Invasive Species

by Joseph Wallace

Mary gestured at the papers. “So many reports—why aren’t the newspapers and TV all over this?”

  “Two dozen reports over many weeks in a country as big as ours—well, that’s not quite an avalanche,” Axelson said. “Especially not when the deaths are reported to be from ‘natural causes,’ allergic shock, or killer bee attacks.”

  Now there was an edge of anger in his voice. “But the government should know what’s going on. The question we need to ask is, Are they asleep at the switch? Or is it something else?”

  Mary said, “What do you want from us?”

  He gazed at her. Calculated sincerity and hope and compassion mixed in his expression, and beneath them, excitement. Avidity.

  It was the look of a spinner who’s seen the opportunity of a lifetime.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Come meet Governor Harrison, and he’ll tell you.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Rockefeller University, Manhattan

  CLARE SHAPIRO WAS a biochemist and a lab rat, which wasn’t hard to guess when you met her. She was tall and thin, with knotty hair pulled back in an unfashionable “I don’t give a shit” ponytail and unsettling, pale-gray eyes that looked at you as if you were wasting her time before you ever uttered a word.

  Maybe because you were.

  Trey and Jack hadn’t come to Rock U to analyze the limitations of Clare Shapiro’s charm. They were there because she was better than anybody else on earth at one thing: analyzing the chemicals in wasp venom.

  Trey knew that scientists around the world were working to develop new antivenins, new drugs, even potential weapons, from wasp venom. But before they could get to work, they had to understand what they were working with. For that, they went to Shapiro and her team.

  Trey and Jack had done the same a week before, when they’d sent the two thief specimens to her.

  After getting a call that she was ready to talk, they’d come to her dingy little office on Rock U’s fourth floor. It had a view of an airshaft and pigeons promenading around on the windowsill. Trey doubted that Clare cared. She probably never even looked out.

  As they entered, she said, “Parker.”

  “Hello,” Jack said. Trey could have sworn he looked a little shy.

  Her gaze shifted. “And you’re Gilliard? The one who served as a host to a larval wasp?”

  “Yes, that one,” Trey said.

  She regarded him with interest. “Mind if I get a blood sample from you?”

  “Sure.” He began to roll up his sleeve.

  She gave a hint of a smile. “When you leave will be fine. I’ll tell you where to go.”

  Trey wondered if a blood sample would reveal the changes in him. The presence, the other, that he was beginning to think would be with him forever.

  He was most aware of it when he awoke in the dead of night, when there were no distractions. At those times it felt most like a being, a consciousness. Half formed, incomplete, but there, living inside him.

  Trey had gone through every detail of his experience with Jack and Sheila, except this one. He wasn’t sure why he was keeping it a secret.

  Maybe it was telling him to stay quiet.

  Shapiro’s cold gaze held him. “Gilliard, how much do you understand about the chemistry of wasp venom?”

  “Let’s assume I understand nothing,” he said.

  Her expression tightened, and he thought she was biting back some choice words. Instead, she said, “You know we have the tools to decode genomes across the animal kingdom, right?”

  He nodded. Beside him, Jack said, “I’m still getting asked if there’s any dinosaur blood in our amber-trapped mosquitoes, so we can unravel the dino DNA and clone new ones.”

  Shapiro ignored this. “A few years ago, we successfully decoded the genome of Nasonia vitripennis—that’s a parasitic wasp, though not closely related to yours,” she said. “We were able to map out the constituents of its venom and compare it to the venom of other wasps.”

  Her expression had lightened a little. This was no surprise. Trey knew that even the most contrary people liked to talk, as long as you stuck to what interested them.

  “So we used a two-dimensional liquid chromatography electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer—”

  “Assume I understand nothing,” Trey said again.

  She looked at him, sighed, put her hands flat on the desk. “It’s a device for analyzing the chemical constituents of substances like wasp venom. Will that do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What its analysis showed us was that N. vitripennis’s venom contains at least seventy-nine different proteins—half of which were never previously associated with insect venoms, and nearly two dozen of which weren’t similar to any other proteins we’d ever seen. They were complete mysteries to us.”

  She stared at him with her unearthly gray eyes, making sure he understood. “These proteins are as alien,” she said, “as ones we might find in insects discovered on Mars.”

  Silence spread in the room. Then Trey sighed. “You’re warning me that seven days hasn’t been long enough for you to solve all the mysteries of thief venom.”

  “No,” she said. “Not quite enough.”

  Her eyes brightened. “But I wouldn’t have called if we’d found out nothing about your beast.” She blinked like a cat. “Logically, first we used a bioinformatic approach, employing amino acid sequences of known venom proteins to search for transcripts—identifiable patterns—of proteins in your wasp’s venom.”

  “Let me guess: The problem with that approach,” Trey said, “is that it only recognizes previously known proteins, not any ‘Martian’ ones.”

  “Yes.” Shapiro gave a quick nod. “But it’s a useful first step.”

  “And the next one?”

  “A combination of two techniques: The ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer I mentioned and—” A glint of amusement in her eyes. “And an off-line two-dimensional liquid chromatography matrix-assisted laser desorption and ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer as well.”

  Trey said, “You had enough venom for all these analyses?”

  “Just. We’re lucky that your beasts have exceptionally roomy venom sacs and that this adult specimen hadn’t stung anyone recently.”

  “I’m the luckiest!” Jack said brightly.

  Trey and Shapiro both ignored him. “What did you find?” Trey asked.

  “Mass spectrometry showed the presence of more than one hundred proteins—significantly more than we uncovered in N. vitripennis. Again, about a third were unrecognizable—we don’t yet know what they do. We’ll keep working on those.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Some, like an allergen 5 protein, are quite familiar. They represent well-known venom constituents that appear in many different wasp species.”

  She gave her quick smile. “Which tends to indicate that your wasps did not, in fact, originate on Mars. They evolved here.”

  Another blink. “Of the rest, some are merely translational or transcriptional.” She noticed his expression and said, “Proteins that help the venom gland function. They’re the grease in the machinery.”

  Trey was beginning to learn what Shapiro’s expressions meant. He could see that even as she spoke, her mind was on to the next thing. The next six things. She was like a chess player who can see the forced checkmate fifteen moves ahead.

  And now Trey could tell that she had something else to tell them, something more important. “But that’s not all, is it?” he said.

  “No.” Suddenly her face was alight. “In our tests, we kept finding the same protein, again and again. In some ways it resembled ones we’ve seen in other parasitic wasps, but with significant differences as well.”

  Her eyes widened a little. “It is highly unusual to see any protein appear so o
ften.”

  “What does it mean?” Trey asked.

  “It means it’s important. Crucial. It means that the beast has put the most energy, the most evolutionary effort, you might say, into producing this constituent.”

  Trey thought that over. “And which known proteins does it resemble?”

  She tilted her head and looked at him, then at Jack. “Most closely: phospholipase A1.”

  Jack sat up straighter in his chair. “Shit,” he said.

  Trey waited.

  “That’s a major venom allergen in the genus Polistes and others,” Jack told him. “When people die of anaphylactic shock from wasp stings, phospholipase A1 is often the culprit.”

  Trey looked at Shapiro. He had one more question to ask, the most important one. “That same protein,” he said. “Did it also turn up in the larva?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Repeatedly.” Again the widening of the eyes. “It’s unprecedented to find the same venom in an adult wasp and its larva, but that’s what we discovered.”

  Trey thought about the poison he’d felt pumping through his bloodstream. “Disturb the larva, and it releases the venom.”

  Shapiro nodded. “Yes.”

  “Any chance of an antivenin?”

  She grimaced. “That’s a long way off.”

  But her gaze was still bright as she looked at him. She had something else to tell him, but was waiting for him to figure it out first.

  “You also found,” he said slowly, “an explanation of why I didn’t realize I’d been . . . infected.” He looked over at Jack. “Or Sheila’s mother, either.”

  Jack’s eyes were still on Shapiro. “The chemical that clouds men’s minds?”

  She nodded. “Yes. In a gland in both adult and larva that, as far as we know, is also unique among wasps.”

  “What does the gland contain?”

  “A benzodiazepine.”

  Jack said, “Jesus.”

  At last something that was familiar to Trey, too. He knew that benzodiazepines were a class of drugs used as muscle relaxants, to control seizures, as sedatives, to battle anxiety.

  And to make patients forget what they’d just gone through. To create amnesia.

  “Every symptom of early infestation you’ve described—the lethargy, the dreaminess, and the inability to remember being implanted—can be caused by benzodiazepines,” Shapiro said.

  Jack was frowning. “Okay. Phospholipase. Benzodiazepine. You’re drugged to the gills. Why?”

  “I think I know,” Trey said.

  They both looked at him.

  “Let’s tie this together.” He paused, marshaling his thoughts. “The fact that I’m sitting here shows that removal of the larva isn’t necessarily fatal to the host.”

  Jack said, “Not when the larva is small.”

  “A mammal that’s been infected,” Trey went on. “Especially a primate—and we know that primates are the preferred hosts—when it notices the swelling. Sees the airhole, figures out there is a larva underneath. How does it respond?”

  Jack answered. “It worries at the wound. Even non-primates will try to get the larva out. A dog will scratch, a cat will chew, and a monkey will have a friend or family member pick it off.”

  “Yes. But only if it’s aware that it’s been infected. Only if it notices.”

  “Which the amnesic properties of the benzodiazepine prevent,” Shapiro said.

  “That’s how it worked on me,” Trey said.

  “Until Sheila noticed, and even then it was almost too fucking late.” Jack sat up in his chair. “You’re right. That’s it. That’s the point. When the larva is implanted, your mind is fogged so you don’t mess with it. Then, by the time it’s big enough that someone notices it and tries to get it out—well, by then it’s almost certain to kill you.”

  Trey nodded. “Could another sting, late in the process, influence the host’s brain to bring on the protective rage response I’ve seen?” He paused. “Is that even plausible?”

  Shapiro gave a shrug. “I don’t see why not. The human brain is easily influenced, and there are many known compounds that antagonize the ionotropic glutamate receptors, which mediate rage. Phencyclidine is just one well-known example, but it’s far from the only one.”

  “Phencyclidine?” Trey said. “PCP?”

  She nodded. “Angel dust. No, phencyclidine didn’t show up in our assays, but there’s something there. Now I just have to find it.”

  This seemed like a cue. Trey and Jack stood. “You’ve done amazing things,” Trey said, holding out his hand. “Thank you.”

  An eyeblink of a smile, and then she stood and shook his hand. Hers felt like it was made entirely of tendons.

  “My team is very skilled,” she said.

  Then she frowned. “Want more? Want that antivenin? Get us a supply of new specimens. There’s only so much we can get out of a single venom sac.”

  Jack made a sound through his nose. A laugh.

  “Soon enough,” he said, “that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  * * *

  THEY HEADED TO the fifth floor, where Trey would leave a blood sample. At the elevator he said, “Hold on. I forgot to ask her something.”

  When Jack made a move to go with him, Trey shook his head. “Wait here.”

  As Jack’s curious gaze followed him, he went back to Clare Shapiro’s office. She was still standing where they’d left her, peering down at some papers on her desk.

  She raised her eyes as he entered the room. “Yes?”

  “Are there any substances in wasp venom,” he said, “that can permanently change the chemistry of the human brain?”

  She tilted her head, thinking, then said, “None that I’m aware of. Theoretically, of course, it’s quite possible. Why do you ask?”

  Trey shook his head and answered her question with another of his own.

  “Clare,” he said, “what do you know about the hive mind?”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “I GOT A voice mail from Mary Finneran,” Sheila said as they walked in the door.

  Something in her tone made Trey stop and look at her. Jack, oblivious, sat down at his computer and said, “Who’s Mary Finneran?”

  Before she could answer, Trey said to Sheila, “The woman you visited in Florida. The one whose son—daughter?—was killed.”

  “Son and daughter-in-law.” Sheila frowned. “She and Kait are living in Charleston now.”

  “I remember. What did she say?”

  Sheila crossed her arms, hugging herself as if she were cold. “She said to make sure we watch Anthony Harrison’s acceptance speech tonight.”

  Jack looked up from his screen and said, “The hell does that mean?”

  Trey stood still, his mind working. Then he figured it out and felt a hole open somewhere deep inside him.

  “It means the deluge,” he said.

  * * *

  THE PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION hall looked like any other. Strung with bunting and red-white-and-blue banners, it was brightly lit but carefully calibrated not to make the audience look corpselike. The seats were filled with banner-waving delegates, politicians, reporters, and perhaps even some regular people.

  Jack, Sheila, and Trey had met in Trey’s apartment because Jack’s apartment was always a disaster area, and Trey wanted to watch on a full-size screen, not a computer monitor at the office. He didn’t watch much television, but when he did, he needed to see, to be able to understand and interpret what he was seeing.

  “Can they get to the point?” Jack said after two hours. “Or should I just shoot myself now?”

  But still the speeches went on and on, all lauding Anthony Harrison’s merits for the presidency. The audience rose to its feet for repeated scripted ovations. Delegates pledged their support to the candidate and showed off their cra
zy hats and buttons and waved their banners.

  Trey barely listened. He was watching the faces and seeing, under the cheers, the laughter, the shouts and ovations, something different: worry.

  They were worried because none of them—not delegates, reporters, pundits, viewers—knew what was coming when Anthony Harrison took the stage. Unlike every nominee for decades, he’d declined to release a transcript of his speech ahead of time, or to give even the slightest hint what it would contain.

  “This is the most important night of Harrison’s political career,” said an offended talking head on MSNBC, “and we have no idea what he’s about to say.”

  “Well,” replied a pundit, “he may be on his way to a crushing defeat, but he certainly has kept our attention tonight.”

  Jack pointed at the screen.

  “Here he comes,” he said.

  * * *

  ANTHONY HARRISON LOOKED like a politician. He was tall, broad shouldered, and wore his pinstriped steel-gray suit and red tie comfortably but not ostentatiously. His hair was thick and touched with gray at the temples.

  As he acknowledged the ovation from the crowd, smiling and waving at this ally and that supporter, Trey watched his face. Harrison didn’t have the shifty, angry look of so many career politicians. Nor was he a handsome blank. There seemed to be some intelligence in his gaze, some awareness of the absurdity of the theater he was engaged in.

  “This guy was a governor, right?” Trey asked.

  Both Jack and Sheila turned their heads to look at him. “Uh, yeah,” Jack said. “Of Colorado? For eight years?”

  Trey said, “Was he good?”

  Jack snorted, but Sheila said, “I think he was okay. Honest enough. Not the brightest or dimmest star.”

  “How do you know this?” Jack asked. “Didn’t you live in the Congo or something?”

  She shrugged. “Sure, but I’m still American. This is still my country.”

  Trey thought about it. Was it still his country? Sometimes he didn’t feel like he even belonged to the same species as the people cheering and waving banners on-screen.

  * * *

  FINALLY THE CROWD restrained itself and sat down, and Anthony Harrison began to speak. His voice was deep, relaxed, confident. Trey could see how he’d come so far.