Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise (13 page)

As they disembarked, Jinkins explained, “Now I realize Mr. Potter is heading to China, but those of you not joining him will be staying here.  Luggage is sorted and delivered to the rooms of all guests automatically, whether they arrive by cruise or air.  The perimeter FlyRail track, Elephant Express, services every hotel on the island.  Luggage is scanned and loaded onto cargo gondolas at the transit points.  Amazing isn't it?”

“Expensive, wasn't it?” Henry said, looking like he was about to blow a fuse.

Suddenly, a yapping chirp echoed in the atrium, and when Aubrey looked over she saw a woman cradling a small, brown creature with the face of a Chihuahua—except for small round ears—and the body of a monkey.  It jumped down to bound for Jinkins.  Its stance was like a gorilla's; hopping on its knuckles, though it was no larger than a kitten.  Jinkins knelt down to receive it as it leaped onto his neck.  It lathered his face with licks and he laughed, “Now, now, Lucy!  Now, now!”

Henry, his face disgusted, asked, “What, may I ask, is that?”

“It's a—now now Lucy—it's a kinkajou.  They're from Central America, make the most wonderful pets,” Jinkins said jovially.  “If you'd like I could have one procured for you, Mr.—” then he frowned as the creature had clamped down on his thumb with its little teeth.  “No biting, Lucy,” Jinkins scolded.  The creature furrowed its little brows as it tightened its jaws, grappling with Jinkins' entire arm as if in a death-match.  “Now, now, Lucy!” Jinkins said as he struggled with the little beast.  “They do like to fight,” he explained.

A man in a white shirt and slacks stepped forward with a tray of freshly cut fruit on toothpicks.  Jinkins took a pineapple and offered it to the creature, which greedily gripped it with both hands and bit into it.  As it munched voraciously, it stared at Henry as if sizing him up as a potential opponent.  The man with the tray offered fruit to everyone else as Jinkins said, “I was saying, Mr. Potter, that I could have one procured for you, if you'd like.  They do make wonderful pets.”

“No, no.  That won't be necessary,” Henry said, watching impatiently as the creature finished the fruit and grew restless, eagerly searching for more by crawling all over Jinkins.

Henry looked Jinkins in the eye, “Well, it's been an interesting tour, but I'm sad to say the fun is over and the tough choices now begin.”  Then he cleared his throat and said, “From this moment on, Jinkins, you are here as a subject matter expert only.  This means that if I ask you a question, I expect an answer.  If you don't have an answer, either find one or find new employment.  Is this clear?”

Jinkins' face had gone from bright to overcast in seconds.  Even his kinkajou sensed the mood change and stared at Henry in total quiet.  “Well, Mr. Potter, I thought that—“

Henry interrupted, “Whatever you thought was wrong.  'Build it and they will come' is one of the most idiotic ideas conceived by man.  But I see here you've employed it to its full disastrous potential.  Clearly, a new
modus operandi
is required.  That is why I'm here—to save you from complete and total ruin, and the sooner you come to grips with that, the better.”

When Jinkins stood there in bruised horror, Henry cajoled, “Look, man, frankly I'm making you a generous offer by allowing you to stay on, so either accept it with dignity, or get the hell out of my way.”

Jinkins looked sadly to Lady Shrewsbury for support, but she said, “I am very sorry, my dear Ignatius.  But Mr. Potter would only help us with the understanding that he was the law.  This is going to be a difficult change for all of us, I'm afraid.”  She turned to Henry, “But that does not give you the right to engage in rude and seditious behavior!  It would behoove you to find a more diplomatic
modus operandi
for yourself, Mr. Potter.”

Unmoved, Henry said to Jinkins, “My offer remains.  Will you stay on with us?”

His face filled with sorrow, he stroked his pet's head several times and then said, “I couldn't leave Paradeisia, Mr. Potter.”  It sounded like he was speaking about a child rather than an island.

“Very good,” Henry said.  “The first thing I must insist upon is that you put your animal away.  The next is that you take us down the shaft.”

“Portal,” Jinkins corrected.

“And the third is that you produce these mythical balance sheets of yours.”

And with that, the kinkajou leaped down to the floor and furiously attacked Henry.

St. Joseph's Hospital

Doctor Kingsley, still wearing his mask, said sadly, “I'm very sorry, John.  I know Sarah was special to you.”  At that moment, two police officers with masks approached. 

“Doctor Kingsley?  Doctor Richard Kingsley?” one of them asked.

“Not now,” Doctor Kingsley said, holding a hand up.

“Sir, this is very important.”

“In a moment,” he said tersely.  The officers nervously backed away.

Doctor Kingsley turned around, back to all the other physicians who had been trying to save Sarah.  They were zipping her body into a bag.  The same kind of bags Doctor Burwell opened every day. 

Doctor Burwell backed away from the scene and turned around.  Slowly, in a daze, he walked through the curtains and out of the area.

When they were done bagging the body, Doctor Kingsley turned around to look for Doctor Burwell.  But he was gone.

Doctor Kingsley was stripping off his gloves when his cell phone rang.  At that moment, the officers once again approached him, but he held up a hand to take the call.  It was his mother-in-law.

“I've been trying to reach you all day but the lines are busy.  I'm so sorry.”

“Yes, there's a lot going on with this virus.”

Her voice was serious, “Rick...I'm so sorry.  Martha is dead.”

He looked up at the officers.  In disbelief he said into his phone, “I'm sorry I didn't hear you.  What did you say?”

“It's Martha...she's passed away, Rick.”

In a daze, he lowered the phone to his side and asked the officers, “Are you here to tell me about my wife?”

One of them looked down at his feet while the other nodded, saying, “She showed the symptoms an hour ago and passed away before they could reach the hospital.”

“Where is she?” Doctor Kingsley asked.

One of the officers nodded down the hallway, where a stretcher was being wheeled by five people in scrubs.

Doctor Kingsley left the room.  He took steps down the hallway, meeting the stretcher.  He uncovered the body.

His wife's mouth was stained with blood, her sickly yellow eyes open in a gaping stare.  Her lips were pale, almost white.

Without a word, he turned around and walked farther down the hall, through a door, down the stairs.  He stepped out of the ground floor door and went straight to his Aston Martin.  He hated to see it now.

He opened his car door and started the engine.

Leave.  He was going to leave this place.

United Nations Security Council

The vast auditorium was silent; the thousands-strong audience were on the edge of their seats.  Now feeling totally at ease, Doctor Martin leaned back in the squeaky chair as he continued, “You all should recall the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  It desolated the entire region, killed over a quarter of a million people, but left very few animals dead.  Why did the animals survive?

“Well, when you look at the evidence, a theme begins to emerge.  In Thailand, thirty minutes before the tsunami struck, a herd of buffalo looked out at the sea and stampeded up a hill.  An hour before the tsunami, elephants at Yala National Park, Sri Lanka, were seen trumpeting and running from the beach.  Bats flew inland, dogs refused to go to the beach, flamingos abandoned low-lying areas, and zoo animals rushed into shelters and wouldn't come out.  These animals all had one thing in common: they knew the tsunami was coming.

“Extraordinary, you say.  Not really.  This is nothing new or remarkable.

“The ability of animals to anticipate disasters reaches far back into antiquity.  The Greeks and Chinese have historically trusted their animals to warn them of impending earthquakes.

“It is a
well-known fact that, during World War II, families relied upon their pets to alert them of air raids long before the sirens sounded.  These animals knew that planes were coming when they were hundreds of miles distant, well in advance of their ability to hear them.

“Dogs in London are known to have warned of German V2 rockets, rockets that were faster than the speed of sound.  It is a physical impossibility that the dogs
heard
the rockets.  So how did they know?

“Well, it seems that these animals have an intuition, a sixth sense, if you will.  And they are very well attuned to it.  I have recorded 177 cases of dogs responding to the death or suffering of their absent owners and 5,000 cases of similar psychic phenomena in animals of all kinds.

“Among these phenomena, and one which myself and others have tested scientifically through experimentation, is what I call the 'intention effect.'

“We have, in video, documented that home alone dogs know not only when their masters leave for the house, but when their masters
decide
to leave.

“How do we know this, you ask,” he chuckled.  “Well quite simply, actually.

“Dogs frequently run to the door or window in anticipation of their owners' arrivals.  By setting up situations in which masters depart by various means from various locations at abrupt and unexpected times, we can watch the dogs through video and document exactly when they ran to the door.  The statistics show that, overwhelmingly, they run to the door at the moment their masters intend to leave for home.

“So, given this evidence, we come to the inevitable question:  How do the dogs know?

“Well, it might be related to this other strange phenomena.  Has anyone heard of Moon the dog?”

No one raised a hand.

“Well, Moon was driving cross country with his master when they stopped for a quick break.   Something spooked Moon, and he disappeared in a flash.   The master searched everywhere but was unable to turn up his faithful animal.  Eventually, the master returned home in despair.

“Now, Moon disappeared seventy-seven miles from home.  Between the dog and the house were all manner of obstacles: miles of desert, a rushing river, a mountain range...all of it unfamiliar terrain.  Despite this, weeks later, Moon appeared at the door.  How did the canine have the slightest idea where to go?

“Well, perhaps the same way that Skittles that cat did.  Skittles was lost while enjoying a vacation 350 miles from home.  When he returned 140 days later, he was skin and bones and his paws were raw.  But he made it nonetheless.

“Of course that's nothing to the cat in Russia that traveled 1,300 miles across Siberian wilderness to get back to his family.  The journey took three months.

“And what of Smokey the cat of Australia, who was picked up by scoundrels and shot thirteen times in the head and left for dead.  He showed up on his family's doorstep a week later, having drug himself there despite his wounds.  Medical care fully restored him to health.

“These are but a few of thousands of such stories, and not only stories about domestic animals, but wild ones.  By watching wild wolves, for example, the researcher William Long noticed that the animals seemed to display behavior that was inexplicable by natural means.  The animals had an intuition about the others' whereabouts, the sixth sense.

“I propose that we do, too.  After all, we use it every day.”  Responding to the looks of surprise on the representatives' faces, he smiled, “You want to know how.  I'll tell you.”

94 Golfpointe Road

QUARANTINE

CONTAGIOUS DISEASE

NO ONE SHALL ENTER OR LEAVE THIS PREMESIS WITHOUT THE PROPER DOCUMENTATION ISSUED BY THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION.  (USC 42 PART G)

NO PERSON EXCEPT AN AUTHORIZED AGENT OR EMPLOYEE OF THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION SHALL ALTER OR REMOVE THIS SIGN.  (USC 42 PART G)

ANYONE VIOLATING THIS REGULATION WILL BE SUBJECT TO A FINE OF NO MORE THAN $1,000 OR BY IMPRISONMENT FOR NOT MORE THAN ONE YEAR, OR BOTH.  (USC 42 PART G § 271)

That's what was printed on the orange signs posted all over the lawn and taped to the majestic white colonial on Golfpointe Road.  Cordoning off the lawn was caution tape, and as if that wasn't enough, someone had painted gigantic red X's on the grass.  Media trucks were all over the road, and police cruisers were parked at the curb.  Camera crews with over-made-up reporters were everywhere, jockeying for the best view of the house.  And the policemen were milling around, bored to death
or posing for the cameras.

Wesley Peterson and his mother, Cynthia, stood by an upstairs window looking down at the scene.