Reliquary

She paused. “There’s something else.”

“Isn’t this enough?”

Margo dug into her carryall and pulled out some small scraps of burned paper, sandwiched between pieces of clear plastic. “I found what looked like Kawakita’s lab journal among the ashes. These were the only sheets with any legible writing on them.” She brought out more photographs. “I had the scraps enlarged. This first one is from the middle of the notebook. It’s some kind of a list.”

D’Agosta peered at the photograph. He could make out a few scribbled words along the left edge of the badly burned page: wysoccan, dung-loving blue foot. Then, nearer the bottom: green cloud, gunpowder, lotus heart.

“Mean anything to you?” D’Agosta asked, scribbling the words into his notebook.

“Just the gunpowder,” Margo replied. “Although something tells me I ought to recognize more of it.” She handed him another photograph. “There’s another one that seems to be fragments of code for his extrapolation program. Then there’s a longer one.” D’Agosta sca

…can’t live with the knowledge of what I’ve… How could I, while concentrating on… ignore the mental effects that… but the other one grows more eager by the day. I need the time to…

“Sounds like he was getting a conscience, there toward the end,” D’Agosta said, handing back the card. “But what was it, exactly, that he did?”

“I’m getting to that,” Margo replied. “Notice he talks here about the mental effects of glaze as something he hadn’t considered. And did you catch that reference to ‘the other one’? I still haven’t figured that part out.” She reached for another card. “Then there’s this. I think it came from the last page of the journal. As you can see, besides a lot of numbers and calculations, there are only three completely legible words, with a period between them: ‘irreversible. Thyoxin might …’ ”

D’Agosta looked at her questioningly.

“I looked it up. Thyoxin is an experimental herbicide, highly potent, for removing algae from lakes. If Greg was growing this plant, what would he want with thyoxin? Or with vitamin D, which he was also apparently synthesizing? There’s still a lot I haven’t figured out.”

“I’ll mention it to Pendergast, just in case he has any ideas.” D’Agosta stared at the photographs a moment, then pushed them aside. “So tell me, Dr. Green,” he went on, “I’m not quite there yet. Just what exactly was Kawakita trying to do with all this apparatus of his?”

“He was probably trying to tame the drug by subtracting the reptilian genes from the Mbwun plant virus.”

“Tame?”

“I think he was trying to create a drug that didn’t cause the grotesque physical changes. To make the user more alert, stronger, faster, able to see better in the dark. You know, the kind of hypersensory abilities Mbwun had. But without the side effects.”

Margo began rolling up the diagram. “I’d need to test tissue samples from Kawakita’s corpse to be sure. But I think we’ll find traces of the Mbwun drug, substantially altered. And I think that the drug itself will be found to have some kind of narcotic side effect.”

“You mean Kawakita was taking it himself?”

“I’m certain of it. But he must have screwed up in some way. He must not have refined it or purified it properly. And the deformation that we saw in his skeleton was the result.”

D’Agosta wiped his brow again. God, he needed that cigar. “Just a minute,” he said. “Kawakita was a smart guy. He wouldn’t just take a dangerous drug for the hell of it, to see what would happen. No way.”

“You’re right, Lieutenant. And perhaps that’s where the guilt comes in. See, he wouldn’t have taken the drug himself right away. He would have tested it first.”

“Oh,” D’Agosta said. There was a long silence, and then he added, “Oh, shit.”

= 36 =

BILL TRUMBULL felt great. The market was up sixteen points for the day, nearly a hundred for the week, with no end in sight. At twenty-five, he was already pulling down a hundred large a year. Wouldn’t his classmates at Babson shit when they heard that at the reunion next week. Most of them had gone on to crummy management jobs, lucky to be making fifty.

Trumbull and his friends pushed through the turnstiles and entered the platform of the Fulton Street subway station, chattering and hooting. It was past midnight, and they’d put away a fine di

Trumbull felt a puff of stale wind and heard the familiar distant rumble as two tiny headlights appeared on the track. He would be home in half an hour. He felt a momentary a

“…So she says, ‘Honey, can I borrow seventy dollars?’ ” Everyone roared salaciously as the punch line was delivered, and instinctively Trumbull laughed along with them.

The rumble grew into a deafening roar as the express train pulled into the station. One of the group nudged Trumbull playfully toward the edge of the platform, and he leaned back out of the way of the approaching train. It came to a halt with a great shriek of brakes, and they piled into one of the cars.

Trumbull lurched into a seat as they pulled out of the station, looking around in a

At 14th Street, several of the guys got off to catch trains for Pe

Vaguely, Trumbull was aware of the train pulling into the 59th Street station, the doors opening, closing, the express plunging back into the darkness, gathering speed for the thirty-block run to 86th. One more stop, he thought drowsily.

Suddenly, the train lurched, then slowed, screeching to a halt. A long moment passed. Jostled awake, Trumbull sat in gathering irritation, listening to the tickings and creakings of the motionless car.

“Screw it,” said Kolb loudly. “Screw the Lexington Avenue Number Four.” He looked around for a response, getting none from the two other half-asleep riders. Then he elbowed Trumbull, who managed a wan smile as he thought about what a loser Kolb was.

Trumbull glanced down the car. He saw a cute-looking waitress and one black kid, wearing a bulky overcoat and knitted cap despite the hundred-degree interior of the train. Although the youth appeared to be sleeping, Trumbull eyed him warily. Probably coming back from a hard night’s mugging, he thought. He felt in his pocket for his penknife. Nobody was going to take his wallet, even if there was no money left in it.

There was a sudden crackle of static and a raspy voice came over the PA system: Attention passengzweesh therlalignal problem reshorkwix hortly.