Reliquary

= 64 =

THE EARLY MORNING sun snuck in low over the Atlantic, kissing the sandy fork of Long Island, gliding over coves and harbors, villages and resorts, bringing a cool summer sweat to asphalt and pavement. Farther west, the brilliant arc illuminated the nearest reaches of New York City, briefly turning the gray welter of buildings a pale shade of rose. Following the ecliptic, the rays hit the East River, then burnished the windows of ten thousand buildings to a temporary sparkle, as if washing the city new in heat and light.

Beneath the thick tangles of railroad track and overhead wire that crossed the narrow canal known as the Humboldt Kill, no light penetrated. The tenements that reared up, vacant and gray as vast dead teeth, were too numerous and too tall. At their feet, the water lay still and thick, its only currents formed by the rumble of the subway trains passing infrequently on the rail bridge above.

As the sun followed its inexorable course west, a single beam of light slanted down through the labyrinth of wood and steel, blood red against the rusted iron, as sudden and sharp as a knife wound. It winked out again, as quickly as it had arrived, but not before illuminating a strange sight: a figure, muddy and battered, curled motionless upon a thin revetment of brick that jutted mere inches above the dark water.

Darkness and silence returned, and the foul canal was left to itself once again. Then its sleep was disturbed a second time: a low rumble sounded in the distance, approached in the dim gray dawn, passed overhead, receded, then returned. And beneath this rumble followed another: deeper, more immediate. The surface of the canal began to shake and quiver, as if jostled reluctantly to life.

In the bow of the Coast Guard cutter, D’Agosta stood, stiff and vigilant as a sentry.

“There she is!” he cried, pointing to a dark figure lying on the embankment. He turned to the pilot. “Get those choppers the hell away! They’re stirring the stink up off the water. Besides, we might need to get a medevac in here.”

The pilot glanced up at the craggy, burnt-out facades and the steel bridges overhead, a look of doubt crossing his face, but he said nothing.

Smithback crowded to the rail, straining to see in the lightening gloom. “What is this place?” he asked, tugging his shirt up over his nose.

“Humboldt Kill,” D’Agosta replied curtly. He turned to the pilot. “Bring us in closer; let the doctor get a look at her.”

Smithback straightened up and glanced over at D’Agosta. He knew the Lieutenant was wearing a brown suit—he always wore brown suits—but the color was now completely undetectable beneath a damp mantle of mud, dust, blood, and oil. The gash above his eye was a ragged red line. Smithback watched the Lieutenant give his face a savage wipe with his sleeve. “God, let her be okay,” D’Agosta muttered to himself.

The boat eased up to the revetment, the pilot backing the throttle into neutral. In a flash D’Agosta and the doctor were over the side and onto the revetment, bending low over the prone figure. Pendergast stood in the shadows aft, silent, an intense look on his pale face.

Margo suddenly jerked awake and blinked around at her surroundings. She tried to sit up, then clapped a hand to her head with a groan.

“Margo!” D’Agosta said. “It’s Lieutenant D’Agosta.”

“Don’t move,” the doctor said, gently feeling her neck.

Ignoring him, Margo pushed herself into a sitting position. “What the hell took you guys?” she asked, then broke into a series of racking coughs.

“Anything broken?” the doctor asked.

“Everything,” she replied, wincing. “Actually, my left leg, I think.”

The doctor moved his attentions to her leg, slicing off her muddy jeans with an expert hand. He quickly examined the rest of her body, then said something to D’Agosta.

“She’s okay!” D’Agosta called up. “Have the medevac meet us at the dock.”

“So?” Margo prompted. “Where were you?”

“We got sidetracked,” Pendergast said, now at the side. “One of your flippers was found in a settling tank at the Treatment Plant, badly chewed up. We were afraid that…” He paused. “Well, it was awhile before we decided to check all the secondary exit points of the West Side Lateral.”

“Is anything broken?” Smithback called down.

“Might be a small green-splint fracture,” the doctor said. “Let’s get the stretcher lowered.”

Margo sat forward. “I think I can manage the—”

“You listen to the doc,” D’Agosta said, frowning paternally.

As the cutter rode the water next to the dank brickwork, Smithback and the pilot lowered the stretcher over the side, then Smithback jumped down to help Margo onto the narrow canvas. It took the three of them to lift her back over the side. D’Agosta followed Smithback and the doctor back on board, then nodded to the pilot. “Get us the hell out of here.”

There was a rumble of the diesel engine and the boat backed off the revetment and surged into the canal. Margo leaned back carefully, resting her head on a flotation pillow as Smithback dabbed her face and hands clean with a damp towel.

“Feels good,” she whispered.

“Ten minutes, and we’ll have you on dry land,” Pendergast said, taking a seat next to her. “Ten more, and we’ll have you in a hospital bed.”

Margo opened her mouth to protest, but Pendergast’s look silenced her. “Our friend Officer Snow told us about some of the things that grow in the Humboldt Kill,” he said. “Believe me, it’ll be for the best.”

“What happened?” Margo said, closing her eyes and feeling the reassuring vibration of the boat’s engines.

“That depends,” Pendergast answered. “What do you remember?”

“I remember being separated,” Margo said. “The explosion—”

“The explosion knocked you into a drainage tunnel,” Pendergast said. “With Snow’s help, we made it up the riser and eventually into the Hudson. You must have been sucked into the Lateral sluice that drains into the Humboldt Kill.”

“Seems you followed the same path those two corpses took when the storm washed them out,” D’Agosta said.

Margo seemed to doze for a moment. Then her lips moved again. “Frock—”

Pendergast immediately touched his fingertips to her lips. “Later,” he said. “There will be plenty of time for that, later.”

Margo shook her head. “How could he have done it,” she murmured. “How could he have taken that drug, built that terrible hut?” She stopped.

“It’s unsettling to learn just how little you really know about even your closest friends,” Pendergast replied. “Who can say what secret desires fuel the inner flames that keep them alive? We could never have known just how much Frock missed the use of his legs. That he was arrogant was always obvious. All great scientists are arrogant, to a point. He must have seen how Kawakita had already perfected the drug through many stages. After all, the drug that Kawakita took himself was obviously a later strain than that which created the Wrinklers. Frock must have been supremely self-confident in his ability to correct that which Kawakita had overlooked. He saw the drug’s potential to correct physical flaws, and he pushed that potential to its limit. But the final iteration of the drug warped the mind far more than it mended the body. And his deepest desires—his most secret lusts—were thus brought to the fore, magnified, perverted, and allowed to govern his actions. The hut itself is the ultimate example of this corruption. He wanted to be God—his God, the God of evolution.”

Margo winced, then took a deep breath, dropping her hands to her sides and allowing the rocking of the boat to carry her thoughts far away. They moved out of the Cloaca, through the Spuyten Dyvil, and into the fresh air of the Hudson. Already the pale light of dawn was giving way to a warm late-summer day. D’Agosta stared off silently into the creamy wake of the cutter.

Idly, Margo realized that her right hand was lying over a bulge in her pocket. She reached in and pulled out the waterlogged envelope that Mephisto had given her in the black tunnel not so many hours before. Curiously, she opened it. A brief note lay inside, but whatever message it had contained was now washed into faint swirls and stains of ink. Enclosed by the note was a damp black-and-white photograph, faded and heavily creased. It showed a young boy in a dusty front yard, wearing coveralls and a pint-sized version of a train engineer’s cap, riding a wooden horse with wheels. The chubby face was smiling at the camera. In the background was an old house trailer, framed by cacti. Behind the trailer was a mountain range, low and distant. Margo stared for a moment, seeing in the happy little face the ghost of the man he would become. She carefully replaced the photograph and envelope in her pocket.

“What about the Reservoir?” she asked Pendergast in a quiet voice.

“The level hasn’t fluctuated in the last six hours,” Pendergast replied. “Apparently, the water has been contained.”

“So we did it,” she said.

Pendergast did not reply.

“Didn’t we?” she asked, her eyes suddenly sharp.

Pendergast looked away. “It would seem so,” he said at last.

“Then what is it?” she prodded. “You’re not sure, are you?”

He turned back to her, his pale eyes staring at her face. “With luck, the collapsed tunnels held and there was no leakage. In another twenty hours or so, the thyoxin will have destroyed the plants remaining in the Reservoir and in the tunnels below. But none of us can be sure—not yet.”

“Then how will we ever know?” Margo asked.

D’Agosta grinned. “Tell you what. One year from today, I’m gonna head down to Mercer’s on South Street and have one of those two-pound swordfish steaks, nice and rare. And if I don’t catch a good buzz, then maybe we can all breathe easier.”

Just then, the sun broke over Washington Heights, turning the dark water to the color of beaten electrum. Smithback, looking up from patting Margo’s face dry, gazed at the scene: the tall buildings of Midtown flashing purple and gold in the morning light, the George Washington Bridge swept with silver light.

“As for myself,” Pendergast said slowly, “I think I, too, will avoid frutti del mare for the foreseeable future.” Margo looked at him quickly, trying to read the joke in his expression. But his gaze remained steady. And, eventually, she simply nodded her understanding.