"Really, Doctor, aren't you letting fantasy run away with you? After all, other viruses have been brought under control. Why should this virus be an exception?"
"Because it is the human virus. After many thousands of years of more or less benign coexistence, it is now once again on the verge of malignant mutation ... what Doctor Steinplatz calls a virgin soil epidemic. This could result from the radiation already released in atomic testing...."
"What's your point, Doctor?" Pierson snapped.
"My point is very simple. The whole human position is no longer tenable. And one last consideration ...as you know, a vast crater in what is now Siberia is thought to have resulted from a meteor. It is further theorized that this meteor brought with it the radiation in question. Others have surmised that it may not have been a meteor but a black hole, a hole in the fabric of reality, through which the inhabitants of these ancient cities traveled in time to a final impasse."
The rescue
A sepia etching onscreen. Written at the bottom in gold lettering: "The Hanging of Captain Strobe the Gentleman Pirate. Panama City, May 13, 1702." In the center of the square in front of a courthouse Captain Strobe stands on a gallows platform with a noose around his neck. He is a slender handsome youth of twenty-five in eighteenth-century costume, his blond hair tied in a knot at the back of his head. He looks disdainfully down at the crowd. A line of soldiers stands in front of the gallows.
The etching slowly comes alive, giving off a damp heat, a smell of weeds and mud flats and sewage. Vultures roost on the old courthouse of flaking yellow stucco. The gypsy hangman—thin, effeminate-looking, with greasy crinkled hair and glistening eyes—stands by the gallows with a twisted smirk on his face. The crowd is silent, mouths open, waiting.
At a signal from an officer, a soldier steps forward with an ax and knocks the support from under the platform. Strobe falls and hangs there, his feet a few inches above the limestone paving which is cracked here and there, weeds and vines growing through. Five minutes pass in silence. Vultures wheel overhead. On Strobe's face is a strange smile. A yellow-green aura surrounds his body.
The silence is shattered by an explosion. Chunks of masonry rain down on the square. The blast swings Strobe's body in a long arc, his feet brushing the weeds. The soldiers rush offstage, leaving only six men to guard the gallows. The crowd surges forward, pulling out knives, cutlasses, and pistols. The soldiers are disarmed. A lithe boy who looks like a Malay shows white teeth and bright red gums as he throws a knife. The knife catches the hangman in the throat just above the collarbone. He falls squawking and spitting blood like a stricken bird. Captain Strobe is cut down and borne to a waiting carriage.
The carriage careens into a side street. Inside the cart the boy loosens the noose and presses air in and out of Strobe's lungs. Strobe opens his eyes and writhes in agony from the pricklings and shootings as his circulation returns. The boy gives him a vial of black liquid.
"Drink this Captain."
In a few minutes the laudanum takes effect and Strobe is able to walk as they leave the cart. The boy leads the way along a jungle path to a fishing boat moored at a pier on the outskirts of the city. Two younger boys are in the boat. The boat is cast off and the sail set. Captain Strobe collapses on a pallet in the cabin. The boy helps him undress and covers him with a cotton blanket.
Strobe lay back with closed eyes. He had not slept since his capture three days ago. The opium and movement of the boat spread a pleasant languor through his body. Pictures drifted in front of his eyes.
A vast ruined stone building with square marble columns in a green underwater light ... a luminous green haze, thicker and darker at ground level, shading up to light greens and yellows ... deep blue canals and red brick buildings ... sunlight on water ... a boy standing on a beach naked with dusky rose genitals ... red night sky over a desert city ... clusters of violet light raining down on sandstone steps and bursting with a musky smell of ozone ... strange words in his throat, a taste of blood and metal ... a white ship sailing across a gleaming empty sky dusted with stars ... singing fish in a ruined garden ... a strange pistol in his hand that shoots blue sparks ... beautiful diseased faces in red light, all looking at something he cannot see....
He awoke with a throbbing erection and a sore throat, his brain curiously blank and factual. He accepted his rescue as he had been prepared to accept his death. He knew exactly where he was: some forty miles south of Panama City. He could see the low outline of mangrove swamps laced with inlets, the shark fins, the stagnant seawater.
Harbor Point
Early morning mist...birdcalls...howler monkeys like wind in the trees. Fifty armed partisans are moving north over Panama jungle trails. Unshaven faces at once alert and drawn with fatigue, and a rapid gait that is almost a jog indicate a long forced march without sleep. The rising sun picks out their faces.
Noah Blake: twenty, a tall red-haired youth with brown eyes, his face dusted with freckles. Bert Hansen: a Swede with light blue eyes. Clinch Todd: a powerful youth with long arms and something sleepy and quiescent in his brown eyes flecked with points of light. Paco: a Portuguese with Indian and Negro blood. Sean Brady: black Irish with curly hair and a quick wide smile.
Young Noah Blake is screwing the pan onto a flintlock pistol, testing the spring, oiling the barrel and stock. He holds the pistol up to his father, who examines it critically. Finally he nods....
"Aye, son, that can go with the Blake mark on it...."
"Old Lady Norton stuck her head in the shop and said I shouldn't be working on the Lord's Day."
"And she shouldn't be sniffing her long snot-dripping nose into my shop on the Lord's Day or any other. The Nortons have never bought so much as a ha'penny measure of nails off me." His father looks around the shop, his fingers hooked in his wide belt. Lean and red-haired, he has the face of a mechanic: detached, factual, a face that minds its own business and expects others to do the same. "We'll be moving to the city, son, where nobody cares if you go to church or not...."
"Chicago, Father?"
"No, son, Boston. On the sea. We have relations there."
Father and son put on coats and gloves. They lock the shop and step out into the muted streets of the little snowbound village on Lake Michigan. As they walk through the snow, villagers pass. Some of the greetings are quick and cold with averted faces.
"Is it all right if my friends come to dinner, Father? They'll be bringing fish and bread...."
"All right with me, son. But they aren't well seen here....There's talk in the village, son. Bad talk about all of you. If it wasn't for Bert Hansen's father being a shipowner and one of the richest men in town there'd be more than talk.... Quicker we move the better."
"Could the others come too?"
"Well, son, I could use some more hands in the shop. No limit to how many guns we can sell in a seaport like Boston ... and I'm thinking maybe Mr. Hansen would pay to get his son out of here...."
Spring morning, doves call from the woods. Noah Blake and his father, Bert Hansen, Clinch Todd, Paco, and Sean Brady board a boat with their liggage stacked on deck. The villagers watch from the pier.
Mrs. Norton sniffs and says in her penetrating voice, "Good riddance to the lot of them." She glances sideways at her husband.
"I share the same views," he says hastily.
Boston: two years later. Mr. Blake has prospered. He works now on contracts from shipowners, and his guns are standard issue. He has remarried. His wife is a quiet refined girl from New York. Her family are well-to-do importers and merchants with political connections. Mr. Blake plans to open a New York branch, and there is talk of army and navy contracts. Noah Blake is studying navigation. He wants to be a ship's captain, and all five of the boys want to ship out.