“Yes, I’m Peter Jance. I work on the base. Is there a problem?” “Yeah, there’s a problem. You look pretty young for someone born in 1924, that’s the problem.” Jesus, Peter thought, they never even bothered to give me false identification papers. Where there’s stupidity there’s hope. “That’s a misprint,” he fumbled. “I was born in 1964. I’ve just never had the time to have it corrected.” “And this photo is you?”
“Yes,” said Peter, toughing it out.
“I heard of bad driver’s license pictures, but not this bad.” The guard handed it back. “Why don’t you go back to town, dude? You ain’t funny.” “I’m Dr. Peter Jance. Check your personnel directory.” The guard yanked on a large red earlobe and gave him a look of mounting impatience. “Stay there.” He went to the guard shack, made a call, listened, and hung up, returning looking downright pissed off. “No one by that name listed. You’d do well to get moving.” He adjusted his weapon so that it pointed in the general direction of Peter and leaned against the doorway. “All right.” said Peter. “It’s a classified project, so I’m probably not listed. Call Dr. Frederick Wolfe.” “Yeah, right.”
“Beatrice Jance. She’s my wi…mother.”
“I ain’t calling nobody. And you need to get out of my face unless you want to be in a whole world of trouble. Sir.” “Call Colonel Henderson, then. He’d be delighted to see me, I’m sure. At the mention of Henderson’s name, the guard blinked for the first time. “Colonel Henderson knows me, Peter assured him. The kid picked up the phone again. He dialed someone-an aide, Peter prayed, not Henderson himself. After talking for a moment, and then listening intently for a few more, the guard slammed down the phone, turned and trained his weapon on Peter. “Get down on the ground spread-eagle, you sorry motherfucker! Now!” The kid was jumping out of his skin and Peter did as he was told, lying abjectly on the asphalt while the guard fidgeted and made sounds with his weapon that Peter didn’t want to think about. Finally a vehicle roared up and several men approached swiftly. He was just about to look up when two pairs of hands picked him up bodily-tonight’s guard and the guard he had encountered the night before. They opened the door to the Humvee and shoved him inside. He hit the floor hard. Someone new jumped in beside him, holding a gun to his face and telling him to hold still if he fucking knew what was good for him. The vehicle fired up and hung a sharp U-turn, roaring back onto the base. At the entrance to the restricted wing, the driver stopped and the other guard threw open the door, instructing Peter to go wait in his room until further notice. Peter watched as the new guard-a small, quick Italian with a New York air-waved his 9-millimeter at Peters suite of rooms. Peter took out his keycard, tried not to shake as he swept the card through the magnetic slot, and entered through the side door. Walking down the hail, he felt like a bug under a poised heel. If ever there was a doubt that all his charisma and privilege could be taken away in an instant, it was gone now. There was everything in the way he had just been treated that spoke of his own physical disposability. He could almost hear the orders that must have been given, something to the effect that if Jance gives you any problems, waste the bastard. His suite was dark and deserted, with no sign of Beatrice or her belongings-just bare beige walls, two forlorn botanical prints in the bedroom and the well-worn Motel 6 furniture. Even the Erlenmeyer flask, Beatrice’s one personal touch, was gone, its spray of dried chrysanthemums scattered on the floor like so much refuse. “Beatrice?” he called into the dark.
No answer. He was alone. Free and abandoned at the same time. With rising panic, he yanked open drawers, gathering loose cash, traveler’s checks, his passport and as much clothing as he could cram into an old duffel bag. Then he looked at the door. They had told him to go to his room and wait. They’d not said he couldn’t go elsewhere, but they sure as hell hadn’t included that in his options. In fact, there were no options. Go to your room. Wait.
Fuck them. He needed to get out of there. And before he did, he desperately needed to see Beatrice. To make amends, to say goodbye, to plead for her forgiveness. He thought that perhaps all he could do, really. was to say that he had become, or was becoming, someone or something other than what he had been. It was a possibility they all should have thought of, each of them. Only now there was no more time for thinking. Based on the sorry reality of what they had created, now there was time only for action. He had to be with this woman, this nameless magnet of life force and longing that was drawing him with an attraction he could never have resisted, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to.
He went back to the corridor, closing the door quietly behind him. The hallway lights, tissue-sized moths banging soundlessly off their globes, shone yellow and dim all the way to where the breezeway branched off. Strange moth shadows chased over the asphalt-block walls. How was he going to find his wife? He had no way of knowing if Beatrice was in her lab, or in her new room, wherever that might be. Maybe she was in some dark cabal with Wolfe and Henderson. He would have to find somebody who knew where she was. Maybe Rosemarie Wiener or Cap Chu or Flannagan? One of them must know her whereabouts. Reaching the entrance door, he peered outside. Immediately he jerked back. Just outside, two guards had been positioned, armed and equipped with walkie-talkies. He was imprisoned, he realized, and his jailers were armed to the teeth and pissed off at him. Had he been stupid to come back?
No, he told himself, without his passport there was no way to disappear. And to disappear was the only course open to him now. Even if he had never encountered the woman on the beach, he had by means of his protean work completed his weapons design without completing any escape plan, rendering himself superfluous. And by openly questioning what they were up to, he had actually pushed himself into the dangerous classification of major irritant. His wife couldn’t stand to be in the same apartment with him. His old friend and competitor, Frederick Wolfe, would now probably just as soon see him dead. Henderson would forget him in a day and be glad the bottom line was more secure. And beyond Wolfe and Henderson? Above them was just a dark presence, a Kafkaesque world of shadowy agencies and faceless powers to whom he was only a pawn. He had a glimpse, then, of the whole apparatus of power, vast and multidimensional, ranging from the violence of the quarkriddled atoms to the parry and thrust of nations, empires and DNA. In this maelstrom, he was nothing. And in this there was no way to escape oblivion if that’s what they wanted. His entire chain of genetic material, fragile but vital and stretching back to the beginnings of the species, now hinged on the brink of utter and irrevocable extinction, and he was powerless to fight it. He stood in that cold wind for a long, dark moment. Fuck it. Death was the ultimate emperor without clothes. If they blasted him to atoms today. his atoms would merge with those of other poor bastards, roaches, lost species, burned rain forests and the endless compost heap of passing humanity and reassemble in a millennium or two into the stuff of stars and brave new worlds somewhere else. There was no death. Fuck it all.
He had to find Beatrice now, but could he? He had no idea. Worse, he felt the notion rising that if he could not see her, he didn’t want to leave. Should he just fling himself out the door and scream her name? He had a notion of Brando in Streetcar and realized how ridiculous that was. But then what? At that supreme moment of doubt and pain, two male voices rang out from the end of the hallway. A swath of light swept across the wall, and a lean, disheveled figure emerged from a door. Alex Davies. Hunched and cursing. Expecting Wolfe to come barging out after his grandson, Peter prudently backed toward his room, turning the knob behind him and tossing in the old duffel bag. But the door at the end of the hall slammed shut and Wolfe didn’t appear. There was only Alex, charging down the corridor in a blue rage. When he saw Peter, half in, half out of his room, Alex stopped dead, then approached at a slower pace. “Motherfuckers,” he muttered, turning one way and then the other, as if some pointed rejoinder had just occurred to him, making him want to go back and restart the battle with his grandfather. But he didn’t have the stomach for that. He sagged against the wall and ran his hands through his hair, looking near tears. “He’s out of his fucking mind,” he said to Peter, as though Peter had been privy to every word. “Alex, do you know where Beatrice is?”