Life Blood Part 45

I slid the rod back into the cryo-tank, then walked over and hoisted myself onto the lab bench next to the Dancing Shiva, creator and destroyer. And when I did, I again felt a stab of pain in my groin. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I was shaking, in the early stages of shock. More than anything, I just wanted to find him and kill him. . . .

I thought I heard a sc.r.a.ping noise somewhere outside, in the hall, and I froze. Was he about to come in and check on his "experiments"? Then I realized it was just the building, his house of horrors, creaking from the wind.

I took one final look at the incubators, and all the pain came back.

The whole thing was too much for my body to take in. I sat there trying to muster my strength.

Don't stop now. Keep going.

I got back onto my feet. The phone. Use the telephone. Find Steve, alert the emba.s.sy, then get Sarah. Do it now, while you still can.

I was holding my breath as I walked over and pushed open the door to the office and looked in. It was empty and dark. Good. I headed straight for the black case of the Magellan World Phone.

When I picked up the handset and switched it on, the diodes went through their techno-dance of greens and yellows and then stabilized giving me a dial tone. Thank you, merciful G.o.d.

I decided to start off by calling the hotel in Belize again, on the long shot that Steve had managed to get the h.e.l.l out of Guatemala.

Baby, please be there. My watch said the time was five-twenty in the morning, but he once told me they manned the desk around the clock. No problem getting through, though the connection had a lot of static. But then came the news I'd been dreading: no Steve Abrams.

"He still not come back, mon."

Where was he? I wanted to scream, but I was determined to keep a grip.

All right, try the Camino Real and hope you can get somebody awake who speaks English. Maybe he went back. Please, G.o.d.

I had the number memorized, so I plugged it in, and I recognized the voice of the guy who picked up, the owner's son, who was trying his best to learn English.

"Hi, this is Morgan James. Remember me? I'm just calling to see if there's a Steve Abrams staying there now?"

"Hey, _que pasa_, Senora James. Very early, yes? _Momento_." There was a pause as he checked. Come on, Steve, be there. Please, please be somewhere.

Then the voice came back: "No, n.o.body by that name stays here."

"Okay . . . _gracias_." s.h.i.t. It was like a pit had opened somewhere deep in my stomach.

I replaced the handset, feeling grateful that at least the phone still worked, my last link to sanity. My next call was going to be to the emba.s.sy, but I couldn't risk using up my opening shot with the graveyard shift. Maybe by 6 A.M. somebody with authority to do something would be there. Just a few more minutes.

Now what? I felt the aching soreness in my groin again, along with a wave of nausea. I had to do something, anything, just to keep going, to beat back an anxiety attack.

That was when I turned and stared at the computers, the little ducks drifting across the screens.

All right, you know what he's doing; now it's time to try and find out why. The real why. There must be records of what he's up to stored there. What else would he have them for?

"Clang, clang, clang." A noise erupted from somewhere outside the window. In spite of myself, I jumped.

Then I realized it was just the odd call of some forest bird. G.o.d, I wasn't cut out for this. Now my head was hurting, stabs of pain, but I rubbed at my temples and sat down at the first terminal.

I'm a Mac fan, hate Windows, so I had to start out by experimenting. In the movies people always know how to do this, but I had to go with trial and error, error compounding error.

After endless false starts that elicited utility screens I couldn't get rid of, I finally brought up an index of files, which included a long list of names.

ALKALOIDS

CARDIAC GLYCOSIDES

PHENOLICS

SAPONINS

TERPENOIDS

Biology 103--which I hated--was coming back. Plant-extract categories.

Looks like he actually is doing research on the flora here. But . . .

still, what does he need my ova for?

I scrolled on. Scientific terms that meant nothing. Then, toward the end of the alphabetical list, I came to the word QUETZAL.

What was that? I clicked on it and--lo and behold--up came a short list of names. Six in all, organized by dates about a year apart, and each a woman.

My G.o.d. First I a.s.sumed they were patients from Quetzal Manor who'd come here for fertility treatment, though each was indicated "terminated" at the end, whatever that meant. But as I scanned down, I didn't want to see what I was seeing. The name next to the last was S.

Crenshaw. She'd been "terminated" too.

The bottom was M. James. But I hadn't been "terminated." Not yet.

I slumped back in the chair, trying to breathe. How much more of this horror could I handle? Finally I leaned forward again and with a trembling hand clicked on S. Crenshaw.

A lot of data popped up, including three important dates. The first was exactly three weeks after the one in her pa.s.sport, the Guatemalan entry visa. The second was ten months ago, the third eight months ago. After each was a number: 268, followed by 153, and finally 31.

The count of her extracted ova. Kill him. Just kill him.

A lot of medical terminology I couldn't interpret followed each number, but the note at the end required no degree.

"Blastocyst material from embryos after third extraction shows 84% decrease in cellular viability. No longer usable."

My G.o.d, had he made her permanently sterile?

While that obscenity was sinking in, I went back and clicked on my own name. The date was today, the number was 233. He'd just taken 233 of my ova. I stared at the screen and felt faint.

No medical a.n.a.lysis had yet been entered, but it didn't matter. I stared at the screen, feeling numb, for a full minute before clicking back to Sarah's page. Yes, I was right. The last date was just six weeks before she was found in a coma, down the river from here. . . .

No more mystery. He'd been using her eggs to create embryos, and they'd finally stopped working. Not "special" anymore. So her "program" had been "terminated." In the river.

My stomach was churning, bile in my throat, and I thought

I was going to throw up. I took a deep breath, slowly, and stopped myself. Before I got Sarah and we got the h.e.l.l out of _Baalum_, I was going to smash everything in this lab.

It all had just come together. Those shots of "muscle relaxant" he gave me up at Quetzal Manor, they had to be a c.o.c.ktail of his "proprietary"