"Right. But he'd visit his father on weekends. Someone would pick him up in a car, take him back and forth. That's where he got the Fluosol-DA. He brought it out to demonstrate for us so he could get a big score, and he gave it to me. It's not like there's anything secret about it; I told you they discovered twenty years ago that lab animals could breathe the stuff."
"What else can it fee used for besides blood transfusions?"
"Nothing; at least nothing that I know of."
"What would a bunch of plant geneticists want with artificial hemoglobin?"
"I have no idea, Mr. Mongo." He suddenly grinned mischievously. "Hey! Maybe they're all 'pod people' in there, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!"
For some reason, I didn't find the notion overwhelmingly amusing. "Did Obie ever talk about what went on in there?"
"Never-except to tell us what we already knew; the Volsung Corporation was involved with plant genetics, gene splicing, recombinant DNA." He took a deep breath, got slightly red in the face. "Recombinant DNA research is the key to the future, sir. We'll have all disease-free crops that will grow anywhere, and even manufacture their own fertilizer. They already have bacteria that produce insulin, other bacteria that eat up oil spills."
Also bacteria that could produce human growth hormone, I thought. Unfortunately, the scientists had pieced together the little fellows too late to be of any help to me.
"We have super-wheat and super-corn," Bill Jackson continued in a voice that was steadily climbing in pitch. "It's going to revolutionize agriculture around the world! We'll be able to feed everybody! No one need ever go hungry again! They- " He abruptly stopped speaking, bit his lower lip, flushed. "I'm sorry, sir. I do talk too much when I get excited."
"It's all right, Bill. I'm interested in everything you have to say. Obie never even hinted at what specific projects Volsung might be working on?"
"No, sir. He never talked about specifics, and we all understood. There's a lot of top secret stuff in that industry, you know. They're always worried about industrial espionage."
Or some other kind of espionage, judging from the camouflage coloring of their building. Since General Foods wasn't likely to order up a bombing run, I assumed Volsung had to be concerned about someone-something-else spotting them from the air. Like a spy satellite.
"Bill, I'd very much like to talk to Obie Loge. Is he boarding at the university this summer?"
"No way. He was taking summer courses, but he was yanked out and flown home right after… after…"
"Take it easy, Bill," I said, gently patting his shoulder. "You want to take a lemonade break?"
He shook his head, wiped his eyes. Bill Jackson was a very sensitive, gentle, and kind young man.
"Where does Obie live?"
"Actually, I don't know. I guess I must have asked him, but he couldn't even tell me that." He cocked his head to one side, grimaced. "Of course, I never really cared. I wouldn't have wanted to visit him anyway."
"Why not?"
The boy shrugged. "Well, first of all he's a lot older than I am, and the only thing we really had in common was an interest in fantasy. He could really be a mean-excuse me-sucker when he wanted to be. A real sore loser. It's probably why he liked to hang around with us; he could push us around when he felt like it, and nobody his own age would put up with him."
"Bill, does 'Mirkwood' mean anything to you?"
He grinned, laughed. "Sure! You've got to be kidding, Mr. Mongo. Mirkwood's the evil forest that the Company passes through on their Quest. Don't you remember those giant spiders?"
"But does it mean anything to you in another context? Did it mean anything else to Tommy?"
He thought a long time about it, obviously anxious to please me, but ended up shaking his head. "No, sir. It doesn't mean anything else to me, and I never heard Tommy mention it outside the context of Tolkien and Sorscience."
"Bill, did Sheriff Bolesh or any of his deputies ask you questions like these?"
"No, sir."
"Did-?"
"Someone else did, though."
"Who?"
"I don't know his name."
"Would your mother?"
"I doubt it. He came up to me at the university. He didn't give me his name, but I knew he worked at the Volsung Corporation. I'd seen him around town once or twice."
"I thought you said- "
"The scientists never come out. This guy's like a chauffeur and handyman. He drives into town to pick up odds and ends, and he used to chauffeur Obie on weekends." Bill Jackson frowned, shook his head. "Spooky guy."
"How so?"
"He's kind of hard to describe. He wasn't spooky-crazy or spooky-mean; otherwise, I wouldn't have talked to him. He was just… spooky. He had these big brown eyes that kind of looked right through you, and you just knew he could tell if you were lying or telling the truth. He never smiled, and he was completely bald-like Yul Brynner. I'm positive he was pretty old, but I can't tell you why I think that. It was hard to tell his age."
Bill Jackson's words startled me. His description could have fit one of the two men with whom I shared the terrible secret I had mentioned to Janet, a secret that would die with me. But the man I was thinking of wouldn't be holed up in a windowless blockhouse in Peru County doing odd jobs and chauffeuring kids. Not likely.
"Bill, as far as you know, did anyone in the county work on the construction of that building?"
"I don't think so, sir. They brought in truckloads of construction workers, and they set up tents for them out on the prairie. When the building was finished, the workers were taken away."
My watch read four thirty. "Bill, thank you for answering my questions."
"Oh, any time, Mr. Mongo."
"You've been very helpful. I have to pick up someone at the bus station. May I come back if I have any more questions about Sorscience or Obie Loge?"
"Gee, I hope you do come back, Mr. Mongo. Listen, I think there's something else you should know. Tommy was real upset about something just before he took off."
"Bill," I said quietly, "I know that, and I don't think you and I should discuss it. I promised your mother I'd only ask questions about Sorscience."
"But this does have to do with Sorscience. I'm sure Tommy was mad because of something that had to do with Obie Loge. They had a big argument. Rodney told me. Obie was sore because Tommy had questioned something Obie wanted to use for a score."
"What?" I asked, feeling a chill run up and down my spine.
"I don't know. Rodney was in a hurry to get someplace. He just said that Obie was full of-excuse me-shit because nothing like what Obie was describing could ever exist in real life."
Zeke Cohen got off the bus, blinked and sniffed in the late afternoon sunlight like some lost night creature searching for New York's night air. His black hair was wrapped in a crimson bandana, worn low across his forehead. A wide-brimmed leather hat sat on top of his head; buckskin, fringed vest over red silk shirt, jeans, boots; about a pound of gold chains hanging around his neck, one small gold earring in his ear. It was a perfect disguise for traveling unnoticed around Peru County, Nebraska. Zeke was a graduate student in criminology, studying for his doctorate in laboratory sciences. He enjoyed a reputation as the fastest computer gun in the East, West, North, or South. He taught a new undergraduate class in computer sciences, and his students called him Wyatt.
"You're not carrying, are you, Zeke?" I asked as we drove across the flat farmland that stretched to the horizon in all directions. "Coke here is something that gives you cavities instead of holes in the nose, and grass is a soft green growth they cut with a machine called a lawn mower. They'll bust your ass good if they catch you with any shit."