by Bill Schutt
Nesbitt shot the artist a skeptical look. “And how come nobody recovered it until recently?”
“Well, apparently they came close,” Knight replied, resigned now and back in educator mode. “Soon after the blast, Emperor Titus had begun a recovery and aid operation in the region—which included the sinking of mine shafts into sites where the wealthiest Pompeians had lived.”
“Ah, the recovery of gold, you mean?”
Knight smiled. “Of course, Dr. Nesbitt. But Pliny’s nephew, Pliny the Younger, was instrumental in bringing mining under the volcano to a halt.”
“And why’s that?” Nesbitt asked.
“Until now, historians figured it was simply a matter of too many earthquakes and too many mine collapses,” said Knight. “But after reading the codex you really do have to wonder.”
“Maybe Pliny the Nephew didn’t want anybody poking around and finding Pliny the Uncle’s little secret.”
“I’d call this more of a big secret,” Patricia added.
“Agreed,” Knight replied. “And the only reason to hide the codex from the rest of the empire is if you know the danger is real.”
“Maybe even more dangerous now,” said Nesbitt. “If something like this got into the wrong hands, it could make what General Ishii Shirō and his pals did with bioweapons in Manchuria look like a church picnic.”
“That’s a big ‘if,’” Knight replied, “but if this is true, then . . .” His voice trailed off, his mind considering thoughts that had suddenly leaped past “uncomfortable” into something darkly nightmarish.
Nesbitt carried her own thought to its next logical step. “Just imagine the Russians or the Chinese getting their hands on something like this.”
Patricia shook her head. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“What if they took an already fast-evolving pathogen—plague say—and then began imprinting it against Western Europeans.”
“Or the other way around,” said Patricia.
“If both sides had it, you could end up with people sending race-specific plagues back and forth against each other, until the only safe thing to be is—”
“—anything but human,” said Patricia.
Nesbitt let out a long whistling sigh, and the room fell silent. “How much does your Major Hendry know about this?” she said, at last.
Once again, Knight lifted the freshly reconstructed page. “He knows quite a lot. And as a point of information, Dr. Nesbitt, he certainly isn’t my Major Hendry.”
Patricia stepped in, giving her friend a moment to cool off. “I’m sure the major’s also figured there’d be more revelations, once we got going on this translation.”
“Although he hasn’t seen these particular fragments,” Knight continued, calmer now. “Doesn’t know how the pieces fit together, or the story they tell.”
“But I’m sure he’s got backup copies of all the fragments, right?” Nesbitt asked.
“He provided us with photos initially, so yes, it makes sense that they’ve got the negatives floating around somewhere.”
“If only we could make them disappear,” Nesbitt wondered out loud.
Patricia gave a mirthless laugh. “Good luck getting access.”
“Actually,” Knight said, “this might just work out without resorting to cloak-and-dagger foolery.”
The two women turned to the artist, who continued. “What’s on this page simply expands on things Pliny had written earlier in the codex. And anyone who’s read this thing—even parts of it—knows that he had a tendency to repeat himself.”
“That’s being kind, Charles,” Patricia interjected, then turned to Nesbitt. “I often get the feeling that his critics must have originated the term ‘beating a dead horse.’”
The biologist nodded. “So, he rambled a lot.”
“Yes,” said Knight, “but as it turns out, we may be able to use this tendency to our advantage. The point is, that saying we think what we found on any given page is simply more of the same—is believable. And if anyone happens to take a close look at the photos of the codex in a year or two, then we’re simply eccentrically incompetent—”
“—and not traitors,” Patricia said, completing Knight’s thought with a dose of skepticism.
“Right,” Knight said, crossing his arms. “So what do you think?”
Patricia made an unsuccessful attempt to hide her true feelings about the suggestion. “Well, I wouldn’t call it ironclad, Charles, but—”
“In the meantime, maybe we can get our hands on those negatives,” Nesbitt suggested. “Destroy them for good.”
“You’re beginning to remind me of Pliny,” Knight said, looking offended that his own potential solution had been summarily dismissed.
Nesbitt, however, ignored the dig. “Let’s just hope you’re right about having a year or two.”
“Indeed,” Knight replied, latching on to the hope that they had gotten themselves unnecessarily worked up about something whose very existence was far from a given.
Nesbitt, though, wasn’t quite finished. “If what Pliny describes here is still active, do you suppose your friend MacCready has found it?”
Patricia Wynters and Charles Knight exchanged glances, then nodded in unison.
Nesbitt pressed on. “And if he brings it back, is there anyone we can trust with it?”
This time there were synchronized head shakes. “Not exactly,” Knight replied.
“Meaning, no one?”
“Exactly.”
Unlike Knight and Wynters, Nesbitt did not know Mac, Yanni, and Jerry. So, it became easier for her to wish that their disappearance simply meant they were dead. She suspected that what gave Pliny’s Cerae a godlike power over life was a hot-spring microbe that could, with practice, be prodded into hijacking and editing the mysterious code of life itself—essentially instantly. If the now-hidden parts of Pliny’s codex weren’t just a fairy tale, then there existed a lost microbe that enabled one to direct, at will, evolutionary change.
And to whom should America entrust such power?
The military?
The legislature?
The church?
None of the above?
One fact, Nesbit did know: many microbes would not find it difficult to survive whatever environmental changes nearly two thousand years had wrought, even if the valley’s hot pools were now smashed and frozen.
What . . . thing might MacCready free from the ice? Nesbitt wondered. And what will happen to the world if he brings it back?
Perhaps, she thought, MacCready would understand the true nature of the discovery and would refrain from bringing it back alive. But what’s the likelihood of that? The man is a zoologist and finding an organism that would allow humans to conduct the symphony of life would be the find of the century.
And so it became possible for Dr. Nora Nesbitt to wonder if there was anyone who knew a way to make sure that Captain MacCready and his friends never came back at all.
Chapter 18
Nursery
The idea that science will one day be able to read and understand DNA the way we can now read and even rewrite music is moonshine.
—Luis Alvarez (1982)
One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solid pronouncements on highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
—Robert A. Heinlein
We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.
—Sylvia Earle
Outside the Prison Igloo
July 18, 1946
“What do you think they did with Li Ming?” Yanni asked, as she and Mac were once again marched out of their igloo prison and this time, to their relief, by Alpha and a rather unassuming duo of Morlock “dog walkers.”
Mac bit down on his lower lip, then shrugged, having decided not to tell Yanni what he’d seen the day before—what he’d been forced to see.
For the moment, however, they were relieved to be out of their glorified iceb
ox, setting off on what, except for the previous day’s nightmarish detour, was now becoming more or less routine. This time, however, after trekking away from the igloo for approximately twenty minutes, they met up with a fourth creature, who seemed to have been waiting for them. There followed a brief exchange between the Morlocks, after which they moved apart, roughly delineating a small patch of ground where the humans were free to wander about.
“Is it just me, or are Alpha’s friends looking even more agitated than usual?” Mac asked, wishing that his ability to decipher Morlock facial expressions were not so frustratingly small.
“You mean nervousness?”
“Yeah.”
“Something like that,” Yanni replied, squinting into the distance. Within their limited radius of view, no pallid corpse plants or plant-mimicking animals were present, and few Morlocks. “I just wish we could see more,” she added, waving a hand at the ever-present mist. “I’d love to take a gander at this place without all of this.”
Mac nodded, his mind shifting easily into what his late friend Bob Thorne had called “zoology mode.” He began by extending a hand into the strange, snow-laden fog. Mostly, the soupy air was just a suspension of microscopic ice crystals, but like Yanni, he knew that this particular mist was home to something far more interesting than perpetually floating snow—something that was, in fact, quite unique.
As if summoned, one of the tiny snowflake mimics twirled past his face. He waited. Another appeared, then another. “Well, at least they’re not avoiding me any longer,” he said.
“Maybe that has something to do with not getting your face smashed down into them this time,” Yanni suggested.
Even so, it was impossible to get anything like a good look at the flittering creatures. Mac gently cupped one between his hands as it flew by. He could feel a faint buzzing from within, and not wanting to injure the little whatever-it-was, he brought his hands close to his face before opening them, palms up.
There, sitting in the center of his left palm, was a new puzzle to be solved. If only—
He forced himself to concentrate on the creature. The size is right, he thought, but it certainly isn’t an insect. Moreover, it was, to his amazement, impossible to place this particular critter into any known phylum.
Mac noted that what the ersatz snowflake most resembled was a ball of dandelion fluff with something that sort of looked like a miniature bat inside. There appeared to be jointed limbs and a distinct head region equipped with large eyes—each of which the zoologist estimated to be roughly the size of a pinhead. A magnifying glass would have answered the question of whether or not the eyes were compound—like those of an insect. Mac would have bet on the more camera-type vertebrate eye.
R. J. MacCready held his breath, not wanting to disturb the delicate enigma. After a long moment, the little animal seemed to drift off, as if being carried away by a breeze. Mac could see, though, that its departure was not wind driven at all. Instead, its flight mechanics became yet another layer of mystery involving the fauna and flora of this hidden ecosystem. As Mac watched, and all within those same few seconds, the gentle flyer darted into a Lilliputian headwind and disappeared into the snowy mist, obviously intent on rejoining its pals.
Mac turned and saw that Yanni had been watching him.
“Pretty incredible, huh?” she said, moving in to stand at his side.
“I’ll say,” Mac replied.
These thoughts were entirely forgotten once Alpha decided that exercise time was over, and—with the usual accompaniment of somewhat less-than-gentle prods—Mac, and to a lesser extent, Yanni were herded back toward their prison of ice. The two prisoners gave no thought to the fact that the fourth Morlock remained behind.
Waiting until after the humans and their guards had disappeared into the mist, the lone Morlock headed off in the opposite direction, retracing his earlier steps until he came upon two figures on the ground—their outlines vague, like ancient statues smoothed by erosion.
Li Ming and his copilot had been reunited, though they were currently unaware of each other’s paralyzed existence. Staked to the cold earth on their backs, their eyes stared straight ahead, at nothing.
To a friend or even a close relative, the two men might have been completely unrecognizable, covered as they were in suppurating nodules. Extremities that had been deemed unimportant by their own bodies were denied blood flow and were now blackening from oxygen starvation—the warm blood having been directed instead to the core. Had a pathologist been present, especially one with knowledge of pandemics, the doctor might have taken a special interest in the golf-ball-sized “buboes” that rose bubble-like from the necks, armpits, and groins of the staked-out men. But there were no pathologists present, at least none being of the Homo sapiens variety. Even so, the Morlock’s eyes widened and his head tilted sideways in birdlike fascination, as a particularly large and purplish bubo continued to bud from the right side of the pilot’s mouth. Straining the epidermal tissue beyond its shearing point, the balloon-like sore burst with an audible pop and a spray of red matter, laced with little white clots.
The stench of putrefaction would have been nauseating to most humans, but the Morlock expressed a typical hominid smile and reached down, projecting a finger at something emerging from the crater of flesh. Two newly born snow mimics catapulted themselves from the crater’s edge and one of them came to rest briefly on a giant finger, before taking to the air. More of the tiny flyers emerged—more and more of them—rising like summoned spirits. They flitted around their giant midwife for a moment, as if celebrating their new lives. Then, in a swirl from a breeze that existed only in mechanized nonsentience, they were gone.
The caregiver took one last look down at the Chinese captives. Pale white, though still giving off faint mists of breath, these were creatures who had only recently believed themselves to be masters of the air. Now, however, they had taken on a far more important role—as the living nursery for a new arsenal of airborne weaponry.
The past seventy-two hours were a blur to Wang Tse-lin. Deprived of sleep, events tended to become mixed up in time, and only occasionally was he able to keep proper track of them.
When Captain Mung’s soldiers broke camp after the first night, Wang had looked on with a combination of disgust and fascination while several men were ordered to butcher the body of the slain Yeren.
In less than an hour, two men with knives had skillfully freed large limb muscles and pectorals from their bony attachments. After some initial reluctance, Wang moved in closer and took notes, as if attending a more formal dissection of a particularly rare specimen. Indeed I am, he told himself, noting that “the muscles were dark red and thus obviously rich in oxygen-carrying myoglobin—a requirement for efficient movement at high altitude.” Wang also observed that the lungs of the Yeren appeared to be proportionally much larger than those of a normal human and furthermore that they possessed two additional lobes (“another way to compensate for the thin air”).
However, the dissection comparison broke down when a third man arrived and began salting the flesh while a fourth packed the Yeren in paper.
“The packages looked no different than what one might purchase from a local butcher,” Wang eventually wrote in his field notebook.
When Captain Mung’s men neared the end of their grisly tasks, the officer pointed to the considerable carnage that had accumulated. “I want no trace of this creature left on the surface. Clean your tools well and bury everything—bury it deep.”
“Yes, sir,” his men replied in unison.
“No blood and not a strand of hair can be left showing,” he said. “Do you understand?”
The four men nodded as one.
Wang had warned his captain that burying what they left behind could not remove all of the Yeren scent from the campsite, or from anyone who had butchered or even touched the beast. It was plain to him that Captain Mung appreciated this fact. Any fool could cross points of no return without foreseeing th
em, and most did. The scientist understood that only one objective mattered to his captain, the same one with which he had begun—saving his family. Only an hour after leaving the camp, the captain had mapped out a new pass leading to higher ground. What seemed a very long time after that, the expedition was making progress again, and Mung moved backward along his line of men until he found Wang. Without anyone else noticing, the officer passed him one of the small, tightly wrapped packages.
“Take it,” he said, “and do so without making a fuss.”
Wang tucked the item into his coat.
“Though I did not think so at first,” Mung said, “you appear to be a survivor type.”
Before Wang could answer, the captain raised his hand in a gesture that meant a response would be neither necessary nor tolerated.
“If I am killed, I am asking you to take this package to my family. They will know what to do with it.”
“Should I tell them anything else, sir?”
Captain Mung pondered the question for a moment before speaking quietly. “You’re a scientist. Tell them everything—everything you have seen here.”
Then, without another word, the officer turned and headed toward the front of the line. Watching Captain Mung, Wang Tse-lin wondered if it was only his imagination that the small package suddenly seemed to weigh considerably more than it had only seconds earlier. Now, beyond the prospect of having to carry dried flesh from the beings inhabiting this region, Wang had been appointed as the family historian of Captain Mung’s mission. Few men besides the officer could have anticipated what had already happened—but fewer would have guessed that, while exceptional intuition defined Captain Mung, a failure of imagination could doom them all.
Chapter 19
Captain America
There was a man who was interested in the color of music—the connection between light and music—and that was Einstein.
—Leon Theremin
The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them.
