Part 20 (1/2)

There were about a dozen tanks in the room that contained various forms of aquatic life. Sarah recognized a baby seal mewling in one tank. Another contained a dolphin that looked rather the worse for wear. Several others gave off the pungent aroma of formaldehyde and contained various organs and portions of internal anatomy.

There was one person in the room with her, regarding her with a mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and interest. He was a tall, slightly chubby man with dark hair untidily brushed. He had piercing blue eyes and an almost cherubic face.

'I'd ask you to explain that comment,' Sarah finally answered him, her voice thick and still speckled with pain. 'But I doubt I'd like the explanation.'

'Probably not,' the man agreed readily. 'Dear me, Miss Smith, your inquisitive nature has really caused you trouble this time, hasn't it?'

'Oh, I'd say it was about par for the course,' she replied. The strength was returning to her tired muscles now. If she could just keep this man talking long . . . What? Maybe she could break the handcuffs with a mighty tug? Fat chance. She wondered what the time was, and whether Alice had managed to convince her father of the need for action. If she stalled long enough, maybe help could arrive. Besides that, there was always the Doctor. Sarah doubted he'd be too far away once the action began. But would he be close enough to do her any good? 'Speaking of which, just what is the course?'

Her captor gave her another of his happily innocent smiles. 'Miss Smith, you have a terrible habit of wanting answers to questions you shouldn't even be thinking about in the first place. Haven't you ever heard the old saying about a little knowledge being dangerous to your health?'

Sarah grunted. ' ” If a little knowledge is dangerous”,' she quoted, ' ” where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” ' She gave him a thin smile. 'Thomas Henry Huxley.'

'Oh, very good!' the man approved. 'You have quite a wit about you.' He shrugged. 'Of course, it is about all you do have about you. And, speaking of danger, you are in it, and I am not. I suppose that makes me the man that you refer to.'

'And what makes you think I'm in danger and you aren't?' asked Sarah, putting on the most innocent expression she could muster. She didn't really expect it to fool him for a second, so she wasn't too disappointed when he laughed at her.

'Oh, you really are something special!' He shook his head sadly. 'Miss Smith may I call you Sarah? ”Miss Smith”

sounds so formal.'

'Oh, by all means, let's dispense with formality,' Sarah answered. 'I'm not one to stand on etiquette. A step-ladder, maybe, but not etiquette. And what do I call you that's polite in mixed company?'

'My name is Ross, Sarah.'

'Ross?' She narrowed her eyes and peered hard at him. 'You wouldn't happen to be related to a Colonel Edmund Ross, would you?'

'He is my brother.'

'Ah.' Some of this was starting to make a strange kind of sense to her now. 'And what do your friends call you?

a.s.suming you have any, that is.'

'All men have friends, Sarah. Mister Breckinridge, for example, is a very good friend of mine. I allow him to call me Percival.' He smiled at her. 'I imagine I could extend that courtesy to you, too, while you are still with us.'

'Charmed,' Sarah replied. 'I'd shake hands, but it's a trifle difficult right at the moment.' She studied her captor with interest. This was definitely a man whose elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor. 'Percival, what are you up to here?'

'My, my, my,' he chided. 'Curiosity killed the cat, Sarah. And I'm afraid it's going to kill you, too.'

'Can we drop the corny literary allusions?' Sarah begged him. 'If you intend to kill me, where's the harm in telling me what I've got to die for?'

Ross shrugged. 'Why not? Immediately, you have to die because I sent those two blockheads after a dead body and they brought me back two live ones instead.'

Well, that was something. 'Kipling's still with us, I take it,' Sarah asked.

'For the time being, yes.' Ross gestured to the large cylinder at the end of the room. 'As soon as that chamber has been vacated, he'll probably end up in there. I'm not entirely certain that the process will work on someone who has so evidently pa.s.sed the point of p.u.b.erty as Master Kipling, but if it kills him then it saves me the bother of having to see to the task personally. And if it doesn't kill him, we'll have another worker.' He patted her gently on the arm. 'You, my dear, are obviously considerably past the age of p.u.b.erty yourself. The process would definitely kill you which is, I'm sad to report, your fate anyway. But it would also damage your internal organs, which would be a terrible waste.'

Sarah's mouth was definitely on the desert side of dry right now. 'Yes,' she agreed, trying to sound flippant. 'I'd hate to see my organs go to waste. You know what they say about a mind being a terrible thing to waste.'

Ross laughed, genuinely amused. 'Oh, you are a one, Sarah. It's a shame that you'll be staying with me, albeit in a number of small containers. I really would have liked the chance to spar with you a little more.'

'Well, you can't have everything,' Sarah managed to joke. 'You may have my body, but you'll never have my mind.

Unless you intend to pickle that, too.' She was trying very hard to avoid thinking about his promises. 'But aside from the fascination of taking my liver out on a date, why do you want my body parts so badly, Percival?'

'For my work, Sarah,' Ross explained. He gestured toward the cylinder and the merboy within. 'As you can see, I've managed to create my own rather unique lifeforms. I believe you came face to face with a number of my creations over the past few days?'

'Yes.' She shuddered. 'Mutant hounds, killer seals and a rather pretty young mermaid.'

'The tip of the iceberg,' he a.s.sured her. 'Here in this laboratory, I have the means to achieve fusion of different animal species, combining their traits to form prototypical creatures that before now existed only in the imagination. Thanks to me, mermaids do exist.'

Sarah shook her head. 'I can't quite bring myself to believe this is just a hobby for you,' she said. 'I mean, most people just take up collecting b.u.t.terflies or stamps for a pastime. Are you just doing all this because you can?'

Ross looked shocked. 'Sarah,' he chided, 'how petty you must think I am! Though I must admit that part of this is merely the desire to see what limits I can break. But my experiments do have a n.o.ble end: I am creating separate species of human beings that will take mankind beyond the oldest boundaries imposed on our species. My merfolk are the first if we don't include that dreadful hound-boy, which was unplanned but I hope to create more very shortly.' He waved his hands in the air like a comic-opera sorcerer. 'Imagine crossing human beings with cheetahs, for example, and creating a race with the endurance and cunning and prowess of the major cats. What warriors and athletes they might become! Or taking a simple bat and making from it winged beings that could ride the air currents and really fly! Isn't that a project worthy of great imagination?'

'It's certainly great something,' agreed Sarah. 'B.S., mostly. You can't be serious.'

He glared at her, his good humour vanis.h.i.+ng in an instant. 'How can you say that after what you've witnessed?' he asked. 'My powers are quite real. The merfolk are alive, their bodies stable, and they are viable. Do you understand what that means?'

'Yes,' agreed Sarah, impressed despite herself. 'That they can have children when they mature. And that they will breed true.'

'Precisely. They can breed true. If I were to step aside now, the merfolk would continue to live and grow. I have done what no man has ever done before: I have created a new breed, a new genus, as my legacy. I have achieved what n.o.body has even dreamed of before least of all that obnoxious, overbearing older brother of mine!'

'I suppose it's partly my fault from the beginning,' Colonel Ross admitted. 'Everything Percival has ever done in his miserable life was an attempt to either prove that he was better than me or else to try and hurt me for being what I am.'

'And what are you?' asked the Doctor carefully. 'If you're merely a military man, I'm a humbug. You remind me a little of a Brigadier chappie I know.'

Ross sighed. 'I've been attempting to avoid answering that question since I arrived here, Doctor. But in the interests that seem to have linked us, I have little choice left to me now, do I?'

'None at all,' the Doctor replied cheerfully. 'If I don't like or don't believe your replies, Doyle and I will truss the two of you up here and mark you ”Do Not Open Till Christmas”.'

Doyle privately wasn't sure that the Doctor's threat could be carried out quite that simply, but it appeared that Ross had already made his decision anyway.

'I am a special agent working directly under the command and authority of Her Majesty Queen Victoria,' he answered.

'It is my job to investigate those matters that lie outside of the conventional. Since the reports were first received about a monster hound on the loose on the moors down here, I've been working to track down the guilty parties.'

Doyle's eyes went wide. 'You can prove that claim, I take it?'

'Don't be an idiot, man,' replied Ross, his voice edged with weariness. 'In this line of work, how long do you think I'd last if I carried papers that proved I was under explicit orders of the Queen herself? Quite frequently I have to operate outside of both the law and this country.' He nodded at the Doctor. 'I think your friend knows I'm telling the truth.'

'I'm inclined to believe most of what you said,' the Doctor agreed. 'As I say, you have the same manner as the Brigadier about you.'

'Brigadier?' asked Doyle, out of his depth. 'What brigadier?'