Micro

by Michael Crichton

  “Obviously not.” Danny tucked himself down into a frilly lichen.

  “We can’t just give up, Danny.”

  Danny scowled and leaned back in the lichen, and put on the radio headset. “Testing, testing,” he said into the radio. His voice crackled in their ears.

  “Hey—radio silence,” Peter warned him.

  “Vin Drake! Help! S.O.S. We’re stuck in a tree!” Danny shouted into his mike.

  “Knock it off.”

  “I was only joking.”

  “Got a transmission.” Johnstone bent over the radio locator in the cockpit of the hexapod, earphones on his head. He started laughing. “Dumb bastards—they’re calling Drake for help.” His eyes moved upward, searched the canopy. “They’re in a tree somewhere above us.”

  Telius grunted. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Telius stood up with the binoculars and began searching through the crowns of trees all around, looking for motion, listening for voices. The spies were somewhere up there. They were not going to be easy to find.

  He couldn’t see anything. Then he silently pointed with one finger: go this way.

  Johnstone toggled the joystick. The hexapod responded by walking swiftly and smoothly across the forest floor, making almost no sound, only a faint whine coming from the motors on the legs.

  Telius was pointing to the base of a tree. A pandanus tree. Telius pointed upward along the trunk. “Up,” he said.

  Johnstone operated a control, and claws on the vehicle’s feet were withdrawn into sheaths, revealing soft pads covered with extremely fine bristles. They were nano-bristles. The bristles, similar to the pads on a gecko’s feet, could stick to virtually any surface, even glass. The hexapod began to walk straight up the trunk of the tree. Strapped in the cockpit, the two men hardly seemed to notice that the walker had gone vertical. They could barely feel gravity anyway.

  The climbers reached the top branches of the ohia tree, and Karen King led the way up the final pitch. She crawled and walked along a high branch into a cluster of leaves that stood in bright sunlight, where she broke out into a magnificent view. The others followed her, and they ended up standing on a branch among the leaves. The branch swayed in the breeze. The ohia blossoms, red and spray-like, resembled fireworks. The flowers consisted of a radiant explosion of red stamens, and they smelled impossibly sweet.

  The view from among the flowers took in the Manoa Valley and the surrounding mountain ridges. Around the valley, mountain flanks, cloaked in green and sheared by cliffs, plunged down from ridges and defiles, veiled in clouds. Waterfalls threaded through rifts in the forested mountainsides. Tantalus Peak, the curving rim of a volcanic crater, looked down on the valley from the north. To the southwest beyond the narrow mouth of the valley, the buildings of Honolulu rose, revealing how close to the city the valley was. Even so, the Nanigen headquarters, on the far side of Pearl Harbor, might just as well have been a million miles away.

  Off to the southeast, they saw the greenhouse and the parking lot, a dirt expanse dotted with puddles of rainwater. The parking lot was empty and deserted; no sign of people or vehicles. At the narrow mouth of the valley the access tunnel was visible, running through a cliff area. They could see the security gate. The gate was closed.

  Peter took a compass reading on the parking lot. “Parking lot is on a bearing of a hundred and seventy degrees south-southeast,” he said to the others as he peered at the compass. Then he looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty in the morning. The shuttle truck wouldn’t arrive until the afternoon. If indeed it did arrive. But right now the valley looked devoid of human activity.

  A thundering sound passed by overhead in the leaves. Instinctively, the humans ducked, grabbing at leaves and wedging themselves down. Peter went sprawling. “Look out!” he yelled. A butterfly zoomed past. Its wings, patterned with orange, gold, and black, made booming sounds as the creature whipped and twisted through sunlight. The insect seemed to be playing. Then it hovered, wings thundering, and landed on an ohia flower.

  Droplets of nectar gleamed in the blossom. The butterfly unrolled its proboscis and sent it deep into the flower, until the tip touched a droplet. They heard sucking, squishing sounds as the butterfly pumped seemingly endless gallons of nectar into its stomach.

  Peter slowly raised his head.

  Karen was laughing. “You should see yourself, Peter. Frightened by a butterfly.”

  “It’s, uh, impressive,” Peter said sheepishly.

  The species, Erika told them, was the Kamehameha butterfly, native to Hawaii. It fed in the flower for a while, poking here and there, while the wind carried a bitter stench to the humans. The butterfly might be lovely to look at, but it gave off a nasty smell.

  “It’s a chemical defense,” Erika Moll said. “Phenols, I think. The compounds are bitter enough to make a bird throw up.”

  The butterfly ignored the humans. It took off from the flower and with powerful strokes caught the wind, and soared outbound into the blue oceans of air.

  The butterfly had taught the humans a lesson. The flowers dripped with liquid sugar. Just what they needed for energy. Karen King crawled into a flower headfirst. She reached a glob of nectar and began scooping it into her mouth with both hands. “You guys have to try this,” her voice came out of the flower, muffled with stickiness. She could feel her body ramping up with energy almost as soon as she swallowed the nectar.

  The others crawled into flowers and drank as much nectar as possible.

  While they gorged on nectar, a movement in the distance caught Peter’s eye. “Somebody’s coming,” he said.

  They stopped drinking and watched as a vehicle approached in the distance, coming up the winding road from Honolulu. It was a black pickup truck. It followed the road along the cliff edge as it climbed, and stopped at the gate in front of the tunnel. Here the driver got out. Peter, studying the scene with binoculars, saw the man take a yellow sign from the back of the pickup truck. The man placed the sign on the gate.

  “He put up a sign,” Peter said.

  “What does it say?” Karen asked.

  Peter shook his head. “I can’t see.”

  “Is it the shuttle truck?”

  “Hold on.”

  The man drove the truck through the gate; it closed behind him. Moments later the truck emerged from the tunnel and descended into the valley, and stopped in the parking lot. The man got out.

  Peter studied the scene through the binoculars. “I think it’s the same man who dug up the supply stations. Muscular guy, wearing an Aloha shirt. There’s a sign on the truck that says NANIGEN SECURITY.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the shuttle,” Karen said.

  “No.”

  In the parking lot, the man walked around, scuffing at things, peering at the ground. Then he got down on his knees and started running his hand back and forth under a clump of white ginger plants.

  “He’s searching the ground around the edge of the parking lot,” Peter said.

  “For us?” Karen asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Now he’s talking on a handheld radio to somebody. Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “He’s looking straight at us.”

  Karen scoffed. “He can’t see us.”

  “He’s pointing toward us. And talking on the radio. It’s like he knows where we are.”

  “That’s impossible,” Karen said.

  Now the man went over to the back of the truck and lifted out a spray tank of some kind. He hoisted the tank to his shoulder on a strap and walked around the edge of the parking lot, spraying the vegetation. Then he sprayed the surface of the parking lot as well.

  “What is that about?” Erika asked.

  “Poison, I bet,” Karen said to her. “They know we’re alive. They’ve guessed we’d try to hitch a ride on the shuttle, so they’re nuking the parking lot. And I’m sure there’s no shuttle now. They’re trying to trap us in this val
ley. They’re figuring we’ll die here.”

  “Let’s make them wrong,” Peter said.

  Karen remained very skeptical. “How?”

  “We’ll revise our plan,” said Peter.

  “How?” Karen asked.

  “We’ll go to Tantalus,” Peter answered.

  “Tantalus? That’s insane, Peter.”

  “But why?” Erika asked.

  Peter said, “There’s a Nanigen base up there. There could be people at the base. They might help us, you don’t know. And Jarel Kinsky talked about airplanes at Tantalus. He called them micro-planes.”

  “Micro-planes?” Karen said.

  “Well, I’ve seen a very small Nanigen airplane. And you guys did too—remember? I found it in my brother’s car. Amar and I magnified it. It had controls and a cockpit. Maybe we could steal some micro-planes and fly.”

  Karen stared at Peter. “That’s completely, totally crazy. You don’t know anything about Tantalus Base.”

  “Well, at least they won’t expect us at Tantalus, so we have the element of surprise.”

  “But look at the mountain,” Karen said to Peter, sweeping her arm. Indeed, Tantalus Peak dominated the view upward, a hulk of a volcanic cone blanketed with near-vertical super-jungle. “It’s two thousand feet high, Peter.” She paused and thought for a moment. “For us that’s like climbing seven Mount Everests.”

  “But gravity won’t slow us down,” Peter answered calmly. He had taken out the binoculars and was sweeping across Tantalus. He found a massive boulder, sitting in an open area on the lip of the crater. “That could be the Great Boulder. The map says Tantalus Base is at the foot of it.” He couldn’t see the base, though—it would be only a few feet across, not visible from this distance. He took out the compass and sighted a line on the boulder. “It’s on bearing of three hundred and thirty degrees from here. Just follow the compass line—”

  “It’ll take weeks,” Karen said. “We have a couple more days, tops, before the bends hit us.”

  “Soldiers,” Peter said to her, “can walk thirty miles a day.”

  “Peter, we’re not soldiers,” Erika groaned.

  “I s’pose we could try,” Karen said. “But what about Amar? He can’t walk.”

  “We’ll carry him,” Peter said.

  “What are we going to do with Danny? He’s a pain in the ass,” Karen said.

  “Danny is one of us. We’ll take care of him,” Peter said firmly.

  Just then, Peter’s radio beeped and started crackling with a frantic voice. It was Danny calling.

  “Speak of the devil,” Karen murmured.

  Peter put on the headset and heard Danny Minot shouting, “Help! Oh, God! Help me!”

  In the lower branches of the tree, tucked in a sunny spot, Danny Minot had fallen asleep. His mouth hung open and he snored; he was exhausted after the longest and most terrifying night of his life. He didn’t hear the clattering noise that approached him and hovered over him. As she helicoptered, hovering, her expressionless eyes studied him. She was a wasp.

  She landed and advanced carefully. Lightly, she touched his left arm with her antennae, then tapped her antennae over his throat, his cheeks, tasting his skin. The skin, so pale, so soft, reminded her of a caterpillar. A host. From the end of her abdomen hung a long tube, like a length of garden hose. The tube had a drill bit at the end of it.

  She took him gently in her forelegs and planted her drill bit in his shoulder. She thrust the bit into his flesh. It injected anesthetic. Then she activated the drill bit, and drove the tube in deep.

  She began gasping, making sounds that eerily resembled a woman in childbirth.

  Danny was dreaming. The dream shifted. He was holding a beautiful girl in his arms. She was naked and gasping with arousal. They kissed. He felt her tongue go down his throat…he looked up at her, and her eyes were compound eyes, bulging in a woman’s face…she clutched him, wouldn’t let go…he woke with a start…

  “Ahhg!”

  He was staring into the eyes of a giant wasp. The wasp was holding him tight, gripping him with her legs and burying her stinger in his shoulder. And he felt nothing. His arm had gone dead.

  “No!” he screamed, and grabbed the stinger in both hands, and tried to pull it out. But then the wasp pulled its stinger out of his shoulder anyway, and let go of him, and flew away.

  He rolled over on his back, clutching his arm. “Aah! Ay! Help!” The arm had become a nothingness hanging from his shoulder, a dead weight with no feeling in it, as if it had been pumped full of Novocain. He noticed a small hole in his shirt, with dark wetness spreading in the cloth—blood. He tore open his shirt and stared at a hole in his shoulder. It was as neat and round as a drill hole, and it oozed blood. There was no sensation of pain, nothing.

  He clutched for the headset. “Help! Oh God! Help!” he shouted.

  “Danny?” Peter’s voice came on.

  “Something stung me…Oh my God.”

  “What stung you?”

  “I can’t feel it. It’s dead.”

  “What’s dead?”

  “My arm. It was so big…” His voice ran up into whimpering terror.

  Rick Hutter’s voice came on. “What’s happening?” He was calling from the moss cave lower on the tree, where he had stayed with Amar Singh.

  “Danny’s been stung,” Peter said. “Danny—stay where you are. I’m coming down to you.”

  “I fought it off.”

  “Good.”

  Danny hunched up, not wanting to look at his shoulder. The blood oozed into his shirt. He felt his forehead. Did he have a fever? Was he getting delirious? He began muttering. “No poison…I’m fine…No poison. No poison, no poison…”

  Peter took the first-aid kit with him. Descent was easy and quick: he let himself down hand over hand, sometimes hanging by one hand. He found Danny curled up in a fetal position, his face drained of color. His left arm seemed limp.

  “I can’t feel my arm,” Danny whimpered.

  Peter pulled open Danny’s shirt and inspected the wound on his shoulder. It was a small puncture wound. He cleaned it with an iodine swab, expecting Danny to feel a sting from the swab, but Danny felt nothing.

  Peter searched for signs of envenomation. He stared into Danny’s eyes, looking for constriction or dilation of the pupils. His eyes seemed normal. He took Danny’s pulse, noted his respiration, and looked for changes in skin color or mental state. Danny seemed very frightened. Peter inspected Danny’s arm. The skin had a normal color, but the arm was limp. He pinched the arm. “Did you feel that?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “Nausea? Pain?” he asked Danny.

  “No poison… No poison…”

  “I don’t think you’ve been envenomed.” If there had been venom in the sting, then Danny would be extremely sick, with severe pain, or even dead. But his vital signs remained stable. “I think you scared it away. What was it, anyway?”

  “A bee or a wasp,” Danny muttered. “I don’t know.”

  Wasps were much more common than bees. Hawaii probably had thousands of different kinds of wasps, many of them unnamed and unidentified. There was no telling what kind of wasp had stung Danny—if it had been a wasp at all. Peter opened a Band-Aid and placed it over the puncture in Danny’s shoulder. Then he tore off the sleeve of his own shirt and turned it into a makeshift arm sling for Danny. He wondered how to get Danny down to the ground. “Do you feel able to jump?”

  “No. Maybe.”

  “It won’t hurt us.” Then Peter called on the radio to Karen King and Erika Moll, who were still at the top of the tree. “Danny and I are going to jump to the ground. You might as well do the same.”

  Karen and Erika leaned out from a cluster of leaves. They couldn’t see the ground. Karen glanced at Erika, who nodded. “We’re cool,” Karen said on the radio, and she checked to make sure the blowgun was strapped tightly to her back. “One, two, three…” Erika jumped first, Karen following moments later. />
  As she fell into space, Karen spread-eagled herself like a skydiver. She went into a glide. “Wow!” she shouted. She could see Erika falling below her, and Erika was shouting. They were gliding, and it was controllable. Karen moved her legs and arms, and went off at a slant. She could feel the air flowing over her body, thick and soft, supporting her weight. This was like bodysurfing, except it was in air rather than water. She slammed into a branch and tumbled into space, unhurt, and spread her arms again, and surfed the liquid wind, descending through the tree. She saw Erika diving at an angle below her. Erika had gotten ahead of her, was falling faster.

  Karen wanted to slow herself down. She rolled her body leftward and rightward, catching the air and using her arms and legs to slow her fall. “Whooo!” she yelled. Leaves were coming. She had lost sight of Erika…she heard Erika scream…

  She burst through the leaves…and a spiderweb lay dead-ahead. Erika was trapped in it, bouncing up and down, thrashing her arms and legs, trying to escape. A pale green spider clung to the edge of the web…A crab spider…very poisonous…

  Karen rolled her body sideways as she fell, her knowledge of this spider flashing through her mind. She needed to fall into the web. It was the only way to save Erika. Gotta hit the web. She had no fear. She could handle a crab spider…She slammed into the edge of the web and hung there, bouncing in midair.

  To Karen, the web seemed maybe fifty or sixty feet across, far bigger than a safety net in a circus. Unlike a safety net, the web was sticky, its radial threads spangled with droplets of glue. She felt the glue soaking into her clothes, pinning her to the web, while Erika struggled in a blind panic, screaming for help, trapped in threads out of Karen’s reach. The crab spider seemed to hesitate. Possibly it didn’t recognize the humans as prey, Karen thought. But it would attack, she thought, and soon. The attack would come in a rush. “Hold still,” she called to Erika. She rolled herself over until she was facing the spider, and drew her machete. “Yah!” she shouted at the spider. Her eyes moved rapidly over the web. She was looking for a trigger line, and she saw it—a thread running from one of the spider’s feet across the spiral threads to the center. She flung herself across the web and cut the trigger line.