Now, there was truth in advertising, Patrick thought. Soon, anyway. Very soon.
“What’s the newsss?” that wheezy, familiar voice whispered from behind him.
Patrick’s body tensed, and he nearly let out a cry. Shannon O’Neal whistled slightly when he made the sss sound—probably because of the oxygen tubes that were always in his nostrils—and Patrick hated the sound of it.
Shannon O’Neal was in the far corner, reading under an artdeco–style lamp that looked like a dying flower bud. His black, mechanized wheelchair whirred and clicked as he shifted his position, first rearing backward, then turning slightly so he could look Patrick in the eye. His right hand moved dexterously at the control, which looked like a tiny video-game joystick. The movements were so fluid that man and machine almost seemed to be one.
And weren’t they? Shannon O’Neal didn’t even have the strength to sit up in the chair; two black straps crisscrossing his chest tightly held him in place, and his head always listed slightly to the side, never quite upright. A human rag doll, Patrick always thought, but today he realized that description was all wrong; at least a rag doll had stuffing. Shannon O’Neal looked brittle, hollowed out, and he seemed less human to Patrick all the time.
It was his face. He knew Shannon O’Neal had been a young man once, but it was hard to speculate on how he might have looked before his face had surrendered entirely to the mesh of wrinkles that had trampled his thin, blue-veined skin. And that skin looked as if it could peel easily away. All that was left of his original looks was a faint brown color, a café con leche tint; he’d been born to an Irish woman and an African man, he’d told Patrick on the day they finally met.
Half-nigger, half-mick, Patrick thought, amused. It was a wonder he’d ever made a cent.
But he had, all right. Shannon O’Neal was never listed among the world’s wealthiest men because he kept his name out of company records, but Clarion Health Enterprises—made up of an HMO, medical-technology ventures, and a slew of investments—was all his, making him worth at least $3 billion, or more. Apparently, with enough time on his hands, even a poor mulatto boy from outside Dublin could make something of his life. Like any self-respecting capitalist, Shannon O’Neal spent most of his money making more money. But he’d also spent a good amount on private investigators, looking for his father. And he was looking for a damned good reason.
How old do you think I am? Shannon O’Neal had asked Patrick last fall, when Patrick’s first sight of this man had made it a struggle just to keep his lunch down. About two hundred and change, mister, Patrick had been thinking, and that was exactly what Shannon O’Neal had answered: I was born in Ireland in 1775. I am two hundred and twenty-six years old. Until I was one eighty, I could still stand on my own two feet.
And he’d sat there waiting for Patrick’s reaction, a silly grin parting his faded lips, making his head look even more like a skull. That grin had made Patrick’s breath die in his lungs, turned his stomach cold. As much as he wanted to believe the guy was full of shit, he couldn’t ignore his certainty that Shannon O’Neal was telling the truth. It was all right there in plain sight.
Patrick hadn’t even needed the proof of the blood, not really, although he thanked God every day that Shannon O’Neal had offered it to him.
You are descended from my son Colm, who in turn gave birth to another son, Riordan, and so on, like all the begets in the Holy Bible. I’ve kept records of my descendants, Patrick. There are thousands of you. Your father never met me, but I arranged to hire him to help build my company, just as I hired you and your son after you. I see the question in your eyes: How do I keep on living? Every year, I give myself a birthday present, a shot that keeps me alive. It can keep you alive, too. I’ve been looking at company medical records, and I see you have a bad heart. Would you like to keep on living, Patrick?
Patrick was ashamed to remember it now, but he’d actually broken down at the old man’s feet. He hadn’t realized how truly scared he was about all the bad news his doctors had been heaping on him until this old man had appeared and offered him a way out. Maybe the only reason he’d believed a word of his story was that he’d wanted to believe. Shannon O’Neal could have been some kind of faith-healing Bible Belter, or an alien from Mars, and it might not have mattered. Patrick wanted to live, that was all. He really, really wanted to live.
So, Nash had come in with a steel hypodermic, swabbed him with cotton, and pumped something into Patrick’s arm. It had felt weird, almost hot, as if it was simmering in his veins. The old man went on with his story only after Nash had left the room.
My father was a black Moor who never aged. When I got sick, or hurt, he healed me with his blood. He told me he was an immortal, from a race of immortals. He tried to abandon me, to leave me to die, but I took enough blood from him to last several lifetimes. I still have some of that blood. I have preserved it religiously, even denying it to my own children, and their children. But it is my birthright, as it is yours. And I intend to find more of it, in my father’s veins, or from another like him. I will force him to teach me the secrets of his eternal youth. I will be a young man again. If you join me, you will be, too.
Insane rambling, all of it, except for one thing—the blood had worked.
In the library, bright red highlights dotted Shannon O’Neal’s world map, all the places he’d searched for his father over the years. The African continent was so crowded with red marks that it looked as if it were bleeding, especially in Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Years back, Shannon O’Neal had hired an artist to sketch a composite of what his father might have looked like, with the help of hypnosis to jolt his recollection. Afterward, an anthropologist had told him the man’s features looked like those of people from Africa’s Horn. But there were other marks on the map, too: in Haiti, in Panama, in Turkey, in Greece, in Spain, in Korea. And finally, in Miami.
Especially Miami. Shannon O’Neal had been so excited about the developments in Miami that he’d actually relocated his entire corporation there just to be closer to the ground where he was convinced an African man with magic blood might recently have walked. Some tabloid newspaper had claimed a black musician had come back from the dead, and that was all he’d needed to hear. Especially since the man, named David Wolde, had been Ethiopian, according to the newspapers. Shannon O’Neal had analyzed photographs of an old-time jazz player from the 1920s and decided they’d been the same man. He thought he was closer than ever. This man, he was convinced, was another of the immortals like his father.
He’d bought the house where David Wolde had lived and had it scoured and analyzed. He’d had investigators interview everyone who’d known David Wolde, even though his wife’s family members had vanished into thin air, it seemed.
Then, another turn: One of his scouts had brought back the first reports that Shannon O’Neal had heard in ages of magic blood in Africa. By luck, the scout had been through one of Patrick’s contacts. That one piece of good timing had brought Patrick into the old man’s good graces, had earned him his first private meeting. And now he knew the whole truth, not just the bogus story that had been circulated through corporate ranks about a stolen blood-based drug.
They weren’t looking for a drug, they were looking for men who didn’t die. And now, it seemed, they might finally have found at least one of them, the ultimate fountain of youth.
Jesus, Patrick hoped so. If only so he wouldn’t have to stare at this guy’s ruined face.
Patrick walked up to Shannon O’Neal and leaned over to kiss his benefactor’s eggshell of a forehead. He had no real hair, only a few thin, white wisps, and his scalp was stained with age spots. The scent of dried urine hung over him. Patrick hated kissing him, but it was the least he could do. He was family.
“The courier is in Botswana, sir. He’s being tailed,” Patrick said, hoping he was telling the truth. In fact, the courier had been tailed to Gaborone in Botswana, but the latest report was that he’d somehow slipped past his shado
w. It was all just a technicality, in the end; if they didn’t get him in Botswana, they’d surely get him in South Africa, when he tried to collect his money.
Still, Patrick would feel better if he could track him to the source, the immortal man. That was what Shannon O’Neal wanted, and so did Patrick, even if it meant torturing the information out of the courier and having to double back. This was one test he didn’t plan to fail.
“I want them brought here,” Shannon O’Neal rasped. His runny brown eyes darted around restlessly, as if they were determined to exercise even if his other body parts couldn’t. His voice retained a faint Irish lilt. “All of them, the living and the dead. Do you understand? I want even the corpses carefully bound and brought to me.”
“The men know what you want, sir. They might think it’s nuts, but they’ll do it.”
“And your son . . . is he ready?” The word ssson made Patrick’s short hairs tingle.
Patrick paused. Justin had seemed hesitant about bloodshed the other night, but he had faith in him. Even prissy Justin wasn’t stupid enough to turn his back on something as big as this.
“He’s ready, sir. I’d like you to meet him. He won’t disappoint you.”
“I hope not,” the frail man’s voice said. “I want this blood in the hands of my generations of sons. I won’t keep it from you the way I’ve been forced to hoard it until now, the way my father kept it from me.” His voice grew angry, and he breathed more heavily through his words. “I want to give you your due.”
“So . . . can I tell Justin the family secret?”
“Don’t say a word, not to anyone,” Shannon O’Neal snapped, eyeing Patrick warily. He’d only recently decided to trust Patrick, and Patrick knew that trust was still fragile. But Shannon O’Neal was an old man, and he needed help. Nash and his security staff were loyal, but even though Nash had tasted the needle himself once—O’Neal had apparently saved him from a brush with testicular cancer—Nash still didn’t know everything. The old man had confided that Nash wasn’t too bright, anyway. He could do his job, but he couldn’t help build a corporate empire.
Hell, maybe Shannon O’Neal was just lonely. Tracking descendants from a distance wasn’t anything like really having a family, after all. No wonder the old man liked telling everyone that Patrick was his long-estranged son.
“Of course I won’t say anything, sir,” Patrick said. “Stupidity isn’t in my genes.”
Shannon O’Neal licked his kindling-dry lips. “I want to tell your lad Justin his birthright myself. Bring him here as soon as you can. Bring your son.” Your ssson.
Patrick was glad his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather wanted to meet his son, but he still couldn’t stand the way the word hissed from the old man’s mouth. And something else bothered him, too, an image from the dreams that gave him night sweats every time he visited, and sometimes when he didn’t: In his dream, he climbed out of bed, ran to his bathroom mirror, and saw that his face had withered just like Shannon O’Neal’s. He’d turned into a two-hundred-year-old whistling corpse.
Whenever Patrick had that dream, he could forget about going to sleep the rest of the night.
28
Botswana
For two full days, Lucas had been living in his rented Toyota Camry, parked directly in front of the clinic fence. He drove into Serowe twice a day to call the hospital from the nondescript hotel where he’d stayed his first night—sometimes Jared was fully alert, pleading with him to come home; and sometimes he was only half-conscious, which was even worse than the pleading—but Lucas spent the rest of his time haunting the clinic, resorting to the last tactic he had: pure, dogged persistence.
Sarah Shabalala brought Lucas food at mealtimes, giving him soft, pitying smiles, but she retreated when he tried to tell her about Jared, to pass on the warnings sent by her mother, or to simply plead with her for blood. Lucas refused to eat the food she brought, and Sarah watched it quickly disappear into the hands of local children who hovered around his car. Maybe a hunger strike would make a difference to Alexis Jacobs. He didn’t know, but he had to try.
Things fall apart. That phrase, more and more, occupied Lucas’s mind whenever it fell idle from exhaustion. He’d learned it first as a line from the Yeats poem as an undergraduate, of course, but it had taken on a deeper meaning in the sixties, when he’d read the novel of the same name by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. Things fall apart.
Oh, yes, they sure do, he thought. Right at the seams. Into a million pieces.
He only had to think about his calls to Tallahassee to realize that, as much as he tried not to remember. Nothing was worse than the way Jared sounded so frightened now, so emphatic. Jared had begun crying on the phone, in frail, gasping sobs. Please, Daddy? Please come home. I’m scared. I’m dreaming bad things about you. Please come back. Please? It had been a long time since Jared had called him Daddy.
Someone had grabbed the line on the other end during Lucas’s last call—he hadn’t recognized the man’s voice at first because it had been so distorted by rage, but he later realized it had been Rachel’s brother Michael, the one she’d always complained was too meek. You cowardly black bastard. Can’t you hear your son? Get your ass back here where you belong, Lucas!
Cowardly black bastard. Michael had probably regretted the racial reference right away, Lucas knew. Michael would never say or even think anything like that, especially in front of Jared. His mother might, maybe, but not Michael. Never Michael.
Except that he had, hadn’t he? Yep, he sure had. Things fall apart.
And then, for good measure, there was Cal. His best friend had run out of anger by now. Whenever he spoke to Lucas, he sounded as if he were speaking to a coma patient, knowing it was foolish to expect his words to get through, but hoping anyway. You remember what I told you that day, Lucas? Out on the back porch? Remember what I said about how some things follow you to the grave? Well, this is for real, buddy. This ain’t no bullshit. You gave it a good try out there, but you know what you need to do. You don’t want to see this get worse.
But it would certainly get worse, Lucas knew. Things fall apart, that’s why.
A tap at Lucas’s window jarred him from his bleary, dreamlike state. As usual, Lucas was sitting in his passenger seat, free of the steering wheel that hampered his legs, reclined so far back he could not see anyone approaching the car until they reached the window. “Good day again, master,” a child’s voice said clearly through the crack Lucas had left at the top of the window. “You don’t get tired of sitting here?”
Lucas saw a tall, lanky boy named Moses with a winning smile who did odd chores for Alexis and Sarah, but mostly seemed to linger by the house, waiting. Lucas had never talked to him long enough to ask what he was waiting for, but it seemed to him that it must be important. Lucas guessed Moses was probably twelve or thirteen.
Lucas stretched his legs, wincing. He had the seat pushed as far back as the car allowed, but his long legs always felt cramped beneath the dashboard. “I’m very tired, Moses,” he said dully.
“Then you should go!” Moses said.
“Not wanting to stay isn’t the same as being free to go,” Lucas said, mumbling. The child frowned in confusion, but Lucas didn’t have the strength to elaborate. His stomach tightened with a weak jab of hunger, but he ignored it. Ordinarily, his metabolism demanded meals three times a day, no later than eight, noon, and seven, but he’d fasted before, and he knew the trick to it: Once his system realized no food was forthcoming, it left him alone, scurrying around for alternatives. The acidic boiling he felt in the pit of his stomach was new, probably more nerves than hunger, but he knew the gnawing feeling would go away by morning. The pangs had been much worse yesterday. In some ways, Lucas mused, it felt as if his body were settling in, preparing to die.
“I’m waiting for my friend to come back,” Moses said suddenly. “You won’t believe she’s my friend, to see her. She’s so small. A baby, for true. But she’s lik
e no one else, master. The spirits live in her. I hope she’ll come back so you can see her. She will put a smile on your face.”
Lucas suddenly gazed at Moses with a dim smile on his lips. In his mind, the dark-skinned African boy blurred into an image of skinny Jared, bouncing a basketball against the dusty earth. Lucas half-chuckled. If Jared had come with him to Botswana, he and Moses would probably have been fast friends. Lucas’s eyes filled with tears, but the tiny smile remained.
“You’re a sad man, master,” Moses said, sighing. “But very smart, I think. I will be a doctor, too, one day. I will make people well, like you.”
Lucas could only nod. Why disillusion this boy by telling him that even doctors were helpless sometimes? He was such a good kid, so well-spoken, with a kind heart. It was too bad he was so poor, so isolated, with so few chances. Would he stay in school? What would his future be? Lucas felt such a deep, sudden ache that he nearly sobbed.
Instead, he must have surrendered to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, Moses was gone, as if he’d only hallucinated the child’s presence. Lucas fumbled with the lever to raise his seat, and this time he saw a group of bedraggled travelers huddled outside the clinic door. More seekers. It did not comfort him to speculate that Alexis wouldn’t help them either, just as she hadn’t helped the two dozen or so people who had found their way to this clinic in the time since he’d been here. How many people was that? Maybe seventy or seventy-five people a week, his tired mind calculated. Moses had told him there were sometimes more. And she was deceiving them.
Oh, she went through a song and dance first. Lucas had spent hours observing the workings of the clinic the first day; Alexis had even allowed him into the examination room while she gave young AIDS patients, diabetics, and malaria victims the same clear injection of what she’d explained were carefully distilled herbs, but which looked like nothing but saline to him. She did this staring straight into the children’s frightened faces, while their parents watched with hope that made Lucas sick to his stomach. And each time Alexis injected a new child with her phony “treatment,” Lucas felt a sharper certainty that she had meant what she’d told him when he’d first arrived—she wasn’t going to help him, now or ever. Why should he be any different from the rest of these families?