us, and doctor the test results to show nothing out of the ordinary.”
She started to speak, hesitated, and stopped because she was obviously
beginning to realize that he was right. She looked more forlorn than
any woman he had ever seen.
He said, “Our only hope of getting the government off our backs is to
get proof of Wildcard and break the story to the press. The only reason
they want to kill us is to keep the secret, so when the secret is blown,
we’ll be safe.
Since we didn’t get the Wildcard file from Eric’s office safe, Eric
himself is the only proof we have a chance of putting our hands on.
And we need him alive. They- need to see him breathing, functioning, in
spite of his staved-in head. They need to see the change in him that
you suspect there’ll be-the irrational rages, the sullen quality of the
living dead.”
She swallowed hard. She nodded. “All right. Okay.
But I’m so scared.”
“You can be strong, you have it in you.
“I know I do. I know. But…”
He leaned forward and gave her a kiss.
Her lips were icy.
Eric groaned and opened his eyes.
Evidently he had descended once more into a short period of suspended
animation, a minor but deep coma, for he slowly regained consciousness
on the floor of the living room, sprawled among at least a hundred
sheets of typing paper. His splitting headache was gone, although a
peculiar burning sensation extended from the top of his skull downward
to his chin, all across his face, and in most of his muscles and joints
as well, in shoulders and arms and legs. It was not an unpleasant
burning, and not pleasant either, just a neutral sensation unlike
anything he had felt before.
I’m like a candy man, made of chocolate, sitting on a sun-washed table,
melting, melting, but melting from the inside.
For a while he just lay there, wondering where the weird thought had
come from. He was disoriented, dizzy. His mind was a swamp in which
unconnected thoughts burst like stinking bubbles on the watery surface.
Gradually the water cleared a bit and the soupy mud of the swamp grew
somewhat firmer.
Pushing up to a sitting position, he looked at the papers strewn around
him and could not remember what they were. He picked up a few and tried
to read them. The blurry letters would not at first resolve into words,
then the words would not form coherent sentences. When at last he could
read a bit, he could understand only a fraction of what he read, but he
could grasp enough to realize that this was the third paper copy of the
Wildcard file.
In addition to the project data stored in the Geneplan computers, there
had been one hard-copy file in Riverside, one in his office safe at the
headquarters in Newport Beach, and a third here. The cabin was his
secret retreat, known only to him, and it had seemed prudent to keep a
fully updated file in the hidden basement safe, as insurance against the
day when Seitz and Knowlsthe money men behind his work-tried to take the
corporation away from him through clever financial maneuvering. That
anticipated treachery was unlikely because they needed him, needed his
genius, and would most likely still need him when Wildcard was
perfected.
But he was not a man who took chances. (Other than the one big chance,
when he had injected himself with the devil’s brew that was turning his
body into pliable clay.) Me had not wanted to risk being booted out of
Geneplan and finding himself cut off from data crucial to the production
of the immortality serum.
Evidently, after stumbling out of the bathroom, he had gone down to the
basement, had opened the safe, and had brought the file up here for
perusal. What had he been seeking? An explanation for what was
happening to him? A way to undo the changes that had occurredthat were
still occurring-in him?
That was pointless. These monstrous developments had been
unanticipated. Nothing in the file would refer to the possibility of
runaway growth or point the way to salvation. He must have been seized