“Not too well.” She’d ridden the train to Eagle Point. Yes, that was it: She was in Eagle Point. Looking for Sheyel.
The physician was tapping a pen against a monitor screen, nodding to himself. “You’re doing fine,” he said. “You’ll probably feel a little out of sorts for a while, but you’ve suffered no serious damage.”
“Good,” she said.
The battle at the lake shore edged its way into her consciousness.
“Kim?”
Sheyel was dead. They were all dead.
“Kim? Are you with me?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I’d like to ask you some questions. First, why don’t you give me your full name?”
He pulled up a chair and asked about her professional duties, how she had come to get into fund-raising, whether she was good at it. He wanted to know her birth date, what books she had read recently, where she had gone to school and what she’d studied. He asked whether she remembered how she had come to be in the hospital, and when she stumbled trying to answer he told her it was okay, don’t worry about it, it’ll all come back.
She had fled with the Valiant.
He asked her opinion on various political issues, questioned her on whether she owned a flyer, and how she enjoyed living in a seafront home. And he wanted her to explain how it could possibly be that the universe was not infinite.
The police cruiser got too close again. She tried to shake the memory off, assign it to delirium, get rid of it. But it had happened.
And then there had been the tunnel.
“By the way, there’s someone who’d like to talk to you. Asked specifically to be put through as soon as you were awake. Do you feel able?”
“Who?” she asked.
“A Mr. Woodbridge.”
Well, it didn’t take him long. “Yes,” she said. “I can talk to him.” She looked at the physician. He smiled at her, took her wrist for a moment, and told her she was going to be fine.
“What happened to the shroud?” she asked.
His brow creased. “What’s a shroud?”
“The thing. The whatever-it-was that was trying to kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Kim,” he said, “I really don’t know anything about that. But I wonder whether you should talk to anyone just now. Maybe you should rest a bit.”
She’d thrown the Valiant into the lake. My God, had she really done that? “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.” She tried to raise herself against her pillows. He helped. “Put him through,” she said.
“Okay. But five minutes. That’s all. Is there anything I can get for you?”
“Something to eat,” she said.
“I’ll have breakfast sent right up.” And he withdrew. She closed her eyes.
The projector came on, and she was staring at a virtual Woodbridge.
He was seated in an old-fashioned oak chair. Because of her awkward position in the bed, the projector was angled. Woodbridge peered down at her from a spot near the ceiling. He looked worried. “Kim,” he said, “are you all right?”
“I’ll have to do a little healing. Otherwise I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
She hesitated.
“It’s safe,” he said. “We’re on a secure circuit.”
That wasn’t why she hesitated. Tell him about the Valiant and it’s gone. Either to a government lab for research. Or back to the Tripley estate. Damn. After all she’d been through, the thing should belong to her, if it belonged to anyone. Anyway, she couldn’t see that she owed any kind of debt to anybody else.
“I got a call from Sheyel Tolliver,” she said, “asking me to meet him at Severin.” She explained that Sheyel must also have contacted Ben Tripley since Tripley had gone there too. But before she could find out what it was all about, the thing had attacked.
She described the assault at the lake and her subsequent flight.
“Curious,” said Woodbridge when she’d finished. “Why did Tolliver go out there? Why would he want you and Tripley along?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“And why did this thing suddenly go berserk? I mean, apparently it was there all these years, right? What was going on?” He frowned at her. “Kim, is there something you’re not telling me?”
He tried to dissect her with that Mephistophelian gaze. But she hardened herself and thought how easily she now resorted to deceiving people. “No,” she said. “I’m as baffled as you are.”
“This shroud, I’m informed no trace of it was found.”
“Good.”
“It strikes me that it has a resemblance to the creature you described from the Hammersmith”
“I’m sure it’s the same kind of beast, Canon.”
“Have we reason to believe there are any others about?”
“Not that I know of.”
He looked sternly down at her. “Good. Let’s hope not. In the meantime, the local authorities are waiting to talk with you. Be careful what you say to them. No connections to the Hunter. Or to the Hammersmith. No otherworld stuff. Okay? You were meeting friends, and other than that you don’t know what it was or why it attacked.”
“Canon, why don’t you just call them off?”
“Can’t,” he said. “People would think we were hiding something. You’ll be safe, Kim. I have confidence that you won’t tell them anything you don’t want them to know.” He smiled and blinked off.
An attendant came in with breakfast, accompanied by a nurse. “Dr. Brandywine,” she said, “there are some people here from the police to see you—”
“Repairing the tunnel’s going to cost half a million.” Matt Flexner was exasperated. “They’ll be rerouting traffic for the next year. You’re not very popular right now with the transportation people. Or with the taxpayers.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “It was the best I could do under the circumstances.” Aside from the broken bones, she’d suffered internal injuries and some burns, and would have bled to death had it not been for the quick work of Air Rescue, and the good fortune that they’d been able to get to her from the western end of the tunnel.
“Kim, we can do without the sarcasm. Since you’re an Institute representative, we’re taking the heat now.”
“Matt,” she said, “try to understand: I was running for my life. The Institute’s views weren’t uppermost in my mind.”
He softened. “I know. The problem is that they told you to stay out of the tunnel. But I’m glad you came through it okay.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
He nodded. “I guess I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.”
He had a stack of images of the shroud, culled from the media. “What exactly was that thing anyhow?”
“It’s probably a designer lifeform. It was apparently a passenger on the Hunter.”
His eyes widened. “How can that be?”
Matt wasn’t somebody you’d necessarily rely on in a crunch, but he knew how to keep his mouth shut. She needed to be able to talk to somebody. Especially if she was going to arrange to have the Valiant analyzed.
She was still debating what to do with it after she fished it out of the lake. Take it home and put it in the den? Keep its existence quiet while she tried to learn as much about it as she could? Any other course of action would lose the Valiant immediately. “Matt,” she said, “I’ll tell you everything I know. But first I want a quid pro quo.”
“Okay.” He folded his arms, as if someone were about to question his honor. “Name it.”
“You don’t say anything to anybody about what I’m about to tell you without my prior approval. Absolute blackout on this.”
“First tell me what it’s about.”
“No. I won’t tell you anything without the agreement.”
The muscles around his jaw worked, but he remained silent. “Okay,” he said finally. “What have you got?”
“A starship,” she said. “A microship. From somewhere else.”