The Black Silent

CHAPTER 36

Studying the plane, Haley had found a fuel tank switch that sucked from the dregs of a second ruptured tank. For just a second she had fired it up and got them started in the right direction away from the unconscious officer and then shut it down, wincing at the horrible racket.

"To paddle this plane, it's too far and will take too much time," Sam said. "That leaves walking or the motor. If we motor, we wake people and arouse curious eyes."

"Some people get up at this hour. It's all dangerous. I'll leave it up to you. I'm worried about Sarah," Haley said.

"Use the motor to get near; then we paddle."

They both silently cringed at the noise of the big Lycoming engine and, of course, its sound was magnified greatly by their worry. It reverberated off the rocky bluffs and probably caused Haley to shut it down early. It would be a long paddle.

Fortunately, they found a second paddle behind the rear seat. With both Sam and Haley paddling, they reached the yacht in twenty minutes. The hard work had one side benefit: neither felt hypothermia In fact, they were cold but breathing strongly as they approached the yacht from the stern, then climbed out on the fantail.

It was a large, beautifully constructed north-sea trawler design. Once on the stern, teak steps rose to the aft deck. Sam tried the aft main-deck door and found it locked. It was beefy and the glass heavy, so breaking in was a poor option.

He climbed to the wheelhouse and found it locked as well. Normally yachtsmen would hide a key. He climbed back up to the wheelhouse and looked for a hiding place.

Using his fingers to hunt every nook and cranny around the wheelhouse, he found nothing. He studied the far back corner of the upper deck and saw a large round canister that held an emergency life raft. He felt underneath it and all around it. Nothing there.

He went up on the outdoor bridge above the pilothouse and took the canvas off the controls and the wheel. It was too obvious a place to hide a key, but he looked, anyway.

After opening every storage locker door, he found nothing.

The situation was getting serious. They hadn't the time to move Sarah again.

There was a door on the front deck that would be rarely used and he tried that as well.

Of course, it was locked. There was a second tender on the yacht, a large Avon hard-bottom inflatable. The owners had taken the other ashore. He took off the cover, begging the Great Spirit for a break. He didn't claim to deserve it, but he thought Sarah might.

He found a box in it, which he opened. It revealed a very large crank handle, apparently the anchor winch handle for the fiberglass tender boat. It wasn't a key, but it might do to smash one of the heavy windows.

He went to the rear window of the pilothouse on the starboard side next to the ladder to the upper bridge. As he drew the handle back, he stopped short, thinking he ought to look under each stair leading to the flybridge. He went down to his knees and felt under the first stair: there, velcroed underneath, was a key; it opened the pilothouse.

He stepped inside, his eyes looking for an alarm box. Immediately he saw the keypad and knew they were finished. Then he saw the small green light, not blinking or flashing. It was too good to be true. He shone his flashlight on the control box. The word Unarmed appeared. He could not recall being so lucky, or a wealthy owner so foolish- blessedly foolish.

One pleasant feature of this floating castle was the very large moat surrounding it. Even at the poky ten knots that was the vessel's top speed, there was no way to come on the boat easily, except over the stern, and Sam could hold off an army there in the short term. aAs quick as he could, he took Haley and Sarah below to the master stateroom, which he knew would be amidships. Using the ship's flashlights, he covered the windows with blackout curtains.

It was just over twenty-one feet across the stateroom and it had a large king-size bed on one side and a small study area and library on the other. On the side opposite the bed in the master suite stood a section of wall with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and cabinets, along with a built-in desk.

The two women went in the marble-tiled bathroom and climbed in the shower. From the sound of it they were greeted with a powerful spray of water. Sam stripped and found pants and a shirt that fit him and then found clothes that looked like they might fit the women. He tossed them through the bathroom door.

In about three minutes Haley was out of the shower and helping Sarah into the bed.

Sarah was still shaking and beyond exhausted. Sam and Haley sat on the bed and opened the laptop. It took sixty seconds to find the recipe for Sargasso stew. Below it they found information about sorting through Arc genes using Venter's computer technology. At the bottom of the page was a stand-alone notation: Archaea — closer than you know.

Haley put her chin on her fist, deep in thought.

"What do you see?" he asked after what seemed a reasonable time.

"Archaea is an organism that makes methane-or consumes it-that lives almost forever and for whom oxygen is poison. So he says they are closer to me than I know.

But their DNA is circular, I believe. It's primitive even if it's closer to ours than, say, a five-thousand-gene bacteria. But none of that leads me anywhere. It's just a bunch of facts. For some reason Ben's sorting through a bunch of different Arc genes from different Arc species. If only I knew why. This is a stew, for sure. I see why Ben likened it to the Sargasso stew."

"Sarah, where are Ben's files on this computer?"

"Look under 'Ben,' in My Documents." Her tongue's swelling had reduced enough to make her easier to understand.

"These are password-protected documents," Sam said. "What's the password?"

"Don't know," Sarah said. "I never looked at 'em."

Sam tried the word Haley and got nothing. Then he tried ARCLES and they opened.

There were five documents and they were all blank.

"Damn it," Sam said.

"He thought I'd be opening them," said Haley. "So what do I know that would help?"

"Nothing if they're blank," Sam said. "Unless they are specially programmed to look blank when they aren't. Like a program within a program."

"I have a wild idea," Haley said. "Ben has a code for the burglar alarm in his house. It's 2872, my birth date. When he wants a longer password for something, like the Internet, it becomes 42872 Haley. He uses it on the Internet and everyplace he needs a long password. It's way too obvious, but why not try?"

"But who else knows it?" Sam said.

"I think only Ben, Sarah, and I know it."

Sam closed the blank document and typed in the code. This time the document opened to another dialogue box, which asked for another password. He typed ARCLES. This time the actual document opened.

Before them lay a map of the North American continent with red dots around it. Sam guessed these represented all the known methane hydrate deposits. Below were calculations and some text, which Haley studied.

"They start out telling where methane is, et cetera. Like an executive summary. I'm guessing these are elaborate mining techniques, here." She pointed at the relevant pages.

"Look at all these sketches: giant anchored ships and barges. It's like what I saw Ben and Nelson looking at."

She pointed.

"They say here that using their methods… God, get this… One 50- by 150-kilometer area off the coast of North and South Carolina is estimated to hold enough methane to supply the needs of the United States for over seventy years. Can that be true? That's unbelievable."

"So they think they know how to mine it," Sam said. "No more energy crisis and worth a fortune, if they can pull it off."

"Let's open another file," he said.

They opened the second. Once again Haley started reading, then scrolled through pages of calculations.

"We're back to aging again." She paused and a look of shock came over her face. "Oh, my God. He is giving it to people."

Sam looked over her shoulder and read Ben's notation: I have interviewed all thirty-six men and the two women on the life-extension regime denominated Arc for short.

"Interesting that there are only two women." "He's got some general material about how they chose these people for the program," Haley offered. She pointed to the text:

Of paramount importance, however, are the psychological impacts, which are as yet only partially understood and documented.

"Then he's got some comments about other reports that are related, and then he goes on some more."

A more surprising development is the complex of psychic issues that arise from taking the regimen and reorienting one's thinking to an extended life span. None of those currently on the regimen can be expected to add more than fifty years to their lives because much of the genetic damage and transformation of age was accomplished before they began the regimen and, hence, the outlook is much different for the late middle-aged and elderly participants than for those who in the future will begin the regimen before age thirty-five.

I have not yet personally begun the more robust portions of the regimen because I did not want any altered state of consciousness that might be associated with the regimen while I was evaluating its effects on my colleagues.

I am sorry to report that there seem to be significant changes in mental orientation from the onset of the regimen. However, they seem much more pronounced in the men than in the women.

First, there is a great sense of well-being that seems to be experienced by all those on Arc, including the two women.

Second, they seem to have developed a strong emotional focus on continuing self-supply

— similar to that of an addict, although this seems much less pronounced in the women.

Third, one cannot overstate the universal sentiment among participants. Perhaps belief is a better word. They view themselves as a distinct group, distinct from the rest of the human race. It is a bit disconcerting that they have such a strong us/them consciousness. I am finding that, because I am not on the regimen, I am not considered one of them.

Haley and Sam looked up at the same time, searching each other's eyes. Sarah lay asleep beside them. They continued silently reading:

On the positive side the regimen seems to foster great energy and optimism that is prevalent, unless one gets on the subject of scarcity — medication scarcity.

Unfortunately, the treatment for aging is expensive, never ending, and complex. Any hint that there might be a problem with supply seems to arouse anxiety and a mental state bordering on paranoia, particularly in males. To this group, the paramount value seems to be securing continuing availability of Arc.

An expert in the field might be able to counter some of these mental effects with drugs, but for the present I have to deal with it psychoanalytically to the best of my ability.

Members of the group seem to have retained their sense of humor and self-awareness and they are often able to laugh about their seeming paranoia over losing the supply of regimen drugs.

In all other regards mental performance of subjects remains as high, if not higher, than it ever had been.

Lately, however, they've become extremely concerned when they do not know my precise whereabouts. In the beginning I kept the various recipes for the various portions of the regimen in a vault at the foundation, but recently I destroyed the hard copies and then had only the copies on my computer and on Sarah's computer. Recently I also destroyed critical portions of the electronic documents on both computers so that I now possess the critical information only in my memory. (I was able to access the escrow and did the same.) My mistrust of Sanker necessitated these actions. I tested Sanker 's integrity and, unfortunately, it failed, thus giving me reason to thwart the escrow. I am concerned about the reaction of the male subjects when they learn what I've done.

For specific interviews and psychological test results, see the main body of this report.

Sam took another look at Haley. She seemed taken aback to the point of shock.

"I can't believe he's done this," she said.

"It's bold to the point of recklessness, I agree. It should make you feel better, though."

"How?" she said.

"You can see now why he kept you out of this," Sam said. "Right? I'm sure he was afraid of your reaction. In addition to your safety. Interesting that women don't seem to have the level of paranoia."

"Two women is too small a sample. It's anecdotal."

"Spoken like a scientist."

She closed her eyes and nodded, as if clearing her mind for the work to come.

"Let's open another."

There were three left. Haley typed in the codes this time. The third popped up a third dialogue box, asking for another code.

"Uh-oh," Sam said. "He hasn't made this one easy and we don't have a code breaker."

They tried a dozen words and then the computer flashed a sign that said no more opportunities to open were available.

"We're cooked," Sam said. "We'll never get in without help. And maybe not then. I'll try for the help, but it's a long shot."

Frick was wondering whether McStott was worth a 1 percent offer, let alone the 20 percent of the take he and Khan had discussed. At Khan's insistence Frick took a call from Rolf.

Rolf spoke first: "Hello?"

"Talk quick," Frick said.

"Okay. Two things: Ben Anderson has been corresponding with people from Homeland Security and various other branches of government. We just have indications of the discussions and meetings, not the substance of them. I'm sure he destroyed any notes.

The bulk of this activity started months ago. It's real," Rolf added unnecessarily.

"What else?"

"I'm closing in on Anderson's meeting place. You know, hideout, or lab, or whatever."

"Enlighten me quickly."

"This first part could be trivial, but we read everything coming in from the field. We asked the deputies to put out an APB for Ben and they threw in his old boat, the Mallard. Someone saw divers going in over the side off a forty-something-foot boat that sounds from the description like it might have been Ben's old boat. But they said its name was Alice 5."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"I'm telling you now," Rolf said.

Frick's cursing pounded in his head. He wanted to break something. Then he spoke in patronizingly measured tones. "Then let's have a deputy call the people who saw this boat and get a precise location."

"We told Khan about it."

Khan answered immediately. "The boat was between what they call the old lime kiln and Turtle Mountain in a sparsely populated area. There's several different roads in that vicinity. We have some Anderson photos that also help."

"Is there anything in there that might be a laboratory?" Frick asked.

"Yep. That's why I got Rolf on the line with you. They're not done yet, but they've got this preliminary indication."

"I say we go there," Frick said. "Full force. Now."

"That's putting our eggs in one basket," Khan said. "It's a huge gamble, but I'm with you. I have one suggestion, though."

"Keep the real deputies on Lopez? Take our guys to Orcas?"

Khan chuckled. "I like how you think, my brother. But I'd change that just a tad. We keep the deputies on the roads going through this whole area, but we send our guys the last half-mile down all the roads."

"Then do it."

Frick hung up on Rolf.

It was time to go.