Basilisk

by Graham Masterton

  Nathan knew that he was right. He had hoped so much for a natural hatching, but it was obvious now that the embryo was far too weak.

  Tim said, ‘Blood pressure’s down to twelve.’

  ‘Heart rate’s dropping, too,’ said Keira. ‘Two sixty-five. Two sixty-three. Two fifty-one.’

  Richard looked at Nathan and even though Nathan didn’t want to admit it, he knew that he had no choice. He opened the deep drawer under the laboratory bench, and took out the picture-framing hammer that he had bought especially for this moment – this moment that he had not believed would ever come.

  He tied a surgical mask over his face, and snapped on a pair of purple latex gloves.

  ‘Two twenty-one,’ Keira intoned. ‘Two-one-seven. Two-one-two.’

  ‘Video cameras running?’ asked Nathan.

  Tim gave him the thumbs-up. Quickly but very carefully, Nathan peeled the electrodes off the speckled green shell. He listened again with his stethoscope, to satisfy himself that the embryo’s heart was still beating. Then he carefully tapped the top of the egg with his hammer.

  He tapped it once – twice – three times – but it didn’t crack. It was obviously much thicker and stronger than he had calculated.

  He looked at Richard but all Richard could do was shrug. Keira and Tim looked equally helpless.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here goes nothing.’

  He struck the egg as hard as he could, and it broke into three large pieces, although they didn’t fall apart. He put down his hammer, and gently lifted the uppermost piece. Inside, there was a thin translucent membrane which stretched and then tore. A gray feathered head appeared, glistening with mucus, and a single orange eye which stared at him, unblinking.

  ‘Holy Ker-ist!’ said Tim.

  An appalling stench poured out of the egg, so foul that Keira made a retching noise and clamped her hand over her nose and her mouth, and even Richard coughed and took two steps back. The smell was sulfurous, like a rotten chicken’s egg, but it also had a strong undertone of chicken meat that was turning green, and a sinus-burning corrosiveness. It reminded Nathan of a blocked kitchen sink filled with Drano – hair and fat dissolving in sodium hydroxide.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Richard. ‘Look at it! It’s still alive, but it’s half decomposed.’

  Nathan turned his head away, took a deep breath, and held it. He turned back and tugged away the second piece of shell, and then the third. The embryo’s wing feathers were slimy, and its body was like a soft, half-collapsed sack. It had all the component parts that he had expected – the head, the beak, the legs and the claws – and there was no doubt that its heart was still beating.

  But it took one sticky breath, and then another, and then it choked, and stopped breathing altogether. Nathan carefully scooped both hands underneath it, trying to lift it up.

  ‘Tim – bring me the nest! Like, now! Keira – get ready with the oxygen!’

  Tim carried over a red plastic bowl filled with fine sand and feathers and shreds of soft purple wool. Nathan had designed it himself, based on the scrapes that were hollowed out on cliffsides by peregrine falcons, to rear their young.

  With trembling hands, Tim held the bowl close to the incubator unit.

  ‘OK, now, easy,’ said Nathan. ‘We’ve put too much love and effort into this little guy to see him die now.’

  ‘He’s eighty per cent necrotic already,’ said Richard. ‘He. It. Maybe it’s a she.’

  Nathan raised his hands, and as he did so, the embryo fell apart. The wings dropped off, on to the floor, and the head rolled into the nest. The rest of the body collapsed into a mush of skin and bones and putrescent slime.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Keira, and walked off toward the other side of the laboratory, one hand raised in utter revulsion. ‘That is totally disgusting.’

  Nathan let the embryo’s remains fall back into the incubating unit, scraping the gelatinous green flesh off his fingers. Then he peeled off his latex gloves, and went to the sink to wash his hands with antiseptic gel.

  He said nothing. He couldn’t find the words. Tim watched him, still holding the nesting bowl. Keira stayed in the corner, by the door.

  With undisguised distaste, Richard picked up the embryo’s wings and restored its head to the top of its body. He coughed again, and said, ‘Feurrgh!’ and spat into a tissue. Then, ‘What happened, Professor?’

  Nathan finished drying his hands before he answered. ‘Some kind of bacterial infection is my first guess. Group A Streptococcus, most likely.’

  ‘But how did its heart go on beating for so long? No human could have survived that degree of necrosis.’

  ‘Of course not. But we’re not dealing with a human here, are we? We’re not even dealing with any recognized species of bird or beast.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Tim. His cheeks were even more flushed than they usually were. ‘Jesus . . . I’ve been working on this one cryptozoology project ever since I left the Academy.’

  Nathan laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘We refrigerate the remains and first thing tomorrow we start a detailed necropsy. And – listen – we don’t tell anybody what’s happened, not yet. I had a call from the Zoological Society’s funding department yesterday afternoon, and so far we’ve managed to go through two-point-seven.

  ‘Million,’ he added, when he received no immediate reaction. ‘Dollars.’

  Richard looked down at the wretched tangle of bones and feathers lying in the incubating unit. ‘Wow,’ he said.

  ‘You’re damn right, wow – when all we have to show for it is one putrefying embryo.’

  ‘Still,’ said Richard, ‘we might be able to salvage something from it. If we can discover how the embryo managed to live for so long, in such an advanced state of decomposition . . . the zoo might get some return for its investment in Cee-Zee research. You know, somebody like Pfizer might be interested.’

  Nathan didn’t answer. Richard was probably right, but he felt much too upset. After a while, Richard went over to one of the refrigerators and returned with a stainless-steel tray. He picked up one of the embryo’s wings but Nathan said, ‘No, Richard – it’s OK. It’s my fricking disaster, I’ll clean it up. I’ll see you guys early tomorrow, OK?’

  ‘You’re sure?’ said Richard.

  Nathan nodded. ‘I could do with some thinking time. Right now, I’m feeling kind of bereaved, to say the least.’

  At that moment, the laboratory door opened again, and George stuck his head around it. ‘Jesus born yet?’

  THREE

  Feathers Fly

  It was nearly midnight before he made it back home. He walked into the bedroom and stood beside the bed, exhausted, saying nothing, as if he had reached the end of a very long journey. Grace was sitting up, reading Northern Liberties, a romantic novel about early Philadelphia, when it had been the largest city in America.

  ‘My God, Nathan,’ she said, putting down her book. ‘You look pooped.’

  ‘Bad day at Black Rock,’ he told her. He pulled off his dark green sweater and started to unbutton his shirt. ‘I think God is giving me a hard time for playing God.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘What didn’t go wrong?’

  ‘Not the gryphon. You thought it might be hatching today.’

  He sat down on the end of the bed. ‘It died. Its heart was still beating, but it obviously didn’t have the strength to break out of its shell. So I cracked it open. And – yuck. You should have smelled it. Or rather, you were lucky you didn’t. It was eighty per cent putrefied. Almost liquid, parts of it.’

  ‘Oh, Nate. After all your work.’

  ‘I’m going to get myself a beer,’ he told her. ‘You don’t want one, do you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it’s always been totally out there, this project. But I really thought that this was going to be the one.’

  He went downstairs to the kitchen and came back with a can of Dale’s
Pale Ale. He sat back down on the bed and popped it open. ‘Somehow, the embryo got infected. I don’t know how, or what with. But it looks like some kind of necrotizing fasciitis.’

  Grace pulled aside the bedcovers, climbed out of bed and sat down close to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. ‘You must be shattered. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I feel totally numb, to tell you the truth. Feel my hands, I’m freezing. I was convinced that by this time next week, there I’d be, on the front cover of Scientific American, grinning at all those skeptical bastards who said that I couldn’t even breed hamsters.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  Nathan swallowed beer, and sniffed. ‘In the short term, try to find out what the hell went wrong. It could have been a bacterial infection – it could have been something more fundamental.’

  ‘And in the long term?’

  ‘In the long term – I guess it all it depends on Henry Burnside. If he doesn’t cut off my research budget, I’ll try again. But he’s been making some pretty grumpy noises lately. As of yesterday we’ve spent over two-point-seven million, and I haven’t even given him a ratfish, leave alone a fully grown gryphon.’

  ‘Maybe you hyped it up too much,’ said Grace. ‘It’s an amazing idea, and I can see why Burnside bought it. But you never really told him how difficult it was going to be.’

  ‘Difficult? That’s the understatement of the twenty-first century. More like fricking impossible. For me, anyhow.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Nate. Give yourself some credit. If the embryo was fully grown, the basic genetics must have been sound, mustn’t they?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t find out for certain until we’ve carried out a full necropsy. I would have started it tonight but I was too damn tired and too damn pissed.’

  ‘Have you told him yet?’

  ‘Burnside?’ Nathan shook his head. ‘No. It’s much too late to call him now. And I’m not about to tell him, either. Not until I know exactly what went wrong, and how to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Grace asked him. ‘There’s some vegetable chowder in the pot, if you feel like some. Or some cold chicken.’

  ‘Chicken – no, thanks,’ said Nathan. He could still smell the gryphon’s egg breaking open. He could almost taste it. ‘I’m fine, really. I think I need some sleep, more than anything else.’

  Grace kissed him, very lightly, on the cheek. He turned to look at her. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t been seeing nearly enough of her lately. She had changed her hair and he hadn’t even noticed. It was very short now, and she had lighter brown streaks in it. He had almost forgotten how alluring she was, with that perfect oval face, like a medieval saint; and how greeny-gray her eyes were, like the ocean on a very dull day.

  ‘You do really believe that I can do this?’ he asked her. ‘I’m not really a New-Age lunatic, am I?’

  She took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’ve never doubted you, Nate, you know that. But maybe you should try something less ambitious. Maybe you should try a ratfish.’

  ‘Well, maybe. But the genetics are just as complicated. And what do you end up with? Either a fish that can run up a drainpipe or a rat that can play water polo.’

  Grace pressed her forehead against his, as if she wanted him to share her sympathy by osmosis. ‘You’re not going to give up, though, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not going to give up. But I need to think this whole thing through, all over again, right from the basement upward. I keep feeling that I’m missing something.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well – I’m sure that the biology is good. The genetic coding, the cell development, everything. But maybe it takes more than biology to create a mythical creature. Maybe – I don’t know – maybe it takes a certain amount of myth.’

  Grace blinked at him. ‘Now you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Nathan. ‘All those medieval sorcerers who first bred gryphons, and hippogryphs, and chimeras, how did they do it?’

  ‘Nobody knows, do they?’

  ‘Well, one thing’s for sure. They didn’t know squat about IVF or egg transplantation. They didn’t have CT scanners or ballistocardiograms. But they still managed to breed all those monstrosities. So before I try to fertilize another gryphon’s egg, maybe I should find out how they did it in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Grace.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes – I think you do need some sleep. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’

  He came back into the bedroom after his shower, with a thick white towel wrapped around his waist. He had washed his hair, and shaved, and slapped on some Acqua di Gio, and he felt human again.

  ‘I didn’t ask you, sweetheart, I’m sorry. How was your day?’

  ‘Busy, but pretty ho-hum. That stomach bug doesn’t show any signs of letting up. But I had a very spooky conversation with old Mrs Bellman, at the Murdstone Rest Home.’

  ‘Mrs Bellman?’

  ‘You remember – that dotty old lady who tried to slide down the banisters and broke her thigh bone? She told me that she’s been hearing people dragging sacks along the corridor, in the middle of the night. And screaming. She’s convinced that Doctor Zauber is killing off his patients and grinding up their bodies for meat loaf.’

  Nathan leaned over and peered at himself in her dressing-table mirror. ‘Maybe she’s right. Maybe they’re running that place like Soylent Green – you know, that sci-fi movie when they turned old folks into food.’

  ‘She’s lonely, that’s all, and delusional.’

  Nathan peered at himself even more closely. ‘God, I’m handsome.’ He plucked a hair out of his left nostril between finger and thumb, and said, ‘Ouch.’

  ‘I just wish I could do more for women like her, that’s all. Her family never visit her. She’s sitting in that room, day after day, with nobody to talk to. It’s not surprising she gets weird ideas. And there must be millions of old people in the same predicament.’

  Nathan climbed into bed, and kissed her shoulder. ‘The only answer is, not to get old. Why do you think I’m doing all of this research? The Egyptian bennu bird was supposed to live for over a thousand years. If we could share its genetic coding, then who knows how long we could live?’

  ‘Uh-uh. I don’t think I could bear to be married to you for another nine hundred and eighty-two years, thank you.’

  ‘Hey –’ he said, whacking at her with his pillow.

  Just as he did so, though, he heard the front door slam, downstairs. He frowned at Grace and said, ‘Is that Denver?’

  ‘I forgot to tell you. He went out. He said he’d be back by eleven.’

  Nathan checked his bedside clock. ‘It’s ten after one. Where the hell has he been?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. He said he was going bowling with Stu Wintergreen and that Evans boy.’

  They heard clattering in the kitchen. Nathan climbed out of bed again, and took his bathrobe down from the back of the door.

  ‘Nate –’ said Grace, anxiously. ‘Don’t be too hard on him.’

  ‘I’m not going to be hard on him. What makes you think I’m going to be hard on him?’

  ‘Because you usually are, that’s why. Come on, Nate, he’s seventeen years old now. Think what you were doing when you were seventeen.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He went out on to the landing, just as Denver was climbing the stairs, with a can of beer in each hand. Denver looked almost exactly like Grace, with a pale oval face and dark shoulder-length hair. But he had inherited his default expression from Nathan – always serious, and interrogative, as if something was troubling him, but he couldn’t decide what.

  ‘Well, well!’ said Nathan. ‘The wanderer returneth! What the hell time do you calleth this?’

  Denver swayed, and blinked. ‘I don’t know, Pops. Sidereal time?’

  ‘You’ve been drinking,
for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I sure hope so. I’d hate to feel like this if I hadn’t.’

  ‘You’re seventeen years old, Denver. Drinking alcohol is illegal until you’re twenty-one. Where the hell did you get it? You didn’t drive in this condition, did you?’

  ‘I had to, Pops. I was too drunk to walk.’

  Nathan made a grab for the cans of beer. He managed to snatch one of them out of Denver’s right hand, but Denver hid the other one behind his back.

  ‘Give me that beer, Denver. There’s absolutely no way you’re drinking any more.’

  By now, Grace had come to the bedroom door. ‘Denver, look at the state of you!’

  ‘Look at the state of me? Look at the state of me? I’m seventeen years old and I went bowling with my friends. I drank three cans of Miller and I pissed over a fence. I horsed around and I laughed and I had a stupid, ordinary time doing nothing but stupid, ordinary things. I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t vandalize anything, I didn’t rape any girls. Why are you being so goddamned cen-snorious?’

  Nathan held out his hand. ‘Give me that can of beer.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Denver shook his head. ‘This can of beer is your compensation to me for being such a dick. You know what I have to put up with, every single day? Has your dad hatched any good dragons lately? He sure succeeded in breeding a gargoyle, didn’t he? Just take a look in the mirror!’

  ‘Give me that can of beer, Denver, or else you’re grounded for the rest of the month, and I’m not kidding you.’

  Denver swayed and almost toppled backward down the stairs. ‘I know you’re not kidding me. You never kid. You’re always so goddamned serious. But how can you be so goddamned serious when you spend all day trying to breed creatures that don’t even exist? That’s you, Pops! That’s you! You don’t care about reality! You don’t give a flying fuck about your own son! The trouble with me is, I’m real! I exist! I’m not a unicorn or a gryphon or a three-headed what-do-you-call-it! I’m just a boring, real, ordinary, stupid person!’

  Nathan grabbed Denver’s sleeve, and heaved him forcibly up to the landing. Denver’s eyes were glassy but he raised his chin in defiance and said, ‘What? What are you going to do now? You going to hit me?’