Shadowfires

the water, an outboard motor buzzed like a swarm of hornets. A breeze had sprung up, coming in off the blue lake, rustling the trees, stirring the grass and weeds and wildflowers. A few cars passed on the state route, rock and roll blaring through the open windows of one of them.

They reached the rental Ford in the cool shadows of the pines.

Rachael pulled her door shut, winced at the loud chunk it made, as if the sound would draw the deputy back. Her green eyes were wide with apprehension. “Let's get out of here.”

“You got it,” he said, starting the engine.

“We can find another place, more private, where you can unpack the shotgun and load it.”

They pulled out onto the two-lane blacktop that encircled the lake, heading north. Ben kept checking the rearview mirror. No one was following them; his fear that their pursuers were right on their tail was irrational, paranoid. He kept checking the mirror anyway.

The lake lay on their left and below them, glimmering, and the mountains rose on their right. In some areas, houses stood on large plots of forested land: Some were magnificent, almost country-style mansions, and others were neatly kept but humble summer cottages. In other places, the land was either government-owned or too steep to provide building sites, and the wilderness encroached in a weedy and brambled tangle of trees. A lot of dry brush had built up, too, and signs warned of the fire danger, an annual summer-autumn threat throughout southern California. The road snaked and rolled, climbed and fell, through alternating patches of shade and golden sunlight.

After a couple of minutes, Rachael said, “They can't really believe we stole defense secrets.”

“No,” Ben agreed.

“I mean, I didn't even know Geneplan had defense contracts.”

“That's not what they're worried about. It's a cover story.”

“Then why are they so eager to get their hands on us?”

“Because we know that Eric has… come back.”

“And you think the government knows, too?” she asked.

“You said the Wildcard project was a closely held secret. The only people who knew were Eric, his partners in Geneplan, and you.”

“That's right.”

“But if Geneplan had its hand in the Pentagon's pocket on other projects, then you can bet the Pentagon knew everything worth knowing about the owners of Geneplan and what they were up to. You can't accept lucrative top-secret research work and at the same time hold on to your privacy.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “But Eric might not have realized it. Eric believed he could have the best of everyone, all the time.”

A road sign warned of a dip in the pavement. Ben braked, and the Ford jolted over a rough patch, springs squeaking, frame rattling.

When they came through to smoother blacktop, he said, “So the Pentagon knew enough about Wildcard to realize what Eric had done to himself when his body disappeared from the morgue. And now they want to contain the story, keep the secret, because they see it as a weapon or, at least, as a source of tremendous power.”

“Power?”

“If perfected, the Wildcard process might mean immortality to those who undergo treatment. So the people who control Wildcard will decide who lives forever and who doesn't. Can you imagine any better weapon, any better tool with which to establish political control of the whole damn world?”

Rachael was silent awhile. Then she said softly, “Jesus, I've been so focused on the personal aspects of this, so intent on what it means to me, that I haven't looked at it from a broader perspective.”

“So they have to get hold of us,” Ben said.

“They don't want us blowing the secret till Wildcard's perfected. If it were blown first, they couldn't continue research unhampered.”

“Exactly. Since you're going to inherit the largest block of stock in Geneplan, the government might figure you can be persuaded to cooperate for the good of your country and for your own gain.”

She shook her head. “I couldn't be persuaded. Not about this. For one thing, if there's any hope at all of dramatically extending the human life span and promoting healing through genetic engineering, then the research should be done publicly, and the benefits should be available to everyone. It's immoral to handle it any other way.”

“I figured that's how you'd feel,” he said, pulling the Ford through a sharp right-hand turn, then sharply to the left again.

“Besides, I couldn't be persuaded to continue research along the same avenue the Wildcard group has been following, because I'm sure it's the wrong route.”

“I knew you'd say that,” Ben said approvingly.

“Admittedly, I know very little about genetics, but I can see there's just too much danger involved in the approach they're taking. Remember the mice I told you about. And remember… the blood in the trunk of the car at the house in Villa Park.”

He remembered, which was one reason he had wanted the shotgun.

She said, “If I took control of Geneplan, I might want to fund continued longevity research, but I'd insist on scrapping Wildcard and starting fresh from a new direction.”

“I knew you'd say that, too,” Ben told her, “and I figure the government also has a pretty good idea what you'd say. So I don't have much hope that they just want a chance to persuade you. If they know anything about you — and as Eric's wife, you've got to be in their files — then they know you couldn't be bribed or threatened into doing something you thought was really wrong, couldn't be corrupted. So they probably won't even bother trying.”

“It's my Catholic upbringing,” she said with a touch of irony. “A very stern, strict, religious family, you know.”

He didn't know. This was the first she had ever spoken of it.

Softly she said, “And very early, I was sent to a boarding school for girls, administrated by nuns. I grew to hate it… the endless Masses… the humiliation of the confessional, revealing my pathetic little sins. But I guess it shaped me for the better, huh? Might not be so all-fired incorruptible if I hadn't spent all those years in the hands of the good sisters.”

He sensed that these revelations were but a twig on an immense and perhaps ugly tree of grim experience.

He glanced away from the road for a second, wanting to see her expression. But he was foiled by the constantly, rapidly changing mosaic of tree shadows and sunlight that came through the windshield and dappled her countenance. There was an illusion of fire, and her face was only half revealed to him, half hidden beyond the shifting and shimmering curtain of those phantom flames.

Sighing, she said, “Okay, so if the government knows it can't persuade me, why's it issuing warrants on a bunch of trumped-up charges and putting so much manpower into the search for me?”

“They want to kill you,” Ben said bluntly.

“What?”

“They'd rather get you out of the picture and deal with Eric's partners, Knowls and Seitz and the others, because they already know those men are corruptible.”

She was shocked, and he was not surprised by her shock. She was not unworldly or terribly naive. But she was, by choice, a present-focused person who had given little thought to the complexities of the changing world around her, except when that world impinged upon her primary desire to wring as much pleasure as possible from the moment. She accepted a variety of myths as a matter of convenience, as a way of simplifying her life, and one myth was that her government would always have her best interests at heart, whether the issue was war, a reform of the justice system, increased taxation, or anything else. She was apolitical and saw no reason to be concerned about who might win — or usurp — the power flowing from the ballot box, for it was easy to believe in the benign intentions of those who so ardently desired to serve the public.

She gaped in astonishment at him. He did not even have to see that expression through the flickering light and shadow to know it held tenancy of her face, for he sensed it in the change in her breathing and in the greater