Fear Nothing

Yet, as I walked my bicycle eastward along the peninsula, I persevered in my search for meaning in all that I’d seen and heard since sunset.

Before the troop had arrived to torment Orson and me, I’d been trying to pin down exactly what was different about these monkeys; now I returned to that riddle. Unlike ordinary rhesuses, these were bold rather than shy, brooding rather than lighthearted. The most obvious difference was that these monkeys were hot-tempered, vicious. Their potential for violence was not, however, the primary quality that separated them from other rhesuses; it was only a consequence of another, more profound difference that I recognized but that I was inexplicably reluctant to consider.

The curdled fog was as thick as ever, but gradually it began to brighten. Smears of blurry light appeared in the murk: buildings and streetlamps along the shore.

Orson whined with delight — or just relief — at these signs of civilization, but we weren’t any safer in town than out of it.

When we left the southern horn entirely and entered Embarcadero Way, I paused to take my cap from the jacket pocket in which I had tucked it. I put it on and gave the visor a tug. The Elephant Man adjusts his costume.

Orson peered up at me, cocked his head consideringly, and then chuffed as though in approval. He was the Elephant Man’s dog, after all, and as such, a measure of his own self-image was dependent upon the style and grace with which I comported myself.

Because of the streetlamps, visibility had increased to perhaps a hundred feet. Like the ghost tides of an ancient and long-dead sea, fog surged off the bay and into the streets; each fine drop of mist refracted the golden sodium-vapor light and translated it to the next drop.

If members of the troop still accompanied us, they would be forced to lurk at a greater distance here than they had on the barren peninsula, to avoid being seen. Like players in a recasting of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” they would have to confine their skulking to parks, unilluminated alleyways, balconies, high ledges, parapets, and rooftops.

At this late hour, no pedestrians or motorists were in sight. The town appeared to have been abandoned.

I was overcome by the disturbing notion that these silent and empty streets foreshadowed a real, frightening desolation that would befall Moonlight Bay in the not-too-distant future. Our little burg was preparing to be a ghost town.

I climbed onto my bike and headed north on Embarcadero Way. The man who had contacted me through Sasha, at the radio station, was waiting on his boat at the marina.

As I pedaled along the deserted avenue, my mind returned to the millennium monkeys. I was sure that I had identified the most fundamental difference between ordinary rhesuses and this extraordinary troop that secretly roamed the night, but I was reluctant to accept my own conclusion, inevitable though it seemed: These monkeys were smarter than ordinary monkeys.

Way smarter, radically smarter.

They had understood the purpose of Bobby’s camera, and they had stolen it. They filched his new camera, too.

They recognized my face among the faces of the thirty dolls in Angela’s workroom, and they used that one to taunt me. Later, they set a fire to conceal Angela’s murder.

The big brows at Fort Wyvern might have been engaged in secret bacteriological-warfare research, but that didn’t explain why their laboratory monkeys were markedly smarter than any monkeys that had previously walked the earth.

Just how smart was “markedly smarter”? Maybe not smart enough to win a bundle on Jeopardy! Maybe not smart enough to teach poetry at the university level or to successfully manage a radio station or to track the patterns of surf worldwide, maybe not even smart enough to write a New York Times bestseller — but perhaps smart enough to be the most dangerous, uncontrollable pest humanity had ever known. Imagine what damage rats could do, how rapidly their numbers would grow, if they were even half as smart as human beings and could learn how to avoid all traps and poisons.

Were these monkeys truly escapees from a laboratory, loose in the world and cleverly eluding capture? If so, how did they get to be so intelligent in the first place? What did they want? What was their agenda? Why hadn’t a massive effort been launched to track them down, round them up, and return them to better cages from which they could never break free?

Or were they tools being used by someone at Wyvern? The way the cops use trained police dogs. The way the Navy uses dolphins to search for enemy submarines and, in wartime — it is rumored — even to plant magnetic packages of explosives on the hulls of targeted boats.

A thousand other questions swarmed through my mind. All of them were equally crazy.

Depending on the answers, the ramifications of these monkeys’ heightened intelligence could be earth- shattering. The possible consequences to human civilization were especially alarming when you considered the viciousness of these animals and their apparently innate hostility.

Angela’s prediction of doom might not have been farfetched, might actually have been less pessimistic than my assessment of the situation would be when — if ever — I knew all the facts. Certainly, doom had come to Angela herself.

I also intuited that the monkeys were not the entire story. They were but one chapter of an epic. Other astonishments were awaiting discovery.

Compared to the project at Wyvern, Pandora’s fabled box, from which had been unleashed all the evils that plague humanity — wars, pestilence, diseases, famines, floods — might prove to have held only a collection of petty nuisances.

In my haste to get to the marina, I was cycling too fast to allow Orson to keep pace with me. He was sprinting full throttle, ears flapping, panting hard, but falling steadily behind.

In truth, I was cranking the bike to the max not because I was in a hurry to reach the marina but because, unconsciously, I wanted to outrace the tidal wave of terror sweeping toward us. There was no escaping it, however, and no matter how furiously I pedaled, I could outrun nothing but my dog.

Recalling Dad’s final words, I stopped pedaling and coasted until Orson was able to stay at my side without heroic effort.

Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life — and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.

Besides, the best way to deal with a rising sea of trouble is to catch the wave at the zero break and ride it out, slide along the face straight into the cathedral, get totally Ziplocked in the green room, walk the board all the way through the barrel, hooting, showing no fear. That’s not only cool: It’s classic.

22

With a gentle and even tender sound, like flesh on flesh in a honeymoon bed, low waves slipped between the pilings and slapped against the sea wall. The damp air offered a faint and pleasant aromatic melange of brine, fresh kelp, creosote, rusting iron, and other fragrances I couldn’t quite identify.

The marina, tucked into the sheltered northeast corner of the bay, offers docking for fewer than three hundred vessels, only six of which are full-time residences for their owners. Although social life in Moonlight Bay does not center around boating, there is a long waiting list for any slip that becomes available.

I walked my bike toward the west end of the main pier, which ran parallel to shore. The tires swished and bumped softly across the dew-wet, uneven planks. Only one boat in the marina had lights in its windows at that hour. Dock lamps, though dim, showed me the way through the fog.

Because the fishing fleet ties up farther out along the northern horn of the bay, the comparatively sheltered marina is reserved for pleasure craft. There are sloops and ketches and yawls ranging from modest to impressive — although more of the former than the latter — motor yachts mostly of manageable length and price, a few Boston