Darwin’s Radio. Greg Bear

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN Innsbruck, Austria

      Sam, Mitch’s father, found him in the hospital lobby, his single bag packed and his leg wrapped in a cumbersome cast. The surgery had gone well, the pins had been removed two days before, his leg was healing on schedule. He was being discharged.

      Sam helped Mitch out to the parking lot, carrying the bag for him. They pushed the seat all the way back on the passenger side of the rented Opel. Mitch fitted his leg in awkwardly, with some discomfort, and Sam drove him through the light mid-morning traffic. His father’s eyes darted to every corner, nervous.

      ‘This is nothing compared to Vienna,’ Mitch said.

      ‘Yes, well, I don’t know how they treat foreigners. Not as bad as they do in Mexico, I guess,’ Sam said. His father had wiry brown hair and a heavily freckled, broad Irish face that looked as if it might smile easily enough. But Sam seldom smiled, and there was a steely edge in his gray eyes that Mitch had never learned to fathom.

      Mitch had rented a one-bedroom flat on the outskirts of Innsbruck, but had not been there since the accident. Sam lit up a cigarette and smoked it quickly as they walked up the concrete stair well to the second floor.

      ‘You handle that leg pretty well,’ Sam said.

      ‘I don’t have much choice,’ Mitch said. Sam helped him negotiate a corner and stabilize himself on the crutches. Mitch found his keys and opened the door. The small, low-ceilinged flat had bare concrete walls and hadn’t been heated for weeks. Mitch squeezed into the bathroom and realized he would have to take his craps from a certain angled altitude; the cast didn’t fit between the toilet and the wall.

      ‘I’ll have to learn to aim,’ he told his father as he came out. This made his father grin.

      ‘Get a bigger bathroom next time. Spare-looking place, but clean,’ Sam commented stuffed his hands in his pockets.

      ‘Your mother and I assume you’re coming home with me. We’d like you to.’

      ‘I probably will, for a while,’ Mitch said. ‘I’m a bit of a whipped puppy, Dad.’

      ‘Bullshit,’ Sam murmured. ‘Nothing’s ever whipped you.’

      Mitch regarded his father with a flat expression, then swiveled around on the crutches and looked at the goldfish Tilde had given him months before. She had provided a little glass bowl and a tin of food and had set it on the counter in the small kitchen. He had cared for it even after the relationship was over.

      The fish had died and was now a little raft of mold floating on the surface of the half-filled bowl. Lines marked the levels of scum as the water evaporated. It was pretty gruesome.

      ‘Shit,’ Mitch said. He had completely forgotten about the fish.

      ‘What was it?’ Sam asked, peering at the bowl.

      ‘The last of a relationship that almost killed me,’ Mitch said.

      ‘Pretty dramatic,’ Sam said.

      ‘Pretty anticlimactic,’ Mitch corrected. ‘Maybe it should have been a shark.’ He offered his father a Carlsberg from the tiny refrigerator beside the kitchen sink. Sam took the beer and swallowed about a third as he walked around the living room.

      ‘You got any unfinished business here?’ Sam asked.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Mitch said, carrying his suitcase into the ridiculously small bedroom with bare concrete walls and a single ceiling light fixture of clear ribbed glass. He tossed it on the sleeping mat, squidgied his way around on the crutches, returned to the living room. ‘They want me to help them find the mummies.’

      ‘Then let them fly you back here,’ Sam said. ‘We’re going home.’

      Mitch thought to check the answering machine. The little message counter had gone to its maximum, thirty.

      ‘It’s time to come home and get your strength back,’ Sam said.

      That sounded pretty good, actually. Go back home at age thirty-seven and just stay there, let Mom cook and Dad teach him how to tie flies or whatever Sam was into now, visit with their friends, become a little kid again, not responsible for anything very important.

      Mitch felt sick to his stomach. He pressed the rewind button on the answering machine tape. As it whirred back onto its spool, the phone chimed and Mitch answered.

      ‘Excuse me,’ a tenor male voice said in English. ‘Is this Mitch Rafelson?’

      ‘The very one,’ Mitch said.

      ‘I just tell you this, then good bye. Maybe you recognize my voice, but … no matter. They have found your bodies in the cave. The University of Innsbruck people. Without your help, I assume. They do not tell anybody yet, I don’t know why. I am not joking and this is no prank, Herr Rafelson.’

      There was a distinct click and the line went dead.

      ‘Who was it?’ Sam asked.

      Mitch sniffed and tried to relax his jaw. ‘Fuckers,’ he said. ‘They’re just messing with me. I’m famous, Dad. A famous crackpot chucklehead.’

      ‘Bullshit,’ Sam said again, his face sharp with disgust and anger. Mitch stared at his father with a mix of love and shame; this was Sam at his most involved, his most protective. ‘Let’s get out of this rat hole,’ Sam said in disgust.