Free A Treasure Deep by Alton Gansky Page A

slope slowly. “I’d only be guessing.”
    “Guess. It’s more than what I’ve got.”
    “They’re excavating.”
    “Excavating what?”
    “Could be anything. If I were a betting man,
I’d say they’re about to drill test holes. Once they learn what
they want, then they’re going to bring up that backhoe we saw on
the truck parked by the road and start pulling up dirt. Whatever
they’re after, it’s underground.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Those papers on the table. While you were
trying to be the irresistible force that moved the immovable object
called Jack Dyson, I was getting an eyeful of those papers.”
    “And?”
    “They were printouts of underground surveys.
I recognized one set of images as being what you get from a GPR
survey. They’re definitely searching for something.”
    “GPR?”
    “Ground-penetrating radar. It’s a way of
seeing what lies below grade. The technology has gotten pretty
sophisticated, and I bet these guys don’t use anything that isn’t
top of the line.”
    “What could be underground that is so
important?”
    “Who knows? Maybe they found someone’s
treasure. Maybe they’re doing something for the government. If it’s
a federal project of some kind, then that would explain why they’re
so tight-lipped.”
    “And why they could care less about me
bringing the sheriff’s department up.”
    “True. What now, coach? Back to the
office?”
    “No.” Anne found her cell phone in the small
purse she carried. “As soon as I get a cell signal, I’m going to
make a few calls.”
    “To whom?”
    “We have only three motels in Tejon, Bob, and
we know this Sachs guy is in one of them. They have to put those
workers up somewhere. I’m betting they’ve taken a block of rooms
somewhere. We’re the closest town, so it would make sense that they
stay there.”
    “You’re going to hunt this guy down?” Bob
asked as he directed the truck back down the road. “You’re that
curious?”
    “It has nothing to do with curiosity, Bob.
It’s the principle of the thing.”
     
    TWENTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD Joseph Henri sat at the dining
room table rocking like a metronome. Back and forth, back and
forth, then side to side. His eyes were open and staring blankly at
the tabletop that was covered in open books. The tomes were
unrelated. One was a Latin grammar; another, an atlas of the United
States; still another, the phone directory for San Francisco.
    Joseph grunted. He always grunted when he
rocked, but he did so with clock-like precision. Every thirteenth
movement came with an “uhh.” Thirteen beats later, “uhh.” He could
do this for hours and often did, never missing count, never
varying. Thirteen rocking motions . . . grunt . . . thirteen . . .
grunt.
    As he repeated his little choreography, body
firmly planted in the dining room chair, he stuck his tongue out
and licked his lips. This he did every seventeen cycles. Rock . . .
“uhh” . . . rock . . . lick . . . rock. He could do calculations
“normal” humans couldn’t. But Joseph couldn’t read. He could,
however, absorb books and even memorize entire volumes word for
word. Words, numbers, sounds, pictures, songs were all stored in
his mind. He never forgot anything. He understood almost
nothing.
    Rocking . . . swaying.
    Joseph’s tongue fired out again and ran
across his thick, chapped lips. An image was on his mind and he was
examining it. This picture was not from a book but from a person,
although he had trouble distinguishing an image from an object. The
image was a face. A deep voice face like his father’s. A smile fun
word face like his mother’s. “Uhh . . . Perry . . . uhh . . .
Perry.”
    Joseph stopped suddenly and began to cry.

Chapter 5
    PERRY’S MIND, DESPITE the thick shroud of sleepiness
that covered him, still ran in high gear. It had always been that
way for him. Even as a child he didn’t simply “have” ideas; he was
infected with them. Once a thought wormed its way forward in