Reliquary

watching the proceedings disinterestedly.

“How long will it take to dump the water?” Waxie asked at last.

“About eight minutes.”

Waxie grunted. “Eight minutes to dump a hundred million gallons?”

“As I understand it, you want the water dumped as quickly as possible, to fill up the lowest tunnels under Central Park and sweep them clean, right?”

Waxie nodded.

“Eight minutes represents the system at one hundred percent flow. Of course, it will take almost three hours for the hydraulics to get in position. Then it will simply be a matter of draining water from the Reservoir, at the same time that we bring new water into the Reservoir from the upstate aqueducts That should keep the Reservoir’s water level from dropping excessively. It has to be done just right, because if the flow coming into the reservoir is greater than the flow going out… well, that means a major flood in Central Park.”

“Then I hope to hell you understand what you’re doing. I want this thing to proceed on schedule, no delays, no glitches.”

The sound of typing slowed.

“Stop worrying,” Duffy said, his finger poised on a key. “There won’t be any delays. Just don’t change your mind. Because once I press this key, the hydraulics take over. I can’t stop it. You see—”

“Just hit the damn key,” Waxie said impatiently.

Duffy pressed it with a melodramatic flourish. Then he turned to face Waxie. “It’s done,” he said. “Now, only a miracle can stop the flow. And in case you hadn’t heard, they don’t allow miracles in New York City.”

= 45 =

D’AGOSTA GAZED at the small pile of rubber and chromed parts, picked one up, then dropped it again in disgust. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Could these have been left there by accident?”

“I assure you, Vincent,” Pendergast said, “they were carefully arranged on the altar, almost as if they were some kind of offering.” There was a silence while he paced restlessly across the lab. “There’s another thing I’m uneasy about. Kawakita was the one who was growing the lily in tanks, after all. Why would they kill him and burn the lab? Why would they destroy their only source of the drug? The one thing an addict is most terrified of is losing his connection. And the lab was burned deliberately. You said there were trace accelerants in the ashes.”

“Unless they were growing it somewhere else,” D’Agosta said, fingering his breast pocket absently.

“Go ahead and light up,” Margo said.

D’Agosta eyed her. “Really?”

Margo smiled and nodded. “Just this once. But don’t tell Director Merriam.”

D’Agosta brightened. “It’ll be our secret.” He slipped the cigar out, jabbed a pencil into its head, and moved to the lone window, lifting the sash wide. He lit up and puffed the clouds of smoke contentedly out over Central Park.

I wish I had a vice I enjoyed half as much as that, Margo thought as she watched idly.

“I considered the possibility of an alternate supply,” Pendergast was saying. “And I kept my eyes open for signs of an underground garden. But there was no evidence of one. Such a lily farm would require still water and fresh air. I can’t imagine where they could be hiding it underground.”

D’Agosta blew another stream of blue smoke out the window, resting his elbows on the windowsill. “Look at that mess,” he said, nodding southward. “Horlocker’s going to have kittens when he sees that.”

Margo walked to the window and let her gaze fall over the rich green mantle of Central Park, shadowy and mysterious beneath the pink of the western sunset. To her right, along Central Park South, she could hear the faint sound of countless horns. A great mass of marchers was moving into Grand Army Plaza with the slow flow of molasses.

“That’s some march,” she said.

“You’re damn right it is,” D’Agosta said. “And those people vote.”

“I hope Dr. Frock’s car service didn’t get stuck in all that on his way home,” she murmured. “He hates crowds.”

She let her eyes drift northward, over the Sheep Meadow and the Bethesda fountain, toward the placid oval of the Reservoir. At midnight, that calm body of water would let loose twenty million cubic feet of death into the lowest levels of Manhattan. She felt a sudden pang for the Wrinklers caught below. It wasn’t exactly due process. But then her mind drifted back to the bloody mouse cages, to the sudden viciousness of the B. meresgerii. It was a deadly drug; one that increased a thousand-fold the natural aggressiveness that evolution had built into almost all living creatures. And Kawakita, infected himself, believed the process to be irreversible…

“I’m glad we’re up here and not down there,” D’Agosta murmured, puffing meditatively.

Margo nodded. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, Pendergast pacing the room behind her, picking up things, putting them down again.

When the sun next rises over the Park, Margo thought, the Reservoir will be twenty million cubic feet lighter. Her eyes rested on the surface of the water, its hint of internal light reflecting the oranges, reds, and greens of the sunset. It was a beautiful scene, its quiet tranquility in stark contrast to the marching and the frantic horns twenty blocks to the south.