They looked quickly around, and both saw it at the same time — a crater formed by the roots of an upended tupelo maple. The hole was partially filled with leaves and sticks and other debris, and they threw in more. Then they jumped in and burrowed down until they were totally covered, and they waited. They waited a long time.
At first they heard nothing, just the ticking and rustling of normal woods sounds. Then they heard the radio voices, snapping on and off across a frequency, barking orders and giving locations. It was impossible to tell how close it was, or what direction it came from, but eventually the sound receded. It got smaller and smaller until it disappeared. But then another sound took its place — the sound of footsteps approaching through the brush, steady, sure of where they were headed, directly toward their hiding place. The footsteps got louder and louder until they came right to the edge of the crater, where they stopped.
Jude and Skyler held their breath. Jude froze, his stomach seizing up. Skyler tried to stare up through the leaves. He thought he could see the tips of a pair of old shoes. A sound right next to his head, the debris being riffled, and suddenly he felt a pain in his side, a stick being jammed in.
It surprised him — he yelped.
Then he jumped up and grabbed the end of the stick and started to pull it down with all his might, until he saw who was on the other end of it, and then he just stood there, his mouth wide open. Jude, down below, had no idea what was happening.
"My God!" said Skyler, his voice flooded with amazement. "You!"
"Who oona spect fa see?" came back the voice, flowing in a familiar cadence.
Jude stood up, the leaves falling around him like scales. An old man was standing there, holding onto a long stick.
The old man looked at him with surprise.
"And who might this be?" he asked.
Skyler let out a laugh, a long low quiet laugh of relief.
"Jude," he said. "Meet Kuta."
He looked up at his beloved friend.
"Kuta, this is Jude."
Jude reached up and shook his hand. He was impressed by the power in the old man's grip. Kuta stepped back and examined him from head to toe, shaking his head slightly.
"If I didn't see it, I wouldn't have believed it," he said. "Well, I expect there're a lotta things that need explainin'," he added, turning and already walking back toward the shore. "But I think we oughta leave that to some other time and some other place. Right now we gotta get you boys outa here."
Kuta told the owner of the boat, a younger Gullah called Jonah, to head straight out to sea until they could no longer see the shore, before turning south for a spell and then moving back toward land. They were relieved to see that no boats were following them.
After forty-five minutes, they put in to a small village on the coast, peopled by Gullah fisherman. Kuta, Skyler was pleased to note, occupied a position of respect. He sent a young man off to bring back the Volvo, and the man obeyed him instantly.
They settled around a table set in the middle of an empty lot. Delicious smells of gumbo and frying fish wafted over from a house next door, where a feast was being prepared for them. They opened up beers, and as quiet settled on the neighborhood and fireflies lighted up the deepening blue of twilight, they told their stories.
First, Skyler recounted how he had left the island and his adventures in New York. Then Jude told about meeting Skyler and how shocked he was to encounter someone who looked so much like him. As he talked, the crowd around the table looked from one to the other, marveling at the resemblance.
Then, when the food was brought over in steaming potfuls and great heaps were piled on their plates and more beers opened, Kuta took the floor. He told about the night when Skyler had left the island, how he had heard a gang of Elders and Orderlies coming from the Big House and had run out to hide just as they arrived, pausing only to grab his trumpet. They'd ransacked his house and he'd assumed they were looking for Skyler, but he wasn't certain.
Then Skyler dropped from sight. Kuta learned that Julia had died, and he observed her funeral from a distance, sadly watching as her coffin was lowered into the grave. But he decided not to bring fish to the Big House anymore, and so he was cut off from any more news. Still, the rumors he heard from friends who still worked there suggested the place was in an uproar. They were moving everything out. For days and days they took boxes away by the boatload.
Everything seemed to come to a head with the hurricane. With the storm threatening to be the worst in decades, a boatload of policemen came to the island with orders to evacuate it. From what Kuta heard, the Elders refused. They insisted upon their right to remain there and barricaded themselves inside the Big House. But some of the Gemini — a small handful — took advantage of the situation and left under police protection and were escorted to the mainland. Skyler assumed that this must have been the small group that had appeared to take him seriously when he tried to warn them that the Lab was dangerous.
"And do you have any idea what happened to them?" Skyler asked Kuta.
The old man just shook his head.
Skyler shuddered at the thought that occurred to him, a thought so frightening that he was loath to say it out loud: perhaps these clones, who like him had opted to go to the mainland, were the "body snatcher" murder victims they had been reading about. It sounded a bit far-fetched at first, but the more he considered it, the more he was struck by the likelihood. Who else would be ghoulish enough to rip out their entire insides? Only someone who would let children like those on the island die of a horrible disease.
He tried to push the thought from his mind.
Kuta told of listening to the D.J., Bozman, and hearing his own record played and then the over-the-air announcement, casual and offhand, that an old "friend from the island" was back in town. He had known instantly who it was, he said, grabbing a beer bottle and raising a toast to Skyler and Jude.
Later, after a few more beers, he pulled out his trumpet and played a few licks. But Skyler and Jude didn't feel like celebrating. They were too upset by what they had seen earlier.
That night, with a full stomach under his belt, Skyler slept in the basement of a large frame house close to the water's edge. The air was fragrant and warm, just as he remembered it from his youth. Jude was sleeping in a bed on the opposite wall — he could hear the rise and fall of his breathing — and Kuta was somewhere upstairs. For the first time in a long while, Skyler felt secure, almost snug.
One thing that bothered him was something that Kuta had said before they'd retired for the night. It wasn't anything much, but it preyed upon the back of his mind, a nagging irritation that wouldn't go away.
After they had all told their stories, Kuta had looked at him and then Jude and then back at him and remarked: "You know, you two keep saying that you're younger than he is. But I gotta say, when I look at you side by side, you two look just the same. If I didn't know, I'd say you were the same age."
And the others who were crowded around all agreed: Skyler looked the same as Jude. What had happened to the age difference? Why couldn't they see it?
Chapter 27
Tizzie had vaguely heard of the State University of New York branch at Purchase, but had always thought of it as an arts school. And sure enough, when she entered through the unmanned gatehouse on Anderson Hill Road, the first building she saw was the theater.
But the limousine sent by Uncle Henry, driven by a taciturn chauffeur who had raised the glass partition to seal off the front seat as soon as she stepped inside, passed the theater and continued to a wooded area at the rear of the campus. Set off by itself was a compound of nondescript buildings. From the outside it could have been a business school, except for the tall wooden fence that surrounded it. Sunk in the lawn out front was a sign in embossed metal letters: THE SAMUEL BILLINGTON SCHOOL OF ANIMAL SCIENCES.