Vale nodded. “If I hadn’t had one of the local Indians as a guide, I’d be dead. But fortunately he spoke their language, and I was able to negotiate with them.”
“But what did you have to bargain with?”
“The most powerful commodity on the market.”
George furrowed his brow. This should be good. “What’s that?”
Vale’s icy yellow-green eyes narrowed. “Fear.”
“Fear? Of what?”
“Well, that’s the real trick, isn’t it?” Vale said. “The key to any negotiation—as I’m sure you well know—is finding out what the other party is most afraid of and exploiting that to your advantage. Fear of losing their business or losing market share. Or losing their life.”
“So what do the N’watu fear?”
“Losing their home,” Vale said. “They have a deep spiritual connection with this mountain. I think they see themselves as guardians in a way. Priests. I got the sense that they were protecting something. Something deep inside the cave. So I explained to them how the white man was moving ever westward and even if they killed me, it would only be a matter of time before others would come. And come with more guns. I convinced them that soon their way of life, their whole existence, would be threatened.”
“Very clever,” George said. He hadn’t realized it before, but to one degree or another he’d been employing those tactics in the business world his whole life. A thought that, after meeting Thomas Vale, was a little unsettling. “What did you offer to alleviate those fears?”
“I assured them that I could keep them safe. I could conceal the entrance to their cave and keep their home hidden away from prying eyes, as it were. I staked claim to the surrounding land and built this lodge to conceal the entrance, and eventually the town to conceal the lodge.”
“Hidden in plain sight,” George said. “Brilliant.”
Vale chuckled and sipped his drink. “You know, I used to think I stumbled across that cave by accident. Pure dumb luck. But now I know it was fate. It was my destiny to discover the N’watu. We found each other, really. We each supplied what the other was looking for.”
“Kismet.” George nodded. “And now your whole life is focused on keeping this place a secret.”
Vale gestured out the window. “I’m still trying to keep the white man away and keep the N’watu hidden from the modern world. But as I said, it’s a balancing act. And that’s why I chose you. Politicians are tireless busybodies, and I need you to help keep them out of my business.”
“So this cave…” George rubbed his jaw. “Where exactly is it?”
Vale gestured to the floor. “Right beneath us. As I said, I built this lodge over the entrance. I’ve provided the N’watu with complete privacy for the last 130 years in exchange for their sacred elixir of youth. Not such a bad trade-off, I’d say.”
“They’re still living inside the caves?” George could hardly believe an entire tribe of human beings could be living under such horrid conditions. Why would they want to? He couldn’t conceive of any benefit or reason for it. “But how can they possibly survive? It’s inhumane.”
“Ah yes, they’d be much better off with cell phones and mortgages.” Vale snorted.
“No, I mean, how do they live? What do they eat?”
“I’ve only been down there once in my life. But from what I saw, a part of that cave system has been isolated from the outside world since the dawn of time. There’s a whole self-contained ecosystem thriving down there, and the N’watu are an integral part of it. They adapted to it long ago. It’s all the world that most of them have ever known. For them, coming up to the surface, into the sun, would be as alien and unsettling as it would be for you to live underground. And they are keenly single-minded in their religion. They have no real material needs, and all they want is to be left alone.”
It all seemed so bizarre to George. The N’watu should have died out from a lack of vitamin D, for one thing. Sunlight was such a necessity for human life in numerous ways. Unless they were able to compensate for it in some way. And that was probably where the perilium came in. George wondered how old they were. And how many were left. He’d only ever seen the one woman. Nun’dahbi. And she had been so covered in black veils that he wasn’t even sure what she looked like.
But George also recalled the power Nun’dahbi seemed to have over Vale when she came into the room that first night. Vale had acted like a frightened child in the presence of his domineering mother.
“I assume the N’watu need perilium to survive as well,” George said.
“Correct.”
“And by moving here—by joining your community—I can basically get my youth back?”
“And then some,” Vale said. “It’s quite literally the chance of a lifetime.”
George shrugged. “Where do I sign?”
A smile curled onto Vale’s lips. “You’re on board, then?”
George spread his hands and smiled. “At this point, I already have a vested interest in your community.”
George knew he was most definitely not “on board” with Vale. Not the way he ran things in Beckon. The fact was, George was going to make it his sole mission to undermine Thomas Vale’s little empire and usurp his position of authority altogether. If George was going to live here, he wasn’t about to put himself in submission to Vale. If he and Miriam were going to have a second chance at life, then he was going to be the one in charge. Then he could get perilium into the hands of real scientists and find a way to replicate it or even improve it and eliminate the side effects.
He would drag this whole town into the twenty-first century. And hopefully live to see the twenty-second.
“Glad to hear it.” Vale slapped George on the shoulder. “Very glad to hear it.”
Satisfied that he’d waylaid any doubts Vale might’ve had about his commitment, George went back to the room to check on Miriam once more. It was getting late in the afternoon and she’d been in bed since her episode that morning.
But the bed was empty, and there was no sign of his wife in the suite. George recalled Miriam’s voracious appetite after her last dose of perilium and returned downstairs to see if she was in the kitchen.
He found her there, wearing her robe, sitting at the table across from Amanda with her back toward him. Amanda looked up at George and winced. An odd expression, George thought.
“I figured you’d be down here,” he said to Miriam. “How are you feel—?”
He choked his words off as Miriam turned to face him. He blinked and took a step backward. “Miriam?”
Her complexion held no trace of line or wrinkle whatsoever. Her skin was like unblemished alabaster. Her hair fell in pure dark waves to her shoulders. A glossy black sheen, just like when they had first met.
She stood, her expression somewhere between joy and terror, traces of blood around her lips. On the plate in front of her was a half-eaten slab of raw meat. “George…”
George was stunned. His mouth hung open and he shook his head. “You… you look…”
Miriam ran to his arms and George held her close, wondering why he was shocked when he should have expected this. She looked as young and vibrant as a woman in her twenties.
Chapter 29
“George… I don’t want to stay here anymore,” Miriam whispered.
“Look at you! You look like you’re eighteen again.”
“But what this stuff is doing to me—it’s not natural. None of this is. Please, can’t we just go home?”
“No. You’re going to need another dose in a day or two.”
“I don’t care,” Miriam said. “I can’t live here. I don’t care what this drug does to me. I don’t care how young it makes me. I just don’t want to stay here anymore.”