David Dun - The Black Silent

Sam limped after her with Rafe's knife. The man came running out of the living room and intercepted her in the hallway.

He never saw Sam come around the corner. With his knife hand Sam punched the side of the man's head. He whirled. In a fluid motion Sam switched the knife to his left hand and struck with the palm of his hand into the man's nose, then smashed an elbow into floating ribs. The man dropped in a state of semiconsciousness, bleeding badly from the face.

Sam grabbed the railing, put his foot against the wall, and, despite new pain in his knees and back, heaved with all his might. The bottom of the railing broke away, leaving Gibbons with his hands free.

"Frick probably has the key to those cuffs," Sam said. "You got any bolt cutters?"

"I'll get them," Gibbons said. He went to the basement door and disappeared with his hands still cuffed in front of him. Sam checked the guy on the floor. He wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt with a Kevlar vest beneath the shirt and cuffs in his back pocket. In seconds Sam had the guy chained to the radiator pipe in the living room. He wouldn't go anywhere, even if he regained full consciousness, any time soon. Sam hoped he hadn't overdone it when he hit him. He checked his pupils and his pulse, worrying about intracranial bleeding. There was no emergency room on the island, although there were paramedics and rapid helicopter evacuation to a trauma center.

Gibbons returned with a large pair of bolt cutters. Sam quickly snipped the cuffs.

"Come with us," Sam said.

"I'm not leaving," Gibbons said. "I'll hide in my basement. They'll never find me."

"They may, and if they do, they'll kill you." "Believe me, they won't."

Sam realized that arguing was a waste of time that they couldn't afford. "You need your car?"

Gibbons thought for a minute. "Better you take it; that way they'll think I've left. And one more thing." The way he said it, Sam knew it was big. "I think Ben might be hiding at the foundation."

"Why didn't you say so before?" Haley cried. Sam took Haley gently by the arm, kept her back, and worked on getting Gibbons talking.

"Why do you say that?" Sam asked.

"A hunch."

"Tell me. You can see these guys aren't screwing around."

"In the workshop there's a small study. It's hidden behind some shelves that move. You might find him in there. And I think you'll find more of his research too. Maybe you would be interested in those volumes, even if you don't find Ben." He paused. "But you might indeed find Ben. It's a good bet." Just when he thought Gibbons was done with the revelations, the older man cleared his throat.

"There is also a small storage room that you access with a door that's behind some lumber racks." "Anything there?"

"I don't know. I just mention it because it's out of the way."

They moved to leave, but on second thought Sam stopped and grabbed Gibbons's bolt cutters.

Outside in Gibbons's car Haley seemed lost in thought. Sam wondered if she was reliving whatever had happened upstairs.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine. Just wondering how we get back into the foundation. Now we have two reasons to go there. The plankton volumes and Ben."

"Once we get in, we still have to get out. Since you told me about the volumes in his office, I've been giving some thought to it." Sam looked at her more closely. "Are you sure you're fine?" She seemed to be putting effort into not crying. "You didn't come any too soon," she said. "The bastard. He was all over me. I hate him. I hate him. I want him rotting in jail."

Sam started the motor and clicked the electronic garage door opener. In seconds they were on the street. As he drove, he saw her hands clenched so tight they were turning white. The tears were coming now.

On a back street Sam pulled over and faced her. Touching her seemed different, but he chanced it and put his arm around her. Perhaps it was becoming more natural. At first she resisted; then she came close. "Laitimer was lying." she said.

"What do you mean?"

"He has an ax to grind. An agenda," she said. Sam drove. "How?"

"It's just a hunch," Haley said.

"He acted like his evasiveness was all about being loyal to Ben."

"I think he is paranoid," she said.

"His agenda is certainly not our agenda."

"Well, at least he gave us the documents he had." She began flipping through the computer printouts. "Every one of these pages has ARCLES at the bottom of it."

They entered the parking lot above the Friday Harbor Marina, where boat owners parked. It was well-lit, with few cars and quiet-a typical off-season night in Friday Harbor.

"It's time to call Rachael," Sam said. It took the punch of a button because he had her number in memory. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," Rachael said. "Meet us at the marina parking lot."

"I'll be there in about twenty minutes. Maybe just a little more."

"Here's a section about Arcs," Haley said. "Ben apparently has other scientists working on this. I recognize Jacob Krevitz, a retired fellow from UW. Oh, and Miles Knoff, retired from Cornell. Ben's really been putting brainpower into this."

She read on. "Here are some calculations regarding a methane/sulfate cycle. Not that I know what that has to do with anything."

"What's it mean generally?" Sam asked.

"It's a cycle that doesn't use oxygen," she said. "By comparison we breathe oxygen, we exhale CO; vegetation does the opposite. You know?"

"Sure."

"According to this, some Arcs live on a methane/sulphate cycle like we live on an oxygen/CO cycle. Methane-producing Arcs take in CO and hydrogen and make 2 2 methane. The point is, if you calculate the available energy in their various chemical cycles, factoring in the normal amounts of energy required to maintain an organism, then Archaea cannot possibly live. None of them. That means that by our standards these Arcs are energy efficient beyond comprehension. It would be equivalent to discovering a race of people that could live for a year on a slice of pizza." She returned to the pages.

"Somebody actually did the pizza calculation." She was quiet for a while. Sam watched a couple men coming up Water Front Street-mere shadows passing through the streetlamp halos. He studied them. Not in a hurry, relaxed, nothing in their hands, they looked like people accustomed to the island.

"Wow," she said.

"What?"

"The ramifications of what I just told you-they're enormous."

"Tell me," Sam said.

"Aside from the fact that these things appear to live on practically nothing, the methane makers produce much more methane than the methane eaters consume. Ben did a mass calculation for methane production by Arcs. He says there's more methane stored in the bottom of the sea than all the oil, coal, and gas reserves put together."

Sam whistled long and low.

"Not so hard to believe," Haley said, "when you consider what Ben says here: 'Arcs comprise one-third of all the living stuff on earth.' Unbelievable! And to think Nelson Gempshorn worked on this."

"Who is Gempshorn?"

"He's a vice president of American Bayou Technologies."

"The company that's merging with Sanker?"

"Yeah." Haley looked surprised that Sam knew this. "That's right. And you know, I don't think I ever mentioned it to you, but I walked in on Ben and Nelson one day at Ben's place. They had some kind of a model of something and they sort of seemed to panic when I came in. The model had something to do with the seafloor and ships. Now that I think about it, American Bayou Technologies is in the energy business. Offshore oil, mainly."

"You see where this is leading?" Sam said. "American Bayou would have a huge stake in what we're looking at here. In the merger Ben may not only have the key for Sanker with aging, he may also have the key for American Bayou. If American Bayou obtains a big energy discovery, that would enable them to win in this merger struggle."