The Presence

CHAPTER 34

Katharine and Rob sat side by side, very close together, a few feet from the small campfire the helicopter pilot had built. The pilot himself was hunkered down opposite them, poking at the fire with a stick. He was a lanky man, tall and skinny, named Arnold Berman—“but everybody calls me Puna”—whom Katharine judged to be in his mid-twenties.

The wind had shifted, flushing some of the fumes from the small clearing, and Michael, his chest starting to hurt, had gone off in search of a fumarole, where the smoke and gases boiling up from deep beneath the crust of the earth would ease the pain in his lungs and give him the strength that oxygen no longer could. Katharine, terrified of losing sight of him even for a moment, wanted to go with him, but Rob stopped her.

“Let him be, Kath,” he’d said. “Whatever happens to him — however this turns out — he’s going to have to deal with it. And so are you and I.”

As exhausted mentally as she was physically, Katharine had reluctantly settled back, but ten minutes later she wished she hadn’t, for as the first flush of victory at having rescued Michael from Takeo Yoshihara’s estate began to fade, the full horror of her son’s condition set in. The alien landscape seemed to be closing in on her, with its perimeters oddly lit by tongues of flame that flicked up from the fire pits, while all around her there was a strange pulsating glow from the lava flows. When Puna had built the small fire, she’d been drawn to it less for its warmth than for its familiarity, and as the little fire seemed to hold the demons surrounding them at bay, she looked at the man who had flown them here, studying him for the first time.

His dirty-blond hair was long, and he wore the standard Maui uniform of shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. He looked far more like a beach bum than a helicopter pilot. “Is there any way I can ever thank you enough for what you did tonight?”

Puna shrugged. “Ken Richter was my best friend. We came to Maui together. If what Rob says is true, I wish I’d had a bomb to dump on that prick’s place after we picked you up.”

“It’s true,” Katharine sighed as Rob slipped his arm protectively around her. “It’s all true.” She pressed closer to Rob and looked into his face. “What are we going to do?”

“For the moment, all we can do is wait,” Rob told her. “But the way I figure it, as soon as it gets light, we should have some company.”

Katharine shuddered. “Yoshihara’s going to come after us, isn’t he?”

“Probably,” Rob agreed. “But if he thinks we’re going to be all by ourselves out here, he’s going to find out he’s wrong.” His arm tightened around her and his eyes rose to scan the sky. And there it was, right where Phil Howell had told him it would be. Glimmering in the blackness of a sky that had been washed all but bare of stars by the light of the fires burning around them, a single light hung far above them.

A light that would shine more brightly with each passing night, but then — in a week or perhaps a month — would disappear.

Disappear forever.

The nova.

“Look,” he said softly, guiding Katharine’s eyes to the brightening star. “That’s where it all came from.” Then, choosing his words very carefully, Rob began explaining to Katharine exactly what he and Phil Howell had discovered that night.

The first light of dawn was washing the blackness from the eastern horizon when the sound intruded on Katharine’s dream.

She was back in the Serinus laboratory on Takeo Yoshihara’s estate, but instead of rats, hamsters, monkeys, and chimpanzees, the cages each contained a little boy.

The rows of Plexiglas boxes seemed to stretch on forever, and each of the aisles opened into another, forming a labyrinth that went on into infinity. Katharine saw herself running through it, searching for Michael, but there were too many cages, too many children, and all of them were reaching out to her, begging her to help them.

She stopped finally, and opened one of the cages, but the moment she did, the child inside began to cough and choke, and when she picked up a little boy — a boy who looked exactly like Michael had when he was six — his coughing became convulsive.

And the child died in her arms.

She began running again, but now something was pursuing her, coming closer and closer, its sinister noise building to a crescendo.

Whup-whup-whup …

She tried to run faster, but the aisles stretched longer and longer before her, and with every turn, there were more of them to choose from. But no matter which way she turned, how many times she dodged from one aisle into another, her pursuer drew ever nearer.

Whup-whup-whup …

She cried out Michael’s name, praying he would answer her, that she would be able to find him before—

“Katharine!”

Her name! Someone was calling her name! But not Michael!

“Katharine!”

She jerked awake, the dream dissolving around her, and with a start remembered where she was. She’d escaped from the estate, and Michael was with her, and so was Rob, and they were safe.

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP!

The noise was still there, and now that she was wide-awake, she knew exactly what it was.

She struggled to her feet, ignoring the stiffness that had crept into her body as she’d dozed against Rob’s shoulder, still huddled close to the small fire Puna was nursing. “Where is it?” she asked, searching the brightening sky for the source of the noise.

Then she saw it. Flying high and coming in from the direction of Maui, she instantly recognized Takeo Yoshihara’s helicopter. “Michael,” she whispered, clutching at Rob’s arm while her eyes remained fixed on the aircraft. “Where’s Michael?”

“He hasn’t come back yet,” Rob told her. “Let’s go find him.”

“There!” Takeo Yoshihara said, pointing to the slope of Kilauea where Arnold Berman’s helicopter was clearly visible in a small clearing.

“Shall I land?” the pilot asked.

“Not until we find the boy!” Takeo Yoshihara, a satisfied smile curling his lips, gazed down at the landscape below. Though the glow of the lava flowing through the cracked and fissured tubes was fading in the breaking dawn, the flames dancing above the fire pits and calderas were still visible, as were the plumes of smoke and steam from the fumaroles that lined the great fissure — the point where an immense chunk of the island of Hawaii would eventually slide away into the sea, creating a tidal wave a thousand feet high. It wouldn’t happen this morning, or tomorrow, or this year or next. Indeed, it probably wouldn’t happen in Takeo Yoshihara’s lifetime, or for generations to come. Which was too bad: a natural phenomenon of that magnitude and the devastation it would wreak, was something he would like to see. This morning, though, there were more important things to do than contemplate the scene below.

The timing, as he had intended, was perfect.

They’d taken off from Maui in darkness, but by the time they found the boy — and they would find him — it would be light.

Light enough to pursue and capture him.

Or to kill him.

But still so early that there would be few witnesses. Only the mother, the besotted Dr. Silver, and their pilot, none of whom would survive.

“Fly lower,” he ordered. “We should be able to see …” His words died on his lips as he caught a flicker of movement that was neither flame nor smoke nor any of the churning gases that swirled up from below. Raising the pair of Leica binoculars that hung from his neck, he peered downward. “Yes,” he said softly. “There he is.”

Keeping the binoculars fastened on Michael Sundquist, Takeo Yoshihara began guiding the pilot toward the spot where the boy stood.

Nearly two hours had passed, but Michael, mesmerized by the undulating rhythm of the fires dancing above the caldera’s surface, had long ago lost any sense of time. After he’d left the small oasis in the lava where the kiawes grew and the others could still easily breathe the air, he’d moved quickly through the tortured landscape. His senses, heightening every minute as his lungs absorbed the nutrients his body now craved, guided him from one vent to another. He’d stopped at each of them, breathing in the thick fumes that steamed out of the cracks in the earth’s crust, inhaling the pungent odors issuing forth from the fumaroles. Finally he’d come to the caldera. There, crouched at its rim, the night had closed around him, wrapping him in a blanket of darkness from which he watched in silent wonder as the fires boiled up from deep within the earth. Through the hours, the flames danced, weaving intricate patterns above the molten rock that seemed to Michael to throb like the heart of the planet itself. Now, as the black mantle of night began to lift from the mountain, he sensed a change coming.

The rhythm of the flames seemed to intensify, as if they had some urgent message to impart before the brilliant fires of the sun made their own luminescence fade to invisibility.

As he was released from the folds of darkness, Michael flexed his body, but found no stiffness in it, despite the hours of crouching near the edge of the caldera’s lip. Then he felt, more than heard, a new rhythm beat into his consciousness. At first he tried to ignore it. Finally, it became so strong that he tore his eyes from the pulsating flames and gazed upward.

The helicopter hovering in the distance took on an iridescent glitter like that of a dragonfly searching for prey in the first rays of the rising sun. Michael watched it in fascination, but as it swooped down, moving steadily toward him, his fascination gave way to a tingling uneasiness.

It was, indeed, a predator out hunting in the morning sun like a dragonfly.

Hunting for him.

But at the same time that he realized he was the prey for which the great metal dragonfly searched, so also came an absolute conviction that he must remain where he was, close to the fires, where smoke and fumes sustained him, and would also now, somehow, protect him.

Rising to his full height, Michael waited.

Katharine, with Rob right behind her, was stumbling along the rocky path that led out of the oasis and onto the lava flow when suddenly a shadow flicked over her. Reflexively, she looked up into the sky, then stopped in her tracks as she watched Takeo Yoshihara’s helicopter, hovering high above for the last several minutes, make a sudden descent.

“They’ve found him!” she told Rob. “Hurry!”

“Land!” Takeo Yoshihara commanded.

His employer’s command ringing in his ears, the pilot searched for a likely looking spot, but found nothing. Already he was beginning to feel the effects of the churning thermals rising from the shattered landscape below, some of them so strong that they shot the helicopter straight up, but at the same time so narrow that by the time he’d adjusted for the added lift, he was out of it, and the aircraft would yaw giddily, or plunge for a second or two like an out-of-control elevator. “There’s no place to land,” he finally replied.

“Find one!” Yoshihara demanded, his eyes fixed on Michael Sundquist, who was standing near the edge of the caldera’s highest wall, only a few yards from a hundred-foot vertical drop into a lake of seething lava.

“No chance,” the pilot replied. “My job is to fly you, not kill you.”

Takeo Yoshihara’s eyes went flat and the single brief look he gave the pilot was enough to tell him that this might be his last flight. After raking the pilot, Yoshihara’s glare shifted to his chief of security.

“Shoot the boy,” he ordered.

The security man reached behind the seat and picked up the laser-sighted rifle he’d brought on the flight for exactly this purpose. Placing its stock firmly against his right shoulder, he switched on the laser, kicked open the door of the cabin, then peered through the telescope mounted above the barrel. The helicopter, now buffeted not only by the thermals, but by the rising trade winds as well, was swinging far too wildly for him to get anything resembling a clear shot at Michael. “Too high,” he said.

“Lower,” Takeo Yoshihara commanded the pilot.

The pilot, weighing the dangers to the craft against the loss of his not-inconsiderable salary, carefully began to drop the helicopter toward the lacerated surface of the mountain.

Yoshihara’s sniper, still peering through the telescope, saw the red dot of the laser flick across Michael Sundquist’s face far too quickly for him to squeeze the rifle’s trigger.

Better if he’d brought an AK-47, he thought, or even an Uzi.

“Lower!” Takeo Yoshihara demanded again, understanding that the flatter the angle, the better the chance of hitting his target.

Michael gazed up at the rifle barrel protruding from the door of the helicopter and instantly knew that the man holding the gun intended to kill him. For some reason, though, the thought did not disturb him. The calmness that had come over him as he’d watched the fires boil remained intact. Instead of turning in an attempt to flee the hunter, he moved closer to the caldera’s lip, as though something deep inside him had instructed him that the fires of the earth were his protection, not his enemy.

“Good,” Takeo Yoshihara said to himself as he watched Michael move closer to the edge. Now, when the boy dropped from the single shot that was all that would be required to execute him, he would pitch forward, plunging into the sea of churning molten rock, his body instantly incinerated. “Lower!” he again commanded the pilot.

The pilot, hands tightening on the controls, peered down into the fiery hell below, then looked away as he felt himself losing his nerve.

Only ten more feet.

He would drop only ten more feet, and that would be it. Even if it cost him his job, he would go no lower.

His eyes glued to the altimeter, he nudged the helicopter downward.

He could feel the heat now, even through the protective bubble of Plexiglas that formed the cabin.

Six more feet.

Five.

Only three more, then he would hold steady, and rotate the cabin around to give the marksman a clear bead on the boy who still stood on the edge of the caldera, calmly watching.

Why didn’t he run?

Was he crazy?

Three more feet …

Michael felt no fear as he watched the helicopter hover over the caldera, dropping lower and lower. He could feel something in the ground now, a slight tremor, as if the earth itself were about to come alive. Then, as the helicopter edged lower, the glowing surface of the lake inside the caldera awakened.

The level of the lava rose steeply, the oddly rhythmic undulations of the boiling rock suddenly interrupted by a column of fire that fountained out of the caldera’s throat, hurling rock, ash, and fire into the air in a burst that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.

Michael ducked beneath the cover of a thick lip of lava, but his eyes remained fastened on the spectacle in front of him.

For the helicopter, there was no place to hide, nor time to flee.

The sniper saw the flicker of red on Michael’s face as the laser sight found its mark. But in the instant before he could squeeze the trigger, a fragment of molten lava struck the helicopter’s enormous propeller. One of its blades broke free of the shaft, and as the helicopter yawed wildly in response to its injury, the metal blade boomeranged back, lashing through the open cabin door, severing the marksman’s arm just above the elbow, and sending him, screaming, into the maelstrom below.

Blood from the severed arm splattered across the Plexiglas cabin, blinding the pilot, who was still trying to control the mortally wounded aircraft.

A terrified howl issued from Takeo Yoshihara, his self-control deserting him as he looked down into the yawning hell into which the helicopter was plunging. His scream, unheard by anyone beyond the confines of the Plexiglas cabin, was suddenly cut off as the fuel tank, heated beyond endurance by the all-consuming fire welling up out of the mountain, exploded into yet more flames, blowing the helicopter into a thousand pieces even as it plummeted into the depths of the churning lake.

The fire spout, as if sensing that it had completed the mission for which it had been summoned, subsided back into the bowels of the mountain. Beneath Michael’s feet, the trembling of the earth began to subside.

By the time Katharine and Rob reached Michael, the helicopter and its occupants had vanished, incinerated as completely as if they had never existed at all.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Michael asked, still gazing out over the caldera’s surface.

Katharine slipped one arm around her son, the other around Rob Silver. “It is beautiful,” she agreed. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”