Cazaubon when she's been out here with her husband, so I know this isn't her. But are you sure you don't have any idea who this…”
He stopped as another set of headlights swept up the driveway and illuminated the rain like long threads of silver twisting in the night. Joanna didn't register her father's arrival right away. She was too stunned by what she had just heard and was still struggling to absorb its significance. Mrs. Cazaubon!
She heard a car door slam, then her father's voice. “What's going on here? Honey, are you all right?”
Joanna saw her father hurry over to her mother, who, clearly upset, was saying something that she couldn't hear, but which made Bob Cross look over in Joanna's direction, puzzlement written on his face. They gazed at each other across the space between them. There was no recognition on his side, nor any longer the hope of it on hers.
A crash came from the house, and Skip's barking, which had been muffled in the distance, suddenly grew louder as he bounded furiously out of the door. Joanna's father tried to catch him, but he slipped through his hands and began running in circles in the rain, hysterical in the face of all this strange excitement. Both her parents called him furiously, but he ignored them.
Joanna saw her chance. She had hoped that by coming here she would find some haven from the madness that her life had become, but saw now how wrong she was. Her only thought was to escape. She was not yet ready to give up the fight, even though she no longer knew for sure what she was fighting. While both her parents and the cops were distracted by the racing, yapping dog, she slid across the seat of the car and reached for the handle of the far door. She squeezed it gently; it wasn't locked. She was out and running before anybody saw her move.
“Hey, you-! Stop right there!”
She could hear both cops coming after her. She didn't look back and she didn't slow down. They could shoot her if they liked; she didn't think they would, but even that would be better than just giving up. She raced through bushes and trees, down slippery rain-soaked paths and hidden places she had known since childhood, and where there was no way they could follow her in the dark.
After a couple of minutes she thought she'd lost them. She stopped, breathless, hearing nothing but the pelting rain all around her. Then she heard Skip's barking in the distance. He was coming after her.
She started to run again, but in a moment the little dog was snapping and snarling at her heels. She turned and tried to hush him. “Quiet, Skip! Go back! Go back!” But he didn't know her, and his barking grew more frenzied. She knew he would bring the police in a few seconds if she couldn't shake him; she could already see their flashlights angling in the distance through the rain as they tried to figure out where the dog's barking was coming from. She tried running a few steps then turning and trying to chase him off again, but he only redoubled the noise he was making and crouched down, the hair stiff and bristling on his neck, ready to attack her.
Finally she saw a bank of huge old laurel bushes where, as a child, she'd found a secret tunnel through to the woods on the far side. If she could find that again she could probably lose Skip. Like a lot of small dogs he grew less brave the farther he was from his own territory; with luck he wouldn't follow her.
She pushed through, her clothes and hair snagging on branches. She tugged them free and pressed on, until suddenly she found herself in relatively open space.
A soft carpet of moss and leaves cushioned her feet as she ran. With every step the dog's barking and the angry voices of the two cops grew fainter in the distance.
51
Sam walked into the lab and glanced around at the various open doors and lighted rooms beyond. He had prepared himself for this as far as possible, despite his fears of what he might find. He knew only that he was deep into uncharted waters, and reminded himself for the hundredth time that afternoon that, as a scientist, it was his job to chart them. He must hang on to that thought at all cost; it must be his anchor and his sanity.
Peggy looked up from the computer she was working at and smiled a greeting, then paid him no more attention as he crossed to the door that led to the cellar and Adam's room. He tried the handle. It was locked, but the key that was in the lock turned easily. He pulled open the door, felt for the light switch, and went down the stairs.
Despite the fact that he had half expected it, the shock of what he found at the bottom was still hard to absorb. The cellar was the same old junkyard of discarded furniture and obsolete equipment that it had been months earlier when the Adam experiment was first mooted. It was as though the intervening time, and everything associated with it, had been wiped out.
Yet he, Sam Towne, still survived. And so did his memory of what had happened. How could that be? Why? Was there some reason for it, some purpose? Or was he by now merely part of a process that was not yet over but soon would be, leaving him…where?
That these were questions without answers was no reason to not ask them. There was some quotation echoing at the back of his mind that he couldn't quite place, about how man must assume that the incomprehensible is ultimately comprehensible-or else abandon all attempts to understand the universe and his place in it. Goethe, perhaps. It didn't much matter. The notion was a simple truth that every scientist lived by, and which he more than most had been brutally reminded of in these last days and hours.
“Are you looking for something?”
He jumped at Peggy's voice on the stairs behind him.
“Not really,” he said, turning to her. “Just thinking.”
He continued looking at her, then said, “That name, the woman who called-Joanna Cross-still doesn't mean anything to you?”
Peggy seemed to search her memory for a moment, then shook her head. “Sony, I can't place her. Is she one of our volunteers or something?”
It was impossible to suspect that this was some kind of joke or game that she was playing.
“Yes…yes,” he said vaguely, “she was involved in one of our programs.”
He started for the stairs. “Come back upstairs, Peggy. I want to talk to all of you. It'll only take a couple of minutes.”
Tania Phillips, Brad Bucklehurst, and Jeff Dorrell were there. Bryan Meade, Peggy said, was off somewhere checking out some new piece of equipment he'd heard about. They all assembled in the open area in the center of the lab. Sam had already rehearsed in his mind how he was going to do this. On the way over he had decided it would be the second thing that he would do, after checking on Adam's room as he just bad.
“I'm going to ask you all a few questions,” Sam began. “I'm not going to tell you why or say anything about what's behind them. And I don't want you to ask me.”
“Will you tell us later?” The question came from Brad Bucklehurst. It was just an amiable inquiry, not challenging the rules in anyway.
“I may,” Sam said. “It depends how things work out. The first thing I want to know is whether the name Joanna Cross means anything to any of you.”
He gave Peggy a little sign to say nothing and let the others answer. They all shook their heads, shrugged, murmured, No, they didn't think so.
“Okay,” Sam said. “And Peggy, I know the name still means nothing to you other than that she called up this afternoon-right?”
“Right.”
“Next, how about Ward Riley? Does that name ring any bells for anybody?”
He watched as they exchanged looks, shook their heads, said no, they didn't think so. All except Peggy, who said, “I remember Ward Riley. He made several very generous contributions to our research funds, including a bequest when he died.”
Sam looked at her. “When did he die?”
She returned his gaze, puzzled. “You know perfectly well when he died.”
“When, Peggy?” he repeated.
“Spring, early April.”
“How did he die?”
