Zinnia

chemist. He funded the Third Expedition through the University of New Portland. Anonymously.'

'Oh, my God,' Zinnia whispered.

'The legal agreement was that his company would have first crack at developing commercial products from any promising botanical specimens that were discovered,' Duncan said. 'Nothing odd about the arrangement. Just business as usual.'

'Not quite,' Nick said. 'Your father was a matrix.'

Zinnia winced. 'So much for business as usual. Matrix-talents never do anything in the usual manner.'

'That was especially true with Marsden Luttrell.' Nick kept his gaze on Duncan. 'He had probably been getting increasingly flaky for years, but he must have been a full-blown paranoid by the time he funded the Third. It's amazing that he was able to conceal his mental state from the university officials.'

'I doubt they would have cared, even if they had guessed that Dad was getting a little weird,' Duncan said. 'After all, money is where you find it and the university needed the cash very badly for the venture.'

Nick looked thoughtful. 'Marsden was so paranoid by then that he convinced himself that he had to join the expedition in order to protect his investment. He didn't trust anyone.'

'Least of all your father,' Duncan retorted. 'He suspected that Bartholomew Chastain was a strong matrix. He figured Chastain would plot to steal or conceal any valuable discoveries.'

Zinnia frowned. 'When Luttrell showed up at the last minute in Serendipity, Bartholomew Chastain had no choice but to accept him on the team.'

'No choice at all,' Duncan agreed. 'After all, Dad had paid for the whole damn expedition. He gave the orders.'

Zinnia took a deep breath. She wondered if it was her imagination or if the air in this section of the garden was becoming thick and heavy. It occurred to her that the plants were not the only predatory species in the vicinity. She was sitting on a bench between two very dangerous carnivores, one of which, the one who appeared the most normal, was clearly crazy.

The only thing she could think to dp was buy time. Fortunately, Duncan seemed quite willing to talk.

'What's the big secret?' she asked. 'What did the Third Expedition find that was worth so many lives? Was it a botanical discovery?'

'Actually, Dad did bring back a rather interesting plant specimen,' Duncan said. 'He spent a lot of time working with it after he returned. He synthesized one of the active compounds. He was certain that it held the potential to allow him to use his talent without the assistance of a prism.'

'But instead, it just made him crazier,' Nick said.

Zinnia looked from one to the other. 'What are you talking about?'

'Crazy-fog.' Nick did not take his gaze off Duncan. 'Marsden Luttrell fiddled with it until it finally put him over the edge. He took too much of the stuff one afternoon about a year ago and walked out a window which happened to be twenty-two stories above the sidewalk.'

'It was his mistress's bedroom window,' Duncan explained. 'He had spent the day with her, working on the journal and dosing himself with fog. That's why she was able to grab the damned book and get away before I learned what had happened.'

'But Marsden Luttrell killed himself a year ago,' Zinnia said. 'The police and the newspapers claim that crazy-fog only recently became a problem on the streets. Where has it been for the past thirty-five years?'

Duncan winked. 'Dad never saw the real potential for crazy-fog. The crazy old coot kept it for himself. All he could think about was finding a way to decode the Chastain journal without using a prism. He was so paranoid by that time that he was afraid to even create a focus link with another person.'

'But you saw the financial implications of crazy-fog, didn't you?' Nick said. 'After your father's death, you started producing it in large quantities and selling it to drug dealers.'

Zinnia stared at Duncan. 'That's how you financed the recent expansion of Synlce and the development of your new generation of software, isn't it?'

'Indeed.' Duncan gave her a patronizing smile.

'In business, money is blood. You get it from any source you can.'

'You arranged for those two men to attack Nick with crazy-fog last night,' she accused.

'I knew what a large dose of the stuff had done to my father,' Duncan said. 'I assumed it would have the same interesting effect on Chastain. But something must have gone wrong. No matter, I'll take care of tidying up the loose ends tonight.'

Zinnia clenched her hands around the edge of the bench on either side of her thighs. 'I still don't understand. You said your father tried to use the crazy-fog to decode the Chastain journal. So the drug wasn't the big discovery that the Third Expedition made?'

'No, of course not.' Duncan glanced at her, impatience simmering in his eyes now. 'The fog was only a means to an end as far as my father was concerned. What he wanted was the real secret that Bartholomew Chastain concealed in his journal. And that is what I want, also. What I'm going to get very soon.'

'What was that secret?' Nick asked in his softest voice.

'The location of the alien tomb,' Duncan said.

Nick said nothing.

Zinnia was flabbergasted. 'Alien tomb? You're saying that the Third Expedition discovered an alien burial site?'

'Yes.'

She spread her hands. 'I don't believe it. You sound like Demented DeForest.'

'Why do you find it so impossible to believe, Zinnia?' Nick said seriously. 'Lucas Trent discovered those alien artifacts that are now housed in the museum. It stands to reason there might be other relics scattered around the world. Why not a whole tomb?'

'In point of fact,' Duncan said, 'your father didn't believe that the structure was intended as a burial site. He thought it was probably meant to be a sort of temporary storage facility for the aliens and their equipment. His theory was that the Curtain had opened and closed more than once in the past, you see.'

Zinnia sat very still on the bench. 'And the aliens came through during one of those earlier openings? When the Curtain created a gate between their world and St. Helens?'

'Precisely. And when it closed, they were stranded, just as the First Generation Founders were a thousand years later,' Duncan said.

Nick shifted slightly. Leaves rustled nearby. 'But instead of adapting to St. Helens and learning how to survive on this planet, the aliens decided to try to hibernate until rescue arrived.'

'But it never came,' Duncan concluded. 'The equipment that was supposed to keep the aliens alive failed. Chastain figured it had simply run out of fuel after several hundred years. Whatever the case, the alien tomb is a treasure trove waiting to be opened.'

'Who knows what might be inside?' Zinnia tried to adjust to the vision of a tomb full of alien machines.

Duncan laughed softly. 'I see you're beginning to get the full implications. Weapons, incredibly advanced technology, medical and scientific data that could make a fortune for the company that controls it. The list of possibilities is endless.'

'It might contain nothing more than a few mummified bodies and some pieces of equipment made out of the same weird alloy as the artifacts that Trent found,' Nick said prosaically. 'Interesting, but not especially profitable. Not worth so many lives.'

Duncan's expression transformed itself from good-humored to enraged in the blink of an eye. 'My father believed it was worth untold millions. I'm stronger than he ever was. I'm going to do what he was unable to do. I'm going to find the location of that tomb.'

Zinnia looked at him. 'I don't understand. Why did your father spend thirty-five years trying to decode Bartholomew Chastain's journal? Marsden Luttrell was a member of the expedition. He was there when the tomb was discovered. He knew where it was.'

'Ah, therein lies the crux of the problem.' Duncan shook his head. 'Unfortunately, Bartholomew Chastain was alone when he discovered the tomb. He left the expedition camp early one morning to do some surveys. He was supposed to return by nightfall. But he didn't show up until late the following day.'

'What happened?' Zinnia asked, desperate now, to keep Duncan talking.

'The team was organizing a search when Chastain walked back into camp with the story of the tomb.'