Radliegh disappeared into the building.
“Oh, my God, no,” a woman on the sidewalk said. She screamed: “Doctor Radliegh! No!”
The attendant who had tried to stop Radliegh seemed pushed backward from the smoke rushing out of the open door.
For a moment, except for the soft wind noise of the flames and the smoke coming through the door and some of the smashed windows, there was silence.
Then there was an enormous bang. Just the sound made the people in the road jump back and duck their heads.
Tiles from the building’s roof shot into the air.
The first story walls of the laboratory’s main section blew out. The second story walls collapsed inward from their tops as if pulled by cables.
“No!” screamed the woman.
Pieces of the roof fell into the building, sending both smoke and dust into the sky.
“Doctor Radliegh!” The weeping woman turned her back to the building. She embraced another woman. “The boss …”
Jack looked at his watch.
It was one fifty.
Smoke at one side of the building swirled like fog.
Through that smoke walked the older man.
In his arms he carried the limp body of another man.
The building’s collapse almost had put out the fire.
Still, the air was thick with smoke and dust.
Walking heavily, smoke-stained, Radliegh carried the body of Doctor Jim Wilson to the ambulance.
Quietly, the people watched him.
Gently, Radliegh placed the body as well as he could on the floor of the back of the ambulance. Bent at the knees, the corpse’s legs dangled over the road.
Radliegh turned. In a low voice, simply, he said to the people, “He is dead.”
Slowly, he picked up his bicycle. Without glancing at the destroyed laboratory, he walked the bike across the street and neatly put it in the rack.
Then he entered the office building.
To himself, Jack said, “Six?”
8
“You all right?” Jack asked.
“Allergies,” the woman managed to say in a strangled voice. “You have to show me your I.D.”
Jack took his laminated pink Vindemia identification out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“I guess I’d better look around.” Jack put his shopping list in his pocket.
She handed him back his identification tag. “Help yourself.”
Through the window of the Vindemia General Store Jack saw a white hearse park against the curb. Two men dressed in black slacks and white shirts were getting out of its front doors.
While riding the bike from the airport/office complex, silently a race car had drawn alongside Jack. It was going not much faster than Jack’s bicycle. It oozed by him. Jack stood astraddle his bike on the road and looked after it. Almost every bit of the car, from hubcaps to windows, appeared to be mirrors. The sun reflecting from it stabbed his eyes painfully a half dozen times before it turned a corner and disappeared into an impeccably planted tree forest. He never heard the engine.
At the edge of the village, there was an intersection. The road to his left went one block, and, at a right angle, turned right. The road to his right went one block, and, at a right angle, turned left. The houses on both sides of the road, each in its own lot, were not identical, but very similar white cottages with blue roofs and trim, a bit of garden, a bit of lawn. Some of the cottages, like his own near the main house, appeared to be duplexes. None of the cottages had a driveway or garage. Crossing the road into the village, Jack figured these residences were built in a perfect square around the village’s center.
The center of the village of Vindemia was only a block long. Landscaping made it look bigger. The buildings were placed precisely on their sites, in relation to each other, more as if a child had placed them for his toys rather than as if there had ever been any sort of human, evolutionary growth to the place, response to the location, the land itself.
The road was a smooth black; the sidewalks glaring white.
Besides the trimmed lawns, bushes, cultivated flowers, everything in the village, including the several fire hydrants, was glossy, eye-stabbing white in the sunlight, with blue roofs and trim.
There were metal bicycle racks everywhere.
“A pound of baloney, please.”
“Oh, honey, we don’t have baloney.” The woman behind the counter of the Vindemia Village General Store coughed until her eyes ran. “Sliced ham. We have sliced ham.”
“Isn’t that a lot more expensive?”
She sneezed. “Of course.” Her brown hair was thin on her scalp. The bags under her eyes complemented the general puffiness of her face. Her skin was gray. “Just healthy food,” she coughed. “Health food.”
“I like baloney.” Jack looked at his short shopping list. “You have canned tuna fish? I like tuna puffs.”
“No canned anything.” She was choking.
There were no cars in the village.
At the end of the main street nearest the only gate to the estate (perhaps a mile away) was a fire station. Its doors were open. One large, one small fire truck had passed Jack on the road. They were headed for the laboratory, at thirty miles an hour. Next to the fire station was the General Store, with gasoline, diesel, and three air pumps, a phone booth, and three electric charging outlets neatly arranged outside. Beyond that was the church. It had a short steeple, a belfry, but otherwise was unadorned by any religious symbol, signboard, name. Next to it in its own bed of rhododendrons snuggled the library, low, with a low slanting roof and leaded windows. Then there was the school. Its windows were tinted glass. None was open. No sound emanated from the school. The side yard of the school nearest the library had picnic tables and instructional areas under pine trees. The further side of the school had seesaws, swings, and jungle gyms. Behind the school was a football field surrounded by a cinder running track, and a baseball diamond. The lawns appeared unscuffed.
Across the road from these buildings was a recreation area. Handball courts along the sidewalk did not conceal an Olympic-sized swimming pool behind them. Behind the swimming pool, behind low hedges, were four tennis courts. There were drinking fountains enough, Jack noticed, but no soft drink machines. A large recreation hall was placed sideways to the road. Overlooking these activity areas was the recreation building’s wide, deep veranda, dotted with blue rocking chairs. The recreation building itself, Jack could see from the road, obviously had a large main room behind the veranda. On one end of the building, lower than the main hall, was a locker, shower, changing room for women; at the other end, one for men. Jack saw no evidence of a snack bar or other food service. The entrance to the recreation hall was on the other side of the building, canopied, facing a small parking lot. At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, the place was empty.
Across the parking lot from the recreation hall was a small clinic. Next to it, the ambulance garage doors were also open.
At the end of the road (it was a dead end) was a tower, taller than anything else in the village. In the tower, facing the village, was a huge digital clock showing the hour, the minute, the second, and the millisecond. Even in the shaded bright sunlight the frantic whirring of the milliseconds dial provided the otherwise still village with an impression of activity.
Riding back to the General Store, Jack decided this would be called a designed community. Designed on a board in a brightly lit, air conditioned office, with pencil and ruler, or maybe on a computer screen. Designed with all the engineering essentials in place, not all of the human essentials, places for people to neck, fight, laugh, scream, cry, hide. There were birds in the trees, and a few tanned children idling about, but there were no dogs, cats, squirrels visible in the village. Except for the whipping of the big blue and white flag atop the clock tower, the place
