The Arcturus Man, page 1
THE ARCTURUS MAN
John Janis Strauchs
a novel
This book is published by Strauchs LLC This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2013
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Strauchs LLC. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elesystem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
For information and inquiries, contact Strauchs LLC at John.Strauchs@StrauchsJohn.Strauchs@Strauchs-llc.com. www.strauchs-llc.com
The cover illustration is by John Janis Strauchs, copyright ©2011 by Strauchs LLC.
The Strauchs LLC logo is a registered trademark of Strauchs LLC.
Reg. No. 3,685,641
ISBN Pending
January 2013
Other novels by John Janis Strauchs
Tides (2011)
Jupiter’s Rings (2012)
Chapter One – Nameless Men
Eagle’s Head Island, Maine – 24 May 2013 Late Morning
The man was frightened and because he was frightened, he was shouting. Jared was casually using one hand to hold the nameless man by the wrist. He held the man’s wrist in a locking hold. The pain was excruciating. The man was taller and much heavier than Jared but the intruder was powerless to resist. It was humiliating. Jared didn’t intend it to be humiliating. He was indifferent to those kinds of motivations and feelings.
Discovering and then overpowering the assasin had been child’s play for Jared. The nameless man couldn’t figure out how he had been detected by Jared. His concealment had been perfect. The assassin had never seen anyone move so silently and so fast.
So far it was a game for Jared, but now the work part would begin. He hated this part. It took so much time. Jared had more important things to do.
“YOU THINK YOU’VE WON. YOU HAVEN’T WON. YOU’VE WON NOTHING. YOU’LL SEE ME AGAIN. IT AIN’T OVER BY A LONG SHOT ASS HOLE,” said the nameless man. “YOU’LL GET YOURS. YOU’LL SEE.”
“I believe you,” said Jared calmly, in a quiet voice.
Tightening the wrist lock, Jared led him to the work bench in the back of the boathouse. Jared pulled his longest awl out of the work stand with his free hand and instantly plunged it into the man’s chest, pinning the heart muscles. He entered exactly 1.5 centimeters to the left of the midsagittal plane. The strike was precise and done so quickly and forcefully that the victim didn’t see it coming. It was done so because Jared did everything with precision. It had nothing to do with being merciful or compassionate. Jared had no compassion. The act was unemotional. It was a perfunctory killing. In a few hours, the nameless man wouldn’t come to mind. He was unimportant.
The man’s eyes grew wide but no sounds came out of his mouth. He began to pant. He shuttered and some noises finally emerged. It was a rattling sound. Jared held him upright, letting go of the wrist lock. Soon, the man’s brain was no longer getting oxygen. He was going into cardiogenic shock. That was what Jared was waiting for. He dropped the man on the floor. There was virtually no blood loss from the body. A bright red spot appeared on the man’s shirt around the awl, but there was no flow. The awl would stay in place. It was an ideal death instrument.
Jared carefully walked around the boathouse and wiped everything that the nameless man had touched that could retain a fingerprint. He cleaned the floor with his shop vac and quickly flushed the weathered wooden floor with bleach. He walked outside and went to the hiding place where the man had been waiting for Jared to return to the island. He found cigarette butts. He picked up all of the butts and methodically examined the area for anything else that might leave DNA trace.
Jared walked back into the boathouse. He picked up the assassin’s gun and unscrewed the silencer. It might come in handy. He threw the silencer in a grease bucket and watched it until in sunk out of sight. He would find a better hiding place later. He slid the 45 automatic into his belt. He would throw it into the bay on his way out. He doubted that the serial number would be useful to the police. They would have ensured that the gun was untraceable, but then again, one should never overestimate the intelligence of any adversary. He was wise to separate the weapon from the dead man.
He went through the man’s pockets. There was no wallet or anything else that would identify him. Jared didn’t expect there would be. He opened his Swiss Army knife and cut and ripped openings in the clothing. He wanted the scavengers to have easy access. He thought about extracting teeth so they couldn’t be matched with dental records but decided that it was too unlikely for the corpse to be found. The scavengers would take care of the fingerprints in no time at all.
He pulled an old style wood frame lobster trap that had been hanging from a nail on the wall. Most lobstermen didn’t use these kinds of traps today, preferring the lighter metal and wire pots, but it was exactly what he needed. This kind of trap was made in a semi-circle curve out of hemlock hoops. It had a heavy concrete slab base. Jared needed it to be very heavy. He cut out the funnel and wire ring and then the rest of the inside rigging. He picked up the hollowed-out trap and worked it over the man’s head until his torso was mostly inside the trap. He pulled a roll of galvanized wire mesh out of the storage shed and carefully wrapped the man’s exposed legs. He took heavy marine wire and wove everything together. As the body is dismembered by the scavengers, it is important that the parts stay together. Jared reinforced the trap.
Although it was an old trap, he used it occasionally and in order to meet the ever changing laws in Maine, he had reluctantly added a biodegradable ghost panel. If a trap broke loose from its buoy line, this panel would eventually disintegrate, allowing any trapped lobsters to escape. He wired over the ghost panel. The bribe to get his lobstering license cost Jared a small fortune. He didn’t care about the money. He had a lot of money. Jared tended to ignore laws he didn’t agree with if they were inconvenient. This time it wasn’t too much bother.
Jared wired several lead bars to the trap and pushed in some rebar. He bent the rebar so that the rods couldn’t slip out. Wood traps weigh about 125 pounds empty on land, but only 7 pounds in the water. He added another 100 pounds. He kept lead bars around so he could cast new fishing sinkers. He needed sinkers constantly. The sharks in Maine’s cold waters would take the bait almost every third troll.
He kept two Boston Whalers in the boat house, a small one to use as a row boat and a large motorized boat for work. Jared drug the trap and man to his big Whaler, an eighteen-foot Dauntless with a 150 XL OptiMax Mercury engine. He threw a canvas tarp over the trap and opened the boathouse door. He was becoming increasingly annoyed. He had more important things that needed to be done today. He didn’t have time for this. It took Jared two hours to get to the Ovid Marina.
As soon as he got to the marina he tied off to the Sampson post on his cabin cruiser, another boat he owned. The canvas bundle now weighted almost 500 pounds. He could have effortlessly lifted it into the larger boat but that might have attracted unwanted attention. He treated it like cargo. Last year he installed a small power hoist on the Carver 350, his ocean cruiser. He swung the arm out over the Whaler. Jared wrapped the bundle in nylon webbing and then connected the hoist cable. It was on board quickly. He tied the Whaler to a piling against a tire bumper.
The StarWind was one of the larger boats in the small marina. The regulars all knew the boat and it was the subject of occasional gossip. A single guy owned the boat and would live on board for a week or so every now and then. They never saw women on the boat so the speculation was that the owner must be gay. He never talked but he would return a wave or a hail. Few knew his name. It would have been fairly simple to find out who he was, but no one bothered. It wasn’t that important to the locals who all kept to themselves and treated others the same way. He kept to his own business and that was good. Everyone assumed that he was a Mainer.
Jared took the boat out of the slip slowly. There were a dozen, or more, people in the marina. It was mid-day now and people were coming and going. They waved and Jared nodded to them as he passed. As soon as he was out of the no-wake zone, he powered up. He checked the navigation chart. When he was out about 15 miles and the water was deep enough, he pushed the trap and the nameless man overboard. It sank quickly. No one would report him missing. No one would search for him. Now, the nameless man never existed. He would be nameless forever.
Jared took his time getting back to the marina. He trolled slowly and in no time landed a large Spanish mackerel, one of his favorite fish—as long as he had bacon. He did. He was looking forward to a nice dinner.
“It would go great with a Domaine Servin Grand Cru Preuses 2002,” he thought.
He cleaned it and put it on ice. Cleaning was easy with mackerel. They had virtually no scales. This was a lucky day. This Spaniard is rare in Maine’s cold waters, especially this far north, and certainly not north of Stephen King Island, but here it was. Jared was pleased.
He thought about the nameless man for a brief moment. It was just a matter of time until his enemies learn that sending a lone assassin was futile. Soon, they would be sending several at a time. Jared had already noted that the skill level of the nameless men increased each time. It was o
“Mashed parsnips,” he thought. He had some chicken stock but he didn’t have fresh chives. “Freeze-dried chives will have to do.”
Jared didn’t want to think about the one simple act that would stop the nameless men from coming, but other thoughts kept percolating in his brain. There weren’t many things in life that he reviled more than being bullied. He had seen far too much of that when he was a boy, and the intimidation wasn’t from other boys. It came from grinning, soulless, disembodied government officials, both Soviet and American. He would never again succumb to that kind of naked coercion. He wanted the U.S. government to have his invention. He truly did. The attack on the World Trade Center had affected him deeply. His invention could almost eliminate terrorist threats—or at least eliminate the threat of heavy casualties. His technology could detect most, maybe all, weapons of mass destruction reliably and before they could be used. But a few dull-witted bureaucrats had threatened to use the 1951 Invention Secrecy Act to take his invention from him on whatever terms they selected for him. He had little to say in the matter. That could not be tolerated. Not threats! Not ever!
His defense against their reprehensible tactics was straightforward. All Jared had to do was to keep the critical technical details in his head. He knew they didn’t have the science to reverse-engineer his technology. If he kept the true secrets in his head, they were powerless. And yet, that was precisely why the nameless men were coming. Somehow they had learned about this invention and that killing him would kill the technology he had invented. He had no doubt that some of his tormenters wanted the tech for themselves and to deprive others. So far, however, he was willing to deal with the nameless men rather than to succumb to governmental threats. So far it had been easy, but he also knew that sooner or later, the danger was going to escalate. How long could he hold out? He wasn’t sure. He put these thoughts back into the deep recesses of his mind. He’ll think about it again…later. He was looking forward to a nice dinner and some great wine.
He would be home in a few hours. It had been a wasted day. It would have been a lot easier if he had anchored StarWind off of Eagle’s Head Island, but he hadn’t and that was that. He was out of coffee beans. He decided to go to the mainland first to get coffee. He had to have good coffee.
He had stopped thinking about the nameless man he just killed. He would never think about him again just as he never thought about the other nameless men.
Chapter Two – On Eagle’s Head
Eagle’s Head Island, Maine – 25 May 2013
Jared usually liked spring. As he slowed to a trot coming out of the clearing near his house, he stopped and listened to a strong wind moving the great trees far away on the far side of the bay. It was dead calm where he stood. The wind would arrive soon. The wind was immutable. You knew it was coming and you knew that there was nothing you could do to stop it.
It was late morning. He had run six miles in 18 minutes. He usually made that run in much less time, but it was a casual lope today. That wasn’t typical, but he had things to do. In his early thirties, his bare skin had a glow, but he wasn’t sweating. His breathing was shallow. At six feet in height he looked ordinary. He wasn’t ordinary in any way.
There hasn’t been anyone like him for hundreds of millenia—perhaps thousands. Like those rare souls in the dawn of man, he was a genetic freak. He learned who he was in his early teens. He was the Arcturus Man—the Northern Man. Lucy, who he regarded as a very distant cousin…of sorts, was the Southern Ape—Australopithecus Afrensis. She, or at least somene like her, lived more than 3 million years ago. Bone fragments from Lucy were discovered by Mary Leaky and others in Ethiopia’s Afar Depression in 1974. Lucy was an extinct genus of hominid. Lucy, or, again, someone like Lucy, was a collosal leap in human evolution. She was a genetic freak, just like Jared. Modern man was Homo sapiens, the wise man. Jared was something entirely new. He was Homo sensatus, the intelligent man, the next great rare leap in human evolution.
The salt in the air from the ocean filled his nostrils as his pace slowed to a brisk walk. He could feel the ancient remembrances stir in his breast. It was genetic memory. The organic scents of the forest settled in him. Iron molecules in his body aligned themselves with the earth’s magnetic forces. It was primeval chemistry. Jared was one of the few people on earth who understood that everything was about the chemistry. He spoke the language of chemistry.
The path ended behind the boathouse. He floated his shrunken Boston Whaler out of the boat house and steadily and easily rowed across the bay against the current and the wind. Soon, Eagle’s Head was lost in the sea mist. He beached at his garage on the mainland. He climbed into his Lexus and drove off, fast. It took almost an hour to get to the outskirts of Rockland. Time meant little to him. He parked his car and walked in. He often went to Ashley’s for lunch. It had the anonymity that he craved. Like most of Maine north of Portland, no one would talk to you if you didn’t invite it. If you were approached, it was surely someone from Massachusetts or New York.
He sat down in a booth and glanced at the blackboard menu. He had memorized the menu but there was always a chance that something had changed. It hadn’t.
Jared could feel depression settling in like the morning damp. It seeped everywhere. His Black Dog had been lingering in the shadows of his mind since last evening. He sank deeper into the darkness the more he thought about it. Soon, it would attack. He knew it wouldn't go away for days. The dark funk had to molt off. He hated it but he had learned not to fight it. Of course, there was another way. He needed an adrenalin fix again. Nothing else would satisfy the Black Dog.
He sat near the window thinking. Ashley, the waitress, called across the room from behind the counter. He turned to her and nodded. He always ordered the same meal, bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a coffee. He took his coffee white and sweet in the morning, but black and sweet the rest of the day. Random thoughts drifted in and out. Bismarck said that coffee should be black as Hell and sweet as sin. He knew that no one in the restaurant would know who Bismarck was, other than perhaps that it was in the Dakotas some place.
Jared thought about monster lobster claw sandwiches. Old man Sevigny sometimes made him claw sandwiches smeared with butter. The claw was so big that you couldn’t see the bread. Taking lobsters that size was illegal in Maine. Jared ignored laws he didn’t like. So did Sevigny. There would be no claw sandwiches today. Sevigny died last month.
There was an acknowledging nod of the head that Ashley gave people she recognized that strangers didn’t get, but that was all. He was glad that Sevigny‘s kid wasn’t working today. He didn’t want a conversation and he didn’t like the kid. Moments later his food was brought over.
He opened his burger to make sure everything was there. He filled a little paper cup with hot barbecue sauce. He picked up the bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce and made the dip even hotter. He liked to dip his fries. It tasted like the catsup his mother made when he was a boy. He liked capsaicin.
“More chemistry,” he thought. His mind was spinning again. “Analysis is paralysis,” he thought. He had to clear his head. He had to stop analyzing every minute of the day. The Black Dog was waiting for him.
What would that boy think of the man? He cleared his mind. He wasn't going to think. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, or at least not that way. Not that it mattered all that much.
Carefully, he organized his table. Each part of his meal had a special place on the table. Eating the meal had a fixed sequence. He didn't think of it as a ritual. As far as he was concerned, it was merely the right way to process the eating of lunch.
Jared took a large bite out of the cheeseburger. His mind was always churning. He couldn’t stop it although he tried to constantly. The meat he was eating had been grazing in some pasture not so long ago and he was now consuming what had been vibrant living flesh. Death is never a painless process. He thought about the arrogance of vegetarians. All humans eat things that had been living in order to survive. It was natural and necessary. The superciliousness of human plant eaters was contemptible. Animals and plants are living things. Who is to say that one form of life is less important? Because humans are animals, Jared supposed it was understandable that forms of life that were different, that are not animals, would be dismissed as being unimportant. Plants are alive and possess the same secret of life. Plants are sentient living organisms in their own manner. That plants feel and, perhaps, communicate is of consequence. That humans are unable and uninterested in empathizing or understanding their world is supreme arrogance. Theirs is a world of pure chemistry. Purer than ours.
