makawao.
"Pull over there."
Josh pulled over. "So are we still friends, or
what?"
"Of course we're still friends," Michael assured
him. "I've just got to call my mom so she can
meet us at the gate."
"The gate?" Josh echoed. "What gate?"
"Ever hear of some guy named Takeo Yoshihara?"
Josh's eyes widened. "Is that who your mom works
for?"
Michael cocked his head. "Is that some kind of big
deal?" he countered.
Josh nodded. "Around here it doesn't get any
bigger. Nobody ever sees him, and
nobody really knows what he does. And hardly
anybody's ever seen where he lives."
"Well, get ready," Michael said. was 'Cause
we're about to see it all."
Not likely, Josh Malani thought as Michael
swung out of the truck to call his mother. Not likely
at all.
"Holy shit," Josh whispered as his truck,
following Rob Silver's Explorer, emerged from the
rain forest into the vast garden that was Takeo
Yoshihara's estate. "Will you look at this? What
do you think it cost?"
Even though his mother had described the estate to him,
Michael was no more prepared for the reality of it than
Josh. As his eyes darted from a pond to a
waterfall to a Zen garden, he found himself unable
to really look at anything. "Ten million?" he
guessed.
"A lot more'n that," Josh said. "Look at those
buildings. That's all koa wood, man. Stuff
costs a fortune." He slowed the truck to a
crawl, staring first in one direction, then in another.
Suddenly an albino peacock appeared from a grove
of trees, stopped short, and spread its enormous
tail into a huge white fan. "I don't
believe this, man," Josh breathed. "How many people do
you suppose it takes to take care of it?"
Michael grinned. "Maybe we can get summer
jobs as gardeners."
"Right," Josh groaned. "Except I hear you
practically have to be a landscape architect just to mow
the lawns in here."
A minute later they were through the estate and onto the
bumpy track that led out to the site two miles
farther on.
Stephen Jameson stared, unseeing, out the window of
his office in the long, low-slung building that stood
on the far side of the gardens from his employer's
private residence. Though his eyes had
unconsciously followed the progress of the
Explorer and the ancient pickup that followed it as
they wound through the gardens, a minute after they passed
he wouldn't have even been able to say for certain what
color either vehicle had been, so focused was his
mind on the problem at hand.
On his desk lay the copy of the autopsy report.
Next to it stood the jar containing the specimen of
Kioki San-toya's lung that the orderly had
carved out of the corpse. For a moment Jameson
considered arranging to have the corpse
transferred from the hospital morgue to the estate,
but then realized that would only serve to draw more
attention to the body than was already being paid. Besides,
what would be the point? Jameson was already certain he
knew the exact cause of the boy's death. He had
already had a cursory look at the tissue sample
through the microscope in his office. The full lab
analysis that would be performed on the sample would, he
was sure, only confirm his preliminary findings.
The question was, how had Kioki become exposed?
And, just as important, had the three boys mentioned
in the memo accompanying the autopsy report also
been exposed?
Stephen Jameson picked up the phone on his
desk, dialed a four-digit number, and began
speaking the moment the phone at the other end was
answered.
"Dr. Jameson here. I have three names: Jeff
Kina, Josh
Malani, and Rick Pieper. All three of them
sixteen or seventeen years old. All three are
to be kept under surveillance. If anything should
happen to any of them-if they should get sick-bring them
here. Is that clear?"
The man at the other end read back the
three names. Stephen Jameson was about to hang up
when another thought occurred to him. "There's one more
name," he added. "Elvis Dinkins. He just left
the estate a few minutes ago. It would be best if
he didn't make it back to Wailuku."
By the time they'd gone only a quarter of a mile from the
main part of Takeo Yoshihara's estate, Josh
Malani had skidded off the rutted road twice,
and the second time Rob Silver had to tow Josh's
truck back onto the track.
"Maybe we'd better leave your truck here and go
the rest of the way in the Explorer," he suggested as
he unfastened the tow rope from Josh's front
bumper.
"I can make it," Josh insisted. "I've been on
lots worse roads than this one."
The look in Josh's eye told Rob that argument
would be useless, so he tossed the rope into the back of
his Explorer and continued along the road, glancing in
his rearview mirror every few seconds to make
sure Josh's rusty pickup was still behind him.
Miraculously, Josh managed to keep on the
track the rest of the way, finally lurching to a stop in
the clearing where the canopies had been set up
to shelter the worktables. Josh gazed around, his
disappointment at finding nothing more interesting than some
worn rocks clear on his face. "This isn't
actually the site," Katharine told the boys, coming
out of the shelter of one of the canopies. "It's up that
way. Come on."
As she
led them along the steep trail into the ravine,
Michael once again felt the strange sensation in his
chest.
Not a pain, really.
Just a funny feeling, as if he were about to run out of
breath, even though he was breathing just fine right now.
Weird.
Steeling himself against the odd phenomenon, he continued
along the trail until at last they came to the
ledge on which the fire pit and the skeleton lay.
"Jeez," Josh whispered as he gazed down at the
remains that still lay in exactly the position in which
Katharine had uncovered them. "What is it? A
chimpanzee?"
"Not a chimpanzee, and not a gorilla," Katharine
told him. She knelt down and began explaining the
features of the skeleton, but Michael was no longer
listening, for the moment he'd seen the skeleton, a
feeling even stranger than the one in his chest
had come over him.
A feeling that ran over his spine like fingers of ice.
A feeling almost like fear, but not quite.
He stood staring down at the skeleton,
transfixed, then slowly forced himself to look away.
He glanced around.
Maybe it was just that it reminded him of someplace
else-someplace he and his mother had been to years ago,
some other dig, somewhere in Africa.
But most of the places they'd been in Africa
hadn't been anything like this. They'd been in dry,
desert areas, places where rain was so scarce that
practically nothing grew at all, while here they were
surrounded by rain forest, with trees towering overhead,
vines climbing up their trunks, ferns sprouting from
the vertical faces of the ravine, mosses everywhere.
Nothing like the part of Africa he'd been to-or
anyplace else he could remember, either.
His eyes returned to the skeleton. He stooped
down, and reached out a hand, laying it on the steeply
sloping forehead of the skull.
Why?
he thought.
Why did I do that?
"Careful," he heard his mother say.
Jerking his hand away almost guiltily, he looked
up at her. "What is it?" he asked.
Katharine's brows furrowed and her lips twisted
into a quizzical half smile. "Haven't you been
listening? I was just telling Josh that so far it
doesn't seem to quite fit with anything I've seen
before."
But Michael's eyes remained on the skeleton.
Again he felt the strange, cold shiver, the
tightness in his chest. Involuntarily, he reached out,
but before he could touch the skull again, his mother's voice
cut through his reverie.
"Michael? Honey, are you all right?"
Michael pulled his hand away from the skull and
straightened up. How could he tell his mother what he
was feeling? How could he tell anyone, since he
barely understood it himself? Finally tearing his eyes
away from the strange skull, he looked up into his
mother's face.
"What is it?" she asked again. "What's wrong?"
Michael's mind raced, but before he could reply, he
heard Josh answering his mother's question.
"One of our friends died last night."
Katharine's mouth dropped open. "One of your
friends?" she echoed. Her eyes shifted from
Josh to Michael. "You mean one of the boys you were out
with last night?"
Michael nodded. "Kioki Santoya," he said.
"He was on the track team."
Katharine sank down onto a large boulder.
"How?" she asked. "What happened?"
Slowly, Michael and Josh told her the little they
knew about Kioki's death.
"And he just died?" Katharine asked as they finished.
"In the middle of a cane field?"
As Michael and Josh nodded, Katharine
instinctively stood and put her arms around her son.
"How awful," she said. "You must feel-was
"I'm okay, Mom," Michael said, his face
reddening with embarrassment as he pulled himself out of her
embrace. "I-I hardly even knew him." His
eyes darted toward Josh, and he was instantly
sorry for how the words must have sounded. "I mean-was
He floundered for a moment, then: "Oh, Jeez, I
don't know
what
I mean!" Turning away, he stumbled up the
trail toward the deep cleft in the face of the
ravine that was the ancient fumarole. A moment
later, almost hidden by the dense foliage that
surrounded him, he dropped onto a fallen tree.
Shit!
What the hell was
wrong
with him? Why had he said that?
Suddenly, he saw a movement a few yards down
the trail. Great! Now his mother was coming after him, like he
was still ten years old.
Or still had asthma!
But a second later it was Josh Malani who
appeared, and once more Michael felt himself flush with
embarrassment. "Look, I didn't mean that about
Kioki. I mean-was
"It's okay," Josh told him, dropping down
onto the log next to him. "I say things I
don't mean all the time."
Michael felt the heat in his face dissipate a
little. "Still friends?"
Josh grinned. "You're not getting rid of me that
easily." The two boys sat quietly for a
minute, listening to the singing of the birds and the splashing
of the waterfall. Then Josh spoke again. "How come
you didn't want your mom to hug you?"
Michael's brow furrowed. "I'm not a little kid
anymore," he groaned. "I mean,
Jeez, Josh! Do you like it when your mom hugs you in
front of your friends?"
Josh turned to look straight at Michael. "I
wouldn't know," he said. "My mom never hugs me."
He stood up. "Maybe we better go back down
there, huh?"
Michael and Josh were just starting down the trail when
Rob Silver appeared from around the bend. "Hey,
what are you two up to?"
"Nothing," Michael said. "Just talking."
"Up here?" Rob asked, wrinkling his nose against the
sulfurous fumes that filled the air. "How can you
stand the stink?"
Michael and Josh looked at each other. "What
stink?" Michael asked.
"That fumarole," Rob replied. "Can't you smell
the sulfur? Your mom and I have been practically
choking on it all afternoon."
Michael was about to say something, but once again Josh
spoke before he had a chance.
"It's not so bad. I've smelled a lot
worse."
Rob Silver rolled his eyes. "Not unless you
live in a landfill. Come on, let's get out of
here."
They walked back down to the clearing where the
skeleton was, and Michael, unable to stop himself,
gazed at the skull once again, the odd feeling
washing over him stronger than ever, as if commanding him
to stoop down once more, to take a closer look.
Then, as he forced him
self to back away, he realized that the strange
feeling in his chest-the feeling that he was about to lose his
breath- was gone.
Five minutes later, as they were getting back
into Josh's truck, Katharine called out to them. "You
guys want steaks for dinner?"
Michael glanced at Josh, who nodded. "Sure."
"Will you stop in Makawao and pick some up on the
way home?"
"No problem!" Josh called. Gunning the engine,
he popped the clutch and shot out of the clearing.
Katharine watched the truck disappear, shaking her
head. "Do you suppose he always drives that way,
or was he just showing off?"
Rob slung his arm around Katharine's shoulders.
"Will you stop worrying? Believe me, Josh knows
exactly how to drive that truck. I only had
to pull him back on the road once on the way out
here."
Katharine couldn't tell from Rob's tone whether he
was kidding or not.
Michael hung onto the dashboard as the pickup
bounced along the ruts, wishing it at least had seat
belts. "Will you slow down?" he complained. "What
if we break an axle?"
A peal of laughter rolled from Josh. "We
won't! But even if we do, so what? From here, we
could hike to your house!"
"Are you nuts?" Michael shot back. "We're
miles away."
Josh shook his head. "We just circled around. If
you went the other way when you left the clearing, you'd
come to a path. All you have to do is climb over a
couple
of fences, and you come out about half a mile up from where
you live. I've been out here lots of times. Sure
never knew there was somebody buried up there, though."
Dusk was falling as Josh finally pulled out of the
eucalyptus grove and parked the truck in front
of the Sundquists" house. But instead of getting out
of the cab, Michael sat thoughtfully gazing out at the
fading panorama of the valley far below. "Hey,
Josh?" he asked.
Something in his voice made the other boy
pause. "Yeah?"
"Up there at that sulfur vent," Michael went
on, his eyes finally shifting to look at his friend,
"did you really smell anything?"
Josh hesitated, then shook his head. "I didn't
smell a thing."
"So why did you lie?"
Josh shrugged. "Didn't feel like arguing. I just
figured it was better to agree with him."
"You think Rob really smelled it?"
Josh frowned. "Sure. Why would he lie?"
Michael felt a shiver of apprehension. "Then why
didn't
we
smell it?" he asked. "How come we didn't
smell anything at all?"
A quizzical expression spread across Josh
Malani's face. "What's going on with you? You
sound like you're scared or something."
Michael shook his head. "I'm not scared,
exactly. But I just keep thinking about Kioki,
and-was
Josh jerked on the door handle and swung out of the
cab. "Will you quit worrying all the time? I'm
telling
you, whatever happened to Kioki doesn't have anything
to do with us. Everything's fine!"
But as Michael got out of the truck, he still kept
wondering:
If everything was so fine, how come Kioki was dead?

Smoke and steam were billowing up from a great tear in the
surface of the mountainside, and a curtain of fire
hung against the black night sky. It was as if the
entire mountain were ready to explode. Katharine
shuddered as she stared at the image on the screen.
Rob Silver, sitting next to her on the sofa,
picked up on her fears instantly. "Take it
easy," he said. "It looks a lot worse than
it is."
For half an hour they'd been watching the live
coverage of the new eruption on the Big Island, and
although it was the third time Rob had reassured her,
Katharine still sat staring, nearly frozen in horror,
at the hellish images being broadcast from the next
island-an island that suddenly seemed much closer than
it had only an hour earlier.
"I know that's what you keep telling me," she
replied. "And I understand that these aren't the kind of
volcanoes that explode. But you have
to admit, it's very, very scary-looking."
Josh Malani, sprawled out on the floor next
to Michael, gazed at the fiery scene as if
mesmerized. "Wouldn't it be neat to be there? You can go
right out onto the lava flows and look down into the
crevices where it's still red hot."
"Maybe we can fly over there," Michael
suggested. "Maybe-was
"Maybe Josh can go home, and you can go to bed,"
Katharine interrupted, shutting off the television with the
remote. "You both have school tomorrow, remember?"
"Come on, Mom, turn it back on," Michael
pleaded. "It's only a little after ten, and-was
"And it's "educational"?" Katharine interrupted,
reading her son's mind. "I don't think we need
to go through that one, do you?"
Josh Malani, hearing the slight edge that had come
into Katharine's voice, scrambled to his feet.
"I think I better get out of here," he said.
A couple of minutes later, as he and Michael were
going out to his truck, he said, "I like your mom."
"Yeah, right," Michael groaned. "She just kicked
you out, and sent me to bed."
"So what?" Josh countered. "She let me come up
here for dinner, and no one got drunk and
started yelling."
Michael studied his friend. "Is that what happens at
your house?"
"Not every night," Josh said a little too quickly, wishing
he'd kept his mouth shut. "I guess it happens
to everyone, though, doesn't it?"
"Sure," Michael replied, though certainly
nothing like that had ever happened to him. Then: "Hey,
if you want, you can stay here tonight."
Josh hesitated, then shook his head. "I better
go. Don't want your mom thinking I'm moving
in." His smile flashed. "Besides, I'm not
sleepy. I think I might just drive around for a
while. Wanta come?"
Michael rolled his eyes. "Like my mom'd let
me."
Josh shrugged, gunning the engine. "Okay. See you
tomorrow." Shoving the transmission into reverse, he
whipped the pickup around, shifted into low, and shot
away, laughing as he watched Michael try to duck
away from the plume of dirt his spinning tires
kicked up. But as he turned down Olinda
Road, his laughter died away, and the strange
restlessness that had been creeping up on him all
evening came over him once again.
Except it wasn't exactly that he felt
restless.
It was something else-something he couldn't quite get a
grip on.
Part of it was his chest, which felt kind of funny. It
didn't hurt, exactly, and didn't feel
congested, like he was getting a cold.
It just felt-weird!
Coming out onto Olinda Road, he turned up the
hill. Though the night was getting chilly, he left
the windows wide open. Finally, near the top, he
turned left and began winding back down toward
Makawao. As he came around a curve, his
headlights swept across a familiar figure.
Jeff Kina, his huge frame hunched over, his
head down, was walking along the side of the road.
Josh slowed the truck as he came abreast of
Jeff. "Hey! Whatcha doin'?"
Jeff, startled, squinted in the darkness, then
recognized Josh's truck. "Just walkin'," he
said. "Didn't feel like going to bed, and-I don't
know-I just felt sort of weird. Like if I
couldn't get out of the house I was gonna go nuts or
something." He fell silent for a moment, then: "I
don't know. Maybe it's what happened
to Kioki, you know?"
"Nobody knows what happened to Kioki," Josh
reminded him. "Hey, want to go do something?"
Jeff shrugged. "Might as well," he agreed.
Pulling
open the passenger door, he climbed into the truck
and Josh continued down the hill toward Makawao.
Neither of them paid any attention to the car that was pulled
off the road just below the next curve.
The driver, though, noticed them, and as soon as
Josh's truck passed him, he turned his car
around. In accordance with the orders he'd been given a
few hours earlier, he continued following Jeff
Kina.
The driver of the pickup-whoever he was-was
somebody else's problem.
Josh turned onto the Haleakala Highway,
utterly unaware of the car that was following his truck.
In the distance he could see the glow of a burning cane
field. The smoke roiling into the night sky brought
an image of the volcano on the Big Island
into his mind. At the same time, a thrill of
anticipation raced through his body.
"Ever been close to a cane fire?" he asked
Jeff. When the other boy made no
reply, Josh glanced over at him. Jeff's
eyes-like his own a moment ago-seemed to be fixed on
the distant flames. "Jeff?" he said more loudly,
and finally Jeff turned to look at him, though for a
moment Josh wasn't sure his friend was actually seeing
him. "You okay?"
Jeff nodded. "You ever been close to a cane
fire?" he asked, his words exactly echoing the question
Josh himself had asked only a moment before.
Josh, deciding not to question his friend's odd behavior,
shook his head. "Want to go see it?"
Again Jeff nodded, but he said nothing and his eyes
went back to the cane fire that was quickly spreading in
the distance. Josh pressed his foot on the
accelerator, and
the truck lunged forward, picking up speed as it
tore down the nearly deserted highway.
The driver watched the truck surge ahead, then
punched one of the two memory buttons on his cell
phone. He waited impatiently until the phone
was answered at the other end. "My guy may have
spotted me," he said. "Anyway, something just
spooked him, and the guy he's with took off like a
jackrabbit with a firecracker up its ass. Do we
have anybody in Kahului?"
"You're covered," the man at the other end replied.
"Just give me the description."
"It's a pickup truck, real old, real rusted,
and beat-up. Two kids in the cab."
"Got a license?"
"Couldn't get close enough." Cutting off the
connection, the man pressed on the gas pedal,
speeding up just enough to keep the taillights of the racing
truck visible.
Josh swerved the truck into a narrow lane that headed
through the fields toward the spot where the blaze was still
growing.
"Jesus," Jeff whispered in the seat next to him.
"Did you ever see anything like that?"
"We've seen it a million times," Josh
replied. But even as he spoke the words, he knew
that tonight it was different.
Always before he'd done his best to avoid cane
fires, closing the windows tightly against the smoke
and soot, even shutting the air vents to keep the
acrid fumes out of the car.
Once-only a couple of months ago-he'd had
to drive past a burning field on his way down from
Pukalani.
For a minute he'd considered turning around,
although detouring meant going nearly twenty miles out
of his way. And when he was about halfway past the
burning field, he'd wished he'd done it. The
heat on his face had felt like it was searing his skin,
and the roar of the fire had scared him almost as much as the
crackling flames.
But tonight the blazing inferno of the field fascinated him
even more than the images of the erupting craters on the
Big Island.
He pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the
truck shot forward.
Jeff Kina whooped in the seat next to him.
"Let's go!"
The truck surged ahead, the dust from the road mixing
with the black ash that was raining from the sky to swirl in through
the open windows. The air was thick with smoke now, and
Jeff, still howling next to him, was sucking it deep
into his lungs.
Josh drove on. The truck roared into the burn
area.
Now the fields on both sides of them were ablaze,
the stalks of cane charred black, the smoldering
foliage glowing an angry red. Josh brought the
truck to a halt and sat gazing, awestruck, at the
inferno around him.
The strange, constricted feeling that had been growing in
him all evening was suddenly gone.
Jeff Kina stared at the whirlwind of fire racing
through the fields around him. Everywhere he looked there were
flames, and as he sucked the smoky air deep
into his lungs, he felt a wave of exultation
break over him, setting every nerve in his body on
edge and heightening every one of his senses. His skin
thrilled to the heat of the fire, and he could taste the
sweetness of the burning cane in
his mouth. The flames danced around him, and as smoke
streamed up from the charred cane of the field, he
nearly imagined he could see strange, wraithlike
forms dancing above the inferno. It was almost like being
stoned, and a great feeling of well-being spread through
him, pushing out the peculiar restlessness that had driven
him from the house an hour ago. Then, as the fiery
tempest swirled higher and hotter around him, he
heard another sound- the seductively whispering song
of a siren.
It was as if the siren was speaking to him, urging him
to leave the truck and join in the dance the flames were
performing in the fields.
The smoke itself seemed to beckon to him. Jeff
Kina opened the door of the truck and slid
out....
The screaming sirens interrupted the reverie Josh
Malani had slipped into, and the truck door
slamming drove the last vestiges of it away,
"What are you doing?" he yelled as Jeff stood
by the truck, staring at the flames as if he'd been
hypnotized. Sliding across the front seat, he
reached out and grabbed Jeff's arm as the warning siren
grew louder and the flashing lights of an approaching
truck became visible through the miasma of smoke.
Jeff was trying to pull away from him now, but he
tightened his grip on the other boy's arm.
"Jesus, Jeff! Get back in the truck! The
fire crew's coming! What the hell's wrong with you?"
The yellow truck slammed to a stop directly
ahead of the pickup, and while one man jumped out of the
passenger seat, two more leaped from its bed. As two
of the men grabbed Jeff's arm and began pulling him
toward the yellow truck, the third one yelled at
Josh.
"Are you kids crazy? Get this damned truck out
of here before it blows up!"
Sliding back into the driver's seat, Josh slammed
the truck into reverse and began backing down the
road. An ember flew through the window and
seared his forehead, and as he momentarily lost his grip
on the steering wheel, the pickup swerved sharply to the
right. For a split second Josh tried to regain
control, then he let the wheel spin. The truck
slewed around, its rear end leaving the dirt road and
skidding into the burning field, but even before it came
to a stop, Josh had shoved the transmission into gear
and smashed his foot against the gas pedal. The rear
tires spun, then caught, and Josh shot forward, not
slowing down until he reached the paved highway.
Jeff!
Where was Jeff!
Should he go back and try to find him?
A set of headlights flashed on in front of him,
and for the first time Josh realized that there was a car parked
across the road. Then, as the car's engine roared
to life and it shot down the road Josh had just emerged
from, he saw another car racing toward him, this one coming
from Kahului.
Blue lights were flashing on its roof.
Cops!
Shit! What was he supposed to do?
What
could
he do?
Taking a last look down the road, but seeing no
trace of Jeff Kina, or the truck the two men
had been dragging him toward, or the car that had been
parked on the other side of the highway, Josh made
up his mind.
Jeff would be all right. Those guys must have been a
fire crew. They'd get Jeff out of there.
But it was time for him to get out of
here.
Slamming the truck into gear, he started down the
highway. A few seconds later he passed the
speeding car with the flashing blue lights, never noticing
that it wasn't a police car.
As soon as it passed, he looked in the rearview
mirror, certain that the cops would turn around to chase
him. But the car turned off the highway into the burning
cane field.

Katharine came totally awake in an instant, her
motherly instincts on full alert, knowing without doubt
what had awakened her.
After all, how many times before had she been jolted from
sleep exactly this way, sound asleep one moment,
wide awake the next?
More than she wanted to remember.
She lay in the darkness, praying that she was wrong,
praying that it wasn't happening again. And listening.
Then she heard it-the sound that must have awakened her.
It was coming from Michael's room, and it was the terrible
racking gasp of someone who is unable to fill his
lungs with air.
Getting up from her bed and snatching a thin robe from the
chair in the corner, she raced for her son's room.
There was a silvery glow all around him, and he knew
he was in the water again.
He also knew it was night.
And that he was alone.
Fear shot through him: you were never supposed to dive
alone.
He turned in the water, trying to orient himself.
Where was the bottom? He gazed downward, peering
into the depths, but the silvery glow seemed to go on
forever. There were no fish, no heads of coral, no
sandy bottom rippled by currents.
He rolled over, peering upward.
No glimpse of the surface. All he could perceive
was the same silver-lit expanse spreading endlessly
away.
He felt his heart start to beat faster, could even
hear it in the silence of the deep.
How deep?
But how deep could he be? He wasn't wearing a
diver's suit-not even a wet suit.
The pulse of terror pounding in his ears, he realized
that not only were his friends not with him, but he wasn't in the
safe confines of the small pool at the end of the lava
flow, either.
He was alone in the vastness of the ocean.
Except he wasn't alone.
There was something else-some presence-nearby.
He could feel it, just out of his range of vision.
Panic reached for him with the grip of tentacles
grasping their prey.
He twisted around in the water, searching for the unseen
presence, catching just a flicker of it: a figure,
ghostly pale in the water, gazing at him.
The tentacles wrapped themselves around him.
He felt the presence again, closer this time, and
whirled in the water.
Again he caught just a flash of it before it vanished.
And then he saw another and another: Ghostly
wraiths in the water, almost without shape or form, but
starting to close in on him.
He had to get away from them.
He started swimming, but the water seemed
to have turned to sludge, and he could barely move his
arms and legs. Then he felt something clammy on his
leg, felt one of the beings touch him, and he tried
to jerk away.
They were all around him, surrounding him, wrapping
themselves around his body so tightly that he couldn't
move, couldn't breathe.
Air!
He was running out of air!
He redoubled his efforts to thrash out against the wraiths,
but they were twisted around his chest now, squeezing tighter
and tighter until he knew it no longer mattered
if there was any air left in his tanks, for he no
longer had the power to breathe.
He was going to die, drown alone in the sea!
He thrashed out once more, lunging this time with enough force
to jerk himself out of the nightmare world in which he'd been
entrapped.
Coming awake, he rolled off the bed and onto the
floor, and lay still for a moment, struggling to catch his
breath, wrestling against the wraiths that still constricted
him.
His sheet!
He tore at it, finally pulling it loose and
shucking it off, but still he couldn't catch his
breath.
It was as if the nightmare were still upon him, though he
knew he was wide-awake.
Suddenly the darkness of the room was washed away by a
blinding glare, and in the sudden whiteness he saw one
of the apparitions from the sea, nearly invisible in the
surrounding brightness, looming over him.
With a great agonizing gasp, Michael finally
succeeded in sucking air into his constricted lungs.
Jerking
the window open even as he rose from the floor, he
fled out into the night.
"Michael!" Katharine called as her son dove
through the window. "Michael, don't! Let me help
you!"
If he heard her, he gave no sign, and by the time
she reached the window a second later, he was gone,
swallowed up by the darkness as completely as if he'd
vanished from the face of the planet.
Wrapping her robe more tightly around her, Katharine
found a flashlight and went out onto the veranda,
snapping the porch light on, but turning it out again
immediately as she realized it blinded her to anything beyond the
circle of its own illumination. As her eyes
readjusted to the darkness, she switched the
flashlight on and played its beam over the small
clearing in which the house sat.
Nothing.
Nothing except the shadowy grove of eucalyptus,
the ancient trees surrounding her like giants out of a
dark fantasy. As the light passed over their
twisted trunks, they seemed to come alive, moving in
the darkness, their limbs reaching out to her.
No! she told herself. They're just trees.
"Michael!" she called again. "Michael, come
back!"
Again there was no answer, but she was almost certain he
must still be able to hear her. And if he was running through the
eucalyptus grove, why couldn't she hear him?
But of course she couldn't-his bare feet would be
all but soundless on the thick carpet of leaves that
covered the ground, so sodden from the frequent rain that
they barely cracked under the leather soles of shoes.
She circled the house, then went to the edge of the
clearing and circled the area again, using the beam of
light to penetrate as deeply as she could into the dense
stand of trees.
Finally she returned to the house, but stood on the
veranda, trying to decide what to do.
Search the forest?
To go alone into the eucalyptus grove and the rain forest
beyond would be to risk getting lost herself.
Call the police?
And tell them what? That her asthmatic son had
run away in the middle of the night? When they heard
how old he was, they would tell her to call back
in the morning.
But what had possessed Michael to run from her that
way?
Obviously he'd had another nightmare, and this one
must have been far worse than the first. Although she'd
barely had a glimpse of him in the moment before he
bolted through the open window, she'd seen the terror on
his face.
His eyes were wide and his mouth stretched into a rictus
of fear as if he were gazing upon the evil countenance of a
demon that was attacking him.
But it had been only her, clad in her white
robe, reaching out to him.
Then he was gone, diving headfirst through the window,
rolling once on the veranda before leaping to his feet and
sprinting across the clearing, disappearing into the blackness
of the night even before he reached the forest.
If the forest was where he had headed.
And wearing nothing but a pair of Jockey
shorts.
For the first time, she despised the isolation of the
house. Why had she ever taken it? There were
neighborhoods all over the island where there were
streetlights, where she would have seen him running, known
at least in which direction he had gone.
Where there were neighbors who might have seen him, too,
and been worried about a boy running through the night in
nothing but a pair of undershorts.
But up here there was nothing but darkness in which he could
easily hide, with only a scattering of houses he
could skirt around if he didn't want to be seen.
Maybe she should just wait.
Maybe, when the terror of the dream had finally
released him from its grip, he would come home again.
As Katharine turned to step back into the house through the
French doors, she noticed her eyes were stinging.
Then, as she rubbed them with her fists, she noticed
something else.
The winds had died, and the rustling of the leaves of the
eucalyptus trees had stopped. Other than the
faint chirping of a few frogs and insects, the night
was silent.
And the air had turned heavy, laden with the dust and
gases being spewed out from the eruption on the
Big Island.
If it was making her eyes sting, what must the fog be
doing to Michael? Was that what had happened? Had he
awakened to find his lungs choking on the pollution that,
until a moment ago, she herself hadn't even
noticed?
She moved through the French doors, closing them behind
her, then went through the house and switched on every light,
both inside and out, turning the little bungalow into a
beacon in the night.
If Michael tried to come home, at least he would
be able to see the house.
Then she sat down to wait, already wondering how long
she could stay here alone, worrying about him, and whom
she would call when finally she could stand it no longer.
But of course she already knew whom she would call.
Rob Silver.
And he would come, and help her, and help Michael.
If, that is, they could find Michael.

Michael moved quickly through the dark shadows cast by the
dense groves of trees that lined the road. He'd
lost track of time-had no idea how long it had
been since he'd fled from the house, no idea what
time it might be now.
He could barely remember scrambling through the window,
jumping over the railing around the veranda, and dashing across
the clearing toward the darkness of the eucalyptus
grove, so gripped had he been by the terrors of the
dream. His only motivation had been to escape the
light, and the apparition that appeared in it. But even after
he'd escaped into the protective darkness, he
kept running, dodging between the trees until he
emerged from the woods and burst out into a grassy
field. He'd dropped down to the ground, breathing
hard.
Escape!
He had to escape.
But where? Even as the question had formed in his head, so also
had the answer: in his mind he saw the cleft in the
ravine above the place where his mother had unearthed the
strange skeleton.
That's where he would go.
But how would he find it?
As
the terror of the dream began to loosen its clammy
grip, he remembered what Josh had told him that
afternoon. Somewhere up the road, there was a trail.
He was still more or less following the road, keeping
to a few of its twists and turns, but more
often than not scrambling up the steep slope where the
hairpins were so tight it would take him far longer
to follow the pavement. He'd passed half a dozen
driveways, and even something that looked like it might be
a footpath, but some voice inside him had told
him to keep walking, to go farther up. A few yards
farther on, though, he stopped abruptly.
For a moment he didn't know quite why he'd stopped, but
a second later he saw it: a narrow track
leading off in the general direction of where Takeo
Yoshihara's estate- and his mother's dig-must lie.
But how could he know? What if it was the wrong path?
What if it took him in the wrong direction?
Despite his doubts, he began moving along the
trail, something inside of him sure that he was going in
the right direction. Twenty minutes later the path
ended at a rough track. Not hesitating, Michael
turned left.
He broke into a trot, the certainty that he was going
in the right direction growing stronger with every step. A little
farther on he came to a gate, climbed over it,
then scrambled over the fence he encountered a few
minutes later. It was as if he was following a
beacon, though the darkness of the night was barely softened
by the dim moon above, its light cut
by scudding clouds.
Finally, though, as he came to the clearing that housed the
worktables and their canopies, the last of the fear that had
gripped him during the nightmare disappeared.
He moved on, a moment later coming to the ancient
campsite where the skeleton lay. Michael
knelt for a moment. His eyes fixed on the fleshless
features of the skull, and as a silvery ray of
moonlight found a tear in the clouds and illuminated
the long-dead being's empty eyes, Michael felt
once more the strange sensation come over him, as it had
that afternoon, composed partly of familiarity, partly of
fear.
Then the ray of moonlight disappeared behind the curtain
of clouds, releasing him. Michael rose to his
feet and moved into the protective shelter of the
long-dead vent.
Tonight the vent was warm-far warmer than the air
outside-and Michael felt a soft mist envelop
him. He sank down, slumping against the
moss-covered rocks.
Soon he was drifting into a dreamless sleep.
He had no idea what woke him up; perhaps a
sound, perhaps some sixth sense.
Nor did he have any idea how long
he'd been asleep.
But the moment Michael came awake, all his
senses were fully alert. He pulled himself into a
tight crouch and held perfectly still, listening.
The moon had nearly set and the clouds had thickened.
Even so, he could easily make out the shapes of the
trees around him, and see the lithe form of a mongoose
slip past on the narrow trail that had brought him to the
lair in which he hid.
He made no movement, for above the chirping of the
insects and the faint mumblings of sleepy birds,
another sound was coming to him.
Voices.
Human voices, so low he couldn't quite make out the
words.
But they were coming closer.
Michael rose to his feet, his senses
practically tingling with the sensation of gathering danger.
He strained his ears, and finally he could make out a
sentence.
"About a quarter of a mile ahead-up where that friend of
Dr. Silver's is working."
Him!
They were looking for him!
Instinctively, Michael shrank back
deeper into the cleft in the ravine's wall, but a
second later realized the trap. If they knew
where he was, he'd have no escape.
Darting out into the darkness, he shivered for a moment against
the cold of the night, then pushed the chill from his mind,
concentrating on only one thing.
Escape.
He moved quickly-far more quickly than when he'd
come-leaving the path only a few feet from the entry
to the cleft, snaking his way through the dense tangle
of the rain forest until he came back to the track a
hundred yards from the main clearing where the worktables
stood.
He could still hear the voices, but as he listened they
became less distinct, and he knew they were no longer
coming toward him, but searching for him where he'd been
only a few moments ago.
Seizing the opportunity, he turned and fled,
loping along the rutted track with an ease that belied
the darkness.
Coming to the fence, he climbed over it, then vaulted the
gate a minute later. He kept running, his
legs pumping in a steady rhythm, his feet making
barely any sound as he flew along the track.
He came to the path that led off to the right, but
instead of turning, he went on, then left the track
and made his way across the mountain's
slope, only coming back to the path when he was a few
yards from the point where he'd left the pavement-
When?
How long had it been?
He had no idea.
Suddenly he was exhausted. The muscles in his
legs were starting to burn, and his knees and ankles
felt as sore as if he'd been running for hours.
He was panting, and as he stopped to catch his breath,
he listened.
He heard nothing.
Once again he was alone in the night.
As he emerged from the narrow lane leading through the
eucalyptus trees, Michael could see his mother
standing on the veranda, still clad in her thin white
bathrobe. The moment he saw her, he understood part
of the panic he'd felt earlier.
What he'd seen in his room hadn't been one of the
apparitions from the dream.
It had only been his mother, switching on the light.
Stupid!
How could he have been so stupid?
Taking a deep breath, he walked out of the
grove of trees and into the circle of light that
spread from the veranda out into the clearing.
Katharine's eyes widened and her mouth dropped
open. "Michael?" Then:
"Michael!
My God, are you all right?" A second later
she was off the veranda. "Michael, what happened?
Oh, God, I've been so frightened! When you went
out the window-was
"I'm okay, Mom," Michael broke in. "I
just-I don't know-it was really weird, and-was They were
back on
the veranda now, and his mother was clinging to his arm. "I'm
really sorry," he said.
Katharine pulled Michael into the house and looked
anxiously into his face. "Are you sure you're
all right?" she asked again. "I've been so
worried. You sounded like you could hardly breathe, and the
way you took off-Michael pulled away from her
grip. "I really feel dumb," he said, sinking
down onto the sofa. He looked up at her. "And
you're gonna be really pissed at me."
Katharine dropped into the chair opposite him. "Just
tell me what happened."
He tried to tell her about the nightmare, but
most of it had vanished from his memory. Still fresh,
however, was the vision he'd seen when his terror had
finally driven him out of his sleep. "It was you," he
finished. "In that bathrobe. I was barely awake,
and that robe makes you look like one of the things that was
chasing me in the nightmare."
"But that's crazy!" Katharine objected. "I was
trying to help you! All I wanted to do was-
"It doesn't matter, Mom," Michael said.
"I'm really sorry I scared you."
"But where did you go?" Katharine asked.
Should he tell her? How could he? He barely
understood what he had done himself. Suddenly it
seemed almost impossible that he'd not only found the
trail Josh had told him about, but followed an
unmarked route to the dig as well.
And what about the people who'd been looking for him?
Suddenly he knew who they must have been and how they'd
known he was there.
The dig was on Takeo Yoshihara's property, and
he probably had a surveillance system everywhere
on it.
They must have been watching him from the minute he
climbed that first gate. And if they'd caught him .
. .
Jesus! His mom probably would have lost her job!
But they hadn't caught him-he'd gotten away!
He made up his mind.
"I didn't go anywhere, really," he said. "When
I finally came awake-I mean really awake-I
was out in a field." He hesitated. "And it was
kind of fun being outside in the middle of the night.
So I lay down to look at the sky for a while and
I guess I fell asleep." Did she believe
him? He couldn't tell. "I guess you're
pretty mad at me, aren't you?"
Katharine took a deep breath, then let it out in a
long sigh. "I don't know," she finally admitted.
"I was so frightened at the way you were breathing, and when you
didn't come back . . ." She shook her head.
"You're really sure you're all right now?"
"I'm fine," Michael insisted.
"If you're "fine," then why were you having such a
hard time breathing?" Katharine demanded, her fear
giving way to anger as she remembered the torment
she'd gone through. "And do you have any idea how many
times I picked up the phone to call the police?"
Michael stifled a groan.
"But I didn't," Katharine went on. "I kept
reminding myself that you're not a little boy, and that
I have to stop thinking of you as if you were still sick all the
time." Her eyes fixed on his. "So I didn't
call them. Instead I sat here and worried myself
half to death."
"I'm really sorry, Mom," Michael began
again. "I don't know what I can tell you. I-was
"Don't tell me anything," Katharine
interrupted. "Just
don't argue about going to see a doctor in the
morning, all right?"
A glare of headlights appeared through the window. "I
thought you said you didn't call anyone." Michael,
already on his feet, was starting toward his room,
suddenly embarrassed about being clad in his underwear.
"I didn't call the police," Katharine told
him. "But I had to call someone."
A car door slammed, and a moment later Rob
Silver appeared at the front door. "I've
changed my mind," he began. "I really think we
ought to call the police. If he's out-"
"He's back," Katharine told him. "He came
in about five minutes ago. And he seems to be
okay. But I'm taking him to see a doctor in the
morning."
Rob nodded. "I'll call Stephen
Jameson first thing," he said. "He's the best
doctor on the island, and he works for Takeo
Yoshihara."

"All he's going to do is tell you I'm fine, and
then you really are going to look like an
overprotective mother," Michael groused. "Why
don't you just drop me off at school?"
"In case you didn't notice," Katharine
observed archly, "we're going in exactly the
opposite direction. And as for me being
overprotective, we're just going to have to agree
to disagree. Given your medical history, I think
your difficulty breathing last night is a
perfectly legitimate cause for concern. And
since Dr. Jameson agreed with me, that settles
it."
The argument had been going on ever since breakfast,
when Rob Silver, who had spent the rest of the night
on the Sundquists' sofa, had called Stephen
Jameson, then turned the phone over to Katharine.
Michael had listened in silence as she set up the
appointment, and wondered if someone at Takeo
Yoshihara's estate might have seen him last night
and would recognize him this morning. After
all,
something
had told them he was there last night, and brought the
guards looking for him.
What if they actually had pictures of him?
There were cameras that could do that-cameras that
could photograph things in a lot less light than
there'd been last night.
But wouldn't they have called the police if they had
pictures?
Though he'd done his best to talk her out of it, and
knew he was now skating on pretty thin ice,
Michael figured he might as well take one
last shot at it. "There's a school bus stop right
up there," he said, pointing to a yellow sign a
hundred yards farther along the road. "If you just
drop me off-was
"I'm not going to drop you off, and I'm getting
tired of arguing about it," Katharine cut in.
Michael, watching the bus stop slide by, and
hearing the finality in his mother's voice, gave up the
argument and reached out to turn on the car radio. An
announcer was just finishing a report on the mayor's
assessments of the island's economic condition, and
Michael was about to change the station when the
newscaster's voice took on a somber note.
"Two local men died in the scheduled burning of a
Maui sugarcane field last night. Their
bodies were recovered this morning from a field off the
Haleakala Highway. Their names are being withheld
pending notification of their families. In an
unrelated incident, a Makawao boy has been
reported missing by his mother. Jeff Kina left his
home around nine o'clock last night, and police
confirm that he was one of three boys questioned in relation
to the death of Kioki Santoya, whose body was found
early yesterday. Though there is currently no
evidence connecting the Kina boy's disappearance to the
death of young Kioki Santoya, police are not
yet ruling out the possibility that these two incidents
are related. Anyone who might have seen Jeff
Kina, who is described as being six feet two
inches tall and weighing

pounds, should contact the Maui Sheriff's Department
immediately.
"In other news . .."
But Michael was no longer listening.
What was going on? Jeff was missing? He glanced
over at his mother. Should he tell her he
knew both Jeff and Kioki? That they'd both been
with him the night before last?
But then he'd have to tell her everything. And when she
found out he'd not only gone out diving at night, but
broken into a dive shop-No! Josh had known where the
key was, and they hadn't broken in!
But they might as well have.
He was still struggling with what, if anything, he should
tell his mother about Kioki and Jeff when he saw the
gate to Takeo Yoshihara's estate swing open.
But his mother hadn't pressed any buttons on the
sun visor, or anywhere else that he could see.
"Where's the remote control?" he asked, a knot
of apprehension forming in his stomach.
"There isn't one," Katharine told him. "The car
has some gadget on it that the gate can sense."
"You're kidding," Michael breathed. His eyes were
already searching for signs of the cameras that he now was
certain must be keeping watch over the grounds.
"Does it know who you are, too?" He tried
to keep his voice casual. "Or do they have
cameras?"
Katharine glanced quizzically at Michael out of the
corner of her eye. "I hardly think they need
cameras," she said. Yet as they went into the
lobby of the building she'd been in yesterday with Rob
Silver, her eyes-
almost of their own volition-scanned the corners where
security cameras would most likely be.
They were there.
But why wouldn't they be, she wondered, given the
collection of art housed in the lobby? There were at
least half a dozen sculptures scattered through the
vast space, cabinets filled with priceless
artifacts stood against the walls, and the painting that
hung behind the desk where a private security
officer sat looked like it might be a Vlaminck.
The security guard himself-the same one who'd been
on duty yesterday when she and Rob had gone
to Rob's office to use the computer-looked up, then
smiled as he recognized her.
"Morning, Dr. Sundquist. Dr. Jameson's
already in his office." He gestured in the opposite
direction from the wing in which Rob Silver's office was
located. "Third door on the right."
A beautiful Eurasian woman of perhaps thirty
sat at a desk behind the door the guard had
indicated. "I'm Jade Quinn," she said, standing
up and offering her hand to Katharine as they came into the
spacious office. "Steve Jameson's
nurse, secretary, and all-around gofer." She
smiled at Michael. "You must be Michael, but you
certainly don't look very sick."
"See?" Michael said to Katharine. "I told you.
Can we go now? If we hurry, I won't miss
second period."
"Not quite that easily," Katharine observed. "Is
Dr. Jameson here yet?"
"In the building, but not quite in the office yet," the
nurse replied, smiling apologetically. She
rose and led them to a door leading to an inner office.
"If you'll just make yourselves comfortable, I'm sure
Dr. Jameson will be here in a minute or two."
Katharine and Michael stepped into a room that looked
nothing like an ordinary doctor's office.
Decorated like a comfortable den, its three interior
walls were paneled in koa, and the outside wall was
made up of French doors opening onto an
elegantly laid-out Zen garden. The gravel was
perfectly raked, and the stones, though apparently
natural at first glance, had actually been subtly
carved into abstract forms that both arrested and soothed the
eye. Just as Katharine and Michael were about to seat
themselves on a deep leather-upholstered sofa, the door
from the receptionist's office opened and
Stephen Jameson stepped in.
"Dr. Sundquist," he said, taking Katharine's
hand in his and gripping it warmly. "So nice to meet
you. Sorry to be late-I was just finishing something up
in the lab downstairs. And you must be Michael," he
continued, releasing his grip on Katharine's hand
to extend his hand toward Michael. "Steve
Jameson."
"Hi," Michael said, briefly shaking the
doctor's hand. "Look, I'm really sorry
Mom called you-was
"Suppose I be the judge of whether she should have
called me or not?" Jameson interrupted. He
tipped his head toward a door set into a wall that was
otherwise filled with bookshelves. "Why don't you
go in there and take your shirt off, then we'll have a
look." When Michael was gone, he gestured
Katharine into one of the two chairs in front of his
desk, dropped something that looked like a plastic card
into the top drawer of a credenza, then seated himself in the
chair opposite Katharine. "Why don't you tell
me what happened last night?"
Katharine related the story as briefly as she could
as Jameson jotted a few notes. Then she
waited in the office as the doctor followed
Michael into the next room.
Half an hour later, Dr. Jameson's
examination of Michael finished, he lowered his large
frame into the chair behind his desk and waited until
Michael, still buttoning his shirt, emerged from the other
room and took the chair next to his mother.
Jameson winked at him, then turned to Katharine.
"Well, I've done as much poking, prodding, and
peering as I can, and I've listened to practically every
inch of his lungs. I had Jade take a set of
X rays, which she should be finished cooking in a few
more minutes. The blood and urine samples will take
a little longer, but unless something unexpected shows up,
I don't see anything for you to be worried about."
"But last night-was
"Last night he had a nightmare, and bad dreams
can make for some of the worst noises you've ever
heard," Jameson interrupted. The door to the
examining room opened and Jade Quinn appeared,
holding a large sheet of film which she placed on a
light box built into one of the walls. "Why don't
we take a look?" the doctor suggested.
As far as Katharine could tell, the picture showed
Michael's lungs looking no different than they
had the last time they'd been X-rayed in
New York. "Considering his history of asthma,
they're in remarkably good shape," she heard
Jameson say. "And his lung capacity, though not
quite up to where I'd like it to be, isn't anything
to worry about, either. All in all, I'd have to say
he's in very good health."
Katharine felt a surge of relief.
"Then can I go to school now?" Michael asked.
"As far as I'm concerned, you can."
"And my mother can stop worrying about me every second of the
day?"
Jameson smiled. "I'm just a doctor," he
said. "There are some things even I can't stop."
Katharine stood up. "I guess maybe I
overreacted last night," she said, extending her hand
to the doctor. "I can't thank you enough for taking a
look, though."
Jameson spread his hands in a dismissive
gesture. "Glad to be of service. And please
feel free to call me anytime." He walked them
to the door of the office, nodded a final good-bye as
they left, then returned to his desk and picked up
the phone.
"I've finished my examination of the boy," he said
when the call was answered at the other end.
"It appears that he, too, has somehow been
exposed to the project."
"How is that possible?" Takeo Yoshihara
demanded.
"I'm sure I don't know, since security is
not my department," Jameson replied. "But
nonetheless, it seems to have happened."
For a long moment Takeo Yoshihara said nothing.
Then: "For now, we will take no action. We will
watch him, as we are watching the others. We're far
too close to success to run any risks now," he
said. "If it becomes necessary, we will dispose of him."

"You're really sure you're all right?" Katharine
fretted as she pulled the Explorer to a stop in the
school's parking lot. Despite the doctor's
assurances, she couldn't convince herself that her son's
terrible wheezing last night had been caused by nothing
more than a bad dream.
"I'm fine," Michael insisted for at least the
fourth time since they'd left the estate. Grabbing his
book bag from the backseat, he swung out of the car and
slammed the door. Then he opened it again and stuck his
head back in. "Look, I'm really sorry about
what happened last night, Mom. I
didn't mean to scare you, and I won't do it again.
But you've got to stop worrying about me every minute of the
day. I'm really okay now."
Katharine sighed and stretched in the driver's seat.
Her whole body felt as tired and sore as if
she'd already been crouching over the skeleton up in the
ravine all day, instead of still having that job to look
forward to. "I'll try," she agreed. Before she
could say anything more, Michael glanced at his watch,
waved to her, then turned and started toward the building.
She watched him until he'd disappeared inside, still
unable to shake the feeling that, despite his
assurances, there was something he wasn't telling her,
something he was keeping to himself. But as
she started out of the parking lot a moment later, she
told herself that maybe the problem wasn't Michael
at all.
Maybe it was her.
She hadn't gotten more than an hour's sleep last
night- maybe two-and she felt bone weary already.
And she still had an entire day of work ahead, moving the
skeleton from the site in the ravine into the safety of
Rob's office. But the very thought of spending the rest
of the day stooped over the bones, carefully freeing them
from their shallow grave, only made her
feel even more exhausted. Finally she pulled her
cell phone out of her bag and called Rob.
"I've got a deal for you," she said. "If you can
get the skeleton collected without me, I'll
fix you dinner tonight. I think I'm getting too old
to stay up all night and then work in the field all
day."
"Not a problem," he replied. "Go home. By this
afternoon I'll have it all moved indoors. See you
later."
Dropping the phone back in her bag, Katharine
pulled out of the parking lot, remembering as she was
starting up the road toward her house that the only things
in the refrigerator were a half gallon of milk,
a few eggs, and a six-pack of Cokes. Taking a
deep breath, she made a right half a mile farther
on and headed for the market in Kula, wondering whether
Rob would prefer steak or chicken.
Hearing her name half an hour later as she was pushing
the cart through the last aisle of the grocery store,
Katharine looked up in surprise. The man who was
smiling at her looked familiar, but for a moment she
couldn't quite place him.
"Phil Howell," he said, reading her confusion.
"Astronomer? Friend of Rob Silver's?"
"Of course," Katharine assured him, her memory
finally putting it together. "Sorry-I'm afraid I
was up all night. In fact, I'm on my way
home to sleep the entire day."
"Lucky you," Howell sighed. "I've been on
top of the mountain all night, and now I've got about
five hours of work on the supercomputer down in
Kihei."
Katharine cocked her head. "Kihei? Isn't that
down by the water on the other side of the island? I
thought the computer was up on the mountain."
"I wish," Howell sighed. "But our guys only
use a little tiny part of it. Most of it's being used
by everyone else. Schoolkids, business types-you
name it. It's an amazing machine-you can do anything with
it if you know how."
Katharine went silent, the image she'd seen on the
monitor in Rob's office popping into the forefront
of her mind: the skull, and the strange video file
that had been linked to it, both of which had mysteriously
vanished from the screen, defying even Rob's
ability to reconstruct the file. Now an idea was
forming in her mind. "How good are you with that computer?"
she asked.
"A lot better than I wish,
actually," Phil Howell said wryly. "I spend
far more time on the computer than I do with my
telescopes these days. What do you need?"
Katharine told him about the file that had disappeared
yesterday. "Do you think there's any way of finding out
where it came from?" she asked.
Howell thought for a moment. "I'm not sure," he
mused. "But practically everything that goes through the
Net gets cached one place or another. If we
can find the right cache record-was
Suddenly, the exhaustion Katharine had felt only
a moment ago evaporated. If Phil Howell
could find that
file for her again-or even just the location of it-she'd
at least have a chance of figuring out what the strange
skull she'd uncovered in the ravine might be.
"Could we do it this morning?"
"If we don't do it this morning, I suspect
there's practically no chance we'll find it," Ho
well told her. "The caches are all timed to dump
after a set period of time, which I suspect isn't
any more than twenty-four hours. But it could be a
lot less."
"Then let's go," Katharine said. Abandoning the rest
of her shopping, she headed for the checkout stand.
If dinner wasn't very interesting, Rob and Michael
would just have to deal with it.
Josh Malani's whole body hurt.
Instinctively trying to escape the pain, he drew
his knees up to his chest, but that only hurt more.
Then, as he came fully awake and felt the heat
of the sun on his face, he knew why he hurt.
He wasn't in bed. He wasn't even home.
He was in the back of his truck, which was parked in the
lot at Makena Beach.
Slowly, as if he were thumbing through a stack of
snapshots, the memories of last night came
back to him.
Feeling kind of funny when he'd left Mike
Sundquist's place.
Picking up Jeff, and taking off into the night.
The burning cane field that had been vomiting fire
and smoke into the air.
The images flashed faster: glimpses of Jeff,
getting out of the truck.
Another truck coming toward them.
Losing his nerve, and driving away. But if the
police had caught him-
But they hadn't caught him. He hadn't dared to go
home last night, afraid that someone in the
car with the flashing lights that raced past him on the
highway might have written down his license number.
If the cops came looking for him at home, and his
dad was drunk, the mess would only get worse.
So instead he'd come out here to Makena, parked the
pickup under the trees, and finally fallen asleep
on the hard metal surface of the truck's bed.
He sat up. The sun was already above the mountain, so
he was way late for school. Maybe he should just
cut the rest of the day and hang out here at the beach.
But what about Jeff? He remembered the crazy
way Jeff had been acting-getting out of the truck as
if he were going to run right into the flaming field.
What if he was dead? What if he'd choked
to death, or tried to get away from the fire crew in
the truck and run into the cane field?
Josh shuddered as he imagined Jeff charging through the
burning cane. If he tripped ... Josh shut his
eyes against the image that came into his head. Why the
hell had he left? If anything happened
to Jeff...
But nothing had happened to Jeff, he told himself.
Jeff was okay. Jeff had to be okay.
He was kidding himself, he knew. How the hell would
he know if Jeff was all right? He sure
hadn't stayed around to find out. What would have happened
if Mike Sundquist had just swum off the day
he'd gotten caught under the reef, instead of trying
to help him?
He would be dead now.
A hot ember of shame starting to burn deep inside
him,
Josh Malani moved from the bed of the truck to the
cab, started the engine, and set off toward his house.
Maybe, if no one was home, he'd grab a quick
shower and change his clothes. Then, even if he
didn't get there till noon, he'd go to school,
find Jeff, and apologize to him.
If Jeff was still speaking to him.
An hour later he slowed down as he neared the
rundown house he and his parents had moved into six
months ago, after his father had lost his last job.
Seeing his dad's rust-eaten Dodge sitting in the
driveway-and his father himself slouched on the sofa in the
living room, staring at the TV'-HE sped up and
drove on by. He'd take a shower at school,
and put on the same clothes he'd been wearing since
yesterday. Better that than having his dad yelling at
him; if the old man had been drinking, he might
even take a swing at him.
Still accelerating as he squealed around the corner at the
end of the block, concerned only with getting out of sight
before his father noticed he was there, Josh never saw the
brown sedan that pulled out of its parking space three
houses down from his own, falling in behind him as he
continued on to school.
In the stillness of the black-glass building in
Kihei, the more than six hundred nodes that
comprised one of the world's two most powerful computers were
hard at work. Yet as Katharine Sundquist gazed
through the large window that gave anyone in the building's
lobby an unobstructed view of the immense machine,
nothing betrayed the furious electronic activity
going on within.
She saw a reel of tape spinning now and then, and a
few lights occasionally blinking.
The machine worked in an oddly eerie solitude,
monitoring itself, curing most of its own ills long
before any of the humans involved in its maintenance were
even aware that anything had gone wrong.
Beneath the false floor of the machine's perfectly
air-conditioned chamber, a maze of wires connected
each node of the computer to all the others. In its
turn, the entire mass of processing units and
wiring was connected to cables that snaked from the
building, to connect to the immense fiber-optic cable
that lay deep beneath the surface of the Pacific, the
essential aorta that supplied the machine with its
lifeblood.
Data.
Billions upon billions upon billions of
bytes of data, a seeming infinity of information,
flowing through the computer's systems; billions upon
billions of connections every second, twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week. Though Katharine
had a vague understanding of how it worked, her mind could
no more truly grasp the reality of it than it could the
concept of infinity.
Too much happening in too little time and with no apparent
effort.
Not like archaeology at all.
Turning away from the window, she crossed the lobby and
pushed through the doors into the terminal rooms, where
dozens of monitors and keyboards sat in the
small carrels into which the rows of tables in the room
had been subdivided.
Most of the monitors were idle; only a few people were
quietly tapping at keyboards.
At the sixth carrel in the fourth row, Katharine
found Phil Ho well, looking as if he
hadn't moved at all during the few minutes she'd
been stretching her aching muscles. The exhaustion that
had dissipated so quickly when she
thought there might be a chance of locating the vanishing
file had quickly returned as Phil began setting
up a search program that would pore through every cache in
the enormous computer, searching for references
to graphics files that had passed through the computer
yesterday afternoon.
"Maybe between two and three," Katharine had told
him when he'd asked what time she and Rob had seen
the file. "Maybe a little earlier-maybe a little
later."
The first list the computer generated seemed to scroll
on endlessly. Even if the files they were looking for
were there, she thought, it would be like searching for a needle in
forty acres of haystacks.
As Phil patiently narrowed the search, Katharine
felt both her excitement and her energy ebb.
Then, as she leaned a little closer to the screen, an
electronic beep sounded and a window opened.
She felt a rush of adrenaline. "Is that it?" she
asked.
"It's something," Phil told her. "But it's mine,
not yours." With a flick of the mouse, he
blew the window up to fill the screen. "I've been
doing a search of my own," he said. "A lot of people
have been picking up strange radio signals from
somewhere near a nova I've been watching. They're
just scraps, but they're really weird. So I've
had the computer run a search, looking for any more
signals that might match, but that I haven't heard
about." He grinned at the puzzled look that came
over Katharine's face. "It's sort of like hunting
for the score to an entire symphony, when all you've
got to match it to is a few notes. Frankly,
I didn't really think I'd come up with anything."
He turned his attention to the computer screen, which was
now displaying another box:

  Data Search Report:
  Project Name: Star Bright Requested Ry:
Phil Howell Search Begun: 17:46:24
Search Ended: 22:06:58 Rnalysis Begun:
22:06:58 Rnaiysis Ended: 10:37:13
Report Generated: 10:37:14 See
Starbrit.rtf
Tapping at the keyboard, he brought up the report
the computer had generated. A list of the files the
computer had copied from all over the world
scrolled down the screen, followed by another list,
nearly as long, of the files upon which the report was
based.
Each file was annotated as to its size, the date
it had been created, the computer on which it had been
stored, and the source of the raw data contained within the
files.
Phil felt the first flush of excitement as he
noted that the second list of files contained only
data gathered from radio telescopes.
Next came the results of the computer's attempt
to put the files together in a cohesive string.
His heart began to race as he saw that the signal
appeared to have been coming in steadily for a period of
months, starting more than two years ago. But then,
79 days after it had begun, it abruptly ended.
After a silence of 142 days, it reappeared, and was
picked up by one or another of dozens of radio
telescopes for a period of 209 days. Then there
had been another 142 days of silence. It
had been detected again for a period of 132 days,
ending last Saturday at noon, GMT.
Phil Howell gazed at the screen in something near
disbelief: If the signal had been received for as
long as the computer claimed, and by as many
telescopes as the computer claimed, why had there
been almost nothing written about it?
But then, as he studied the data further, he began
to understand.
The signal had been picked up in so many bits and
pieces that they simply went unnoticed in the sea
of data being received from the universe every day.
Then he noticed something else, and he felt his skin
go clammy with excitement.
The signal had not been consistently picked up on
a single frequency. Instead, it was picked up on
hundreds of frequencies, as if it had been
blasted out by some kind of cosmic shotgun.
A normal radio signal emitted by a star or a
quasar was carried on a single frequency.
Stars, obviously, had no technology that would
allow them to change the frequency of a broadcast.
Nothing did, as far as Phil Howell knew, with a
single exception.
And that exception was mankind.
"A planet," Phil breathed, almost inaudibly.
"My God."
Katharine frowned. "A planet? What are you
talking about?"
Ho well's eyes never left the computer
screen as he spoke. "It's this transmission,"
he said, his fingers touching the numbers on the screen
almost as if he would be able to feel the signal they
represented. "It stopped
coming in twice, each time for a period of

days. That pause is very significant. And one
explanation for it is if the signal was being
broadcast from a planet rather than pulsating out from a
star. If the planet's orbit was in the right plane,
then the signal would be blocked from our telescopes
whenever the planet was in the shadow of its own sun."
Katharine gazed at him, trying to absorb the full
implication of the report on the screen. "But that
means-She stopped, leaving it to the astronomer to finish
her thought.
"If I'm right," Howell finally said, "it means
there was someone out there."
"If you're right?" Katharine echoed. "You just said the
only explanation-
"I said, it's
one
explanation," Howell interrupted. "And certainly
my favorite," he went on, a wry smile
twisting his lips, "since finding someone out
there would make me the most famous astronomer on the
planet. But unfortunately I have a feeling there
are about a hundred other explanations, all of them
far more probable than what I just told you." His
eyes returned to the computer monitor. "Look,
don't say anything about this to anyone else, okay?
There's not much chance I'm right, and the opposite of being
known as the most famous astronomer on the planet
is being known as the stupidest. Okay?"
"But if you're right- was Katharine began, and again the
astronomer interrupted her.
"If I'm right, you can testify that you were here when the
discovery was made. But I'd just as soon prove it
first before talking about it." He looked up at her.
"Deal?"
"Deal," Katharine agreed.
Another soft electronic signal sounded, and both
of
them looked back at the monitor to see that another
window had opened in the lower right quadrant of the
screen Howell had been studying.
"Well, look at that," he said. "This morning we
both get results."
Katharine studied the two file names that appeared in
the box, both of them stark in their
simplicity.
Skull.jpg
Video. avLike
Both of them were annotated with their domain of origin,
which was listed as
mishimoto.com.
"I'm almost sure the file names were a lot longer
than these," Katharine said. "It's as though the computer
looked for names that matched what I saw, instead of
content."
Phil Howell shook his head. "You said there was a
link on the page with the skull that took you to the
video. The file name you saw was probably the one
for the page that contained the graphic of the skull, and the
link. These would be the files themselves."
"But how do I find the files themselves?"
"Go back to Rob Silver's office," the
astronomer told her. "Mishimoto is the name of
Takeo Yoshihara's company, which should mean that
mishimoto dot com is the name of his private
domain for e-mail purposes. Which means that those
files are somewhere on one of Takeo Yoshihara's
own computers."
"Can you find them from here?"
Howell shrugged. "Maybe, if I were an
expert hacker. But it shouldn't be too hard to find
them from Rob's office, since he's already inside
Yoshihara's network. As for me, I'm going back
to work on my signal. And remember," he added,
nodding toward the computer screen
that was still displaying the results of his own search. "Not
a word about this. Please?"
"Not even a hint," Katharine promised. "And
thanks for helping me out. If I find anything,
believe me, I'll let you know."
"Great," Howell replied. But by the time Katharine
was back in her car less than a minute later, the
astronomer had already dismissed the two files from his
mind. To him, the strange radio signal from a star
fifteen million light-years away was far more
interesting than any image of an earthbound skull
could ever be.

He was back in the cane field.
The fire was crackling around him, and though he could
see no flames, its glow suffused the darkness with a
reddish tinge.
He could feel it, creeping toward him from every
direction. It was as if he were encircled by hunters
so sure of their kill that they no longer
felt any need to conceal their presence with silence.
Despite the approaching hunters, he was
unafraid.
He could smell the first tendrils of smoke as they
slithered into his nostrils and down his throat to his
lungs.
But it didn't smell like smoke-not quite.
Smoke had always made him choke, made his eyes
sting and run, left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He breathed deeply of it, drawing it into his
lungs as if it were fresh salt air blowing in from the
sea on the trade winds. As it flowed into his
body, he felt something he'd never experienced before,
an exuberance, an exultation that infused his body with a
strength and well-being that made him feel invincible.
The crackling of the fire grew louder, but he could
hear something else now. A strange moaning sound, as
if someone were in great pain. No, not a moaning, but the
whoosh and crackle of the fire, gaining strength as it
swept through the cane field, feeding on everything in
its path, building on itself. It was like a living force
now, rampaging across the earth, creating a great
swirling, howling upward draft that sucked every
molecule of air in from the surrounding area to feed the
growing monster, huge now and continuing to grow,
continuing to spread.
Yet still he couldn't see the flames.
Then, at last, they came.
Only glimpses at first, barely visible
flickerings of orange, like the exploring tongues of
serpents, poking through the dense thicket of cane that
surrounded him.
He felt the first warmth of the fire on his skin, but it
was like no fire he'd ever felt before.
This fire seemed to fuel him, to impart its strength
to him rather than consume him. Then, as he felt his own
being thrive upon the closeness of the throbbing monster's
breath, the foliage around him began to quail before the
beast. Everywhere he looked, the leaves and stalks
withered before the advancing heat, then burst into flames as
they succumbed to the rampaging marauder.
The tendrils of smoke thickened into the bodies of
serpents, winding around his body, wrapping him
tightly in their coils, but instead of struggling against
their grasp, he reveled in the sensation, drawing as
much vitality from the tightening spirals of smoke as
from the fire itself.
The howling of the maelstrom filled his ears, and the
darkness of the night was banished by the shower of embers
exploding from the field. Smoke and flame
intertwined, whirling around him like a living being.
Entranced, he reached out as if to gather the force of the
firestorm to him, and a great cry of ecstasy rose from
his throat.
He was no longer the hunted, but now, becoming as one
with the inferno around him, he felt the spirit of the fire itself
enter his soul.
He stretched to his full height, his legs
spread, his arms flung out, and the cry of the hunter
bellowed up from the core of his being....
Jeff Kina's whole body jerked spasmodically
in response to the shout that issued from him and yanked
him from the thrall of the dream. Yet as he came
awake, the dream stayed with him. The fire's heat
he'd felt only a moment ago was gone, but the
smoke was not. The second he opened his eyes, he
could see it swirling around him, a gray-brown fog
so thick he instinctively closed his eyes against it.
He lay still, his eyes clamped shut, his heart
pounding, but no longer from the exultation of the dream.
Now it was pounding with fear.
The dream had been so real, it was exactly as if
he'd been back in the cane field, back in the
vortex of the fire, just before the men from the yellow
truck had grabbed him, and Josh Malani
had taken off in his pickup.
In those few seconds-those few moments while he'd
stood next to Josh's truck-he'd felt different
than he'd ever felt before in his life.
Part of it had been the fire itself. There had been
something about the way the flames ebbed and flowed and danced
together that reached into his mind, touched something deep
inside him, made him feel almost as if he'd been
hypnotized. And as the smoke had filled his
nostrils, he'd felt something else.
The restlessness that had plagued him all evening
disappeared, and his whole body tingled exactly as it
did
when he was finished with his warm-ups at a track
meet and ready to run a race.
Then the men from the yellow truck were on him, yelling
at him, grabbing him, trying to drag him away from the
fire.
He was bigger than they were-much bigger-and his right arm
had come up, jerking loose from the hands of one of the men
so his fist could plunge into the face of the other. Now,
his eyes still closed, he remembered the blood that
spurted from the man's nose, the look of surprise
that came into his eyes, and the man's enraged shout.
But after that, everything was confused. Lights had
hit him in the eyes, brilliant halogen lamps
that blinded him as thoroughly as if someone had thrown a
bag over his head.
After that, his memories were nothing more than
impressions.
More lights.
The sound of engines; voices yelling.
Suddenly, more hands were on him, and he was on the
ground, pinned down by someone on his chest, someone else
on his legs.
Something was pressed over his face, and he struggled
to turn his head away, but couldn't.
Blackness had begun closing around him, and he'd
known he was dying.
But now he was awake, and he was not dead.
He lay perfectly still, listening.
He could hear sounds he'd never heard before.
His own heartbeat, pumping blood through his veins.
Though he knew it wasn't possible, he even
imagined he heard the sound of his blood itself, whooshing
softly as it
coursed through his arteries, the sound changing with every
contraction of the chambers of his heart.
He took an inventory of his body, testing every
muscle, but moving each of them so slightly
as to appear utterly immobile.
Nothing was broken; nothing even hurt.
And he was naked.
He turned his attention away from his own body to the
environment around him. Though his eyes were still closed,
he could sense there were walls around him, very close
by.
And he was alone.
The air around him was moving, and unfamiliar scents
were wafting through his nostrils.
Not unpleasant scents, but unfamiliar ones.
At last he opened his right eye-no more than a
fraction of an inch-the movement so perfectly
executed that no observer could have seen the slight
flicker.
Fog.
The same brown fog.
But not fog, for he felt nothing of the cool dampness
of fog against his skin.
His eye moved beneath its hooded lid, scanning the
area around him, though he was far too uncertain of where
he was or what might be nearby to betray himself by any
but the slightest movement.
He saw nothing.
He opened both his eyes then, opened them
wide, the lids snapping open in an unblinking
stare.
He gazed straight ahead, his mind analyzing the
data his eyes and ears and nose were gathering, searching
for an as-yet-unnoticed enemy that might be lurking
in the miasma.
Why didn't his eyes hurt?
Why weren't they stinging from the smoky haze, and streaming
with tears?
Why wasn't he coughing and choking on the fumes that
swirled around him?
No answer came to him.
He lay inert, only his eyes moving, flicking first
in one direction, then in another.
Nothing he saw, nothing he heard, nothing he
smelled, betrayed the presence of any other living
thing.
Yet he was being watched.
He could feel it with a certain knowledge he'd never
experienced before. Despite the evidence of his eyes,
and his ears, and his nose, his skin was tingling and his
nerves were on edge.
Then he saw it.
Far up, above him, and off to the right.
A camera.
He turned his head to it, staring straight into its lens
like a wolf staring into the telescopic sight of a gun.
His eyes never leaving the camera, Jeff Kina
slowly gathered himself into a crouch, every movement so
subtle and smooth it was barely perceptible.
Had he been in a field of tall grass, barely
a blade would have stirred.
He froze, his eyes fixed on the camera,
waiting.
Then he sprang, launching himself from the floor on which
he lay, his body extending with the grace of a leaping
cat, his arms stretching outward as his hands reached for the
camera, his legs extending behind him as they hurled his
huge frame upward.
And in a split second he slammed against an
unseen barrier.
A grunt escaping his lips, he fell back to the
floor, pain shooting through his right hip and his left
knee as they struck hard against the surface of the
tile beneath him.
He lay still, waiting for the pain to ease, then slowly
got to his feet and began moving cautiously, his
hands and fingers reaching out to explore the strange
surroundings.
He was in a box.
A large box, transparent, not cold to the touch.
Plexiglas.
The thick gray-brown fog that swirled around him had
kept him from seeing it before, but now, as he made his
way around its perimeter for the second time, he could
see it as well as feel it.
He was trapped, imprisoned in the box, which seemed
to have no entry or exit, except for two vents through
which the foglike atmosphere swirled, and a small
air lock, with a door on each side.
He could open the inner door, but not the outer one.
He was imprisoned, like a wild animal.
And to the men who watched the image the camera above him
was capturing, a wild animal was exactly what
he appeared to be.
A feral creature, pacing the confines of its cage.
Michael was just closing his locker before going to the
cafeteria for lunch when he heard the voice behind
him. "I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get
scared." Michael didn't need to be told what
Rick Pieper was talking about; he'd been growing more
and more worried himself all morning, ever since Josh
had not turned up at the break after second period,
and even after hearing the radio report of Jeff's
disappearance, he'd still half expected
to see the big Hawaiian under the banyan tree
where the rest of the track team hung out. But when
Jeff failed to appear . . . "Did you try
to call Jeff?" he asked as they started toward the
cafeteria.
Rick nodded. "I talked to his mom just before third
period. She said he went out around nine last night
and didn't come home. She said she called the cops
around four in the morning."
Michael stopped short just outside the cafeteria
door and waited until the kids behind them had gone
inside. "Maybe we should call them ourselves," he
said. "I mean, after what happened to Kioki-
"We don't
know
what happened to Kioki," Rick countered.
"What if someone saw us break into that dive shop the
night before last?" Michael pressed, searching for an
explanation-any explanation-for what had happened
to Kioki, and could now explain why Josh Malani
and Jeff Kina had disappeared. "I mean, what if
someone told the guy who owns the shop who it was that
broke in?"
Rick Pieper's eyes widened as the implication of
what Michael was saying sank in, but a
moment later he shook his head. "Ken Richter
wouldn't do something like that."
"How do you know?" Michael demanded. "In New
York-was
"This isn't New York," Rick said sharply.
"If Ken was going to do anything at all, he'd
call the cops, and the deputy who talked to us
yesterday didn't say anything about breaking into the
dive shop."
"So what else could it be?" Michael demanded.
"Were Josh and Jeff in any kind of trouble?"
Rick hesitated.
"What?" Michael prompted him.
"Jeff wasn't in any trouble," Rick said
carefully, "but Josh Malani's always in some kind
of mess-was
"Oh, yeah?" a voice asked, and Rick spun
around to see Josh Malani himself coming around the corner
of the cafeteria, his eyes glinting angrily. "Just
because I don't suck up to everyone like-was
"Well, I guess we can stop worrying about
Josh," Rick cut in, his voice turning cold
and his expression tightening. Before either Michael or
Josh could say anything else, Rick stalked off
into the cafeteria.
Michael stared at Josh's rumpled clothes and the
smears of dirt on his face, seeing in an instant
that Josh hadn't been home since last night.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Where's Jeff?"
"Oh, Jeez," Josh whispered. "He isn't
here?"
There was something in his friend's voice that made the
apprehension Michael had been feeling all morning
congeal into fear. He shook his head and told Josh
what he had heard on the radio and what Rick had
just confirmed.
"I ran into him after I left your house," Josh
said. He glanced around nervously. "Maybe we
better get out of here, huh?"
"You mean just cut school for the rest of the day?"
Michael asked. "Come on, Josh! Just tell me
what's going on, okay?"
"Not here!" Josh said as the cafeteria door opened
and two kids came out, looked uncertainly at
them, then hurried on. "What's wrong with them?"
Josh asked as they disappeared around the corner.
"Have you taken a look at yourself? What did you do
last night?"
Josh felt a flicker of anger. Why was Mike
quizzing him so much? It wasn't as if he
was asking much.. ..
But if he got pissed off at Michael, where could
he go? Who could he even talk to? And he was
starting to feel bad, too. But why wouldn't he, after
breathing all that smoke in the cane field last
night, then sleeping in his truck? "Look, let's
just go over to the locker room. At least I can take
a shower, and I'll tell you what happened last
night. But you gotta promise not to tell anyone,
okay?"
Dropping several quarters into the vending machine
outside the cafeteria door, Michael got a
couple of Cokes, a bag of Fritos, and two
packages of stale-looking cookies. Popping the
top off one of the Cokes, he handed it to Josh, who
took a long swig from it as they started toward the
locker room. But as Josh lifted the Coke to his
lips for a second drink, he was seized by a fit of
coughing.
"You okay?" Michael asked.
Josh shook his head. "I feel like crap."
In the locker room, Josh stripped out of his clothes
and went into the showers. As he stood under the steaming
water, scrubbing the soot and dirt from his skin, he
finally told Michael what had happened
last night.
"You just left him there?" Michael asked as Josh
finished his shower and grabbed a towel.
"Well, what was I supposed to do?" Josh shot
back as he started to dry off, his temper flaring again.
"He wouldn't get back in the truck, and the fire was
all around us, and those guys were coming, and-was His words were
cut short as another hacking cough doubled him over.
"Maybe you better go home," Michael said.
"Home?" Josh demanded as the coughing subsided.
"That's real easy for you, isn't it, Mike? Your
mom doesn't get drunk and start pounding on you, like
my dad
does, and-was Suddenly Josh could barely breathe.
Choking, he stumbled out of the locker room and shambled
toward the rest room.
Michael hurried after him, and by the time he got to the
rest room, Josh had sagged to the floor, his face
pale. Frightened by the sudden change in his friend,
Michael reached out and touched Josh's arm.
His skin was cold and clammy.
Josh was gasping for breath. "What is it?"
Michael asked. "What's wrong?"
Josh peered up at Michael out of eyes that seemed
to be glazing over. "D-Don't know,"
he gasped. "C-Can't breathe ..."
Michael's eyes widened. Asthma? Could Josh be
having an attack of asthma? His atomizer-the one
his mother still made him take with him all the time, even
though he hadn't had an attack of asthma in over
a year ... where was it?
His locker.
Or should he run and get the nurse?
He didn't even know where the nurse's office
was!
"I'll be right back," he said. "I'm gonna
try to find the nurse, and I've got something in my
locker that might help you breathe."
"Not the nurse," Josh gasped. "I don't
want-was But it was too late; Michael was already
gone.
Struggling to catch his breath, Josh scrambled back
to his feet, steadying himself with the knob of the closet
door he'd been leaning against only a moment
earlier. He took a tentative step, started
to lose his balance, and jerked on the doorknob.
The door came open, revealing a jumble of boxes,
cans, and bottles-the cleansers and disinfectants the
janitor stored in the closet.
Instinctively moving back a step, Josh
stared at the array of bottles and containers spread out
in front of him. Then, reacting to an impulse that
had suddenly seized him, he reached out, picked up
a bottle of ammonia, opened it, and tentatively
held it to his nose.
Sucking the fumes deep into his lungs, he felt
an instant rush of energy, as if a shot of
adrenaline had been injected into his bloodstream.
He breathed in again; an almost electric tingle ran
through his body.
A moment later, when Michael Sundquist
reappeared, his inhaler clutched in his hand, Josh
Malani's entire demeanor had changed again.
His complexion looked healthy, his eyes were bright, and
he seemed to be breathing perfectly normally.
As Michael looked on in astonishment, Josh
once again raised the ammonia bottle to his nose
and inhaled its fumes into his lungs. "Jeez,
Josh, what are you doing?" Michael cried, grabbing
the bottle from Josh's hand. "What's all this
mess?"
"Give it back!" Josh demanded. "I was just
sniffing it."
"Are you crazy? That stuff's poisonous! It can
kill you."
Josh reached for the bottle once again. "Just give it
to me!"
Shoving Josh away from the closet, Michael
slammed the door shut, then leaned against it, the
bottle of ammonia clutched in his hands. Josh
glowered at him, and for a moment Michael was afraid
he might be about to slug him. But then Josh shook his
head. "The hell with you," he muttered. Turning his
back on Michael, he barged out
of the rest room. By the time Michael had put the
ammonia away and gone after him, Josh was almost
dressed again.
"Come on, Josh," Michael pleaded. "I'm just
trying to help you."
Josh barely looked at him. "I don't need you
helping me. I don't need anyone helping me."
Then he was gone, shoving Michael aside as he
left the locker room and headed for the parking lot.
Michael caught up with him just as he was getting
into his truck.
"I'm going with you," Michael said, heading toward the
passenger's side.
"The hell you are." Starting the engine, Josh
slammed the truck into gear and screeched out of the parking
lot.
Michael stood in the cloud of dust the truck had
kicked up, staring after his friend. Tears were welling up
in his eyes, and in his stomach he felt a hard knot
of anger and pain, all twisted together so tightly he
couldn't even begin to unravel it.
He "II get over it,
he told himself as he finally turned away and started
back toward the locker room.
By the time school's out, he'll get over it. It'll
be okay.
But even as he silently uttered the words to himself, he
knew he didn't believe them.

Josh Malani had no idea where he was going as he
roared out of the school parking lot. All he knew was
that he had to get away.
Already the tingling he'd felt in his body when he
breathed in the ammonia was fading away, but so was the
fury that had boiled up in him when Michael had
torn the bottle from his hands.
What the hell was he doing, getting pissed off at
Michael? Michael was his best friend.
Michael had saved his life.
Michael had only been trying to help him.
And what had he done? Blown his stack and
taken off.
Terrific!
So now what?
Home was out-no way was he going to go there until at
least five, when his mom would be home from work and he
wouldn't have to be alone with his dad.
Maybe he'd just go to the beach for a couple of hours.
He always felt a lot better after going for a swim,
and then he'd come back just before school let out and find
Mike.
He'd apologize, and then they'd figure out what
to do about Jeff Kina. Maybe Mike was
right-maybe they
really should go tell the police where they'd been the
night Kioki died.
By the time Josh came to the floor of the valley between
Haleakala and the West Maui mountains, the strange
discomfort in his chest had started up again, and as he
headed out toward a park on the windward side where
few people ever went during the week, another fit of
coughing gripped him. Then, with the same frightening
breathlessness that had come over him at the school once
again descending on him, he pressed hard on the
accelerator, determined to get to the beach, where he could
take in the trade winds blowing in from the
ocean. So focused was he on his struggle
to overcome the choking airlessness, that Josh never
noticed that the car behind him sped up, too, keeping
perfect pace with his truck.
The ammonia,
he thought.
Michael was right.
His chest was aching painfully now, and no matter how
hard he tried, he couldn't seem to get enough air
into his lungs. As he pulled the truck to a stop
in the empty parking lot behind the beach, he was gripping
the wheel hard with both hands, partly against the terrible
fiery pain spreading through him, but even more to keep himself
steady.
His knuckles, already white with tension, were starting
to turn blue, and now, when he looked out to sea, he
could barely even see the horizon.
Everything seemed to be getting blurry, and the brightness
of the afternoon was fading, even though a moment ago there
hadn't been a cloud in the sky.
Ou.
He had to get out of the truck and down onto the beach.
If he could just get that far, he'd be able to breathe
again, and lie down and rest for a while, and then this
strange attack would pass. He'd be
okay again. He fumbled for the door handle, found it,
and slid out of the driver's seat. But instead of landing
on his feet, his knees buckled beneath him and he
crumbled to the ground, sprawling out in the dust.
He was panting, gasping for breath, but with every movement
of his diaphragm, it felt as if his lungs were being
seared from inside with a blowtorch.
Dying!
He knew it now, knew it with a terrible certainty.
The darkness was closing around him, and the pain was growing
worse, and he couldn't breathe at all.
He reached out, flailing, searching for something-
anything-to hang on to, to cling to, as if the act
of clutching something in his hands could stave off the
horrible suffocation that was claiming him.
He tried to cry out, tried to scream for help, but
all that emerged from his throat was a whispered moan.
Then, as the darkness closed around him and the last of his
strength deserted him, he felt a new sensation.
It was as if he was being lifted.
Lifted up, and carried away.
His beleaguered lungs still struggling for breath, Josh
Malani surrendered to the blackness.
"My Jeff is a good boy," Uilani Kina
insisted. "My Jeff wouldn't just take
off. Something's happened to him."
Cal Olani nodded sympathetically, but the gesture
was nearly automatic. After fifteen years as a
cop, he'd long since learned that there wasn't a
mother alive whose son wasn't "a good boy." It
made no difference what the charge might be, or how
damning the evidence.
"My son is a good boy," Mrs. Kina said again.
Still, as he looked around the tidy house that Uilani
Kina kept, he didn't see any of the typical
signs that a teenager was likely to be a
troublemaker. On a side street above Makawao,
the frame house sat in the midst of a well-kept
garden. The patch of lawn in front was mowed, and
though a few chickens pecked at the ground in a
coop next to the house, they weren't running wild.
Uilani's husband operated a small garden
supply shop down the road in Makawao, where
Jeff worked after school except during track
season. Aside from a couple of incidents when
he'd threatened a few
haoles
comb hadn't actually done much to make good on his
threats- Jeff had never been in any serious
trouble. Still, he was at the age when boys
start wanting to show their independence, and had it not been
for the discovery of Kioki Santoya's body
yesterday morning, Cal would probably have tried a
little harder to reassure Uilani Kina that her son
would turn up by the end of the day. As it was, though,
he had to take the boy's absence more seriously.
"I'll put out an official missing persons
report this afternoon," he promised, though he knew the
news was out about Jeff all over the island. He
closed his notebook and, putting it back in the
inside pocket of his uniform jacket, he said as
gently as he could, "Just try not to get too upset,
Mrs. Kina."
"If it wasn't for Kioki-was Uilani Kina
began, but couldn't bring herself even to finish the thought.
A slim wraith of a woman with soft features
framed by flowing black hair, she shook her head
sadly. "I don't know what Alice is going
to do. He was all she had, and now ..." She
struggled to compose herself. "What were those
boys doing that night?" she asked, her eyes searching
Cal Olani's face for an answer. "Did
something happen? Did they get in a fight or
something? Was someone mad at them?" She shook her
head, clucking her tongue softly. "Who
could get mad at them? Such good boys." Her
voice changed, and Cal Olani had the feeling she
was talking more to herself than to him. "Even Josh
Malani. What can you expect with parents like that? I
feel so sorry for him. . . ." Her voice
trailed off again, but her liquid brown eyes
remained fixed on the policeman. "Find Jeff
for me," she pleaded. "Please find him for me."
Back in his car a few minutes later, with the
memory of the distraught woman's plea still fresh in
his mind, Olani kept hearing echoes of her question:
Did something happen?
And he also remembered the faces of the four boys
he'd talked to at the high school yesterday afternoon.
The way their eyes had darted toward Josh Malani
before they answered his questions, as if seeking his advice
or his permission before they spoke.
And the new boy-the one Cal couldn't remember having
seen at all before yesterday-hadn't actually answered
his questions with anything more than a noncommittal shrug.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was just about time
for school to be letting out. Maybe he'd swing
back there and have another talk with those three. But just as
he made the decision, the radio in the car came
alive and he heard the dispatcher calling
him.
"Car five here," he said into the microphone.
"I have a report of an abandoned car, Cal," the
dispatcher told him. "Down in the park near
Spreckelsville. You anywhere close?"
"Above Makawao," Olani replied, then told
the dispatcher what he was planning to do next.
"I think you might want to take this abandoned car
report," the dispatcher told him. "We've run the
plates. It's an eighty-two Chevy pickup,
registered to Joshua Malani."
Olani felt an uneasy chill ripple over
him. "How long's it been there?" he asked.
"Not very long," the dispatcher replied. "The woman
who reported it says it wasn't there this morning."
"Then why is it being reported as abandoned?"
Olani asked. Who would report a truck the first
time he saw it? After a day or two, maybe, but..
. The dispatcher's voice cut into his thought.
"The keys are in the ignition, and his wallet was
left on the front seat."
The uneasy chill that had come over Cal Olani
congealed into a feeling of dark foreboding. "Ten-four,"
he said. "I'm on my way."
"It certainly took you long enough." The
woman was sunburned and overweight and swathed in a
wildly patterned muumuu in a particularly
hideous shade of lavender. She made no effort
to hide her displeasure as Cal Olani swung out
of his patrol car nearly half an hour after he'd
received the dispatcher's call.
"Now, Myrtle," her husband said, trying to soothe
her. He sported a shirt that matched his wife's
muumuu, and a sunburn even more purple. "You have
to remember, this is Maui, not Cleveland." He
offered his hand to Cal Olani. "I'm Fred
Hooper, and this is my wife, Myrtle. We're
staying in a condo down that way about a mile." He
gestured vaguely in the direction of
Spreckelsville. "I told Myrt she shouldn't
bother you with this, but-was
"Nobody goes off and leaves a truck with the keys
hanging in the ignition, and their wallet just lying out on
the seat where anyone could come along and pick it up,"
Myrtle Hooper broke in, silencing Fred with a
single quick gesture. "At least they don't in
Cleveland, and I just don't believe things are that
much different out here." As Cal Olani started
toward Josh's truck, both Hoopers trailed after
him, Myrtle still talking. "Something isn't
right about this. I know Fred thinks I'm being silly,
but a mother knows these things." They had reached the
pickup, and as Olani turned to look questioningly at
Mrs. Hooper, she pursed her lips. "We
looked in the wallet, of course. We thought we
might find a telephone number or something." She
sighed deeply. "Just seventeen. Such a shame."
"Now, Myrt, we don't know what happened,"
Fred began, but once again his wife silenced him with a
sweep of her hand.
"Of course we know what happened," she said.
"It's happening to kids all the time now. Teenage
suicide. I read about it in
Time
magazine." She shifted her gaze to Cal
Olani. "His clothes are on the beach," she said.
"At least I assume they're his clothes. There's
no one else around here. And we put his wallet
back on the seat of the car, exactly the way it was
when we found it," she added as the policeman peered
into the truck's open window.
Just as the woman had said, a worn wallet was lying
on the seat of the truck, and the keys were hanging in the
ignition. Picking the wallet up, Olani checked
the driver's license himself.
Josh Malani.
There were a few dollar bills, a student
identification
card, some worn pictures, and various scraps of
paper with girls" phone numbers written on them,
but little else.
Moving on to the beach, Cal Olani found a pile
of clothes, also just as Myrtle Hooper had
described. There were a pair of worn jeans, a
T-shirt, Jockey shorts, socks, and shoes.
The jeans were on the bottom, then the T-shirt and the
underwear, with the shoes resting on top of the pile, the
socks tucked inside them.
Very neat.
Very tidy.
And from what Cal Olani knew of the boy, not at
all like Josh Malani.
Unless Josh had been trying to say something.
Wordlessly, Olani went back to the truck. Shoved
behind the driver's seat was a slightly damp towel,
wrapped around an equally wet bathing suit.
Even if Josh had a dry bathing suit, wouldn't
he have taken his towel down to the beach if all he was
planning to do was go for a swim?
Of course, as Myrtle Hooper had
pointedly implied, if the boy was planning to go into the
water and not come out, what would be the point of having the
towel on the beach?
He searched the cab of the pickup once more, looking
for a note, but even as he hunted he knew he
wouldn't find one. A little too reckless, always a
bit too wild, Josh Malani wasn't the kind
of kid who'd leave a note behind. Not the kind of
kid, either, who'd commit suicide. Yet the
evidence seemed pretty strong that that was exactly
what he'd done.
He went back to the beach, where Mrs. Hooper
waited
for him, a faintly smug expression on her face.
Cal Olani found himself disliking her intensely: a
woman who was more concerned about having her opinion
validated than she was about what might have happened
to a seventeen-year-old boy.
"There's some footprints, too," he heard Fred
Hooper say. "We were careful not to disturb them."
Olani moved closer to the neatly folded clothes and
looked down at the sand. A single set of
footprints led toward the water, disappearing where the
surf-gentle today-had washed them away. Shading his
eyes from the sun's glare on the water, he
peered out at the ocean, searching for signs of someone
swimming, but saw no sign of Josh or anyone
else. Not that he had expected to; his gut was already
telling him that Josh Malani was dead.
"It's tough for them," Fred Hooper said softly, his
eyes, like Cal Olani's, fixed on the sea.
"Not like when I was a kid. We didn't have to worry
about anything. Grow up, raise a family,
retire, and come to places like this. But what do the
kids have to look forward to now? Drugs, and gangs,
and getting shot at when you're just minding your own
business." He was quiet for a moment, then: "I
wish we'd gotten here a little earlier. Maybe if
he'd just had someone to talk to, it would have helped, you
know?"
Cal Olani rested his hand on the man's shoulder.
"Maybe it would have," he said. But as he started
taping the area off to keep the people who'd been
attracted by the presence of his squad car from messing
up the site before it could be photographed, he
wondered. Would talking to someone really have helped?
Yesterday, neither Josh Malani nor any of his
friends had been interested in talking about anything.
231 JOHN SAUL
Now Kioki Santoya was dead, Jeff
Kina was missing, and Josh Malani had apparently
drowned himself. What the hell was going on?
CHAPTER

Katharine Sundquist was excited when she returned
to Takeo Yoshihara's estate, convinced she held
the key not only to the missing computer files, but to the
mystery of the skeleton in the ravine. Arriving just as
Rob and one of his workmen were transferring the last of the
carefully tagged bones from the back of the Explorer
into his office, she'd barely been able to hold her
impatience in check until the entire find had been
carefully laid out on a lab table in the room that
adjoined Rob's office.
The sharp edge of her excitement had been blunted,
though, when the files proved less easy to locate
than she'd hoped. It should have been so simple: they
had the file names, and Phil Howell was certain they
were somewhere on Takeo Yoshihara's computer. But when
Rob brought up a directory of the drive, no such
file names appeared. Sensing Katharine's
disappointment, he'd tried to reassure her. "Not
to worry. This is only one drive, and there have to be
a lot more than that. I'll run a search."
The search, though it had only taken a few
minutes, seemed to Katharine to go on forever, but then
two lines appeared on the screen, showing the
results of the inquiry, and her hopes leaped again.
[*reg]
Xccbackslash serinus backslash artifact
backslash Philippine backslash skull.jpg
Xccbackslash serinus backslash artifact
backslash Philippine backslash videoddavi
"If the directories are set up with any kind of
logic, at least we know where the skull came from,"
Katharine said as she gazed at the screen. "But what
does "serinus" mean?"
"It's one of Yoshihara's projects," Rob
Silver said. "It has something to do with pollution.
Serinus is the genus designation for finches.
Specifically,
Serinus canaria
-
canaries."
"Canaries?" Katharine repeated. "I'm not sure
I see the connection."
"The connection comes from the old practice of lowering
canaries into mine shafts. If the birds came up
alive, it was safe for the men to go down. If the
birds were dead, then there were dangerous
gases in the mine." He paused. "I don't know
much about that particular project, but I suspect
Yoshihara's looking for new ways to stop killing
canaries, as it were. Hence the name of the project.
Corporate cute, if you ask me. Let's see
if we can take a look at those files."
With growing anticipation Katharine watched as Rob
pulled up a viewer, then copied in the full path
of the jpg file. Almost there, she thought, we've almost
got it. Until the screen went blank and a new
message appeared:
PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW
Rob had tried a few possible passwords, ranging
from anagrams of the words "artifact" and "serinus"
to Takeo Yoshihara's name spelled backward.
To neither his nor Katharine's surprise, none of them
worked. "Who knows?"
he'd finally sighed. "It could be someone's
mother-in-law's birthday, or a random sequence of
letters and numbers. And I suspect that if I just
keep trying to break in, the computer will notice
what's going on and report me to someone."
Katharine gazed dispiritedly at the monitor, unable
to shake from her memory the disquieting images
recorded on the strange video. "It's
probably not the right file anyway," she said,
disappointed. "What on earth would a tribe
slaughtering some kind of primate have to do with air
pollution?"
Rob shrugged. "I'm afraid you'd know a lot more
about that than I would. You're the bone person,
remember?"
But Katharine had no answer. They spent a few
minutes poking around in the directory named
Serinus, but quickly discovered that without the password,
only a single file was open to them.
A file that confirmed that Takeo Yoshihara and
Mishimoto Corporation were indeed embarked on a
major research project aimed at tackling the
problem of global pollution head-on. "And making
a fortune with whatever they discover, no doubt," Rob
remarked as they finished reading the file.
They'd abandoned the computer then, but for the rest of the
afternoon, as Katharine concentrated on reconstructing the
skeleton that had been exhumed from the ravine, the first
faint tendrils of an idea kept reaching out to her.
When Rob finally interrupted her to suggest they have
dinner together, she realized that the afternoon had slipped
away.
Though she was no closer to gaining access to the
files containing the image of the skull and the video, the
skeleton was almost complete. And the idea, though not
yet fully formed, was starting to come together in her mind.
"I think I'm going to finish this," she said. "You go
on, and I'll see you in the morning."
After Rob left, she called Michael and told
him she'd be late.
"How late?" he asked.
"Only a couple of hours," she promised. "And
then we'll go out for pizza, okay?"
"I guess," Michael replied, and she heard the
anxiety in his voice.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"
There was a long silence, then: "I'll be okay.
See you when you get home."
She hung up the phone and hesitated, wondering if
she shouldn't call it a day and go home now. But even
as that thought came to her, the idea that had been poking
at the edges of her consciousness all afternoon suddenly
came together.
Once again she replayed the video in her mind, but
this time, instead of trying to decide what kind of
creature it was that she'd seen, she concentrated on
how old it might have been.
If it was some kind of small primate, it
would have been full-grown.
But if it wasn't a primate?
More images flashed though her memory.
The way the tribesmen had stared at it.
The way its fear seemed to grow, and the look almost of
surprise when the tribesmen had begun chasing it.
It had been so much smaller than the men.
And the woman had acted like ...
The woman had acted like a distraught mother who had just
lost a child.
A mutant?
Could what she'd seen on the video have been a
mutated human child?
Mutated by what? Pollution?
Even as the question formed in her mind, so did a possible
answer.
Mount Pinatubo.
The volcano that had erupted in the Philippines
less than ten years ago, spewing enough ash and
poisonous gas into the atmosphere to make dozens of
villages uninhabitable.
If alcohol and tobacco could harm a fetus, what
might the gases disgorged from an active volcano
do? Katharine's eyes fixed once more on the
skeleton on the table, but now her mind's
eye no longer saw the fire pit next to which the
body had been buried, but the sulfurous vent a little
farther up the ravine. What if the remains she'd
unearthed were of someone who'd been born only months
after an eruption of Haleakala?
Suddenly it became imperative to determine the age
of the bones as exactly as possible, and try
to correlate them to one of the last eruptions on
Maui.
Or on the Big Island, where even now new vents
were opening, releasing gases from the bowels of the
planet?
She worked for three more hours, preparing bone
samples and searching the Internet for the labs that could do
the work most quickly and efficiently.
And now her mind was starting to fog with exhaustion and her
whole body ached.
And she was already hours later than she'd promised
Michael.
Leaving everything as it was, Katharine began closing
up the workroom. She'd just turned the lights off and
was
about to lock the door when a sweep of headlights
across the window caught her eye.
Leaving the lights off, she went to the window
and looked out.
Michael sat staring at the television, trying
to concentrate on the characters on the screen but unable
to keep his attention on the movie for more than a few
seconds at a time.
He kept thinking about Josh, clutching the bottle of
ammonia in the rest room, sucking the fumes deep
into his lungs, struggling to hang on to it when he'd
taken it away from him.
And he remembered the look in Josh's eyes just before
he'd fled from the locker room. For a moment
Michael hadn't been able to recognise his friend at
all. Josh had completely disappeared, replaced
by ...
What?
A wild animal.
The words came unbidden into Michael's mind, but the
more he thought about them, the more he realized that was
exactly what Josh had looked like: a trapped
animal, searching for a way to escape.
And for just a second, Michael recalled, he'd
been afraid Josh was going to attack him, going
to try to recover the bottle he'd yanked from
Josh's hands.
After school Michael had waited as long
as he could, hoping Josh would come back, but when the
bus had been ready to leave, he'd finally climbed
onto it. All the way home he'd kept half
an eye out, thinking he might see Josh's truck
racing up to overtake the bus, hear his horn blaring,
and then find him waiting at the stop where
he got off. But another part of him was just as sure that
Josh's pickup was not going to appear, that something
terrible had happened to his friend.
Should he call the police?
And tell them what?
Repeat the weird story Josh had told him about
Jeff's strange behavior and his own flight from the
cane field last night? But that would only get
Josh in even more trouble than he was already in. And if
something had happened to Jeff Kina in the cane
field, wouldn't someone have heard about it? After all,
he'd heard the names of the two men who had died in the
cane fire before he'd left school: fire workers
on a routine patrol, killed in a freak
accident. One of them had been the uncle of one of the
guys on the track team. But nobody had heard
anything about Jeff Kina.
When he got home, he called Josh's house, but
Sam Malani answered, sounding drunk,
and ranting that when Josh got home he was going to beat
the crap out of him.
Michael hadn't called again.
Then, about an hour ago, he started feeling kind of
funny again. It wasn't too bad-not at all like
when he'd had asthma-but for a minute he'd been
tempted to call his mother. He'd chucked that idea as
soon as it crossed his mind. If she didn't
make him go to the hospital tonight-"Better to be
safe than sorry"-she'd definitely drag him
back to Dr. Jameson tomorrow.
Better not say anything; he'd probably be fine
by morning anyway.
He scrunched lower on the sofa and once more tried
to focus his mind on the movie he was staring at.
Stop it,
he told himself.
Just stop it. Nothing's wrong
with your lungs, and Josh is just pissed off, and you
hardly even know JeffKina.
Except no matter how much he tried to tell himself
that nothing was wrong, he kept remembering the one thing
that gave the lie to that thought.
Kioki Santoya had died the night before last.
What if Jeff and Josh were dead, too?
What then?
To that question, he had no answer.
By the time Katharine's eyes adjusted to the dim
lights that illuminated the grounds of Takeo
Yoshihara's estate at night, the vehicle had
stopped near one of the doors in the other wing of the
building. As Katharine watched, the security guard
who normally sat at the desk in the lobby emerged from
the building and walked quickly to the vehicle, which
Katharine could now see was a small van. As two
men got out of the van, a second man came out of the
building, and a moment later the four men had opened the
back doors of the van and were unloading a box from it.
A box that appeared to be about three feet wide,
three feet high, and perhaps seven feet long.
The image of a coffin came instantly
into Katharine's mind, and though she tried to reject
it, the image wouldn't let itself be so easily
banished. Instead, the vision of the coffin was immediately
reinforced by her recollection of the skeleton in the
next room.
The skeleton that, though not of the species Homo
sapiens, had been laid out for burial as if it
were.
Leaving her office, Katharine strode down
the long corridor to the lobby, then hesitated.
What was she going to do? Walk down the opposite
hall, trying doors until she found one that was
unlocked, and go in? Hardly, since the fact of the
van arriving in the middle of the night suggested that her
presence might not be welcomed.
The same reasoning also precluded going outside and
simply walking up to the van to ask what was going
on.
Changing course, she moved toward the security
officer's desk, a big wooden cube whose
surface was bare save for two identical computer
monitors. Circling the desk as warily as if it
were a tiger ready to spring at her, Katharine perched
nervously on the guard's chair and studied the two
monitors.
The first one-on the left-displayed a view of the area
just inside the estate's main gates. Though she could
remember no light fixtures around the gates, the
image on the screen was almost as bright as if it were
full daylight.
So, the security cameras were equipped with a
light-amplifying device, she realized, making the
darkness around the gates utterly deceptive.
The other screen displayed nothing more than a
series of images of sculpted buttons, some of
them labeled, others bearing nothing more than graphics
that identified their use in manipulating the camera.
Reaching out, Katharine touched the screen where a
button framing a magnifying glass was displayed.
Instantly the image on the other screen enlarged as
the camera's lens zoomed closer to the gate.
Now Katharine examined the labeled buttons,
touching the one marked "North Wing."
All the buttons except those that controlled the
cameras disappeared, and in their place appeared a
floor plan of the building's north wing. Picking a
room she thought
was close to the area where the van had parked, Katharine
touched the screen again.
The display monitor immediately responded, showing the
interior of Stephen Jameson's office.
His empty office.
She touched the room two doors farther down the
corridor, and was rewarded by a view of the two men from
the van and the two security guards placing the box
onto a gurney. As the men from the van departed, the
guards pushed the coffinlike box through the office and
into the corridor. Switching the monitor to a view
of the north corridor, Katharine froze as
she saw the guards, one at each end of the gurney,
apparently moving straight toward her. A split
second later, when the guard who would normally be
sitting in the seat she herself was now occupying looked
directly into the camera, Katharine had the horrible
sensation that he could see her as clearly as she could
see him. Her heart pounded and she had to fight an
urge to bolt in the opposite direction, fleeing
back to her office. But when the guards and the box
disappeared from her view-and didn't come through the double
doors at the end of the lobby-she realized they hadn't
been coming toward her at all. In fact, they were
moving in exactly the opposite direction.
But where?
She studied the control screen again, and discovered a
button marked "LL."
Lower Level? Of course! The "downstairs"
Dr. Jameson had mentioned just this morning.
She touched the button. It seemed to produce no
effect.
The same floor plan and control buttons showed
on the right-hand monitor, and the same image of an
empty corridor was displayed on the screen on the
left.
Yet she'd been all but certain that both
screens had flickered slightly, as if their
displays had in fact responded to her touch. Then,
as she examined the control screen more closely, she
realized that one thing had changed: the "LL"
button was now labeled "UL."
So there
was
another level beneath this one.
As if to confirm the thought, the two guards
reappeared, now moving in the opposite direction,
away from the camera. Halfway down the corridor
a door opened, and the guards maneuvered the box through
it. Once again Katharine had to press two of the
rooms depicted on the control monitor before she
found the right one, and the image on the camera monitor
changed again.
The room was obviously a laboratory of some
kind. As Katharine watched, two men wearing
orderly uniforms started to unscrew the top of the
box. Katharine's fingers moved to the buttons that
gave her control over the camera, and she zoomed in
on the box. As the lid was raised, wisps of fog
curled from the container.
Dry ice?
The lid came free, and Katharine could
see that whatever was in the box was wrapped in plastic.
She watched as four hands, clad in rubber
surgical gloves, worked at the plastic, loosening
it.
Four hands.
Where were the other four, the hands that belonged to the
security guards?
Katharine zoomed the camera to its widest angle.
The two guards were gone.
Touching the control screen again, she found them.
In the corridor, once again walking toward her.
No! Away from her, by the far end, where apparently
there was an elevator. How long did she have before they
would be back on this level and coming toward the lobby?
A minute?
Two?
Certainly no more.
She touched the screen again, and once more the orderlies
appeared. They had finished unwrapping the outer layer
of plastic and were taking out what was left of the dry
ice the contents of the box had been packed in.
Silently urging them to work faster, wanting to reach through
the camera and tear the second layer of plastic from
whatever lay within, Katharine could barely contain her
impatience.
Her nerves screaming, she switched back to the
corridor. The security guards were still standing there,
waiting for the elevator. Then, just as she was about
to click back to the room where the orderlies were working,
the guards stepped out of her view.
They were in the elevator, and the elevator would already be
moving.
How fast?
She had no idea.
She switched the screen back to the laboratory.
At last, the orderlies seemed to have finished with the
dry ice. Unconsciously holding her breath,
Katharine gazed into the container. One of the orderlies
reached for the layers of almost transparent plastic-all
that remained to block Katharine's view of whatever
had arrived at the estate in the middle of the night.
Then, in a movement that made her want to scream with
frustration, the orderly suddenly pulled away.
The zoom!
Her fingers trembling, she touched the adjustment
buttons for the camera. It zoomed in and refocused
slightly. For just a moment, before one of the orderlies
abruptly leaned in and blocked her view
completely, she thought she saw something.
A face.
A human face?
The glimpse had been too brief, the distortion of the
wrinkled plastic too much.
How much time did she have left? If she could get just
one more look-
She touched the UL button, then the hallway.
The guards were on their way back down the hall!
Her heart racing, Katharine rose from the chair and
started back toward the double doors leading to the south
corridor and Rob's office.
The display! As soon as the guards came in,
they'd see what she'd been doing! Whirling around,
nearly stumbling in her haste to get back to the
desk, she searched the screen again, finding a button
marked "Main." She hit it, and instantly the menu
that had been displayed when she'd come in no more than
five minutes earlier reappeared.
The gate!
Where was the button for the gate?
There-down near the bottom, at the right!
She stabbed at it, waited just long enough to see the
image on the display monitor change, then fled
across the lobby. Pushing her way through the double doors,
she paused to make them stop swinging, then dashed down
the hall to Rob's office, slipped
inside, and switched the lights back on.
Leaning heavily against the desk, she waited for her
heartbeat to return to normal and her breathing to even
out, then picked up her purse. Switching the lights
out,
she left the office for the second time in ten
minutes, locked it, and started toward the double
doors.
For a moment she had the terrible feeling that the two
guards would be waiting for her, knowing what she'd been
doing. If they questioned her, what could she say? That
she'd been worried when the guard hadn't been at his
post and was looking for him?
Would they believe her?
Pushing the doors open, she stepped into the lobby.
To her vast relief, the two guards were not waiting for
her. One of them, the one who had been there before the
van's arrival, was seated behind the desk again, thumbing
through a magazine. As she entered the lobby, he
looked up.
"Dr. Sundquist. I thought you'd left."
Was there suspicion in his voice? "Just finishing up
a few things," she replied. Then, when she was
halfway across the lobby, she suddenly knew
exactly what to say to put any
suspicions to rest. "What was that van that came in
a few minutes ago?" she asked, turning back
to face the guard. "Isn't it awfully late for
deliveries?"
The guard smiled. "One of our trucks," he said.
"The driver just stopped to find out where we wanted him
to park it."
"Well, it's nice to know we're not the only ones
working late," Katharine said, returning the guard's
smile. "But how come that doesn't make me feel
any less tired?"
The guard chuckled. "Doesn't ever make me
feel less tired, either."
With a final good night, Katharine left the building
and hurried toward her car.
The guard had lied.
Obviously, something was going on she wasn't
supposed to know about. But what was it?
And how could she find out?
Was the corpse that had been delivered tonight-if it
truly was a corpse-somehow connected to the alarming
video and the skeleton in Rob's laboratory?
That was ridiculous. There was no reason to make such
a connection.
But the images of the anomalous skull from the
Philippines and the film of the slaughtered creature
were also still fresh in her mind. An image and a film
that were stored in files locked away behind a password,
just as whatever had arrived in the van was now hidden
away in a lower level she hadn't known existed
until tonight.
Every instinct she possessed told Katharine that somehow
all these things were related.
The body-if that's what it was-that had been
delivered just now.
The mutant-if that's what it was-that had been
killed in the Philippines.
And the skeleton she herself had excavated right here on
Maui.
But how was she going to find out what the connection was?
As she drove through the darkness toward the gates of the
estate, she wondered how she might gain access not
only to the files hidden away in the computer, but to the
lower level of the north wing as well. Slowing to let
the gates open, she came to a disturbing realization:
security here was far tighter than Rob Silver had
told her.
Just as she'd remembered, there were no lights
illuminating the gates, yet she was positive that as
her car passed through them, the guard in the
lobby was watching her as clearly as if it were high
noon. The thought sent a shiver
down her spine, and though she kept telling herself that
she was being silly, she couldn't rid herself of the eerie
feeling that she was being watched until she emerged from the
narrow road from the estate onto the Hana
Highway. Even then it didn't quite leave her, and as
she sped toward Makawao, she continued to glance in the
rearview mirror, searching for some sign that someone was
following her.
Though she saw nothing, the creepy feeling stayed with
her.
Though the television was droning as Katharine entered the
house, Michael was not watching it. Sprawled out on
the sofa, he was fast asleep, and when she bent down
to kiss his forehead, he barely stirred. Dropping
her leather bag on the floor next to her sleeping
son, Katharine used the remote control to turn off
the television, then went into the kitchen to find something
to eat. The remains of a pizza-not quite half of
it-sat on the kitchen counter, cold in its
grease-stained box. Transferring two pieces to a
plate and slipping them into the microwave, Katharine
poured herself a glass of wine while the pizza
heated. Taking the pizza back to the living
room, she set it down on the coffee table, but then,
before settling down onto the floor to have her meal, she
moved though the house, locking the doors and windows.
And pulling the curtains.
Before she pulled the last one, she stared out into the
night, nearly shivering with the strange sensation that someone
was watching her.
But that's ridiculous, she told herself. There's no
one out there. No one's watching you!
Repeating those words to herself, though, did nothing
to dispel the paranoia that had come over her as she'd
left the research pavilion that night. She closed
the curtain before going back to the coffee table to eat the
pizza Michael had left for her.
She was just finishing the first piece when Michael
stirred on the sofa and the rhythm of his breathing changed,
taking on a labored quality. Within seconds his
feet began kicking and his arms thrashed in the air.
Katharine tensed, terrified that the awful scene of
last night, when he'd fled into the darkness and not come
back until hours later, was about to be replayed.
Getting up from the floor, she went around the coffee
table, crouched down, and laid a gentle hand on him.
"Michael? Michael, wake up! You're having a
bad dream."
He moaned and tried to turn away from her, but she
put her hand firmly on his shoulder and shook him.
"Michael! Wake up!"
Abruptly, Michael's whole body convulsed, and
then he was sitting up, instantly awake. Startled,
he stared at her.
"What was it?" Katharine asked. "What were you
dreaming about?"
"The night di' Michael began, but instantly cut
himself off.
"The what?" Katharine asked. Her eyes fixed on
him as she tried to figure out what the word was that he'd
cut off.
Michael, reddening, knew by the way his mother was looking
at him that there was no point in trying to lie about it.
"I went on a night dive," he finally said.
"A night dive?" Katharine echoed uncertainly.
Then, as the meaning of his words sank in, her eyes
widened. "You mean you went scuba diving at
night?"
Michael hesitated, then nodded unhappily. "With
Josh Malani, and some other guys."
"What other guys?" Katharine asked.
Michael hesitated. "Jeff Kina and Kioki
Santoya. And Rick Pieper."
The first two names rang a faint bell in
Katharine's memory. They sounded familiar, but where
had she heard them? Before she could even ask the question,
Michael answered it.
"Kioki's the guy whose mom found him in the cane
field yesterday morning."
Katharine remembered the radio report they'd
heard that morning. "It was the night before that, wasn't
it?" she asked. "The night you came home late."
Michael nodded.
"And that's what you dreamed about last night? And tonight?"
Again Michael nodded.
Katharine's eyes fixed on Michael. "Did
something happen?" she asked. "On the dive?"
Michael thought quickly, but he'd hesitated just long
enough to let her know that the forbidden dive had not been
uneventful. "It wasn't anything serious," he
said. "The tanks weren't quite full, so we had
to quit early, that's all. No big deal."
"But it's given you nightmares," Katharine told
him. "And after what happened to-was
Michael groaned. "Aw, come on, Mom. They
don't even know what happened to Kioki!"
Katharine studied her son. Not only had he lied
to her, but what he'd done had been both
stupid and irresponsible. She should ground him, she
thought, take away all his privileges, do whatever
it took to make certain he'd never
do anything like it again. But right now, after having been up
almost all last night, she was too tired to cope with
it. Besides, he was alive, and at home, and nothing
terrible had happened to him. And maybe the fact he
hadn't told her what he was planning was partly her
own fault-after all, she'd been overprotecting him
for years. If it hadn't been for Rob Silver,
she wouldn't have let him go scuba diving at all.
The exhaustion that had been crawling through her body
all day finally caught up with her, and she decided that
this, at least, could wait until another time. "Go
to bed," she told him. "Go to bed, and get some
sleep." Then an idea came to her. "And
Michael? You're the one who screwed up, so
you
decide how you should be punished. I'm just too tired
and too angry to deal with it. So you figure it out.
Okay?"
Michael looked at her for a long time, and she could
see by the expression on his face that she'd come up
with the right answer: she was certain that whatever punishment
he finally decided to mete out to himself would be
far worse than anything she could have come up with.
"Okay," he said at last. "I guess that's
only fair." He got up and had almost reached his
room when he came back, bent down, and kissed
her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't
have done it, and I should have told you." He straightened
up. "G'night," he said softly as he started
once more toward his room.
"Michael?"
He turned to face her.
"Try not to be too hard on yourself. A year's
grounding will be way too much."
By the time she collapsed into bed a few minutes
later, Katharine's exhaustion had reached the point
where she
was too tired even to sleep. Finally, feeling the
house grow stuffier, she got up and opened all the
windows. Not that it helped much; a kona wind had
begun carrying a faintly acrid, smoglike
miasma in from the erupting volcano on the Big
Island.
Before she went back to bed, Katharine paused to listen
at Michael's door. Though she herself was
wideawake, her son was sleeping peacefully.
Takeo Yoshihara awoke, as he always
did, as the first glow of dawn was lighting the eastern
sky. As fully awake now as he'd been deeply
asleep the moment before, he rose immediately from his bed
and, dressing in the aloha shirt, white pants, and
sandals that were his standard uniform on Maui, he went
to the small dining pavilion. His breakfast of miso
soup, fish, and tea was waiting for him, just as always when
he was in residence at the estate.
As he ate he reviewed the conditions of the
financial markets and scanned the stack of
reports that had come in from all over the world during the
night.
It appeared that he was thirty million dollars
richer than when he'd gone to bed last night.
Finishing the reports as he drained the last drop of
tea from his cup, Yoshihara left the dining
pavilion to make his way through the gardens to the
research center, stopping only once to remove a
wilting orchid bloom that the Filipino gardeners had
overlooked.
Entering the research pavilion through the main doors,
he nodded to the guard as he passed the desk, pushed
open the double doors leading to the south corridor, and
strode quickly down the long passageway to the
elevator at its far end. Pulling his
wallet from his pocket, he
passed it over a nondescript gray plate above
the call button, and the red light at the top of the
plate immediately blinked green. A moment later the
door slid open. Yoshihara stepped into the car, and the
door closed behind him.
Less than a minute later he was in the
laboratory to which the large wooden crate had been
delivered late last night. The crate, though, had
long since been taken away, as had the remnants
of dry ice in which the contents had been packed, and the
plastic sheeting in which it had been wrapped.
Only the body itself remained, and it was all but
unrecognizable.
Stephen Jameson looked up as the laboratory
door opened. Surprised to see his employer coming
into the room, he glanced at the clock.
Nearly six-thirty.
Suddenly feeling the fatigue of the long night of
dissection, Jameson took off his glasses, rubbed
his eyes, and stretched.
Nodding a greeting to the doctor, Yoshihara stepped
closer to the table and looked down at what was left
of the body that he'd had removed from its grave and
shipped to Maui. If the sight of the
carnage caused Yoshihara any discomfort, he
gave no outward sign.
The corpse had been laid open from the crotch to the
neck, and what few organs still remained in the
thoracic area lay in confused disorder, like the
pieces of a quickly disassembled jigsaw puzzle.
The rib cage had been split and spread wide
to allow easy access to the lungs and heart-both of which
were missing entirely-so all that now remained was a
great yawning cavity that, since it was entirely free
of blood, gave the body the odd appearance of never
having been alive at all. Rather, the re
mains of the cadaver had an artificial and
strangely impersonal look to them, as though what
lay on the table had been sculpted of wax rather than
flesh and blood.
Yet Yoshihara knew that such was not the case, for he
himself had seen pictures of the boy taken only a
few weeks ago. A white male, seventeen
years old, he'd stood a little over six feet
tall, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of an
athlete. In one of the photographs Yoshihara had
seen, the boy was smiling broadly, showing perfect
white teeth, deep dimples, and a slightly
cleft chin. In combination with his blue eyes
and blond hair, he'd been the perfect example
of the California surfer.
Oddly, the boy's good looks remained.
His blond hair, neatly combed and sprayed for his
funeral, had been slightly mussed by the packaging,
and before Yoshihara realized quite what he was doing, he
found himself reaching out to smooth the stray locks back
into place.
The pallor of death had been expertly covered with
makeup, and the boy's cheeks showed a rosy glow, as
if he might wake up at any moment.
The cleft in his chin was as clear as it had been in the
photo, though in the solemn expression of death, he
showed no signs of his dimples.
Yoshihara turned his attention back to Jameson,
who now held a manila folder in his hands. "Have you
determined the exact cause of death?"
Jameson opened the folder, scanning its contents.
He'd had a team of laboratory assistants
working all night, analyzing the tissues that
Jameson himself had taken from each organ as he'd
performed his dissection of the body.
As Jameson had expected, most of the boy's
organs
proved to be
as
healthy as they'd appeared. The lab tests showed no
signs of disease or toxic substances.
Or at least there were no signs of any substances that
one might have expected would kill a
seventeen-year-old boy.
No strychnine, or cyanide, or any other
poisons.
No drugs, either. No heroin, no cocaine, no
uppers or downers.
Not even any alcohol or marijuana.
Yet the boy had died, and the lab report in
Stephen Jameson's hands clearly showed why.
"The cause of death," he said, "was a violent
allergic reaction to the substance in question." He gave
Yoshihara a smug smile. "When the ambulance
arrived, his mother was trying to get him out of his car, which was
running in the garage with the door closed."
Yoshihara nodded. "And so they gave him oxygen."
"And he died," Jameson said.
"And the weather in Los Angeles that day?"
Yoshihara asked.
Jameson smiled thinly. "Close to perfect. A
Santa Ana condition had developed; the weather
reports spoke of a crystalline day such
as Los Angeles hardly ever experiences
anymore."
"But not good for our subject," Yoshihara observed.
"What would the result have been if they hadn't
applied pure oxygen?"
"It's hard to say," Jameson replied. "But it
appears that our latest subjects are doing better.
So far, four of the five seem to be doing fine. Of
course, the air in Mexico City has been
particularly bad the last few days, but in Chicago
it's been pretty good."
"And how long have they been in place?"
"Only two days," Jameson told him.
"Interesting," Yoshihara mused. "What about the
local boy who died? What was his name?"
"Kioki Santoya," Jameson replied. "He
wasn't given oxygen, of course-he was already dead
when his mother found him. But our lab work shows that his
lungs are in very much the same condition as this
subject's." He nodded toward the cadaver on the
table.
Takeo Yoshihara was silent for a moment, thinking.
"The other two locals," he finally said. "I would
like to see them. Not on the monitors. I wish
to look at them directly."
Stephen Jameson's eyes clouded. "I'm not
sure that's a good idea," he began. "If either of
them recognizes you-was
"It won't matter if they do," Takeo
Yoshihara cut in. His expression was grim.
"After all, it's unlikely they'll be leaving here,
isn't it?"
Stephen Jameson tilted his head
noncommittally. It would not do to expose his feelings
to his employer. "As you wish," he said, leading
Takeo Yoshihara through a door. They passed through
a chamber filled with tanks of compressed gas and a
large pump, and then into yet another room.
This room was empty, except for a large
Plexiglas box.
The box was filled with a brownish fog.
Barely visible through the haze were the figures of two
young men. Naked, they lay sleeping on the floor,
their heads resting on their arms. But as Takeo
Yoshihara stared at them, the eyes of one-the larger of
them, and as Yoshihara could now see, a
Polynesian by ancestry- suddenly snapped open.
In an instant he was crouched low to the floor, as if
ready to spring.
Like an animal, Takeo Yoshihara
thought. Like a wild animal sensing danger.
Yoshihara stepped closer, exactly as he might
have to get a closer look at an ape in a cage
at the zoo.
The figure sprang at him, his hands extended as
if to seize Yoshihara's neck, until, crashing
against the Plexiglas wall, he dropped back to the
floor of the cage with a howl of pain.
Now the other, smaller specimen was awake, too,
staring through the transparent wall, his eyes burning with
fury.
"We still have no idea how they became involved in our
experiments?" Yoshihara asked, turning away from the
box to gaze once more at Jameson.
"Since I'm sure they don't know themselves-was he
began, but once more Yoshihara cut him off.
"I'm not interested in what they know," he said. "I
wish to understand how they became exposed to our compound.
Find out. I want an answer by the end of the day.
Is that clear?"
Stephen Jameson swallowed nervously, but nodded
his assent, knowing no other response would be
acceptable.
"Good," Yoshihara said softly. Then, without so much
as a backward glance at the two boys
imprisoned in the Plexiglas box, he made his
way back through the series of rooms, rode the
elevator up to the main floor, and left the
building to stroll for a while in the gardens.
He had an hour before it would be time to leave.
Except for the small hitch involving the local
boys, things seemed to be progressing nicely. And
even the problem with the locals was being contained.
"Contained," he repeated silently to himself. It would
have been better if all the research subjects could
have been kept far from Maui, as originally planned,
but since
the error had occurred-and he
would
find out precisely how that error had occurred-there was
no point in not turning the mistake to his own
advantage.
For as long as they lived, the two young males down in
the laboratory would make valuable research
subjects.
For as long as they lived,
For Takeo Yoshihara, the life spans of Jeff
Kina and Josh Malani were of no concern. Far more
important- indeed, the only matter of any
importance-was the essential scientific
data their corpses would provide.

Katharine was just turning off the Hana Highway
onto the long dirt road that led to the estate when she
heard the unmistakable whup-whup-whup produced by the
whirling blades of a helicopter. Though the sound was
ominously close, she could see no sign of the
aircraft. Instinctively braking the car to a
halt, she gazed up into the sky, using her hand
to shade her eyes against the brilliance of the morning
sun. Like an iridescent dragonfly, the
helicopter appeared, skimming low over the trees,
seeming almost furtive as it bobbed and wove over the
contours of the landscape. As it passed low overhead
she thought she recognized Stephen Jameson and
Takeo Yoshihara peering out of the Plexiglas
shell, and she turned to watch it, expecting it
to bank around to the left, toward the airport at
Kahului.
Instead it turned right and disappeared behind a rocky
parapet that rose nearly two hundred feet from the
floor of the rain forest.
Only when the sound of the chopper's blades had faded
away did Katharine put the car in gear again and
continue down the narrow road.
Anticipating her arrival, as they did every morning,
the gates swung open as she approached, and she
barely had to slow the car as she rolled
through. This morning, though, Katharine felt the tiny
hairs on the back of her neck rise as she sensed
the camera that she was certain was watching her, and as she
drove through the grounds of the estate, she had
to consciously force herself not to look around for more
cameras. She was nearing the research pavilion that
housed Rob's office when she noticed that most of the
parking spaces in the lot behind it were empty this
morning.
She surveyed the nearly deserted lot, an idea
taking form in her mind. An idea that began to dispel
the dark mood that had come over her during the long
hours of the night when she'd lain awake, wondering
how she might gain access to the laboratory under the
north wing. Last night she had come up with nothing.
But this morning things had changed.
First the helicopter, and now the all-but-empty parking
lot.
Something, obviously, was going on.
Abandoning her intention to go out to the site in the ravine
this morning, Katharine pulled the Explorer into one
of the empty slots in the parking lot.
Entering the main lobby-and again resisting the urge
to look for security cameras-she started toward the
doors leading to Rob Silver's office, but then
stopped abruptly, as if having just changed her
mind. As she approached the security desk, the
guard looked up, and she was certain she detected a
look of surprise in his eyes. Perhaps she wouldn't
have to pump him for information; with a little luck, he might
just tell her what was going on without her even having
to ask. A second later he spoke the words she'd
hoped for: "Thought everybody'd gone up to the meeting
in Hana."
She struggled not to betray her ignorance. Hana?
What was he talking about? What was going on up there?
"I'm going up this afternoon," she said smoothly.
Why had she felt the need to lie?
But of course she knew-the paranoia she'd felt
last night as she'd watched the clandestine delivery,
then driven home with the feeling that eyes were watching her
all the way, was creeping over her again, wrapping its
coils around her like a boa constrictor.
But at the same time, the inkling of an idea that she'd
had in the parking lot was quickly taking shape. "Has
Dr. Jameson already gone?" she asked, her mind
working quickly as she tried to inject a note
of anxiety into her voice.
The guard nodded. "Took off in the chopper with Mr.
Yoshihara a few minutes ago."
"Damn," Katharine muttered, carefully setting
her features into a mask of annoyance.
"Pardon me?" the guard asked.
Katharine sighed heavily. "My son thinks his
keys might have fallen out of his pocket yesterday.
I was going to ask Dr. Jameson if he'd found
them." She opened her mouth as if about to say something
else, then closed it again, indicating a change of
mind.
She hesitated, then fed out a little line, as though
playing a fish: "Of course, he's blaming it all
on me. Kids." She turned away as if having
no expectation that the guard might offer to help her.
But as she started toward the double doors leading to the
north wing, she could almost feel him sniffing the bait,
considering whether there was a hook in it.
"Maybe I could let you in for a minute, Dr.
Sundquist," he suggested.
Katharine turned back as if she could hardly
believe what he'd said. "I couldn't let you do
that," she said, risking everything to set the hook
firmly. "With him being gone-was
"No problem," the guard told her. "And I've
got a sixteen-year-old of my own. I know how
they can be. If the keys are there, we should be able
to find "em in a couple of minutes."
As she trailed along, the guard led Katharine down
the north corridor. When he stopped, searching his
ring for the key to Stephen Jameson's office, she
glanced at the elevator at the far end. Above the
call button was the drab gray plate, its red
light glowing mockingly at her.
"Where should we start?" the guard asked.
Katharine shrugged a display of helplessness. "The
examination room, I suppose. That seems the most
likely place for him to have dropped them, doesn't
it? Why don't I check the chair he used in
Stephen's office while you look around the examining
room? It's just a ring with half a dozen keys on
it." As they entered Jameson's office, Katharine
made a show of searching the chair while the guard went
into the examination room. Alone then, she darted to the
credenza, praying the drawer would not be locked.
It wasn't. There, in plain sight, was the gray
plastic card, not even concealed under so much as a sheet
of paper. Snatching it up, she slid the drawer
silently closed, then joined the guard in the
examination room. "Well, they weren't in the
chair."
"And I'm not finding them in here, either." He nodded
toward a cabinet containing half a dozen drawers.
"Why don't you go through those while I take these?
Did you look in his desk?"
"If anyone's going to prowl through someone else's
desk, it's going to be you, not me," Katharine
replied. "I'm the new kid around here, remember?
I just barely got my key to the elevator. I'm
not about to start rifling through desks."
They left Jameson's office a few minutes
later, chatting cordially.
The key to the elevator was in Katharine's pocket.
And Michael's keys, she assumed, were still in his
pocket. As far as she knew, he'd never lost them
once in his whole life.
She waited half an hour before setting out for the north
corridor, pausing only to exchange a few words
with her new friend, the guard. "Well, down to the salt
mines," she said, winking at him before pushing her way
through the double doors and walking purposefully toward
the elevator. It took all her self-control not
to look back and glance up at the security camera
she suspected was trained on her. When she
took the card from her pocket and held it over the
gray sensor plate, she prayed the trembling of
her hand was not visible.
The light turned green. A moment later the
elevator doors slid open. She stepped in and
pressed the Down button, then tried to judge how
far the car traveled. The ride was so smooth, though,
that she had almost no sensation of movement; when the
doors slid open fifteen seconds later, she
could have been fifteen feet down, or fifty.
Or a hundred.
The corridor was deserted. Katharine walked along
it as purposefully as she'd strode down the
hallway above a
moment ago, though she had no idea of precisely
what she was looking for.
First, of course, she wanted to find the object that
had been delivered last night. In her mind's eye
she summoned up the floor plan of the lower level
as it had appeared on the security monitor, and
tried to remember in which room she'd seen the
coffinlike box being opened.
Third door on the right, she was almost certain.
When she came to the third door, she paused,
resisted an overpowering urge to glance back
at the camera above the elevator door, then twisted
the doorknob. To her vast relief, the door
opened.
She recognized the room the instant she stepped
inside: immaculately clean, its floor was
covered with white tile, a white-enameled metal
examination table stood in its center, and there was a
large lab bench against one wall. Another wall was
lined with three rows of large drawers.
Drawers she immediately recognized from the morgue
scenes in countless television shows.
Steeling herself, Katharine crossed the room and stood
before the bank of drawers.
She was wrong, of course. She
had
to be wrong! It couldn't possibly be a morgue.
Unsettling thoughts were tumbling through her mind. What
if someone came in?
What if the guard was watching?
What if the room was alarmed?
Get out,
a voice inside her head whispered.
Get out, and go back upstairs, and mind your own
business.
All you have to do is work on one skeleton.
One skeleton that Rob found two miles away.
Whatever is in here is none of your business.
Get out.
Get out!
But even as the voice kept whispering to her, she
reached out with a trembling hand and pulled one of the
drawers open.
Empty.
The tension in her body easing only a fraction, she
moved her hand to a second drawer.
Empty.
So was the third, and the fourth.
Now her hand was no longer trembling, and she was starting
to feel a little foolish. Whatever she'd seen last
night, it couldn't have been a-
The thought shattered in her mind as she pulled open the
fifth drawer and found herself staring into the face of a
boy.
A boy of seventeen or eighteen, perhaps, with strong
features, blond hair, and a cleft chin.
And dead blue eyes that stared unblinkingly up at
her from sockets that were sunk deep into his gray,
expressionless face.
Katharine stood rock still, fighting the nausea that had
risen in her belly.
Don't react,
she told herself.
If they're watching you, you mustn't react at all.
You must act like you belong here.
Pulling the drawer all the way open, she gazed
into the great y-shaped incision that had been cut in the
boy's torso. What few organs remained were in
a chaotic jumble, as if having been hastily put
back after an autopsy. His lungs, though, had
been completely removed.
His lungs?
Suddenly the description of the single file she'd
been able to read in the Serinus directory came
back to her.
Pollution? Could this boy have died from pollution
poisoning?
She pulled the drawer farther open, looking for
something-anything-that would identify the corpse. And then,
as the drawer reached the limits of its extension
hardware, she saw it.
A tag was attached to the big toe of the boy's right
foot. Tearing the tag loose, she dropped it
into her pocket, closed the drawer, and was about to leave
the room when she noticed a door in the left-hand
wall, toward the back of the room. Moving
close to it, she listened for a moment and heard a
humming noise. She hesitated, then tried the
knob.
It turned, and she eased the door open enough to see
inside.
It was some kind of equipment room, filled with
tanks of varying sizes, all of which seemed to be
connected to a central tank with a series of hoses and
valves. From the central tank a series of large
ducts ran in several directions, passing through two
of the walls.
Then she saw the source of the humming sound: a pump
next to the large tank, apparently moving the
tank's contents through the ducts.
Both the wall opposite Katharine and the one at the
far end of the room were pierced by doors as well as by the
large ducts, and she quickly moved to the closest one,
listened, and tried the knob.
Locked.
She moved to the other door, only to find it locked,
too.
Frustrated, she rattled the knob hard. She
searched for a card scanner, but there was no sign of
one. Should she try to find a key? What if one of the
cameras was watching?
She twisted the doorknob one more time, then gave up
and went back to the autopsy room. She was tempted
to return to the elevator right then-to press her
luck no further-but when she stepped out into the
corridor, its row of closed doors drew her like
a magnet.
Deciding, she turned away from the elevator and
moved slowly toward the far end of the hallway.
Thirty feet farther on she saw a door that bore
a plaque:
  The Serinus Project
She stared at the sign, the realization slowly sinking
in: she no longer needed the password to the protected
directory that had so utterly frustrated her
yesterday afternoon. Steeling herself, she reached for the knob,
all but certain that this door, like those inside the
morgue, would be locked.
It wasn't; apparently, Takeo Yoshihara
considered the elevator's security system
sufficient, for this area of the facility, at least.
She stepped into a wood-paneled anteroom,
empty but for a deserted desk and a display case. As
she realized what was in the cabinet, Katharine's
heart began to beat faster.
The skull?
Could it be the same skull she'd glimpsed on the
monitor in Rob's office? Katharine moved
closer to the case, a sealed Plexiglas box
fixed to the top of a black lacquered pedestal. As
she studied the skull from every angle, her excitement
grew. It
was
the one she'd seen! It
had
to be! And it appeared to be exactly like the skull
she'd found in the ravine, in every aspect. Tearing her
eyes away from it, she searched for something that would
identify
its provenance. For a moment there seemed to be nothing,
but then she found it: a small plaque very much like the
one affixed to the door through which she'd come in a moment
ago. It identified the skull only as having been
discovered in a village in the Philippines on a
date two months earlier. Committing the name of the
village to memory, Katharine studied the skull
once more, then moved on.
And stopped in shock as she came to the next room.
For a split second she had the strange sensation that
she'd stepped into a veterinarian's office, since
one entire wall was lined with animal
cages. Except they weren't quite cages at all:
rather, they were boxes made of Plexiglas. She
moved farther into the room, her eyes rapidly taking
in the details of its equipment. The cells-the word
popped into Katharine's mind out of nowhere, but even as
it formed in her head she had the distinct feeling that it was
exactly the right word to describe the plastic
cages- were airtight, with what were apparently
remotely operated systems allowing food and water
to be provided to the animals isolated within each of
them.
Each cage had a ventilating system that kept the
atmosphere within the cells constantly circulating,
and a large computer monitor displayed the composition
of the atmosphere within the confines of the plastic boxes.
In an instant Katharine understood: the tanks in the
equipment room she'd found a few moments ago were
supplying the atmosphere for the boxes.
She moved closer to the wall of cages.
The cells were of varying sizes and contained various
species.
In the smallest were mice, a few of them alone, some
in pairs. In one there was a nursing female, with
half a dozen babies suckling at her teats.
A row of larger cells contained cats and
dogs. They were all caged singly, and most of the cats
were curled on the floors of their prisons, some
licking at their fur, others sleeping.
Or perhaps they had died?
Katharine's gaze shifted to one of the monitors; the
display, a series of letters and numerals, indicated
the composition of the atmosphere within the confines of the
plastic box. She picked out familiar chemical
designations: NH

, CHBLED, CO.
Ammonia.
Methane.
Carbon monoxide.
There were half a dozen other chemical formulae, a
few of which she was familiar with, most of which she was not.
But all of them, she suspected, were equally deadly
gases. Dear God, what was going on here?
Katharine moved closer to one of the cages and rapped
on it sharply. The cat within stirred, then settled
down and appeared to go back to sleep.
All but one of the dogs were awake. Two of them sat
staring at her, but with none of the eagerness of puppies
hoping to be played with. Rather, their eyes seemed oddly
empty, as if they understood they would never be
released from the plastic boxes in which they were
imprisoned. The other three were sprawled out,
apparently looking at nothing at all. With a shudder
of revulsion, Katharine recalled the meaning of the
project's name: canaries in the mines-that's what
these poor animals were! Impulsively, she
reached out, opened one of the
cages, and lifted the puppy inside into her arms,
then quickly closed the cage door against the
foul-smelling fumes that spewed from it.
The puppy, wriggling gratefully, snuggled against
her bosom, and as she stroked its soft fur,
outrage at the experimentation going on in this room
rose inside her. How could anyone
do
something like this? To subject all these innocent
animals to-
Her thoughts were interrupted by a strange wheezing sound
from the puppy in her arms. Then it was wriggling, as if
trying to escape her hold on it, and when she looked
down, it was gazing up at her with frightened eyes, its
mouth gaping as it gasped in a struggle to catch its
breath.
Dying! The puppy was dying in her arms!
She cuddled it close, trying to ease its
fear, but a moment later it was over. The puppy lay
limp in her arms, silent and still. Katharine stared at
it numbly for a moment.
What should she do with it?
And then she remembered where she was and what she was
doing. If someone found her-
Quickly she returned the lifeless puppy to the cage
from which she'd taken it.
She should leave-leave now, before she was discovered. But
there was another room beyond this one, and even as she tried
to bring herself to leave the strange laboratory
complex, she knew she could not. She had to try to find
out exactly what they were doing down here.
How was it possible that any of the caged animals
remained alive, given what they were breathing?
She moved on through a series of laboratories that
were deserted but for a few technicians in white lab
smocks, most of whom seemed to be concentrating on
their work.
She barely paused, and asked no questions, determining
to go unnoticed as long as she possibly could.
And finally she came to the last room.
It was a small chamber. In its center, enclosed in
a thick glass case, was a sphere, perhaps three
feet in diameter, made of a
gray-black substance that could have been either metal or
stone. From the sphere a tube protruded, which curved
around, then went straight down, apparently through the
case and into its base.
On one wall of the room was an instrument panel that
appeared to be monitoring every possible condition within the
case, from temperature and humidity to air
pressure and the presence of trace elements within the
atmosphere itself.
Katharine circled the case, studying it from every
angle, but each aspect of the sphere inside
appeared to be the same as every other.
Her back was to the door when a voice startled her.
"First time you've seen it?"
She whirled around, realizing a second too late
how guilty she must look, then did her best
to recover. "My God! You have no idea how you
startled me!"
"Sorry," the technician replied. Then he
smiled. "I suppose you're pondering the eternal
question?"
"Excuse me?"
was 'What is it?"' was the technician asked.
The question caught Katharine off guard. "That's just what
I was going to ask you," she replied.
Now the technician's expression turned slightly
quizzical. "That's what we're all trying to find
out, isn't it? I thought maybe a new face might
have a new idea."
Katharine floundered for a moment, then composed herself.
"I wish I did," she said. "But I'm afraid
I'm as
puzzled as everyone else. Actually, I was just
looking for Dr. Jameson."
"Not here," the technician replied. "He went up
to the meeting at Hana." Now the last of his smile
disappeared, and his eyes narrowed with a hint of
suspicion. "Why aren't you up there?"
Katharine decided simply to tell the truth. "I
wasn't invited," she said. "And since Dr.
Jameson isn't down here, I suppose I
might as well go back to my office and do something
useful, huh?" Feeling the technician's eyes
watching her every step of the way, Katharine quickly
retraced her steps, again resisting the urge to look
over her shoulder.
But even when she was back in Rob's office, the
feeling that eyes were watching her every movement lingered
on.
In a private conference room at the
Hotel Hana Maui, tucked away at the end of
thirty-five miles of some of the most winding highway
in the world, Takeo Yoshihara faced the seven
members of the Serinus Society who had flown in
over the last thirty-six hours from every continent on the
planet.
"I have good news," he began. "Four of our
latest canaries have not died. One of the two new
subjects in Chicago, along with the newest ones in
Tokyo and Mexico City, seem to be doing
well."
A murmur of excitement rippled through the room, which
Yoshihara silenced with a slightly raised hand.
"We also have a problem. A boy died here on
Maui two days ago, apparently after having been
exposed to our compound."
The excitement in the room turned to consternation.
"And there are three other boys here, all of whom
are-was He hesitated, searching for the right word, then
smiled faintly as he found it. "All of whom are,
shall we say, "faring better" to varying degrees.
Dr. Jameson will tell you about them."
Accompanied by uneasy whispers from the audience,
Stephen Jameson rose to his feet. At the
same time, photographs of Josh
Malani, Jeff Kina, and Michael Sundquist
appeared on a screen hanging on a wall behind him.
"As you know, it was never our intention to carry out any of
our human experimentation so close to our research
headquarters. Be that as it may, at least four boys
on Maui appear to have come in contact with the substance with
which we are experimenting." He glanced up at the
three faces on the screen, then fixed a laser
pointer on the image of Jeff Kina. "This is a
seventeen-year-old male of Polynesian
heritage. He is six feet two inches tall,
and weighs

pounds. He was apprehended in a burning cane
field some thirty-six hours ago, breathing
comfortably in an atmosphere that was heavily
polluted with smoke. He is now in our lab, and
doing well." The pointer moved on to Josh
Malani's image. "This is another
seventeen-year-old boy, five feet eight, and
weighing 135 pounds. Mixed heritage. Less
than twenty-four hours ago, while under our
surveillance, he collapsed in a parking lot near
one of the beaches. He was kept alive by administration
of a mixture of carbon monoxide,
methane, and ammonia, and is also now doing well in
our lab."
"And the third boy?" someone asked from the back of the
room.
Jameson studied the image of Michael
Sundquist for several seconds. "This one is most
interesting," he finally said. "This is a
sixteen-year-old Caucasian of Swedish
descent, and though we didn't specifically choose
him for our project, any more than we chose the other
three locals, he is proving to be one of our most
intriguing subjects. We do not expect complete
success with him, of course, but I think that at such
time as he dies, his autopsy will greatly advance our
understanding of precisely how the substance affects the
human body."
A heavily accented voice spoke from the back of the
room. "And if, by chance, he
doesn't
die?"
Jameson smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
"Believe me, Herr von Schmidt, one way or
another,
all
these boys will die."

"Mrs. Reynolds?" Katharine said when a
woman's voice answered the phone. Katharine,
seated in Rob's office, was staring through the French
doors at the idyllic scene outside: flowers
everywhere, filling the balmy Hawaiian morning with a
rainbow of colors that stood in stark contrast to the
cold, gray fear that had cloaked Katharine in the
half hour since she'd emerged from the
laboratories on the lower level of the research
pavilion's south wing.
The first thing she'd done upon returning to Rob's
office was to locate the village in the
Philippines from which the skull had come. Exactly
as she guessed yesterday, the skull had been
collected from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo. And
if it was, indeed, the skull of a child, it had been
breathing fumes-pollution-from the volcano its entire
life.
Then, from the depths of her pocket, she'd
retrieved the identifying tag she'd found on the
toe of the corpse. The boy's name, neatly typed
on the cardboard tag, was Mark Reynolds.
Along with his dates of birth and death, the label
revealed an address on North Maple
Drive, in Beverly Hills, California. Right
in the middle of metropolitan Los
Angeles-one of the most polluted cities in the
country. But polluted enough to have killed him? She
had to know. First she'd called the hospital where
Mark Reynolds had died, only to be told that
she could be given no information over the phone. Perhaps
if she'd care to make a request in writing?
No, she had
not
cared to make a request in writing. And so,
reluctantly, Katharine dialed the number she'd
found on the card, part of her burning to find answers
to her questions, but another part hating to make this call
to Mark Reynolds's mother, who was listed as his next
of kin. The phone had been answered on the second
ring. Now there was no backing out.
"Elaine Carter Reynolds?" she asked,
repeating the name into the telephone exactly as it was
written on the piece of cardboard.
"Yes," a voice replied, desolation so clear in
the woman's tone that Katharine wanted to hang up.
But she knew she couldn't. "You had a son named
Mark?" she asked.
A silence, then, again, a single word:
"Yes."
Katharine took a deep breath. "Mrs.
Reynolds, my name is Katharine Sundquist.
I need to talk to you about Mark. I know it's going
to be very difficult for you, but I need some information and
I hope you'll be able to give it to me."
What sounded like a stifled sob came through the phone,
but then Elaine Reynolds spoke again, and for the first
time there was a trace of life in her voice. "It
can't be any more difficult than what I've already
been through," the woman replied.
"I don't think there can be anything worse than
having a child die," Katharine said.
"Mark didn't just die, Mrs...." She
faltered, unable to remember the name she'd been
given.
"Sundquist," Katharine said quickly. "But please
call me Katharine."
"Thank you," Elaine Reynolds murmured. Again
she was silent for a moment, and Katharine waited,
sensing that the older woman was working her way up
to something. Finally Elaine Reynolds blurted it
out. "My son committed suicide, Katharine," she
said. "Mark killed himself."
The words stunned Katharine. Killed himself?
"I- I'm sorry-was she stammered. "I thought-was
She fell suddenly silent, having no idea what
to say.
"What did you think, Katharine?" Elaine
Reynolds said, and now there was more than just a faint
hint of interest. When Katharine finally voiced her
idea that Mark's death must somehow have been related
to the polluted air in Los Angeles, a single
bark of bitter laughter erupted from Elaine
Reynolds's throat. "I suppose some people would
call carbon monoxide pollution," she said. Her
voice catching on almost every sentence, and having
to pause twice to regain control over her emotions,
Elaine described to Katharine Sundquist the
scene of her son's suicide. "But they got there
too late," she said. "They gave him oxygen, but
it was too late. He died on the way to the
hospital."
An image of the puppy that had died in her arms a
little while ago-a puppy that suddenly had trouble
breathing the air outside its cage full of
poisonous gases-rose in Katharine's mind.
"Your son died while they were giving him oxygen,
Mrs. Reynolds?" she asked, praying that she'd
heard wrong.
Her voice breaking, Elaine recounted Mark's
struggles in the ambulance. "He fought them," she
finished. "I'm sure he had no idea what he was
doing, but he fought
against the oxygen mask. And there was nothing I could do.
You have no idea how helpless I felt." She
paused, then: "Katharine? What is this about? You still
haven't told me exactly why you called me."
"I'm calling from Hawaii," Katharine began.
"I'm working for a man who's very interested in
pollution-"
"In Honolulu?" Elaine Reynolds
interrupted. "I would have thought the air there would be as
clean as anywhere in the world. Although actually the fog was
pretty bad for a day or two while Mark and I were
on Maui over Christmas."
Katharine froze. "Maui?" she echoed. What was
going on? Could it possibly be only coincidence that
Mark Reynolds had been on Maui a few
months ago? "Mrs. Reynolds-Elaine-what were
you doing on Maui?"
"Just vacationing. Why?"
"Elaine, I'm on Maui, not in Honolulu.
And I've come across something...." She paused, not
wanting to cause Elaine Reynolds any
more pain than she absolutely had to. "Well,
something strange," she finally went on. "It appears
that for some reason your son's lungs are being
studied."
"But how could they?" Elaine asked. "I mean, without
his body, what are they studying?"
Katharine hesitated, but quickly realized she had no
choice but to tell the woman the truth. "His body
is
here, Elaine," she said.
"I'm afraid there's been some mistake,"
Elaine Reynolds said after Katharine's words had
sunk in. "Mark's body was buried right after his
funeral."
Buried? What was she talking about? Was it possible
that she was wrong? That she was somehow talking to
the wrong person? "Mrs. Reynolds," Katharine
said, unconsciously slipping back into the more formal
term of address, "would you mind if I-well, if
I told you what the boy I saw today looked like?"
There was a long pause, but finally Elaine
Reynolds murmured her assent. Katharine
summoned an image of the face she'd seen in the
morgue drawer downstairs, and began describing it
as dispassionately as she could. It was when she
mentioned the cleft in the boy's chin that a soft but
agonized moan came from the woman at the other end
of the line.
"Why?" Elaine whispered a moment later. "Why
would they have taken him out there? And why would they have lied
to me about burying him?"
"I wish I could tell you, Elaine," Katharine
said softly. "But I'm afraid I don't know
any more than you do." Then: "What about when you were out
here? Did anything happen then? I mean anything
unusual?"
"No," Elaine sighed. "It was a wonderful
trip. Except for the dive, of course."
Katharine felt a chill pass over her. "The
dive?" she repeated.
"Mark went out with some other boys, and they had some
trouble with their tanks. Some of the boys had to come up
fast, and I guess it was pretty scary.
Anyway, it scared me enough that I didn't let
Mark go again. And I still keep wondering if that was
what started his breathing problems."
Katharine's chill worsened as she heard the last
two words, and the knot of fear that had been in her
stomach since last night tightened. The night after
he'd gone diving, Michael had had
breathing problems, and even last night-
And then she remembered. Kioki! What about him?
Why had he died? And Jeff Kina. Had he come
home yet? Or had the same thing happened to him that
had happened to Kioki Santoya? But even as the
questions tumbled through her mind, so also did a memory of
Michael's voice: "Aw, come on, Mom. They
don't even know what happened to Kioki!"
"Elaine?" she said, her voice quavering. "What
about the other boys who went on the dive with your son?
Do you remember any of their names? Or where they
might have been from?"
"I don't think I do," Elaine began. "But
maybe-wait! There was a boy named Shane, from
New Jersey, who Mark palled around with a lot after
the dive. Hold on a minute." After what seemed
an endless wait, Elaine came back on the line.
"I found it," she said. "Mark had it written down
on a scrap of paper in his wallet. His name is
Shane Shelby and he lives in Trenton, New
Jersey." As Elaine read her the address and
phone number, Katharine scribbled it down on the
back of the tag she'd taken from Mark Reynolds's
body. "Let me know if you find anything out, will
you?" Elaine asked.
"I will," Katharine promised. "Of course I
will."
Immediately, she dialed the area code and number
Elaine Reynolds had given her. On the fourth
ring a man's voice answered.
"Keith Shelby."
Katharine struggled to keep her voice from breaking as
she asked her question. "Mr. Shelby, my name is
Dr. Katharine Sundquist. Are you the father of a
boy named Shane?"
A long silence echoed hollowly from the receiver, and for a
moment Katharine was afraid the man had hung up.
But then Shelby spoke again, his voice betraying
uncertainty. "Who did you say this is?"
Once again Katharine identified herself. "I know it
sounds strange, Mr. Shelby, but I have to know if
your son is all right."
There was another long silence-far longer than the
last-and Katharine had a terrible premonition about
what he was going to say. Finally, she said it herself.
"He's not all right, is he, Mr. Shelby?"
"He's dead, Dr. Sundquist," Keith
Shelby said, his tone one of utter defeat. "It was
his lungs. They never found out exactly what it
was. The best guess was that it was some new
kind of virus or something. I don't know anything
at all about things like that, but they tell me those things
mutate all the time. We thought maybe he picked
it up on the flight back from Maui. After that, he
was never really very well."
When the call was finally over, Katharine sat
numbly, staring out the window.
What on earth was going on?
Was Shane Shelby's body hidden away somewhere on
the estate, too?
For several long minutes Katharine sat gazing out the
window into the garden, but she saw nothing. Her mind was
starting to feel fogged, partly with the exhaustion of the last
two nearly sleepless nights, but just as much with
strange bits and pieces of information that floated just
out of her grasp, parts of a single puzzle that she
couldn't quite fit together.
Think! she told herself. The answers are here. Find
them!
Pushing her fear and exhaustion away, Katharine
went to work.
In the conference room at the Hotel Hana Maui,
Takeo Yoshihara felt the cellular phone in his
jacket pocket vibrate. Stepping out into the
corridor, he flipped the phone open and
held it to his ear. "Yes?" He listened for a
moment, then spoke again: "Exactly whom did
Dr. Sundquist call?" he asked the caller who
had just interrupted his meeting with his associates in the
Serinus Project.
As he broke the connection several seconds later
and returned to the conference room, Takeo Yoshihara
was already considering the most efficient way to deal with
Katharine Sundquist. And her son.
From the moment he woke up that morning, Michael
hadn't felt right. His chest felt tight, and his
whole body hurt, but he didn't want to complain
to his mother, who would hustle him back to Dr.
Jameson. So instead of saying anything, he'd
taken the bus to school, where the first thing he'd done was
hunt for Josh Malani.
Josh was nowhere to be found. Finally, Michael
called his house. His father-sounding as if he were still
sleeping off a binge from the night before-growled that Josh
wasn't home, but when Michael asked if he'd
been home at all last night, Sam Malani
only mumbled something about not caring where the hell Josh
was and hung up. Through the rest of the morning, Michael
grew more and more worried about Josh, and his chest kept
getting worse as well.
During third period, when he was starting to wonder if
maybe he was going to have an asthma attack, he'd
barely been able to breathe. Trying to work the tightness out
in gym class didn't do any good.
At lunchtime Rick Pieper tried to convince him
to see
the school nurse, but Michael knew what would
happen if he did-the nurse would call his mother; his
mother would come pick him up and haul him to Dr.
Jameson, who would start jabbing needles in him and
sticking things down his throat.
And he'd feel worse than he already did.
After lunch he barely made it through his last two
classes. Fortunately, the windows of both rooms
were wide open, and in both classes he sat close
to them, struggling to suck as much of the fresh air into his
aching lungs as he could.
By the time the last bell rang, his chest was still hurting
and he was starting to feel kind of weak. Dizzy.
Maybe he should just skip track practice and go
home.
He rejected the thought in an instant, as old
memories rose in his mind. There had been times
back in New York a couple of years ago when
the asthma was so bad he'd had to catch a
taxi just to get the five blocks from school to their
apartment. Well, he'd worked for too long to get
past that to let it start screwing up his life again.
He'd grit his teeth, ignore the pain and the
weakness, and break through it on the track. He'd start
running, and keep going until the pain either went
away or he couldn't feel it anymore.
As the clanging of the bell faded away, Michael
packed his books into his bag and joined the throng of
students pushing their way out the door. Emerging onto
the covered walkway that edged the building, he had
to pause to catch his breath before trusting himself even
to make it to the locker room next to the gym.
Pulling open the door, he stepped into the humid
room. The air was redolent with the mingled odors of
perspiration, soap, disinfectant, and half a dozen
other chemicals.
Michael went to his locker, opened it, and,
stripping naked, pulled on the gym clothes that were still
damp from his fourth-period workout. Then he fished
around for a pair of clean socks, unwilling
to subject his feet to the stinking pair he'd used
earlier in the day.
As he put on his track clothes, he began
to feel a little better, and flushed with pride
for resisting the urge to skip practice. Finished
dressing, he headed toward the rest room.
It was as he was standing at the urinal that he became
aware of a new odor drifting into his nostrils.
Instinctively, Michael expanded his chest, drawing
it deep into his lungs. The pungency of the scent
almost made him dizzy, but the constriction in his chest
immediately eased and he felt some of the fatigue leave
his body.
Glancing around, Michael searched for the source of the
odor, but all he saw was the closet in which Josh
Malani had found the bottle of ammonia
yesterday. The door was slightly ajar. Finished at
the urinal, Michael adjusted his shorts and pulled
at the lever that flushed the porcelain basin. He
moved to the sinks, which stood between the urinals and the
closet, and the scent grew stronger. Unable to contain
his curiosity, he approached the closet and pulled
the door wide open.
The cleaning supplies were lined up on the shelf, just
as they'd been yesterday. There were nearly a dozen
different containers, holding chemicals ranging from
window cleaner to scrubbing powder, from toilet cleaners
to solvents powerful enough to remove practically anything
from the school's walls, be they painted,
tiled, or bare concrete. But there was nothing that could
account for the peculiar odor he'd been breathing for the
last couple of minutes.
His eyes fell on the ammonia bottle that Josh
had been sniffing. Almost without thinking, he reached out,
picked it up, unscrewed its cap, and sniffed at
it.
The odor grew stronger, and he felt a heat
spread through his body.
Frowning, Michael studied the label. Something had
replaced the familiar acrid ammonia odor he
would ordinarily have recognized.
All the label contained was the usual list of warnings
against using the product in an enclosed area, inhaling
its fumes, or ingesting it.
Picking up the bottle's cap to screw it back
on, he hesitated. His frown deepening, Michael
held the bottle to his nose and took another
sniff, breathing more deeply this time. The warmth
spread through him, setting his whole body tingling.
Was this what Josh had felt yesterday? Glancing
around the rest room as furtively as if he were about
to shoot heroin into his veins, Michael sucked the
fumes in again, and then yet again. With each breath he
felt more strength surge into his body, and the
last of the fatigue and pain he'd been feeling all
day evaporated. He drew a dozen more breaths, and
was still holding the bottle in his hand when the rest room
door slammed open.
"Jesus! It stinks in here!"
Quickly putting the cap back on the bottle,
Michael stepped out of the closet to find himself facing
the janitor. "Someone left the cap off the
ammonia bottle," he said.
"Musta been Joe," the janitor said, so quickly that
Michael was sure that Joe-whoever he was-got the
blame for anything that went wrong in the maintenance
department. "Christ! How can you stand to even be in here?"
Obviously neither expecting nor wanting an answer
to
his question, the janitor propped the door open to let the
fumes out of the rest room and started pulling
supplies out of the closet.
"See you later," Michael offered as he walked
back out into the locker room. The janitor barely
grunted a reply.
Ten minutes later, the wondrous effects of the
ammonia fumes still infusing his body with a strength
he'd never felt before, Michael ran his first timed
one-hundred-meter sprint of the afternoon.
He beat his own best time by nearly three-fifths of a
second, and the school record by thirty-eight
hundredths.

The French doors to the garden outside Rob's
office were wide open, but Katharine felt as if the
walls were closing in around her. All day-ever since
she'd arrived at the estate's gate that
morning-she'd been unable to rid herself of the feeling of
being watched. Indeed, the creepy sense that unseen
eyes were following her every movement had grown stronger
with each hour that passed, until finally she'd found
herself suspecting that even the gardener, who appeared after
lunch with a rake and a broom and proceeded to remove
every fallen leaf and blossom from every square inch of
garden she could see, was there solely to spy on her.
That she had never once been able to catch him even
looking at her, let alone snapping pictures of
her, or aiming something that could be an amplifying
microphone in her direction, had done nothing
to dissuade her. Not that she had any idea what an
amplifying microphone would look like, even if she
tripped over one. She had been unable to bring herself
to make any more phone calls for fear that the instrument
was bugged, and before lunch, she had actually
unscrewed the handset of Rob's phone, examining the
inner parts for something that might be a tiny extra
microphone, but had given that up, too.
The day had turned into an eternity, and if she
hadn't also convinced herself that leaving early would be
considered suspect, she would have fled right after talking
to Elaine Reynolds and Keith Shelby.
Instead, she had stayed in Rob's office, her
paranoia in full bloom, attempting to appear
to whoever might be watching her as if she were proceeding
with her normal work, establishing an identification
for the skeleton from the site near the fumarole. But
what she had actually been thinking about for the last three
hours was what she'd seen in the Serinus Project
laboratory.
And what Rob had said yesterday about canaries being
lowered into mine shafts. The more she thought about it, the more
certain she had become that the animals in the cages
were precisely that. They were being used to test the
levels of toxins that oxygen-breathing creatures could
withstand in the atmosphere.
But there was a question that kept haunting her:
Given what they were breathing, and the levels at which they
were breathing it, how were any of the animals surviving
at all?
In mid-afternoon she'd gone onto the Internet, where
she spent some time hunting for information about the effects
on animals of the various chemicals being
circulated through the Plexiglas boxes. The
conclusions she came to were inescapable: given the
levels of poisonous gases she'd seen on the
gauges, every one of the animals should have been dead.
But they weren't.
The only logical conclusion, then, was that the Serinus
Project was far more than simply a study of the
effects of pollution on various life-forms.
There must be experiments going on, as well.
Experiments in which the animals were being treated to make
them resistant to pollutants in the atmosphere.
Her thoughts kept returning to the strange object
she'd seen in the last room she explored, and the odd
thing the technician had said: "I thought maybe a
new face might have a new idea."
It hadn't taken her long to figure out that the
technicians in the lab knew only as much as they
needed to know in order to do their jobs, and obviously
Yoshihara had decided they did not need to know the
precise nature of the spherical object or its
contents. Yet he'd made no attempt to conceal the
sphere.
Their job was to tend the animals, and, she
suspected, administer doses to them of whatever
substance was being obtained from the tube protruding from the
sphere.
A gas? Possibly. Both the object's
spherical form and its heavy-looking metallic
composition seemed designed to withstand tremendous
pressures. Such as those that would emanate from a
liquefied gas.
Though it seemed almost impossible to her, the logical
conclusion appeared to be that whatever was being given to the
animals was intended to counteract the effects of the
poisonous gases they were breathing. And, since some of
them were still living, it must be working, at least to some
extent.
But if the gaseous contents of the sphere could change the
metabolism of the animals, enabling them to survive
in a poisonous atmosphere, what might the side
effects be?
She stared at the strange skeleton she'd
unearthed. Could it be some kind of anthropoid that had
been altered right here in Takeo Yoshihara's
research pavilion, and simply been buried after it
died?
But as she gazed at the skeleton, noting
yet again that it was far more humanoid than
anthropoid, and remembered Mark Reynolds's
body lying in the drawer downstairs, and the protected
files on the computer, an insidious idea began
to form:
Was it possible that it wasn't simply animal
experiments that were protected in the files of the
Serinus directory?
What if the research was being carried out on people as
well?
What if Mark Reynolds's body hadn't been
brought to Maui because he had died from the effects of
prolonged inhalation of carbon monoxide?
Her mind raced. More and more of the pieces of the puzzle
began to fall into place:
If you wanted to administer a gas to someone, how could
it be done?
Tanks, of course.
There was certainly no reason that air tanks couldn't
be filled with something other than air, and both Mark
Reynolds and Shane Shelby had been scuba
diving when they'd been on Maui.
What if Mark Reynolds and Shane Shelby
weren't the only ones?
The files! The damned protected files
that she had no way of getting into! But surely she
knew someone-
Phil Ho well!
He was on the computer all the time!
She reached for the phone to call him, but instantly
changed her mind as paranoid thoughts of cameras and
hidden microphones rose up, stopping her.
Except, she thought, if there was even a scintilla
of validity to the horrifying theory that had taken
shape in her mind, then there was nothing paranoid about
her fears at all.
She glanced at the clock-nearly four.
A perfectly reasonable time to leave, and plenty of
time to get to Phil Howell's office in Kihei.
If he weren't there, surely she'd be able to find
him at the Computer Center across the street. She
prepared to leave Rob's office, doing her best
to appear as if nothing were amiss.
Every move she made seemed self-consciously
over-casual, and in her own mind she gave herself
away a dozen times. When she wrote a carefully
worded note to Rob-"Meet me at Phil's
office. I've had an idea"-she could almost feel
a camera peering over her shoulder, not merely reading
the words, but translating their meaning as
well. But when she finally passed through the lobby a
few moments later, the guard only nodded to her,
barely looking up from his magazine.
She kept the car at exactly the speed limit as
she started toward Kahului, and was about to pass the
shortcut to Makawao when she thought once more of
Michael.
For the last hour, since she began to consider the
possibility that Mark Reynolds and Shane
Shelby had inhaled something other than air from their
scuba tanks, she'd been trying not to think about the
possibility that the same thing could have happened
to Michael.
And one of the boys with whom he'd gone diving was already
dead!
She told herself that she was letting her paranoia get
out of control, that Kioki Santoya's death was just a
terrible, but meaningless, coincidence. But as she came
to the turnoff to Makawao, she knew she had no
choice. Michael had track practice this afternoon.
He should still be out on the field. If he was there, she
would continue on to Kihei. If he wasn't...
Her skin crawled and her heart pounded as she tried
to
reject even the thought that what might be
happening to Michael was what had already struck Mark
Reynolds and Shane Shelby.
As the school came into view, she slowed the
Explorer, pulling to a stop as close to the track
as she could get. There were a dozen boys standing along
the track on the opposite side. For a moment
Katharine couldn't make out Michael at all. Then
she saw him, crouched low, his feet braced against a
pair of starting blocks. A man she assumed must
be the coach was holding his hand high in the air, and then,
as the man's hand dropped, Michael took off,
pushing off the blocks and sprinting down the track, the
other boys cheering him on.
As she watched him run the hundred meters,
Katharine felt at least part of her fear finally begin
to diminish.
No matter what had happened-no matter what
might have been done to Mark Reynolds and Shane
Shelby and Kioki Santoya, Michael was
safe.
In fact, it looked to her as if he was in better
condition right now than he'd ever been in his life.
As she pulled away from the curb she barely
noticed the dusty sedan that had been parked ahead of
her.
She certainly didn't notice that the man sitting
behind its steering wheel had also been watching Michael.
Watching him even more carefully than she.
Michael released the breath he had unconsciously
been holding as he watched his mother's car pull away
from the curb and head toward the Haleakala Highway.
At least she hadn't gotten out of the car-that would have
been all he needed! It had made him
self-conscious enough when the rest of the team stopped
practicing and lined up along the track to watch him
run, but if his
mother had actually gotten out of the car and come over
to watch, too ...
Just the thought of it made him flush with embarrassment.
On the other hand, if she'd stayed around and watched,
then at least he'd have had a chance of convincing her he
was telling the truth when he told her about the
records he'd set today.
Though the times were unofficial, he'd broken the
school records in the fifty-, hundred-, and
two-hundred-meter sprints, and though he'd had to go
inside and breathe a little more ammonia before the last
run, he still felt really good. As his mother's car
disappeared around a bend, he turned his full
attention back to the track.
Even after having beaten every sprinting record for the
school, he still felt totally terrific. So
terrific, in fact, that maybe he'd just try some
of the longer runs.
He set out down the straightaway, pacing himself
carefully to make it all the way around the
quarter-mile loop of the track. Settling into a
comfortable jog, he wasn't even breathing hard as he
turned into the first curve. He held his pace steady
until he came into the long straightaway on the
opposite side of the field from the bleachers, but then
put on some speed as he started down the
backstretch.
A month ago-even a week ago-he would be feeling
it by now. His breath would be getting shallow, and his
legs starting to burn, and by the time he got to the far
end, he'd have to slow down to a walk, if he
didn't collapse onto the ground, gasping and
panting until his breath finally returned to normal.
Today, though, there was no pain in his legs and his breathing
was still regular,
though he was finally starting to feel the effects of the
stress he was putting his body under.
Mostly it was just the beginning of a slight heaviness in his
chest. It didn't hurt, really. It was just
a feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Moving into the turn, he stepped up the pace a little
more; whatever was going on in his chest would go away if
he just ignored it. Shifting from the jog into a fast
trot, he came out onto the stretch in front of the
empty grandstands. As his gaze swept across the bank
of empty seats, Michael imagined them filled with
cheering people, and once again he upped his pace, the fast
trot giving way to a lope that was easier on his
legs but required more work by his lungs.
He made it around the second lap, and finally he was
starting to feel a little heat in his legs. And his chest was
hurting, too, but it wasn't the same as the
asthmatic agony he'd grown up with.
This felt like the healthy pain of exertion, and he was
sure that if he didn't give in to it-if he just
kept his pace steady, or even increased it a
little-he might break right through the pain and, for the first time,
experience the high he'd heard long-distance runners
talk about since he was a little kid, but which he had
never felt himself. As he finished the third lap, his
coach fell in beside him.
"What's going on, Sundquist? You said you couldn't
do distances."
Michael flashed the coach a quick grin.
"Just feel like running, that's all."
Peters shot him a quizzical look. "You been
taking something?"
Michael felt an instant stab of guilt. What
should he
say? Should he lie? But ammonia wasn't a
drug! It was nothing but cleaning fluid.
All the warnings he'd read on the label flashed
through his mind. But if it was really as poisonous as the
label had claimed, how come he was still feeling so
good?
Except that suddenly he wasn't feeling so good.
The breakthrough he'd been expecting-the surge of
pheromones that he'd been sure would wash the pain from
his chest, giving him a second wind that would send him
sprinting around the last quarter of the mile run he'd
set out to do-hadn't come.
Instead, the pain in his chest was worse, and now the
burning in his legs was starting to feel like fire.
The ammonia! That was it!
It had to be!
The pain was increasing by the second now, and he felt
himself falter.
Keep going. If you can just keep going, you can get
through it!
The coach, still keeping pace beside him, spoke again.
"What's going on, Sundquist? You don't look
so good."
So the pain was starting to show in his face now. If he
got caught-if the coach found out what he'd been
doing in the cleaning closet-he'd get kicked off the
team for sure!
Run,
he told himself.
Just keep on running. It'll be okay!
But as he turned into the curve leading to the
backstretch, his stride was way off and he could feel
himself losing the pace.
His breath was getting ragged, too, and now every time he
expanded his lungs, it felt as if knives were
thrusting into his chest.
Stumbling, he lost his pace completely, regained
it for
a couple of steps, then stumbled again. This time, knowing
he was going to fall, he veered off onto the grass
of the football field, and finally collapsed onto
the ground.
"Sundquist? Sundquist!" Jack Peters was
crouching beside him now. Michael was lying on his back,
and as he stared up into the sky, he saw it
darken, lights darting around the edges of his vision, as
though he was about to black out.
Or die.
No! He couldn't be dying. Not now! Not after he'd
just been feeling so good, and running better than he'd
ever run in his life!
He had to get back on his feet, keep going,
get through it. He rolled over, tried to pull himself
into a crouch, and flopped back onto the ground. Then
he felt the coach's hands on his shoulders, turning
him back over.
"Just lie there," he heard the coach say. "What
is it, Sundquist? What happened?"
Darkness was closing in on him now, and no matter how
hard he tried to catch his breath, he couldn't seem
to get any air.
Then he felt another pair of hands on him and
heard another voice.
Rick Pieper's voice.
"Michael? Michael, what's wrong? What is
it?"
Feeling the strength ebbing from his body, Michael
struggled to form a word. His lips worked, but as the
seconds ticked by, no sound came out.
Rick Pieper looked up at the coach,
his eyes filled with terror. Kioki Santoya was
already dead, and Jeff Kina and Josh Malani had
both disappeared. And now Michael looked like he was
dying right in front of his eyes. "Do
something!" he begged. "For God's sake, can't you do
something?"
The coach leaned down. "What is it?" he demanded,
speaking directly into Michael's ear. "What are
you trying to say?"
Michael's tongue felt thick, but he struggled
hard, and in a whisper he managed to stammer out a
single word.
"A-Ammonia-was
Exhausted by the effort it took to utter the word, he
gave up his struggles and concentrated what little energy
he had left on the normally simple task of
breathing.
A task that was now nearly impossible.
Takeo Yoshihara and Stephen Jameson were in the
helicopter when the call came through that Michael
Sundquist had collapsed on the field at
Bailey High School.
"Where are we?" Yoshihara demanded, speaking into the
headset that allowed him to communicate with the pilot
despite the thundering racket of the rotor
spinning overhead.
"We can make it there in five minutes," the pilot
responded.
"Do it," Yoshihara ordered. Then he turned his
attention to Stephen Jameson. "Will he make it?"
"If we get there before the ambulance does,"
Jameson replied. "But if they give him the
same treatment they gave the boy from Los
Angeles, they'll kill him."
"Then speak to the rescue crew," Yoshihara
ordered. "Tell them you are the boy's doctor and that
they are to do nothing until you arrive."
The pilot's voice came over the headsets.
"We can't do that. We don't have the same
frequencies the ambulances use. And speak of the
devil-take a look!" He was
pointing downward and slightly off to the right through the
helicopter's Plexiglas bubble. Speeding along
the road below them was an ambulance; even from here they
could see its lights flashing.
"Faster," Takeo Yoshihara ordered. Though he
didn't raise his voice a single decibel, there
was a note of total authority in the command that
galvanized the pilot.
Tipping the chopper forward, he increased the
speed of the rotor, andwitha lurch that brought a sickening
bile into Stephen Jameson's throat, though
Takeo Yoshihara seemed not to notice the motion,
the aircraft shot ahead.
They reached the school thirty seconds before the
ambulance. By the time the medics appeared with a
stretcher, Stephen Jameson was in full control.
Obeying the doctor's orders without hesitation, the
paramedics strapped Michael onto a stretcher and
loaded him into the helicopter.
"Maui Memorial?" the pilot asked, already
revving the engine in preparation for lifting off.
Takeo Yoshihara shook his head. "Home."
The pilot, like the ambulance crew, obeyed his
orders without a single question.

Phil Howell's right shoulder felt as if it were on
fire, his eyes were gritty, and the images on the
computer screen he'd been staring at through most of last
night and all of today were blurring in front of him.
But finally it was all coming together.
It had begun late yesterday afternoon, when he'd forced
himself to admit that there was no way he could have the
supercomputer compare the string of strange
nonmelodic tones the
radio-telescopes had been picking up to every file
in every computer in the world. Finally he'd had the computer
assign letters to the tones, choosing the four notes that
came closest to matching the tones: A, B-flat,
D-sharp, and G. Even as he'd done it, he was
skeptical that it would lead anywhere: after all, there were
no four-note musical scales that he knew of,
and certainly no reason to think that a civilization-if
there really was one-fifteen million light-years
away would have any sense of earthly music anyway.
It was just that he hadn't been able to think of anything
else to do. But then, as the notes had streamed across the
screen, something had begun rising out of the fog swirling
in his mind. At last he'd punched the Pause key
at the top right of his keyboard and sat gazing at the
screen.
Nothing more than a string of the four notes, one
following another randomly, as completely free of a
recognizable pattern as the sound-now emanating" from
the terminal's speaker-was free of a repeated
melody.
Yet something about it looked oddly familiar. Then it
came to him. Opening a new window on the monitor,
he searched the web until he found a site that
displayed a certain kind of code.
Genetic code.
A moment later Phil's eyes fixed on a long
sequence of code. Not presented as rungs on the
double-helix of chromosomal structure as it
usually was, the code had simply been typed out in
sequence, each of the nitrogenous bases-adenine,
guanine, cytosine, and thymine-reduced to single
letters.
AeaGeaCeaandT.
His heart began to beat rapidly as his eyes went
to the other screen, displaying the signal from deep in
space.
A, B-flat, D-sharp, and G.
Substitute C and T for B-flat and
D-sharp, and-
comand it was so obvious.
He thought of the rocket NASA had sent out into deep
space years ago, bearing a plaque with simple
stick figures of a man and a woman, and some
mathematical symbols.
But if you really wanted to communicate with another
life-form-a life-form similar enough to yours so that your
two races might have some slight hope of
communicating-what better symbol to send out than an
exact depiction of the sort of being you were?
Particularly when the very definition of your being could be
conveyed in a simple code of four symbols,
issued in a specific sequence?
Surely any culture that found such a signal, and
was far
enough advanced to recognize it, would also have had
to develop in a way so similar as to make
communication between the two species not only possible,
but comprehensible as well.
Phil's eyes shifted back and forth between the two
windows on the screen. The more he stared at it, the more
certain he became.
He was right. He had to be!
The signal wasn't music.
It was code.
DNA code.
A full set of blueprints for a species.
His mind had begun racing then. First he'd have to convert
the signal from the notation he'd assigned into genetic
notation. That was a simple matter of substitution.
But which notes to substitute for what protein? It was
purely coincidence that two of the notes from the
signal happened to correspond to two of the letters that
human beings use to symbolize the substances that
comprise DNA. He hadn't wanted
to try to calculate the odds that an alien race would
not only have come up with the same musical scale that was
native only to certain parts of planet Earth, but
would also have assigned the same symbols to the
proteins that dictated their own anatomic
structure, whatever it might be.
By ten o'clock he'd given up and called a
mathematician at the university who had been able
to come up with a simple program to construct an
entire directory of new files. Each file
would differ only in the notes for which the letters A,
C, T, and G were substituted. In all, there
would be twenty-four files representing every possible
combination of substitutions.
Then the supercomputer could begin comparing each
of those twenty-four files to every file containing DNA
data on every computer within its reach.
Even the mathematician had been unwilling
to venture a guess as to how long it would take.
Though Phil was nearly ready to pass out from
exhaustion, he had been sitting in front of the
computer most of last night and all day today, unable
to tear himself away for more than a few minutes at a
time for fear of missing the moment when a match was
made.
If a
match was going to be made. The mathematician had
told him a match was statistically so improbable as
to be virtually impossible. "But that's not to say you
won't find something
similar,"
his friend had gone on, confusing the issue even further.
"In fact, I'd be surprised if you didn't.
After all, if space is truly infinite, then
somewhere there has to be an exact match. In fact,
there has to be an infinite number of exact
matches. But of course the likelihood of your
finding one would be one in-what? An infinity of
infinities?"
All day long Phil Howell watched the letters
stream by, and he was no closer to the answer he was
looking for than when he'd started.
But he'd find it. If it was there, he'd find it.
All the way from Makawao to Kihei, Katharine
rehearsed what she was going to say to Phil Howell,
and in her own mind it sounded perfectly reasoned,
perfectly logical.
And utterly insane!
Takeo Yoshihara was one of the most respected men
on Maui. Why should Phil Howell-or
anyone else- believe her?
If only Rob were with her!
What if he didn't find her note? What if
someone else found it, and figured out what it meant,
and-
Stop!
She spoke the word so sharply to herself that she
reflexively stamped on the brake pedal,
eliciting an instant and angry response from the car
behind her.
Paranoia,
she reminded herself as she got the car back under
control, moved into the left lane of the Piilani
Highway, and turned up Lipoa Street.
It was just an innocent note!
And if Rob didn't get there, she'd just have
to convince Phil by herself that she wasn't crazy.
But when she reached Howell's office, he wasn't
there. She felt a moment of desperation as she thought of
how far she was from the top of the mountain, but then the
receptionist told her he hadn't gone up
Haleakala to work with the telescope. "He's right
across the street at the Computer Center."
Relief flooded through Katharine, and she hurried out
of the building. Just as she was crossing the
street, a horn honked and she heard Rob
Silver call out.
"Kath, what's going on? I found your note and-was
She turned around, and he saw the look on her
face. "Katharine, what's wrong? What is it?"
A moment later he was out of the car, his arms around her.
She let her head rest against his chest a moment, then
took a deep breath, trying to remember the words
she'd so carefully rehearsed, and failing utterly.
Instead she blurted, "Rob, something horrible is
going on, and we have to convince Phil Howell to help
us find out exactly how bad it is."
For the next ten minutes she talked steadily, trying
to separate what she knew from what she only
suspected; trying to knit the fragmentary pieces
of the story into a coherent structure. But even as she
talked, she could see
the doubt in Rob's eyes. "You don't believe
any of it, do you?" she asked when she was finally done.
Rob took a deep breath. "It's not that I
don't believe you, Kath," he said carefully.
"It's just that so much of what you say is-well, it's
supposition."
"I know what I saw in the lab, Rob,"
Katharine said, her voice taking on an
edge.
"I'm not questioning what you saw," Rob went on
quickly. "But the conclusions you've come to-I mean,
what you're implying about Takeo Yoshihara-was
"That he could be experimenting on human beings?"
Katharine broke in. "Why is that such a
difficult concept to accept? There have always been people
willing to experiment on other people. And maybe I'm
wrong. God, you have no idea how badly I want
to be wrong. But I have to know, Rob. I have to know
exactly what's going on down there, and I can't do
it by myself. And I'm sure it's all in that damned
Serinus directory that we can't break into! So you
have to help me convince Phil to hack into it, or-was
Katharine's voice broke as all her pent-up
fear crashed over her like a great wave bearing down,
crushing her beneath its weight. Her eyes welled with
tears and her body began to tremble. For a moment she
felt as if her legs were going to give way beneath her
and she was going to collapse, but then Rob's arms were
around her once again.
"It's all right, Kath," he whispered in her ear,
his fingers gently stroking her hair. "It's all
right. Of course I'll help you. Just don't
worry anymore, all right?"
Katharine's arms went around him and she held him
tight. "I'll try," she breathed. "But I've
been so frightened that something terrible is going to happen
to Michael-was
Rob pulled her closer. "It won't," he told
her. "I promise you. Nothing bad will happen
to Michael."
Katharine listened to the words and tried to cling to them as
she was clinging to Rob himself, but as they started across the
road to the Computer Center and she struggled to put her
faith in what he'd said, another voice was speaking
to her.
That voice was telling her that despite what Rob was
saying, and despite the clear evidence of
Michael's well-being, which she'd witnessed at the
school only an hour earlier, it might already be far
too late.
Phil Howell was still staring at the screen when he
slowly became aware that he was no longer alone.
When he looked up and saw Katharine's ashen
complexion and the worry in Rob's eyes, he knew
something had gone wrong.
"We need your help, Phil," Rob said
quietly. "And we need it now."
Phil frowned, his eyes returning to the
screen. If a match was found and he didn't see
it-
"Please?" Katharine begged. "I'm afraid-was
Her quavering voice was enough to convince Phil that she was
truly frightened.
Certain that whatever Katharine and Rob wanted of him
involved the computer, he opened yet another new
window on his monitor.
The signal was already fifteen million years old.
It could wait a little longer.
Katharine, clearly, could not.
A tiny point of light glimmered faintly in the
darkness, so dim that at first Michael was barely
aware of it. As it slowly began to brighten, he found
himself fastening onto it as the watchman on a ship
might fasten on a beacon
signaling safe shelter from a storm. He
concentrated on the glimmer of light, willing it
to grow larger, burn brighter, and wash away the darkness
that had enveloped him.
The empty silence that had embraced him along with the
darkness was also starting to give way. At first all he
could hear was what sounded like a distant droning coming from
some unidentifiable source. But as the light expanded
and the blackness began to gray, the sound grew
louder, and finally he could distinguish a variation in it.
Whupwhupwhupwhup.
It was a sound he'd heard before, a sound he should be
able to identify in an instant. But dark tendrils were
still wrapped around his mind, confusing him, and it wasn't
until the sound became loud enough to frighten him that he
finally recognized it.
A helicopter!
It grew louder and louder, but he couldn't see
anything at all, for the blackness had now been washed
away by a brilliance that blinded him as completely as
the total night of a few moments before.
The roar of the helicopter's blades was deafening now.
He knew he had only another second or two
before those blades would surely crush him.
Run!
He had to get up and run!
But his entire body felt leaden. He could barely
flex his muscles.
He tried to breathe, but his lungs hurt, and there was
something over his face.
Was that why he couldn't see?
He tried to twist his head away, and then, over the
roar of the helicopter's rotor, he heard something
else.
A voice.
"Don't, Michael. Don't try to move. Just
relax."
He knew the voice, but he couldn't quite place it.
Dimly, he began to remember fragments of the last
few minutes before the terrible blackness had closed
around him.
He'd been running. And running better than ever.
Running better because-
Ammonia!
He'd been breathing ammonia, and the coach had been
asking him-
But this voice wasn't Coach Peters's. It was
someone else, someone who-
Dr. Jameson!
That was it. When he'd gotten sick and passed out,
they must have called Dr. Jameson.
The thing on his face was an oxygen mask, and they were
taking him to the hospital.
No! He hated the hospital-from the very beginning, when
the asthma had seized him in its grip for the first time and
his mother had rushed him to the emergency room, he had
hated everything about the hospital.
Not just the smell and the sickly green paint and the
terrible food. The worst was the way they'd
treated him, sticking needles in him, shoving pills
in his mouth, doctors and nurses, all of whom he
had learned to distrust, talking about him like he wasn't
even there. And there was nothing wrong with him today-not
really. He had fainted, that was all. He could
tell, because he was already feeling a lot better, and
when he'd had asthma attacks, the oxygen they'd
given him had barely helped. But now the pain in his
chest was almost gone, and it wasn't hard to breathe! If
he could just get the mask off his face and tell them-
He struggled harder, and for the first time realized why
he couldn't move his arms or legs: they were strapped
down, immobilized.
He twisted his neck, trying to struggle free of the
mask, and realized with astonishment what the blinding
light was.
The sun, shining down from out of a blue sky through-
The bubblelike windshield of a helicopter! He
could see the blur of the propeller spinning overhead,
and feel the swaying of the machine as it hurtled through the
sky.
"It's all right, Michael!" He could make out a
tinny quality to Dr. Jameson's voice, and
realized he was wearing a headset, as well as an
oxygen mask. "If you can understand my
voice, nod your head. Not hard, just a little."
Without thinking, Michael nodded.
"All right. Now, someone back at the school said
something about ammonia. Did you drink it?"
Michael froze for an instant, then shook his head.
"Then you breathed it."
Not a question. A statement. But how did Jameson
know?
"It's all right, Michael," Jameson told
him. "We know what's wrong. Just relax. You're
going to be all right."
Again Michael struggled to speak, but couldn't find the
strength. Then he heard Jameson's voice again,
urging him to relax, not to fight against the straps that
held him to the stretcher or the mask that covered his
face. "Relax," Jameson repeated, his voice
taking on an almost hypnotic quality. "Just
relax, Michael. You're not going to die. Do you
hear me? You're not going to die."
Concentrating on the voice, Michael felt himself
begin to drift back into the darkness, and the steady whupping
of the propeller began to fade. But as he drifted
back into unconsciousness, he heard another
voice.
A voice he didn't recognize.
"Why do you say he isn't going to die, Stephen?
Why should he be different from all the others?"
"I am a doctor, sir," he heard Jameson
reply. "I believe in comforting my patients, even
if it means lying to them."
The words rang and echoed in Michael's mind. He
wanted to cry out against them, to struggle one more time against
the bonds that held him and the mask that was pressed
to his face. But his strength was gone.
He let himself sink back into the darkness.

It was edging toward six o'clock. Katharine Sundquist
and Rob Silver were still in the Computer Center, Rob
watching patiently as Phil Howell worked, while
Katharine paced, her frustration ballooning with every
minute that passed. To her it seemed the computer itself
had almost become an enemy. Her eyes hurt from
having stared at the monitor for so long. "Now do you
believe me?" she sighed. While one of the windows
displayed on the monitor in front of them was filled
with the unending stream of random combinations of the letters A,
C, G, and T, another window-the one in which
Phil Howell had been working for almost an hour-was
flashing the same infuriating message that had been the
result of everything the astronomer had tried
so far:
  Password Incorrect. Please Enter
Password:!
The vertical line of the cursor blinked tauntingly
just to the right of the colon on the second line of the
message, as if daring them to try one more time to solve
the puzzle of the elusive password that would allow them
access to the Serinus directory.
"Well, I certainly believe your boss
doesn't want us getting into that directory,"
Howell agreed. "But I still can't believe it's the
only one guarded by a password. The man has
business all over the world, and you can bet he wouldn't
want anyone to see most of what he's doing. Even
if all his transactions are perfectly legal-which
I doubt-there must be an enormous amount of
proprietary information in his memory banks."
"But this computer is only for the research pavilion,"
Rob Silver reminded him. "The business stuff
is somewhere else. Japan, probably."
"Cayman Islands would be more like it, if you ask
me," Howell muttered, then typed
Cayman
into the computer, pressed the Enter key, and watched the
same box instantly reappear, flashing the
same message. "That's it for me," he sighed.
"It's going to take a lot better hacker than I
am to get into that directory."
"Do you know one?" Katharine asked.
Howell thought for a moment. "No," he said glumly.
His gaze shifted to the window on the monitor that was
displaying his own project, but nothing seemed to have
changed, and he felt the gnawing pangs of hunger that
reminded him he'd completely forgotten to eat today.
"What do you say we break for something to eat? Then
we'll come back and try again."
Katharine's first impulse was to object that there
wasn't time for food, but with a glance at the dark
circles under Phil's eyes and the tight lines of his
face, she knew his endurance was almost gone.
"Maybe we'd better," she said, rubbing the back
of her neck to ease the soreness of straining to watch the
changing display on the computer screen. "I want
to see what Michael's up to," she said aloud,
turning to Rob. "Have you got your cell phone?"
Rob fished the flip phone out of his pocket. "You
want to go someplace in Makawao, and take
Michael, too?"
When the answering machine at home picked up on the
first ring, signaling that there was a message
waiting, Katharine assumed it would be Michael,
telling her his own plans for the evening. But when she
punched in the playback code and the impersonal
electronic voice announced, "Seven ... new
... messages," a current of panic surged through
her.
The phone at home rarely got even one
message, let alone seven. She quickly punched in
the code to play all the messages back. The
moment she heard the tone of voice of the first caller,
she knew it was about Michael.
And it was bad.
"Dr. Sundquist, this is Jack Peters, the
track coach at Bailey High. I-I'm real
sorry to have to tell you this way-I mean, I wish I
could talk to you directly, but..." The voice
trailed off, then started up again. "Michael
collapsed on the track this afternoon. I don't know
exactly what the problem was, but we called the
EMT'S. The ambulance was just arriving when Dr.
Jameson showed up in Takeo Yoshihara's
helicopter. I assume they took him to Maui
Memorial. I just called there, but they haven't
admitted him yet. I'll keep trying, though, and
if you want to call me after you get this
message, I'll be at 555-3568.1 just can't
figure what happened. I mean, he was running
better than ever, and then ..." For the second time,
Jack Peters's voice trailed off.
"Anyway," he continued, "I'll keep trying the
hospital, and if I find anything out, I'll
leave another message. I-well-God, I
hate these things!"
By the time the next message began playing,
Katharine's tiny cry of anguish when she'd heard
Peters's
words had brought Rob to her side. She tipped the
phone enough so he could listen, too. They heard the
voice of a frightened-sounding boy.
"Mrs. Sundquist? My name is Rick
Pieper." As the boy began to repeat what she'd just
heard the track coach say, she pressed the code
to advance to the next message.
"This is Yolanda Umiki, Dr. Sundquist. From
Mr. Yoshihara's office? He asked me to call
you and tell you that your son is ill, and that he would like
to talk to you as soon as possible. If you could call
me as soon as you get this message, I can put you
directly through to Mr. Yoshihara."
The panic that had seized her when she was
told that Michael was ill turned to terror when she
heard that Takeo Yoshihara was somehow involved. And
why had Dr. Jameson shown up in the
helicopter?
There were two more calls from Yolanda Umiki, and then
another one from Rick Pieper:
"It's Rick Pieper again, Mrs. Sundquist,
and I'm at Maui Memorial Hospital. I
came to find out how Michael is, but he's not here!
I mean, they say he hasn't even been here! But
where else could they have taken him? Oh gosh, I'm
sorry-I'm just-well, I guess I'm scared.
I mean, I thought they'd bring him here, and-look,
I'm really sorry, Mrs. Sundquist! But
Michael said something just before he passed out, and I
thought you should know! He said something about ammonia before
he fainted. I don't know what he meant, or
anything, but that's what it sounded like he said. Just
"ammonia."
The last message was from Jack Peters again, and it
was almost a duplicate of Rick Pieper's: "I
don't get it, Dr. Sundquist. If they
didn't take him to Maui Memorial, where-was
He broke off abruptly. "Christ, I must be
scaring you half to death! He probably
woke up and it turned
out it wasn't anything serious and there wasn't any
point in taking him to the hospital at all.
Anyway, if you can let me know what's going on,
I'd sure appreciate it."
The electronic voice came on once more:
"End ... of... final.. . message."
"He's at the estate," Katharine said. "They
didn't take him to the hospital! Oh, God,
Rob, what if he's-was Even if Rob hadn't
put his finger to her lips, she couldn't have brought herself
to finish the sentence. Michael couldn't be dead! He
just couldn't be!
"Call the woman in Yoshihara's office," Rob
told her. When Katharine seemed unable to cut off
the connection to the answering machine, Rob took the
phone from her, punched in the number he'd memorized
after Yolanda Umiki had left it the second time,
and pressed the Send button. Then he handed the
phone to Katharine.
When the assistant answered on the second ring,
Katharine identified herself, then: "Is my son
there? Is he at the estate?"
"Dr. Jameson thought he could treat him better
here than-was
"No!" Katharine snapped. "I want him taken
to Maui Memorial immediately. Or flown
to Honolulu. But I don't want Dr.
Jameson to-was
"I'm afraid I don't have the authority to do any
of that, Dr. Sundquist," Yolanda Umiki
replied in a voice that made it clear that she took
orders only from Takeo Yoshihara. "If you will
come out to the estate, Mr. Yoshihara will explain the
situation to you."
Katharine hesitated, not wanting to ask the next
question, not knowing whether or not she would believe the answer
she was given, but knowing she could not end the
call without asking it. Finally she forced the words out.
"Just tell me one thing. Is Michael still alive?"
Takeo Yoshihara's assistant hesitated, then
said, "I've heard nothing to the contrary."
As Katharine terminated the connection, she tried
to tell herself she'd heard a note of sympathy in
Yolanda Umiki's tone. But the woman's words were
so ... peculiar.
Was she trying to tell her that Michael was still alive
without violating some edict Takeo Yoshihara had
laid out against giving out any information? Or had she
simply not wanted to be the one to tell her
the bad news? Katharine's eyes, glistening with
tears, fixed on Phil Howell. "Please," she
whispered. "Keep trying. I don't know what
they're doing, but if we can't find out, I think my
son is going to die."
Numb, Katharine allowed Rob to lead her out of the
building. Less than a minute later, with Rob
driving her car while she sat trembling in the
passenger seat, they were speeding back across the island.
Josh Malani leaned against the Plexiglas wall,
glowering through the brownish haze that swirled around him
at the empty room beyond the confines of the huge box in
which he and Jeff Kina were imprisoned. He'd lost
track of how long he'd been here, for the light in the
room never changed.
No clock hung on the wall.
No window betrayed the changing light between night and
day.
The last thing he truly remembered was going to the beach
at Spreckelsville, thinking that just being outside and
maybe going for a swim might make him feel
better.
The memory was faint, but he thought he'd fallen,
col
lapsing next to his truck. He'd felt
terrible-worse than he'd ever felt in his life.
He'd felt like he was dying.
Then someone had been there, picking him up and putting
him in the back of a car.
The next thing he remembered was waking up, and
feeling good.
The tightness in his chest was gone, and his whole body
had been tingling with energy. But when he'd opened his
eyes, he knew instantly that something was wrong.
First, there'd been the haze; and then he realized he
was naked.
And he wasn't in a hospital room.
He wasn't even in a bed.
He was lying on a cot, and the brown haze had made
it hard to see; except for that, he felt all right.
He'd sat up, looked around, and realized he
wasn't alone.
There was someone else, stretched out on another cot
about six feet away. As the last foggy wisps of
sleep lifted from his mind, he'd recognized
Jeff Kina. Jeff, also naked, had been sound
asleep, but when Josh touched him, he'd come
awake, springing off the cot to crouch on the floor,
his eyes fixing on Josh as if he were about
to attack.
"Jeez, Jeff, it's me!" Josh said,
instinctively pulling back from Jeff's tense
body. At first it seemed to him that Jeff didn't
recognize him at all, but then he'd slowly
relaxed, dropping from the crouch into a sprawl on the
concrete floor. For a long time he'd simply stared
at Josh, and when he finally spoke, his voice had
a rough, almost guttural note. Though Jeff no
longer seemed on the verge of attacking, his
unblinking eyes were fixed on Josh with the concentration of
an omnivore targeting its prey.
"They got you, too."
For a moment Josh had no idea what Jeff was
talking about, but then it came to him-the cane field!
The car parked at the mouth of the dirt road, which shot
into the field as he'd come out.
And the other car-the one with flashing blue lights that
he'd been sure was a police car, but which hadn't
turned around to chase him as he'd sped down into the
valley, ignoring the speed limit in his race
to escape the fire in the cane field.
The fire to which he'd abandoned Jeff Kina.
"I-I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't
have-was He hesitated, then: "I shouldn't have left you
there."
"You mean you shouldn't have run away," Jeff
growled. Once again his body tensed, his thick
muscles knotting under his skin, and Josh braced
himself for the attack.
Jeff Kina was at least six inches taller than
he was, and nearly twice as heavy, but until now
Josh had never felt even slightly threatened
by Jeff.
Now he could almost feel Jeff struggling to keep
himself under control. "What did they do?" he
whispered, making no effort to mask the terror he was
feeling. "Where are we? What did they do to us?"
For another terrible moment Josh watched the conflict
that was raging inside Jeff. Finally, slowly,
Jeff's big body relaxed again.
"We're gonna die," he said. "Just like Kioki,
man. We're just gonna die."
"Why?" Josh demanded. "What happened?"
Jeff shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know
anything, and there's no one to ask."
As Jeff watched, Josh began prowling along the
sides of the Plexiglas enclosure, examining every
inch of it,
touching every surface he could reach, searching for a way
out. Again and again. Around and around. Like a rat
in a maze, Josh kept moving, circling the
perimeter of their prison.
For maybe an hour.
Maybe two.
Maybe more.
For a long time Josh had felt Jeff's eyes on
him, watching his every move. At first he made sure
he didn't turn his back on the other boy. But as
the minutes dragged by and Jeff remained motionless on
the floor, Josh focused more of his attention on the
Plexiglas prison and less on Jeff Kina.
Finally, Jeff crept back onto his cot and
fell asleep.
Yet Josh could still feel eyes watching him, and
he'd moved his focus from the confines of the enclosure
to the room outside.
He'd seen the cameras then.
Four of them, all pointing toward the box, watching every
move he made, from every angle.
There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape from the
all-seeing lenses.
After a while Josh, too, had fallen asleep, but
suddenly come wide-awake, coiling his body tight
in an instant, then springing away from the cot and
whirling around, crouched low to the ground.
Jeff Kina was poised over his cot. "It's all
right," he said. "I wasn't gonna hurt you,
man."
From then on they'd been like two caged animals,
warily watching each other, sleeping only
fitfully, slinking around the perimeter of their prison
when they weren't stretched on the floor or the cots,
dozing.
Twice, a man clad in white entered the room,
put food
in the air lock of the seamless Plexiglas box, and
left, without uttering a word.
Eventually, hunger overcame them, and they ate.
Then, a while ago-Josh had no way of knowing
exactly how long it had been-someone tried to turn
the knob on the door to the room beyond their
Plexiglas prison.
This time, though, the door didn't open and the
white-clad man with food didn't appear. Josh
realized what the brief movement of the doorknob
meant-someone who had no key was trying to get in.
"Help!" he shouted. "Help us!" But even as he
yelled the plea, he had the feeling that whoever was
outside the room couldn't hear him, that the
Plexiglas and the walls of the room beyond
composed a soundproof barrier. If they didn't
want them to see outside, or to know where they were,
or even what time it was, surely they wouldn't
allow them to be heard, either.
Still, he'd tried again.
"Please!" he called out. "Please let us out!"
The knob had wiggled one more time, but that had been it.
Whoever was out there had gone away.
Since then, Josh had been slumped on the floor,
staring at the door, waiting.
Something, he sensed, was about to happen, although nothing in
the room had changed; the light was as glaring and
shadowless as ever, the walls as featureless, the haze
inside the box the grimy brown that he'd become so
accustomed to that he barely noticed it anymore.
He knew that Jeff Kina could sense the tension,
too.
Like him, Jeff was on the floor, his back against one
of
the walls, his legs drawn up so his knees were
pressed against his chest.
His eyes, like Josh's, were watching the door.
Time slowed; silence hung over the room.
Josh's eyes never wavered from the door.
When the knob moved-barely a fraction of
an inch at first-Josh noticed it immediately. Shifting
into a crouch, he felt the muscles in his body
tense and the heat of adrenaline stream through his body.
The doorknob turned, the latch clicked, and the
door swung open.
Two men came in, neither of them the white-clad
attendant who brought them their food.
One of the men was a
haole,
the other Japanese-the same two men who had
appeared outside the cage a few hours ago.
Both were dressed in suits, and though Josh had never
seen the Japanese before, there was an aura of power
about him that told him who the man was, now that his mind
was clear enough to think.
Takeo Yoshihara.
Josh's eyes narrowed and his muscles tightened even
more.
"Are they dangerous, Dr. Jameson?" he heard
Yoshihara say. Even through the heavy panel of
Plexiglas, he could hear no nervousness in the
man's voice, only casual interest.
"It doesn't appear so," Stephen Jameson
replied. "They both seem nervous and wary, but
except for this morning, neither of them has
shown any true signs of aggression. It's more as
though some of their senses have been heightened."
"Interesting," Takeo Yoshihara mused. He
circled the
box, and Josh's eyes followed him, his body
turning as he tracked the man's path. "Very
interesting," Yoshihara remarked when he'd completed
his circle. "I saw a tiger in a cage in
India a year ago. He watched me with the same
intensity." He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
"I suspect he wished to eat me." His eyes
fixed on Josh. "I wish we had more time to do
psychological studies," he went on. "But perhaps
the researchers will be able to learn as much from the dissection.
Instruct them to pay particularly close attention
to the brain structures."
As the words penetrated his mind, Josh felt a
shiver jolt through him. His whole body began
to shake.
No! He must have heard wrong!
But then he caught sight of Jeff Kina, and knew
he'd heard perfectly. A look of fury
contorted Jeff's face, and his muscles had
corded into tight knots. A howl of rage erupted
out of Jeff Kina's throat, and he
hurled himself at the Plexiglas with enough force to make
the entire structure shake. Collapsing to the
floor, his nose bleeding from the impact against the
plastic wall, Jeff lay still for only a second
before gathering himself and hurling himself again against the
transparent barrier.
"No!" Josh yelled as a gout of blood erupted
from Jeff's mouth. "Jeff, don't!"
Jeff, too caught up in his rage even to hear
Josh, crashed to the floor once more, only
to attack the wall a third time. His fingers, stiffening
into claws, raked across the surface of the
Plexiglas, but barely left a mark. An eerie
screech of frustration bubbling from his throat, he
kicked at the wall with his bare feet, his howl
ascending to a shriek of pain as the agony of his
smashed toes crashed through his rage.
"Stop it!" Josh yelled, throwing himself on Jeff,
trying to pin him to the floor.
Jeff knocked him away as if he were no more than
a yapping puppy, and returned to his attack on
the Plexiglas wall.
Outside the plastic cell, Takeo Yoshihara and
Stephen Jameson watched Jeff Kina's
attack.
Yoshihara spoke. "Flush the enclosure."
Josh, the wind knocked out of him by Jeff's
casual blow, lay on the floor, trying to catch his
breath. And then, as Jeff kept smashing at the
wall, leaving reddish brown smears everywhere his
bleeding hands struck the greasy surface of the
plastic, the atmosphere inside the chamber began
to change.
The brown haze cleared away.
And Josh Malani felt his chest begin to hurt.
He tried to struggle to his feet, but couldn't.
Scrabbling across the floor, he instinctively
stretched a hand out toward the two men who stood
safely beyond the confines of the Plexiglas. "Help
us," he pleaded. "Please? Just help us ..."
Jeff Kina, writhing on the floor now, was
clutching at his chest as he struggled to breathe the
oxygen-rich air that was quickly replacing the noxious
fumes with which the box had been filled only a moment
ago. Josh crawled toward him, his hands closing on
Jeff's wrists.
"They're killing us, Jeff," he whispered.
"Oh, God, they're killing us."
Once more Jeff Kina tried to heave himself up,
tried to launch one final attack, but already
the strength was leaching from his body and darkness was closing
in on him. "Mama ..." he whispered. "Mama
..." His voice
trailed off, his body convulsed, then relaxed, and
he lay still.
"Interesting that the bigger one died first," Josh
Malani heard Takeo Yoshihara say. It was the
last thing he heard before the darkness conquered him.

"I still don't understand why they brought him up here,"
Rob said as he steered the Explorer through the gates
of Takeo Yoshihara's estate.
"She didn't tell me," Katharine said. She
sat tensely in the passenger seat, arms wrapped
tightly around herself, as if to contain the anxiety within.
Her mind was reeling with images of Michael hidden
away in one of the subterranean rooms below the south
wing of the research building; Michael imprisoned like
the poor puppy that died in her arms. "All
Yolanda Umiki said was that I should come
to Yoshihara's office."
Leaping from the car a moment after they pulled up, she
ran across the gardens that separated the research
pavilion from the collection of structures that made
up Takeo Yoshihara's personal
residence, as Rob followed- and stopped, realizing
that she had never seen Takeo Yoshihara's office,
and wasn't certain where it was. She looked about in
confusion just as a servant materialized and bowed
respectfully to them.
"Mr. Yoshihara is waiting in his office. This
way, if you please."
A small bridge led to an Oriental-style
building like a
his
perfect teahouse, floating in the center of a pond.
Inside were the two rooms that Takeo Yoshihara
used as an office on the estate. The smaller, rather
cramped anteroom held Yolanda Umiki's
desk, two ornately carved teak chairs, a
tonsu, and several filing cabinets. In Takeo
Yoshihara's own office there was only a simple
table of highly polished wood that served as a
desk-bare save for a telephone-and a single chair.
Several cushions were scattered on the floor.
Takeo Yoshihara himself stepped into the room through an
open shoji that led to a veranda that overlooked the
mirrorlike surface of the pond and the perfectly
tended garden of bonsai conifers that lay beyond.
Sliding the screen closed, Yoshihara
approached Katharine, his hand extended, his
expression grave.
Katharine was tempted not to take his hand at all, but
thought better of it at the last second.
Why warn him of her suspicions?
"Dr. Sundquist, I can't tell you how sorry
I am about your son."
"Where is he?" Katharine demanded. "I want
to see him."
"I shall take you to him myself in just a few moments."
"A few moments?" Katharine repeated, her voice
rising. "Mr. Yoshihara, you're talking about my
son! My son! From what I already know, he
collapsed on the playing field at Bailey
High. Why wasn't he taken to Maui
Memorial Hospital?"
Takeo Yoshihara tried to gesture her onto one
of the cushions on the floor, but when she remained
standing, he did, too. "It was upon my orders that he
was brought here," he explained.
"Your orders?" Katharine shot back. "Who are you
to
be giving orders as to what is to be done with my son?
And how did you even know something had happened to him?
Have you been watching him?"
If she expected him to flinch at the accusation, she
was disappointed; far from being taken aback by the question,
Takeo Yoshihara appeared to welcome it. "As a
matter of fact, we have," he said. "Ever since
Kioki Santoya died, I have been concerned not
only about Michael, but about his friends Josh Malani
and Jeff Kina, as well." He hesitated, then:
"I'm not sure how to tell you this, Dr.
Sundquist, but the Malani boy died on the beach
at Spreckelsville yesterday afternoon."
The words struck Katharine like a physical blow.
Instinctively she reached out to Rob for support.
As Rob took her arm, Takeo Yoshihara brought
the chair around from behind his desk. "I can have Yolanda
bring you something," he offered as Katharine sank onto
the chair.
She shook her head but could say nothing. Josh?
Dead? How could it have happened? And if Josh were
dead ... "How?" she asked, the bravado of a
moment before gone from her voice, her hand slipping
unconsciously into Rob's. "Dear God,
why?

"Dr. Jameson isn't yet certain where the
problem began," Takeo Yoshihara said,
leaning back against his desk. "But he was very interested
in what happened to the Santoya boy, particularly
the condition of his lungs. When he analyzed the lung
tissue, it appeared that the boy's lungs had somehow
become incapable of allowing oxygen to be absorbed
into the blood. In fact, it was as if he had become
allergic to it. When it was determined that your son was
having respiratory problems but seemed not to be
having difficulty in moving air in and out of his
lungs, Dr. Jameson thought it imperative that
Michael not be given oxygen."
Katharine's fingers clamped down hard on Rob's
hand as she struggled against the terrible panic rising
inside her. Rob tightened his arm around her, as if
to protect her from whatever Takeo Yoshihara might
say next. "But you still haven't told us exactly
what's wrong with Michael," he said.
"In order to do that, I have to explain to you about some
experiments that are going on here," Yoshihara
replied. His gaze shifted to Katharine. "Dr.
Silver has already signed a confidentiality
agreement. It was part of his employment contract.
I'm afraid I shall also have to ask you to sign one."
He pressed a button on the telephone,
summoning Yolanda Umiki, who appeared
with a single sheet of paper in her hand.
Rob Silver's eyes narrowed. "Is this really
necessary?" he asked. "Given the circumstances, I
can't believe-was
"I'm afraid I shall have to insist" Taking a silver
pen from the pocket inside his jacket, Yoshihara
handed it to Katharine.
Without reading a single line of the document-not caring at
all what it might say-Katharine scribbled her
signature on it and handed it back to the woman.
As silently as she'd come in, the secretary
left, quietly closing the door behind her.
When the three of them were alone, Takeo Yoshihara
turned to Katharine. "As Dr. Silver may have
told you, we are doing a great deal of environmental
research here. What he hasn't told you, because
until now he hasn't known, is that we have been
working with a substance that appears to give
oxygen-sustained, carbon-based life-forms-which
comprise most of what we have on this planet-the
ability to sustain themselves on gases other than
oxygen. Gases that would ordinarily be poisonous
to them."
"Are you saying you've developed a compound that would
let people survive in badly polluted
air?" Katharine asked, carefully keeping any
clue that she had seen the subterranean labs out of
her voice.
"We haven't developed it," Yoshihara
explained. "We found it."
"Found it?" Rob echoed. "You mean you're mining
it?"
Yoshihara shook his head. "One of my research
teams- a group of divers-was working off the Big
Island, along the Kalapana coast."
"Where the black sand beach used to be," Rob
interjected. "But it's all under fresh lava now."
"Exactly," Yoshihara said. "At any rate,
they found what appeared to be a geode near a lava
vent, which they brought here. But instead of containing the
typical crystals of most geodes, this one contains
some kind of liquified gas. We began experimenting
with the substance, and have discovered that when it is administered
to oxygen-breathing animals, it has the effect of
allowing them to thrive in an atmosphere containing what
would normally be lethal doses of various gases and
contaminants."
"I'm not sure I'm following you," Rob Silver
said.
Takeo Yoshihara smiled. "I'm not
surprised-I have only the most tenuous of grasps
on it myself. But Dr. Jameson tells me our
research animals seem able to function perfectly
normally in an atmosphere that is heavily laden with
such things as unburned hydrocarbons and oxides of
nitrogen. Also ozone, sulfur dioxide, and
hydrogen cyanide."
"Cyanide?" Rob said in disbelief.
The thinnest of smiles passed over Yoshihara's
lips. "I can assure you, Dr. Silver, most of
us breathe such things every day, but in amounts so slight as
to be harmless. Except, of course, in areas of very
heavy pollution. But this compound seems to make our
lab animals immune to the effects of such
pollution, even in the heaviest of concentrations."
"It sounds like a miracle," Rob said.
"Perhaps it is," Yoshihara agreed. "Except that
there is a side effect. Our laboratory
animals all have become allergic to oxygen.
Once the compound has been administered, they are no
longer able to breathe what we consider to be an
unpolluted atmosphere."
The puppy, Katharine thought. She had killed the
puppy by taking it out of the box. She felt a chill
spread through her body as she anticipated
Takeo Yoshihara's next words, and when they
came, she heard them as an oddly distant echo of
what her own mind had already told her. Yoshihara's
features settled into an expression of utmost
concern, though Katharine found that even as he mouthed the
words of sorrow, his eyes seemed to betray no
emotion.
"I'm so very sorry to have to tell you this, Katharine, but
I'm afraid your son and his friends have become
exposed to the compound inside the geode. We've no
idea yet how such an accident could have occurred."
The dive! But nothing terrible had happened on the
dive! Michael had said so. The only thing that went
wrong was that some of them had run out of air, but even that
hadn't been a problem.
"We think Michael and his friends must have come across
another geode," she heard Takeo Yoshihara
say.
A geode! But it wasn't a geode! She'd seen
it herself,
and it was a perfectly round sphere, the contents of which,
she was absolutely certain, had been cooked up
right here on Takeo Yoshihara's own estate!
"I want to see him," she said, her voice calm,
though her mind was still reeling. "I want
to see my son."
Katharine had to use every bit of her self-control not
to scream when she saw Michael.
His room was on the subterranean level, and while
it was neither a part of the complex that made up the Serinus
Project nor a part of the laboratory she had
discovered, it was, if possible, even more horrifying
than what she'd seen before.
He was in a bed, but the bed was in a box.
The same kind of Plexiglas box she had seen in
the Serinus labs, housing the animals which, though still
alive, had seemed listless and ill.
The box was equipped with a pair of large ducts, as
well as a variety of air-locked access ports
that would allow food and drink to be passed inside
without contaminating the internal atmosphere.
The atmosphere inside the cube was actually
visible, swirling around Michael like smoke, filling
the box with a brownish haze. The sight of it made
Katharine feel like choking, though it was completely
contained inside the plastic walls.
Michael, propped up against a pillow that rested on
the raised head of a hospital bed, was awake. His
face looked deathly pale to Katharine, but he
managed a smile as she came into the
room, followed by Rob Silver, Takeo
Yoshihara, and Stephen Jameson.
"I guess I had a major attack of asthma this
time," he said. His voice emerged from a speaker that was
invisible
to Katharine. It sounded both tinny and hollow, as if
it were coming from a long distance away.
Don't cry!
But even as she silently issued herself the order,
Katharine felt her eyes welling with tears. She
took a step toward him, wanting to put her arms
around her son, to hold him, to tell him that everything was
going to be all right.
The box stopped her.
Suddenly she felt helpless, unable to do anything for
Michael or even to comfort him.
"Oh, Michael," she whispered. "What happened?
You've been feeling so good. I thought..." She
shook her head and bit her lip against the tears
threatening to overwhelm her.
"I
was
feeling great," Michael said. "You saw me,
Mom!"
"I sure
did!"
Katharine told him. "And you looked fine! I even
stopped worrying about you." Once again she
instinctively reached toward him, this time actually
touching the hard plastic that separated her from her son.
"Darling, what happened?"
Michael shrugged. "I-I'm not sure," he
stammered. Haltingly, he told her that it had been
getting harder and harder to breathe all day. "But then
I found a bottle in the closet in the boys'
room," he finished. "And as soon as I sniffed
it, I felt great!"
Rick Pieper's broken message echoed in
Katharine's ears.
Ammonia! He'd been breathing ammonia! Of
course he was sick!
But no sooner had the thought occurred to her than she
knew it was simply a straw she was grasping at
to avoid facing the truth.
The ammonia hadn't made him sick. In fact,
it had made him feel better.
Her mind spun as more and more pieces of the puzzle
clicked into place.
Mark Reynolds-the boy from L.a.-hadn't been
trying to kill himself; he'd been trying to
save
himself, and the medics who came to his rescue had
unwittingly killed him by administering oxygen.
Oxygen!
For the first time since she'd entered the room,
Katharine's eyes strayed from Michael's face as
she took in her surroundings.
A computer monitor was mounted in the wall, its
screen divided into a series of windows; some
displayed a continuous graph of Michael's vital
signs, while others monitored the makeup of the
atmosphere within the box. Some she could identify:
CO, SO

.
Carbon monoxide.
Sulfur dioxide.
Most of them, long strings of atomic symbols
designating complex chemical compounds, possibly
hydrocarbons, she guessed, might as well have
been written in Greek.
"Can I be alone with him for a few minutes?" she
asked.
"Of course," Takeo Yoshihara agreed. "I have
some business that must be attended to immediately.
Dr. Silver can wait for you with Dr. Jameson."
When they were alone, Katharine moved as close
to Michael as she could, placing her hands on the
plastic as gently as if it were his skin she was touching.
"I'm so sorry, darling," she whispered. "It's
my fault. If I hadn't brought us here-
"It's not your fault," Michael said. "It's just
something that happened. It must have happened on-was
Katharine briefly held a finger to her lips, and as
Michael fell silent, she pulled her pen and
notebook out of her bag. The cameras might
see-Katharine knew sharp lenses must be monitoring
this room-but perhaps they would not
read.
It was a chance she had to take. There was no other
choice. She began talking as she quickly scribbled
on the pad. "They think you must have gotten exposed
to something they found in a geode," she said out loud.
What happened on the night dive?
she wrote.
I don't believe a geode was involved.
Opening the access lock, she put the notebook and
pen inside. The air in the lock was instantly
evacuated, and replaced with the toxic atmosphere
inside the Plexiglas chamber.
"What kind of geode?" Michael asked, quickly
reading the note, then scrawling a response.
There wasn't anything like a geode,
he wrote.
Four of the tanks ran out of air, and we started
choking on something. Mine, Jeff's, Kioki's, and
Josh's.
He passed the notebook and pen back through the air
lock.
"I'm not sure Mr. Yoshihara even said,"
Katharine replied as she read what he'd written.
Then she wrote:
Where did you get the tanks?
"I don't remember ever seeing anything like a
geode," Michael said.
Kihei Ken's,
he wrote.
Josh said it would be okay.
After she'd read his last entry, Michael said,
"Mom? Am I going to be all right?"
Katharine could contain her tears no longer, and even
before she could speak, Michael read the truth in her
expression.
"I'm going to die, aren't I?" he asked. His
voice sounded very young.
Very young, and very frightened.

There was nothing unusual about the car; it looked like
any one of the hundreds of medium-sized, neutrally
painted, minimally equipped sedans that make up the
majority of the car rental fleets of Maui. Nor
was there anything unusual about the two men in the car.
Both of them were middle-aged, and both were dressed in
the standard tourist uniform-polyester slacks and
inexpensive aloha shirts like those sold out of the
shops in La-haina and in the malls along the
Kihei strip.
Like tourists, they drove too slowly along South
Kihei Road, as if unsure of their destination,
or maybe just taking in the sights.
But the car was not a rental, and neither of the men were
tourists. Both of them had lived on Maui for
years, though neither had been born there.
And they knew exactly where they were going. Their
destination was currently one block ahead of them,
tucked back in a corner of one of the strip malls
where it would be relatively hard to find unless you
knew where you were going. Half the shops in the mall
had already closed, and most of those that weren't were
clustered around an ice cream shop near the
southern end of a long row of storefronts.
Kihei Ken's Dive Shop was at the opposite
end from the ice cream shop, and occupied all of a
small freestanding building that appeared to have been set
down on the mall's property almost as an afterthought.
The two men parked their car in the middle of the parking
lot and started slowly toward the dive shop, pausing
to examine the merchandise in a few of the windows along
the way.
Just as they'd been told, the closed sign was hanging
inside the glass door, but the lights were still on and
they could see someone standing behind the counter, apparently
filling out some kind of form. As one of the men held the
door open, the other walked into the shop. "You
Kihei Ken?" the first man asked.
"In person." The man abandoned the cash sheet
he'd been working on and stepped out from behind the counter
to extend his hand in welcome. "You must be the guys
Mr. Yoshihara's office called about."
The second man had now come into the shop, and the door
swung closed behind him. "Don't know anyone by that
name."
The smile on Ken Richter's face faded
to puzzlement as the first man ignored his proffered hand.
"I'm sorry," he said, his eyes
uncertainly scanning the parking lot in search of the men
he'd been told to expect when the man from Takeo
Yoshihara's office had called fifteen minutes
ago. "Actually, I'm closed. I was just catching
up on some paperwork while I waited for-was
"Us," the first man said.
Something in the tone of that single word rang an alarm
deep in Ken Richter, setting off a jangling of
nerves. "Look, I really am closed- " he
began again. This time it wasn't a word that silenced
him.
This time it was the gun that appeared in the hand of
the second man. Only a moment ago, he'd been
no more menacing than a curious tourist. Now there was
nothing left of the tourist except the polyester
aloha shirt. His eyes had a hard look that told
Ken Richter he wouldn't hesitate to use the ugly
black pistol that was held so easily in his right hand
that it might have grown there.
"L-Look," Ken said, instinctively backing
away, "if it's money you want, just take it,
okay?"
While the man closest to Ken held the gun on him
and said nothing, the other stepped into the back room
to make certain it was empty, then locked the
front door of the dive shop and snapped off the
lights, leaving only the sickly blue glow of a
neon sign that portrayed the outline of a diver in
mask and fins.
The man with the gun spoke again. "In the back,
please."
They're not going to kill me,
Ken thought.
If they were, they wouldn't be polite.
Clinging to the thought, he edged nervously toward the back
room. "Look, why don't you just empty out the cash
register and leave? There's no cash in back-I
haven't even got a safe. I won't call the
cops. I-was
"Sit down, please." The man with the gun nodded
toward a small step stool that served both as a
place to perch while trying on fins and as a ladder
to the higher storage shelves.
They're going to tie me up, Ken thought as he
dropped onto the hard surface. They'll tie me
up, and maybe clean the place out, but they won't
hurt me.
The second man had now come into the back room.
Ken watched as he circled the space.
Inspecting the shelves?
Looking for something?
"Don't watch him, please," the first man said.
"Watch me."
Ken was confused. What did they want? If they were
going to steal something, why didn't they just take it?
There was a moment of silence, interrupted twice
by what sounded to Ken like the snapping of some kind of
rubber.
Then came the distinctive click of metal on
metal, as if an animal trap had just been set.
Though he kept his eyes on the man in front of
him, as he'd been instructed, he sensed the second
man directly behind him, and very close.
The hair on the back of Ken Richter's neck
stood on end. Suddenly he understood.
But it was too late. Even as the flash of understanding
came into Ken Richter's mind, the man behind him
squeezed the trigger of the silenced pistol in his hand.
There was a soft-almost gentle-snicking sound as the
hammer struck the cartridge and the carefully carved
lead slug shot out of the muffled barrel.
Ken Richter felt nothing as the bullet drilled
through his skull, then split open, tearing through his brain
like the blade of a Cuisinart. He was already slumping
to the floor when the bullet exploded out of
his forehead, tearing half his face away.
Katharine didn't want to leave the estate-didn't
want to leave Michael alone even for a minute. But
she knew she couldn't tell Rob about the night
dive until she was certain she wouldn't be
overheard. The last thing she wanted was for Takeo
Yoshihara to find out just how much she knew. Composing
her face into a perfect mask of trust in the
doctor and fear for her son, she told Stephen
Jameson
that she needed to go home and get some things for
Michael; she would be back within an hour-no more than
two. And would it be all right if she stayed with
Michael through the night? He'd spent so much time in
hospitals, and he hated them so much, and he was so
frightened.. .. The improvised tale rolled off her
tongue with the genuine sincerity of truth, since truth
was exactly what most of it was. But as soon as
she and Rob were away from the estate, she told him
about the messages she and Michael had exchanged.
Immediately, he used his cell phone to call Ken's
Dive Shop.
"Something's not right," Rob said as he steered
Katharine's Explorer into the parking space next
to Ken Richter's aging Volvo. Though he
shut off the engine, neither he nor Katharine got out
of the car. Instead, both of them stared at the darkened
dive shop. It looked as if it had closed hours
ago.
"Maybe he went somewhere," Katharine suggested, still
praying they would find Kihei Ken, and that he would have
some reasonable explanation for what had happened
to Michael on the dive. "Couldn't he be having
dinner? Maybe he went to a movie?"
Rob shook his head. "The movies are down at
Kukui Mall, so he would have taken his car. And the
first time we called, he should have been here. I've
known Ken Richter for years-we've dived together
dozens of times- and he's the most reliably
scheduled person I ever met. He closes the shop
at seven every night, but he's always here until at
least seven-thirty, closing up and getting ready for the
morning. And if he has a dive scheduled, he's
often here till nine or ten. I'm going to take a
look."
They got out of the car and approached the building.
Despite her suggestion that there could be a perfectly
reasonable explanation for Ken Richter's failure
to answer his phone, Katharine had the queasy feeling
that something was not right. Both of them cupped their
hands over their eyes to peer into the shop. The murky
darkness within was broken only by a dim blue glow from
a neon sign.
Nothing appeared to be amiss until they circled
around to the side of the shop and Rob pointed to a counter
clearly visible in the blue glow from the sign, on which
a number of papers were strewn in disarray.
"Ken never leaves anything undone," Rob said.
"That's what makes him a great diver. He hates
for anything to be out of place." Moving to the back
door and squatting down, he slid his fingers under a
big metal drum that sat, slightly elevated from
the ground, on four small wooden blocks.
"What are you looking for?" Katharine asked.
"Same thing Michael and his friends were looking for the
night they went diving. The key." A second
later he found it, hidden in the same magnetized
metal box in which Josh Malani had discovered it a
few days ago. Inserting the key into the lock on the
back door, Rob twisted it, then pushed the door
open. Reaching inside, he groped for the light
switch, found it, and flipped it on.
For a second, half blinded by the sudden blaze of
light, Rob didn't realize exactly what he
was looking at. But as his eyes focused and
he saw the red pool of blood that was spread around
Ken Richter's head, his stomach churned. "Oh,
Jesus," he whispered, his voice catching as his
throat constricted.
"What?" Katharine asked from behind him. "What is
..." The question died on her lips as she caught a
glimpse of what lay on the floor. The vision of
carnage froze them both for a moment that seemed
to stretch into
an eon. Katharine instinctively put her hand
into Rob's. "It's him, isn't it? It's Ken
Richter."
Rob tried to speak and couldn't. He made a move
toward his friend.
Katharine's hand tightened on his and she held him
back. "No," she said. "Don't touch him.
Don't touch anything, Rob. Let's just call the
police." As the seconds ticked by and Rob neither
spoke nor moved, Katharine wondered if he'd
heard her. Just as she was about to speak again, he found his
voice.
"Go back to the car and call on the cell phone.
Then come back here."
"Come back? We should wait for the police
outside."
Rob shook his head. "Once the police get here,
we won't be allowed to look at anything. They'll
have the whole place taped off, and the first thing they'll
want to know is why we're here."
"Can't we just tell them?"
Rob managed to pull his eyes away from the grisly
scene on the floor of the dive shop's back room.
Putting his hands on Katharine's shoulders, he
looked directly into her eyes. "Tell them what,
Kath?" he asked. "Tell them the truth? Do you
really think we're going to walk away from here if we
tell them we think Takeo Yoshihara had something
to do with this? Believe me, they aren't going to be
happy to hear us accuse one of the richest men on
Maui of murder. We might as well accuse one
of the Baldwins or the Alexanders, for God's
sake! And the minute we make any kind of
accusation, Yoshihara's going to hear about it. If he
was willing to have Ken Richter killed to protect
whatever he's up to, do you think he'll worry about
you, or me, or Michael? Michael would be dead
within the hour, and I'd be willing to bet you and I
would have an accident-a fatal accident-before morning.
All we can do is play dumb and find out everything
we can. And we can't waste any time being
questioned by the police. One slip and it'll all be
over. Michael won't have a chance."
The warm Hawaiian evening seemed suddenly to have
taken on a terrible chill. Katharine felt her
whole body shiver as she realized the truth of what
Rob had just said.
Returning to the car, she punched 911 into the keypad
of Rob's cellular phone and pressed the Send
key. As she made the hurried call, hesitating
when the operator asked her name, then ending the
connection, her whole body was shaking.
All she could think about was Michael-getting back
to the estate, getting Michael, and getting him out of
there.
But she knew there was no way that Takeo
Yoshihara's security force was simply going to let
her pick Michael up and drive him away. Even
if they did let her take him, what good would it do?
He'd die as soon as she took him out into the
clean, fresh air.
For a moment she almost gave in to the sense of utter
helplessness that washed over her, but then the thought of
Michael in his Plexiglas prison coalesced
her frustration and fear into a cold fury.
Michael wasn't dead yet. So far,
Takeo Yoshihara had no idea how much she really
knew.
And the night wasn't over yet, either.
Her body stopped shaking and the terrible cold loosed
its grip. Still clutching the phone, she went back
to the dive shop. This time, at the sight of Ken
Richter's body, the horror she felt was tempered
by something else.
Rage.
"What have you found?" she asked Rob.
"Not much," he admitted. While she'd been gone,
he looked around the back room of the shop, but had
neither touched anything nor gone into the front of the
store. "There's not much back here except the rental
scuba equipment."
"What's that?" Katharine asked, pointing to a large
white board on the wall, marked off into a grid
filled with names.
"The dive schedule," Rob said, looking carefully
at it for the first time. "He always kept it-was His eyes
widened and he moved toward the board, reaching out to it,
pulling his fingers back just before he touched it. "Oh,
Jesus! That's it! Look!"
Katharine moved next to him. "Look at what?"
"It's the board!" Rob said again. He was
pointing to a section of the grid. "Look!" he
repeated. "He had a VIP dive, the morning after
Michael and his friends went on their night dive."
Katharine frowned. "VIP? What's that? Movie
stars?"
Rob shook his head. "It was his special code.
Every now and then Takeo Yoshihara's office would
call and set up dives for the kids of some of his
business associates."
"I still don't see-was
"It wasn't just that Yoshihara set up the dives,"
Rob went on. "He sent over special
equipment, too. Fins, masks, regulators, the
whole works."
"Including air tanks," Katharine whispered,
suddenly understanding.
Rob nodded. "If the boys took the tanks that were
already here for the next morning's dive-was Rob began,
but Katharine was ahead of him.
Her notebook was out and she was already copying
down the names of the five boys who had been scheduled
for the dive that Ken Richter had designated as
VIP.
Four of those boys, thanks to Michael and his friends,
had undoubtedly escaped the fate Takeo
Yoshihara had planned for them.
The fifth one might already be dead.
She had just slipped the notebook back into her
purse when the first police siren wailed in the
night.

"What if he can't do it?" Katharine asked. They
were driving up Lipoa Street toward the Computer
Center. In the fifteen minutes since they'd left
the dive shop, Rob Silver had made two phone
calls. Nick Grieco hadn't answered, but Also
Kalama had. On a terrible hunch, Rob had
decided to swing by Nick's apartment building. The
presence of three police cars confirmed that his hunch
had hit a bull's-eye.
"I don't think we have any choice," Rob said,
his voice grim. "You can't leave Michael alone
up at Yoshihara's any longer, and there's no way
Phil Howell and I can find what we're looking
for by ourselves. We've got to have an expert."
"But you said he's a dive guide-was Katharine
began.
"He's also a computer freak. When he's not diving,
he's messing around on the Net. If he can't find
the information we need, then it's just not there. I
don't know why I didn't think of him an hour
ago."
"If he's such a genius, then why doesn't he have
a job?"
Rob glanced over at her, one eyebrow lifted.
"Come on, Kath-this is Maui. Haven't you
noticed how many jobs only exist to pay for the rent
and the sports
equipment? Besides, Also had a little problem a few
years ago. Something to do with hacking into a government
computer where he wasn't supposed to be. The way
he tells it, the only reason he didn't go
to jail was because no one was willing to acknowledge that what
he'd done was possible. It's hard to convict someone
of a crime if you won't admit it was committed."
The light at the Piilani Highway changed. As
Rob pressed on the accelerator, a horn blasted
behind them, and an ancient Honda Civic, its
caved-in passenger door tied shut with a frayed
rope, and a surfboard strapped to its top, shot
past them. "Hey, man! Quit blockin" the
road with that beater, huh?" A hand appeared from the
driver's window, thumb and pinkie waggling.
Katharine's heart sank. "That's Also Kalama,
isn't it?" she asked.
"Believe me, he knows what he's doing," Rob
insisted, but a quick glance at Katharine told him she
didn't believe him. A few seconds later
Rob pulled the Explorer up next to the Honda.
Also Kalama, wearing nothing but a Speedo, a
pair of sandals, and a grin, was already leaning against the
door of his car. "So what's the rush, man? The
way you were talkin', it sounded like someone was dyin' or
something."
Rob Silver's eyes fixed on the beach bum.
"Ken Richter's already dead, and I think Nick
Grieco is, too."
The grin wiped from his face, Kalama listened to what
they had found, first at the dive shop, then at Nick
Grieco's condo complex. When Rob finished, he
uttered a low whistle. "Jesus! What the hell's
goin' on?"
"That's why we need you," Rob said. He handed
Kalama the list of names Katharine had copied from the
board in the back room of the dive shop. "We need
to
find out where these five people are, or at least if
they're still alive."
Also Kalama paled as he read the names. "I was
on a dive with these guys a few days
ago."
Rob glanced at Katharine. "Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure! I remember the kids
"cause most of them were assholes. Plus, one of
them had some trouble with his air tank, which was really
weird, 'cause it was brand-new equipment that guy
Takeo Yoshihara sent down."
The words struck Katharine like nails being pounded into a
coffin.
Michael's coffin.
Until that moment she had been clinging to the hope, no
matter how slim, that Michael's illness was an
accident, as Takeo Yoshihara had insisted. Now
there was no more room to deny the truth. "The one who had
trouble," she said, her voice trembling, "is there
any way you can find out if he's still alive? Is
he still on the island?"
Kalama shrugged. "Should be a piece of cake.
All the kids on that dive were leaving that afternoon or the
next morning. The guy who had the problem was from
Chicago, and it seems like if he died, there ought
to be some mention in the local papers."
"Do it," she said. "Please do it." She turned
to Rob. "I have to get back up there. I have to get
Michael out." She moved to get behind the
wheel of the Explorer, but Rob stopped her.
"Katharine, are you crazy? How are you going to get
him out?" he asked. "And even if you can, where are you
going to take him? He can't breathe outside that box,
remember?"
Katharine brushed the questions aside. "I don't
know,"
she said. "I'll find a way. But I have to get
back to him! My God, Rob, don't you see?
Takeo Yoshihara doesn't want him alive!
He just wants to find out how Michael and his friends
got into that stuff, and when he does, he'll kill
him!" Even as she spoke the words, new questions- questions
Rob hadn't yet thought of-came into her mind.
What if they wouldn't let her back into the estate?
What if Michael were already-
She cut the last question off, unwilling even to let the
thought come into her head. "Find out everything you can," she
begged Rob. "Find out what's in the files. Find
out what they're really doing!" Putting her arms around
him, she pressed close to him for a moment, then
broke the embrace and got into the Explorer. She
was just about to pull out of the parking slot when Rob
produced his cellular phone from his pocket and shoved
it through the open window.
"Take this," he said. "I have a feeling we're
going to need to talk."
"But if I have your phone-was Katharine began.
Rob cut her off. "I'll find another one.
Phil Howell has one-his car's still here, so
I'll bet he is, too. I'll call you with the
number as soon as I get it."
As Katharine's car sped back down toward the
Piilani Highway, Rob and Also Kalama
hurried into the computer center.
In less than a minute Also was seated in front
of the terminal next to the one at which Phil Howell was
still working. Barely acknowledging the introduction Rob
made, Kalama's fingers were tapping at the
keyboard even before the monitor had fully warmed
up.
While Kalama navigated through the Internet,
Rob turned to Phil Howell. "I need to borrow
your cell phone,
Phil," he said. When he got no response,
he glanced at the monitor in front of the
astronomer, where the results of the substitution
program he'd been running had finally come up. The
screen was now displaying a new window, and inside the
box was a list of the twenty-four files the
computer had generated, each of them containing the
results of one of the twenty-four possible
substitution equations that could be applied to the
original sequence of four letters.
Next to each file was the probability that the letter
sequence could represent DNA code.
The fourth one from the bottom was highlighted, and read:
ninety-seven percent.
Rob frowned, then felt his pulse begin to quicken.
"Does that mean what I think it does?" he asked
Howell.
The astronomer nodded. He had broken out in a
cold sweat a few moments ago when the window opened
and he'd seen the fourth line from the bottom of the
report. He spoke, his voice quavering with
excitement: "I think so. At least the computer
thinks so." He slowly shook his head, as if still
unable to accept what he was seeing. "My God,"
he breathed. "What if it's really true?"
"What if what's true?" Also Kalama asked from
the next terminal, but Phil Howell had already
returned to his work, so engrossed that he didn't
even hear the question. Then, before Also could repeat it, a
window on his own terminal filled with a brief
paragraph-an obituary from the
Chicago Tribune
noting the death of Kevin O'Connor, a
sixteen-year-old boy, from an unnamed
"respiratory problem."
"You want to tell me what's going on?" he asked
Rob.
Rob Silver, who had been staring at Phil
Howell's screen in fascination, turned back
to Also. "Takeo
Yoshihara is experimenting on people," he said without
preamble. "Katharine's son is one of the ones he's
experimenting on."
Also Kalama emitted a low whistle, but he made
no argument, asked no questions. Instead, he simply
said: "So how do we nail the prick?"
"There's a directory on the computer up at his
estate," Rob told him. "Those are the files
Katharine was talking about just before she left. We think
those files hold all the information on the project."
"What about the kid?" Also Kalama asked. "What
are we going to do about him?"
To that question Rob had no answer.
Knowing there was no chance of regaining Phil Ho
well's attention for something as trivial as a
cellular telephone, Rob began searching
for it himself, and when he found it-in the right front
pocket of Ho well's shirt- the astronomer
didn't even notice as he fished it out.
"Kath?" Rob said a moment later after he'd
dialed his own number. "It looks like you're right.
Be careful." Giving her the number of the phone he'd
just appropriated, he hung up.
And still had no idea of what to do about Michael
Sundquist.
Katharine was being followed.
She knew it, as surely as she knew her own name.
The car's lights had switched on as she'd made a
left turn in Puunene. She watched in the
rearview mirror as it pulled up behind her,
following closely when she took the quick right onto
Hansen Road, the shortcut to the Hana
Highway.
How had he known she'd be coming this way?
Was the car bugged?
Of course it was-the same device that
automatically opened the gate no doubt sent out a
signal that Takeo Yoshihara's men could home in
on.
Twice she considered turning off Hansen Road
to take one of the narrow cuts through the cane
fields that would lead her up toward Kula, but both
times she lost her nerve as she slowed the Explorer
to a near stop to peer up the long stretches of
deserted road that quickly disappeared into the blackness
of the night.
A blackness that seemed far darker than usual.
If she took one of these roads and got lost, she
could poke around in Kula or Pukalani for an
hour and never find the road to Makawao. Worse,
if the car that was following her overtook her, and forced
her off the road-
She cut off the thought, telling herself her sense of being
followed was brought on by paranoia, but, unbidden and
unwanted, an image of Ken Richter's body
sprawled in a pool of fresh blood rose up in
front of her, and the terror that had been escalating
inside her all day notched up yet again. If they
hadn't hesitated to gun down Ken Richter, why
would they hesitate to kill her, too?
When the car behind her blasted its horn and ducked around
her to speed away into the night, Katharine's body
jerked so convulsively that she wrenched her shoulder
against the restraining seat belt.
That's it!
she scolded herself.
If you don't calm down, you don't have a hope of
saving Michael.
Bringing the Explorer back up to speed, she held
it steady until she came to the intersection with the
Hana Highway, then turned a few hundred
yards farther on, where the road ascended the slope of
Haleakala. She remained steadfastly calm
until she neared the Haliimaile
cutoff that wound through the cane fields to the left and
would eventually take her to Baldwin Road, just a
mile or so below Makawao.
Almost involuntarily, her eyes went to the pair of
headlights glowing in the polarized glass of the
rearview mirror.
Biting down hard on her lower lip, Katharine
moved into the left turn lane.
The car behind followed.
She let the car continue to slow until she was almost
into the intersection, then pressed the accelerator hard
and swerved back to the right, shooting into a break in the
uphill traffic that was small enough to make the driver
of the car she'd cut off blast furiously on his
horn. Ignoring the sound, Katharine glanced in the
side mirror.
The other car was just completing its left
turn, its taillights disappearing down the road
toward Haliimaile as she watched.
Feeling both relieved and a little bit foolish, she
managed to keep the paranoia firmly in check
until she came to the turnoff from Olinda Road
into the dark, narrow lane that led to her house.
As if acting under its own volition, her right foot
left the gas pedal and moved to the brake. The
Explorer rolled to a stop, its headlights aimed
down the drive, washing the shadows away as far as the
first curve in the road that wound through the eucalyptus
trees.
The road appeared to be deserted.
Too deserted?
Images flashed through her mind of a dark figure
lurking in the shadows within the forest, peering through the
windows as she quickly packed a bag so that the watcher
would believe she was planning to spend at least this
night at Takeo Yoshihara's estate.
When would they come for her?
Would they use the cover of darkness to close in on the
house, while she was helplessly blinded by the false
security of the electric lights?
Or would they wait until she was at the estate itself?
No! No, no, NO!
No one had followed her; no one was waiting for her!
Then, just as she was about to move her foot back to the
gas pedal, the cellular phone rang, startling her
so badly she yelped out loud. Fumbling in her
purse, she found the instrument, flipped it open, and
held it to her ear. "Rob?"
"It's me," his familiar voice confirmed. "Two
things. First, Also can't get into the Serinus
directory from any computer outside the estate. But
he says there's a workaround. Once you get there,
get to any computer terminal- try the one in my
office-and connect to this number. Got a pen?"
Katharine rummaged in her purse, then told him
to go ahead. Rob gave her a telephone number,
then repeated it. "Once you hook up to him from my
office, he should be able to use my terminal as a
slave, and Yoshihara's central server won't
realize he's coming in from the outside."
"What's the other thing?"
"Michael," Rob said. "We need a place
to take him."
"We have to get him out first."
"We think we can do that. But the big question is, where are
we going to take him?"
It was the question Katharine had been avoiding
all the way home. Now she could put it off no
longer. If Michael truly could no longer breathe
fresh air, then where could they possibly go? Anywhere
they took him, anywhere at all-
And then it came to her: the skull.
The skull from the Philippines-and the reason it was of
such interest to the Serinus Project. The mutant
boy- and Katharine was now convinced the murdered child had
been a mutant-had been living on Mount
Pinatubo, breathing the fumes spewing from the
volcano. "The Big Island," she said. "If we
can get him to where the eruption is going on, he might
be able to breathe!"
There was a silence, then Rob spoke again. "It
might be possible. But he's going to have to be able
to breathe long enough for you to get him out of the building,
plus maybe ten to fifteen minutes. Can he do
that?"
Katharine didn't hesitate. "I'll make
sure he can."
"How long before you get back to the estate?"
Katharine glanced at her watch. It was just past
nine-thirty. "I'm just getting home," she said,
calculating the time it would take to grab a few
things, then drive to the estate. "I guess
I should be there by ten. That's if they let me get in
at all."
"Don't talk that way," Rob told her.
"Don't even think that way. Just get what you need
and go. If we're lucky, we'll have what we need
within a few minutes after you get online with Also.
How much time will you need to figure out a way to get
him out of the building?"
"How much can I have?" Katharine countered.
"I wish I knew."
"All right. I'll let you know when I get there.
Will I be able to talk to Also on the computer?"
"Absolutely." He paused. "It'll be just like
passing messages in school."
In the darkness Katharine smiled bleakly. "Why
don't I quite believe that?"
"Well, I thought I'd give it a shot,
anyway." There was
a short silence, then Rob spoke again, his voice
suddenly shy. "Katharine? Be careful, okay?"
It wasn't just the words, but the way he said them. A
tiny bit of Katharine's tension eased, and she finally
started the car slowly down the long driveway. "You
have no idea how careful I intend to be," she said
softly. "And you also have no idea how much
courage it will give me if you just keep talking
while I drive down this road. Remind me never
to take another house that's at the end of a long,
narrow, dark road."
"What do you want me to talk about?"
"I don't care. Tell me I don't have to be
scared, and that there's nobody waiting in my house, and
that Michael's going to be all right, and that when all this
is over you're going to marry me and take me away
from all this like a good knight in shining armor."
"All right," Rob said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said all right. To all of it. You proposed. I
accept. Consider it a done deal. Listen to me
carefully, Kath. There is no one in your house.
You're going to get what you need, and you're going to go
up to the estate, and we're going to crack into the
computer and find out all of Takeo Yoshihara's
dirty little secrets. Then I'm coming to get you and
your kid, who is going to have to learn to like me, and
we're going to live happily ever after."
Katharine was silent for a moment, then: "Promise?"
"Promise."
The car emerged from the woods into the clearing. Katharine
carefully swept the darkness with her eyes.
There were no other cars in the clearing.
"I'm gonna hold you to that," she said. "Call me
again
in half an hour. If I don't answer, then you
lied to me and there was someone in the house."
"I wouldn't lie to you. I love you. I always
did."
"Hell of a time to tell me." Katharine sighed.
"Still, it does make me feel better. Talk to you
in a while."
Breaking the connection, she sat in the car for a few more
seconds, summoning the nerve to go into the house.
Switching on the lights as she entered, she glanced
around, half expecting it to look like a scene from a
movie after the Mafia had paid someone a visit.
It was exactly as she'd left it.
Nothing had been moved.
Nothing had even been touched.
Katharine quickly threw enough clothes into a small
suitcase to make it look as if she was prepared
to stay at the estate for several days. Then, thinking
about what she had to do in the hours to come, she added a
few more items to the suitcase.
In less than five minutes she was back in her
car, driving steadily toward whatever
awaited her at Takeo Yoshihara's estate.

The cellular phone buzzed. "I'm almost at the
gate," Katharine said before Rob had even spoken.
"Is it opening?"
"I'm not worried about getting back in,"
Katharine told him. "I have a feeling it's getting
back out again that's going to be the neat trick. And I
have no idea how I'm going to be able to communicate
with Michael." The murder of Kihei Ken proved
to Katharine that the camera's eye had seen the notes
she and Michael had passed. No doubt they could
hear every word she might say, as well.
"You'll find a way," Rob assured her, and she
prayed he was right.
Ahead of her, the gate was swinging open, just as it always
did when her car approached.
Katharine took a deep breath as the car passed
through, then said, "I'm going through the gate, Rob.
I'll call you again if I can, but don't be
surprised at anything I might say. And I
might not say anything at all."
"I'll do my best to decode."
Shutting off the cellular phone, she caught herself
watching in the rearview mirror as the gate
swung closed behind her.
Like the gate of a prison?
Though the parking area next to the research pavilion
was far emptier than it ever was during the day, it still
held more cars than Katharine would have expected. For a
moment she felt the courage she had carefully
nurtured during the last half hour begin to crumble.
Not until Michael and I are out of here,
she told herself.
After you get him out, you can turn into a whimpering
idiot, and it won't matter. But not now!
Pulling the Explorer into an empty space, she
took the suitcase out of the backseat, locked the
car, and went into the lobby of the research pavilion.
Perhaps, if she was lucky, the guard on duty would be
the one whose friendship she had enlisted-dear God, could it
really have only been this morning?
As the lobby door swung closed behind her, the guard
at the desk looked up. She was looking into the face
of a stranger. Then, as he rose to his feet and
spoke, she realized that she was not a stranger to him.
"Dr. Sundquist. They said you'd be coming back
tonight."
They.
Who were
they?
The security staff?
Stephen Jameson?
Takeo Yoshihara himself?
"My son," she said, for the first time hoping she looked
every bit as worried as she was. If she was going
to get Michael out, she would have to appear to be so
upset as not even to be thinking straight. "He-he's
..." She pretended to flounder, letting the words
trail off as if she weren't certain how much she should
say in front of the guard.
"It's all right, Dr. Sundquist," the guard
assured her.
"They told me what happened to your boy. I'll just
let you into the elevator, and you can go right down."
The elevator! She'd completely forgotten about the
elevator.
But it was all right-she still had Stephen Jameson's
card.
Unless Jameson had noticed that it was gone? Would
he have reported it already? Would the gray plastic
square still activate the elevator, or would they have
removed its code from the computer?
Don't worry about it now,
she told herself.
And don't even think about trying it first. If they
see that on the security cameras, it will be over before
you can even start.
The computer! She had to get to Rob's computer, even
if only for a minute or two. She offered the guard
a distracted smile and set down her small
suitcase. "Could I leave this here a minute? I
need to go to Dr. Silver's office for a second."
"No problem," the guard replied, dropping back
onto his chair.
Was he going to watch her on the monitor? Should she
offer him some excuse? No! Why should she be
explaining her movements to him? It would only make
him wonder why she'd felt the need to explain herself.
Leaving the suitcase next to the guard's desk, she
strode down the north corridor to Rob's office,
turned on the lights, and switched on the monitor
attached to his terminal. Finding the communications
program, she quickly entered the number Rob had
given her and touched the Enter key. The connection was
completed almost instantly, and she heard a brief
exchange of static as the computer on her desk
established a link with the one in
Kihei. A window containing two lines of text
opened. A cursor flashed at the end of the
second line. As she watched, the last digit of the
first line changed as each second ticked by:
  Pickup 04:00:00 Current time is:
22:16:53. Enter to Confirm.
Understanding the message immediately, Katharine glanced at
her watch. It was almost exactly two and a half
minutes ahead of the time displayed on the screen.
Adjusting her watch to synchronize to the time on the
screen, she hit the Enter key again. A new window
opened and letters appeared as Also Kalama began his
first efforts to open the Serinus directory. Before
he'd finished typing the first line of his instructions,
Katharine used the mouse on her desk to minimize the
program so that all that showed on the monitor was the
normal desktop screen.
Shutting off the monitor, she turned off the lights
in the office and started back down the corridor.
"All set?" the guard asked as she reentered the
lobby.
Katharine nodded and picked up her suitcase,
glancing at her watch one last time as she followed
the guard through the doors that led to the south corridor
and the elevator at its far end.
"Nothing worse than having your kid get sick,
is there?" the guard asked as he passed his
card over the gray panel next to the elevator
door. Katharine shook her head but made no
reply. After what seemed to her to be an eternity,
the elevator car arrived and she stepped inside.
To her relief, the guard remained where he was,
nodding his head a fraction of an inch, then turning
away as the doors slid closed.
Glancing at her watch, she saw that "eternity" had
amounted to fifty-two seconds.
Katharine counted the seconds it took for the car
to descend to the lower level.
Fifteen, including the time it took for the doors
to open.
Leaving the car, she moved down the corridor to the
door behind which Michael lay.
An anteroom guarded the chamber in which Michael
had been put. Behind a desk, empty of anything
except a telephone, a woman sat. A
nurse, or a guard? Though she wore a white
uniform, her posture and her steely gaze told
Katharine that here was no angel of mercy. This woman
would not simply sit still as she and Michael walked out
of the room.
If Michael could walk.
"You can go right in, Dr. Sundquist," the
woman said. "Dr. Jameson is with your son."
She went through the door into Michael's room, and
felt a terrible fury begin to rise in her as she
looked at her son.
The atmosphere inside the box was now so foul that a
brown film was building up on the inside of the
Plexiglas. In places, it had grown so thick
that it was actually running down the surface of the
plastic, leaving behind long, slimy-looking trails.
And Stephen Jameson actually had the nerve
to smile at her as he looked up from the computer
terminal at which he sat. "He's doing very well,"
he said. "You have quite the boy here."
As if Michael had just won some kind of race!
Katharine thought, her anger threatening to overwhelm her.
For the first time, then, she knew with absolute conviction
that she would get her son out of the vile box in which he
lay. Somehow. Even if it meant killing Stephen
Jameson and the female guard. And anyone else
who tried to stand in her way. Indeed, right this instant,
she would take a distinct pleasure in ending the life
of this man who regarded her son as nothing more than a
lab specimen. "He's always had a lot of
courage," she said, revealing nothing of her thoughts.
"May I talk to him?"
"Certainly."
She glanced around the room as she moved closer to the
Plexiglas box, searching for the camera she knew was
hidden there. As before, she saw nothing.
"Hello, darling," she said softly. "Are you all
right?"
Inside the box, Michael nodded. "I think so."
Then: "Am I ever going to be able to breathe regular
air again?"
The question wrenched at Katharine's heart.
Tonight!
she wanted to scream.
I'm going to get you out of here, and I'm going to take
you to a place where you can breathe until we can fix
what they did to you!
But she could say none of it.
Then, as her silence stretched, she noticed that
Michael's head was moving. He seemed to be nodding
toward his own lap.
Looking down, she saw the forefinger of his right hand
moving. For just a moment she didn't understand what he
was doing.
Then it came back to her.
He was forming letters with his fingers, tracing them on the
sheet so casually that no one who wasn't
looking for it would have realized what he was doing. "Of
course you'll
be able to," she said. "And Dr. Jameson says
you're doing very well."
GET ME OUT, his fingers spelled.
Glancing quickly to be certain that Jameson was still
concentrating on the computer screen, she nodded once.
"Tonight," she said, raising her right hand to her stomach,
its four fingers extended while the thumb remained
folded under the palm. Her eyes fixed on
Michael, willing him to understand that she was responding
to the plea he'd traced on the sheet. She spoke
again, almost immediately repeating the word. "Tonight, I'll
stay right here with you. Okay?"
She was almost certain she saw his eyes flick to the
four fingers she'd displayed at the instant she uttered
the word "Tonight." Would he understand that she was giving him the
time of escape-four a.m.?
His wink confirmed that he did.
"Got it!"
For several seconds Also Kalama's shout
didn't register on Rob. Over the last three
hours, as Also had worked patiently at the terminal
next to the one at which Phil Howell labored,
Rob had become increasingly fascinated
with the innumerable lists of files that scrolled on the
terminal in front of the astronomer's monitor.
Hour after hour it had gone on as the supercomputer
in the room a few yards away reached out into every other
computer it could find, hunting for files containing
DNA sequences, and whenever it found one, comparing its
contents not only to the single file that the
supercomputer had calculated bore a
ninety-seven percent probability of listing the
DNA sequence of an unknown organism, but to the
other twenty-three files it had generated as well.
By the time Also Kalama spoke, thousands of files
had been put through the process, and each of them had
been added to the ever-lengthening list of digitally stored
DNA sequences-the genetic codes for the tiniest
single-celled organisms, for thousands of species
of algae, mosses, ferns, bushes, and trees, as
well as for additional thousands of worms, insects,
spiders, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and every
species of warm-blooded creature known to man.
The astonishing result was that there were sequences-some
short, some long-in every single file that perfectly
duplicated one or another sequence that could be found
in the file the computer had generated from the signal from
the far reaches of space. A signal,
Howell had told Rob, that had come from something
called the Whirlpool Galaxy. In every case, the
computer dutifully reported the exact percentage
of match it had found. Though there was no complete
match-not even anything the computer considered
significantly close-more and more segments of the
sequence from the galaxy fifteen million
light-years away were matching to one or another
segment of the DNA of some organism on Earth.
Cumulatively, Howell was already nearly certain,
the proof would be irrefutable: not only was life not
unique to Earth, but its basic building blocks,
the four nitrogenous bases found here, were found on
other planets as well.
Not only was life universal, but its forms, when they
were finally found, would be familiar....
Rob's thoughts were shattered by a hand roughly shaking his
shoulder. "Rob," Also Kalama was saying, "what
do you want me to do now that I've cracked it?"
Rob whirled around, fixing his attention on the screen
Kalama had been slaving over for the last few
hours. The
Serinus directory was open at last, displaying
several more subdirectories. Under each
subdirectory were dozens-in some cases
hundreds-of files.
"Can you search them?" he asked, his eyes scanning a
small portion of the long list of cryptically named
files that filled the screen.
"No problem," Also replied. "What are we
looking for?"
"Names," Rob replied. "Michael Sundquist,
Josh Malani, and Kioki Santoya, for
starters. Also, look for a kid named Mark
Reynolds, and another named..." He hesitated,
searching his memory for the name of the boy from New
Jersey, then found it. "Shelby. Shane Shelby.
Start with those."
Also Kalama's fingers flew over the keyboard as
he activated a search program, typed in the names
Rob had just given him, and pressed the Enter key.
A list of fifteen files appeared, five in each
of three subdirectories of the main Serinus
directory.
As Rob was studying the list, trying to decide which of the
files to look at first, a soft chime sounded from the
terminal in the next carrel, and he heard Phil
Howell utter a single quiet phrase in a tone
barely above an awed whisper: "Oh, Jesus."
For a moment Rob wasn't certain what the
chime meant, but then it came back to him.
Phil Howell had set an alarm.
An alarm that would go off if the supercomputer found
a match for the file it was comparing to hundreds of thousands
of others.
Not a partial match.
Not even a ninety-nine percent match.
Only a perfect match.
But it was impossible! They knew what the sequence
was, and knew that there was no possibility of a
perfect match-at least not on this planet! Yet the
alarm had gone off.
His pulse quickening, Rob moved over to gaze at the
screen in front of Phil Howell.
A single line was highlighted. The moment he looked
at it, Rob felt a sensation of deja vu, as though
he'd seen this display, this file name, in precisely
this configuration, before. It took him an instant
to realize it was not the name of the file that was familiar.
It was the name of the directory it was in.
The Serinus directory.
"Also," he said softly, "take a look at this."
Also Kalama, still in his chair, slid over and peered
at the screen on which Rob Silver's eyes
remained fixed. "Jesus," he whispered,
unconsciously echoing Howell's exclamation as he
read the full address of the file that was highlighted
on the screen. "What the hell is going on?"
Half an hour later, all three of them knew.
Takeo Yoshihara had not been lying after all when
he said his people had found something resembling a geode
containing an organic substance. But Rob knew now
that neither Yoshihara nor the team of scientists he
had put together to analyze and find a use for the
substance- the group he had called the Serinus
Society-could have had any idea where the substance within
the sphere had come from.
Though it had emerged from deep within the crust of the
Earth, spewed up by violent volcanic activity
far beneath the ocean floor, its source was a mystery
only the conjunction of Phil Howell's accidental
discovery could unravel.
And suddenly Rob understood: the object at the
heart of the Serinus Project wasn't a geode
at all.
It was a seed.
A seed that had arrived sometime so far in the past as
to be almost beyond comprehension, from a planet so far
away as to be entirely invisible. Indeed, a
planet that had ceased to exist fifteen
million years ago.
A seed that was undoubtedly one of many-thousands, perhaps
even millions-that had been sent out into the universe
like spores riding on the wind. Most of them would have
floated endlessly in space, moving through the freezing
void for millennia upon millennia.
Some would have fallen into stars, to be instantly burned.
But a few-the most minuscule of fractions-would have
fallen onto planets, burying themselves far below the
surface. And there they would have lain, dormant,
waiting. Every now and then one would have risen to the
surface, carried by rising tides of magma, and
broken open.
If conditions were wrong-if the chemical makeup of the
atmosphere was improperly balanced-the life within the
seed would die.
But sometime, somewhere, one of the seeds would open, and find
an atmosphere that nurtured its contents, and the life
contained within would begin to reproduce.
A new planet would be seeded, and evolution would
begin.
And the life of the dead planet-the planet that had long
ago been destroyed by the explosion of the star around which it
orbited-would go on.
"How many planets?" Rob finally mused,
barely realizing he was speaking out loud. "How many
planets do you suppose received them?"
The Presence 369
For a moment Phil Howell was silent. When he
finally spoke, the awe in his whispered voice told
Rob that he, too, had realized the truth. "Not
them," he said. "U. We're what evolved from the
first of those seeds." His eyes fixed on Rob. "It
wasn't some kind of aliens that sent out that signal,
Rob. It was us."

Midnight.
Four more hours.
How was she going to make it?
"I will
make it,
she told herself. I
won't let Michael die. Not here, not anywhere!
Inside the Plexiglas box, Michael seemed
to be asleep, though Katharine suspected he
wasn't. Stephen Jameson was gazing down at her
son with no more concern than if Michael had been
suffering a minor case of the flu. "I think our
patient is doing quite well, all things considered,"
he said in the professionally comforting tones
Katharine thought he must have learned in medical
school.
Patient?
How could he call Michael a
patient! Victim
was more like it! She felt like smashing her fist into his
face, like locking him into the box in which Michael was
trapped, and letting him breathe the deadly
atmosphere that was suddenly the only thing that could keep
her son alive.
Why wouldn't he go home? What if he was planning
to stay up with Michael all night? What would she
do?
Though she managed to keep her own mask in place-
a mask she'd carefully composed of equal parts
concern for Michael and appreciation of the doctor's
efforts-her
mind was racing. But then she heard the words she'd been
waiting for.
"I think maybe I'll see if I can catch some
shuteye," Jameson told her, scanning the
monitors that were keeping track of Michael's
vital signs one more time. "Everything seems to have
stabilized. If there's a problem, LuAnne knows
how to reach me."
LuAnne, Katharine repeated silently to herself.
One look at her hard gray eyes had told
Katharine that, despite the nurse's uniform, the
primary job of the woman who sat in the anteroom
outside-perhaps her only job- was security.
Carefully concealing her true feelings, Katharine
tried to inject exactly the right mixture of worry
and confidence into her voice. "Do you really think he's
going to be all right?"
"He'll be fine," Jameson assured her.
As if I'm a child!
Katharine managed a sigh she hoped sounded like
relief. "Well, I hope you get enough sleep for
both of us," she said. "I just don't think I'll be
able to sleep a wink tonight." Oh, God. Had she
overplayed it? Jameson, though, seemed willing
to accept her at face value.
Or did he simply know there was absolutely
nothing she could do to extricate Michael from this
room? She instantly rejected the question, unwilling
to deal with its implications.
Fifteen minutes after Jameson finally left, she
set off on the first of what she'd begun to think of as
reconnaissance missions. Certain that every word she
spoke was being overheard, every move she
made watched, she forced herself to tell Michael not
to worry and try to get some sleep. Hoping the words
didn't sound as ludicrous to whoever might be listening
as they did to her, she took
a Ziploc bag out of her suitcase, left
Michael's room, and asked the "nurse" if there was
a kitchen on this level. "If I don't get some
coffee, I'm never going to make it through the night,"
she said, sighing.
Eyeing her sharply, LuAnne hesitated, then
pointed toward the end of the corridor. "But there's no
coffee," she said.
"Not to worry." Ignoring the woman's coolness and
holding up the Ziploc bag, which contained a fistful
of single-cup coffee bags still in their foil
packets, Katharine explained, "I brought my
own."
LuAnne made no reply, so Katharine
proceeded to the kitchen. As she passed the door behind
which lay the Serinus Project laboratories, she
noticed that the brass plaque was gone, and had
to resist an urge to try the knob to see if it was
locked.
In the kitchen she put a kettle of water on
to boil, then washed out two cups, dropping
one of the coffee bags in each of them. After the coffee
had steeped, Katharine fished out the bags, then
carried both cups back to the anteroom in which the
nurse was stationed. "I made you a cup, too," she
announced, setting both cups on the nurse's
desk and willing herself not to react to the look of
suspicion that immediately came into the other woman's
eyes. "This one's Chocolate Mocha, and the other's
French Vanilla Bean."
"Which one's your favorite?" the nurse asked.
"I think maybe the vanilla."
"Maybe I'll try that one."
Picking up the other mug, Katharine took it
into Michael's room. Though he appeared still to be
asleep, she was almost certain he was pretending.
Grateful for his pretense, which removed the need
to make up
conversation that would undoubtedly sound as false to whoever
might be listening as it would to them, she turned off the
light. The room was plunged into near blackness,
save for the glow of the monitors that still displayed
Michael's vital signs, and the chemical makeup
of the atmosphere inside the plastic box.
Even the darkness has eyes, Katharine thought,
remembering the cameras at the gate. She
settled down to wait, hoping that by four in the morning
the darkness and silence of the room would have lulled the
watchers into sufficient inattentiveness to let her
make the final move in the game she'd planned.
Moving surreptitiously, she fished the cellular
phone from her pocket and switched it over so that instead
of ringing it would vibrate silently.
Forty minutes later, playing out the script she'd
devised while packing her suitcase a few hours
earlier, she got both herself and the nurse a second
cup of coffee. This time, though, she lingered at the
desk in the anteroom long enough to find out that
LuAnne's last name was Jensen, that she had no
family, lived alone, and seemed to take no
interest in any subject on which Katharine tried
to engage her.
But she accepted the second cup of coffee, which she
finished in less than ten minutes.
The same thing happened with the third.
On none of the trips to the kitchen did Katharine
hear or see anyone else. Nor was there any
sign of a security guard, if she didn't count
LuAnne Jensen.
Which meant one of two things: either they thought she'd bought
Takeo Yoshihara's story, or they were so
supremely confident of their security that they
simply weren't worried.
When Katharine finally saw the minute hand on her
watch creep toward five minutes past three, she
picked up her empty cup and stepped out into the
anteroom one more time.
LuAnne Jensen actually smiled at her. "I was
just about to come in and see if you wanted me to fix it this
time."
"Not a problem," Katharine replied, picking up the
empty mug from the desk. "Michael's still sound
asleep, and I'm tired of sitting in the dark.
Any particular flavor this time?"
"Maybe another Chocolate Mocha?"
"Coming right up."
Heading for the kitchen for the fourth time, Katharine once
again set about making two mugs of coffee. But this time
she removed one more tinfoil packet from the
Zip-lock bag.
This one, though, contained more than coffee, for before she
left her house, she'd carefully slit it open and
added to the original contents three of the Halcion
tablets that her doctor had prescribed for her more
than a year ago. That had been during one of
Michael's bad periods, when she'd
worried so constantly about his asthma that she couldn't
sleep. Though she'd never taken the pills, she'd
kept them, superstitiously, as though their mere
possession would act as a charm against needing to use
them.
"Does it ever seem like the nights will never end?" she
asked now as she set one of the coffee mugs on
LuAnne Jensen's desk.
"Every one of them gets longer," the nurse agreed,
picking up the mug, blowing on the steam for a moment,
then taking the first sip. "You have no idea how much this
helps."
"Have as much as you want," Katharine replied. "I
brought plenty." Leaving with her own mug of coffee,
Katharine went back into Michael's room.
In the darkness, she stripped off the clothes she'd
been wearing all day and put on the jeans and shirt
she'd brought from home. The cellular phone went
into one of the front pockets of the jeans, where she'd
feel its vibration if Rob tried to call her.
At three-forty she cracked the door to the
anteroom open just wide enough to allow her a glimpse
of the desk. LuAnne Jensen was still in her chair, but
her head had rolled forward so her chin nearly touched
her chest, and a rhythmic snoring was
emanating from her open mouth. Katharine silently
closed the door.
At three forty-five she felt the cellular phone
vibrate in her pocket. Slipping it out, she
flipped it open and was about to utter Rob's name when
she thought better of it. "Michael?" she asked.
"Are you awake?"
Instantly, her son's voice crackled from the
speaker. "Uh-huh."
At the same time, she heard Rob's voice coming
through the telephone: "If you don't say anything,
we'll pick you up in exactly fifteen minutes.
If there's a problem, speak to Michael again."
Katharine hesitated. She had a plan, but she had
no idea whether it would work. If it didn't ...
But what choice did she have?
Silently, she pressed the End button on the
cellular phone, closed it, and returned it to her
pocket. Then she went over to the bed. In the dim
light emanating from the monitor, she could barely
make out Michael's face. But he was staring at
her, his eyes wide open, and she no
longer had any doubt that he'd been as wide-awake
as she through the long hours of the night.
She held a finger to her lips, then took
the bundle of clothes she'd brought for him out of the
suitcase and pushed them into the air lock. He
immediately began wriggling into them, staying under the covers
and doing his best to move as little as possible. When he
was done, she signaled him to pull the covers up and
pretend to go back to sleep. Then she stepped out
into the anteroom.
"Are you ready for- was she began, then cut herself off.
"LuAnne? LuAnne, what's wrong?" Moving
around behind the desk, she shook the nurse, who slid
off the chair onto the floor. Straightening, she
looked wildly around the anteroom as if uncertain
what to do, then picked up the telephone and pressed
the button that was labeled "Lobby Desk." Someone
picked it up in the middle of the second ring.
"Jensen?" a voice asked.
"It's Dr. Sundquist," Katharine said.
"Something's happened to LuAnne. I just came out
to make us some more coffee, and I thought she'd fallen
asleep. But when I tried to wake her up, she
slid off the chair."
"Oh, Jesus," the guard swore. "I'll be right
there."
Katharine darted back into Michael's room and
took three more items out of the suitcase.
Two of them were large plastic garbage bags.
The other was the fossilized femur of an
anthropoid that had become extinct several
million years ago.
Shoving the garbage bags into the air lock,
Katharine finally risked speaking to Michael out loud.
"Hold these up to the intake tube," she said.
"Get them as full as you can." Then, taking the
femur with her, she went back to the anteroom and
once again pressed the Lobby Desk
button on the phone. When there was no answer by the
second ring, she hung up, left the anteroom,
and went to stand by the elevator door, her back
pressed against the wall.
As she counted the passing seconds, she prayed that the
camera above her was being monitored only by the guard
who should be stepping out of the elevator in five more
seconds.
In at least partial answer to her prayers, the
doors slid open exactly five seconds later
and the guard stepped out.
As the second hand of Katharine's watch ticked one
more time, she raised the femur high, then brought it
down on the back of the guard's neck as hard as she
could.
Grunting, he dropped to his knees.
Katharine smashed the fossilized bone down one more
time.
The guard sprawled out on the floor, facedown, and
lay still.
Grabbing both his hands, Katharine dragged him down the
hall and into the anteroom. Closing the door, she
tied his hands behind him with the telephone cord, then
pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
If the elevator card stolen from Jameson
didn't work, the guard's would.
Rising to her feet, she looked once more at her
watch.
Seven minutes had gone by.
Going back into Michael's room, she finally
turned the lights on. Inside the plastic box,
one of the garbage bags was inflated, and Michael was
pulling its drawstrings tight.
"Don't tie them," she said. "Hurry, and get the
other
bag filled, and-was Her words died on her lips as
she realized for the first time that none of the corners of the
Plexiglas box had hinges.
"My God," she whispered, staring at Michael in
horror. "How am I going to get you out of
there?"
Holding the second garbage bag up to the intake
tube, Michael jerked his head toward the corner of the
room. "Over there. There's a button."
Katharine searched the corner where he'd gestured,
saw nothing for a moment, then spotted a small
button mounted flush into the wall. When she pressed
it, nothing seemed to happen, but then she saw
Michael pointing toward the ceiling.
A small panel had slid open directly above
the center of the Plexiglas box. From it a stainless
steel rod, perhaps an inch thick, was descending. A
knob on the rod slipped into a socket on the
box's top. She heard a click as something locked
in place.
A second later the box began to rise up off the
floor. Instantly the room filled with the noxious
gases with which the cube had been filled. Katharine,
already coughing from the fumes, lurched toward the
anteroom door.
"Take one of the bags," she heard Michael say
as the box cleared the bed. Grabbing the strings of the bag
he had shoved in her direction, she darted out into the
anteroom, yanking the door shut behind her.
Nine minutes had gone by.
She waited as another minute passed, and was about to go
back into the inner room when suddenly the door opened
and Michael, clutching the second garbage bag,
came out.
"Follow me," Katharine told him. Pulling the
door to the hallway open, she raced down the
corridor to the
elevator, the key card already in her hand. Holding
it up to the panel, she uttered a silent prayer.
The light on the gray panel changed from red
to green, but nothing happened.
The doors remained closed.
Then she understood: the elevator had returned to the
upper floor.
The fifteen seconds it took for the elevator
to arrive back on the lower level seemed to take
forever, but at last the doors slid open.
Katharine almost shoved Michael inside, stepped in
after him, and pressed the Up button. Then, as the
doors began to slide shut, she saw someone come out
of one of the doors down the hall.
The door to the Serinus Project.
The man stared at her in surprise and started toward
her, but the elevator doors closed before he could
get to them.
The elevator was only halfway up when Katharine
heard the faint ringing sound. An alarm.
As the doors slid open at the top and the sound of the
alarm battered against her eardrums, Katharine
looked at her watch again.
Five minutes left.
"Come on," she told Michael.
She raced down the corridor toward the double doors
at the far end, the inflated garbage bag bouncing
clumsily behind her. Michael, pausing only
to suck a deep breath from the second bag, ran after
her, catching up to her just as she came to the lobby
doors.
She pushed them open.
Here, the sound of the alarm was even louder, but the lobby
was still empty.
"Outside," she said.
They ran for the front door, and a few seconds
later burst out into the night. For an instant, seeing
no pursuers, Katharine dared to hope that, after all,
they might escape. Then the blackness was washed
away by a brilliant beam of white light.
Like two insects caught on a pin, Katharine and
Michael cowered in the brilliance.
Over the alarm, Katharine heard another
sound.
The familiar
whup-whup-whup
of a helicopter.
Shielding her eyes against the glare of the light, she
looked up. As suddenly as the beam had appeared, it
disappeared, and finally she saw it.
The helicopter dropped down no more than twenty
yards away.
She froze in horror, thinking:
Takeo Yoshihara.
Then, as lights all over the estate began to go on,
she caught a glimpse of a face inside the
chopper's cabin.
Rob Silver's face.
Grabbing Michael with one hand and still clutching the
garbage bag with the other, Katharine stumbled toward the
hovering aircraft and shoved Michael inside.
As Rob's strong hands closed on her wrists and
began to lift her into the cabin, she heard the
helicopter's engine roar.
Even before she was fully on board, it lifted off,
wheeled around, and began racing away into the darkness.
From the lanai outside his bedroom, Takeo
Yoshihara watched the helicopter disappear
into the night, then spoke into the telephone he had
picked up the instant the alarms had wakened him from
sleep.
The Presence 381
"Track them on radar," he ordered. "Find out
where they are going. We will bring them back. Do you
understand? Both the mother and the son." Before hanging up,
he spoke once more: "And when we go, I shall want
a special guard with us. One who has been trained
as a sniper."

The headset that Rob clamped over Katharine's
ears the moment after he dragged her into the
helicopter's cabin cut the rotor's roar just enough so
she could make out that he was trying to talk to her, but the
words themselves were lost in the din coming from above. When she
finally trusted herself to speak after the sickening series of
dips and turns the helicopter made as the pilot
raced it away from the estate, she had to raise her
voice to a shout, even though the headset's
microphone hung only a fraction of an inch from
her lips.
"I said, how long will it take to get to the Big
Island?"
Rob started to reply, then went silent as
the pilot jerked on the joystick and the helicopter
yawed sharply to port as it banked away from the face
of a cliff. It plunged straight down, then
stabilized and began to rise, finally cresting the top
of the cliff and swooping away to the west.
"Maybe forty minutes," Rob finally answered.
Forty minutes? But before, she recalled, Rob had
said Michael would have to breathe for only ten or
fifteen minutes! And though one of the two plastic
bags was still full-she herself was clutching its top
to make sure none of its contents could escape before
Michael needed them-the bag Michael had carried out
of the research
pavilion was already nearly half empty. He'd
never make it! Before she could say anything, though,
Michael spoke.
"I'm gonna try breathing regular air!" he
shouted into his microphone. "Maybe I can save
what's in the bags!"
Katharine nodded vigorously, then shouted into the
microphone again: "Just don't waste any of it
trying to talk!"
Michael made a thumbs-up sign. Then, as she
watched, he exhaled the last breath he'd taken from
the bag, and inhaled his first breath of air from
the cabin.
For a second, just a second, Katharine felt a
surge of hope. Then a fit of coughing seized
Michael, and she could see the pain he was
experiencing. He buried his face in the mouth of the
bag, sucked in some of the gas it held, and the coughing
subsided.
The bag, though, had collapsed still further. When
Katharine glanced at her watch, she saw that only
three minutes had gone by since they'd left the
estate. At this rate, both the bags would be
depleted before they were even halfway to the Big
Island. "What are we going to do?" she asked,
struggling to control the panic rising within her.
Michael couldn't die now! He couldn't! They were
supposed to be rescuing him, not killing him!
"Don't worry!" Rob shouted over the noise of the
rotors. "By the time he finishes them, we should be
okay!"
Katharine gazed out through the Plexiglas bubble into the
darkness outside. The route they were taking was leading
them up the side of the mountain, and the pilot was keeping
the chopper low, hugging the ground. The rain forests around
the estate had already given way to the lush pastureland
above Makawao and Pukalani, and just
ahead and off to the port side Katharine could see a
few lights she assumed must be at Kula. In the
distance, strung along the edge of Maalaea Bay like
a string of glittering diamonds, were the lights of
Kihei and Wailea.
Farther to the south there was a vast expanse of darkness,
broken only by a faint glow from the Makena Surf
Condominiums and the Maui Prince Hotel, then a
scattering of glimmers marking the dozen or so houses
strung along the beach until the beach itself ended
abruptly at the lava flow. Beneath the helicopter
the landscape was changing again, the lush up-country
pasturage giving way to the scrubby ranch land that
dominated the leeward side of Haleakala. Even
in the starlight she could make out the dense thickets of
prickly pear cactus and scraggly kiawe trees
that made up much of the sparse vegetation that grew there.
She glanced over at Michael; the first of the two
bags was all but depleted, but as his body began
to recover from the burst of energy he'd expended during
the escape, his breathing, like her own, had started
to return to normal, and the remaining gas contained in the
bag had lasted far longer than she would have thought
possible. But even so, the bag was deflated long before
they had even crossed over the coastline and
started out over the broad channel that separates
Maui from the Big Island.
As Michael discarded the first bag and took his first
breath from the second, she realized that instead of
turning southeast, en route to the Big Island, the
helicopter was still moving southwest. In the darkness,
she could see the silhouette of a small island etched
against the night sky. But there were no small islands
between Maui and the Big Island. A glance at the
compass confirmed her suspicion, and a new fear
took root inside her as she
searched for some plausible reason that they would be going in
the wrong direction.
And why had Rob assured her that Michael would have
to breathe no more than fifteen minutes?
Then, as the helicopter held a steady course almost
ninety degrees away from the only place where
Michael had a chance of surviving other than in
Takeo Yoshihara's laboratory, the truth
dawned on her.
Rob was still working for Takeo Yoshihara!
Not only was he still working for him, but he'd led her-and
Michael-directly into a trap.
Frantic, she looked wildly around, trying
to decide what to do. Should she attempt
to take control of the helicopter herself? She dismissed
the idea the instant it occurred to her-perhaps in the
movies someone who'd never flown a helicopter before
could simply take over the joystick, but in real
life it simply wasn't possible.
"Why aren't we going to the Big Island?" she
demanded, shouting to make herself heard over the din of the
rotor.
Rob cupped his hand over his ear, as if he hadn't
been able to hear her. But he must have heard! How could
he not have? Furious now, she jabbed her finger toward
the compass, then the island beyond. "That's not the Big
Island, God damn you! You lied to me! You're
going to kill us, aren't you?" As Rob's eyes
widened in the face of her fury, she shouted at him
again. "Why? Why are you doing this?" Suddenly it all
made sense: of course she'd managed to pull off
the escape-they'd always intended for her to! And they'd
timed it perfectly:
The man from the laboratory appearing in the hallway
just seconds too late to prevent her from using the
elevator.
The alarms going off just seconds too late for the
guards to prevent her from getting to the helicopter.
Even the arrival of the helicopter itself,
unchallenged, its searchlight blinding her, confusing
her, scaring her into shoving Michael into it with no questions
at all.
An idiot! She'd been a complete idiot! Her
frustration and fury overwhelming her, she lunged at
Rob, wanting to smash him even harder than she'd
smashed the guard with the fossilized bone half an
hour ago. She wanted to hit him, to strangle him,
to shove him out the door of the helicopter. "Damn
you!" she screamed. "Damn you, damn you,
damn your
Rob's hands instinctively came up to defend
himself, then his fingers closed on her wrists, holding
her arms immobile. "What are you talking about,
Katharine?" he demanded. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" she screamed. "For God's
sake, Rob! How stupid do you think I am?
Don't you think I've figured out why you told me
Michael was only going to need to breathe for-what did
you say? Ten to fifteen minutes, wasn't it?"
"Kath-was
"I should have known then, shouldn't I? I should have been
able to figure out there was no way to get to the Big
Island in that short a time. But I thought you had a
plan! I trusted you, God damn it! I
trusted you!"
"Stop it!" Rob shouted, so loudly his voice
carried over the roar of the rotor even without the help
of the headsets. "Will you tell me what the hell you
think is going on?"
"I don't think!" Katharine bellowed back. "I
know!" She jerked her head toward the vista beyond the
bubblelike cabin. They had crossed the coastline
now, and the
helicopter was speeding low over the water,
directly toward the small island she had seen.
"That's not the Big Island, Rob. What is it?
Does Yoshihara have another lab down there? Or
are you just going to dump us into the ocean?"
Michael, his complexion going ashen in the face of his
mother's fury, loosed his grip on the neck of the
plastic bag, and the cabin began to fill with choking
fumes.
Instantly, one of Rob's hands released
Katharine's arm and closed around the bag. "Careful
with that!" he yelled. "You need that for about five more
minutes. Don't let it escape."
As Michael, almost hesitantly, took the
half-deflated bag back from him, Rob swung
around to face Katharine again. "It's the
wind!" he shouted. "We can't go directly to the
Big Island-Michael would never make it! But the
wind's carrying fumes from the eruption almost due
west, so we should be able to catch the worst of them just on
the other side of Koho'olawe. Then we can turn
and fly due east, right into the fumes. It might be
rough for the rest of us, but Michael should be able to breathe
on his own. It's longer, but at least he has a
chance!"
Katharine's eyes bored into his, trying to read the
truth.
And what she saw was love.
Love, and the agony that her doubt had caused him.
Then, as if what she saw in his eyes might not be enough
to convince her, she felt a shift in the attitude
of the helicopter and heard the pilot's voice coming
through the headset.
"Someone open a window. Let's see if our ,boy
can breathe."
His hands dropping away from Katharine, Rob twisted
around and slid his window open. Instead of the fresh sea
air Katharine would have expected, the air that filled
the cabin was so laden with volcanic fumes that her
eyes immediately began stinging.
"Bingo!" the pilot yelled. "Don't you
love that fog?"
As the helicopter finished its swing, Katharine
searched for the great mass of the Big Island that should be
rising out of the sea ahead, but Rob, reading her mind,
shook his head. "You won't be able to see it through the
haze. But wait ten or fifteen minutes.
Believe me, it's still there." Then he said to her
son: "Well, what about it, Michael? Can you
breathe, or did we take the wrong gamble?"
Katharine turned to look at Michael. Once more,
as he had shortly after the helicopter took off,
he exhaled the fumes from the bag and inhaled the
cabin's air. He coughed once, hesitated, and
tried again. After a long pause, while Katharine
waited anxiously, he stuck his right hand out, thumb
up. "It's not great," he said. "But I'm not
feeling as bad as I did at school yesterday."
"Hang on to the bag, but just use it when you have to,"
Rob told him. Then he grinned at Katharine.
"And as for you, I forgive you your suspicions," he
said, as he drew her close.
Half an hour later the helicopter, with both its
windows wide open, was cruising along the
Kalapana Coast southwest of Hilo. The entire
mountainside was pocked with glowing vents, and
Michael gazed in awe at the lava flows that oozed
down the mountain's flank like slithering, flaming
serpents.
Bathed in the eerie silver light of the moon, he could
see the stone cliffs of the coastline being battered by the
heaving ocean-an ocean made angry by the mountain's
attempt to invade its realm with spreading fingers of
molten rock. The Pacific was waging an unending
counterattack, hurling vast masses of water against
the intruding rock and casting spume high into the sky like
spent artillery shells being ejected from machine
guns.
Here and there along the battle's front line,
enormous plumes of steam gushed up where the ocean
quenched the mountain's fire, and from behind the lines, on
the mountain's slopes, clouds of smoke arose.
The helicopter crossed the coastline and began
moving up the flank of the mountain. Below, most of the
terrain was barren lava without so much as an inch of
topsoil covering it, though here and there a few
scrubby bushes had gained a foothold. Almost
everywhere Michael looked, steam or smoke belched
forth from deep within the mountain's bowels. The air
reeked with the acrid smell of sulfur.
He sucked it deep into his lungs,
feeling the warmth that spread through his body as he
absorbed the fumes. "Where are we going?" he
shouted.
"The pilot says there's a clearing where he can set
the chopper down," Rob told them. "The idea's
to get you as close to these vents as possible."
In the distance, and two hundred feet above them,
flames rose out of a crater like a beacon. As the
pilot guided the chopper higher, rising above the
caldera, they saw for the first time its demonic
contents. Lava boiled with the fury of hell,
flames leaped across its surface, evil fountains
of molten rock shot high into the air, some of them
breaking apart to drop back into the churning cauldron,
others exploding into brilliant bursts of sparkling
embers that drifted on the wind before cooling to the point
where their fiery glow died away.
The heat rose in waves, and above the gaping,
hellish maw into which Michael was gazing, the air itself
shimmered and danced. The flames took on a
hypnotic quality that wrapped itself around
Michael's mind until he was staring at the
spectacle with unblinking fascination.
Only when the helicopter began to drop down toward
the ground, and the lip of the caldera once more
hid its fires from his view, did Michael finally
turn away to see where they were going. A minute
later the helicopter settled into something that seemed
to him like an oasis in the desert of fire and lava.
Somehow, in the vagaries of its flow, the lava had
left a clearing in which stood a grove of scraggly
kiave trees. On the ground, miraculously, a
thin covering of grass still survived.
Near the center of the clearing there was a fire pit,
built of a circle of rocks very much like the one in the
ravine where his mother had uncovered the skeleton.
Beyond the fire pit were the ruins of a hut, its walls
also built of lava, its roof long since caved
in.
The chopper settled onto the ground and the pilot cut
the engine. As the roar died away and the great rotor
slowed to a stop, an eerie silence fell over the
four people inside.
"What is this place?" Michael finally asked.
"Used to be a campground," the pilot explained.
"This is all that's left of it. It's about the only
place around here that's still safe to land. Everywhere
else, you don't know what's under you."
Katharine, feeling oddly disoriented by the sudden
quiet, looked uncertainly at
Michael, as if perhaps his
breathing might have been somehow dependent on the power
of the helicopter's engine. "Well?" she asked.
Pushing open the door, Michael scrambled out of the
cabin and dropped to the ground, then turned and grinned
at his mother. "I can breathe!" he yelled. "It worked!
I can breathe!" Almost as quickly as his grin had come,
though, it faded. His eyes flicked around the
desolate landscape, taking in the darkness that was
laced with patches of glowing fire and swirling smoke
and fumes. "Is this the way it's going to be from now
on?" he asked, his voice quavering despite his
effort to control it. "Is this where I'm going to have
to live the rest of my life?"
Katharine's eyes met Michael's and she felt a
terrible sense of dread come over her.
She had no answer for him.

Katharine and Rob sat side by side, very close
together, a few feet from the small campfire the
helicopter pilot had built. The pilot himself was
hunkered down opposite them, poking at the fire
with a stick. He was a lanky man, tall and
skinny, named Arnold Berman-"but everybody
calls me Puna"-whom Katharine judged
to be in his mid-twenties.
The wind had shifted, flushing some of the fumes from the
small clearing, and Michael, his chest starting
to hurt, had gone off in search of a fumarole, where the
smoke and gases boiling up from deep beneath the crust
of the earth would ease the pain in his lungs and give him
the strength that oxygen no longer could. Katharine,
terrified of losing sight of him even for a moment,
wanted to go with him, but Rob stopped her.
"Let him be, Kath," he'd said. "Whatever
happens to him-however this turns out-he's going to have
to deal with it. And so are you and I."
As exhausted mentally as she was physically,
Katharine had reluctantly settled back, but ten
minutes later she wished she hadn't, for as the first
flush of victory at having rescued Michael from
Takeo Yoshihara's estate
began to fade, the full horror of her son's
condition set in. The alien landscape seemed to be
closing in on her, with its perimeters oddly lit
by tongues of flame that flicked up from the fire
pits, while all around her there was a strange
pulsating glow from the lava flows. When Puna had
built the small fire, she'd been drawn to it
less for its warmth than for its
familiarity, and as the little fire seemed to hold the
demons surrounding them at bay, she looked at the
man who had flown them here, studying him for the first time.
His duty-blond hair was long, and he wore the
standard Maui uniform of shorts, T-shirt, and
sandals. He looked far more like a beach bum than a
helicopter pilot. "Is there any way I can ever
thank you enough for what you did tonight?"
Puna shrugged. "Ken Richter was my best friend.
We came to Maui together. If what Rob says
is true, I wish I'd had a bomb to dump on
that prick's place after we picked you up."
"It's true," Katharine sighed as Rob slipped
his arm protectively around her. "It's all
true." She pressed closer to Rob and looked
into his face. "What are we going to do?"
"For the moment, all we can do is wait," Rob
told her. "But the way I figure it, as soon as
it gets light, we should have some company."
Katharine shuddered. "Yoshihara's going to come after us,
isn't he?"
"Probably," Rob agreed. "But if he thinks
we're going to be all by ourselves out here, he's going
to find out he's wrong." His arm tightened around her and
his eyes rose to scan the sky. And there it
was, right where Phil Howell had told him it would
be. Glimmering in the blackness of
a sky that had been washed all but bare of stars by the
light of the fires burning around them, a single light
hung far above them.
A light that would shine more brightly with each passing
night, but then-in a week or perhaps a month- would
disappear.
Disappear forever.
The nova.
"Look," he said softly, guiding Katharine's
eyes to the brightening star. "That's where it all came
from." Then, choosing his words very carefully, Rob
began explaining to Katharine exactly what he and
Phil Howell had discovered that night.
The first light of dawn was washing the blackness from the
eastern horizon when the sound intruded on
Katharine's dream.
She was back in the Serinus laboratory on
Takeo Yoshihara's estate, but instead of rats,
hamsters, monkeys, and chimpanzees, the cages
each contained a little boy.
The rows of Plexiglas boxes seemed to stretch
on forever, and each of the aisles opened into another,
forming a labyrinth that went on into infinity.
Katharine saw herself running through it, searching for
Michael, but there were too many cages, too many children,
and all of them were reaching out to her, begging her to help
them.
She stopped finally, and opened one of the cages, but the
moment she did, the child inside began to cough and choke,
and when she picked up a little boy-a boy who looked
exactly like Michael had when he was six-his
coughing became convulsive.
And the child died in her arms.
She began running again, but now something was pursuing
her, coming closer and closer, its sinister noise
building to a crescendo.
Whup-whup-whup. ..
She tried to run faster, but the aisles stretched
longer and longer before her, and with every turn, there were more of
them to choose from. But no matter which way she turned,
how many times she dodged from one aisle into another,
her pursuer drew ever nearer.
Whupwhupwhup.
..
She cried out Michael's name, praying he would
answer her, that she would be able to find him before-
"Katharine!"
Her name! Someone was calling her name! But not
Michael!
"Katharine!"
She jerked awake, the dream dissolving around her,
andwitha start remembered where she was. She'd escaped
from the estate, and Michael was with her, and so was Rob,
and they were safe.
WHUPWHUPWHUPWHUP!
The noise was still there, and now that she was wideawake,
she knew exactly what it was.
She struggled to her feet, ignoring the stiffness that had
crept into her body as she'd dozed against Rob's
shoulder, still huddled close to the small fire Puna
was nursing. "Where is it?" she asked, searching the
brightening sky for the source of the noise.
Then she saw it. Flying high and coming in from the
direction of Maui, she instantly recognized
Takeo Yoshihara's helicopter. "Michael,"
she whispered, clutching at Rob's arm while her
eyes remained fixed on the aircraft. "Where's
Michael?"
"He hasn't come back yet," Rob told her.
"Let's go find him."
"There!" Takeo Yoshihara said, pointing to the
slope of Kilauea where Arnold Herman's
helicopter was clearly visible in a
small clearing. "Shall I land?" the pilot asked.
"Not until we find the boy!" Takeo
Yoshihara, a satisfied smile curling his lips,
gazed down at the landscape below. Though the glow of the
lava flowing through the cracked and fissured tubes was
fading in the breaking dawn, the flames dancing above
the fire pits and calderas were still visible, as were the
plumes of smoke and steam from the fumaroles that lined
the great fissure-the point where an immense chunk
of the island of Hawaii would eventually slide away
into the sea, creating a tidal wave a thousand feet
high. It wouldn't happen this morning, or tomorrow, or this
year or next. Indeed, it probably wouldn't
happen in Takeo Yoshihara's lifetime, or for
generations to come. Which was too bad: a natural
phenomenon of that magnitude and the devastation it would
wreak, was something he would like to see. This morning,
though, there were more important things to do than
contemplate the scene below.
The
timing, as
he had intended, was perfect.
They'd taken off from Maui in darkness, but by the time
they found the boy-and they
would
find him-it would be light.
Light enough to pursue and capture him.
Or to kill him.
But still so early that there would be few witnesses. Only
the mother, the besotted Dr. Silver, and their pilot,
none of whom would survive.
"Fly lower," he ordered. "We should be able to see
..." His words died on his lips as he caught a
flicker of movement that was neither flame nor smoke
nor any of the churning gases that swirled up from below.
Raising the pair of Leica binoculars that hung from
his neck, he peered downward. "Yes," he said
softly. "There he is."
Keeping the binoculars fastened on Michael
Sundquist, Takeo Yoshihara began guiding the
pilot toward the spot where the boy stood.
Nearly two hours had passed, but Michael,
mesmerized by the undulating rhythm of the fires
dancing above the caldera's surface, had long ago
lost any sense of time. After he'd left the small
oasis in the lava where the kiawes grew and the others
could still easily breathe the air, he'd moved quickly
through the tortured landscape. His senses, heightening
every minute as his lungs absorbed the nutrients his
body now craved, guided him from one vent
to another. He'd stopped at each of them, breathing in
the thick fumes that steamed out of the cracks in the
earth's crust, inhaling the pungent odors issuing
forth from the fumaroles. Finally he'd come to the
caldera. There, crouched at its rim, the night had
closed around him, wrapping him in a blanket of
darkness from which he watched in silent wonder as the
fires boiled up from deep within the earth. Through the
hours, the flames danced, weaving intricate
patterns above the molten rock that seemed
to Michael to throb like the heart of the planet itself.
Now, as the black mantle of night began to lift
from the mountain, he sensed a change coming.
The rhythm of the flames seemed to intensify, as if
they had some urgent message to impart before the
brilliant
fires of the sun made their own luminescence fade
to invisibility.
As he was released from the folds of darkness,
Michael flexed his body, but found no stiffness in
it, despite the hours of crouching near the edge of the
caldera's lip. Then he felt, more than heard, a
new rhythm beat into his consciousness. At first he
tried to ignore it. Finally, it became so strong that
he tore his eyes from the pulsating flames
and gazed upward.
The helicopter hovering in the distance took on an
iridescent glitter like that of a dragonfly searching
for prey in the first rays of the rising sun. Michael
watched it in fascination, but as it swooped down,
moving steadily toward him, his fascination gave way
to a tingling uneasiness.
It was, indeed, a predator out hunting in the
morning sun like a dragonfly.
Hunting for him.
But at the same time that he realized he was the prey
for which the great metal dragonfly searched, so also
came an absolute conviction that he must remain where
he was, close to the fires, where smoke and fumes
sustained him, and would also now, somehow, protect him.
Rising to his full height, Michael waited.
Katharine, with Rob right behind her, was stumbling along
the rocky path that led out of the oasis and onto the
lava flow when suddenly a shadow flicked over her.
Reflexively, she looked up into the sky, then
stopped in her tracks as she watched Takeo
Yoshihara's helicopter, hovering high above for the
last several minutes, make a sudden descent.
"They've found him!" she told Rob. "Hurry!"
"Land!" Takeo Yoshihara commanded.
His employer's command ringing in his ears, the pilot
searched for a likely looking spot, but found nothing.
Already he was beginning to feel the effects of the churning
thermals rising from the shattered landscape below, some of
them so strong that they shot the helicopter straight
up, but at the same time so narrow that by the time he'd
adjusted for the added lift, he was out of it, and the
aircraft would yaw giddily, or plunge for a
second or two like an out-of-control elevator.
"There's no place to land," he finally replied.
"Find one!" Yoshihara demanded, his eyes fixed
on Michael Sundquist, who was standing near the edge
of the caldera's highest wall, only a few yards
from a hundred-foot vertical drop into a lake of
seething lava.
"No chance," the pilot replied. "My job is
to fly you, not kill you."
Takeo Yoshihara's eyes went flat and the single
brief look he gave the pilot was enough to tell him
that this might be his last flight. After raking the
pilot, Yoshihara's glare shifted to his chief of
security.
"Shoot the boy," he ordered.
The security man reached behind the seat and picked up
the laser-sighted rifle he'd brought on the
flight for exactly this purpose. Placing its
stock firmly against his right shoulder, he switched on
the laser, kicked open the door of the cabin, then
peered through the telescope mounted above the barrel. The
helicopter, now buffeted not only by the thermals, but
by the rising trade winds as well, was swinging far too
wildly for him to get anything resembling a clear
shot at Michael. "Too high," he said.
"Lower," Takeo Yoshihara commanded the pilot.
The pilot, weighing the dangers to the craft against the
loss of his not-inconsiderable salary, carefully
began to drop the helicopter toward the lacerated
surface of the mountain.
Yoshihara's sniper, still peering through the telescope,
saw the red dot of the laser flick across Michael
Sundquist's face far too quickly for him
to squeeze the rifle's trigger.
Better if he'd brought an AK-47, he thought,
or even an Uzi.
"Lower!" Takeo Yoshihara demanded again, understanding
that the flatter the angle, the better the chance of
hitting his target.
Michael gazed up at the rifle barrel
protruding from the door of the helicopter and instantly
knew that the man holding the gun intended
to kill him. For some reason, though, the thought did not
disturb him. The calmness that had come over him as
he'd watched the fires boil remained intact.
Instead of turning in an attempt to flee the
hunter, he moved closer to the caldera's lip, as
though something deep inside him had instructed him that the
fires of the earth were his protection, not his enemy.
"Good," Takeo Yoshihara said to himself as he
watched Michael move closer to the edge. Now, when
the boy dropped from the single shot that was all that would be
required to execute him, he would pitch forward,
plunging into the sea of churning molten rock, his
body instantly incinerated. "Lower!" he again commanded
the pilot.
The pilot, hands tightening on the controls, peered
down into the fiery hell below, then looked away as he
felt himself losing his nerve.
Only ten more feet.
He would drop only ten more feet, and that would be it.
Even if it cost him his job, he would go no lower.
His eyes glued to the altimeter, he nudged the
helicopter downward.
He could feel the heat now, even through the
protective bubble of Plexiglas that formed the
cabin.
Six more feet.
Five.
Only three more, then he would hold steady, and
rotate the cabin around to give the marksman a clear
bead on the boy who still stood on the edge of the
caldera, calmly watching.
Why didn't he run?
Was he crazy?
Three more feet...
Michael felt no fear as he watched the
helicopter hover over the caldera, dropping lower
and lower. He could feel something in the ground now, a
slight tremor, as if the earth itself were about to come
alive. Then, as the helicopter edged lower, the
glowing surface of the lake inside the caldera
awakened.
The level of the lava rose steeply, the oddly
rhythmic undulations of the boiling rock suddenly
interrupted by a column of fire that fountained out of the
caldera's throat, hurling rock, ash, and fire
into the air in a burst that seemed to come from nowhere and
everywhere simultaneously.
Michael ducked beneath the cover of a thick lip of
lava, but his eyes remained fastened on the
spectacle in front of him.
For the helicopter, there was no place to hide, nor
time to flee.
The sniper saw the flicker of red on Michael's
face as the laser sight found its mark. But in the
instant before he could squeeze the trigger, a fragment
of molten lava struck the helicopter's enormous
propeller. One of its blades broke free of the
shaft, and as the helicopter yawed wildly in
response to its injury, the metal blade
boomeranged back, lashing through the open cabin door,
severing the marksman's arm just above the elbow, and sending
him, screaming, into the maelstrom below.
Blood from the severed arm splattered across the
Plexiglas cabin, blinding the pilot, who was still
trying to control the mortally wounded aircraft.
A terrified howl issued from Takeo Yoshihara,
his self-control deserting him as he looked down
into the yawning hell into which the helicopter was plunging.
His scream, unheard by anyone beyond the confines of the
Plexiglas cabin, was suddenly cut off as the
fuel tank, heated beyond endurance by the all-consuming
fire welling up out of the mountain, exploded into yet
more flames, blowing the helicopter into a thousand
pieces even as it plummeted into the depths of the
churning lake.
The fire spout, as if sensing that it had completed the
mission for which it had been summoned, subsided back
into the bowels of the mountain. Beneath Michael's feet,
the trembling of the earth began to subside.
By the time Katharine and Rob reached Michael, the
helicopter and its occupants had vanished,
incinerated as completely as if they had never existed
at all.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Michael asked, still
gazing out over the caldera's surface.
The Presence 403
Katharine slipped one arm around her son, the other
around Rob Silver. "It is beautiful," she
agreed. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever
seen."
EPILOGUE
It didn't seem like two weeks. It barely
seemed like two days. Yet the exhaustion that had
become Katharine's most familiar and constant
companion since the night she and Michael had fled
from Takeo Yoshihara's estate told her that the time
had, indeed, passed.
She was back on the estate, now in an office of
her own, though not in the north wing of the research
pavilion.
The entire north wing had been turned over to the army
of press that had descended on the estate. Katharine
and Rob had moved into what had been the Serinus
Project laboratories, and found it ironic that
Takeo Yoshihara's security system now served
to protect them from the swarm of reporters upstairs,
freeing them to concentrate on finding a way to reverse
the damage that had been done to Michael and a dozen
other adolescent children scattered around the globe.
Wherever the victims were found, fumatoria had been
immediately set up, funded by the companies that Takeo
Yoshihara had controlled, to keep them as comfortable as
possible until an answer could be found.
If there was an answer.
Most of the scientists who had been involved in the
Serinus Project, acting on the advice of their
attorneys, refused to discuss anything about the
sphere-or the Seed, as it was still called, the press
having latched onto the term the moment they heard
it-let alone the project that had been centered around
it.
"We knew nothing of it until two days ago,"
Herr Dok-tor Wolfgang von Schmidt had
insisted. "As far as we knew, we were called here
to be briefed on a new project that
Takeo Yoshihara had in mind. Needless to say,
when we heard of his plans to indulge in human
experimentation, we were all appalled. And we all
refused."
Juan-Carlos Sanchez and all but two of the other
scientists who had been housed at the Hotel
Hana Maui had clung to von Schmidt's
position, though now they were protesting their ignorance from
prison cells in Honolulu rather than hotel
suites on Maui.
The laboratory staff, save for the one man whose
job it had been to fill the scuba tanks before they were
sent to Kihei Ken's Dive Shop, was still intact,
now working under the supervision of Katharine and Rob and the
team of biologists and geneticists they had
assembled to reanalyze the compound within the Seed and
attempt to find a way to reverse its effects.
Thus far, no progress had been made. Though
Katharine was doing her best to remain optimistic, with
each day that passed a little more of her hope faded. This
morning, when one of the lab technicians rapped on
her open door, she looked up from the data she'd
been studying and braced herself for more bad news.
"There's something I think you should see, Dr.
Sundquist," he said. "Right away."
Following him out of the office, she threaded her way
through the laboratory and then into the room in which the
walls were lined with the Plexiglas boxes where the
animals waited for death.
The technician stopped in front of a cage.
Katharine herself had paused at this box earlier this
morning to try to comfort its sole occupant, a
chimpanzee whose energy seemed finally to have been
sapped. The animal, so heartbreakingly close in
appearance to a human child, was still breathing, but seemed
unaware of her presence, its dull eyes staring off
into space, as if looking at something that wasn't there.
Katharine had talked to it for a moment or two, but it
gave no more sign of hearing her than it had of seeing
her. Finally, knowing there was nothing she could do for the
creature, she'd turned away.
But even as she'd gone on toward her office, a
thought had lingered in her mind:
Is this the way it will end for Michael?
Now, standing an front of the cage, she made herself
look at its occupant, certain it must have died.
Instead, the chimp was sitting up on the floor,
scratching itself with the fingers of its left hand while it
clung to a banana with its right. Catching sight of
her, it chittered softly, then held out the
banana as if offering it to her.
Katharine's eyes shifted to the gauges monitoring
the atmosphere inside the cage. As the
significance of their readings slowly sank in, she
knew what she had to do.
And she had to do it right now.
Phil Howell, as overwhelmed by the army of
reporters as Katharine and Rob, had moved onto
the estate, too, hiding out in one of the subterranean
offices while he worked on a monograph concerning
the origin of the Seed. Now, with the monograph finally
completed, he stood nervously
behind the podium of the largest conference room on the
estate, trying to quell the attack of stage fright that
had seized him the moment he'd entered the room and
been surrounded by the pack of journalists, all of
them jamming microphones at him, calling out a
barrage of questions.
Shaking his head, hand held up as if to ward them off,
he fought his way to the front of the room. There, he
waited silently until the crowd of reporters had
quieted down. Then he began:
"The civilization that created the Seeds knew what was
going to happen to them, just as we know how much longer our
own sun is going to last, and how it is going
to die. For us, that event is so far in the future as
not even to be a factor in our thinking." He
paused, then went on. "But they, fifteen million
years ago, knew that their sun was going to explode.
They knew that their planet was going to be incinerated,
and that they were all going to die.
"Not slowly.
"Not over a period of centuries, or decades,
or even years.
"They were going to die in an instant.
"And so they prepared. Probably for hundreds of
years; perhaps for thousands. They knew they couldn't
prevent their sun from exploding, nor save their
planet. So they did something else. They
escaped."
Someone at the back of the room rose to her feet.
"But they didn't," she said. "The Seed isn't
viable here. Whatever might have hatched out of them
couldn't live in our atmosphere."
Phil Howell's gaze shifted to Rob Silver,
who was
standing against the wall just inside the conference room's
door. "Perhaps you could comment on that, Rob."
Coming to the podium, Rob looked out at the faces,
some expectant, some skeptical. "The
fact of the matter is, we feel fairly certain that
the contents of the Seed may be perfectly viable." The
murmuring crowd grew silent as the import of what
he was saying slowly sank in. "Right now,
Michael Sundquist is living on the slope of
Kilauea, thriving in an atmosphere that would
poison the rest of us. And in the basement of this
building there is a skull and a skeleton, both of
which bear very close resemblance to early hominids.
Preliminary tests show that the DNA of both of them
are a very close match to that of the organic compound
inside the Seed. Though we can't yet prove it,
we are fairly certain that the beings whose bones we are
currently analyzing must have been affected by the
contents of one of the 'Seeds" at a very early age,
possibly even before birth, through a mother who came
into contact with one of them. The atmosphere of this
planet, like everything else in the universe, is
constantly changing and evolving. If there are areas on
this planet right now where organisms such as those who
created the Seed can survive, think of how many such
areas there would have been eons ago, when life here was just
emerging."
Rob paused, fixing his eyes directly on the
woman in the back row who had posed the
question. "Except, of course, that life was not emerging
at all."
The reporter frowned. "I beg your pardon?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Rob replied. "Life
on this planet did not emerge," he said again. "It
adapted."
For a moment the silence in the room held as the
reporters digested what Rob Silver had just said,
and then a
dozen of them were on their feet, all shouting questions at
once.
Rob waited until the furor died away, then
dealt with all the questions in one statement.
"It's very simple," he said. "Life did not
arise
on this planet-it
arrived.
Before that planet was destroyed fifteen million
years ago, the essence of its life force escaped;
this is where it came. Here, and perhaps to hundreds-even
thousands-of other planets." His tone changed, almost
as if he were no longer speaking to the people in the room, but
to everyone, everywhere. "When you look up into the sky
tonight, and see the one star that is brighter than all the
others, understand what it is. Or what it
was."
A silence fell over the room, and finally the woman
in the back of the room, still on her feet, spoke a
single word.
"Home."
"That's right," Rob said softly. "Home."
Then, seeing Katharine waving to him from the door,
Rob turned the press conference back over to Phil
Howell and left the room.
Michael had awakened before dawn that morning, his
eyes snapping open in the darkness and immediately fixing
on the nova that was now the brightest star in the sky. For
him, the brilliant beacon of light had taken on
a special meaning, appearing for the first time on the
night he had been delivered from the confines of the
Plexiglas box and brought to the oasis in the lava
shield covering the flank of Kilauea.
The oasis was still his headquarters, and in the two
weeks that had elapsed since the helicopter
deposited him here, a tent had been set up. There
was a picnic table and benches, and half a dozen
folding chairs stood in a
The Presence 413
loose circle around the stone ring in which a small
fire always smoldered.
A makeshift kitchen had even been constructed, with a
Coleman stove for cooking, and an enormous
cooler, its ice replenished every three days. They
had offered to bring a generator to the oasis, but
Michael himself had begged them not to, unwilling to have
what little quiet remained on the mountainside
destroyed by the constant roar of another machine.
The helicopters overhead were bad enough.
A crowd of reporters had set up camp farther
down the mountain, held back only by a team of
rangers whose sole job had become to protect the
small amount of privacy Michael had, and the
reporters had brought their own generators up. When
the winds were right, Michael could hear them all too
clearly, and when he went to the caldera at night
to watch the flames dance over the surface of the
boiling lava, the comforting blanket of darkness in which
he'd wrapped himself that first night was gone, torn
to shreds by the brilliant halogen lights with which the
reporters lit their camp.
Visitors came to see him every day, and every day his mother
and Rob came as well, if only for an hour or
two. Most days, the three of them had supper together,
and often one or the other of them spent the night with him,
sleeping in the tent while he himself lay
outdoors, savoring the expansiveness of the sky.
Each day, he felt a little stronger, and each night
the star grew a little brighter. Three days ago, for the
first time, it had remained visible into the dawn, only
disappearing when it inevitably dropped over the
horizon.
But the star, he knew, was eventually going to fade,
and though he'd said nothing to either his mother or to Rob, he
had begun to fear that day.
This morning, when he'd come awake before dawn and
looked up into the sky, something had changed: the nova
had been less bright than the night before. He'd
gazed at it for a long time, silently willing its
brilliance to grow, before he drifted back into a
fitful sleep.
When he awoke again, the sun was rising, and the stars,
except for the nova, were gone.
And he felt a tightness in his chest.
All morning long he told himself it meant nothing,
that he'd simply caught a cold, and that by tomorrow or the
next day it would be gone. But he knew better;
knew that tomorrow, and on every tomorrow to come, the nova would have
dimmed, and the pain in his chest would have spread.
The night it disappeared, he was certain, would be the
night he died.
He spent the day alone, hiking on the mountain,
visiting all his favorite places, inhaling the
smoke and fumes, praying they would banish the pain in
his chest and replace the flagging energy in his body.
They did not.
It was nearly three o'clock when he heard the roar of
rotors and looked up into the sky to see Puna's
helicopter cruising above him, then dropping lower,
and finally landing in the oasis. Even before the blades
stopped spinning, his mother and Rob scrambled out. Then
his mother's hands were on his shoulders, and her eyes
intently studying his face, and she asked the questions she
asked every day since he'd come here.
"How do you feel? Are you all right?"
Michael hesitated, then decided there wasn't
any
reason for her to be as frightened as he'd been when the
pain in his chest persisted throughout the day. "I'm
fine," he said. There was a flicker of something in his
mother's eyes, and when she spoke again, she almost sounded
disappointed.
"You're sure? You aren't in any pain? You have
plenty of energy?"
Michael's smile faltered. "I-I'm okay,
Mom. Really!"
For some reason, his words didn't seem to make her
feel better. She took a deep breath. "I
brought you something," she said.
Michael glanced at the helicopter, but saw nothing
except Rob and Puna unloading some kind of box
from behind the aircraft's rear seats.
A Plexiglas box.
A Plexiglas box that looked big enough for him
to get into.
Involuntarily, he took a step backward. His
mother grabbed his arm. "No!" he said. "I won't-was
He fell abruptly silent when he realized the
box wasn't empty.
Inside it was a chimpanzee.
"She's from the laboratory," he heard his mother say
as Rob unlocked the door to the Plexiglas box.
"This morning I thought she was dying."
Rob opened the lid of the box, and the chimpanzee, as
if surprised to find its prison door open,
hesitated, then slowly came out. It looked
curiously around for a moment, and then its eyes fixed
on Michael. In two short bounds it crossed the
space between them and leapt up, its arms encircling
Michael's neck as it sniffed at his ear.
"But how can she breathe?" Michael asked,
certain that at any second the chimpanzee would begin
gasping.
As if on cue, the chimp began to wheeze. "Put
her back in the box," Michael pleaded. "She's
going to die!"
Katharine shook her head. "She's not, Michael.
She's going to be fine."
Michael blinked. "I don't understand-was he began,
but then his mother's arms were around him again, hugging both him
and the chimpanzee.
"It's over," she said. "The reason the animals in
the lab have been dying is because the effect of the Seed
doesn't last! It wears off, and when it does, the
animals can only survive on oxygen again. Even
this morning I was afraid this baby wasn't going
to make it through the day. But in the middle of the morning,
someone changed her atmosphere and started giving her
oxygen again. And look at her! She's all right!"
As the words slowly sank in, Michael pulled
away from his mother and looked into her eyes. "How
long?" he asked. "How long before me did they
give it to her?"
"Not quite two weeks," Katharine told him. "And it
was just about a week ago that she started failing. We
thought she was getting sicker, but it was just the
opposite. She was getting better, but we kept
on poisoning her."
Michael was no longer listening. Instead, he was
gazing up at the nova, and remembering what Rob
had told him about how long it would take before it began
to die.
A couple of weeks.
Perhaps a month, or even more.
But now it no longer mattered, for long after the star had
died, he would still be alive.
A sheepish smile came over his face. "Mom?"
Katharine looked at him.
"When you asked me if I was okay and I said I was
fine?"
Katharine nodded.
"Well, I lied. Actually, I've been feeling
kind of lousy all day, and breathing fumes and smoke
hasn't helped much at all!"
Darkness was falling as the helicopter took off from the
Big Island for the last time, carrying Michael,
Katharine, and Rob back to Maui.
Below them the glowing vents of the volcano were brightening,
and the flames above the caldera were beginning their nightly
dance, but Michael could see that the lake of lava was
beginning to recede, and the writhing serpents of
molten rock were slowing in their progress toward the
sea. The eruption was ending; the mountain was slowly
dropping back into an uneasy slumber.
Above them the nova hung alone in the sky, but other
stars were beginning to appear as well.
And soon-very soon-the nova would fade away.
Unlike the volcano, it would never awaken again.
AFTERWORD
More than a year and a half ago the idea for
The Presence
came to me while I was walking on the beach near my
home on Maui. Here, on this island paradise,
exists one of the finest astronomical
observatories in the world, as well as one of the most
powerful computers on earth. And, within a few short
miles, an active volcano, Kilauea, sends
forth continual lava flows. From these intriguing,
disparate-seeming ingredients, the basic concept
began to take shape for a book of "speculative
fiction."
Little did I know as I began to write that my
"speculative" fiction might turn out to be not quite
so speculative. First it was discovered that there may
well have been life on Mars, and the remnants of that
life may have been carried to Earth within the
core of a meteorite. On the heels of that
discovery came new photos from the spacecraft
Galileo,
revealing that Europa, a moon circling Jupiter,
may well have water and volcanic action beneath its
covering of ice. More than one scientist has
theorized that these conditions could presage the presence of
life.
Just three months prior to publication of
The Presence, Smithsonian Magazine
reported that at the American Association for the
Advancement of Science meetings in Seattle, there was
discussion of very unusual life-forms
living on the floors of our own oceans, near
hydrothermal volcanic vents: life-forms
surviving and developing with
no
oxygen,
no
sunlight; life-forms thriving in 500dgF
heat, on gases such as hydrogen sulfide-the very
"poisonous" gases that would terminate life as we
have previously known it. Additionally, many scientists
now believe that volcanoes deep under the ocean may
not simply harbor life, but be the very
place where life
began.
Suddenly, all our presumptions about the source of
life have been turned upside down. So, now that I
have finished writing
The Presence,
and you have finished reading it, the question arises: Is this
truly
speculative
fiction?
Or is it possible that perhaps things might have happened
just this way?
Somewhere in the Arizona desert April 30,1997
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks go to John L. Africano,
Astronomer and Senior Engineering Specialist at
Rockwell International Corporation, and Paul
W. Kervin, Chief Scientist at Phillips
Laboratory, for their assistance and time.
Ma-halo,
guys, for the tours, the stories, and your work.
Much appreciation is extended to David Fisher,
Center Director of the Small Business
Development Center at the Maui Research and
Technology Park. Thanks for showing me
around and introducing me to a group of fascinating people.
I am grateful to A. Keith Pierce,
Designer of the McMath-Pierce Solar
Telescope, for the time he spent guiding me around
Kitt Peak. Thanks, Keith, it was lots of
fun.
Special thanks also go to Les Horn and
William Long-acre, who connected me to the right
people.
JOIN The CLUB
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SAUL Fan Club by writing to the address below.
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newsletters, and advance information about forthcoming
publications. Please send your name and address to:
The John SAUL Fan Club
P.o. Box 17035
Seattle, Washington 98107
Be sure to visit John SAUL at his Web
site! www.johnsaul.com

JOHN SAUL'S first novel,
Suffer the Children,
published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy
bestseller. He has since written
nineteen successive bestselling novels of
suspense, including
Black Lightning, Guardian,
and
The Homing.
He is most recently the author of the
New York Times
bestselling serial thriller
The Blackstone Chronicles-
initially published in six installments, now
available in one volume. Mr. SAUL divides
his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui,
Hawaii.