Something green caught my eye-greener than grass. It was the front cover, partially burned, of an old book. All that was left was this piece of the cover—the pages in the book, the back cover, were totally gone. I could see some letters, embossed in gold, in the old way. I touched it with the tip of my finger. It was warm, but not too hot. I picked it up and examined it.
“Of Nat,” one line said, and the next line said “bank.”
Bank, I thought, Nat Bank. What was this, some kind of Amish bankbook, for some local First Yokel’s National Bank?
No, it didn’t look like a bankbook cover. And the “b” in this bank was a small letter, not a capital. Bank, bank, hmm… wait, hadn’t Mo said something to me about a bank yesterday? A bank… yes, a Burbank. Darwin and Burbank! Luther Burbank!
Partner of Nature by Luther Burbank—that was the name of the book whose charred remains I held in my hand. I’d taken out a copy of it years ago from the Allerton library, and loved it.
Well, Mo and Sarah were right about at least one thing—the reading level of at least some Amish was a lot higher than grade school—
“You again!”
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I turned around. “Oh, Mr.—” it was the man we’d seen here yesterday—Jacob’s brother.
“Isaac Stoltzfus,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
His tone was so unsettling, his eyes so angry, that I thought for a second he thought that I was responsible for the fire. “Isaac. Mr. Stoltzfus,” I said. “I just got here. I’m sorry for your loss. What happened?”
“My brother’s family, thank the Deity, left to stay with some relatives in Ohio very early this morning, well before dawn. So no one was hurt. I went with them to the train station in Lancaster. When I returned here, a few hours later, I found this.” He gestured hopelessly, but with an odd air of resignation, to the ruined house and barn.
“May I ask you if you know what your brother was doing here?” I hazarded a question.
Isaac either didn’t hear or pretended not to. He just continued on his earlier theme. “Material things, even animals and plants, we can always afford to lose. People are what are truly of value in this world.”
“Yes,” I said, “but getting back to what—”
“You should check on your family too—to make sure they are not in danger.”
“My family?” I asked.
Isaac nodded. “I’ve work to do here,” he pointed out to the field. “My brother had four fine horses, and I can find no sign of them. I think it best that you go now.” And he turned and walked away.
“Wait…” I started, but I could see it was no use.
I looked at the front cover of Burbank’s book. This farm, Sarah’s bizarre theories, the book—there still wasn’t really enough of any of them at hand to make much sense of this.
But what the hell did Isaac mean about my family?
Jenna was overseas, and not really family—yet. My folks lived in Teaneck, my sister was married to an Israeli guy in Brookline… what connection did they have to what was going on here?
Jeez—none! Isaac hadn’t been referring to them at all. I was slow on the uptake today. He’d likely mistaken me for Mo—he’d seen both of us for the first time here yesterday.
He was talking about Mo’s family—Corinne and the kids.
I raced back to the car, the smoky air cutting my throat with a different jagged edge each time my foot hit the ground.
“What’s going on?” Sarah said.
I waved her off, jumped in the car, and put a call through to Corinne. Ring, ring, ring. No answer.
“What’s the matter?” she asked again.
I quickly told her. “Let’s get over there,” I said, and turned the car, screeching, back on to Northstar.
“All right, take it easy,” Sarah said. “It’s Saturday—Corinne could just be out shopping with the kids.”
“Right, the day after their father died—in my arms,” I said.
“All right,” she said again, “but you still don’t want to get into an accident now. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I nodded, tried Corinne’s number again, same ring, ring, ringing.
“Fireflies likely caused the fire,” Sarah said.
“What?”
“Fireflies—a few of the Amish use them for interior lighting,” Sarah said.
“Yah, Mo mentioned that,” I said. “But fireflies give cool light—bioluminescence—no heat.”
“Not the ones I’ve seen around here,” Sarah said. “They’re infected with certain heat-producing bacteria—symbionts, really, not an infection—and the result gives both light and heat. At least, that’s the species some of these people use around here when winter starts setting in. I had a little Mendelian lamp myself—that’s what they’re called—you know, the one that broke on the floor in my place last night.”
“So you think one of those… lamps went out of control and started the fire?” I asked. Suddenly I had a vision of burning up as I slept on her couch.
Sarah chewed her lip. “Maybe worse—maybe someone set it to go out of control. Or bred it that way—a bio-luminescent, bio-thermic time-bomb.”
“Your biomob covers a lot of territory,” I said. “Allergens that cause low-level irritation in millions of people, catalysts that amplify other allergens to kill at least two people, anti-catalytic tomato sauce, and now pyrotechnic fireflies.”
“Not that much distance at all when you’re dealing with co-evolution and symbiosis,” Sarah said. “Hell, we’ve got acidophilous bacteria living in us right now that help us digest our food. Lots more difference between them and us than between thermal bacteria and fireflies.”
I put my foot on the pedal and prayed we wouldn’t get stopped by some eager-beaver Pennsylvania trooper.
“That’s the problem,” Sarah continued. “Co-evolution, bio-mixing-and-matching, is a blessing and a curse. When everything’s organic, and you cross-breed, you can get marvelous things. But you can also get flies that bum down buildings.”
We finally got to Mo’s house.
“Damn.” There was no car in the driveway. And the door was half open.
“You wait in the car,” I said to Sarah.
She started to protest.
“Look,” I said. “We may be dealing with killers here—you’ve been saying that yourself. You’ll only make it harder for me if you come along and I have to worry about protecting you.”
“OK,” she nodded.
I got out of the car.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have my gun—truth is, I never used it anyway. I didn’t like guns. Department had issued one to me when I’d first come to work for them, and I’d promptly put it away in my closet. Not the most brilliant move I’d ever made, given what was going on here now.
I walked into the house, as quietly as I could. I thought it better that I not announce myself—if Corinne and the kids were home, and I offended or frightened them by just barging in, there’d be time to apologize later.
I walked through the foyer and then the dining room that I’d never made it into to taste Corinne’s great cooking yesterday. Then the kitchen and a hallway, and—
I saw a head, strawberry blonde, on the floor poking out of a bedroom.
Someone was on top of her.
“Laurie!” I shouted and dove in the room, shoving off the boy who was astride her.
“Wha—” he started to say, and I picked him up bodily, and threw him across the room. I didn’t know whether to turn to Laurie or him—but I figured I couldn’t do anything for Laurie with this kid at my back. I grabbed a sheet off the bed, rolled it tight, and went over to tie him up.