Creature

Chapter Four

There was asnarp snap to the air on Monday morning, and as Mark Tanner stepped out the back door into the brilliant sunlight, the first thing he noticed was the sky. Cobalt blue, it had a depth to it that he'd never seen in San Marcos, where no matter how clear the day was, a vague haze always seemed to hang over the world. Here, the mountains to the east were etched sharply against the sky, and there was a different odor, too-not the pungent aroma of the bay, sometimes briskly salty, but more often carrying the faintly nauseating stench of the mud flats-but the clean scent of pine.Chivas, too, seemed to feel the difference, and uttered a joyful bark as he shoved his way past Mark and raced out to the rabbit hutch next to the garage.

But as he fed the rabbits, Mark's sense of exhilaration began to fade, for already he suspected he would have trouble fitting himself in with the rest of the kids in Silverdale.

He had begun thinking as much Saturday evening, when he'd seen Robb Harris. He'd tried to pick up their friendship where it had been left three years before, but quickly realized that it wasn't going to work.

Robb had changed.

He towered over Mark now, and it seemed he'd lost interest in a lot of the things they'd shared when they were growing up.

The rabbits, for instance. Robb had glanced at them for a moment, then asked Mark-and Mark was certain he hadn't mistaken the contempt in Robb's voice-why he was still "messing around" with them. Mark had frowned.

"You used to raise guinea pigs," he'd pointed out.

Robb had rolled his eyes. "Everybody did, when we were kids. Or hamsters, or gerbils." Then he grinned, but it hadn't been the kind of friendly grin Mark remembered from years ago. "Why don't we let 'emgo?" he suggested. "Then we could hunt them."

Though Mark had felt a flash of anger, he said nothing. From then on, though, the evening had gone downhill for him. He tried to pretend he was interested in the football game Robb had played in that afternoon, but it hadn't really worked, and Robb finally asked what team he himself was going to try out for.

Then it was Mark who had grinned. "I don't know," he replied. "Debating, maybe?"

Robb looked at him as though he were some kind of alien. "We don't have a debating team," he replied. "And even if we did, nobody would care."

Mark had fallen silent then; and yesterday, when his mother had suggested he go over to theHarrises ' and visit Robb, he'd shaken his head and made up an excuse. His mother had looked at him sharply, and it seemed she was about to say something but then changed her mind. So he had spent the day withChivas, following a trail up into the foothills, enjoying the solitude and the majestic scenery, but already starting to worry about what would happen today.

Suddenly Kelly burst out the back door. "Mom says if you don't come in right now, you're going to be late!" She planted her feet wide apart and put her hands on her hips. "And she has to take me to school, so hurry up!"

Mark grinned at his little sister. "What if I don't?" he teased.

Kelly giggled, as she always did when he teased her. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I bet you'll get in trouble!"

"Then I'll hurry," Mark replied.

He finished hosing out the tray and slid it back beneath the hutch, then added some water to the rabbits' reservoir. In less than a minute he was back in the house, sliding into his place at the breakfast table. His father, already nearly done with his breakfast, glanced up at him.

"I talked to Jerry Harris yesterday," Blake said.

Mark frowned, but made no reply.

"He was thinking you might show up over there. Wanted to know if anything was wrong between you and Robb."

Mark shrugged, but still made no reply.

Blake leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, and Mark felt himself tense. "I know this move is a big change for all of us," Blake began. "We're all going to have a lot of adjusting to do. But it's a big opportunity." He hesitated a moment, and finally Mark looked up. His father was staring straight at him. "Especially for you," Blake told him.

Mark shifted uneasily in his chair. What was going on? Had he done something wrong?

"I want you to fit in here," his father went on. "I know you've had some problems in the past-missing a year of school-and I know you've had some problems fitting yourself in. But this is a chance for you to start over again."

Suddenly Mark understood. "You mean you want me to go out for sports," he said.

Blake said nothing, but the long, questioning look he gave his son spoke for him.

"I thought we already talked about that-" Mark began

His father silenced him with a gesture. "That was before- and you were right. In San Marcos, you probably wouldn't have made the team. But this is a much smaller school, and Jerry tells me there's room for everyone."

Mark's eyes clouded. "But-"

Once again, Blake didn't let him finish. "All I want you to do is try. Okay?"

Mark hesitated, then reluctantly nodded, knowing there was no point in arguing with his father right now. Still, when he left for school a few minutes later, he was already starting to think of a way around the decision his father had so abruptly made for him.

"Hey! Wait up!"

Mark was still two blocks from the school when he heard the girl's voice. He ignored it until he heard the shout again, this time with his name attached to it, then stopped and looked back. Half a block away, running to catch up, was Linda Harris. She was breathing hard when she came abreast of him, and a sheen of perspiration glistened on her forehead. "Didn't you hear me?" she gasped. "I've been yelling at you for two blocks."

"I didn't hear you," Mark protested.

"You mean you weren't listening," Linda contradicted him, her blue eyes dancing mischievously. "I've been watching you, wandering along with your head in the clouds. You could have gotten run over by a bus, and you wouldn't even have noticed."

Mark felt himself flush, but it was more with pleasure than embarrassment. For Linda, too, had changed since the last time he'd seen her. In three years she'd grown from a gangly girl with braces on her teeth and her hair in braids into a gently curved fifteen-year-old whose blond hair-a little darker than her brother's-flowed softly over her shoulders. "There aren't any buses in Silverdale, are there?" he countered, simply to make conversation. He fell in beside her as she started walking once more.

"A couple," she told him. "There're a few kids who live out on ranches, and they have to go to school, too, you know." She glanced at him curiously. "So what were you thinking about?"

Mark hesitated. His first instinct was to tell her the truth- that he'd been trying to figure out a way around his father's determination that he go out for football-but he wasn't sure how she might react to that. And, with a jolt, he realized that he didn't want Linda Harris to react badly to him. So he shrugged his shoulders amiably and smiled at her. "I don't know. I guess I was just looking around. You know, getting the feel of things. I… well, I do that a lot," he finished lamely.

To his surprise, Linda nodded. "I know. I do that, too. Sometimes people think I'm weird, 'cause I just all of a sudden tune everything out. But just because people are talking doesn't mean you have to listen, does it?" She looked at him so earnestly that he almost burst out laughing.

"I guess not," he admitted. "Not that I ever really thought about it, but I guess you're right. And most people don't seem to have much to say anyway. I guess that's why I like animals better than people."

They turned the last corner and Mark stopped short. "Jesus," he breathed. "Is that the high school?"

Linda stared at him blankly. "What's wrong with it?" she asked, her voice taking on a defensive note.

"N-Nothing," Mark stammered. "It's just-well, it's just not what I was expecting."

Without even thinking about it, Mark had supposed that the school in Silverdale would look like all the others in the innumerable small towns they had passed through since leaving San Marcos-a simple wood-frame structure, its paint peeling, sitting in the midst of a dying lawn on a dusty block on the outskirts of town, with a dirt playing field behind it.

But Silverdale High School resembled nothing he'd seen before. It was a red-brick building, rising three stories high in its central core, with two-story wings jutting out from it to form an imposing V shape. All the windows were framed by white shutters, and the high, peaked roof of the core structure was supported by six soaring columns.

The columns were made of white marble.

The building faced a velvety lawn that was crisscrossed with winding brick paths, and in front of the building were gardens that, even in September, were ablaze with brightly colored flowers.

A flagpole stood in the center of the lawn. As Mark watched two boys slowly ran an American flag up the pole, as the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" began to sound. Next to him, Linda stood still, facing the flag, and a moment later Mark realized that on the lawn in front of the school, and on all the pathways, too, the other students had stopped as well, as though frozen in place, their eyes fastened on the flag. It rose slowly in the morning sun, then, as it reached the top, it began flapping in the breeze just as the last notes of the anthem sounded from the public address system. Only when the music had died away did the school come to life once more.

Mark blinked, then looked at Linda in puzzlement. "Everyone does that every day here?"

Linda frowned for a split-second, then nodded. "I guess it seems kind of dumb to you. Robb said it really bugged him when we first came. But it's a tradition now."

"And everybody does it?" Mark pressed. "They just all stop and face the flag?" He was trying to picture the kids at San Marcos High-the ones with their hair dyed green and orange, and rings through their nostrils-stopping their talk for the raising of the flag. But of course they wouldn't have: They would have turned their ghetto blasters up louder and kept right on with whatever they were doing.

But then, as he and Linda started across the wide lawn toward the school building itself, he realized that none of the kids here wore punk hairstyles, or leather jackets covered with studs. Everywhere he looked he saw only boys in chinos and sports shirts, and girls in sweaters and skirts or carefully pressed slacks and crisp blouses.

They mounted the flight of steps that led to a wide,terracelike porch between the marble columns and the main doors of the school. "Well, do you like it?" Linda asked eagerly.

Mark grinned. "What's not to like?"

Linda waved to a group of her friends who were standing next to one of the columns but made no move to join them. Instead, she took Mark's arm and edged him toward the door. "Come on, I'll show you where the office is."

Inside the front doors was an enormous hall whose ceiling rose the full three floors to the roof. A broad staircase at the end of the hall rose to the second floor, and above that, split into two narrower flights, one on each side of the hall that led to the third floor. The ceiling itself was made of white plaster, but was decorated with an ornate molding around its edges.

The floor beneath Mark bore a complicated geometric design of black and white marble. He paused for a moment, trying to take it all in, but Linda urged him on. "The principal's office is down this way," she said, leading him off to the right. A moment later they'd stepped through a white paneled door with a fanlight above it and were facing a smiling secretary.

"This is Mark Tanner, Miss Adams," Linda said. "He's starting today."

The secretary nodded. "Your father called me last week," she said, then turned to Mark. "Did you happen to bring your records with you?"

Mark shook his head blankly, but the secretary seemed unconcerned. "Just start filling these out, and I'll have them before you're done," she said. She pushed a small stack of forms and cards toward Mark, then turned to a computer terminal on her desk. Her fingers flashed over the keyboard, and a few minutes later a printer on a table next to the wall clattered to life.

"See you at lunchtime," Linda promised. Then she was gone and Mark was filling out the numerous questionnaires and forms that would get him enrolled as a student at Silverdale High.

Half an hour later Shirley Adams quickly went over the forms he'd completed and handed him yet another stack.

"Take these to the nurse-two doors down, on the left-then come back here after you're done. By then we should have a schedule for you."

"Wh-What about photography?" Mark asked hesitantly. "Back in San Marcos I was taking my second year of it."

Shirley Adams's smile widened. "Then you'll be in it here, too."

"You mean you really have a darkroom?"

Miss Adams looked astonished. "This is Silverdale," she said. "We have everything here."

Mark, dressed only in a pair of gym shorts that were two sizes too large, was standing on the scales when Robb Harris walked into the nurse's office. Robb glanced at the scales, then smirked at Mark.

"A hundred and five?" he asked. "You're even scrawnier than I was when I came here." Before Mark could say anything, Robb turned to the nurse. "The coach wants me to go over to the clinic this morning. Can you write me a pass?"

"In a minute," the nurse replied, not glancing up from the clipboard on which she had been noting Mark's height, blood pressure, lung capacity, reflex responses, and myriad other details pertaining to his health.

"Maybe you'd better write one for Mark, too," Robb went on, dropping onto a chair and stretching his long legs out in front of him. "I bet Dr. Ames could fix him up in no time."

Mark frowned. "Dr. Ames?" he asked. "Who's he?"

"The sports clinic. Didn't your dad tell you about it?"

Mark shook his head, but already a tight knot of anxiety was forming in the pit of his stomach.

"It's a couple of miles out of town. It's a sports camp all summer, and kids come from all over the country. But the rest of the year we get to use it."

Mark stared at Robb. "Use it for what?"

"For training," Robb replied. The look of scorn that had needled at Mark on Saturday evening came into his eyes once more. "Dr. Ames knows practically everything there is to know about sports medicine, and he's got all kinds of special equipment out there. It's neat."

"And," the nurse added with a knowing glance at Mark, "the fact that the boys get a morning off from classes when the coach sends them out there doesn't make it any tougher for them."

"Time off from classes?" Mark echoed. "Just so you can go out and train for football?"

"And basketball and baseball," Robb replied.

Mark frowned. "So what's wrong with you that you're going today?"

Robb shrugged. "Nothing. It's just a checkup. All of us on the football team get one every week."

"Everyweek? What for?"

Robb rolled his eyes impatiently. "Because you can get hurt playing football, dummy. Christ, look what happened to that guy from Fairfield on Saturday. He's all torn up inside, but he looked just fine."

The nurse put her clipboard aside for a moment, scribbled something on the top sheet of a small pad of paper, and handed it to Robb, who stood up and stretched lazily, then grinned at Mark.

"Sure you don't want to come along?" he asked. "It sure beats sitting in a math class."

Mark shook his head. "Guess I'll have to do without weekly checkups, since I'm not going out for football."

Robb looked at him sharply. "Oh, yeah? That's not the way I hear it."

And then he was gone. Mark stared at the closed door where Robb had stood a moment before. The other boy's last words echoed in Mark's mind.

The knot of anxiety in his stomach tightened.

Robb Harris pedaled his bicycle slowly out of town, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back, feeling no rush to reach his destination. That, he decided, was one of the best things about being on the football team. You never had to rush to get anywhere except practice, and at least one day a week you could count on half a day off from classes. Not, of course, that you could let your grades slip-Phil Collins was an absolute fanatic about that. Drop below a B average, and you were off the team. But if you were on the football team, the teachers were always ready to give you a little extra help, so it was really no sweat. And in the end the best football players from Silverdale always got their pick of where they wanted to go to college.

They might not get scholarships, but they all at least got their choice.

He breathed deeply of the mountain air, enjoying the rush of oxygen filling his lungs.

Not like before, when he'd been growing up in San Marcos. From the time Robb had been seven years old, almost every breath had been an agony. He could still remember the terrible panic he felt whenever an attack began, the helpless, horrible fear as he gasped for air. It had been that way here, too, for the first few months. But then he'd started going to Dr. Ames, and been put on a regimen of exercise.

For the first six weeks he'd absolutely hated it. But then the coughing had begun to ease and he'd started feeling better. A few months later, as he'd put on weight and grown out of his clothes, he decided that all the exercise was worth it.

Then, summer before last, his dad had gotten him into the football camp, even though he'd never really played the game before. At first he felt clumsy and stupid, but as the summer progressed, he began to catch on. For the first time in his life he felt like everyone else.

Maybe, he thought, that would happen to Mark, too. Except that Mark didn't seem to care if he fit in or not. Robb snickered softly to himself, remembering Mark showing off his rabbits the other day.

Christ, that was kid stuff. And if the other guys found out about it, Mark had better watch out.

He turned off the narrow road that led up the valley toward the foothills, and steered the bike up the lane to the gates of the sports clinic, barely glancing at the sign he knew so well:

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

MensSana inCorpore Sano

Robb still thought it was a dumb name but he hadn't been able to convince Marty Ames that none of the kids cared about that old John Denver song anymore.

The gates under the arching sign stood open, and Robb rode through with a wave to a gardener who was working on the turf of the playing field to the right. He parked the bike in the stand next to the entrance and pushed open the glass door into the lobby. It was large and airy, and furnished with an assortment of comfortable furniture. During the summer the lobby served as a lounge for a motley collection of husky youths. But now, during the school year, it was deserted, and Robb hurried through it, then turned left, passed the dining hall, and entered the waiting room next to Dr. Martin Ames's office. Marjorie Jackson smiled up at Robb from behind the clutter on top of her desk. She was a middle-aged woman whose title was Assistant to the Director, and it was she, as all the boys knew, who actually took care of the day-to-day running of the camp, with little direction from her employer.

"He's in the rowing room," she said without waiting for Robb to ask. "And," she added, glancing at the clock on the wall, "you're ten minutes late."

Even before Robb could begin to make up an excuse, she had gone back to her work, pointedly ignoring him. Only slightly abashed, Robb turned and left the office, then broke into a trot as he cut through the dining room and kitchen, toward the large training section at the back of the building. Marjorie might forgive him for the ten minutes, and Dr. Ames might not even mention it, but still, Robb would see the hurt look in the doctor's eyes and know that he'd let him down.

Robb, and most of the other boys on the team, far preferred Phil Collins's shouting at them to Marty Ames's grave look of abject disappointment.

Today, though, Ames seemed not to have noticed Robb's tardiness. When Robb came into the rowing room, the tall, dark-haired doctor merely looked up from the computer terminal he had been staring at and smiled a welcome.

"Good game Saturday," he commented.

Robb shrugged modestly. "I didn't really do much. A dozen plays, and that was about it."

Ames chuckled. "If you don't let the other team keep the ball, the defense is going to sit on the bench." His face turned more serious then. He was a good-looking man, though not quite handsome, and he appeared to be no more than thirty-five, though he was actually nearing fifty. He always joked to the boys that he had to work hard to keep as fit as his patients. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine," Robb replied. Without being told, he stripped down to his underwear, then stretched out on a treatment table next to the wall. An osteopath as well as an M.D., Ames ran his fingers expertly over Robb's spine, then instructed the boy to roll over on his right side and draw up his left knee. Wrapping his arms around Robb's torso, Ames applied a quick but gentle twist to the boy's back, and Robb felt just a hint of something like vibration as one of his lower vertebrae adjusted itself back into perfect alignment.

"Looking good," Ames commented, then began wrapping the sleeve of a sphygmomanometer around his upper left arm. Satisfied, he nodded toward one of the rowing machines, and Robb, after pulling on a pair of gym shorts, took his position at the mechanical oars. He waited patiently as the doctor inserted an I.V. needle into his thigh, not even flinching as Ames expertly found the vein. "We'll be monitoring your blood today," he said, and Robb nodded, used to the procedures after more than a year.

Facing him was a wide, curving screen whose sides were just beyond the reach of his peripheral vision. At a signal from Ames, Robb began rowing. With the first stroke, the screen in front of him came to life.

It was a river scene, and though it looked to Robb like it might have been the Charles River in Boston, he knew that it was actually a computer-generated graphic, thrown onto the screen by three separate projectors. From where he sat, the illusion was almost perfect. He felt as if he were actually on the water. A few yards away he could see three other sculls, keeping pace with him.

He applied himself harder to the oars, and immediately the other sculls seemed to drop behind, until the other rowers, too, picked up their pace, and one of them began gaining on him.

Robb could feel himself sweating now, and he began working harder. Once again he pulled ahead, but then, while two of the other boats continued to drop back, the third once more began catching up with him. Cursing silently to himself, Robb renewed his efforts.

At the computer terminal, Marty Ames studied the graphic readouts of the changes in Robb's blood chemistry as the boy punished himself even harder. The blood-sugar level began dropping, and then he watched as Robb's adrenal gland kicked in and a short burst of adrenaline shot into the boy's system.

Then, as the adrenaline faded from Robb's circulatory system, Ames's fingers flew over the keyboard.

Once more the graphics on the screen changed.

Robb's eyes narrowed angrily as he saw his computer-generated competitor gaining on him. He leaned into the oars harder, but he was getting tired now and didn't seem to be gaining any speed. He looked up from his labors to see the other boat catch up with him and move off to the right to pass him.

"No!" Robb shouted out loud, then bit his lips in angry determination as he realized how much energy he'd wasted on the useless outburst. The tendons of his neck standing out, he forced himself to row harder. Once more he caught up with the other scull.

Abruptly, the screen went blank. It was over.

He was back in the rowing room at the sports clinic and Marty Ames was smiling at him, his expression reflecting his pride in Robb.

"Not bad," he said, which, coming from Marty Ames, was considered high praise. "How'd it feel?"

Robb rested against the oars for a moment, panting, then shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "This setup really gets to me sometimes.Iknow nothing's real, but when I'm doing it, I get so into it I could swear I was in a real race. And that guy in the number-three boat almost beat me."

"How come he didn't?" Ames asked with deceptive mildness as he began removing the needle from Robb's thigh.

Now it was Robb who grinned. " 'Cause I got pissed at him," he confessed. "I just got pissed off at losing."

"And that," Ames said, "is exactly the point. Your anger released a shot of adrenaline, and the adrenaline was just enough to put you across the line. In case you're interested," he added, glancing once more at the computer screen, "you beat him by exactly thirteen hundredths of a second."

"Not much," Robb commented, standing up and stretching his tired muscles.

"It was enough to win," Ames told him. "And it'll get better. If you just keep at it, it'll keep getting better."

As Robb headed for the shower a few minutes later, he knew he'd keep at it, because he knew how much he liked winning.

He liked it a lot.

A whole lot.