Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  ‘If they see the chance of making billions of dollars from marketing the final result,’ Calum finished. ‘And part of their tactics for doing that is to keep prices high and to control the supply. Only those who can afford the cure will get it.’

  ‘You can afford it!’ she cried stubbornly. ‘And if you can’t then there are people in your life who will afford it for you.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘But I’m not the only paraplegic person in the world, Gillian. What happens to the rest of them? The big pharmaceutical companies are there to make money for their shareholders – that’s their raison d’etre. They aren’t much into philanthropic gestures. You know as well as I do that there are strains of bacteria resistant to almost any antibiotic we can throw at them. The big pharmaceutical companies could solve that problem within a year if they threw money at it, by working on modified versions of the antibiotics we have, but they won’t, because all those antibiotics are out of their licence period and won’t make them any money. That’s the sad truth.’ His gaze flickered towards Gecko with a silent apology: he knew that Gecko’s father had died from tuberculosis – a disease that could have been cured if the drugs had been available.

  ‘Welcome to capitalism,’ Gillian said, shaking her head. ‘It may not be an ideal system, but it’s the best we’ve got.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We’re not going to agree on this, are we?’

  Calum shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I still love you though.’

  ‘And I love you too. Now give me a hug before I leave.’

  She moved towards him, and he slipped his free arm round her. ‘It’s good to see you again. And thanks for the leg braces. I promise I’ll give them a go.’

  ‘See that you do. I’ll be angry if you don’t, and you know what that means.’

  ‘No Ferrari?’

  ‘That’s right – no Ferrari.’

  Professor Livingstone waved at Gecko, gave Natalie a quick peck on the cheek and walked out.

  Natalie huffed. ‘She doesn’t let me talk to her like that,’ she said.

  ‘But you do anyway,’ Calum pointed out.

  Gecko snorted. ‘Not with the same razor-edged logic and the same bright, shining moralistic position.’ He moved across and punched Calum gently on the shoulder. ‘That was well said.’

  Natalie looked at them both. ‘You guys really think my mom would do that? I mean, keep a medical treatment under wraps so that a company she was involved in could make more money than they already have?’

  ‘Where do you think the money for those shoes comes from?’ Gecko asked gently.

  He was saved from Natalie’s scathing response by the doorbell.

  Before Gecko could move to the computer keyboard to activate the door lock, the door pushed open.

  ‘Sorry – it was unlocked,’ a voice said. ‘Can I come in?’

  It was Tara. Gecko felt his face suddenly flush, and he quickly brushed a hand over his clothes, aware that they were dirty from the free-running he’d done earlier. Using Calum’s shower was one thing, but he really ought to keep a few spare sets of clothes here as well. He smiled to himself. Calum was right – it was almost as if he was moving in!

  ‘Hi, Tara,’ Calum called. ‘You can always come in here – you know that.’

  ‘Best to check,’ she said, entering. ‘Oh, hi, Gecko. Hi, Natalie – I saw your mum outside.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure she saw me though.’

  ‘She gets like that,’ Natalie pointed out. ‘Very driven.’ She glanced at Calum. ‘Aren’t you getting tired, hanging around there? Can’t we, like, all go and chill out on the sofa or something?’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Gecko said, before Calum could protest that, no, he was fine where he was, thank you very much. He knew how stubborn the boy could be.

  ‘Ooh, what’s this?’ Tara said, gazing into the opened crate.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ Calum promised.

  ‘OK.’ Tara sat down, brandishing her tablet in the air. ‘But I’ve got something for you! There’s a hidden website out there on the shadow internet, and I think they’ve got a photograph of a cryptid on it! It’s one of the things you specifically asked me to look for.’

  Calum swung himself over and almost fell into the sofa. ‘Let me see!’

  Tara powered up her tablet, touched the screen a few times and then passed it across to Calum. Natalie sat down beside him and leaned in to look. Gecko moved round to the back of the sofa and gazed over Calum’s shoulder.

  ‘I hate to tell you this,’ Gecko said, looking at the photo of the man holding the turtle, ‘but that’s a Bostami turtle. It’s a very rare soft-shelled turtle – there are only supposed to be a hundred and fifty or so of them left, and they all live in a pond of the Tripureswari Temple in Gomati district of Tripura, which is in India. This man certainly shouldn’t be offering one for sale, and he ought to be reported, but it’s not exactly a cryptid.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the turtle,’ Tara said, exasperated, ‘I’m talking about the thing in the cage behind it.’

  There was silence in the room for a few moments, as they all tried to take in what they were seeing.

  ‘Eeuw!’ said Natalie finally.

  CHAPTER three

  ‘What’s with the interest in giant rats?’ Natalie asked after she had stopped gagging at the photograph. ‘Aren’t there any nice cryptids out there? You know, like ponies?’

  Calum shrugged. ‘I guess it actually started with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’

  She recognized the name, but she wasn’t sure why. ‘The writer?’ she ventured.

  ‘Exactly.’ Calum seemed impressed that she knew that, which made her smile inwardly. Not outwardly, of course. That wouldn’t be cool.

  ‘He invented the character of Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest detective,’ Gecko pointed out helpfully. ‘Very popular in Brazil.’

  ‘Doyle had this habit of telling his audience about Sherlock Holmes’s more ordinary cases,’ Calum went on, ‘but mentioning in passing more bizarre ones that he never got around to explaining. It was all a bit of a tease, I suppose. For instance, in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories there’s a reference to the affair of the Politician, the Lighthouse and the Trained Cormorant. Fans have wondered for more than a hundred years what that case might have involved.’

  ‘Presumably it involved a politician, a lighthouse and a cormorant that had been trained to do something interesting,’ Tara said.

  Calum glared at her. ‘That’s a given, but what was the connection between them?’

  Tara shrugged. ‘Beats me. I’m not a writer.’

  ‘Anyway, in another of the stories Doyle mentions the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and he goes on to say that it’s a case for which the world is not yet prepared. Again, fans of Sherlock Holmes would far rather read about a bizarre giant rat than an ordinary theft or murder.’

  ‘Is there a giant rat in Sumatra?’ Gecko asked. ‘Oh, and by the way – where is Sumatra?’

  ‘Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, and there are large rats on the island, although they’re only about the size of a house cat.’

  ‘In South America we have the capybara,’ Gecko offered. ‘It is also a rodent, and it is about the size of a large dog.’ His face fell somewhat. ‘The problem is that it looks nothing like a rat. More like a small hippopotamus covered with hair.’

  Natalie grimaced at the thought.

  ‘Skeletons and fossils of giant rats have been discovered in places like East Timor,’ Calum went on. ‘They were about the size of a large dog too, although, judging by the skulls, they looked a lot more like the rats we know about now. The odds are that they only died out about a thousand years ago – if they did die out. They might still be around, in isolated locations.’

  ‘So has anyone actually reported seeing giant rats anywhere?’ Natalie persisted.

  Calum shook his head. ‘Not as such. I mean, there’s a photograph on the internet of a large dead rat in N
ew York, but it’s almost certainly a tropical rat that had probably been smuggled to America as a pet. It’s just that if there are unknown species out there, it’s more likely that they are going to be versions of things we already know about: new kinds of deer, new kinds of spider, and so on. Rats are one of the most successful and widespread species on earth. Next to cockroaches they are nature’s best survivors. It seemed to me that looking for some references to giant rats wouldn’t be a long shot. And then, of course, there’s the naked mole rat.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ Natalie said, suppressing a shudder. ‘There’s always the naked mole rat.’ She shook her head. ‘Actually – naked? Is that really what it’s called?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Calum confirmed.

  ‘And they’re called naked because why? People don’t dress them up, do they? They don’t dress themselves up?’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s because they don’t have hair,’ Tara offered.

  ‘Correct.’ Calum leaned back into the comfort of the sofa. ‘They’re rodents – hence the rat bit – but they live underground – hence the mole bit – and they don’t have any hair – hence the naked bit.’

  ‘Biologists are like that, I have noticed,’ Gecko said. ‘They are very literal-minded.’

  Ignoring the bantering interruptions, Calum continued: ‘They’re about ten centimetres long and they live in Africa. There’s a whole raft of interesting things about naked mole rats. For instance, they have a social structure that’s more like that of insects than mammals – each colony has a queen, a small number of fertile males and a whole load of sterile “workers” who don’t get to breed. Also they’ve only got a crude heat-regulation system in their bodies, more like that of lizards than mammals. They can run backwards or forwards through their burrows at the same speed and they don’t seem to have any nerves on their skin. They can stand levels of carbon dioxide that would kill any other creature, they live for a lot longer than any other species their size and they’ve got these four incisor teeth that project from their mouths and which they can wiggle around independently . . .’ He put his hand in front of his mouth and wiggled his fingers to demonstrate.

  ‘OK, so far, so comedic,’ Natalie said. She was trying to imagine an elderly, hairless, pink rat running backwards in its burrow and waggling its teeth, and she wasn’t sure whether the resulting image was funny or horrific. ‘I think we can all agree that there’re some strange creatures in the world. What’s the thing about naked mole rats that’s attracted your attention?’

  ‘They don’t get cancer,’ Calum said simply. ‘They have this chemical in their bodies – it’s a kind of complicated sugary polymer thing – that kills tumour cells. All tumour cells. They’re the only creature that’s known to have this.’

  ‘What’s it for?’ Gecko asked, obviously intrigued. ‘Is it actually there to stop cancer, or to do something else?’

  ‘It looks,’ Calum answered, ‘as if they evolved this chemical in their bodies to make them more supple and flexible, to help them move around their burrows, but it has this great and completely unexpected side effect. There’s a lot of research going on around the world to try to find out how exactly this chemical works, and replicate its results.’ He glanced around the group. ‘The point is that rats may seem boring, but that’s only because they’re everywhere. There’s a reason why they are everywhere, and it’s because they are survivors. What they can’t do by adapting their behaviour they do by adapting their genetic structure and biology.’

  ‘They can’t fly,’ Natalie pointed out.

  ‘That’s not true,’ Gecko said. ‘Have you ever looked at a pigeon? They are rats with wings.’

  Calum was looking away from them, towards the wall. Natalie could tell that he was uncomfortable. ‘You just want there to be a giant rat out there because of that stupid Sherlock Holmes story,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not a –’ He caught himself. ‘Yes,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘I want there to be a giant rat out there because of that Sherlock Holmes story.’

  He gestured to Tara to hand her tablet across. She did – reluctantly, Natalie thought – and Calum touched it a couple of times. The nine LCD screens that were clustered around his workstation suddenly swivelled on their articulated arms and came together to form a larger screen facing the sofa. The picture of the man holding the turtle appeared in high definition on it. Calum used his fingers to identify the corners of a box on the image, marking out the creature in the background. That section of image suddenly expanded to fill the screen. Calum made some more gestures and imaging-processing software improved the quality, getting rid of some of the graininess and making the picture sharper. A serial number, stencilled on the side of the crate, came into focus: 119078B.

  It still looked like a large rat in a cage. Not a dog, and not a hairy hippopotamus.

  ‘This thing really does look like a giant rat,’ Calum conceded. ‘Is there any other information about it on the website? Any close-ups, or details of where it was found, or anything?’

  Tara shook her head. ‘Not that I could find. Actually, getting to the site was difficult enough – there are all sorts of firewalls and protocols protecting it from casual viewing. You can’t find it using normal search engines. As far as I can see, you actually need a password to get past the front page, although I didn’t let that stop me.’ Tara glanced at the screen, and then at Calum. ‘What do you want to do about it?’

  ‘I want to buy it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you should have mentioned that earlier,’ Natalie said brightly. ‘I’ve got my credit card with me. Can we order online? Do they deliver?’

  Calum glared at her – which was unusual, she thought. Normally, for some reason, he tried to look away from her as much as possible. She didn’t think he liked her very much, which didn’t actually bother her. Lots of people didn’t like her, but then she didn’t like lots of people, so that was OK.

  ‘I’m not kidding,’ he said. ‘I really do want to buy one. And you know as well as I do that someone engaged in the illegal buying and selling of exotic or extremely exotic animals is not just going to take a credit-card order online, put it in a box with some bubble wrap and FedEx it from Hong Kong to here. They are criminals. They are going to be operating very, very carefully. Someone is going to have to travel to Hong Kong and get in touch with this Xi Lang, which almost certainly isn’t his real name. Any clumsy or direct approach is going to spook him. He’ll assume it’s a trap set by the police. We’re going to have to be very careful.

  They all looked at one another, each thinking the same thought.

  Tara was the first one to say it. ‘Have you seen Rhino recently?’

  Gecko glanced over at Calum. ‘Do you want me to text him?’

  Calum nodded. ‘Please.’

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Natalie asked. ‘You actually want someone – us! – to go to China –’

  ‘Hong Kong,’ Calum corrected mildly.

  ‘Which was, the last time I checked, in China –’

  ‘It’s actually a Special Administrative Region of China, rather than being part of the mainland. It used to belong to England, but it was handed back in 1997.’

  ‘Whatever. The point is, it’s not England and it’s not America. It’s a foreign country controlled by a government that does not have a good record on human rights. And once we’re there you want us to go undercover and actually make a deal with these people. It’s not a good idea, Calum. It’s really not.’

  ‘Hong Kong has some very good shopping areas.’

  ‘That joke got old some time ago,’ she hissed. ‘Nice shops don’t work like catnip on me. Not any more.’ She shook her head for a moment, dismissing Calum’s attempts to get her off topic. ‘Look, these guys are committing felonies. Firstly, that makes them very dangerous. This is almost certainly something to do with the Triads! Haven’t you ever heard of them? They’re criminal gangs who are heavily into extortion, money laundering, people traf
ficking, smuggling and counterfeiting.’

  ‘How is it that you know so much about the Triads?’ Gecko asked.

  ‘I saw a documentary once,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘Calum, they kill people who get in their way! We need to tell the authorities about this, not go out there and actually give them more money!’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ he pointed out, ‘and I agree with you – in theory. The trouble is that if we report them then there’ll be a raid on the warehouse and all the exotic animals will be taken away. Most of them will probably die, because the authorities will have no idea how to look after them. The rest will be released back into the wild wherever they were taken from, where they’ll probably die anyway because they’ll be undernourished and under-exercised. Our only chance is to go and buy that giant rat now.’

  ‘Our only chance?’

  He gazed at her. ‘I thought we were all part of thelostworlds.co.uk, Natalie.’

  ‘Don’t try and guilt me out, Calum. I was there when you were arguing with my mom, remember? You want that DNA. I don’t want it. Tara doesn’t want it. Gecko—’

  ‘All right.’ He held up a hand. ‘I get the message. Yes, I have an ulterior motive, but if you really listened to the argument that your mother and I were having then you’d know it’s not just about me – it’s about everyone who is paralysed, or has cancer, or suffers from some sort of genetic problem that could be treated using gene therapy, if only the right genes could be found. That rat might have them.’

  ‘ “That dirty rat”,’ Tara murmured. She was quoting some film, Natalie knew, but Natalie wasn’t sure which one. Neither did she care. Rats were dirty.

  ‘You’re not helping,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not trying to help.’

  Natalie turned to Calum. ‘So what happens when we do buy it? Do you want us to pretend it’s a dog and have it shipped back here in a pet carrier in the hold of an aircraft? I’m pretty sure that customs will have something to say about that. Just getting a valid rabies certificate is going to be impossible.’