The Perfect Monster

By W. Lawrence Nash

Yes, Roger Sloane is completely mad, but what of it. He is the right man to provide the solution and he does not disappoint us. Of course, he is a brilliant scientist and certainly a total madman, but after all he is our madman. He belongs to us. The Cabal. We of Canada, Germany, Russia, China and the United States, made him and cultivated him and we have taken him home with us. And we must thank Roger. He has protected us with his vaccine.
Now, admittedly, what he did with the virus was a bad thing, oh yes, a naughty thing, but who could blame him. It was the crowding, you see. Crowding with too little space, crowding with too much data, crowding with too many ideas, crowding with demands to react, crowding with unending guilt and every day, all the things we know, crowded out of us into nothing. All that.
And Jack and Claire, beautiful Claire. They were sweethearts, you know. Young love lost and separated and all that and they are looking; looking for who did it and why and maybe they will find it, maybe they will once again find each other, recover their true love in times of virus and mayhem, and then there are the Boys. Oh, bad, bad Boys. What devils! They shimmer, they shine, they flit into your mind, they scavenge your computer, they scour your soul. They skim the stars, they know your heart. They know everything. They see the mess and they understand Roger Sloane. Yes, they like Roger. They feed his mind, they speak to him in his own voice and their minds are united to his and oh he likes that voice. He believes the voice. He has what they want. The answer to the crowding. The answer to everything. His little baby. His own little offspring. For them he will make it. The Boys are sure they can convince him. Surely, for them, Roger Sloan will make the Perfect Monster. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: lawrence nash
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777458607

Book preview

Prologue

Billions>7.8

We are witnessing the end of the cluster. Every two thousand years or so there is a cluster of events which taken together remake the world and change the course of humanity until the next such cluster forms itself, two thousand years hence. We are now at the close of one such cluster. We will see the remaining events within that cluster, but having seen them, we will not survive them.

This book is a book of fiction. The people described herein do not exist but what they can do exists and what is described as having been done technologically, has been done. Some technology is presented as if in the future but it is technology which exists today. Some technologies are described as having originated some years back and that is so, despite their fantastical capabilities. Some actions which are described as having been taken, have been taken, despite their insanity.

I put this book to paper in 2015. I anticipated and presaged the global pandemic which overwhelms us today, as well as the subsequent madding rush to vaccination. I hope I am wrong about the rest.

Chapter One: The End

Billions>6.7

1994 Brisbane Australia

The only sound in the laboratory was the squeal of the slowly turning ceiling fan as it spun shadows of its blades across Lucas Glover’s face. Lucas hung in a sickly posture in his chair with his notepad and pen thrown askew on the floor. His head was back, his eyes were closed and he slumped, arms draped and hands hanging, slowly moving his head back and forth. Glover was beyond sensation, for he knew what they had done. His technique had been scrupulously correct yet all twelve were dead; twelve subjects vaccinated successfully and all were dead. Lucas knew he and McCaffrey had sounded the death knell for the world.

The holiday weekend passed too slowly for Dr. Crystal McCaffrey and by Tuesday morning she was anxious to get back to her lab. Brisbane Australia offered up one of its 34 degrees Celsius, eighty percent humidity days. Crystal often rode her bicycle the four miles from her apartment to the Teralba Park research site, but not on days like this, and the air conditioning in her old Mercedes was struggling. The heatwaves shimmered up from Highway Five and she was wet with perspiration from the baking heat and the tension of the prospects at the lab. This week should be the payoff. Things had gone well with her research and Lucas would likely be at his bench recording his observations.

It was a short sauna walk in from the parking lot to the lab and the asphalt was sticky on her shoes. The bike rack was empty except for one bike and Dr. McCaffrey smiled at the predictability. Lucas rode his bike every day whether it was rain or shine or inferno and he chained it to the rack under the roof overhang. He had become nut brown and fit from the cycling in the Brisbane sun and the daily aerobic ritual keened an already exceptional mind.

McCaffrey entered the lab humming a tune from the car radio and hung her sun hat on the peg. She was fair skinned and she burned to a crisp in ten minutes. Brisbane weather was unpredictable. It was hot and humid, cold and wet, or bright and roasting, just wait a day. This was a roasting day and Crystal was soaked from the short walk into her laboratory. She threw on a stained lab coat with missing buttons and greeted Lucas with the same bad joke she had used every day, So, Lucas, how they hangin’?

Lucas said nothing and he did not acknowledge her. His pallid head moved left and right in the strobing shadows of the overhead fan, in hopeless denial of what he knew to be true. As her stomach tightened, Dr. McCaffrey walked slowly to the containment area window and turned on the light. Through the glass, snuggled in a tight cluster, were twelve small gray and brown unbreathing bodies. The urine released on death had spread to make a sepia background of the portrait. Crystal stood immobile, digesting the morbid tableau and she tapped her nails lightly on the glass as if making a signal might awaken them. Without speaking and made senseless by the fear and understanding of what she saw, she shuffled into her office and rummaged there quietly and came back to Lucas with her bottle of Sullivan’s Cove Scotch, which Crystal had purchased to celebrate the conclusion of her very difficult project. The project was certainly concluded but not as expected. She held a mug and a tumbler between her fingers and poured the tumbler half full of scotch and gave it to Lucas. She poured the mug half full and walked with it. She dragged her plastic chair over beside Lucas and sat. A fatigue of disappointment and guilt descended on Lucas and he looked at Crystal and said nothing. She returned the look and her eyes dropped through the amber liquid to the bottom of her mug. The two of them sat together and cradled the scotch. Its perfume was strong and Crystal sniffed close over it. The blade on the air conditioning fan continued to squeal. Needs oil thought Lucas. Crystal did not hear it. They exhaled simultaneously and both slumped in their chairs as if choreographed and each took a deep worried mouthful. Lucas hated the burn of the stuff, but right now, he needed to drink it. Crystal was the scotch drinker and she held it and played with it with her tongue before swallowing. It was the best scotch in the world and it was tasteless. They sighed and shook their heads because they both understood it. They had just stamped an expiration date on mankind.

You know Lucas, this changes everything. What we have done, it changes everything.

Lucas nodded with his eyes focused ten feet out on nothing. Yes, Crystal, I know. What now? What do you want me to do?

Nothing. Lucas, there is nothing to do.

Lucas nodded to himself. He had already done enough.

McCaffrey’s experimental laboratory event went largely unnoticed. In due course her peers reviewed the failures and successes of the work she and Glover had authored. Those who read the research notes read them narrowly. The implications were not obvious even to professionals in the field. Their work was considered to be at most a laboratory curiosity which merited a side notation and nothing more. The potential for cataclysm was not recognized. Those researchers who did see the danger, decried the recklessness of it and moved on. However, there were others who liked what they saw from McCaffrey and Glover and they did not move on. They massaged the work and coddled it and tuned it up and made it their own.

Chapter Two: Paloekastritsa

Billions>7.4

Corfu Island

Jack Trenchart turned his face to the west wind and stopped near the edge of the bluff, 900 feet above the moving sea. The waves approached in a slow heavy roll and he watched them fall with full weight onto the beach in a perfect, regular tempo. They seemed to pacify the land and he felt a surge of nostalgia for his own Pacific coast breakers. He was from Vancouver and the smell of the sea and the rhythmic pounding of the surf was part of him. The breakers here at Corfu were the same, yet not the same. They had their own rhythm and their own way of tumbling and polishing the small pebbles they stole from the land. It was late afternoon and the gulls were homing, riding high across the wind to the south. Jack followed them with his eyes and travelled with them in his mind, escaping with them, rising above, doing nothing except being with them.

He had come to the island of Corfu to recover some reality and to de-stress but he was not sure he remembered how it felt. He exhaled slowly and completely and waited for it to happen but his hands were still clenched and his shoulders were high and rigid with tension. It was going to take some time.

Jack had concluded a grinding semester at the Pushkin Institute in Athens and he was exhausted. He had audited a Russian poetry course there as a departure from the intensity of his PhD dissertation in psychopathology. The incessant heat and filth of Athens had fatigued him, the tension of the crowded city had fatigued him and the daily struggle with two new languages, Greek and Russian, had exhausted him. He had however, discovered Pushkin there and the soul of the fabled Russian poet made the struggle less draining. Trenchart had defended his psychopathology thesis in May and he was waiting for the result of the adjudication.

Jack had studied the maps and tourist materials of the island carefully. The island of Corfu sat like a mushroom with the stem down and it ran roughly north south in the Ionian Sea, straddling the border between Albania and Greece. The west coast of the island had the reputation for the best sand beaches and a rougher surf than on the east side. Jack had taken a hotel room which sat high above the bay at Paloekastritsa on the west coast, so he could hear the breakers from his room. He had come alone and he intended a solitary, quiet and rejuvenating escape.

He arrived from Athens on Eonian Airlines that afternoon and he had slept for the entire flight. The bump of the touchdown on the Kapodistrias runway had jolted him awake and he slept again on the bus all the way to his hotel drop off at Lakones above Paloekastritsa Bay. His hotel was a small cracked stone building sitting right at the road edge, limited in the rear by the precipice to the sea. It dated from the eighteenth century and its only identifier was a small wood burned sign above the narrow door reading ‘Ariadne.’ The Ariadne was a fifth-generation family run hotel which prided itself on its food. Moreover, the patriarch boasted of his own wine and the smell of fermentation was everywhere. Jack knew five days here would do him much good.

The calendar was closing down September and the beaches were not crowded. The trail from the Ariadne to the surf below was tortuous and steep and it meandered like a river down the side of the green hill holding up Lakones. The descent was not difficult and Jack inhaled the Ionian Sea deeply as he arrived at the strand. He plodded across the wide beach through a deep, soft, granular sand which collapsed and buried his feet on every step he made. He rolled his head a little as he did habitually to ease the tightness in his neck and shoulders and he sensed things were already a little looser. The sand was still very hot from the day but Jack had to get out of his shoes. He tied the laces through a belt loop to free his hands and cooled off in the water as he walked along the margin of the breaker line. He realized for no reason, he was rushing. He forced himself to slow down and he let the warm water do its work. As Jack puddled along with his pant legs rolled up, he contemplated he would soon be Dr. Trenchart and no longer just plain Jack. He was relieved but he was not impressed.

The wind was warm, blowing off the south west and now he began to relax for the first time in months. His neck was feeling hot and good and his shadow lengthened off his right shoulder as the sun edged down. The base of the escarpment was already purpling in the diminishing light. He heard what seemed to be an extra splash behind him and a long shadow gained on him in his peripheral vision. Aggravated by the trespass into his space, Trenchart felt his tension storm back and he turned stiffly toward the intruder. She was also shoeless, and she walked ankle deep in the 80-degree water and carried her shoes. She wore a light cotton skirt which was too long for the beach and she futilely attempted to keep it dry by holding it up at the front with the other hand. Jack stopped and the girl kept walking, came abreast and kept on, neither speaking nor looking at Jack. As she passed, Pushkin’s poetry crept into his mouth and Jack Trenchart stood in Pushkin’s shoes and recited softly under his breath.

I recall some storm-brewing ocean. Jealous, I watched its waves that beat a path straight toward her in devotion to swirl in sequence at her feet. To join those waves my soul was burning, to touch those limbs with lips so yearning.

The shadow stopped. Pardon? What did you say?

He had not intended his verse to be audible, but there was no turning back. Well, I have recently translated that beautiful poem from the Russian and without so much as a ‘by your leave’, it possessed me just now and out it came. I blame the Russians. However, I think you have to take the primary responsibility for inspiring it. He did a quick bow and a hand sweep.

Claire Watchorn smiled and Jack knew she had heard it well and had liked it.

He used his most brilliant ploy. Hi, I’m Jack.

She gazed placidly at him with her pale blue, almost primordial eyes. It was a blue which belonged deep in an iceberg but it burned in a way it caught Jack’s breath. Those eyes could reach into a man’s gut and walk around in there and make him like it.

The cafes and tavernas were opening for the evening and here and there through the trees reaching up to Lakones, the lights were coming on.

Want to walk up? His eyes pointed the direction.

Claire had been thinking the same thing and she smiled. Yes. If you like.

The west wind diminished behind them and the surface of the bay was less active. A gentle gloaming promised a fine tomorrow and the tang of the sea stayed strong on the weakening breeze. The reddening sun played roseate across the water and it was still warm.

They brushed off their feet and put on their shoes and started up the trail with sand gritting between their toes. It was steep going and tricky in the diminishing light but Jack was no longer tired and Claire seemed familiar with the path. She spoke over her shoulder to Jack who was walking behind her. Have you been to Taverna Moustaka?

No, I have just arrived today, so no. Is it near here?

Not far. It is about a hundred yards or so from the gate at the height of the path. It has a beautiful view of the bay. There is still plenty of light for that and the sunset is amazing. It is worth the climb. Your accent. You are not American. I think.

No, I am not an American. I am Canadian. And you?

Claire smiled at the awkwardness of the conversation. English. Old blighty. Bristol England, but I haven’t been there in several years. I am studying in Italy. I have spent the last four years there studying bioinformatics. You know? Biotechnology. Computer science and genome information, protein sequencing and the like. Sexy huh?

Jack nodded. He did know and yes, it was. She continued.

That was my bachelor of science. My master’s degree program begins in one month, so I am here now on a holiday before the onslaught begins.

Claire anticipated Jack’s question. My masters is in virology. Claire rolled her eyes. Jack could not believe the cold blueness.

I see. What is your name Miss virology, or should I stick with that, or are you going incognito these days?

She laughed. Sorry, not my strong point you know? Social stuff. My name is Claire, Claire Watchorn. You can call me Claire Watchorn.

They laughed and continued on chatting about nothing and everything and Jack told her he too was on a holiday from studies, but nothing more. They arrived at the Taverna Moustaka, slightly out of breath from the climb and looking for a drink. Jack realized he was not as fit as he thought he was. They entered to a broad smile from Mercedes, the wife of Nikos, who was the vintner and owner of the taverna and he did the singing coming from the kitchen. Claire came here routinely and she and Mercedes had become good friends.

So, Jack. You did not say what you study. Kind of old to be in school, aren’t you? Jack enjoyed her small smile.

I am a slow learner. He said no more but she was waiting. He sighed reflexively, not wanting to cast his mind away from the moment.

I am waiting for the final adjudication of my PhD treatise in psychopathology. But please, let’s leave it at that with the academics. I am here to forget and relax and vegetate. I am much more interested in a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou. I would say ‘singing beside thee in the wilderness’ too, except I can’t sing. Maybe the guy singing from the kitchen can help out.

Claire smiled at that. At her suggestion, they ordered the Taverna Moustaka spécialité, Shrimp Saganaki. Mercedes lit the brandy sauce and the almost invisible flame vaporized the Courvoisier and spun the aroma around them. The meal was wonderful and it came and went and the sun slipped down and the night went on. They walked in the cooling September evening and watched the shooting stars and listened to the rollers below, slow now and smaller, yet still sounding heavy on the beach. A perfect star map sketched itself above them and Claire pointed out the Cepheus and Ursa Major constellations, so perfect in the night sky. She yawned and shivered and hugged herself and looked up at Jack.

I hate to do this, but I have been in the sun all day and I am fading fast. I need sleep. I have to call it a night.

Jack nodded in understanding, as he felt much the same way. He was very tired after a day of travel. They walked side by side across the way to the Golden Fox restaurant and called a cab for Claire. Together they waited outside on the street for the cab to come, neither of them needing more conversation. A small Fiat cab arrived in ten minutes with a broken lens on the roof sign and a beaming driver who proudly displayed his gapped tooth smile when he saw Claire. They knew each other from the airport and the driver hopped out and he opened the door for her.

Do you want to share the cab back to your hotel, Jack?

No thanks, Claire. I am staying at the Ariadne. It’s just a few hundred yards from here and I want the walk. But how about tomorrow night, here at the Golden Fox. 8:00 PM?

Claire smiled. Yes. That would be nice. Goodnight Jack, thanks.

She had wanted to say, and thanks for a wonderful day, but it did not come out. Gaptooth whisked her away.

Jack slept until 10:00 the next morning, in a deep and dreamless sleep and awoke to the rhythm of the water and a brilliant sun. He did his quick four-minute nitric oxide dump workout and grabbed his Tilley hat against the sun. He picked a piece of fruit he didn’t recognize from the room basket and was out the door without thoughts of shaving or wanting breakfast. Jack headed down to the beach with the mystery fruit, tossing it up and catching it and whistling. It occurred to him half way down he did not whistle but he was doing it. The wind was up from the south west and there was a froth blowing off the tops of the wave curls. The rhythmic thud of the surf soothed the landscape. Jack threw the small orange fruit as far as he could out into the sea. He suspected it was a kumquat.

He smelled smoke from a grill or open fire and looking upwind he saw the fish hut on the beach. The sand was white with screaming gulls fighting over the dropped bits and a few immature grey feathered youngsters squarked at their mothers to get busy but they were not having luck. Jack did not care for breakfast but the aroma was tantalizing. He shielded his eyes with his hand against the sand the wind blasted off the beach and turned to walk to the grill and there stood Claire Watchorn. She was turned half away from the sandblast and the wind blew her blue cotton dress against her and silhouetted her shape.

Hello Jack. Beautiful when it is windy like this, isn’t it? Bit rough for swimming though. Strong current today. She waited. Jack said nothing, stunned by her beauty.

Jack, what do you say we walk up to the Taverna Moustaka again and rent some bikes? She smiled and the eyes were in his gut, walking around. Uh, yes. It is beautiful.

Claire frowned. What is, the Taverna Moustaka?

No. The. What the… Where?

Claire smiled. Let’s go up and rent a couple of bicycles for the day. There are some good bike tours if you want to do one of them. Pubs, restaurants, lookout points. We could start off uphill and finish off coasting back down.

She pulled up a little. Oh. Were you going to lie on the beach here?

Jack had had that in mind but not now. He blurted, Good. I mean no. Yes. Let’s rent some bikes. He felt like a stammering idiot but it was the best feeling.

Jack, you must see some of the views over the bay by daylight. Why don’t we just do a taverna wine tour? The wines are good and the views and the food are even better. Okay with you?

Yep. Sounds good. Any chance I might be the first Canadian arrested on Corfu for drunken bike riding?

Hah. That’s the least of your worries. Moustaka is 500 feet above the beach and there are no guard rails. However, if we are stopped by the gendarmerie as you weave your way along, perhaps I will vouch for you.

The day was warming up and the September sun was brilliant and uncovered and it was a perfect day for bike riding. It was sunny and 70 degrees. The climb from the beach up to the Taverna Moustaka level seemed much easier this time and after saying a quick hello to Mercedes at the bike rental, Jack and Claire picked out two bikes and set out riding side by side, with Claire navigating and playing the tour guide. They rode sharply uphill for three minutes when Claire came to a stop and stepped off her bike.

Claire, what’s up? Too steep?

No, this is it. Taverna Lefkos. They describe it as dining on the top of the world. We’ll take the lift up to the restaurant level. It’s a thrill ride.

The lift was glass walled and it creaked its objection to their weight and vibrated up the three floors to the dining room. Jack stepped out into the restaurant and saw Paloekastritsa Bay displayed there like a perfect gemstone.

Claire, this is magnificent.

The owner welcomed them and seated them with exaggerated pomp and gesticulations in a prime spot near the railing, overlooking the bay. Claire ordered a liter of the Athiri, which arrived in a copper pitcher. It was a dry Tsandalis white, with a pale, green-silvery tint. They lingered over the wine, talking and smiling and they nibbled on the sweet, home-made orange-pie cake Claire had recommended. They absently watched two sunlit wasps stake out some sugar on the next table as the Muzak played Nana Mouskouri singing Even Now for the benefit of the tourists.

They shared the bill for the Tsandalis and they felt its effect as they left the restaurant level. Sixteen euros was more than either of them would normally spend on a bottle of wine but somehow there was an unspoken agreement of a special happening. The elevator shuddered its way down and they were on their way to the next taverna, which was again about a three-minute ride, this time coasting all the way slightly downhill.

The balance of the day floated by on the same magical stream and they made their way on foot back down to the sea, laughing and nicely tipsy. The twilight was deepening fast and planet Venus came out just for them. There was no light pollution and the stars were touchable and they carried a warmth belying their distance. Jack looked for the big dipper and extended by eye the line of the two stars where the water would pour out of the dipper and found Polaris, the north star. They agreed that was it.

Jack ached that he had to leave for his meeting to conclude his PhD formalities. You know Claire, I don’t want to leave here. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid. I have been grinding for so many years I had forgotten what ease was like. He looked at her and he could not read her. She was analyzing what was right to say, how to say it, how it might sound, what would be his response and the moment passed. Claire stayed trapped in her head and she did not respond except with a confused smile.

They held hands and did not speak as they walked. Mosquitoes struck and they said damn at the same time and laughed. The next two days were the same. They walked and sampled the local fare and swam and sunned and enjoyed each other’s company. Their job, their schools, their academic stresses, never entered their conversation. Claire watched Jack walk when she thought he was not looking. He prowled rather than walked and moved with the incipient threat of the big cat. He reminded her of a panther. His physique and athleticism were strong. The mystery of some things being a perfect fit was timeless. Claire spoke what both of them had been avoiding speaking. So, Jack, you are leaving tomorrow.

Yes. I am leaving tomorrow. Yes.

What time is your flight? Shall I come to the airport to see you off?

Yes, that would be fine Claire, very fine. That would be good. If it’s no trouble.

Claire gave Jack her ‘You jerk!’ look and said, Forget it. It’s too much trouble.

Sorry for that Claire, but I checked this morning and they have moved up the flight. I leave at 1 PM. Will that work?

Yes, but in that case, I can’t go with you to the airport for your check in time ahead of the flight. That time tomorrow is my honor bound, daughter must do, duty call from my mater and pater. It is a weekly call I don’t miss. She made a snooty face. The contrived upper-class accent and the mock patrician reference to her parents was perfect and at ease. I will meet you there at the departures gate at about 12 noon.

The thought of the goodbye kiss at the airport gave Jack a surge of pleasure. Good. Thank you. They moved close and just stood breathing against each other for a minute and Jack placed a soft kiss on Claire’s cheek.

The next morning came too soon. Jack packed and was ready early and he was checked out from the Ariadne by ten. The bus trip from Paleokastritsa to the airport took an hour and Jack did not want to be late. By car, the direct airport trip took twenty minutes, while the bus across the island stopped and picked up one or two passengers at a dozen hamlets along the way. Jack walked with his luggage to the bus pickup kiosk and sat there on his bag with his face lifted to the growing sun. He was already sunburned but he needed a last statement of the place. The smoking bus trundled in on time but when the doors opened, Trenchart hesitated at the step. He allowed two other travelers in line to go ahead and inhaled ten more seconds of Corfu and Claire.

The driver looked at him and the bus took Jack in. The air conditioning was working and the seats were clean and Jack relaxed a little. He thought of the wasps stealing the sugar in the Taverna Lefkos as the bus moved off on time, on another blue, bright, perfect day. Two hundred yards or so along, the bus slowed to avoid a thronging which narrowed the road where several gawkers were standing and looking over the shoulder on the right, down toward the precipice. There was no guard rail there and a vehicle had slid off and down and was lodged sideways against a boulder on the narrow bench, smoking and badly crumpled. Trenchart saw the driver was very lucky not to have gone down the six-hundred-foot cliff face.

Claire’s appointed time to receive her weekly call from parents, Mavis and Harry, was 10:30 AM. If she borrowed the car from Mercedes by 10:00, she could be back for the call by 10:30, she could speak with her parents for forty-five minutes and then head to the airport and make the twenty minute or half hour drive very easily by 12 noon, to see Jack off. The weekly phone call from home was an appointment she kept faithfully and in fact Claire looked forward to it. She was a dutiful daughter and she had a close and loving family. This day though, she had more warm thoughts on her mind than just the call from her parents. She rode her bike to the Taverna Moustaka where her friend Mercedes was waiting with the keys to Nikos’ old Fiat.

So, Claire. Mercedes had that look on her face. Good looking boy.

Claire blushed despite herself and took the keys. She jangled them in agreement with Mercedes, said her thanks, closed the door and rolled up the window. There was nothing on the road and Claire pushed it a little to get home on time for the call from her parents. She did not see the dogs until too late. A snarling whining pack of fighting animals cascaded down onto the road in front of the old Fiat and she reacted. She braked hard and the car skidded and fishtailed over the brink. It slid sideways down the embankment, landed on a narrow plateau and hammered into the one large boulder between it and the valley floor. A boy who was one of the dog owners had seen the whole thing and he ran to it. The noise of the impact brought out the neighborhood and the rising steam marked the spot. The boy shaled down to the car and looked inside, excited. He was there first and he knew this was important. He reported up to the road level. Woman. She’s not dead. Still breathing. Cut though. She’s really bleeding.

The transmission fluid pooled under the car and a small red waterfall trickled over the lip of the cliff and bled 600 feet down into the bay.

Trenchart arrived a little early at the airport. He checked in and walked around to burn off his nervous energy. It was not yet noon and Claire was coming. He realized then she did not have his contact information. All they knew was each other’s names and not much more. They would trade details when she arrived. Jack tore a piece from his ticket envelope and printed his name, phone number and address neatly and folded it into his shirt pocket and gave it a pat. It was just a few minutes now until he would see Claire. He had forgotten to shave and he felt for the stubble reflexively.

Twelve o’clock came and went and at 12:45 the Eonian Air boarding call for Athens came over the loudspeaker. He stepped into the small main concourse and there was still no Claire. He closed his eyes and held them closed, expecting she would appear when he opened them.

Excuse me, sir, if you are boarding this flight, please board now, I am closing the gate.

Jack could not grasp the agony and disappointment he was feeling and he thought it an impossibly cruel game he did not know how to play. He fished into his shirt pocket, crumpled the piece of torn envelope into a ball and tossed it hard onto the gangway. He made his way into the plane, jostled down the aisle and squeezed numbly into his window seat. He attempted to focus on the upcoming confirmation of his degree but he could not do it.

The wail of the siren pierced the day and the strength of it waned from time to time as the hot wind blew away the sound but the volume grew as the ambulance came closer to the wreck. In fifteen minutes, the emergency crew was on the scene and hard at work extricating the driver. Claire had not been crushed by the impact against the boulder which demolished the passenger side of the car, but she was semi-conscious from the heavy head impact on the steering wheel. She was bleeding from cuts on her nose and brow and she had a deep gash and puncture wound on her knee from the shifter. The paramedic crew was quick and careful with her. At practiced speed the ambulance made St. Prokopius hospital near the Venetian Fortress in Corfu City in thirty minutes. Claire was confined there for three days on a concussion watch but otherwise she recovered uneventfully. Her face was blue, bruised and swollen and she would be left with several small scars but nothing worse than that. The puncture wound on her leg would leave a permanent reminder.

Mercedes visited daily and brought Claire clean bedding and food which the hospital did not supply and held Claire’s hand. The gentle chatter of Mercedes’ prayer beads and her constant intonation of the Theotokion prayer made for soothing music. Claire had not told Jack