himself on one knee.
“Tell Morrison that when he finds out who I am”—his fingers ground the pamphleteer’s knuckles together—“it will be too late for him.”
The spotted old hand released its grip. “Keep the change,” the mysterious stranger said, leaving the money behind and turning away. He walked straight now, his strides long and purposeful.
Regaining his shopping cart, he guided it a few yards down the street until he spied another homeless one. Wheeling up to the woman, who could not have been more than forty but looked ancient because of her matted hair, sun-damaged skin, and edentulous mouth, he spoke to her for a moment, then left the cart with her. She stared gratefully at his receding figure, then began to pick through the gift of recyclable goods. There had to be at least ten dollars worth of aluminum and plastic. Then she discovered a roll of twenties stuffed in a dirty Styro cup. Her toothless
face smiled in amazement at the stranger, but he had already vanished into the crowd.
Walking down the busy sidewalks of San Francisco’s business district, the bulbous-nosed man reached into another pocket of his tweed jacket and withdrew something that looked like a thick wristwatch. Grimy fingers punched at the keys; his eyes— sharp-gazed, now—read the messages stored in the wristcomm’s memory. His deeply furrowed brow wrinkled even more. He pulled a tiny, tan-plastic plug out of his pocket, wiped the lint and tobacco flakes off of it, and inserted it in his ear.
“Voice response,” he said in a clear, strong tone. “Flash.”
“Flash here,” a voice said equally clearly over the earpiece. “ What are you doing ”—he paused to check the wristcomm’s location—“ in San Francisco?”
“Looking for alumni. What have Rock and Lei found?” “Cap—hit the road running. You’re an hour’s drive from Hell.”
Chapter Five
The Mirror Pool
“Who are you two, the SWAT team?”
Detective Fleming eyed the odd pair with a weary impatience. Both the short, stout male and the willowy female wore black jump suits. And both wore damnably huge autopistols at their side.
“We are from Anger Institute in L.A.,” Rock said, placing the large silver equipment box on the pavement. “We’re here to help.”
“Anger Institute,” Fleming repeated. “We don’t need therapists, we need—”
“We’re scientists,” Leila interjected.
Fleming shook his head. “Not toting those cannons, you’re n—”
A scream pierced the sky. Fleming turned to see the male paramedic shriek in horror, watching as his female companion collapsed in on herself, flesh, bone, and organs eaten up in seconds by the glistening nightmare. Then the screaming man looked at his own chest, watched it cave in, seeing ribs, lungs, even his heart melt away like a wax figure in a
blast furnace.
Several of the reporters fainted dead away. Their cameramen— distanced from the terror by watching it through viewfinders— held steady, broadcasting the sickening deaths to millions of TV sets.
Rock opened the case and withdrew a pair of minicam headsets. He slipped his on and inserted the earplug, handing the other set to Leila. The headsets transmitted and received audio and video via their wrist communicators.
“Here’s our own news report, Flash.” Rock slammed the case lid shut and slid the whole thing toward the yellow police line. “People are melting like wicked witch out here.”
Four hundred miles away, Flash observed the two slightly differing perspectives on separate monitors. On Rock’s screen blazed the image of a pair of paramedics’ jump suits rapidly disappearing into a small silvery puddle. On Leila’s monitor, a fifty-yard-wide, roughly oblong lake reflected the buildings around it as accurately as a mirror. She nearly grew disoriented watching it. The diner had completely disappeared, one edge of the lake cutting into the next building. Its foundation undercut by the strange matter, a portion of it collapsed into the pool and sank. Now, beams and broken sections of roof and wall hung precariously over the ever-widening perimeter of destruction.
Rock stepped over the police line. The confident professionalism in his demeanor convinced Fleming not to interfere. The detective merely watched with quiet apprehension.
Leila withdrew two containers from the case—a stainless-steel vacuum bottle and an acid-proof, wax-coated quartz Petri dish. “Heads up!” she shouted at Rock. He turned and caught the two tossed items.
“It’s not a liquid,” Flash announced over their earcomms. “It runs like a fluid, but once it’s pooled, it seems to harden. Otherwise the wind would cause ripples.”
Rock picked up a crushed soda can and tossed it into the pool. It bounced once, skidded across the reflective surface, then came to a rest. Within seconds, it softened and disappeared as if sinking into water.
“Fun stuff,” Flash muttered.
“It may seem solid, but look at this.” Rock lowered his head to allow the camera a view of the edge of the mysterious pool. Its shoreline advanced steadily toward him at a slow but perceptible pace.
“Maybe it’s a fluid with a high surface tension,” Leila offered.
“Rock—get out of there,” Flash said. “It may not be an infectious agent, but it sure seems contagious. You might not even be able to tell if you’ve got any on you.”
“I just want to try scooping—”
“Do as he says, Rock.”
The voice behind him spoke in a deep, persuasive tone. Turning, he saw a wretched man in tattered, grimy clothes standing behind the police line. His face looked like a traffic accident, a swollen, red nose the most salient feature. The stranger stood, though, with an amazingly imposing posture. Fists on hips, he surveyed the scene through calm, intense eyes.
“You made it!” Leila shouted at the sound of his voice.
The newcomer nodded, his matted, dirty hair barely shaking with the motion. “Get away from that stuff, Rock. It’s too reactive.”
Rock knew better than to argue. Stepping backward over the thin vinyl barricade, he asked, “Plan is what, then?”
The tattered man surveyed the scene. “We’ll freeze that small puddle there”—his dirty hand pointed to where the paramedics had fallen—“and get a sample to analyze.”
He turned toward a black man in a white lab coat who had just arrived with several others. “Dr. Bhotamo,” he said cordially, “If we find that we need it, may we have the use of the Class Three isolation lab at Lawrence Livermore?”
The scientist eyed the filthy man up and down. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“I apologize.” The man in the dirty tweed jacket reached up to his weathered face and grasped the red, pocked nose. With a firm tug, he tore it off.
The nose ripped away from his face to reveal another one— thin, sharp, and healthy—beneath it. In quick motions he peeled away bits of latex, exposing smooth tan skin beneath the artifice. His left hand removed the matted wig. Shortly cropped, dark-copper hair shimmered in the sunlight. The disguise dropped to the ground. Reaching up with both hands, the transformed derelict deftly removed a pair of grey contact lenses. Eyes of dark green gazed at Dr. Bhotamo. He peeled the age-spotted and gnarled rubber appliances from his hands and offered
