Робин Кук - Mutation

“Anybody seen my son?” Victor asked abruptly.

“I just spoke to Hal not two minutes ago,” Sheldon said. “I specifically asked him, but he said he hadn’t seen VJ all day.”

“The manager at the cafeteria told me that VJ had lunch with one of you guys today,” Victor said. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t eat with VJ!” Sheldon said, pressing his palm against his chest. “I know Hal didn’t either. He ate with me. We both brown-bagged it. Hey, Fred!”

Fred stuck his head into the main part of the office from the spot where he operated the entrance and the exit gates. Sheldon asked him if he ate lunch with VJ.

“Sure didn’t,” he said. “I went off-site for lunch.”

Sheldon shrugged. Then he said to Victor, “There’s only three of us on duty today.”

“But the manager said...” Victor started, but he stopped. There was no point getting into an argument over who ate with VJ and who didn’t. The point was, where the hell was he now? Victor was getting curious and a little concerned. Marsha had wondered, and now he did too, just what did VJ do at Chimera to keep himself occupied. Up until that moment Victor had never given it much thought.

Leaving the security office, Victor went back to his lab. He was running out of ideas of where to search.

“The manager over at the cafeteria just called,” Robert said as soon as Victor appeared. “VJ’s turned up.”

Victor went to the nearest phone and called the manager.

“He’s here right now,” the manager said.

“Is he alone?” Victor asked.

“Nope. Philip is with him.”

“Did you tell him I was looking for him?” Victor asked.

“No, I didn’t. You just told me to call. You didn’t tell me to say anything to VJ.”

“That’s fine,” Victor said. “Don’t say anything. I’m on my way.”

Crossing to the building that housed both the cafeteria and the library, Victor chose not to enter through the main cafeteria entrance. He went in a side entrance instead, climbed to the second floor, and only then entered the cafeteria on the balcony level. Going to the railing and looking down, he saw VJ and Philip eating ice cream.

Keeping back out of sight, Victor allowed VJ and Philip to finish their afternoon snack. Before long they got up and disposed of their trays. As they were leaving, Victor came down the stairs, staying out of sight close to the wall. He could hear the door close behind them as they left.

Quickening his step, he got to the door in time to see them turn west on the walkway.

“Something wrong?” the manager asked.

“No, nothing is wrong,” Victor said, straightening up and trying to appear nonchalant. The last thing he wanted was office gossip. “Just curious about my son’s whereabouts,” he said. “I’ve told him time and time again not to go near the river when it’s raging like it is now. But I’m afraid he’s not minding me at all.”

“Boys will be boys,” said the manager.

Victor exited the cafeteria in time to see VJ and Philip in the distance, turning to the right beyond the building housing Victor’s lab. Clearly they were heading toward the river. Moving to a slow jog, Victor followed as far as the point where VJ and Philip had turned right. About fifty yards ahead he could still see them. He waited until they veered left just before the river and disappeared from sight. Victor ran down the alleyway.

When he arrived at the point VJ and Philip had gone left, he caught sight of them nearing the clock tower building. As he watched, the two mounted the few steps in front of the deserted building and entered through the doorless entranceway.

“What on earth can they be doing in there?” Victor asked himself. Keeping out of sight as much as possible, he went as far as the entranceway, then paused to listen. But all he could hear was the sound of the falls.

Perplexed, Victor entered. He waited a moment until his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Once they had, he found just the kind of mess he’d expected to find in the abandoned building. The floor was littered with rubble and trash.

The first floor was dominated by a large room with window openings over the millpond. Any glass had long since been broken. Not even the sashes remained. In the center of the room was a pile of debris giving evidence of squatters who had probably occupied the place before Chimera purchased the complex and fenced it in. Over the whole scene hung a pervasive smell of rotting wood, fabric, and cardboard.

Stealthily moving toward the center of the room, Victor tried to listen again, but the noise of the falls was even more dominating inside than it had been outside. He could make out no other sounds.

Along the side opposite the river was a series of small rooms that opened onto the main room. Victor started at the first and worked his way down. Each was filled with trash, to varying degrees. At either end and in the center of the building were stairwells that led to the two floors above. Victor went to the center staircase and slowly climbed up. On each floor he searched the warren of little rooms on both sides of a long hallway. Each room had its complement of rubble, litter, and dirt.

Mystified, Victor returned to the first floor. He walked to one of the front window openings and gazed out at the river, the dam, the pond, and then at the empty sluice, closed from the river with its rusted doors.

It was then that Victor remembered that the clock tower building was connected to the other buildings by elaborate tunnel systems to distribute the rotary mechanical power of the paddle wheels. It was obvious VJ was not in the clock tower building now. Victor wondered if it was this system his son had stumbled onto.

Victor whirled about, his hair standing on edge. He thought he’d heard something over the roar of the falls, or felt something; he wasn’t sure which. His eyes rapidly scanned the room but no one was there, and when he strained to listen, all he heard was the sound of the river.

Going from one stairwell to the other, Victor searched for the entrance to the basement. But he couldn’t find it. He looked again, still to no avail. There were no steps leading down. Stepping over to a window opening on the south side of the building, he looked to see if there might be a basement entrance from the outside, but there wasn’t. There seemed no way to get into the basement.

Victor left the building and walked back to the occupied section of the Chimera complex to visit the office of Buildings and Grounds. Using his master key, he let himself in and turned on the lights. He immediately went to the file room. From a huge metal cabinet he retrieved the architectural drawings of all the existing structures on the Chimera property. Referencing the clock tower building on the master site plan, he found the drawings for it and pulled them out.

The first drawing was of the basement. It showed where the water tunnel entered the edifice. Within the basement the water flowed through a heavily planked trough where it turned a series of paddle wheels that were mounted both horizontally and vertically. The basement itself was divided into one central room with all the power wheels and a number of side rooms. The tunnel system emanated from one of the side rooms on the east end.

Victor then looked at the plan for the first floor. He found the stairway that led down to the basement easily enough. It was immediately to the right of the central stairwell. He could not imagine how he had missed it.

To be doubly sure, he made a copy of the basement and first-floor plans, using the special copy machine that Chimera had for that purpose. He reduced the copies to legal-paper size. With these in hand, he returned to the clock tower building, determined to explore below.