by Ted Kosmatka
He backed up, blood splattering the tile while he reached for the door. He hit the door-open button as the creature eyed him from a crouch, gray eyes slitted. Its muzzle slid away from its teeth as its face contorted in rage.
Silas took a step back through the opening door, and the creature bolted, crossing the room in springing strides. Silas jerked himself backward, slipping on his own blood, falling through the open doorway. He hit the ground on his shoulder and kicked at the door, trying to shut it. The creature launched itself forward and slammed into the bloody glass a moment after the door clicked shut.
There was a meaty thump, and the gladiator dropped to the ground.
Silas rolled away from the door. Away from the staring, slitted eyes on the other side of the glass.
He pulled himself to his feet, grabbing at the edge of the lab bench to steady himself. Only then did Silas look at the wound.
Only then did he see the missing finger.
On his right hand, his pinkie finger terminated just above the second knuckle.
HOSPITALS. SILAS had always hated them.
The surgery took a little more than an hour.
“We need to shorten the bone,” the doctor had said.
To Silas, this seemed counterintuitive, but a series of nurses assured him it was necessary so that skin could be pulled over the wound.
“It’s too bad you couldn’t find the finger,” one of them said.
“Oh, I know where it is.”
A finger. Not a pound of flesh, exactly. But it was something. It felt like payment.
They pumped him full of IV antibiotics. Then tetanus shots. Rabies shots were suggested when it was learned an animal bite was involved.
Silas explained to the new doctor at shift change that the animal in question wasn’t going to be available for brain tissue dissection. “Honestly, it’s worth more than I am. They might want to dissect my brain to make sure I didn’t give it something.”
The next morning, the calls started at nine A.M. The visits soon after that. Tay, the trainer, showed up, accompanied by several members of the team. After the condolences, “It’s time to shift gears on this,” he said.
Silas agreed.
“Past time,” Tay said. “We’ve officially transited the natal phase of the program. The training phase begins tomorrow.”
“I’m really sorry about this,” Tay said. “If I had any idea that it might be so aggressive so young …”
Silas shrugged as best he could while sitting in the hospital bed. “You did say it was a good thing that the gladiator associated humans with the arrival of food.”
Tay cringed.
Silas smiled. “Things happen.”
“You say that now. We’ll see if you’re casual when the drugs wear off.”
When Tay left, Silas made several calls to Benjamin, who was already on his way and had to reroute back to the lab. He showed up at the hospital a few hours later, arms laden.
Benjamin laid the requested papers on Silas’s hospital bed and collapsed into a nearby chair.
“That bad?” Silas asked, reading Ben’s expression.
“A bust,” Benjamin said.
“Complete?”
“Not a single match.”
“Damn.” Silas leafed quickly through the pile of papers that represented nearly two weeks’ work for his head cytologist. The DNA fingerprinting hadn’t turned up a single template match to any of the known existing orders of animals.
“Are you okay?” Ben asked. “You in a lot of pain?”
“Let’s not worry about me at the moment. Let’s worry about the project.”
“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Benjamin said.
Silas leaned back in his bed. He was out of ideas, too. He laced his remaining fingers behind his head and casually considered his friend. His hand throbbed.
Ben was one of those rare individuals, usually of Scandinavian extraction, afflicted with skin so profoundly devoid of melanin that the underlying blood vessels provided a kind of emotional broadcast system. When he was embarrassed, he flushed red to the ears. When angry, deep red ovals would form in the hollows of his cheeks. If he was merely overheated, a rosy glow would reach across his face to his forehead. It was a communication system both completely alien and completely fascinating to Silas.
As he looked at the younger man’s mottled pink face, Silas assessed that there was now a new emotion to be cataloged: frustration. “I think we’ll have to take a different angle on this. We’ve been trying to learn about Felix from the inside out. Now let’s try the opposite.”
“I don’t get you. You’re in the hospital, and you’re still thinking about work?”
“I’ve got nine and a half other fingers. What we need now is data.”
“You have a problem.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”
“We need to learn everything we can about the creature.”
“It’s all there,” Ben said, gesturing to the paperwork. “Right down to its raw code, but I don’t know what you expect to find.”
“Maybe I’ll know when I see it.”
“We’ve already done a head-to-toe workup.”
“Yes, but with the wrong mindset and the wrong people. We were looking for similarities to existing species, existing patterns. If this organism really is new, then we’ll have to relate form to function if we’re going to learn anything about what to expect.”
“So what are you saying—bring in some new talent?”
“Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“We can do that. We’ve had teams of anatomists fighting over time to study it.”
Silas considered. He thought of the creature as it had hissed at him. That strange alien sound. “No, that would still be from the wrong perspective. Conventional anatomic study is still rooted in cladistics.”
“So is all of biology.”
“Not all of it,” Silas said.
He flipped open his notebook and scanned down the page, not wanting to look at Benjamin when he said what he was thinking. “I think we need a xenobiologist.”
Silas heard the smile in Benjamin’s voice. “Busy field, that?”
“You know what I mean. Theoretical xenobiology.”
“How is that gonna help?”
“Fresh eyes. A different perspective.”
Ben nodded. “Okay, you’re the boss. I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
“I want you to check who’s the best.”
“Sure.”
“And, Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“This is a silent program. No publicity on this one.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I assumed that.”
Part II
The Gathering Storm
How dare you sport thus with life.
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vidonia João stepped through the hatch of the small aircraft and into the direct glare of the Southern California sun. She paused at the top of the platform and turned her face into the hot breeze. It had been a long flight on short notice, but despite the heat, it felt good to be in the open air again.
Long black hair fanned out behind her, exposing the planes of an unusual face.
Her ancestral pool was broad and shallow, drawn from the oldest sailing routes across the North and South Atlantic. It was the kind of face sometimes seen in Caribbean markets or metropolitan fashion shows—places where the world’s cultures mixed and matched and made their own thing. Soft brown skin, full lips, a long, high-arched nose.
She cast her dark eyes into the glare and saw a tall blond man waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Silas? she wondered. She shouldered her travel bag and descended in a series of bounces that drew the man’s eye to places other than her face.
“Dr. João?” the blond man asked. His face was scorched deep red by the noonday sun.
Her white teeth flashed affirmation.
>
“I’m Benjamin Wells, head cytologist at Helix. We’re happy you decided to join us.”
“Happy to be here. It will be nice to step out of the classroom for a while.” Her accent was soft, subtle, something she’d worked hard to smooth out in the eleven years she’d been an American citizen.
“Well, glad to oblige you. You’ll certainly be doing more than teaching here.”
“That’s what I’ve been told, but it’s still not clear what exactly I will be doing. Opportunities in industry aren’t exactly common in my field.”
“Dr. Williams wants to brief you about that when we get to the compound. If you’ll follow me,” he said.
And as simple as that, the introductions were over.
Vidonia followed him across a dozen yards of hot tarmac to a low, sleek limousine. The driver nodded as he took her bags, and the bite of the air-conditioning was welcome on the bare skin of her calves.
“Any jet lag?” Benjamin asked once they were on their way.
“Not too bad.”
“Good, because Silas will want to see you as soon as possible.”
“The sooner the better. Are we stopping by the hotel first?”
“Hotel? I guess you are still in the dark. You’ll be staying at the compound. This is a blue-level project, and they take security pretty seriously around here. For your own safety and the safety of the program, all consultants are to be on-site for the duration.”
“How many consultants are there?” This was getting more interesting by the minute.
“Counting you?”
“Yeah.”
Benjamin looked up, as if counting to himself. After a moment of contemplation, “One,” he said.
“One?”
“Yep.”
Vidonia reclined deeper into the leather seat and let the view through the window wash over her. The limo was making good time, cruising in the commercial lane while the rest of the traffic struggled along bumper to bumper.
They were high in the air, and the elevated highway gave a breathtaking view of the city. Low rectangular buildings sprawled away in all directions, and in the distance, glittering spires stretched toward the sky. There were no trees or green of any kind. It made her sick for her childhood. But that was so long ago now. Long ago and far away, and she the better for it, she told herself.
Twenty minutes later they descended the skyway, and the landscape around the thoroughfare had opened up considerably. The urban sprawl had given way to something else. The broad steel buildings they drove past were now spaced farther apart, crouching on huge park-size swaths of grass. Here, at least, green had taken a foothold.
“This is the technical district,” Benjamin said, when he noticed her interest.
It reminded her of the poem Where Science Lives, all those steel buildings on their neat little parks. The straight roads and ordered landscaping. Looking out at that, it was easy to imagine that science belonged here and might have little use in places where the roads weren’t quite so clean and orderly. Places where dirty children begged at the corners.
Ben revealed his discomfort at her continued silence through his fidgeting and an occasional awkward glance. She knew the type, always looking for the next interaction and confused about what to do in its absence. An unusual temperament in a scientist. She decided to put him at ease. “Was I hard to find?”
He shook his head. “Not really. But I did a lot of research before I contacted you. You’re near the top of your field.”
“You give me too much credit, really,” she said. “But even if I am near the top, why not contact those at the summit? Why me?”
“That’s rather complicated.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“You’ve managed not to attract a lot of attention from those outside your area of specialty.”
“Or much in it,” she said.
Ben smiled. “Your absence isn’t likely to require a lot of explanation in scientific circles.”
“Oh, I’m beginning to understand,” she said. “So you mean I’m good, but I’m not so good that I’m going to be missed.”
“Something like that.”
When they arrived at the compound a few minutes later, the scale of the place shocked her. The facility was enormous and sprawling—a maze of winding roads that took them past several suites of buildings and parking lots. Ben took her directly to the research lab. They parked and entered the building. She said nothing as he led her down the long halls and carded her through the checkpoints.
When she stepped through the door of the research lab, she looked around for a moment, unsure why he’d brought her there.
“This would be your lab,” he said.
“This?”
“Yes.”
“This would all be for my use?”
“Yes.” Ben motioned her forward.
The lab was something she hadn’t expected. She let her fingers play over the smooth, silver benchtop that ran along the wall. She gestured to her left.
“A CAT scan,” Ben responded. “That’s basic. We also have X ray, thermal imaging, and internal photo time-lapse. But the rest we thought best left up to you.”
“I can order other equipment?”
He nodded. “Silas wants the lab designed around you. Let us know what your needs are, and they’ll be provided for. Whatever you want, within reason. And my experience has been if it’s not completely crazy, then it’s within reason. They believe in keeping the talent happy around here.”
“And the computer system?”
“Tandem link, virtual imaging tied from different ports of scan. It will do.”
“Yes,” she said, impressed. “That will certainly do.”
She sank into a swivel chair and let it run a slow circle. What was she getting herself into?
“How much control do I have?”
“All and none. You’ll have the freedom to do what you feel is necessary, but ultimately, you answer to Silas. What he says goes. Oh, and you can’t publish until after the Olympic Games. We’ll need you to put that in writing before you begin.”
“Eight months. That won’t be a problem.”
“Still interested?”
She looked around at the gleaming equipment. “Very.”
“Good, then it’s time you met Silas.”
SHE HEARD him before she saw him. Thwump, thwump, thwump. She followed Benjamin around the side of the building and into a kind of courtyard. Bushy trees draped in tiny white flowers stood in staggered formation along one side of the clearing. Several picnic tables crowded at the far edge. Beyond them, a single basketball hoop cast its crooked shadow along the edge of a parking lot. The cars in the lot were parked at a respectful distance.
The ball left Silas’s hands in an arc. It bounced high off the rim, touched backboard, rim again, and then fell away. Missed.
Ben clapped loudly as they approached across the grass. “They told me you were out here. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.”
The man turned, and Vidonia tried to conceal her surprise. He wasn’t what she expected.
“You must be Dr. João,” he said, extending a large hand. The pinkie, she noticed, was partly missing—the skin healed but still slightly pink. “I’m Silas Williams.”
“Nice to meet you. And it’s pronounced Zhoo-wow.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s quite all right, I get that all the time. It’s Portuguese. I’m familiar with your work.”
Silas smiled. Like many very tall men, he had a heavy jaw, and his smile seemed awkward perched across all that bone. Strong, high cheekbones balanced out his rectangular face. The complexion beneath the roughness of a few days’ stubble was smooth mocha, and his curly hair was graying vigorously upward from the temples, giving him a distinguished look, despite his size.
“Has Ben showed you the lab yet?” he asked.
“Yeah, she’s hooked,” Ben interjected.
Silas bent for the ba
ll, then tossed it from one hand to the other. He turned and regarded the basketball hoop thoughtfully.
“There is something about this game that I’ve really missed,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Ben asked, his voice, incredulous, rising an octave.
“When you’ve got the ball in your hand and you’re staring at the hoop, it’s easy to push everything else away.”
“When was the last time you touched a ball?” Ben asked.
“You focus on the rim, calculate distance, concentrate …” Silas flicked his wrist and sent the ball tumbling through the air. It connected firmly with the front of the rim and bounced back in his direction.
“Why the sudden interest in athletics?” Ben asked.
When Silas didn’t answer, Ben pressed, “Did something happen that I don’t know about?”
Silas grabbed the ball again and tossed it over to Vidonia. She caught it and turned it in her hands, looking at him. Looking at him.
“Shoot,” he said, finally.
She didn’t hesitate. She brought it up to her chest and heaved. The ball carved its little parabola across the blue sky. Air ball, not even close.
Silas picked the ball from the grass and stepped back onto the pavement, dribbling in long bounces. “Used to play a lot when I was a kid. You don’t have to think. You just aim and throw; your body does the math for you. There’s something to that, probably.”
“Did something happen today, Silas?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, something happened.” Silas shot again. This time the ball rasped through the net. He turned back to Vidonia. “You’re probably wondering why you’re here.”
“It had crossed my mind,” she said.
“You’re curious why we’d want a xenobiologist.”
“This isn’t a field where it’s common to get job offers in the middle of the night from halfway across the country,” she said. Particularly from Olympic Development, she thought.
“Well,” he said, as he bent to retrieve the ball, “as you’ve probably guessed, since you say you are familiar with my work, the organism in question isn’t of extraterrestrial origin. I should get that out of the way at the beginning. But it is alien. Yes, I think it fits the broadest definition of that word—alien—but it is from here, right from this facility. That’s why we called you.”
