John Saul - The Presence

Puna shrugged. “Ken Richter was my best friend. We came to Maui together. If what Rob says is true, I wish I’d had a bomb to dump on that prick’s place after we picked you up.”

“It’s true,” Katharine sighed as Rob slipped his arm protectively around her. “It’s all true.” She pressed closer to Rob and looked into his face. “What are we going to do?”

“For the moment, all we can do is wait,” Rob told her. “But the way I figure it, as soon as it gets light, we should have some company.”

Katharine shuddered. “Yoshihara’s going to come after us, isn’t he?”

“Probably,” Rob agreed. “But if he thinks we’re going to be all by ourselves out here, he’s going to find out he’s wrong.” His arm tightened around her and his eyes rose to scan the sky. And there it was, right where Phil Howell had told him it would be. Glimmering in the blackness of a sky that had been washed all but bare of stars by the light of the fires burning around them, a single light hung far above them.

A light that would shine more brightly with each passing night, but then — in a week or perhaps a month — would disappear.

Disappear forever.

The nova.

“Look,” he said softly, guiding Katharine’s eyes to the brightening star. “That’s where it all came from.” Then, choosing his words very carefully, Rob began explaining to Katharine exactly what he and Phil Howell had discovered that night.

The first light of dawn was washing the blackness from the eastern horizon when the sound intruded on Katharine’s dream.

She was back in the Serinus laboratory on Takeo Yoshihara’s estate, but instead of rats, hamsters, monkeys, and chimpanzees, the cages each contained a little boy.

The rows of Plexiglas boxes seemed to stretch on forever, and each of the aisles opened into another, forming a labyrinth that went on into infinity. Katharine saw herself running through it, searching for Michael, but there were too many cages, too many children, and all of them were reaching out to her, begging her to help them.

She stopped finally, and opened one of the cages, but the moment she did, the child inside began to cough and choke, and when she picked up a little boy — a boy who looked exactly like Michael had when he was six — his coughing became convulsive.

And the child died in her arms.

She began running again, but now something was pursuing her, coming closer and closer, its sinister noise building to a crescendo.

Whup-whup-whup …

She tried to run faster, but the aisles stretched longer and longer before her, and with every turn, there were more of them to choose from. But no matter which way she turned, how many times she dodged from one aisle into another, her pursuer drew ever nearer.

Whup-whup-whup …

She cried out Michael’s name, praying he would answer her, that she would be able to find him before—

“Katharine!”

Her name! Someone was calling her name! But not Michael!

“Katharine!”

She jerked awake, the dream dissolving around her, and with a start remembered where she was. She’d escaped from the estate, and Michael was with her, and so was Rob, and they were safe.

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP!

The noise was still there, and now that she was wide-awake, she knew exactly what it was.

She struggled to her feet, ignoring the stiffness that had crept into her body as she’d dozed against Rob’s shoulder, still huddled close to the small fire Puna was nursing. “Where is it?” she asked, searching the brightening sky for the source of the noise.

Then she saw it. Flying high and coming in from the direction of Maui, she instantly recognized Takeo Yoshihara’s helicopter. “Michael,” she whispered, clutching at Rob’s arm while her eyes remained fixed on the aircraft. “Where’s Michael?”

“He hasn’t come back yet,” Rob told her. “Let’s go find him.”

“There!” Takeo Yoshihara said, pointing to the slope of Kilauea where Arnold Berman’s helicopter was clearly visible in a small clearing.

“Shall I land?” the pilot asked.

“Not until we find the boy!” Takeo Yoshihara, a satisfied smile curling his lips, gazed down at the landscape below. Though the glow of the lava flowing through the cracked and fissured tubes was fading in the breaking dawn, the flames dancing above the fire pits and calderas were still visible, as were the plumes of smoke and steam from the fumaroles that lined the great fissure — the point where an immense chunk of the island of Hawaii would eventually slide away into the sea, creating a tidal wave a thousand feet high. It wouldn’t happen this morning, or tomorrow, or this year or next. Indeed, it probably wouldn’t happen in Takeo Yoshihara’s lifetime, or for generations to come. Which was too bad: a natural phenomenon of that magnitude and the devastation it would wreak, was something he would like to see. This morning, though, there were more important things to do than contemplate the scene below.

The timing, as he had intended, was perfect.

They’d taken off from Maui in darkness, but by the time they found the boy — and they would find him — it would be light.

Light enough to pursue and capture him.

Or to kill him.

But still so early that there would be few witnesses. Only the mother, the besotted Dr. Silver, and their pilot, none of whom would survive.

“Fly lower,” he ordered. “We should be able to see …” His words died on his lips as he caught a flicker of movement that was neither flame nor smoke nor any of the churning gases that swirled up from below. Raising the pair of Leica binoculars that hung from his neck, he peered downward. “Yes,” he said softly. “There he is.”

Keeping the binoculars fastened on Michael Sundquist, Takeo Yoshihara began guiding the pilot toward the spot where the boy stood.

Nearly two hours had passed, but Michael, mesmerized by the undulating rhythm of the fires dancing above the caldera’s surface, had long ago lost any sense of time. After he’d left the small oasis in the lava where the kiawes grew and the others could still easily breathe the air, he’d moved quickly through the tortured landscape. His senses, heightening every minute as his lungs absorbed the nutrients his body now craved, guided him from one vent to another. He’d stopped at each of them, breathing in the thick fumes that steamed out of the cracks in the earth’s crust, inhaling the pungent odors issuing forth from the fumaroles. Finally he’d come to the caldera. There, crouched at its rim, the night had closed around him, wrapping him in a blanket of darkness from which he watched in silent wonder as the fires boiled up from deep within the earth. Through the hours, the flames danced, weaving intricate patterns above the molten rock that seemed to Michael to throb like the heart of the planet itself. Now, as the black mantle of night began to lift from the mountain, he sensed a change coming.

The rhythm of the flames seemed to intensify, as if they had some urgent message to impart before the brilliant fires of the sun made their own luminescence fade to invisibility.

As he was released from the folds of darkness, Michael flexed his body, but found no stiffness in it, despite the hours of crouching near the edge of the caldera’s lip. Then he felt, more than heard, a new rhythm beat into his consciousness. At first he tried to ignore it. Finally, it became so strong that he tore his eyes from the pulsating flames and gazed upward.

The helicopter hovering in the distance took on an iridescent glitter like that of a dragonfly searching for prey in the first rays of the rising sun. Michael watched it in fascination, but as it swooped down, moving steadily toward him, his fascination gave way to a tingling uneasiness.