The thought encouraged him to pull out his cigar case and remove a long, fat Cohiba Esplendido. He could have a celebratory cigar now without worrying about Paul seeing the smoke.
As he lit up he thought again about that scene in the lab this morning. Christ, what a moment that had been. He had imagined one of those gizmos attached to every car, truck, train, and plane engine, to every furnace, to every freaking dynamo in every power plant across the world. Frik could see his life’s work crumbling to smoke and ash if this device were reproduced and oil became as old-fashioned as vinyl records.
Paul had seemed somehow oblivious of the full implications of what he’d found. Yes, he was holding the key to a future free of dependence on fossil fuels. But that key, that odd little contraption he had assembled in there, could make Oilstar obsolete. No…obsolete was a euphemism here.
Extinctwas more like it.
Let’s not forget you assembled that thing from piecesI gave you, he thought. It’s not about money, Paul. As it is, I’ve got to rack my brains to begin to find ways to spend theinterest on my holdings. Money hasn’t been the point for a long time. It’s thedoing, Paul. This is my company.
Frik thought back to when he had left South Africa. His family’s fortunes in land and gemstones could have kept him in Cohibas and fine scotch for a lifetime, but it would have meant being under his father’s thumb. He couldn’t stand that. He’d filled theAssegai with supplies and sailed alone across the Atlantic to make a life he could control.
I worked as a stinking charter captain for a year to get together a few thousand bucks, he recalled. Hocked my soul for start-up money, sank my first well almost single-handed. Oilstar isn’t just a company, it’s not some soulless corporate entity. It’sme, damnit.
He was a bull tyrannosaur now, but that little gizmo Paul had assembled in there was a dino-dooming asteroid aimed straight at the heart of Frik’s personal Cretaceous period.
Think what you will of me, Paul, he thought. I’m not ready to become extinct.
Figuring he had waited long enough, Frik stepped out of the bushes. As he strolled down the slope to the lab, he fished a set of keys from his pocket.
Immediately after leaving Paul this morning, he’d returned to his office in San Fernando and put together a full set of keys for the lab building. He just prayed that Paul hadn’t at some time changed the lock on his personal lab.
He unlocked the front door and hurried down the central hallway. The key fit into Paul’s door…turned. He was in.
He crossed to the workbench but stopped halfway there. The artifact sat alone in the center of the black surface.
Christ, Paul hadn’t even bothered to stick it in a drawer. This was not something to leave lying about, even in a locked room.
He approached it slowly, cautiously, with the proper respect due a thing of such wonder. He leaned close to the bench top and stared at it. No question—there was something unearthly about this thing. Reminded him of the science-fiction paperbacks he’d read when he was a teenager, the ones with the abstract covers by someone named Powers who squiggled bizarre-looking shapes in the backgrounds of his paintings. This thing would have been right at home on one of those covers.
“Wheredid you come from?” Frik muttered.
He looked around and found the chopstick-length forceps Paul had used earlier. Turning on the bench lamp, he grasped the artifact with the tips of the forceps and lifted. He twisted it, turned it, rotated it this way and that, waiting for the loop of the figure-eight piece to fade away.
Nothing happened.
He kept at it, remembering how it had taken Paul a good bit of trial and error this morning before he’d found the precise orientation that made it work, and he’d had a whole night of practice.
Still nothing.
Frik felt himself starting to sweat. Why wouldn’t it work? Had Paul taken one of the pieces? No, all four were there. Then what—?
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Frik froze. The words had been spoken without inflection, with far more weariness than heat. And that only sharpened their edge. Clamping his cigar between his teeth, he turned to face Paul Trujold’s withering stare.
“Oh. Hello, Paul.” Frik maintained his game face and drew deeply on the Cohiba.
“Oh. Hello, Paul,” Trujold mimicked. “Is that the best you can do?”
The scientist’s dark eyes blazed. Frik fought the urge to step back as Paul stopped two feet in front of him.
“What were you going to do with it, Frik?”
“Put it in a secure place. This room is too vulnerable. I’ll feel better if it’s in the safe in my office.” He held up the artifact, still clasped within the forceps. “Perhaps you’re forgetting, Paul. This belongs to Oilstar, and Oilstar belongs to me.”
“Yes,Oilstar ’s yours Frik, but the artifact belongs to the world. One man can’t be allowed to keep it hidden.”
“Since when do you speak for the world?”
“Sincenow, you selfish son of a bitch.”
Frik couldn’t say exactly what happened next, what it was inside that snapped. In his mind, the bizarre object he was holding became a meteor, and Paul the inexorable laws of the universe that were propelling it toward Frik’s world. He reacted the only way he knew. Sure that the scientist was about to grab for the artifact, he dropped it and lunged at the smaller man. He grabbed Paul by the shirtfront and twisted him toward the lab table.
Paul took a swipe at Frik, knocking the cigar from his mouth instead. The Afrikaner pushed Paul backward into the workbench. It tilted under the force of the impact, and the very air seemed to explode, sending Frikkie staggering in the opposite direction.
When he recovered his balance, he heard screaming. Paul was rolling on the floor, his body bathed in flame.
“Paul! Oh, Christ!”
Frantically looking around for a blanket, a lab coat, anything to beat out the flames, Frik spied the red canister of a fire extinguisher on the wall. He ran to it, ripped it free, and carried it over to the wailing ball of flame on the tiles.
Don’t die on me! he screamed inwardly. God, don’t die on me. I didn’t want that.
It took him precious seconds to find the safety pin, yank it free, find the trigger, and start spraying. The conical nozzle coughed white plumes of CO2, enveloping Paul and seeming to take forever to douse the flames.
Frik stared at what had been Paul Trujold. He could recognize the face. Though charred, it had miraculously all but escaped the flames. The rest was nothing more than a twitching, man-shaped thing with only patches of clothing remaining. He didn’t know whether to retch or sob. With the room ablaze, there was time for neither.
“Jesus, Frik, get yourself out of here. I’ll get Paul.”
Where Manny Sheppard had suddenly appeared from Frik did not know or, at that moment, care.
Ignoring Trujold’s moans of pain, Manny lifted the man onto his back in a fireman’s carry. Frik started toward the door, but stopped when the artifact caught his eye. It lay at the edge of the flames, and it was burning.
He reached into the fire with his foot and kicked the object across the floor. The flames were doused by its tumbling flight. As he bent and picked it up, it oozed against his palm, searing his flesh. He cried out in pain that was more than just physical. The device was melting. Ruined. All but its base, which, amazingly, had remained intact and cool to the touch.
Tucking that against his shirtfront, he lurched toward the door.
6
The phone rang two, three times. Frik could not recall ever having felt so frustrated at the hollow ringing of an unanswered telephone.