Now the SIG-Sauer was pointing at the professor’s face, drilling a laser-line between his eyes.
Tomwun was slowly recovering a little of his self-control, and he shook his head. “There’ll be no more shooting here tonight. You have my word on that.”
“Worth as much as a baron’s charity.” He spit down into the water. “You said we should talk, Tomwun. Well, I tell you that I don’t see much we got to discuss.”
“Oh, but you are wrong. There is much. I was wrong to conceal some things from you, but I felt you might be shocked.” He looked at Krysty. “I am truly sorry.”
For several long beats of the heart nobody moved or spoke. In one of the pens there was a coughing noise and a single slapping splash.
“Coming around,” Tomwun said. “Quickly. Get poor Knight’s bedraggled body away before they start devouring it again. Come on, quickly.”
Ryan nodded to Krysty, and they both bolstered their blasters. While the professor watched, tapping his fingers on the rail, his assistants clambered nervously down the old iron ladders and, after an edgy, bungled struggle, emerged back onto the quay with the limp, savaged, bloodless corpse, laying it dripping on the stones.
“I’m going back to our rooms, now,” Ryan said. “Give you the benefit. Just for the time being.”
“We can talk in the morning. There are things that you don’t know and don’t understand.” Tomwun was crying as he stared down at the remains of Jerry Knight. “In the morning.”
Ryan nodded, reaching out to take Krysty’s hand. “In the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Krysty convinced Ryan that it was better to wake the others early the next day, rather than drag them all from sleep when they got back to their quarters. But the two of them were still fully awake well after midnight, lying in their bed and talking over what had happened in the quayside shed.
There was no possible argument that Professor Mark Tomwun wasn’t anything like the gentle and caring ecologist that he’d portrayed himself. And the Institute of Peaceful Oceanographic Research wasn’t what was described in its title.
Particularly there was overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t at all peaceful.
“You think that he’s just another megalomaniac baron on the make?”
“No. Not really. I mean Fireblast! I don’t know. He seems a real weird contradiction, doesn’t he?”
They were lying pressed against each other, like two spoons snug in a drawer. Krysty had her arm across his chest, holding him close.
“I don’t pick up any clear vibes from him,” she said. “Lots of men and women, you can see them. Sort of see the real person under the mask. Some of the time I like Tomwun and some of the time It’s as though he’s two completely different people, living inside the same skin.”
“Bombs and mines and dead people scattered on a beach And electric shock treatment to condition those poor bastard fish to obey him.”
“They aren’t fish, lover,” she corrected. “Mammals. Cetaceans. Not fish.”
Ryan didn’t reply. He had either fallen asleep, or he was giving a convincing impression of someone who was.
BREAKFAST WAS unusually massive, even by the generous standards of the institute. But, by the time it arrived, carried by two taciturn young men called McBride and Colquhoun, who shared the given name of Bob, Ryan and Krysty had recounted their adventures of the night before and the marvelous meal took on the appearance of a feeble bribe.
Despite the serious reservations that they’d all been discussing, the food was so excellent that everyone stuffed themselves chilled fruit juices, orange, pineapple, grapefruit, mango and lime, and some others that none of them even knew the names of; dishes of cereals, both hot and cold, with either milk or cream, and honey or syrup; a platter with a rainbow assortment of fish laid all around it, alternating slices of red salmon and silver trout with pale swordfish and the coarser fillets of what could have been shark.
To Dean’s delight, there was also a huge fry-up in a variety of chrome-plated dishes golden eggs, fried and scrambled, and strips of crispy back bacon, with tomatoes and link sausages. Michael took two enormous steaks, each as big as a man’s clenched fist, placing a fried egg on top of each, then scooping up four ladles of hash browns, finishing it with a side dish of grits and strips of deep-fried chicken breast.