Jude watched him and, once he was ten yards off, followed suit, imitating his movements as best he could. The water was warm and the rocks underneath were covered by seaweed, which made them slippery. Keeping his balance was harder than it looked, because the currents swirling around his legs kept changing direction and velocity. Twice, he managed to prop himself up with the staff just in time to avoid a dunking. At one point, Jude looked up and saw a fishing boat anchored maybe half a mile out to sea.
Soon they reached the halfway mark, and the water got shallower. Then they made rapid progress and reached the opposite shore quickly. Skyler sat down to put his shoes on, and Jude did the same.
"Did you see that boat out there?" asked Jude.
"Yeah. Just fishing. They're always out there."
"I guess."
Skyler looked around.
"I can't tell you how strange it is to be here, standing right here on this land. When we were growing up, it was prohibited even to come near the place. So naturally we had all kinds of fantasies about it — we imagined all sorts of things."
"Like what?"
"Mostly about the children. Who were they? What were they going to do?"
"This whole place must have filled you with fear."
"Not really. Though on some level, I think we probably feared they were going to take our places—"
"Which probably wasn't far off."
"I'd say it's right on the mark. Since we're clones, chances are they're clones, too — only younger ones. It all makes sense when you think about it. That way, their organs could be used further down the line, when ours wear out. Another great advance in extending life span."
Skyler said this with no effort to hide his bitterness, looking directly at Jude, as if he were holding him responsible.
"Anyway," he added. "All this is by way of saying that we don't know what we're going to find here, if anything."
Jude nodded. He had been thinking the same thing himself. Again, he was struck by the fact that his mind and Skyler's seemed to work in tandem. They were so much alike in so many ways — and yet so fundamentally different. He noticed that Skyler, back on his home turf, seemed more confident, more assertive. And again he was proud of him for that — proud and keenly competitive.
"You know," he said. "Now that I'm here and I'm actually seeing all this" — he waved one hand to take in the island they had just left—"I still have trouble getting my mind around it. I mean, it's just so incredible. This little colony existing off the coast of Georgia, the private laboratory of a madman, producing human beings for experimentation."
Skyler looked at him for a long time without speaking and then just grunted. He stood up.
"Better get going," he said. "Follow me."
The marsh grass was spread all around them. From where they stood it was apparent that this island was much smaller — they could see the shore on both sides where the grass abruptly dropped off. About fifty yards ahead was a line of trees. There the island widened, but it was still narrow enough to cross in five or ten minutes. There were no buildings visible, no sign of habitation at all, except for a thin brown path through the grass. Skyler found it and started off, and Jude followed.
Once the path hit the trees, it seemed to disappear, so they were forced to fight their way through the underbrush, which was thicker than on the other island. There were vines and brambles and thorn bushes that ripped their pants legs and scratched their arms. Their progress was slow, but eventually they came to a small meadow.
It was here that they first heard the sound.
A strange sound, like a low humming or even a moaning, distinctly human but unlike anything they had heard before. It carried on the wind, ghost-like.
They looked at each other, and without a word hurried across the meadow. Ahead was a grove of tall, smooth-trunked palm trees, rising up every which way to reach the sun. Through them they could see in the distance some sort of structure.
Drawing near, they made out a brick wall, about five feet tall, topped by razor wire. It looked solid and impregnable, without an opening. The sound was louder now — coming over the enclosure. They followed the wall to a corner where it formed a perfect right angle, and then to another corner and another right angle. Here the trees were sparse and there was a driveway, a small brick gatehouse, and in the distance a docking area, and beyond that, the sea. No one was in sight.
Skyler and Jude walked up to the entrance — two hinged wooden gates, large enough for a car to drive though, which were standing wide open. They walked through them and found themselves in the central courtyard of an old building, constructed in the French colonial style, with verandas, shielded walkways and slanting tile roofs. It had fallen on hard times; the walls were cracked, tiles had fallen to the ground, windows were broken. A large, spreading oak tree sat squat in the center, its limbs hanging so low that the Spanish moss brushed against the bare ground.
They knew right away that someone was there. Not from anything that they saw, but from the sounds — a mumbling, an echoing cough, a dry groaning, whispers — that seemed to come from the shadow of every window and every doorway.
The nearest door led to a sort of office, which was empty. A stool rested before a counter upon which a book lay, one page rustling softly in the wind. Sitting beside it was a mug whose bottom was coated with a brown layer of coagulated coffee.
Next door was a cavernous room. They paused at the door because the smell was overwhelming, a smell of decay and illness. They stepped inside, and as their eyes accustomed to the dimness, they began to make out shapes and movement — people lying upon bare mattresses that lined the wall. Not ordinary people, but small, wizened figures, turning slowly to look at them.
"Good God," said Jude. "What is this?"
They walked over to a small naked person lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. He seemed to be a boy, but it was hard to tell. He was totally hairless — bald without eyebrows or eyelashes. The skin on his overly large skull was thin and crinkly, almost transparent, so they could see the veins throbbing underneath. He was about four feet in height, but oddly proportioned, with a bulging head and a small face and a small lower jaw and receding chin, protruding eyeballs and a huge beaklike nose. His skin had numerous yellow-brown blotches upon it. His chest was narrow, his belly stuck out, his knees were prominent and his sexual organs were large.
He was a strange birdlike creature. As they stood over him, his eyes moved and found theirs, and he looked from one to the other, silently. It was like looking into a bottomless well. He was beyond reach, gone. They had the odd sensation they were looking into the glazed eyes of an old man on his deathbed.
They realized they were in a ward of some sort, but no one seemed to be in attendance. There were no doctors or nurses. Their presence created no reaction. The moaning that had brought them there had stopped, and it was strangely quiet, except for the occasional dry cough. The only movement came from a ceiling fan, which turned slowly with a steady ticking. It churned the smells of vomit and diarrhea, spreading them throughout the sick bay.
"They've been left behind," Jude said to Skyler, whispering. "They've been abandoned."
Skyler did not reply. His eyes looked around, taking everything in furiously.
Many were lying upon the filthy mattresses. Sometimes their eyes flickered as Skyler and Jude approached, the only sign that they took notice of them. Others just lay there with their eyes closed, barely breathing, in a posture of exhausted resignation.
A few seemed to be quietly weeping. In the second ward, they again heard the moaning — the sound they had heard earlier beyond the wall. It came from a girl, and when they tried to help her, she withdrew into total silence again, a mummy with wrinkled skin and brown-rimmed eyes.