to us. Their dog had a lot of puppies, and they needed to find homes for them.”
“One of your mom’s colleagues at the university?”
“Yeah. A professor at Ashdon.”
Roosevelt Frost stared, unspeaking, and a terrible cloud of pity crossed his face.
“What?” I asked, and heard a quavery note in my voice that I did not like.
He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and kept his silence. Suddenly he seemed to want to avoid my eyes. Now both he and Orson were studying the damn dog biscuits.
The cat had no interest in the biscuits. Instead, he watched me.
If another cat made of pure gold with eyes of jewels, standing silent guard for millennia in the most sacred room of a pyramid far beneath a sea of sand, had suddenly come to life before my eyes, it would not have seemed more mysterious than this cat with his steady, somehow ancient gaze.
To Roosevelt, I said, “You don’t think that’s where Orson came from? Not Wyvern? Why would my mother’s colleague lie to her?”
He shook his head, as if he didn’t know, but he knew all right.
I was frustrated by the way he fluctuated between making disclosures and guarding his secrets. I didn’t understand his game, couldn’t grasp why he was alternately forthcoming and closemouthed.
Under the gray cat’s hieroglyphic gaze, in the draft-trembled candlelight, with the humid air thickened by mystery as manifest as incense, I said, “All you need to complete your act is a crystal ball, silver hoop earrings, a Gypsy headband, and a Romanian accent.”
I couldn’t get a rise out of him.
Returning to my chair at the table, I tried to use what little I knew to encourage him to believe that I knew even more. Maybe he would open up further if he thought some of his secrets weren’t so secret, after all. “There weren’t only cats and dogs in the labs at Wyvern. There were monkeys.”
Roosevelt didn’t reply, and he still avoided my eyes.
“You do know about the monkeys?” I asked.
“No,” he said, but he glanced from the biscuits to the security-camera monitor in the hutch.
“I suspect it’s because of the monkeys that you got a mooring outside the marina three months ago.”
Realizing that he had betrayed his knowledge by looking at the monitor when I mentioned the monkeys, he returned his attention to the dog biscuits.
Only a hundred moorings were available in the bay waters beyond the marina, and they were nearly as prized as the dock slips, though it was a necessary inconvenience to travel to and from your moored boat in another craft. Roosevelt had subleased a space from Dieter Gessel, a fisherman whose trawler was docked farther out along the northern horn with the rest of the fishing fleet but who had kept a junk dinghy at the mooring against the day when he retired and acquired a pleasure boat. Rumor was that Roosevelt was paying five times what the lease was costing Dieter.
I had never before asked him about it because it wasn’t any of my business unless he brought it up first.
Now I said, “Every night, you move the
He remained silent.
He and Orson appeared to be so intensely and equally fascinated by those three dog biscuits that I could almost believe
“After tonight,” I said, “I think I know why you go out there to sleep. You figure it’s safer. Because maybe monkeys don’t swim well — or at least they don’t enjoy it.”
As if he hadn’t heard me, he said, “Okay, dog, even if you won’t talk to me, you can have your nibbles.”
Orson risked eye-to-eye contact with his inquisitor, seeking confirmation.
“Go ahead,” Roosevelt urged.
Orson looked dubiously at me, as if asking whether I thought Roosevelt’s permission was a trick.
“He’s the host,” I said.
The dog snatched up the first biscuit and happily crunched it.
Finally turning his attention to me, with that unnerving pity still in his face and eyes, Roosevelt said, “The people behind the project at Wyvern…they might have had good intentions. Some of them, anyway. And I think some good things might’ve come from their work.” He reached out to pet the cat again, which relaxed under his hand, though he never shifted his piercing eyes from me. “But there was also a dark side to this business. A very dark side. From what I’ve been told, the monkeys are only one manifestation of it.”
“Only one?”
Roosevelt held my stare in silence for a long time, long enough for Orson to eat the second biscuit, and when at last he spoke, his voice was softer than ever: “There were more than just cats and dogs and monkeys in those labs.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but I said, “I suspect you aren’t talking about guinea pigs or white mice.”
His eyes shifted away from me, and he appeared to be staring at something far beyond the cabin of this boat. “Lot of change coming.”
“They say change is good.”
“Some is.”
As Orson ate the third biscuit, Roosevelt rose from his chair. Picking up the cat, holding him against his chest, stroking him, he seemed to be considering whether I needed to — or should — know more.
When he finally spoke, he slid once again from a revelatory mood into a secretive one. “I’m tired, son. I should have been in bed hours ago. I was asked to warn you that your friends are in danger if you don’t walk away from this, if you keep probing.”
“The cat asked you to warn me.”
“That’s right.”
As I got to my feet, I became more aware of the wallowing motion of the boat. For a moment I was stricken by a spell of vertigo, and I gripped the back of the chair to steady myself.
This physical symptom was matched by mental turmoil, as well, and my grip on reality seemed increasingly tenuous. I felt as if I were spinning along the upper rim of a whirlpool that would suck me down faster, faster, faster, until I went through the bottom of the funnel — my own version of Dorothy’s tornado — and found myself not in Oz but in Waimea Bay, Hawaii, solemnly discussing the fine points of reincarnation with Pia Klick.
Aware of the extreme flakiness of the question, I nevertheless asked, “And the cat, Mungojerrie…he isn’t in league with these people at Wyvern?”
“He escaped from them.”
Licking his chops to be sure that no precious biscuit crumbs adhered to his lips or to the fur around his muzzle, Orson got off the dinette chair and came to my side.
To Roosevelt, I said, “Earlier tonight, I heard the Wyvern project described in apocalyptic terms…the end of the world.”
“The world as we know it.”
“You actually believe that?”
“It could play out that way, yes. But maybe when it all shakes down, there’ll be more good changes than bad. The end of the world
“Tell that to the dinosaurs after the comet impact.”
“I have my jumpy moments,” he admitted.
“If you’re frightened enough to go to the mooring to sleep every night and if you really believe that what they were doing at Wyvern was so dangerous, why don’t you get out of Moonlight Bay?”
“I’ve considered it. But my businesses are here. My life’s here. Besides, I wouldn’t be escaping. I’d only be buying a little time. Ultimately, nowhere is safe.”
