Inside the vast storage tanks bordering the refinery, inside the cracking facilities of the refinery itself, certain molecular bonds were snapped. Perhaps a dozen new compounds were formed as a result. The subsequent creation brought forth destruction, for several of those new compounds were volatile and unstable. Within the airless confines of a few huge tanks, the result was explosive.
The big globe which squatted near the Administration Building, the one beneath which Jake had encountered the troublesome worker, was the first to go. Painted steel, catwalks and piping erupted skyward, propelled by expanding gases and accompanied by black-orange flame. Jake tried to stop it when he realized what he’d done, tried to reverse it. Even if he’d had the training and experience in the use of his ability, he couldn’t have prevented what had already been set in motion.
Pipes began to disintegrate, spewing unfamiliar corrosive compounds across pavement and other structures. Cracks appeared not only in the walkways but in the earth beneath the plant. Jake had touched much more than a few liquids.
“Uncle Jake!” Someone was shaking him. “Uncle Jake, that’s enough!” He blinked, looked to his right. Amanda was yelling and shaking him with both hands, pleading with him. “That’s enough, Uncle Jake!”
Dazedly he turned to look back at the refinery. It was disappearing, coming apart as explosion after explosion ripped through it. The concussions were felt as far north as Galveston. As he stared, one particularly violent eruption temporarily deafened man and grandniece. A gigantic red-orange fireball rose from the center of the petrochemical complex as fragments of metal and plastic and people were blown a mile from the middle of the plant. None of them struck the fleeing boat, though plenty struck all around it. A fine powder sifted down to the water in the inboard’s wake.
A serious, no-nonsense invisible fire struck his heart. He went forward, then backward in the seat, both arms wrapped around his chest. Somehow Amanda shoved him aside, gaining enough of an edge to sit on as she fought to regain control of the momentarily gyrating boat. She was crying steadily, cold with only the thin nightgown to cover her. She brought their speed down to a crawl and pointed the boat southward as she bent to her uncle.
His mouth gaped wide and a rasping, sodden sound came from his throat. She put an ear against his chest, heard his heart going mad. It would pause for an instant, then resume beating wildly.
Finally it steadied. Jake squinted at her until his vision cleared. He’d been asleep, or something. Distant, faint explosions continued to shake the shoreline behind the boat and interspersed among them, the first weak cries of approaching sirens. Lots of sirens.
Jake saw his grandniece gazing into his eyes, saw the tears straggling down her cheeks. Weakly, he began fumbling at his shirt for the bottles. Then he knew something had broken inside him. He shook his head at nothing. It was growing dark out, evening advancing in midday, the ominous evening he’d dreaded and been expecting for a long time.
“Too late,” he whispered at her. She had to lean closer to understand him. “Too late for nitro now. Too late for anything. I didn’t mean, didn’t mean to do all that.” His neck muscles didn’t seem to be working, so he had to indicate what he meant by gesturing backward with his eyes.
“No one will bother you anymore, Mandy.” He smiled. That only increased the flow of tears, which was not his intention. “No one will ever bother you again.”
“It doesn’t matter, Uncle Jake. What matters now is you. You’re going to get better, get well. You have to.” The bodice of her gown was dark with tears and sweat. “If you don’t, I won’t have anybody to talk to. I’ll be all empty inside.”
“Oh no you won’t, Mandy. There’s no void where there are people who love you, like your mom and dad and brother. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Marty. He’s a good boy, your brother. And before you know it there’ll be somebody else to fill any voids, somebody who’ll love you forever. You’ll see. There always is.”
“There wasn’t for you, Uncle Jake.”
He tried to shrug, discovered that he couldn’t. “So I’m a disreputable, cantankerous old bachelor. That was just something I never got around to, Mandy. Never met the right woman, I expect. But there’s something else I have to get around to. One more thing to do.” He went silent.
He’d never tried to make anything like this slipt before. He wasn’t sure if he could manage it. After everything that had happened he still didn’t really know quite how he made things slipt. It was funny, he mused, downright hysterical. He was going to go without ever knowing what had pushed him into it.
Maybe on the other side, he thought. Maybe on the farther shore someone could tell him how it worked. That was a nice thought. He was looking forward to seeing Catherine again.
It occurred to him that he could have tried the same thing on himself. Too late now. The time for that would’ve been years ago, before everything inside him got too broke down. Typical, though. Maybe if he’d thought of himself first everything would have worked out better long ago. Too late for that now, though. Too late to do anything, except consider his grandniece and strain to make something inside her slipt.
Amanda jerked back, let out a little “Oh!” of pain and surprise. Her hands drew away from her uncle and went to her legs.
“Uncle Jake, it’s hurting me! It’s hurting!”
Suddenly the import of that pain struck home, and then it didn’t hurt so much anymore. Then there was only shock, and wonder.
She leaned back and put a hand on the passenger’s seat for support. She pushed down hard with both hands and did something she hadn’t done in eleven years. She stood up.
Only for a few seconds, because the muscles weren’t there to support her body weight. She slumped back against him. The muscles would come back. All that would require was a little therapy, a little hard work. But her legs would come back. Her spine throbbed just above her hips, a throbbing that was slowly beginning to fade. She stared at her Uncle Jake. He was smiling back at her, unable to nod but able to perceive his success.
“I thought maybe I could do something like that,” he said softly. “It’s just like the bottle caps, only more complicated. You just have to make things feel right. You never did feel right, Mandy. I remembered what the doctors said, all those years ago. I thought I could do something like that.”
“Uncle Jake …” she started to say.
“It’ll take you awhile. You’ll have to learn how to walk all over again. But I think that thing that was wrong in your back will be okay now.” He sighed and his chest rattled like a tin drum. “I think everything will be okay now.”
Suddenly his back arched forward; once, twice. Then he settled back easily into the padded seat. The air hissed out of him and was not renewed.
“No,” Amanda whispered. “Please, no.”
The sirens across the water were very loud now, all clustered behind the billowing black smoke and the flames. Amanda pushed and beat on her uncle’s chest and breathed into his mouth the way the books said you should, but it didn’t do any good. It didn’t do any good because Jake wasn’t there anymore. She knew that in a way no doctor could know it, because Jake’s mind, always so receptive and open, had become a dark, empty place.
She sat there and sobbed while the boat chugged southward at a few miles an hour. Eventually she wiped at her face and retook the wheel. That was how he’d expect her to react, she thought. This is what he’d expect me to do. The boat accelerated, parting the water as it sped toward the open expanse of Lavaca Bay. Occasionally Amanda used her legs on the controls, the legs her Uncle Jake had returned to her.
No one to talk to anymore. No familiar, warm thoughts to cuddle up to at night in bed. But she was a smart girl. Everyone talked about how smart she was. She’d study hard, and she’d learn, and she’d try to find out what the bad people had wanted so desperately to know about her Uncle Jake.
She thought about his last words. Maybe she would meet some boys now. Maybe her brother could introduce her to some. Surely they’d be different in college, more serious, more grown-up. She’d finally have a real life, all the more real because of her Uncle Jake’s final act. She’d get married, yes, and raise a family. If she had a boy she knew what she’d call him. She’d have a couple of boys, and a girl, too. No, make that a couple of girls and a boy.
She’d be able to tell them all about her wonderful, sad, gifted Uncle Jake. That made her feel better, helped to keep back the tears, as she steered down the center of the intercoastal waterway.
And as she steered the boat toward the tree-choked shore later that afternoon, toward the oh-so-familiar yard and house, it did not occur to her to wonder if just maybe whatever she held inside her genes, whatever Jake Pickett had possessed inside his, might be waiting patiently within her own body, a tiny insignificant twist in a strand of DNA waiting to be passed on to a child not yet conceived.
Maybe a new twist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The New York Times–bestselling author of more than one hundred ten books, Alan Dean Foster is one of the most prominent writers of modern science fiction. Born in New York City in 1946, he studied filmmaking at UCLA, but first found success in 1968 when a horror magazine published one of his short stories. In 1972 he wrote his first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, the first in his Pip and Flinx series featuring the Humanx Commonwealth, a universe he has explored in more than twenty-five books. He also created the Spellsinger series, numerous film novelizations, and the story for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. An avid world traveler, he lives with his family in Prescott, Arizona.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Ian Koviak
Copyright © by 1984 Alan Dean Foster
ISBN: 978-1-5040-9351-4
This edition published in 2024 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
