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He finished his Heineken, and I shoved our empty bottles into the cooler

"Could be that we don’t know half of e think we know," Bobby said

"Like?"

"Maybe everything that rong at Wyvern rong in the genetic-engineering labs, and maybe your mom’s theories were entirely what led to theOr maybe not"

"You mean my mother didn’t destroy the world?"

"Well, we can be pretty sure she helped, bro I’ your mom was a nobody"

"Gracias"

"On the other hand, maybe she was only part of it, and maybe even the lesser part"

After my father’s death from cancer a month earlier--a cancer I now suspect didn’t have a natural cause--I had found his handwritten account of Orson’s origins, the intelligence-enhancement experiments, and my mother’s slippery retrovirus "You read what my dad wrote"

"Possibly he wasn’t clued in to the whole story"

"He and Mom didn’t keep secrets from each other"

"Yeah, sure, one soul in two bodies"

"That’s right," I said, prickling at his sarcaslanced at me, winced, and returned his attention to the riverbed ahead "Sorry, Chris You’re totally right Your mom and dad weren’t like mine They ay…special When ere kids, I used to eren’t just best friends Used to ere brothers so I could live with your folks"

"We are brothers, Bobby"

He nodded

"In more important ways than blood," I said

"Don’t set off the ar lately"

There are truths about which Bobby and I never speak, because all words are inadequate to describe them, and to speak of them would be to diminish their power One of these truths is the profound depth and sacred nature of our friendship

Bobbyis, maybe your mom didn’t know the full story, either Didn’t know about the Mystery Train project, which ht be as much or more at fault than she was"

"Cozy idea But how?"

"I’m not Einstein, bro I just drained ine and drove downriver, still leaving the headlights off

I said, "I think I knohat Big Head hten me"

"It’s one of the second troop"

The first troop had escaped the Wyvern lab on that violent night well over two years ago, and they had proved so elusive that every effort to locate and eradicate them had failed Desperate to find the monkeys before their numbers drastically increased, the project scientists had released a second troop to search for the first, figuring that it would take a monkey to find a ically implanted transponder, so it could be tracked and ulti hatever h these new h this surgery, once set loose they had chewed the transponders out of one another, setting the Head was a ned monkey Maybe not entirely a rhesus Maybe some baboon in there"

"Maybe soht the second troop was supposed to be a lot better engineered than the first Less violent"

"So?"

"Big Head didn’t look like a pussycat That thing was designed for the battlefield"

"It didn’t attack us"

"Only because it was sun could do to it"

Ahead was the access raht, with Orson padding atthe sorry beast on the bungalow roof and the way it had hidden its face behind its crossed arms, I said, "I don’t think it’s a killer"

"Yeah, all those teeth are just for opening canned hams"

"Orson has wicked teeth, and he’s no killer"

"Oh, you’ve convincedHead for a pajae bowls of popcorn, order in a pizza, put one another’s hair up in curlers, and talk about boys"

"Asshole"

"A o, ere brothers"

"That was then"

Bobby drove up the ra about the dangers of the river during storms, across the barren strip of land to the street, where at last he switched on the headlights He headed toward Lilly Wing’s house

"I think Pia and I are going to be together again," Bobby said, referring to Pia Klick, the artist and love of his life, who believes that she is the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, the goddess of surf

"She says Wai to work so us toward dawn, but the streets of Moonlight Bay were so deserted and silent it was easy to ihosts and cadavers

"Mojo? You’re into voodoo now?" I asked Bobby

"Freudian mojo"

"Pia’s way too sh she had been acting flaky for the past three years, ever since she had gone to Hawaii to find herself, Pia was no duraduated sus sold for big bucks, and the pieces she wrote for various art oing to tell her aboutthere’s so it with"

"You need a reality transfusion, bro Pia can’t be ot the tandem board, and I’m ready whenever she is"