She stopped, leaving it to the astronomer to finish her thought.
“If I’m right,” Howell finally said, “it means there was someone out there.”
“If you’re right?” Katharine echoed. “You just said the only explanation—”
“I said, it’s one explanation,” Howell interrupted. “And certainly my favorite,” he went on, a wry smile twisting his lips, “since finding someone out there would make me the most famous astronomer on the planet. But unfortunately I have a feeling there are about a hundred other explanations, all of them far more probable than what I just told you.” His eyes returned to the computer monitor. “Look, don’t say anything about this to anyone else, okay? There’s not much chance I’m right, and the opposite of being known as the most famous astronomer on the planet is being known as the stupidest. Okay?”
“But if you’re right—” Katharine began, and again the astronomer interrupted her.
“If I’m right, you can testify that you were here when the discovery was made. But I’d just as soon prove it first before talking about it.” He looked up at her. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Katharine agreed.
Another soft electronic signal sounded, and both of them looked back at the monitor to see that another window had opened in the lower right quadrant of the screen Howell had been studying.
“Well, look at that,” he said. “This morning we both get results.”
Katharine studied the two file names that appeared in the box, both of them stark in their simplicity.
Skull.jpg
Video.avi.
Both of them were annotated with their domain of origin, which was listed as mishimoto.com.
“I’m almost sure the file names were a lot longer than these,” Katharine said. “It’s as though the computer looked for names that matched what I saw, instead of content.”
Phil Howell shook his head. “You said there was a link on the page with the skull that took you to the video. The file name you saw was probably the one for the page that contained the graphic of the skull, and the link. These would be the files themselves.”
“But how do I find the files themselves?”
“Go back to Rob Silver’s office,” the astronomer told her. “Mishimoto is the name of Takeo Yoshihara’s company, which should mean that mishimoto dot com is the name of his private domain for e-mail purposes. Which means that those files are somewhere on one of Takeo Yoshihara’s own computers.”
“Can you find them from here?”
Howell shrugged. “Maybe, if I were an expert hacker. But it shouldn’t be too hard to find them from Rob’s office, since he’s already inside Yoshihara’s network. As for me, I’m going back to work on my signal. And remember,” he added, nodding toward the computer screen that was still displaying the results of his own search. “Not a word about this. Please?”
“Not even a hint,” Katharine promised. “And thanks for helping me out. If I find anything, believe me, I’ll let you know.”
“Great,” Howell replied. But by the time Katharine was back in her car less than a minute later, the astronomer had already dismissed the two files from his mind. To him, the strange radio signal from a star fifteen million light-years away was far more interesting than any image of an earthbound skull could ever be.
CHAPTER 19
He was back in the cane field.
The fire was crackling around him, and though he could see no flames, its glow suffused the darkness with a reddish tinge.
He could feel it, creeping toward him from every direction. It was as if he were encircled by hunters so sure of their kill that they no longer felt any need to conceal their presence with silence.
Despite the approaching hunters, he was unafraid.
He could smell the first tendrils of smoke as they slithered into his nostrils and down his throat to his lungs.
But it didn’t smell like smoke — not quite.
Smoke had always made him choke, made his eyes sting and run, left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He breathed deeply of it, drawing it into his lungs as if it were fresh salt air blowing in from the sea on the trade winds. As it flowed into his body, he felt something he’d never experienced before, an exuberance, an exultation that infused his body with a strength and well-being that made him feel invincible.
The crackling of the fire grew louder, but he could hear something else now. A strange moaning sound, as if someone were in great pain. No, not a moaning, but the whoosh and crackle of the fire, gaining strength as it swept through the cane field, feeding on everything in its path, building on itself. It was like a living force now, rampaging across the earth, creating a great swirling, howling upward draft that sucked every molecule of air in from the surrounding area to feed the growing monster, huge now and continuing to grow, continuing to spread.
Yet still he couldn’t see the flames.
Then, at last, they came.
Only glimpses at first, barely visible flickerings of orange, like the exploring tongues of serpents, poking through the dense thicket of cane that surrounded him.
He felt the first warmth of the fire on his skin, but it was like no fire he’d ever felt before.
This fire seemed to fuel him, to impart its strength to him rather than consume him. Then, as he felt his own being thrive upon the closeness of the throbbing monster’s breath, the foliage around him began to quail before the beast. Everywhere he looked, the leaves and stalks withered before the advancing heat, then burst into flames as they succumbed to the rampaging marauder.
The tendrils of smoke thickened into the bodies of serpents, winding around his body, wrapping him tightly in their coils, but instead of struggling against their grasp, he reveled in the sensation, drawing as much vitality from the tightening spirals of smoke as from the fire itself.
The howling of the maelstrom filled his ears, and the darkness of the night was banished by the shower of embers exploding from the field. Smoke and flame intertwined, whirling around him like a living being.
Entranced, he reached out as if to gather the force of the firestorm to him, and a great cry of ecstasy rose from his throat.
He was no longer the hunted, but now, becoming as one with the inferno around him, he felt the spirit of the fire itself enter his soul.
He stretched to his full height, his legs spread, his arms flung out, and the cry of the hunter bellowed up from the core of his being.…
Jeff Kina’s whole body jerked spasmodically in response to the shout that issued from him and yanked him from the thrall of the dream. Yet as he came awake, the dream stayed with him. The fire’s heat he’d felt only a moment ago was gone, but the smoke was not. The second he opened his eyes, he could see it swirling around him, a gray-brown fog so thick he instinctively closed his eyes against it.
He lay still, his eyes clamped shut, his heart pounding, but no longer from the exultation of the dream.
Now it was pounding with fear.
The dream had been so real, it was exactly as if he’d been back in the cane field, back in the vortex of the fire, just before the men from the yellow truck had grabbed him, and Josh Malani had taken off in his pickup.
In those few seconds — those few moments while he’d stood next to Josh’s truck — he’d felt different than he’d ever felt before in his life.
Part of it had been the fire itself. There had been something about the way the flames ebbed and flowed and danced together that reached into his mind, touched something deep inside him, made him feel almost as if he’d been hypnotized. And as the smoke had filled his nostrils, he’d felt something else.
The restlessness that had plagued him all evening disappeared, and his whole body tingled exactly as it did when he was finished with his warm-ups at a track meet and ready to run a race.