Death Sentence td-80 Read online

  Death Sentence

  ( The Destroyer - 80 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Destroyer 80: Death Sentence

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  Naomi Vanderkloot knew people.

  Hers was not an instinctual knowledge. She possessed no innate ability to read faces, voices, or personalities. In truth, she couldn't tell if a fellow human being were telling the truth three times out of ten, if her personal life was any barometer.

  Naomi Vanderkloot knew people. She just didn't understand them. This was because everything Naomi Vanderkloot knew about people came from books.

  As she turned in her chair to look out the bunkerlike window of her office, she wondered, for the first time in her thirty-three years on earth, if perhaps that was the problem.

  Her thin eyebrows slowly drew together as she stared past the stark black-and-white geometry of the Kennedy Library to Boston harbor, believed by some voters to be radioactive. Today the harbor was slate gray. The sky above was the same uncertain near-blue of Naomi Vanderkloot's sad eyes.

  They were the eyes that beheld the secret initiation rites of the Moomba tribe of the Philippines. They were the eyes of the first white person to behold, however briefly in the lightning-illuminated Matto Grosso, a member of the semilegendary Xitlis.

  They were also the eyes that had sized up Randy Gunsmith, all six-foot-five and 228 pounds of gorgeous unemployed construction worker, as well as the petite blond on his arm, and not questioned the lack of family resemblance when Randy fumblingly introduced the blond as his sister Candy from Evansville, Indiana.

  The occasion had been the previous Friday night. Naomi had left her office in the anthropology department of the University of Massachusetts and taken the Red Line subway to Harvard Square. She had been walking down Church Street when Randy and his "sister" unexpectedly emerged-from Passim's, a popular coffee shop.

  At first Randy had appeared flustered. Naomi had been so self-absorbed-her normal state of mind-that it wasn't until three days later, when she returned to her Brattle Street apartment early and found Randy spooning Cool Whip onto the hollow between his "sister's" lush breasts, that she recalled his surprised expression.

  "Oh, my God," Naomi said. "You're doing it with your sister."

  "Don't be a complete idiot, Naomi," Randy had snapped back as he covered himself with a sheet. "She's no more my sister than you are."

  "Oh," Naomi said, getting it at last.

  It wasn't the fact that her boyfriend had been cheating on her that bothered Naomi Vanderkloot as much as it was that he covered himself up. As if he were ashamed or unwilling for her to behold him in what Naomi used to playfully call his "tumescent state."

  She realized then-one of the few flashes of insight she would show in her life-that she had seen his magnificent male tool for the last time. And that realization brought her to her knees at the side of the bed. Her bed.

  "Please, Randy don't leave me!" she wailed.

  "Great, now you want me," he muttered. "If you'd paid half as much attention to me as your stupid hypotheses, I wouldn't have had to go looking for a little satisfaction in the first place."

  "I know! I know!" Naomi had cried, her voice as abject as a temple votary. More abject. Naomi had met temple votaries. They were much more dignified than she was. She clenched at the blanket in an effort to keep him from leaving.

  But Randy Gunsmith had no intention of leaving. He hadn't finished yet.

  "Mind waiting outside, Naomi?" he said.

  "But ... but this is my apartment!" she had sputtered.

  "Ten minutes. That's all. Then we can discuss this. I promise. Okay?"

  Her lower lip quivering, Naomi Vanderkloot nodded mutely. She couldn't muster the nerve to speak. She was afraid her voice would crack.

  Stiffly she closed the bedroom door behind her and slumped in a director's chair. She fingered the spines of the many volumes that crowded the concreteblock bookcases in her living room, her fingers lingering over The Naked Ape and other books that had inspired her life and career.

  When Randy Gunsmith finally emerged, not ten or even fifteen minutes later, but after a full sigh-and-groan-punctuated hour, he was fully dressed and pulled the blond along after him.

  Naomi Vanderkloot shot to her feet, her nails digging into the palms of her bony hands. Her mouth parted. But before she could form a single uncertain syllable, Randy shot her a curt "Later" and slammed the front door behind him.

  Through the beaded curtains Naomi watched them hurry, hand in hand, past the Victorian homes of her upscale Cambridge neighborhood.

  She knew then that she would never see him again.

  At first Naomi blamed her preoccupation with her latest researches for the breakup. Hurt, she couldn't look at her papers and clippings for nearly twelve hours.

  Then in the middle of the night she threw back the covers that she hadn't bothered to change because they still had Randy's Coors-and-Winston scent on them and plunged back into her work. If her work had caused another romance to fail, then she was determined to make that work the most important of her life.

  It was looking now, on the Monday following those unsettling events, as if the months of work she had put into her latest theory was about to slide into the loss column too.

  The knock on her office door brought Naomi out of her reverie. She swiveled in her chair. Her hurt expression melted and rehardened into a cool professional mask. She adjusted her owl-round glasses on her straight nose, and automatically her parted mouth sealed primly. She patted at her mouse-brown hair and called, "Yes, come in."

  Even before the door yawned open, she knew what kind of an expression the reporter would be wearing. She had seen it a thousand times before. No innate knowledge of the male animal was required. Only endless repetitive experience.

  The man was tall and slim. Not terribly distinguished, but Naomi, recalling his journalistic affiliation, suddenly realized that she was lucky to pull a primate above the knuckle-walking stage.

  He poked his head around the doorjamb expectedly, his face curious, even hopeful.

  The moment his eyes focused on her, the expression dropped away, leaving a vaguely disappointed one. It was a transmutation Naomi Vanderkloot knew well. It marked, to the microsecond, the precise moment the male brain realized that it was seeing, not a nubile Naomi, but a knobby Vanderkloot.

  Naomi let out a tiny sigh that collapsed her sunken bosom more severely than normal.

  "Hello," she said in her prim, not-quite-cold, but distinctly unwarm voice. She rose awkwardly, all six-foot-two of her. "You must be Mearle." She offered a cool hand in a gesture midway between a handshake and the expectation of a hand kiss.

  The man shook it. He did not kiss it.

  "That's me," Mearle told her as she smoothed the back of her severe black skirt and resumed her seat. Mearle dropped into a plain chair. He looked about the office, evidently finding it more interesting than its occupant. Or possibly just less hard on the eyes. "I can't believe I'm actually going through with this," Naomi said to break the silence.

  Mearle's eyes refocused. He was an ectomorph. Naomi noticed his long tapering fingers, often found on writers and artists. Probably a fast sugar burner, she thought.

  "This what?" Mearle asked a little vaguely, and Naomi reconsidered her assessement.

  "This interview," she reminded him coolly. "It's the reason you've came, isn't it?"

  "Actually, I'm here because my editor told me to come. "

  Naomi's voice dropped ten degrees. "Well, I'll try not to take up too much of your precious time."

  "What?" He was staring at a chart
illustrating the evolution of the human animal from Homo habilis to modern Homo sapiens. He pointed to the full-frontalnude drawing labeled "Homo Erectus," and remarked, "No wonder the queers leave the broads alone. When they get it up, it's nothing."

  " 'Homo Erectus' is Latin for 'Man the Erect,' " Naomi told him reprovingly. "He was the first of our primate ancestors to walk upright. I can't believe people don't know these fundamental things. This is your species."

  "Are you calling me a homo, lady? Because if you are, I'll be glad to demonstrate that I can get it up."

  "No, no, don't," Naomi said, shielding her eyes. "Can we simply get on with this?"

  "Hold on a minute, will you?" Mearle fumbled through his coat pockets, seemingly having trouble getting those intelligent-looking fingers past his lapels.

  Definitely a slow sugar burner, Naomi decided. It was unusual. Statistically, most slow sugar burners had stubby, blunt fingers. She made a mental note of the discrepancy, and decided to pay closer attention to the man's mannerisms. Perhaps an unusual phenotypical pattern might emerge.

  Finally Mearle located his mini cassette tape recorder and placed in on the corner of Naomi's desk. Its spools turned silently.

  "I rather imagined you'd use a pad and paper."

  "Don't know shorthand," Mearle told her.

  "Were you considered slow as a child, Mr.... ?" Mearle didn't pick up on the lead.

  Instead he said, "I don't remember. My editor says you've made an important discovery."

  "Yes, I have. But before I start, it's important that you know my background. So you know I'm not some wild-eyed theoretician. I'm a professor of anthropology. Harvard, class of seventy-nine. I've done extensive fieldwork in Asia, Africa, and South America. "

  "How do you spell that?"

  "Spell what?"

  "Anthology."

  "Anthropology. It's from the Greek. It means the study of man. I study men."

  Mearle's eyebrows shot up. "No women?"

  "I study women too. By man, we anthropologists refer to man the species. It's not supposed to be a gender-specific term."

  "Think you can use smaller words, Professor Vanderkloot? Our readers are not exactly swift in the brain department."

  "Slow sugar burners, you mean?" This time it was Naomi's brows that lifted.

  "Say again?"

  "It's been discovered that the human brain processes glucose--natural sugar-at greatly different speeds. Some people process their brain sugar very rapidly. Consequently, these people are very quick thinkers. Others, whose brains are less efficient, seem to be slower-witted. "

  Mearle the reporter perked up, interest lighting his dull face.

  "Great! That's exactly the kind of angle our readers love."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. I can see a great headline: ANTHOLOGY PROFESSOR MAKES STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT: ALL-SUGAR DIET INCREASES BRAINPOWER"

  Naomi's brows fell sharply. "That's not what I meant," she said.

  "I eat a lot of sugar," Mearle went on as if he hadn't heard. "I guess that explains why I'm so smart."

  "Do your friends and family consider you very intelligent?"

  "Sure. I'm a writer. I make a lot of money."

  "Journalist, you mean."

  "Lady," Mearie said sternly, "I've been with the National Enquirer since eighty-three, and in all that time I never once saw a journalist darken my editor's door. Any unimaginative fool can copy down quotes and string them into a newspaper article. We're writers. We make the dull facts jump up and grab you by the throat. That's what sells newspapers."

  "And used cars," Naomi said dryly.

  "I used to write confession stories before this," Mearle said, not understanding. "It's the same technique. This is easier. I don't have to make everything up from scratch. So okay, let's get back to this sugar thing. What would it do to the average person's IQ if he doubled his sugar intake? If you don't know, try to guess on the high side, okay?"

  "Oh, the average American would probably burn out the adrenal glands," Naomi said airily.

  "Is that good or bad?"

  "In your case, it would probably be an improvement," she said sarcastically. She regretted the lapse almost as soon as she uttered it. Fortunately Mearle No-last-name, Boston stringer for the National Enquirer, took it as a compliment.

  "Really?" he said with ill-disguised interest. He was fascinated. "Maybe I'll triple my sugar intake."

  "Let me know how it turns out." And this time Naomi smiled. Her lips resembled a rubber band stretching, right to the dull red color. No hint of teeth showed.

  "I love sugar. Always have."

  Naomi went on doggedly, "It's important that the world understand my credentials. I was the first white person to see a member of the Xitli tribe. I, and I alone, have been initiated into the Moomba secret ceremony."

  "Great! We'll do a sidebar. Let's hear all the gory details. "

  "I'd rather not get into that," Naomi said quickly, a flicker of embarrassment flooding her ordinarily bloodless features. "What I'm trying to tell you is that before I returned to academe ... er, teaching full-time, I was a highly respected field anthropologist. Not a crackpot."

  "Can I quote that last statement?"

  Naomi made a prim face. "Please don't." She cleared her throat and went on. "For the last five years I've taught courses in political anthropology, imperialism and ethnocentrism, and ecological anthropology. I also consult for IHPA, the Institute for Human Potential Awareness. It was while compiling data for that organization that I first discovered that he exists." Mearle, catching the portentous tone of the pronoun, jumped to the slow-sugar conclusion.

  "He? Do you mean God?"

  "I definitely do not mean God. I'm an atheist."

  "Can you spell that?"

  "Look it up. You'll find a definition that goes with it."

  "Good thinking." Mearle grabbed the tape recorder and spoke loudly into it, "Look up 'atheist' for spelling and definition. Okay, go ahead," he told Naomi, replacing the machine.

  Naomi plowed ahead. "It began when I took on the task of sorting newspaper clippings and other accounts of extraordinary human physical achievement."

  "I can wriggle my ears," Mearle piped up. "One of them, anyway. The left. No, it's the right."

  Seeing Naomi's expression, he subsided, one ear quivering.

  "In these instances we were dealing with incidents of heightened strength or reflexes," Naomi went on in her best lecturer's voice. "Perhaps you've heard stories of ordinary people who become empowered with near-superhuman strength in times of stress. Like the mother who discovers her child trapped under a car. In her anxiousness, she upends the vehicle to rescue the child."

  "I once did a story along those lines. ENRAGED GRANDMOTHER LOSES CAN OPENER, BITES BOTTLE TOP OFF WITH FALSE TEETH. Like that?"

  "Not quite. And could you please stop interrupting? This is very important to me."

  "If it were that important, you'd be talking to Scientific American, not me."

  Naomi made a face. "They declined to publish my findings," she admitted in a morose tone. "So I went down the list of national magazines, then local newspapers. The Boston Globe actually sent out a reporter, but after twenty minutes he pretended he was late to an interview with a local television anchor. I went to the Herald next, and even they weren't interested. I thought I had hit bottom; then I remembered you people."

  "Actually, we lead our field. You should see our competition. Some of them don't bother getting quotes. They make 'em up."

  "I want my story to get out, Mr. . . ."

  "Call me Mearle. 'Mister' makes me think I'm being lectured."

  "As I was saying, I want my story to get out. It's important. For if my data are correct, mankind may be on the threshold of an important new era in its evolution." Her tone darkened. "Or, conversely, we may face the extinction of the human race."

  "Oh, my God," Mearle said in genuine horror. "Are we facing a global sugar shortage? Will our brains shrivel?"


  "Forget sugar!" Naomi snapped. "We're talking about superman."

  "We are?"

  "We are. You surely know something about evolution. How we as a species have evolved from a manlike ape ancestor."

  "Darwin."

  "Yes, Darwin. Mankind has come a long way on the evolutionary scale, but it's not over yet. Have you ever wondered about the next step?"

  "No."

  "No. No one wonders. It took millions of years for man to learn to walk erect, to develop the cranial capacity to house a manlike brain, to generate prehensile fingers and an opposable thumb. No one is quite certain how these developments occurred. They are still the subject of raging debate because they are not sudden occurrences. They happen over generations. Well, Mearle, I have discovered that the next stage in human evolution has already arrived. Now. Here in the U.S."

  "I'll bet it's all that sugar we eat. It probably accelerates the process."

  "Could I tell this? ... Thank you. At the Institute for Human Potential Awareness I went through literally tens of thousands of accounts of extraordinary human feats. I sorted them according to sex. Then within gender. I divided those accounts into incidents of accelerated reflex, heightened strength, and other like phenomena. Many of these incidents are easily explained with the parameters of known physiology. Adrenaline can convey great strength for short periods of time. High-speed mental calculations are possible by some brains-oddly, most of these are people who suffer from forms of retardation. Other traits are the product of a dominant gene that can disappear for generations."

  "You're losing me."

  "I'm just getting to my point," Naomi said quickly. "As I sorted these accounts, I was struck by certain commonalities among them. Do you remember the Yuma Emergency last Christmas?"

  "Who doesn't? An American city taken over by a Japanese movie company. It was worse than the Chinese student massacres."

  "The government hushed a lot of it up. But several eyewitness accounts made it into Arizona newspapers, and these came into my hands. During the height of the crisis, many people reported that the occupying army was attacked and virtually dismantled."

  "By U.S. Rangers," Mearle said flatly.