David Dun - The Black Silent

Let's leave it at that."

"Let's," said Frick.

"Problem two is finding exactly the right place to drill. Even though it covers large areas, drill sites are much more rare. That's the key to recovery."

Frick nodded. "And?"

"The third problem is that it's still a fossil fuel. It's the cleanest fossil fuel, but it still makes CO. Right?"

"If you say so. I suppose the do-gooders don't like that."

"That's right," said McStott. "So they developed a closed-system way of using it to make electricity. They burn it and use the heat to make steam and the steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. They break down the CO into water and carbon. The 2 carbon goes into the ground, leaving only water vapor."

"Where is all this written down?"

"That's the trouble. They've hidden all the details. So we don't have all the how-to parts," said McStott, "but at least we know what to look for. This is the end of the energy crisis as we know it, man. If somebody does something about it."

Frick grabbed the animated McStott by the shirt, shocking him into silence.

"Get the details. And get the aging technology. That's our priority. Got it?"

"Okay! I know," McStott said, pulling away. "I know you're in a rush. But hear me out.

There's something here, it's like a whole thing," McStott blurted quickly, making little or no sense. "Not just aging. But it's all related. See, oxygen-based creatures-"

"What the hell are you talking about? Read my lips. Does Ben Anderson know how to make people live a long time?"

Khan came into the lab in a hurry. "Something's going on. They're about to call me back." On cue Khan's phone beeped and Khan answered.

Frick watched Khan clamp his jaw as an angry shadow crossed his face.

"Where is… Hello? Hello?" Khan said. He turned to Frick, his eyes intense. "One of our guards saw a big man in this building. He sprayed our guy with pepper spray and took his clothes."

Sam had to get off the roof but had no good way to do it.

He stared down the peak toward the balcony, holding his bag of papers. Given the murderous drop to the balcony and then the ground, Sam decided to risk going back through the window. He tied the bag to his belt, and as he opened the window, he saw a shadow cross the hallway outside the door of Ben's office.

Immediately he felt he was in bad trouble. He looked at his other option: the jump off the roof to the balcony and then to the ground could paralyze him.

It wouldn't take much to start the swelling, and he had already badly abused his body.

He broke out in a cold sweat as he scrambled up the roof in pain that felt like surgery without anesthesia. When he got his leg almost straight and used two hands and one foot to do the bulk of the locomotion, it hurt less. The far end of the roof was a long way off, but he covered the distance in a few minutes. Approaching the balcony slowly, he peered over the edge. Then the door to the balcony flew open. Somebody was there with a gun making all the right moves.

A trained cop.

His mind did a quick calculation. One possibility remained-jumping to the big fir tree in the dark. Doing his weird three-point crawl and dragging the bad leg, he went down the roof to the fir. It was probably a second-growth tree that the second group of loggers missed.

It would be ironic to die falling out of a tree when the fountain of youth might be hanging from his belt. He made sure it was a fleeting thought. At this time of night it looked like he'd be jumping into a big shadow. A window onto the roof was opening. It was a simple calculation. The fear of pain was daunting. Fear of Frick's murder methods made it seem perfectly acceptable.

It was a good jump, probably ten feet to something really solid. He backed up on the roof and decided to pretend that he had more or less two good legs. It was a ridiculous assumption. In less than five seconds he noticed that he was nearly hyperventilating.

Looking at the gulf, the great fall to the ground, he imagined the clean snap of the bones.

He really didn't want to jump. He paused.

A few evil men, Ben had warned. Did Ben have any particular evil men in mind?

As someone scrambled up the far side of the roof, he realized he'd have to live if he were ever to find out what was really happening. Taking three giant strides, he leaped from his good leg. Airborne, he reached out with his arms and hit two branches, one near each armpit. The first was flimsy and bent as he grabbed it; the other snapped. Then he was grabbing as things broke and his body fell. Maybe for two seconds branches snapped like toothpicks. Then he slammed into the tree itself, sliding down the trunk, taking off plenty of skin. Everything from his testicles to his chest hurt like hell. His leg throbbed in pain beyond description.

He hung on as a matter of instinct, then sought something solid for his feet. He found it.

Somebody was shouting something on the roof. They would all come. He started sliding down the tree again, burning more skin at the friction points. Then branches thudded against his body like torturers with small clubs. Down he went, never stopping, just trying to control the fall. The last fifteen or twenty feet, he broke his fall only once. Then he hit the ground and pain was screaming in his face, in his ears.

Now he knew who was screaming. He was.

Knowing it was move or die, he rolled and began half-crawling and doing a three-point gallop, happy even to run like a three-legged animal, amazed that he wasn't yet paralyzed.

He hung onto the swinging duffel as he ran. After a few moments he made it to standing upright, and groaned with the terrible, pulsing pain. He grabbed a stick and bit down.

His breath came fast. The stick was putrid with rot, and soft, and had an acrid taste. But it stopped the groaning.

Men were coming out of the building and shining flashlights around, but nobody plunged into the thick of it. In seconds he was away from the building and away from them. As he came near the road, he saw flashlights in the distance moving along a path parallel to his. They also were running for the road. He halted at the shoulder and watched them turn down the road, jogging in his direction.

The clouds had opened, allowing the moon to shine down the road, making a fuzzy white worm snaking through the trees. Mustering his will, Sam half-ran, half-stumbled, across the road. Careless shots in the dark sent bullets into the forest, but none found him. Quickly he plunged back into the sopping wet branches of the forest, keeping low like a brush buck. Running wasn't possible, unless one was willing to risk running into a tree trunk. There were no more flashlights and he heard no movement through the trees from down the road. Likely, no one would follow, except in a large group. He began angling just a little west of north, as near as he could figure it, toward the area of the most trees and the fewest people.

He felt nothing now but a raw desire to survive, served by instincts millennia old. Vegas guys in stitched leather shoes, and without a dog, would be hard-pressed to find him, unless some of them were really, like him, country guys living in the city. Of course, as luck would have it, they had one police dog on Orcas Island. No doubt they would bring it over. With a dog they could find him. There were a few tricks he might employ, but with a group of men and a trained dog, they were long shots. If Haley didn't come fast, he was done, cornered on a small portion of a small island. He hoped he would be able to find the needed materials to buy himself a chance. It was either that or try to kill the dog. He didn't want to kill a dog.

Fortunately, the forever-reassembling clouds were disassembling at the right spot. When he had a moment, he intended to figure out an appropriate direction of travel. It was a damnably dense, small-tree forest that, if in northern California, would vaporize like so much confetti at the first forest fire. However, the underbrush was light and there hadn't been any recent windstorms leaving large windfalls that would make passage even more difficult. He would have preferred the windfalls. That he used no light would be his strength, and one of the several weaknesses of those who searched for him. They would advertise their presence long before they arrived. To find him in the thickest of the forest, they would have to step on him. It was the tracking dog that would make the difference. To land a seaplane or pick him up in a boat, whichever worked out (either was a long shot), he and Haley would need a rendezvous far away from all the hired help at Sanker. They had a contingency plan if she couldn't make it, but it wasn't good.