Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 31
"Not precise, mind you, but simpler. We don't yet understand how it
breaks down those substances or how it obtains energy from them. There
are aspects of its biology that we can see perfectly clearly but that
still remain mysterious."
"I thought insects ate plants or each other or... dead meat," Bobby
said.
"They do," the entomologist confirmed.
"This thing is not an insect or any other class of the phylum
Arthropodan for that matter."
"Sure looks like an insect to me," Bobby said, glancing dow at the
partly dismantled bug and grimacing involuntarily.
"No," Manfred said,
"this is a creature that evidently e through soil and stone, capable of
ingesting that material i chunks as large as fat grapes. And the next
question is, that's what it eats, what does it excrete?" And the answer,
M Dakota, is that it excretes diamonds." Bobby jerked as if the
entomologist had hit him.
He glanced at Clint, who looked as surprised as Bobby t The Pollard case
had induced several changes in the y and now it had robbed him of his
poker face.
In a tone of voice that suggested Manfred was playing the for fools,
Clint said,
"You're telling us it turns dirt into diamonds?"
"No, no," Manfred said.
"It methodically eats through vein of diamond-bearing carbon and other
material, until it find the gems. Then it swallows them in their
encrusted jackets minerals, digests those minerals, passes the rough
diamond into the polishing chamber, where any remaining extraneous
mortar is worn away by vigorous contact with these hundreds of fine,
wirelike bristles that line the chamber." With the scalpel he pointed
to the feature of the bug that he had just describe
"Then it squirts the raw diamond out the other end." The entomologist
opened the center drawer of his desk,moved a white handkerchief,
unfolded it, and revealed three red diamonds, all considerably smaller
than the one Bobby had taken to van Corvaire, but probably worth
hundreds of thou sands, maybe millions, apiece.
"I found these at various points in the creature's system.
The largest of the three was still partially encased in a mottled
brown-black-gray mineral crust.
"They're diamonds?" Bobby said, playing ignorant.
"I've never seen red diamonds."
"Neither had I. So I went to another professor, a geologist who happens
to be a gemologist as well, got him out of be at midnight to show these
to him." Bobby glanced at the would-be Irish Sumo wrestler, but the man
did not rise from his chair or speak, so he evidently was not the
geologist.
Manfred explained what Bobby and Clint already knew that these scarlet
diamonds were among the rarest on things earth-while they pretended that
it was all news to them.
"This discovery strengthened my suspicions about the creature, so I went
straight to Dr. Gavenall's house and woke him shortly before two o'clock
this morning. He threw on sweats and sneakers, and we came right back
here, and we've been here ever since, working this out together, unable
to believe our own eyes." At last the round man rose and stepped to the
side of the desk.
"Roger Gavenall," Manfred said, by way of introduction.
"Roger is a geneticist, a specialist in recombinant DNA, and widely
known for his creative projections of microscopy genetic engineering
that might conceivably progress from current knowledge."
"Sorry," Bobby said,
"I lost you at 'Roger is..." We'll need some more of that layman's
language, I'm afraid."
"I'm a geneticist and futurist," Gavenall said. His voice was
unexpectedly melodic, like that of a television game-show host.
"Most genetic engineering, for the foreseeable future, will take place
on a microscopic scale-creating new and useful bacteria, repairing
flawed genes in the cells of human beings to correct inherited
weaknesses and prevent inherited disease. But eventually we'll be able
to create whole new species of animals and insects, macroscopic
engineering-useful things like voracious mosquito eaters that will
eliminate the need to spray Malathion in tropical regions like Florida.
Cows that are maybe half the size of today's cows and a lot more
metabolically efficient, so they require less food, yet produce twice as
much milk." Bobby wanted to suggest that Gavenall consider combining
the two biological inventions to produce a small cow that ate only
enormous quantities of mosquitoes and produced three times as much milk.
But he kept his mouth shut, certain that neither of the scientists would
appreciate his humor. Anyway, he had to admit that his compulsion to
make a joke of this was an attempt to deal with his own deep-seated fear
of the everincreasing weirdness of the Pollard case.
"This thing," Gavenall said, indicating the deconstructed bug in the lab
tray,
"isn't anything that nature created. It's clearly an engineered life
form, so astonishingly task-specific in every aspect of its biology that
it's essentially a biological chine. A diamond scavenger." Using a
pair of forceps and the scalpel, Dyson Man gently turned over the insect
that wasn't an insect, so he could see its midnight-black shell rimmed
with red markings. Bobby thought he heard whispery movement in many pa
of the study, and he wished Manfred would let some sun into the room.
The windows were covered with interior shutters, and the slats were
tightly shut. Bugs liked darkness and shadows, and the lamps here
seemed insufficiently bright to dissuade them from scurrying out of the
shallow draw over Bobby's shoes, up his socks, and under the legs of
pants.
Hanging his pendulous belly over the desk, indicating crimson edging on
the carapace, Gavenall said,
"On a few Dyson and I shared, we showed a representation of this pattern
to an associate in the mathematics department, and he confirmed that
it's an obvious binary code."
"Like the universal product code that's on everything you buy at the
grocery store," the entomologist explained.
Clint said,
"You mean the red marks are the bug's number?"
"Yes."
"Like... well, like a license plate?"
"More or less," Manfred said.
"We haven't taken a chip the red material for analysis yet, but we
suspect it'll prove be a ceramic material, painted onto the shell or
spray-bonded in some fashion." Gavenall said,
"Somewhere there are a lot of these thing industriously digging for
diamonds, red diamonds, all of them carries a coded serial number that
identifies it whomever created it and set it to work." Bobby grappled
with that concept for a moment, trying find a way to see it was a part
of the world in which he lived but it simply did not fit. "Okay, Dr.
Gavenall, you're able envision engineered creatures like this-"
"I couldn't have envisioned this," Gavenall said adamant
"It never would've occurred to me. I could only recognize it for what
it was, for what it must be."<
br />
"All right, but nevertheless you recognized what it must which is
something neither Clint nor I could've done. Sotell me-who could make
something like this damned thing Manfred and Gavenall exchanged a
meaningful look and were both silent for a long moment, as if they knew
the answer to his question but were reluctant to reveal it. Finally,
lowering his game-show-host voice to an even more mellifluous note,
Gavenall said,
"The genetic knowledge and engineering skill required to produce this
thing do not yet exist. We're not even close to being able to... to
... not even close.
" Bobby said,
"How long until science advances far enough to make this thing
possible?"
"No way of arriving at a precise answer," Manfred said.
"Guess."
"Decades?" Gavenall said.
"A century? Who knows?" Clint said,
"Wait a minute. What're you telling us? That this thing comes from the
future, that it came through some...
some time warp from the next century?"
"Either that," Gavenall said,
"or... it doesn't come from this world at all." Stunned, Bobby looked
down at the bug with no less revulsion but with considerably more wonder
and respect than he'd had a moment ago.
"You really think this might be a biological machine created by people
from another world? An alien artifact?" Manfred worked his mouth but
produced no sound, as if rendered speechless by the prospect of what he
was about to say.
"Yes," Gavenall said,
"an alien artifact. Seems more likely to me than the possibility that
it came tumbling back to us through some hole in time." Even as
Gavenall spoke, Dyson Manfred continued to work his mouth in a
frustrated attempt to break the silence that gripped him, and his
lantern jaw gave him the look of a praying mantis masticating a grisly
lunch. When words at last issued from him, they came in a rush:
"We want you to understand, we will not, flatly will not, return this
specimen. We'd be derelict as scientists to allow this incredible thing
to reside in the hands of laymen, we must preserve and protect it, and
we will, even if we have to do so by force." A flush of defiance lent a
glow of health to the entomologist's pale, angular face for the first
time since Bobby had met him.
"Even if by force," he repeated.
Bobby had no doubt that he and Clint could beat the crap out of the
human stick bug and his rotund colleague, but the was no reason to do
so. He didn't care if they kept the thing in the lab tray-as long as
they agreed to some ground rules about how and when they would go public
with it.
All he wanted right now was to get out of that bughouse into warm
sunlight and fresh air. The whispery sounds from the specimen drawers,
though certainly imaginary, grew louder and more frenzied by the minute.
His entomophobia would soon kick him off the ledge of reason and send
him screaming from the room; he wondered if his anxiety was a parent or
if he was sufficiently self-controlled to conceal it.
felt a bead of sweat slip down his left temple, and had the answer.
"Let's be absolutely frank," Gavenall said.
"It's not only obligation to science that requires us to maintain
possession of this specimen. Revelation of this find will make us,
academically and financially. Neither one of us is a slouch in his
field but this will catapult us to the top, the very top, and we're
willing to do whatever is necessary to protect our interests here His
blue eyes had narrowed, and his open Irish face had closed up into a
hard mask of determination.
"I'm not saying I'd k to keep that specimen... but I'm not saying I
wouldn't, their." Bobby sighed.
"I've done a lot of research for UCI into backgrounds of prospective
faculty members, so I know the academic world can be as competitive and
vicious and dirty dirtier-than either politics or show business. I'm
not going to fight you on this. But we've got to reach an agreement
about when you can go public with it. I don't want you doing anything
that would bring my client to the attention of the press until we've
resolved his case and are sure he's... out of danger.
"And when will that be?" Manfred asked.
Bobby shrugged.
"A day or two. Maybe a week. I doubt it drag on much longer than
that." The entomologist and geneticist beamed at each other, obviously
delighted. Manfred said,
"That's no problem at all. We need much longer than that to finish
studying the specimen and preparing our first paper for publication, and
devise a straight way to deal with both the scientific community and the
media." Bobby imagined that he heard one of the shallow drawers sliding
open in the case behind him, forced outward by the weight of a vile
torrent of giant, squirming Madagascar roaches.
"But I'll take the three diamonds with me," he said.
"They're quite valuable, and they belong to my client." Manfred and
Gavenall hesitated, made a token protest, but quickly agreed. Clint
took the stones and rewrapped them in the handkerchief. The scientists'
capitulation convinced Bobby there had been more than three diamonds in
the bug, probably at least five, leaving them with two stones to support
their thesis regarding the bug's origins and purpose.
"We'll want to meet your client, interview him," Gavenall said.
"That's up to him," Bobby said.
"It's essential. We must interview him."
"That's his decision," Bobby said.
"You've gotten rid of what you wanted. Eventually he may agree, and
then you'll have everything you're after. But don't push it now." The
round man nodded.
"Fair enough. But tell me... where did he find the thing?"
"He doesn't remember. He has amnesia." The drawer behind him was open
now. He could hear the shells of the huge roaches clicking and scraping
together as they poured out of confinement and down the front of the
cabinet, swarming toward him.
"We really have to go," he said.
"We don't have another minute to spare." He left the study quickly,
trying not to look as if he was bolting for his life.
Clint followed him, as did the two scientists, and at the front door,
Manfred said,
"I'm going to sound as if I ought to be writing stories for some
sensational tabloid, but if this is an alien artifact that came into
your client's hands, do you think he could've gotten it inside a...
well, a spaceship? Those people who claim to have been abducted and
forced to undergo examinations aboard spaceships... they always seem to
go through a period of amnesia first, before learning the truth '
"
"Those people are crackpots or frauds," Gavenall said sharply.
"We can't let ourselves be associated with that sort of thing." He
frowned, and the frown deepened into a scowl, and he said,
"Unless in this case it's true." Looking back at them from the stoop,
grateful to be outside, Bobby said, "Maybe it is. I'm at a point where
I'll believe a
ny thing till it's disproved. But I'll tell you this...
my feel is that whatever is happening to my client is something a
stranger than alien abduction."
"A lot," Clint agreed.
Without further elaboration, they went down the front was way to the
car. Bobby opened his door and stood for a moment reluctant to get into
Clint's Chevy. The mild breeze wash down the Irvine hills felt so clean
after the stale air in M fred's study.
He put one hand in his pocket, felt the three red diamond and said
softly,
"Bug shit." When he finally got into the car and slammed the door,
barely resisted the urge to reach under his shirt to determine if the
things he still felt crawling on him were real.
Manfred and Gavenall stood on the front stoop, watching Bobby and Clint,
as if half expecting their car to tip back its rear bumper and shoot
straight into the sky to rendezvous with some great glowing craft out of
a Spielberg movie.
Clint drove two blocks, turned at the corner, and pulled the curb as
soon as they were out of sight.
"Bobby, where the hell did Frank get that thing?" Bobby could only
answer him with another question:
"H many different places does he go when he teleports?