Micro

by Michael Crichton

  He increased the power and began to fly toward Diamond Head.

  His plane suddenly flipped over and blew sideways, rolling over and over, and he yelled with fright. He had entered the trade wind as it burbled over the mountains. He swore and fought the stick while the plane tumbled in wind eddies. But then the plane stabilized, and began flying straight and steady in the wind, moving really fast. He had gotten into laminar flow. It was like getting into the main current of a river. He looked down. The forest was moving down there. Or rather he was moving over it. The altimeter showed he had gotten up to three thousand feet. In the moonlight he saw a magnificent view.

  Behind him, upwind, the hollow of Tantalus Crater spread out. The crater was dark like a cave; no lights in the crater, no sign of Rourke’s Redoubt or Tantalus Base. Directly below him, roads snaked up the flanks of the ridge. Lights burned along the roads. Ahead of him the towers of the city were coming perceptibly closer, until they seemed to burn with energy and rise to impossible heights. For a moment he felt as if he was flying into the capital city of an alien galactic empire. But it was only Honolulu. He still couldn’t see Diamond Head Lighthouse.

  The wind was carrying him toward the hotels that stood along Waikiki Beach. He wanted to go more to the left, more toward Diamond Head. He experimented with the control stick and with the throttle. He banked left and kept the power on high. He looked around.

  He did not want to be blown into the city; that would be certain death. He would be crushed by traffic or sucked into the air-conditioning of a building. So he increased the power to EMERGENCY MAXIMUM, and kept his course toward Diamond Head. A screen flashed a warning: EXCESSIVE BATTERY DRAIN. Remaining flight time: 20:25 min…18:05 min…17:22 min…the remaining flight time was dropping like a stone. He would run out of power in minutes.

  He checked his airspeed. The readout showed 7.1 MPH / 11.4 KPH. He found the radio panel and switched it on. “Mayday. Mayday. This is Daniel Minot. I’m in a small plane. A very small plane. Does anybody hear me? Mr. Drake, are you there? I can’t reach Diamond Head…I’m being blown into the city…oh my God!”

  A hotel loomed up like a first-order battleship from outer space. He saw two giants standing on a balcony, a man and a woman, holding drinks in their hands. His plane rushed toward them uncontrollably, carried in the wind. Their heads were bigger than Mount Rushmore. The man put his drink down and reached toward the woman, and pulled down the shoulder strap of her dress, exposing a colossal breast with an erect nipple standing out six feet. The man fondled it with a hand of horrifying size, and their faces closed in for a kiss…As his plane rushed toward a collision, he screamed and fought the controls, and passed between their noses under emergency power, propeller churning, and the plane was caught in an eddy of wind and swept around the corner of the building and out of sight.

  The man jerked away from the woman. “What the hell—?”

  She had seen something weird. A tiny man flying a tiny plane. Lights blinking on the wings. The tiny man had been screaming. She had distinctly heard his insect-like whine over the sound of a buzzing motor, and she had seen the open mouth, the staring eyes…it was impossible. One of those waking dreams. “The bugs are awful out here, Jimmy.”

  “It’s these flying cockroaches they got in Hawaii. They got wings.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  Danny regained control of his aircraft as the wind seemed to decrease. He flew across Kalakaua Avenue, where he looked down on the nighttime crowds. He noticed that he had stopped being blown sideways. His plane was flying faster than the wind was blowing; he was making headway now. He banked and headed northeast, and flew along the length of Waikiki Beach, straight toward Diamond Head.

  Now, as he peered at the famous shape of the headland in the moonlight, he saw a blink of light. On, off. Darkness. On, off. It was the lighthouse.

  “I’m saved!”

  He backed down the power a little, and left it at FULL CRUISE, because it would be a disaster if the battery ran out now. He was getting the hang of this. It was a matter of technique.

  He gained altitude. He wanted to stay above the buildings, keep plenty of distance above them. It was funny how life could turn around so fast. One moment you think you’re ruined and dead, the next you’re on your way to the best hospital and admiring Waikiki Beach in the moonlight. Life was good, Danny thought.

  A shape came out of the night. He saw a flash of wings—he threw the stick over, and just missed the thing.

  “Stupid moth! Watch where you’re going.” That had been close. “Absolutely no brain,” he muttered. A collision with a moth could drop him in the sea, and he could see breakers below him.

  Then a peculiar noise reached his ears. Sort of an echoing whish-whing… He heard it again… whish-whing. Whoom… Whoooemm… eee… eee… What was that? Something was making freaky noises in the dark. Then a drumming noise started up: pom-pom-pompompom. He saw another moth, and the drumming sound came from the moth… and then the moth suddenly wasn’t there.

  Something had swept the moth out of the sky.

  “Oh, fuck,” Danny said.

  Bats.

  They were painting the moths with sonar. He had gotten himself into the middle of some kind of a bat situation. This was not good.

  He advanced the throttle to EMERGENCY MAXIMUM.

  He could hear the sonar pulses ringing in the darkness, left, right, above, below, nearby, far away…but he couldn’t see the bats. That was the worst thing. Above, below, on all sides, the predators were moving in three dimensions around him. It was like treading water at midnight surrounded by feeding sharks. He couldn’t see anything at all, but he could hear them snatching prey. Whoo… whoom… whooom… eee… eee… eee/ee/ee… that had been a kill.

  And then he saw it. A bat killed a moth right in front of him. He got a glimpse of a spiky shape as it swept by, and the plane shuddered and jumped in the turbulence of the bat’s wake. Holy God. The bat had been far bigger than he thought it would be.

  He had to get to ground. Just land, anywhere, even on top of a hotel. He pointed the plane into a dive, and went straight down, engines shirring at full power, aiming for the nearest hotel…but he was headed for the beach… oh, shit… too far away from the building, too close to the water…

  The bat-sounds got louder. Then a sonar beam raked over him, and went away. There was a pause…then the beam hit him full-force, making his chest flutter—WHOOM… EEEP… EEEP… EEE-EEE-EEE… The bat was painting him with a beam of ultrasound. The pings shortened and became focused. A chaos of sound enveloped him.

  “I’m not a moth!” he cried. He threw the stick hard over and pulled sideways in a screaming dive-turn. With his good hand he began pounding on the outside of the cockpit, trying to imitate the drumming of the moths, thumping his hand on the plane. Maybe it would jam the bat’s radar…

  Too late he realized that by banging on his plane, he had told the bat exactly where he was.

  He saw a flash of brown fur gleaming with silver-tipped guard hairs, a pair of wings flaring impossibly wide, blocking out the moon, and a wide-open mouth filled with a set of canines like chisels…

  The micro-plane spiraled down, its wing broken, its cockpit empty, and landed in foam slick near the beach, where it vanished.

  Chapter 44

  Diamond Head Lighthouse 31 October, 11:45 p.m.

  Rourke dozed for a while, but awoke when he became aware that Danny Minot had not returned from the privy. Time had passed; the fire had burned down. He got up and hurried down the tunnel toward the privy; Danny wasn’t there.

  The Redoubt was a sprawling warren, with many unused tunnels; perhaps Danny had gotten lost in a tunnel. Rourke went into a side tunnel, and called, “Mr. Minot! You there?” Nothing. Another tunnel yielded silence. Then Rourke noticed air moving in the tunnel. The hangar…he ran to the hangar, and found the doors open, a plane gone.

  He closed the doors, then woke Rick and Karen. “Your friend has gon
e. He took a plane.”

  They weren’t sure what had gotten into Danny. Perhaps he had become frightened, gone into a panic, with his arm in such bad shape, and had decided to fly to Nanigen on his own. It showed more courage than Danny seemed capable of.

  “Maybe we should fly out and try to find him,” Karen suggested.

  Rourke forbade it. “He’s gone. The wind could take him anywhere over the island.” And he said it was too dangerous to fly after dark; the bats were out. “It’s almost suicidal.”

  Danny might already be dead. And if he survived the flight, it wasn’t clear how he planned to get inside Nanigen.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Karen said.

  “Sheer panic,” Rick said.

  Vin Drake sat in his car. The beam from the lighthouse swung around above, shining through the branches of trees overhead. The moon washed the scene with silver. What a beautiful world it truly was. He felt almost placid. He was high above the world, walking on a tightrope and doing it well.

  A black pickup swung in and parked next to Drake. Drake got out and climbed into the truck. He explained the situation to Makele. “He’s in the air. He knows a cure for the bends. He’s going to tell me when he lands.”

  “Then?” Makele asked.

  Drake didn’t answer. He put on the radio headset and began calling, staring up toward the mountains. “Daniel? Daniel, are you there?”

  He heard nothing but a hiss of airwaves. He turned to Makele. “Watch for his running lights. Red and green, very small.”

  “What are you going to do with the kid?” Makele asked.

  Drake ignored him. “Wind’s blowing from Tantalus. He should be here any minute.”

  A car swung into the parking area. Drake snatched the radio off his head and stared. “Check it.”

  Makele edged closer to the parked car and saw a couple inside getting friendly with each other. He told Drake there was nothing to worry about.

  Drake resumed calling, but with no answer. Cars passed, and the lighthouse beam circled many times. The couple in the parked car went out of sight. The two men stared up into the sky, trying to see any lights against the backdrop of stars. “Little Danny was lying,” Drake remarked.

  “About what?”

  “About a cure for bends.” Lying to make me save him. Ha.

  They listened for the whine of a micro-plane. Don Makele saw that the wind was blowing pretty hard. If they didn’t see the kid, he’d get blown out to sea. Drake removed something from the trunk of the sports car and placed it in the back of the pickup truck. Then he said: “I’m giving you three more shares. Now you’ve got seven shares. That brings your net worth to seven million.”

  The security man grunted. Then he said: “What do we do with the kid?”

  “Question him.” Drake tapped on the radio headset. It could communicate with micro-humans.

  “After that?”

  Drake didn’t reply for a bit. Then he leaned against the pickup truck and slapped his palm on the metal. Gazing into the sky, he murmured, “The bugs are bad tonight.”

  “I see,” Makele said.

  The two men watched a while longer. Makele backed up a few steps, moving alongside the truck, and glanced at the object Drake had placed on the bed of the truck. It was a plastic fuel container. He could smell the gasoline.

  Drake called some more, finally ripped off his headset. “Mr. Minot had an accident. Or he changed his mind.” He got into the pickup truck and handed the keys of his sports car to Don Makele.

  “What do you want me to do with your car, sir?”

  “Drop it at Nanigen. Take a taxi home.”

  Drake started the truck and it roared off on the Diamond Head Road. As he watched the headlights disappear, Makele shook his head.

  Chapter 45

  Rourke’s Redoubt 1 November, 1:00 a.m.

  Karen and Rick were curled up inside the magnet, waiting out the night.

  “We’re the last ones,” Karen said.

  Rick smiled thinly. “I didn’t figure we’d end up together, Karen.”

  “What did you figure?”

  “Well, I thought you’d survive. Not me,” he said.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked him.

  “Perfect.” That was a lie. His face had become streaked with bruises, and his joints ached.

  As Karen studied Rick’s bruises, it made her wonder what she looked like. I probably look like I’ve been mugged, she thought. “You need to get into the generator, Rick.”

  He glanced at her face in the firelight. “You, too.”

  “Listen, Rick—” How to tell him about what she’d decided? Just be blunt. “I’m not going back.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to be okay, I think.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not flying to Nanigen. I’m going to take my chances here.”

  They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, wrapped in blankets and looking into the dying embers of the fire. She could feel his body going tense; and he turned and stared at her. “What are you talking about, Karen?”

  “I don’t have anything to go back to, Rick. I was so unhappy in Cambridge. I didn’t even realize it. But here—I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. It’s dangerous, but it’s a new world. It’s waiting to be explored.”

  Rick felt a kind of sickness take hold in his chest, and he couldn’t tell if it was the bends or his feelings…“What the—? Are you in love with Ben or something?”

  She laughed. “Ben? Are you kidding? I don’t love anybody. Here, I don’t have to love anybody. I can be alone and free. I can study nature…give names to things that don’t have names—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Karen.”

  After a pause, she said, “Can you get back to Nanigen by yourself? Ben would probably fly with you.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  The fire popped and crackled. Rick felt a disappointment grip his insides, like a fist closing. He tried to ignore the feeling. He looked over at her, saw the firelight shining on her raven hair, but couldn’t keep his eyes off the shadow of a bruise on her neck. That bruise worried him. Had he done that to her? When he’d grabbed her around the neck? He couldn’t bear the thought that he’d hurt her…“Karen,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Please don’t stay. You could die here.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it. And let it go.

  “Don’t do it,” Rick went on.

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “That’s not good enough for me.”

  She glared at him. “It’s my decision.”

  “But I am involved.”

  “Like how?”

  “By the fact that I love you.”

  He heard her take a breath. She turned away and her hair fell over her eyes, so that he couldn’t read her expression. “Rick—”

  “I can’t help it, Karen. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. When you got swallowed by the bird, I thought you were dead, Karen. At that moment I would have thrown my life away to save you. And I hadn’t even known I loved you. And then, when I got you back and you weren’t breathing—it scared me so much—I couldn’t bear to lose you—”

  “Rick, please—not now—”

  “Well, why did you save me?”

  “Because I had to,” she answered in a tight voice.

  “Because you love me,” he went on.

  “Look, get off this—”

  He thought he had gone too far. Probably she didn’t love him, didn’t even like him. Maybe he should just shut up. But he couldn’t. “I’ll stay with you. We’ll have the bends together. We’ll get through it. Just like we got through everything else.”

  “Rick, I’m not somebody to stay with. I’m basically—alone.”

  He folded his arms around her, feeling her body trembling. He pulled her hair aside and found her cheekbone with his fingertips, and turned her head
gently toward him. “You’re not alone.” He brought her mouth to his, and kissed her, and she didn’t try to stop it. And then she was kissing him deeply, wrapping her arms around him. That was when he noticed how much it hurt to kiss her. Every part of his body hurt with a deep, unfocused pain, an ache in the joints and bones that seemed to be spreading everywhere, like a spilled liquid. Was he bleeding internally? She winced suddenly, and it made him wonder if she hurt the same way he did. “Are you okay?”

  She pushed him off without answering. “Don’t stay.”

  “Why? Give me a reason.”

  “I don’t love you. I can’t love anybody.”

  “Karen—”

  Their talk got no further, because the ceiling lights went out, plunging the room into gloom except for the glowing fire pit. Almost immediately a weird odor began to filter through the tunnels. The room smelled like a gas station. The smell grew stronger.

  Ben Rourke came running. “Gasoline!” he shouted. “Get out!”

  Chapter 46

  Tantalus Crater 1 November, 1:20 a.m.

  A rumbling sound started up, making the tunnels shake like an earthquake, and then a glow of yellow light appeared in the ceiling smoke hole over the fire hearth. Rick and Karen jumped up, throwing the blankets off, as Ben rushed into the room. “To the hangar!” he shouted.

  They began to run down the tunnel, but were hit with a blast of rushing air, hot and soaked with fumes. Karen fell; Rick picked her up and started dragging her, but she wrestled him away. But then she fell to her knees and collapsed. She seemed to have fainted or something. He couldn’t see anything, and smoke had suddenly flooded the tunnels. He picked her up and slung her over his back and started to run, following Ben. He got dizzy and had trouble breathing, and realized that the oxygen was being sucked out of the tunnels. Ben was shouting, hauling him along, and he fell, dropping Karen.