Relic

= 54 =

Smithback held the light, but it hardly seemed to penetrate the palpable darkness. D’Agosta, slightly in front, held the gun. The tunnel went on and on, black water rushing past and vanishing into the low-vaulted darkness. Either they were still descending, or the water was getting higher. Smithback could feel it pushing against his thighs.

He glanced at D’Agosta’s face, shadowy and grim, his thick features smeared with Bailey’s blood.

“I can’t go any farther,” someone wailed from the rear. Smithback could hear the Mayor’s familiar voice—a politician’s voice—reassuring, soothing, telling everyone what they wanted to hear. Once again, it seemed to work. Smithback stole a glance backward at the dispirited group. The lean, gowned, bejeweled women; the middle-aged businessmen in their tuxedos; the smattering of yuppies from investment banks and downtown law firms. He knew them all now, had even given them names and occupations in his head. And here they all [384] were, reduced to the lowest common denominator, wallowing around in the dark of a tunnel, covered with slime, pursued by a savage beast.

Smithback was worried, but still rational. Early on, he’d felt a moment of sheer terror when he realized the rumors about a Museum Beast were true. But now, tired and wet, he was more afraid of dying before he wrote his book than he was of dying itself. He wondered if that meant he was brave, or covetous, or just plain stupid. Whatever the case, he knew that what was happening to him down here was going to be worth a fortune. Book party at Le Cirque. Good Morning America, the Today Show, Donahue, and Oprah.

No one could do the story like he could, no one else had his first-person perspective. And he’d been a hero. He, William Smithback, Jr., had held the light against the monster when D’Agosta went back to shoot off the lock. He, Smithback, had thought of using the flashlight to brace the door. He’d been Lieutenant D’Agosta’s right-hand man.

“Shine the light up to the left, there.” D’Agosta intruded upon his thoughts, and Smithback dutifully complied. Nothing.

“I thought I saw something moving in the darkness,” D’Agosta muttered. “Must’ve been a shadow, I guess.”

God, Smithback thought, if only he lived to enjoy his success.

“Is it just my imagination, or is the water getting deeper?” he asked.

“It’s getting deeper and faster,” said D’Agosta. “Pendergast didn’t say which way to go from here.”

“He didn’t?” Smithback felt his guts turn to water.

“I was supposed to radio from the second fork,” D’Agosta said. “I lost my radio somewhere back before the door.”

Smithback felt another surge against his legs, a strong one. There was a shout and a splash.

“It’s all right,” the Mayor called out when Smithback [385] aimed the flashlight to the rear. “Someone fell down. The current’s getting stronger.”

“We can’t tell them we’re lost,” Smithback muttered to D’Agosta.

Margo swung open the door to the Secure Area, looked quickly inside, and nodded to Pendergast. The agent moved past the door, dragging the bundle.

“Shut it in the vault with the Whittlesey crates,” Frock said. “We want to keep the beast in here long enough for us to close the door on it.”

Margo unlocked the vault as Pendergast threaded a complex pattern across the floor. They put the bundle inside, then closed and locked the ornate vault door.

“Quick,” Margo said. “Across the hall.”

Leaving the main door to the Secure Area open, they crossed the hall to the elephant bone storage room. The small window in the door had long ago been broken, and a worn piece of cardboard now covered the opening. Margo unlocked the door with Frock’s key, then Pendergast pushed Frock inside. Switching Pendergast’s flashlight to its low setting, she balanced it on a ledge above the door, pointing the thin beam in the direction of the Secure Area. Finally, with a pen, she reamed a small hole in the cardboard and, with a last look down the corridor, stepped inside.

The storage room was large, stuffy, and full of elephant bones. Most of the skeletons were disassembled, and the great shadowy bones had been stacked on shelves like oversized cordwood. One mounted skeleton stood in a far corner, a dark cage of bones, two curving tusks gleaming in the pale light.

Pendergast shut the door, then switched off his miner’s lamp.

Peering through the hole in the cardboard, Margo had a clear view of the hallway and the open door of the Secure Area.

[386] “Take a look,” she said to Pendergast, stepping away from the door.

Pendergast moved forward. “Excellent,” he said after a moment. “It’s a perfect blind, as long as those flashlight batteries hold out.” He stepped back from the door. “How did you happen to remember this room?” he asked curiously.

Margo laughed shyly. “When you took us down here on Wednesday, I remember seeing this door marked PACHYDERMAE and wondering how a person could fit an elephant skull through such a small door.” She moved forward. “I’ll keep watch through the peephole,” she said. “Be ready to rush out and trap the creature in the Secure Area.”

In the darkness behind them, Frock cleared his throat. “Mr. Pendergast?”

“Yes?”

“Forgive me for asking, but how experienced are you with that weapon?”

“As a matter of fact,” the agent replied, “before the death of my wife I spent several weeks each winter big-game hunting in East Africa. My wife was an avid hunter.”

“Ah,” Frock replied. Margo detected relief in his voice. “This will be a difficult creature to kill, but I don’t think it will be impossible. I was never much of a hunter, obviously. But working together we may be able to bring it down.”

Pendergast nodded. “Unfortunately, this pistol puts me at a disadvantage. It’s a powerful handgun, but nothing like a .375 nitro express rifle. If you could tell me where the creature might be most vulnerable, it would help.”

“From the printout,” Frock said slowly, “we can assume the creature is heavy boned As you discovered, you won’t kill it with a head shot. And an upper shoulder or chest shot toward the heart would almost certainly be deflected by the massive bones and heavy musculature [387] of the creature’s upper body. If you could catch the creature sideways, you might get a shot into the heart from behind the foreleg. But again, the ribs are probably built like a steel cage. Now that I think about it, I don’t believe any of the vital parts of the beast are particularly vulnerable. A shot to the gut might kill eventually, but not before it took its revenge.”

“Cold comfort,” Pendergast said.

Frock moved restlessly in the darkness. “That leaves us in a bit of a quandary.”

There was silence for a moment. “There may still be a way.” Pendergast said at length.

“Yes?” Frock replied eagerly.

“Once, a few years ago, my wife and I were hunting bushbuck in Tanzania. We preferred to hunt alone, without gun bearers, and the only guns we had were 30-30 rifles. We were in light cover near a river when we were charged by a cape buffalo. It had apparently been wounded a few days earlier by a poacher. Cape buffalo are like mules—they never forget an injury, and one man with a gun looks much like any other.”

Sitting in the dim light, waiting for the arrival of a nightmarish creature, listening to Pendergast narrate a hunting story in his typical unhurried manner, Margo felt a sense of unreality begin to creep over her.

“Normally, in hunting buffalo,” Pendergast was saying, “one tries for a head shot just below the horn bosses, or for a heart shot. In this case, the 30-30 was an insufficient caliber. My wife, who was a better shot than I, used the only tactic a hunter could use in such a situation. She knelt and fired at the animal in such a way as to break it down.”

“Break it down?”

“You don’t attempt a kill shot. Instead, you work to stop forward locomotion. You aim for the forelegs, pasterns, knees. You basically shatter as many bones as you can until it can’t move forward.”

“I see,” said Frock.

[388] “There is only one problem with this approach,” said Pendergast.

“And that is-—?”

“You must be a consummate marksman. Placement is everything. You’ve got to remain serenely calm and steady, unbreathing, firing between heartbeats—in the face of a charging beast. We each had time for four shots. I made the mistake of aiming for the chest and scored two direct hits before I realized the bullets were just burying themselves in muscle. Then I aimed for the legs. One shot missed and the other grazed but didn’t break the bone.” He shook his head. “A poor performance, I’m afraid.”

“So what happened?” Frock asked.

“My wife scored direct hits on three out of her four shots. She shattered both front cannons and broke the upper foreleg as well. The buffalo tumbled head over heels and came to rest a few yards from where we were kneeling. It was still very much alive but it couldn’t move. So I ‘paid the insurance,’ as a professional hunter would put it.”

“I wish your wife was here,” Frock said.

Pendergast was quiet. “So do I,” he said at length.

Silence returned to the room.

“Very well,” Frock said at last. “I understand the problem. The beast has some unusual qualities that you should know about, if you are planning to, ah, break it down. First, the hind quarters are most likely covered in bony plates or scales. I doubt if you could penetrate them effectively with your gun. They armor the upper and lower leg, down to the metatarsal bones, I’d estimate.”

“I see.”

“You will have to shoot low, aim for the phalanx prima or secunda.”

“The lowest bones of the leg,” said Pendergast.

“Yes. They would be equivalent to the pasterns on a horse. Aim just below the lower joint. In fact, the joint itself might be vulnerable.”

[389] “That’s a difficult shot,” said Pendergast. “Virtually impossible if the creature is facing me.”

There was a short silence. Margo continued her vigil through the peephole, but saw nothing.

“I believe the anterior limbs of the creature are more vulnerable,” Frock continued. “The Extrapolator described them as being less robust. The metacarpals and the carpals should both be vulnerable to a direct hit.”

“The front knee and the lower leg,” Pendergast said, nodding. “The shots you’ve described already are hardly garden variety. To what extent would the creature have to be broken down to immobilize it?”

“Difficult to say. Both front legs and at least one rear leg, I’m afraid. Even then, it could crawl.” Frock coughed. “Can you do it?”

“To have a chance, I’d need at least a hundred and fifty feet of shooting space if the creature were charging. Ideally, I’d get the first shot in before the creature knew what was happening. That would slow it down.”

Frock thought for a moment. “The Museum contains several straight, long corridors, three or four hundred feet long. Unfortunately, most of them are now cut in half by these damned security doors. I believe that there’s at least one unobstructed corridor within Cell Two, however. On the first floor, in Section Eighteen, around the corner from the Computer Room.”

Pendergast nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “In case this plan fails.”

“I hear something!” Margo hissed.

They fell silent. Pendergast moved closer to the door.

“A shadow just passed across the light at the end of the hall,” she whispered.

There was another long silence.

“It’s here,” Margo breathed, “I can see it.” Then, even softer: “Oh, my God.”

Pendergast murmured in Margo’s ear: “Move away from the door!”

[390] She backed up, hardly daring to breathe. “What’s it doing?” she whispered.

“It’s stopped at the door to the Secure Area,” Pendergast replied quietly. “It went in for a moment, and then backed out very fast. It’s looking around, smelling the air.”

“What does it look like?” Frock asked, an urgency in his voice.

Pendergast hesitated a moment before answering. “I’ve got a better view of it this time. It’s big, it’s massive. Wait, it’s turning this way ... Good Lord, it’s a horrible sight, it’s ... Flattened face, small red eyes. Thin fur on the upper body. Just like the figurine. Hold on ... Hold on a minute ... it’s coming this way.”

Margo suddenly realized she had moved back to the far wall. A snuffling sound came through the door. And then the rank, fetid smell. She slid to the floor in the heavy darkness, the peephole in the cardboard wavering like a star. Pendergast’s flashlight shone feebly. Starlight ... A small voice in Margo’s head was trying to speak.

And then a shadow fell over the peephole and everything went black.

There was a soft muffled thud against the door, and the old wood creaked. The doorknob rattled. There was a long silence, the sound of something heavy moving outside, and a sharp cracking as the creature pressed against the door.

The voice inside Margo’s head suddenly became audible.

“Pendergast, turn on your miner’s lamp!” she burst out. “Shine it at the beast!”

“What are you talking about!”

“It’s nocturnal, remember? It probably hates light.”

“That’s absolutely correct!” cried Frock.

“Stay back!” Pendergast shouted. Margo heard a small click, then the brilliance of the miner’s light blinded her momentarily. As her vision returned, she saw [391] Pendergast on one knee, his gun leveled at the door, the bright circle of light focused directly on its center.

There was another crunching noise, and Margo could see splinters spray into the room from a widening split in the upper panel. The door bowed inward.

Pendergast stayed steady, sighting along the levelled barrel.

There was another tremendous splintering sound and the door broke inward in pieces, swinging crazily on bent hinges. Margo pressed herself against the wall, forcing herself into it until her spine creaked in protest. She heard Frock shout in amazement, wonder, and fear. The creature squatted in the doorway, a monstrous silhouette in the bright light; then, with a sudden throaty roar, it shook its head and backed out.

“Keep back,” Pendergast said. He kicked the broken door aside and moved cautiously out into the hall. Margo heard a sudden shot, then another. Then, silence. After what seemed an eternity, Pendergast returned, motioning them forward. A trail of small red droplets led down the hallway and around the corner.

“Blood!” Frock said, bending forward with a grunt. “So you wounded it!”

Pendergast shrugged. “Perhaps. But I wasn’t the first. The droplets originate from the direction of the subbasement. See? Lieutenant D’Agosta or one of his men must have wounded it earlier but not disabled it. It moved away with amazing speed.”

Margo looked at Frock. “Why didn’t it take the bait?”

Frock returned her gaze. “We’re dealing with a creature possessed of preternatural intelligence.”

“What you’re saying is that it detected our trap,” Pendergast said, a note of disbelief in his voice.

“Let me ask you, Pendergast. Would you have fallen for that trap?”

Pendergast was silent. “I suppose not,” he said at length.

[392] “Well, then,” said Frock. “We underestimated the creature. We must stop thinking of it as a dumb animal. It has the intelligence of a human being. Did I understand correctly that the body they found in the exhibition was hidden? The beast knew it was being hunted. Obviously, it had learned to conceal its prey. Besides—” he hesitated. “I think we’re dealing with more than simply hunger now. Chances are, it’s been temporarily sated by this evening’s human diet. But it’s also been wounded. If your analogy of the cape buffalo is correct, this creature may not only be hungry, but angry.”

“So you think it’s gone hunting,” Pendergast said quietly.

Frock remained motionless. Then he gave a barely perceptible nod.

“So who’s it hunting now?” Margo asked. No one answered.