5

"I'm back!"

Carol carried the bag of Cokes, fries, and burgers into the library and found Jim just where she had left him, slumped in the wing chair, engrossed in one of the newfound Hanley journals.

"Yoo hoo," she said. "I'm home. And don't get too comfortable there. That's my chair."

Jim looked up but didn't smile. His expression was troubled, and his eyes had a faraway look.

"Something wrong?" Carol said.

"Hmm?" he said, straightening up. "Oh, no. No, everything's fine. I'm just having a little trouble with some of this scientific stuff, is all."

He wasn't much company during dinner—if indeed the cooling, soggy cheeseburgers from Wetson's deserved to be called dinner—and she noticed that he poured his glass of Scotch into his Coke before he drank it. He initiated no conversation, which was highly unusual for him. Jim always had something to talk about—a wild idea or a diatribe about some aspect of the current political and social scene. But he was definitely preoccupied tonight, answering her attempts at conversation in monosyllables.

As soon as he gobbled down his third and last burger, he stood up and drained his Coke.

"Look, I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to get back to those new journals."

"Sure. Go ahead. Come across any good stuff yet?"

His expression was bleak as he turned away toward the library.

"No. No good stuff."

Carol finished her second cheeseburger and swept all the wrappers and fries bags back into the sack. Then she wandered into the library. Jim didn't look up from his hunched posture over the journal. Carol wandered along the shelves, looking for something to read. There were lots of classics, from Aeschylus to Wyss, but she wasn't in the mood for anything long or heavy. She stopped by the wing chair where Jim sat and noticed a small black journal on the table next to him. She remembered seeing it in the safe when they'd opened it earlier.

She picked it up and opened the cover. A title was block-printed in capitals on the first page:

PROJECT GENESIS

"What's this about?" she asked.

Jim's head snapped up.

"What?"

His eyes widened when he saw the journal in her hand, and he snatched it away.

"Give me that!"

"Jim!" Carol cried, shocked.

"I'm sorry," he said, obviously flustered. "I… I'm just trying to put all the pieces together and I… I can't if… the pieces start wandering away. You know? Sorry I snapped. Really."

She noticed that as he was speaking he closed the journal he had been reading and slipped the black one under it. She had never seen him so distracted, so tentative, and it made her uneasy.

"Jim, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, Carol," he said, rising from the chair.

"I don't buy that. Something in those journals is upsetting you. Tell me. Share it."

"No, no, I'm not upset. It's just heavy going, that's all. When I get it straight in my head, I'll lay it out for you. Right now… I've got to concentrate. I'll take these upstairs and you take the chair and read or watch TV."

"Jim, please!"

He turned and headed for the stairs.

"It's okay, Carol. Just give me a little time alone with this stuff."

She noticed that he grabbed the Scotch decanter on his way out of the room.

Time crawled.

Carol tried to occupy herself but it wasn't easy. The disquiet over Jim's obsession with these journals and his past gnawed at her, making it impossible to read, or even to involve herself in the new color TV in the corner of the library. She spent most of the night spinning the dial. The Avengers seemed vapid, The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were more annoying than usual, and even The Jonathan Winters Show couldn't wring a smile from her.

By eleven o'clock she couldn't take any more. She went upstairs to the science library to pull Jim away from those damn journals.

The door was locked.

Alarmed now, she pounded on it.

"Jim! Are you all right?"

She heard papers shuffling within, then Jim opened the door —but only part way. He stood in the opening, blocking her from entering. His eyes had a haunted look.

"What is it?" he mumbled.

She could smell the Scotch on his breath.

"It's late," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "Let's call it a night."

He shook his head. "Can't. Gotta keep after this."

"Come back in the morning when you're fresh. You might get a whole new—"

"No! I can't leave this now! Not yet! You go home. Take the car and leave me here. I'll come home later."

"You're going to walk home? You can't be serious! You'll freeze!"

"It's only a mile or so. The exercise will do me good."

"Jim, this is crazy! What's wrong? Why can't you tell me what's—"

"Please!" he said. "Just go home and leave me here. I don't want to discuss it any more right now."

With that he closed the door in her face. She heard the lock click.

"Fine," Carol said.

She went downstairs, grabbed her coat, and drove home in J. Carroll. Somewhere along the way her anger gave way to hurt. And fear.

Jim had looked frightened.

Ten

Tuesday, March 5

1

You hear the cries from behind the walls of the sick houses as you trod Strasbourg's misty, filth-encrusted streets. Two months ago when you arrived from Genoa, the streets at this hour were clogged with people. Now you can number your fellow travelers on one hand. Unlike you, they hurry along with nosegays pressed to their faces to protect themselves from the disease and to fend off the odor of corruption that hangs over the town like a shroud.

Fear. Fear keeps the small surviving remnant of the populace indoors, hiding behind their shuttered windows and barred doors, peeping through the cracks; fear of catching the pestilence, for they know not whence or why it has come; fear that the world is coming to an end.

And perhaps it is. Twenty million dead in the last four years, bishop and beggar, prince and peasant alike, for the pestilence cuts across all classes. There are not enough peasants to till the fields, not enough knights to force the remainder to work. The whole fabric of Europe's social order is unraveling around you.

Fear. The very air is saturated with fear, laced with grief and tinged with the death throes of a ravaging disease. They blame God, they blame the alignment of the planets, they blame the Jews.

Fear. You breathe deeply, sucking it in like a bracing tonic.

You find the house you are seeking and push your way inside. There are seven people within, two adults and five children, but no one resists your entry. Instead the survivors plead for your aid. Two more have died since you stopped by last night. Now only the father and one of the daughters remain alive, each with draining, egg-size swellings in their groins and armpits. Their eyes are feverish, their cheeks hollow, their lips and tongues swollen and cracked as they hoarsely beseech you for a sip of water.

You hover over them a moment, drinking their misery, then tear yourself away and proceed to the back room. You lift the wicker trap you baited with cheese last night and feel the squealing weight within.

Rats. A pair of them. Good! Your supply of sickly rodents is sufficient now. You can move on.

And you must move on. The pestilence is beginning to taper off, its spread is slowing. You can't allow that. This is too good. You must make this ecstasy last.

You start back toward the street. Your horse and loaded cart await you at the stable. You really must be on your way to Nürnburg where they say there is no plague.