Reliquary

by Douglas Preston

  D’Agosta nodded. So far, it was ancient history.

  “What they didn’t know was that the figurine was a representation of a savage, indigenous creature. And that the packing material was a local plant essential to the diet of this creature. Soon after, the creature’s home environment is destroyed in the local government’s search for mineral deposits. So this monster—this Mbwun—follows the only remaining fibers. All the way from the Amazon Basin, to Belem, to New York City. It survives in the Museum basement, eating feral animals and consuming this plant, to which it seems addicted.”

  D’Agosta nodded again.

  “Well,” said Margo, “I don’t buy it. I used to, but I don’t anymore.”

  D’Agosta raised an eyebrow. “What about it don’t you buy, exactly?”

  “Think about it, Lieutenant. How could a wild animal—even an extremely intelligent one—make its way from the Amazon Basin to New York City in search of a few cases full of fibers? That’s a hell of a long way from its habitat.”

  “You’re not telling me anything we didn’t already know when that beast was destroyed. There was no other interpretation then, and I sure can’t see any other one now. Mbwun was here. I felt the thing breathe on me, for Chrissakes. If it didn’t come from the Amazon, then where?”

  “Good question.” said Margo. “What if Mbwun was originally from New York and was simply coming home?”

  There was a brief silence. “Coming home?” D’Agosta said, mystified.

  “Yes. What if Mbwun was not an animal at all, but a human being? What if he was Whittlesey?”

  This time, the silence was much longer. D’Agosta looked at Margo. Great shape or no, she must be near dead from exhaustion, working nonstop on those corpses. And Brambell getting murdered like that, and then her discovering that one of the corpses she’d been picking over belonged to a former coworker. A coworker she already felt guilty about having dropped out of touch with… How could he have been so stupid, so selfish, bringing her in on a job like this, knowing how much the original Museum murders had upset her? “Listen,” he began. “Dr. Green, I think you’d better—”

  Margo held up her hand. “I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But it’s not, I swear it’s not. My lab assistant is working on several more tests as we speak, just to verify my findings. So let me finish. Mbwun had an astonishingly high percentage of human DNA. We had one of the claws sequenced, remember? We found intact strings of perfect human DNA, many thousands of base pairs long. That’s no evolutionary aberration. Also, Pendergast found some items of Whittlesey’s in the creature’s lair, remember? And don’t forget that the creature killed everyone it came in contact with except one person: Ian Cuthbert. Why? Cuthbert had once been a close friend of Whittlesey’s. And then, Whittlesey’s body was never found…”

  D’Agosta’s jaw set. This was insane. Pushing the chair back, he began to rise.

  “Let me finish,” Margo said quietly.

  D’Agosta returned her level gaze. Something about the look in her eyes made him sit down again.

  “Lieutenant,” she continued, “I know how this sounds. But you must listen. We made a terrible mistake. I’m as much to blame as anybody else. We never put the final pieces of the puzzle together. But somebody did. Greg Kawakita did.”

  She placed an 8” x 10” blowup of a microscopic image on the table. “This plant contains a reovirus.”

  “We already knew that.”

  “But what we overlooked is that these reoviruses have a unique ability: they can inject foreign DNA into the host cell. And they produce a drug. I ran some additional tests on the fibers this evening, after I made this discovery. They carry genetic material—reptilian DNA—which is inserted into the human host when the plant is eaten. And that DNA, in turn, initiates a physical transformation. Somehow—I don’t know how or why—Whittlesey must have ingested the plant while on the expedition. He underwent a morphological change. He became Mbwun. Once the change was complete, he needed a steady diet of the drug in the plants. And when the local supply was destroyed, Whittlesey knew that more could be found in the Museum. He knew, because he’d sent them the plants here, as packing fibers in the crates. So he returned to the crates. It was only when he was cut off from the supply of fibers that he began killing human beings. See, the hypothalamus of the human brain contains a hormone similar to the plants—”

  “Wait. You’re saying that eating this plant turns you into some kind of monster?” D’Agosta asked incredulously.

  Margo nodded. “And now I know what Greg had to do with this. He figured everything out, then dropped out of sight to pursue some plan of his own.” She unrolled a large diagram on the conference table. “Here’s a map of his laboratory, or as much of it as I could reconstruct. This list in the corner inventories all the equipment I could identify. Even at wholesale prices, it all must have cost in excess of eight hundred thousand dollars.”

  Despite himself, D’Agosta whistled. “Drug money.”

  “That’s exactly right, Lieutenant. The only purpose of such a lab would be some very sophisticated production-level genetic engineering. I emphasize the word production.”

  “Late last year, there were rumors about a new drug on the street,” D’Agosta said, “called glaze. Very rare, very expensive, with an amazing rush. Haven’t heard much about it recently, though.”

  Margo placed a finger on the diagram. “There are three stages to genetic engineering. The first is to map the DNA of an organism. That’s what these machines along the north wall did. Combined, they made up a massive sequencing operation. This first one controls the polymerase chain reaction, which replicates the DNA so it can be sequenced. This one sequences the DNA. Then this machine, here, was a Cambridge Systems NAD-1. We have one downstairs. It’s a highly specialized supercomputer that uses gallium arsenide CPUs and vector processing to analyze sequencing results. Then here, along the south wall, were the melted remains of a series of aquaria. Kawakita was growing the Mbwun plant in large quantities to supply raw material for this operation. And here was an Ap-Gel viral production facility for incubating and culturing viruses.”

  There was a deathly silence. D’Agosta mopped his brow and felt around in his pocket for the reassuring shape of his cigar. Despite himself, he was starting to believe.

  “Kawakita was using this equipment to remove genes from the plant virus.” Margo placed some more pictures on the table. “These are SEM micrographs. They show that he was removing the reptilian genes. Why? Because he was obviously trying to negate the physical effects of the drug.”

  “What does Frock think of all this?”

  As he asked the question, D’Agosta thought he saw a momentary flush move across Margo’s features. “I haven’t had the chance to tell him yet. But I know he’ll be skeptical. He’s still wedded to his fractal evolution theory. This may sound crazy, Lieutenant, but the fact is there are many substances in nature—hormones, for instance—that cause startling transformations like this. It’s not as bizarre or unusual as it sounds. There’s a hormone called BSTH which turns a caterpillar into a butterfly. There’s another called resotropin-x. When a tadpole gets a dose of that, it turns into a frog in a matter of days. That’s what’s happening here, I’m sure of it. Only now, we’re talking about changing a human being.”

  She paused. “There’s something else.”

  “Isn’t this enough?”

  Margo dug into her carryall and pulled out some small scraps of burned paper, sandwiched between pieces of clear plastic. “I found what looked like Kawakita’s lab journal among the ashes. These were the only sheets with any legible writing on them.” She brought out more photographs. “I had the scraps enlarged. This first one is from the middle of the notebook. It’s some kind of a list.”

  D’Agosta peered at the photograph. He could make out a few scribbled words along the left edge of the badly burned page: wysoccan, dung-loving blue foot. Then, nearer the bottom: green cloud, gunpowder, lotus heart.

&n
bsp; “Mean anything to you?” D’Agosta asked, scribbling the words into his notebook.

  “Just the gunpowder,” Margo replied. “Although something tells me I ought to recognize more of it.” She handed him another photograph. “There’s another one that seems to be fragments of code for his extrapolation program. Then there’s a longer one.” D’Agosta scanned the offered fragment.

  …can’t live with the knowledge of what I’ve… How could I, while concentrating on… ignore the mental effects that… but the other one grows more eager by the day. I need the time to…

  “Sounds like he was getting a conscience, there toward the end,” D’Agosta said, handing back the card. “But what was it, exactly, that he did?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Margo replied. “Notice he talks here about the mental effects of glaze as something he hadn’t considered. And did you catch that reference to ‘the other one’? I still haven’t figured that part out.” She reached for another card. “Then there’s this. I think it came from the last page of the journal. As you can see, besides a lot of numbers and calculations, there are only three completely legible words, with a period between them: ‘irreversible. Thyoxin might …’ ”

  D’Agosta looked at her questioningly.

  “I looked it up. Thyoxin is an experimental herbicide, highly potent, for removing algae from lakes. If Greg was growing this plant, what would he want with thyoxin? Or with vitamin D, which he was also apparently synthesizing? There’s still a lot I haven’t figured out.”

  “I’ll mention it to Pendergast, just in case he has any ideas.” D’Agosta stared at the photographs a moment, then pushed them aside. “So tell me, Dr. Green,” he went on, “I’m not quite there yet. Just what exactly was Kawakita trying to do with all this apparatus of his?”

  “He was probably trying to tame the drug by subtracting the reptilian genes from the Mbwun plant virus.”

  “Tame?”

  “I think he was trying to create a drug that didn’t cause the grotesque physical changes. To make the user more alert, stronger, faster, able to see better in the dark. You know, the kind of hypersensory abilities Mbwun had. But without the side effects.”

  Margo began rolling up the diagram. “I’d need to test tissue samples from Kawakita’s corpse to be sure. But I think we’ll find traces of the Mbwun drug, substantially altered. And I think that the drug itself will be found to have some kind of narcotic side effect.”

  “You mean Kawakita was taking it himself?”

  “I’m certain of it. But he must have screwed up in some way. He must not have refined it or purified it properly. And the deformation that we saw in his skeleton was the result.”

  D’Agosta wiped his brow again. God, he needed that cigar. “Just a minute,” he said. “Kawakita was a smart guy. He wouldn’t just take a dangerous drug for the hell of it, to see what would happen. No way.”

  “You’re right, Lieutenant. And perhaps that’s where the guilt comes in. See, he wouldn’t have taken the drug himself right away. He would have tested it first.”

  “Oh,” D’Agosta said. There was a long silence, and then he added, “Oh, shit.”

  = 36 =

  BILL TRUMBULL felt great. The market was up sixteen points for the day, nearly a hundred for the week, with no end in sight. At twenty-five, he was already pulling down a hundred large a year. Wouldn’t his classmates at Babson shit when they heard that at the reunion next week. Most of them had gone on to crummy management jobs, lucky to be making fifty.

  Trumbull and his friends pushed through the turnstiles and entered the platform of the Fulton Street subway station, chattering and hooting. It was past midnight, and they’d put away a fine dinner at the Seaport, as well as a lot of microbrewed beer, and had talked endlessly about how rich they were all becoming. Now they were in an uproarious mood, chortling about the dork who had just joined the training program and wouldn’t last a month.

  Trumbull felt a puff of stale wind and heard the familiar distant rumble as two tiny headlights appeared on the track. He would be home in half an hour. He felt a momentary annoyance at how far uptown he lived—98th Street and Third Avenue—and at how long it took to get home from Wall Street. Maybe it was time to move, get a loft downtown, or a nice two-bedroom in the low Sixties. While a Soho address wasn’t too bad, an East Side address was still better. Balcony on a high floor, king-sized bed, cream carpeting, chrome and glass.

  “…So she says, ‘Honey, can I borrow seventy dollars?’ ” Everyone roared salaciously as the punch line was delivered, and instinctively Trumbull laughed along with them.

  The rumble grew into a deafening roar as the express train pulled into the station. One of the group nudged Trumbull playfully toward the edge of the platform, and he leaned back out of the way of the approaching train. It came to a halt with a great shriek of brakes, and they piled into one of the cars.

  Trumbull lurched into a seat as they pulled out of the station, looking around in annoyance. The car’s air-conditioning wasn’t working and all the windows were open, letting in the stale, damp smell of the tracks and the deafening noise of the train. It was hot as hell. He loosened his tie further. He was beginning to feel logy, and a mild but persistent pain was gathering at his temples. He glanced at his watch: they had to be back at the office in six hours. He sighed and leaned back. The train rocketed through the tunnel, swaying, making so much noise it was impossible to speak. Trumbull closed his eyes.

  At 14th Street, several of the guys got off to catch trains for Penn Station. They grasped his hand, punched his shoulder, and were gone. More got off at Grand Central, leaving only Trumbull and Jim Kolb, a bond trader who worked one floor below. Trumbull didn’t particularly like Kolb. He closed his eyes again, exhaling wearily as the train dove deeper into the earth, following the express track.

  Vaguely, Trumbull was aware of the train pulling into the 59th Street station, the doors opening, closing, the express plunging back into the darkness, gathering speed for the thirty-block run to 86th. One more stop, he thought drowsily.

  Suddenly, the train lurched, then slowed, screeching to a halt. A long moment passed. Jostled awake, Trumbull sat in gathering irritation, listening to the tickings and creakings of the motionless car.

  “Screw it,” said Kolb loudly. “Screw the Lexington Avenue Number Four.” He looked around for a response, getting none from the two other half-asleep riders. Then he elbowed Trumbull, who managed a wan smile as he thought about what a loser Kolb was.

  Trumbull glanced down the car. He saw a cute-looking waitress and one black kid, wearing a bulky overcoat and knitted cap despite the hundred-degree interior of the train. Although the youth appeared to be sleeping, Trumbull eyed him warily. Probably coming back from a hard night’s mugging, he thought. He felt in his pocket for his penknife. Nobody was going to take his wallet, even if there was no money left in it.

  There was a sudden crackle of static and a raspy voice came over the PA system: Attention passengzweesh therlalignal problem reshorkwix hortly.

  “Yeah, right, tell me another one,” Kolb said disgustedly.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s what they always say. A signal problem. We should be moving shortly. In their dreams.”

  Trumbull crossed his arms, closing his eyes again. His headache was getting worse, and the heat felt like a suffocating blanket.

  “To think they charge a buck fifty to make us sit in this sweatshop,” Kolb said. “Maybe next time we should hire a limo.”

  Trumbull nodded vaguely and checked his watch. Twelve forty-five.

  “No wonder people jump the turnstile,” Kolb was saying.

  Trumbull nodded again, wondering how he could make Kolb shut up. He heard a noise outside the car and glanced idly at the window. There was a dim form in the humid darkness, approaching up the adjoining track. Some MTA repairman, no doubt. Maybe he’s just doing late night track repairs, Trumbull thought, watching idly as the figure came closer. Hope swelled, the
n ebbed. But if there’s something wrong with the train, shit, we could be down here until—

  Suddenly it passed by his window, soundlessly, a figure in white. Trumbull sat up like a shot. It was no track worker, but a woman: a woman in a long dress, running and stumbling down the tracks. He watched her retreating back through the open windows. Just as she disappeared into the gloom, he noticed that the woman’s back was splattered with something that glistened black in the reflected light of the stalled train.

  “Did you see that?” he asked Kolb.

  Kolb glanced up. “See what?”

  “A woman running along the tracks.”

  Kolb grinned. “One too many, Billy boy?”

  Trumbull stood up and thrust his head out the window, squinting down the tracks in the direction the figure had gone. Nothing. As he ducked back into the car, he realized nobody else had noticed anything.

  What was going on here? A mugging? He looked back out the window but the woman was gone, the tunnel once again quiet and empty.

  “This is getting to be a lot longer than ‘shortly,’ ” Kolb groused, tapping his two-toned Rolex.

  Trumbull’s head was pounding now. God knows he’d had enough to drink to be seeing things. Third time this week he’d gotten hammered. Maybe he shouldn’t go out so much. He must have seen a track worker carrying something on his back. Or her back. Some of them were women these days, after all. He glanced through the coupling doors into the next car, but it was equally peaceful, its sole occupant staring vacantly into space. If anything had happened, it would have been announced on the PA.

  He sat down, closed his eyes, and concentrated on making the pain in his head go away. Most of the time, he didn’t mind riding the subway. It was a fast trip, and the clattering tracks and flashing lights kept a person distracted. But at times like this—idled without explanation, in the overheated darkness—it was hard not to think about just how deep under the earth the express track ran, or the mile of blackness that lay between him and the next stop…