Fear Nothing

He picked up a remote-control device from the table and jabbed one of the buttons on it, although the tip of his finger seemed too large to press fewer than three buttons at once. Behind Orson, motorized tambour doors rolled up and out of sight on the top half of a built-in hutch, revealing two stacks of tightly packed electronic gear gleaming with light-emitting diodes.

Orson was interested enough to turn his head for a moment before resuming worship of the forbidden biscuits.

In the hutch, a large video monitor clicked on. The quartered screen showed murky views of the fog- shrouded marina and the bay on all four sides of the Nostromo.

“What’s this?” I wondered.

“Security.” Roosevelt put down the remote control. “Motion detectors and infrared sensors will pick up anyone approaching the boat and alert us at once. Then a telescopic lens automatically isolates and zooms in on the intruder before he gets here, so we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

“What are we dealing with?”

The man mountain took two slow, dainty sips of his coffee before he said, “You might already know too much about that.”

“What do you mean? Who are you?”

“I’m nobody but who I am,” he said. “Just old Rosie Frost. If you’re thinking that maybe I’m one of the people behind all this, you’re wrong.”

“What people? Behind what?”

Looking at the four security-camera views on the quartered video monitor, he said, “With any luck, they’re not even aware that I know about them.”

“Who? People at Wyvern?”

He turned to me again. “They’re not just at Wyvern anymore. Townspeople are in it now. I don’t know how many. Maybe a couple of hundred, maybe five hundred, but probably not more than that, at least not yet. No doubt it’s gradually spreading to others…and it’s already beyond Moonlight Bay.”

Frustrated, I said, “Are you trying to be inscrutable?”

“As much as I can, yes.”

He got up, fetched the coffeepot, and without further comment freshened our cups. Evidently he intended to make me wait for morsels of information in much the way that poor Orson was being made to wait patiently for his snack.

The dog licked the tabletop around the three biscuits, but his tongue never touched the treats.

When Roosevelt returned to his chair, I said, “If you’re not involved with these people, how do you know so much about them?”

“I don’t know all that much.”

“Apparently a lot more than I do.”

“I know only what the animals tell me.”

“What animals?”

“Well, not your dog, for sure.”

Orson looked up from the biscuits.

“He’s a regular sphinx,” Roosevelt said.

Although I hadn’t been aware of doing so, sometime soon after sunset, I had evidently walked through a magic looking-glass.

Deciding to play by the lunatic rules of this new kingdom, I said, “So…aside from my phlegmatic dog, what do these animals tell you?”

“You shouldn’t know all of it. Just enough so you realize it’s best that you forget what you saw in the hospital garage and up at the funeral home.”

I sat up straighter in my chair, as though pulled erect by my tightening scalp. “You are one of them.”

“No. Relax, son. You’re safe with me. How long have we been friends? More than two years now since you first came here with your dog. And I think you know you can trust me.”

In fact, I was at least half convinced that I could still trust Roosevelt Frost, even though I was no longer as sure of my character judgment as I had once been.

“But if you don’t forget what you saw,” he continued, “if you try to contact authorities outside town, you’ll endanger lives.”

As my chest tightened around my heart, I said, “You just told me I could trust you, and now you’re threatening me.”

He looked wounded. “I’m your friend, son. I wouldn’t threaten you. I’m only telling you—”

“Yeah. What the animals said.”

“It’s the people from Wyvern who want to keep a lid on this at any cost, not me. Anyway, you aren’t personally in any danger even if you try to go to outside authorities, at least not at first. They won’t touch you. Not you. You’re revered.”

This was one of the most baffling things that he had said yet, and I blinked in confusion. “Revered?”

“Yes. They’re in awe of you.”

I realized that Orson was staring at me intently, temporarily having forgotten the three promised biscuits.

Roosevelt’s statement was not merely baffling: It was downright wacky. “Why would anyone be in awe of me?” I demanded.

“Because of who you are.”

My mind looped and spun and tumbled like a capering seagull. “Who am I?”

Roosevelt frowned and pulled thoughtfully at his face with one hand before finally saying, “Damned if I know. I’m only repeating what I’ve been told.”

What the animals told you. The black Dr. Doolittle.

Some of Bobby’s scorn was creeping into me.

“The point is,” he said, “the Wyvern crowd won’t kill you unless you give them no choice, unless it’s absolutely the only way to shut you up.”

“When you talked to Sasha earlier tonight, you told her this was a matter of life and death.”

Roosevelt nodded solemnly. “And it is. For her and others. From what I hear, these bastards will try to control you by killing people you love until you agree to cease and desist, until you forget what you saw and just get on with your life.”

“People I love?”

“Sasha. Bobby. Even Orson.”

“They’ll kill my friends to shut me up?”

“Until you shut up. One by one, they’ll kill them one by one until you shut up to save those who are left.”

I was willing to risk my own life to find out what had happened to my mother and father — and why — but I couldn’t put the lives of my friends on the line. “This is monstrous. Killing innocent—”

“That’s who you’re dealing with.”

My skull felt as though it would crack to relieve the pressure of my frustration: “Who am I dealing with? I need something more specific than just the people at Wyvern.”

Roosevelt sipped his coffee and didn’t answer.

Maybe he was my friend, and maybe the warning he’d given me would, if I heeded it, save Sasha’s life or Bobby’s, but I wanted to punch him. I might have done it, too, might have hammered him with a merciless series of blows if there had been any chance whatsoever that I wouldn’t have broken my hands.

Orson had put one paw on the table, not with the intention of sweeping his biscuits to the floor and absconding with them but to balance himself as he leaned sideways in his chair to look past me. Something in the salon, beyond the galley and dining area, had drawn his attention.

When I turned in my chair to follow Orson’s gaze, I saw a cat sitting on the arm of the sofa, backlit by the display case full of football trophies. It appeared to be pale gray. In the shadows that masked its face, its eyes glowed green and were flecked with gold.