Douglas Preston - Reliquary

Margo, reeling in shock and disbelief, could not speak.

“However, it can’t be helped.” The flicker in Frock’s eyes died away. “As for the rest of you, welcome. I think some introductions are in order. For example, who is this hirsute gentleman with the ragged clothes?” He turned to Mephisto. “He has the face of a wild animal caught in a trap, which I suppose is exactly what he is. One of the natives, I imagine, brought along as a guide. I will ask you again, what is your name?”

There was a silence.

He turned to one of his lieutenants. “Cut his throat if he doesn’t answer. We can’t tolerate rudeness, now, can we?”

“Mephisto,” came the sullen reply.

“Mephisto, indeed! A little learning is a dangerous thing. Especially in a derelict. But ‘Mephisto.’ Really, how banal. No doubt meant to strike fear into the hearts of your scabby little followers. You don’t look like much of a devil to me, just a pathetic, drug-addled bum. I should not complain, however: you and your likes have been exceedingly useful, I will admit. Perhaps you will find an erstwhile friend amongst my children…” He swept his hand across the gathered ranks of Wrinklers. Mephisto drew himself up, saying nothing.

Margo stared at her former professor. This was like no Frock she had ever seen before. He had always been diplomatic and soft-spoken. Now there was an arrogance, a cold lack of emotion, that chilled her even beyond the fear and confusion she felt.

“And Smithback, the journalist!” Frock sneered. “Were you brought along to document this intended victory over my children? Pity you won’t be able to tell the real outcome in that scandal sheet you write for.”

“The jury’s still out on that,” Smithback said defiantly.

Frock chuckled.

“Frock, what the hell is all this?” D’Agosta said as he struggled. “You’d better explain, or—”

“Or what?” Frock turned toward the police officer. “I always thought you a crude, ill-bred fellow. But I’m surprised it’s necessary to point out you are in no position to make demands of me. Are they disarmed?” he asked one of the hooded figures closest to him, who nodded slowly in reply.

“Check that one again,” Frock said, pointing to Pendergast. “He’s a tricky devil.”

Pendergast was hauled roughly to his feet, searched, then shoved back to his knees. Frock slowly scanned them with his eyes, smiling coldly.

“That was your wheelchair, wasn’t it?” Pendergast asked quietly, indicating the platform.

Frock nodded. “My best wheelchair.”

Pendergast said nothing. Margo turned to Frock, finding her voice at last. “Why?” she asked simply. Frock looked at Margo for a moment, then signaled his lieutenants. The cloaked forms moved into position behind the huge cauldrons. Frock stood up, jumped down from the sedan chair, and approached the FBI agent on foot.

“ This is why,” he replied.

Then he stood proudly, lifting his arms high above his head.

“ As I am cured, so shall you be cured !” he cried in a clear, ringing voice. “ As I am made whole, so shall you be made whole !”

A loud answering cry came from the assembly. The cry went on and on, and Margo realized it was not an inarticulate cry, but a kind of programmed guttural response. The creatures are speaking, she thought. Or trying to .

Slowly, the cry died away and the chanting resumed. The deep, monotonous beat of the drums began again, and the lines of Wrinklers came shuffling forward toward the semicircle of cauldrons. The lieutenants brought delicate clay goblets out from within the hut. Margo stared, her mind unable to connect the beautifully formed implements with the hideous ceremony. One by one, the creatures came forward, accepting the steaming cups in horny-nailed hands, drawing them up into their hoods. She turned away, repelled by the thick slurping sounds that followed.

“ This is why,” Frock repeated, turning toward Margo. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how this would be worth anything, anything in the world?” There seemed to be something almost imploring in his tone.

For a minute, Margo didn’t understand. Then it hit her: the ceremony, the drug, the wheelchair pieces, Pendergast’s reference to the Lourdes shrine with its miraculous healing powers.

“So you could walk,” she said quietly. “All this, just so you could walk again.”

Instantly, Frock’s face hardened. “How easy for you to judge,” he said. “You, who have walked all your life and never given it a second thought. How can you begin to know what it is like not to walk? Bad enough to be crippled from birth, but to know the gift and to have it snatched away, when the greatest achievements of your life still lie before you?” He looked at her. “Of course, to you I was always just Dr. Frock. Dear old Dr. Frock, how unpleasant for him to contract polio in that African bush village in the Ituri Forest. How unfortunate he had to give up his field work.”

He brought his face closer to hers. “Field work was my life ,” he hissed.

“So you built upon Dr. Kawakita’s work,” Pendergast said. “You finished what he started.”

Frock snorted. “Poor Gregory. He came to me in desperation. As you surely know, he’d started taking the drug prematurely.” Frock waggled his finger in an uncharacteristically cynical gesture. “Tut, tut. And to think I’d always taught him to follow strict laboratory procedure. But the boy was simply too eager. He was arrogant and had visions of immortality. He took the drug before all the unpleasant side effects of the reovirus had been negated. Due to the rather, ah, extreme physical changes that resulted, he needed help. A surgical procedure had left him with a plate in his back. It was beginning to cause him acute pain. He was hurt, lonely, and scared. Who could he turn to but me, in my stifling, wasting retirement? And, naturally, I was able to help him. Not only in removing the plate, but in further purifying the drug. But of course, his cruel experimentation”—here Frock spread his hands at the multitude—“his selling of the drug—was his demise. When his subjects realized what he had done to them, they killed him.”

“So you purified the drug,” Pendergast said, “and took it yourself.”

“We did the final work at a rather untidy little lab he’d set up along the river. Greg had lost the conviction he needed to go forward. Or perhaps he’d never had that kind of courage, that intestinal fortitude a truly visionary scientist needs to see things through to their conclusion. So I finished what he’d started. More accurately, I perfected what he’d started. The drug still creates morphological change, of course. However, those changes now heal, rather than disfigure, what nature has corrupted. It is the true destiny, the truest iteration, of the reovirus. I am living proof of its restorative power. I was the first to make the transition. In fact, it is now clear to me that no one but myself could have made it. My wheelchair was my cross, you see. Now it is venerated as a symbol of the new world we shall create.”

“The new world,” Pendergast repeated. “The Mbwun lilies growing in the Reservoir.”

“Kawakita’s idea,” Frock said. “Aquaria are so expensive and take up so much room, you see. But that was before…” his voice trailed off.

“I think I understand,” Pendergast went on, as calmly as if he was debating with an old friend at a comfortable coffeehouse table. “You’d been planning to drain the Reservoir all along.”

“Naturally. Gregory had modified the plant to grow in a temperate environment. We were going to drain the Reservoir ourselves and release the lily into these tunnels. My children shun light, you see, and this makes the perfect warren. But then, friend Waxie made it all unnecessary. He is—or rather was —so eager to take credit for other people’s ideas. If you recall, it was I who first suggested the notion of draining the Reservoir.”