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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JAMES C. GLASS
Eagle Squad: A Novel of Suspense
Imaginings of a Dark Mind: Science Fiction Stories
Sedona Conspiracy: A Science Fiction Novel
Toth: A Science Fiction Novel
Touches of Wonder and Terror: Tales of Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction
Visions: A Science Fiction Western
Voyages in Mind and Space: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2013 by James C. Glass
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
This one is for Gail
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks go to Joy Oestreicher for her useful comments and suggestions regarding the first draft of this book.
PROLOGUE
A snarling wharf rat, mouth flecked with foam, came out of the darkness. Jacob Bauer cowered in one corner of an empty room as the dog-sized animal lunged towards him. There was a fleeting instant of panic. Something was amiss; it was the wrong kind of rat. It should be small, white and cute, with little pink eyes. Bauer glared at the rat, and it fell over on its side. Bauer watched the death throes curiously, feeling detached yet somehow responsible, and then a telephone was ringing, but that wasn’t right either because he didn’t allow telephones in this part of the laboratory. He tried to find it, and it kept on ringing.
He awoke when a fumbling hand struck something sharp on the nightstand. Ester grumbled in her sleep and turned over beside him, pushing her buttocks against his back. He fumbled until he had the telephone in hand, and he was wide awake.
“Yes, this is Bauer,” he whispered, then listened quietly for a long minute, frowning.
“Don’t touch anything at all, and stay out of the room. I’ll be over in a few minutes, Len, but are you okay? No cramps, or dizziness? I hardly recognize your voice.” He listened again.
“Relax, and put some coffee on. See you.”
He swung out of bed, shuffled to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. A balding, middle-aged man with sagging jowls and stomach watched him sleepily from the mirror as he performed his toilet rituals. He dressed in the dark, smiling when his wife began to snore. He tapped the bed sharply with his foot and the snoring stopped. I’ll call her later from the lab, he thought. He went to the kitchen, found a day old bagel, some cream cheese, and made a snack. There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The morning was clear and crisp, with an orange glow on the horizon as he peddled his bicycle through empty streets towards the nearby campus. The hill loomed ahead of him, bristling with silhouettes of buildings housing classrooms and laboratories that were his life for much of each day. A feeling of guilt returned. The university had been so good to him, but if he had his way he might soon bring it all down. Why couldn’t he just do his work like the others? Because the others didn’t care about consequences, he thought. They only wanted the power and prestige that came with heavily funded research programs, and they would do anything for that. He had wanted it too, and had played the game well, but now he wanted out as soon as the project was finished. The way things were going that might be never. The string of failed experiments was both discouraging and mysterious, and his masters were not pleased.
Bauer leaned over the handlebars, pumped hard up the winding narrow road towards the hilltop campus. He raced past the darkened library and administration building, circled a wide grassy quadrangle in the center of campus and sweated a staggering path up a dark walkway towards the glowing beacon of the Robert F. Gordon Science Center at the very top of the hill. The white marble building, a windowless four story rectangular box, glowed softly in yellow light from dozens of powerful lamps pointing upwards from the flower gardens at its base. He parked his bicycle with three others in a rack near the front entrance. One he recognized as Len’s, the others he hadn’t seen before. At a wide door of thick glass he inserted a plastic card in a slot below a speaker and television screen. The PROCEED appeared on the screen.
“Jacob Bauer, analytical chemistry,” he said slowly.
Somewhere in the bowels of the security system, a voiceprint identity comparison was made. CLEAR appeared on the screen. Bauer pushed on the door and entered the building, crossed the dimly lit empty lobby to the elevators and pressed a button, looking up at the floor indicators to see that both elevators were at the third floor where his laboratory was located. He waited impatiently while one descended, and then rode it up to his floor. He stepped out into a brightly lit corridor stretching far in both directions. A uniformed guard sat at a desk near the elevator, watching several television monitors and eating a sandwich. He grinned as Bauer approached him. The man had dark circles under his eyes, his face a ruin of old acne scars.
“Getting an early start today?”
“Not really. Len called, and I’ve got some troubleshooting to do.” Bauer signed his name in the security record book. Len had signed in at dinnertime the previous evening, had not yet signed out.
The guard chewed thoughtfully. “Haven’t seen Len all night. Haven’t seen anybody all night,” he said.
“He called from the lab, and his bike is downstairs. I won’t be long.” Try staying awake, he felt like saying, but didn’t.
The man wrote something on a pad in front of him and yawned. “Have a good day, Doctor Bauer,” he said cheerfully.
“Sure,” said Bauer, and he started down the corridor to his right. Behind him the guard returned to watching the television monitors, but his eyelids fluttered and he was soon dozing as he did for much of his shift each night.
The laboratory was at the far end of the corridor, and Bauer found the door unlocked. Don’t students ever use their keys? Irritated, he pushed the door inwards and stared into a dark room. He flicked the light switch on and off, but darkness remained. Across the room, light shimmered beneath a closed door. The synthesis lab. He left the hall door open and felt his way across the room past benches covered with animal cages. The animals were excited by his presence; he could hear the scratching of their tiny feet as they scuttled back and forth in their prisons.
“Hey, Len,” he called loudly, “give me some light out here before I knock something over.”
There was a sound of metal sliding on metal in the room beyond the door. It sounded like Len was working in the fume hood, but couldn’t he at least answer?
“What happened to the lights in here?” he shouted, and reached for the door. Behind him, the door to the hallway slowly closed as if pushed from the inside. He heard a click in the other room as the light there suddenly disappeared, and he was in total darkness. His breathing quickened. He pushed the door open wide, saw a single red light glowing dimly ahead of him and shuffled towards it, keeping his arms out to avoid collisions with the benches he knew were there.
“Len, are you all right?” His voice was trembling, and he wondered if the red light
