He was speaking a phrase over and over, in Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and finally settling on English, and she sensed he had said the same thing in all tongues: "I will kill you!" he shouted, but it was an abnormal voice, inhuman, filled with rage.
Leonard had been thrown into a seizure that literally lifted him off the bed. The IV was knocked over along with a tray, cords were snatched and the EKG went dead, but the man was very much alive, kicking, thrashing, afire as he came over her, knocking her to the floor. Mark and Tom rushed in. They had to sit on Leonard to hold him still while Kendra Cline climbed to her feet, exhausted and frightened, when suddenly they all heard Dr. Leonard say, "Where am I? Who are you? Please get off me!"
"Dr. Leonard?" She was on her knees over him between Mark and Tom. She saw the brown ooze seeping from his ears, nose and mouth. It was a gummy brown substance, and she knew it was the same as had come out of Weitzel.
"Where in God's name am I?" he asked her, his eyes clear and lucid.
"I'm Dr. Kendra Cline, Dr. Leonard. You were in a coma, and now you're back with us. You can let go of him now, Mark, Tom. Help him up. My God, we're on our way to an antidote."
He was weak, dehydrated, nothing like Stroud when he had come around, strong and virile.
"Mark, scrape up some of that spongy substance for the microscope, and take every precaution with it."
She asked Tom to see that Leonard got some nourishment and that he be run through the same series of tests as Stroud had gone through.
"Abraham Stroud, too, was in coma?" asked Leonard.
She confirmed this without telling him more, other than the fact that Stroud had come around and was given a clean bill of health. "I will call him immediately to let him know that you are all right, Dr. Leonard. And sir, you may just have saved the lives of many others. We were not at all sure our antidote would work."
He nodded and watched her leave, taking his cues now from the space-suited Tom.
Outside the room, Kendra Cline had finished decontamination, thinking that perhaps decontamination had saved Stroud and the others, yet the usual decontamination measures were not enough to combat this awful disease. She wasn't even sure any longer if it was a disease. Diseases didn't make comatose people speak in tongues, swear and foam at the mouth. And how odd that her experience with Leonard should parallel Stroud's with Weitzel so closely. Stroud claimed that Weitzel had spoken to him, but that it was not Weitzel. That it was something speaking through him. That was the exact sensation she had gotten from Leonard, and no one but her had heard...
"Wonderful news, Dr. Wisnewski," Stroud told him, detailing the story that Kendra Cline had given him about Leonard's recovery.
Wisnewski hadn't slowed in his work at all until now. He slumped into a chair and said, "Thank God. I'd thought we had lost our dear friend."
"Perhaps it's time you got some rest, Doctor."
Wisnewski didn't fight the suggestion. "Yes, need my wits about me ... all my wits..."
"Whatever this thing is, Dr. Wisnewski, it's very potent, very powerful."
"The evil of the ages," he said thoughtfully. "The core of the evil of all our ills, Stroud. That's what it is shaping up to be."
"Satan?"
"Satan, if you wish ... It has as many names as there are religions and races on the planet. The Etruscans had a name for it, most certainly, but so far, I have not been able to find it in the writings."
"What do you make of the bones?"
"Sacrifices to this deity."
"How can you be certain?"
He lifted one of the bones. It was a tibia with large spurs at the bottom. Wiz said, "This is representative of the entire lot we found in the ship. See the spurs? Broken and beaten and herded, those people were put aboard that ship, without provisions, to starve to death as they were being fed to this ... this bestial god."
"These markings appear to be numbers ... the number of sacrifices, perhaps?"
"Leonard will translate the numbers when he returns. But that is how I read the parchment, also."
"This ... this thing somehow infiltrates a man's mind ... turns him into a walking dead man to come unto its altar and worship it and be made fodder for it?"
"As far as I can tell, yes. Without Leonard, well ... he knows these characters so much better, you see."
"Time for rest, Doctor. You've done more than enough tonight."
"Great news, that about Leonard. I'd feared the worst."
"I, too."
"You know, Stroud, I saw it."
"What?"
"I saw its face. That is what drove me to madness."
"You saw it? Where, how?"
"It was in the chamber with you when you fell out. I looked in and there it was. Then it lay down beside you, whispering in your ear--this ugly, hideous creature--unspeakable, and I ... I snapped."
Stroud realized it was on seeing this demon that Wiz had lifted the pickax. That he hadn't intended to strike Stroud, but that this creature had somehow created a hologram in Wiz's mind, placed it over Stroud and taunted the man to strike it. Had he done so, Wiz would have killed Stroud. The thing wanted Stroud dead, no doubt of that.
Dr. Wisnewski's quarters in the museum were home for now, a pair of black leather couches, a coffee urn and a small refrigerator and bath.
"If you had left me in that prison, I would still be mad now," the older man told Stroud as they made their way to the couches when the phone rang.
It was Nathan, wanting a progress report. Stroud told him the news of Leonard, and that was all so far. No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang again. It was Kendra Cline. She sounded strange, upset.
"I need ... must see you. Can you come here?"
"Where are you? It's almost two a.m."
"My lab at the hospital. Please, it's urgent. Please hurry."
"I'll have to make arrangements here, but I'll be right over, Kendra."
"Hurry, please ... hurry."
"Are you all right?"
"No ... no, I am not."
"I'm on my way. Hang on."
Stroud told Wisnewski of the emergency. "Something go sour with Dr. Leonard's recovery?" Wiz asked.
"No, no! She said nothing about Leonard. Something else entirely." He lied because he didn't know, and he didn't wish to unduly upset Wisnewski. "Go to bed, and I'll return as soon as I can."
"Don't worry about me, Stroud. Go ... do what you must."
"There'll be guards at your door, should you need anything, Wiz, anything."
"For God's sake, Abe, go ... go."
Stroud nodded, turned and rushed out, fearful of the strange tone he had heard in Kendra's voice.
Abraham Stroud had had a police squad car drive him to the hospital, and when he asked the driver if he could speed it up, the siren roared into life. He reached St. Stephen's within twenty minutes of Kendra's call. She was waiting for him in her lab, and he had to don the protective gear that she wore. He now stepped into the isolation chamber where she explained that she had the sample of organic matter that had filtered from Dr. Leonard's orifices as he came out of coma. The sample she wished him to look at was under her microscope. She was, for her, agitated.
Stroud felt cumbersome in the suit, and looking over the comparison microscope with its double vision capability was a chore through the face mask. Stroud saw a great deal of teeming life on both sides of the scope, but nothing that meant anything to him. He lifted his eyes away and asked, "What does this mean? What am I looking at?"
"Don't you see it ... those ... the things in there?"
"I see ordinary bacteria, protozoa. Why are you so upset?"