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He was certain she was lying, so he continued to fence with her. "Is the Wolf family planning any festivities to celebrate the coming of doomsday?"
Elsie shook her head slowly. "We have no time for foolish revelry. Our labors have been spent in survival."
"Do you really think a comet will strike in the next few weeks?"
"The Amenes were very precise in their astronomical and celestial charts." There was a flick of the eyes from his face to the floor and a lack of conviction in her voice that made Pitt doubt her.
"So I've been told."
"We have. . . connections with some of the finest astronomers in Europe and the United States, who verified the Amenes' projections. All agreed that the comet's return was plotted and timed with amazing accuracy."
"So your family of uncharitable clones kept the news to themselves rather than warn the world," Pitt said nastily. "And your connections kept the astronomers from talking. Benevolence must not be in the Wolf dictionary."
"Why cause a worldwide panic?" she said carelessly. "What good would it do in the end? Better to let the people die unknowing and without mental anguish."
"You're all heart."
"Life is for those who are the fittest, and those who plan."
"And the magnificent Wolfs? What's to keep you from being killed along with the rest of the foul-smelling rabble?"
"We have been planning our survival for over fifty years," she said decisively. "My family will not be swept away by floods or burned by raging fires. We are prepared to weather the catastrophe and endure the aftermath."
"Fifty years," Pitt repeated. "Is that when you found a chamber with the Amenes inscriptions telling of their near extinction after the comet's impact?"
"Yes," she answered simply.
"How many chambers are there in total?"
"The Amenes told of six."
"How many did your family find?"
"One."
"And we found two. That leaves three that remain undiscovered."
"One was lost in Hawaii after a volcano spewed tons of lava into it, effectively destroying it. Another disappeared forever during a great earthquake in Tibet during A.D. 800. Only one remains unfound. It's supposed to lie somewhere on the slopes of Mount Lascar in Chile."
"If it remains unfound," said Pitt carefully, "why did you murder a group of college students who were exploring a cave on the mountain?"
She glared at him, but refused to answer.
"Okay, let me ask you the location of the Amenes chamber your family discovered?" he pressed her.
She gazed at him almost as if he were a lost soul. "The earliest inscriptions we found of the Amenes are inside a temple that stands amid the ruins of what once was one of their port cities. You need not ask more, Mr. Pitt. I have said all I'm going to say, except that I suggest you bid farewell to your friends and loved ones. Because very soon now, what is left of your torn and shattered bodies will be floating in a sea that never existed before."
That said, Elsie Wolf closed her eyes and shut herself off from Pitt and the world around her as effectively as if she had entered a deep freeze.
By the time Pitt left the clinic it was late in the afternoon, and he decided to head for his hangar rather than return to the NUMA building. He was moving slowly through the rush-hour traffic that crawled over the Rocheambeau Bridge before finally exiting onto the Washington Memorial Parkway. He was just approaching the gate at the airport maintenance road leading to his hangar when the Globalstar phone signaled an incoming call.
"Hello."
"Hi, lover," came the sultry voice of Congresswoman Loren Smith.
"I'm always happy to hear from my favorite government representative."
