As if on cue, the quiet growl of Owen's rumbling stomach filled the room.
"Sorry," he apologized.
He was still trying to control his animal urges. But it was now against his nature.
Of course, Judith did not allow her base instincts to consume her. She had mastered both body and mind-harnessed them into a single, perfect being.
She could summon human intellect when it served her. She had the ability to squelch animal desire. And when it suited her, she could act on instinct better than any creature on the face of the planet.
She alone of all the beasts to ever walk and crawl and swim and run across the Earth had attained utter perfection.
Before her, Owen Grude shifted uncomfortably. He was trying so hard to be strong. But the urges at this stage were nearly overwhelming. Owen had a long way to go before he attained the perfection of Dr. Judith White. But perfection was on the way. Not that Owen or any of the other new mongrels would be around long enough to witness it.
"You have a little time before this is ready. Go feed," Judith commanded.
Owen didn't need to be told a second time. Spinning on his heel, he prowled out of the office. Once she was alone, Judith crossed over to a small, two-drawer filing cabinet. Beside it was a pair of pebbled black cases. She lifted one of the cases, setting it on a computer table below a long picture window. The softly sighing conifers of the deep Maine woods were framed in the window. The beauty of the scenery had no meaning to Judith White.
Fingering the silver tabs on the case, she popped open the lid.
Inside was lined with the gray peaks and valleys of special packing foam. Large glass vials were lined up neatly on the egg-carton foam. There were now as many empty as full. Slipping the test tube carefully from her pocket, she set it delicately in its own recessed compartment.
There was a reason why she would not allow Owen or anyone else to handle the formula. There was simply no way she would ever entrust something so important with one of the others. The compound had to be measured just so.
Too little would take too long to affect the humans, if it worked at all. Too much would be a waste. The process would be accelerated to two seconds from fifteen.
And at the moment she didn't want to waste a drop. She could have more made, but it would disrupt her plan, which at the moment was proceeding precisely on schedule.
The intellectual part of her that remained knew that the odds were increasing in her favor with every passing hour.
"It's nothing personal, mankind," she growled to the whispering woods. "Just survival of the fittest." Purring, Judith White slapped shut the case lid.
Chapter 10
Dr. Harold W. Smith felt good.
For most people, feeling good was a normal sensation. Oh, sometimes it was fleeting, sometimes it lingered, but for the world at large it wasn't terribly unusual to simply feel good. But for the director of the secret agency CURE, feeling good was a strange, alien sensation.
A dour, lemony man, Smith's moods generally ran the gamut from mildly concerned to deeply anxious. Sometimes he was peevish; very rarely he was angry. At times-when his country or agency was threatened-there were moments of full-blown panic or, more likely, steadfast resolve.
Feeling good was definitely not part of his normal emotional repertoire. So on this day, as he steered his car onto the street on which he had lived for the past forty years, he resolved to savor the sensation.
Smith parked his rusted old station wagon in the driveway of his Rye, New York, home. He grabbed his battered leather briefcase from the seat beside him. After locking the briefcase in the back compartment alongside the spare tire, he headed up the front walk.
His wife had heard the sound of the car pulling in the driveway. She was at the front door to meet him. "Hello, Harold," Maude Smith said. She was wiping her hands dry on a well-worn dishrag. Mrs. Smith had been in the process of scrubbing the old copper pots that had been a wedding gift from her longdeceased mother.
"Hello, dear," Smith said, giving the plump woman a peck on the cheek. He headed upstairs. Smith generally stayed at work from before sunup until well after sundown. Seeing Harold home at any other time of day would ordinarily be cause of great concern to Mrs. Smith. But although it was only eleven o'clock in the morning, his wife had not been surprised to see her Harold today.
Smith had told her he would be home at this time. And since he said it, she was confident he would come. Maude's Harold was nothing if not reliable.
In the upstairs bedroom, Smith found his special clothes folded on a chair just where he'd left them. His normal uniform was a three-piece gray suit, which he wore now. Smith changed out of the suit, hanging it carefully in the closet next to six other identical suits. He pulled on the powder-blue longsleeved jersey and green plaid pants. There were some fabric pills on the shirt. Smith plucked them off, depositing them in the trash.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he slipped his feet back in his dress shoes. He was lacing them back up when his wife stuck her head around the corner.
"Are you all right, Harold?" Maude asked, concerned.
"Yes, I'm fine." Smith asked, "Why?"
"That noise you were just making with your mouth. I thought something was wrong."
Smith frowned. "Noise?" he asked. "I don't believe I was making any noise, dear."
He picked up a pair of white shoes from the floor under the chair, just where he'd left them the previous night. Carrying the shoes under one arm, he kissed his wife on the cheek once more and headed back out into the hallway.
As he stepped down the stairs, he was unaware that he had started making the same horrible noise once more.
Behind him, Maude Smith watched from the top of the stairs. As he headed briskly out the door, she saw her husband's lips purse, saw his ashen cheeks puff out.
Maude recognized the noise this time. Her Harold was actually whistling. She shook her head in astonishment
"Will wonders never cease?" she asked the walls with the old white paint that, although long yellowed from age, Harold refused to have repainted. The paint had been guaranteed to last thirty years, which would not be up for another two years. Even though the manufacturer had long gone out of business, Harold refused to pay to have the walls repainted until precisely thirty years had passed. Anything sooner than that would be an extravagance. Like whistling.
Maude heard the awful sound coming from outside. A dog two houses away was howling at the noise as her husband backed his station wagon out of the driveway.
Still shaking her head in amazement, but grateful to the Almighty just the same for her Harold's new outlook, Maude Smith climbed carefully back down the creaky old stairs.
SMITH COULD NOT THANK the Almighty for this morning away from work. Not that he didn't believe. A healthy fear of God had been inculcated in Harold Smith at an early age. But thanks to the requirements of his job as director of CURE, Smith had long before determined that he could not in good conscience involve the Deity in the matters of his adult life. Smith didn't bother God, and when the time of judgment came for him, Smith hoped the Almighty would understand the necessity of his many transgressions.
No, if any thanks were due at all, they went to Smith's assistant.
Mark Howard was a diligent young man who from the start had insisted that he relieve some of his employer's heavy burden. Thanks to Mark Howard, Harold Smith was able to take off two early afternoons every week to enjoy dinner with Maude. And thanks to his assistant, Smith was about to indulge in a guilty pleasure that he had given up long ago.
Smith's house bordered one of the most exclusive country clubs on the East Coast. As he drove along, he caught glimpses of well-tended greens between houses and trees.
Around the block and up through the gates, Smith drove through the main entrance to the Westchester Golf Club.
There were plenty of spaces in the parking lot. Smith chose one recently vacated near the clubhouse. He changed into his golf shoes beside his car and took his wheeled bag of clubs from the back seat of the station wagon where he had carefully placed them earlier that morning.
He was whistling again as he headed for the clubhouse.
Although Smith had been paying his yearly membership dues without fail for the past forty years, he had been to the club only a handful of times in the past three decades.
When CURE had first been established by a President now long dead, Smith had been a CIA analyst living in Virginia. He had dutifully accepted his post, moving his family to Rye.
Smith had taken over directorship of Folcroft Sanitarium, a private mental institution and convalescent home in town. Folcroft was the cover for CURE, the agency that didn't officially exist. As part of his own cover, Smith had early on involved himself in his community. Not too much. But in the early 1960s, to be completely removed from one's community affairs was to invite suspicion, he reasoned.
One of the first things Smith did after settling in at Folcroft was join the Westchester Golf Club.