next year. Columbia was my father’s alma mater. So I’ve
“Great news!” said Smithback. “We’ll have to celebrate over dinner tonight.”
“Dinner? Tonight?”
“Cafe des Artistes, seven o’clock,” he said. “Listen, you’ve got to come. I’m a world-famous author, or about to become one. This champagne’s getting warm,” he continued, reaching for the bottle.
Everyone crowded round as Frock brought out glasses. Smithback angled the bottle toward the ceiling and fired off the cork with a satisfying
“What’ll we drink to?” asked D’Agosta, as the glasses were filled.
“To my book,” said Smithback.
“To Special Agent Pendergast, and a safe journey home,” Frock said.
“To the memory of George Moriarty,” Margo said quietly.
“To George Moriarty.” There was a silence.
“God bless us, everyone,” Smithback intoned. Margo punched him playfully.
EPILOGUE
= 63 =
Long Island City, Six Months Later
The rabbit jerked as the needle sank into its haunch. Kawakita watched as the dark blood filled up the syringe.
He placed the rabbit carefully back in its hutch, then transferred the blood to three centrifugal test tubes. He opened the nearby centrifuge, slotted the tubes into the drum, and shut the lid. Flicking the switch, he listened to the hum slowly build to a whine as the force of the rotation separated the blood into its components.
He sat back in the wooden chair and let his eyes roam around the surroundings. The office was dusty and the lighting dim, but Kawakita preferred it that way. No sense in drawing attention to oneself.
It had been very difficult in the beginning: finding the right place, assembling the equipment, even paying the rent. It was unbelievable how much they wanted for rundown warehouses in Queens. The computer had been the hardest item to come by. Instead of buying one, he had finally managed to hack his way over the telephone long [460] lines into a large mainframe at the Solokov College of Medicine. It was a relatively secure site from which to run his Genetic Extrapolation Program.
He peered through the dingy window to the shop floor below. The large space was dark and relatively vacant, the only light coming from aquariums sitting on metal racks along the far wall. He could hear the faint bubbling of the filtration systems. The lights from the tanks cast a dim greenish glow across the floor. Two dozen, give or take a few. Soon, he’d need more. But money was becoming less and less of a problem.
It was amazing, thought Kawakita, how the most elegant solutions were the simplest ones. Once you saw it, the answer was obvious. But it was
The Mbwun riddle was like that. He, Kawakita, had been the only one to suspect it, to see it, and—now—to prove it.
The whine of the centrifuge began to decrease in pitch, and soon the COMPLETED light began blinking a slow, monotonous red. Kawakita got up, opened the lid, and removed the tubes. The rabbit blood had been divided into its three constituents: clear serum on top, a thin layer of white blood cells in the middle, and a heavy layer of red blood cells at the bottom. He carefully suctioned off the serum, then placed drops of the cells into a series of watchglasses. Finally, he added various reagents and enzymes.
One of the watchglasses turned purple.
Kawakita smiled. It had been so simple.
After Frock and Margo had blundered up to him at the party, his initial skepticism had quickly changed to fascination. He had been on the periphery before, not really paying attention. But practically from the minute he’d hit Riverside Drive that evening—carried along in the stream of countless other hysterical guests who’d rushed from the opening—he began thinking. Then, in [461] the aftermath, he began asking questions. When later he’d heard Frock pronounce the mystery solved, Kawakita’s curiosity had only increased. Perhaps, to be fair, he’d had a little more objective distance than those who’d been inside the Museum that night, fighting the beast in the dark. But whatever the reason, there seemed to be small defects with the solution: little problems, minor contradictions that everyone had missed.
Everyone except Kawakita.
He’d always been a very cautious researcher; cautious, yet full of insatiable curiosity. It had helped him in the past: at Oxford, and in his early days at the Museum. And now, it helped him again. His caution had made him build a keystroke capture routine into the Extrapolator. For security reasons, of course—but also to learn what others might use his program for.
So it was only natural that he’d go back and examine what Frock and Margo had done.
