The Darwin Strain

by Bill Schutt

  The elder and the juvenile had no knowledge of this, or anything else about how a commonplace, octopoid ancestor had experienced the rewriting of its genome and the overhaul of entire organ systems by a fascinatingly self-serving infection.

  Initially, under the red infection, the elder’s ancestors had become abnormally creative. Males constructed increasingly decorative patterns of spirals and circles beneath the salt sea—the most sophisticated of them attracting the most desirable mates. Still . . . Being the newest and brightest creature around did not count for very much without parents and grandparents, and social organization.

  Then, as if the infection were taking command, thoroughly, over the process of adaptation, life spans expanded. Under normal conditions, even the most sentient cephalopod lived for only five years. After only a few dozen generations, imploding birth rates precluded overpopulation in spite of lengthened lives. The emergence of a new mathematical imbalance simultaneously increased the competition for mates and serendipitously spawned the planet’s first artists. Lines and circles originally cut out of the seabed to attract mates became the impressive architecture of watery roadways—the canals of the deep Mediterranean marshlands.

  Minds that were alien to yet in many ways above the sentience of the Stone-throwers were not what made the cephalopods most dangerous to Proud One’s refugee clan. Once the Kraken lineage was elevated to longer life spans and reduced to infrequent births, the canyon’s cephalopod denizens were on common ground, driven by instincts that all but mirrored the invading bonobo clan. In order to survive, they needed to make babies. Now, to lose even a single juvenile, or to see it injured, was a tragedy and a threat calling for tracking the killer down, and likely rendering its entire species locally extinct.

  After the disastrous first contact, the juvenile who now led the caretaker had stalked the trespassers. He was so familiar with the stench of them that chemo-sensors at the tips of his tentacles could detect individual molecules from bonobo urine spreading seaward along the canals. Presently, the night rains that carried the scent had ceased and the sun was rising higher, fierce and hot. Yet the molecular trail remained strong and the juvenile directed the caretaker toward the encampment, as one might direct a submarine using sonar.

  For uncounted centuries, adult cephalopods had been digging canals landward through layers of moss and muddy reeds, because food from the land remained a delicacy.

  The juvenile, using a three-color signal that ran along a horizontal line so narrow that it could not be seen by anything watching from above the water, pointed his companion toward the canal’s end, as if to say, There! There it is!

  The caretaker signaled just as stealthily—that she could smell it, too, and hear it.

  They glided past reed nets and basket traps set out to capture land life. A hopper snail lay drowning in one of them, but the two cephalopods ignored it.

  The juvenile brought one tentacle close to the caretaker’s eye and displayed, for her, shapes indicating that there were two of the hair-covered trespassers ahead. Then, gurgling and clicking, he corrected the number to three.

  The adult did not agree. Moving swiftly to the canal’s end, so gracefully that she did not create the slightest ripple on the water’s surface, she spread all of her camouflaged tentacles along the floor. She was now able to feel even the faintest vibration from the ground above.

  She watched.

  She waited.

  She analyzed.

  The juvenile came up stealthily beside her, and the caretaker communicated what she felt and saw, through the ground: A hopper snail was being chased by one of the trespassers. A second biped, larger than the first, was also approaching.

  The caretaker raised both eyes very near to the surface and peered out. Her eyes were the only part of her entire body that could not be camouflaged, to blend in with the weeds and mud on the bottom of the canal. Each eye was larger than a bonobo’s fist; each iris surrounding an alien, W-shaped pupil. The juvenile cephalopod also rose up and looked around.

  The little bonobo gazed back at them, seemingly spellbound.

  Chapter 9

  Seeing Red

  You don’t have a war plan. No plan at all. All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!

  —JFK’s nuclear technology advisor Robert S. McNamara

  July 2, 1948

  Central Park West, New York City

  Yanni’s observation that on those odd occasions when Mac did make a mistake, the results could be spectacular, was being tested by history—again.

  High above the city streets, Genya and Victor were trying their best to find some hidden meaning in what they had transcribed from the latest theremin transmission. They were both exhausted to begin with and a new mystery was putting them several steps beyond ordinary exhaustion. During the first two days after the Nesbitt woman left, Mac’s office remained generally quiet, except for an intermittent ringing of the phone and the all-too-familiar sounds of a chain-smoker. The old artist had apparently sought the solitude of the office to finish a painting project, and finally answered one of the calls. There was no mistaking how quickly he became impatient with the man on the other end of the line—“Sure, Hendry, we all know that you don’t like cleaning up Mac’s messes. Gettin’ him into the shit, that’s another . . . what? . . . What makes you think I would know what the hell he was thinking? . . . Okay, okay, what was that number again? . . . Yeah, got it. Yes, I’ll repeat it back to you, but how would I know anything about a cab company at the Athens airport?”

  “But why were they talking about Greek telephone numbers?” Genya asked, his voice unable to hide his alarm. “Perhaps they have discovered that we’re listening? Could this talk of phone numbers be a ruse—pretending to speak in codes?”

  Genya felt Victor’s hand touch his shoulder sympathetically. “Stop thinking too much,” his friend advised. “It’s past dawn now, in case you did not notice. One of us needs to get some sleep and the other has to make that next drive to LaGuardia.”

  “I only need a little breakfast, and some strong coffee,” said Genya. “After that, I can make the drop.”

  This was the first time in many hours that Genya had observed anything approaching enthusiasm on Victor’s face.

  “Go, then,” Victor said. “I will have everything ready for you by the time you fill yourself with coffee.”

  Genya knew how much his friend hated driving in New York traffic. Sometimes one needed the skills of a bullfighter just to maneuver safely across Columbus Circle. But he actually relished the excitement.

  During his typical-New-Yorker-in-a-hurry walk to a local diner, he brushed past a newsboy aggressively hawking a paper he’d never seen before—the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  “Whassa matter, mister?” the boy said, flashing something resembling a snarl. “Ya got somethin’ against da Bums?”

  “In fact I do not,” Genya replied, using a well-practiced French accent that would have fooled all but the most discerning ear. “But you are in enemy territory, no?”

  “Whattaya tawkin’ about, mister?” the kid shot back.

  Genya gestured uptown. “The Yankees play right up the road, no?”

  “Dey stink,” the kid replied, holding out a paper. “Ya want one or not?”

  Genya nodded, reached for a paper, and less than five minutes later, after ordering his meal, the “Frenchman” was reading a column about the appalling increase in the price of common goods and services.

  This “crisis” is only half true, Genya told himself, noting that a cup of coffee, two eggs on a fresh roll, plus a chocolate bar would cost him only twenty cents.

  Such luxuries, he thought, shaking his head at how spoiled these postwar Americans were becoming. He reasoned that if New Yorkers had been forced to experience the famine currently spreading across his own country, the bread lines of the Depression would have seemed nostalgic by comparison.

  As Genya consumed his “early bird special,” he sharpened his speed-reading and
photographic memory skills on the rest of the newspaper. The deepening tensions across the globe looked even worse than during the previous week. The problem was that a month before that, he had convinced himself they had all finally hit bottom, and by now Russia and the United States would have realized there was nowhere for them to go except up.

  Where else can we go? he had asked himself, after John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and even Walt Disney were publicly skewering fellow actors and filmmakers accused of working in Stalin’s best interests.

  It occurred to Genya now that he should never have asked the question, because he had underestimated just how low the bottom could be. The newspaper told him so.

  Washing down the last bite of a Milky Way with a gulp of coffee, Genya paused at a cartoon depicting children walking under the American flag, into a schoolhouse where a large black serpent lurked. The snake wore a caption that read “Communist teacher.”

  An announcement at the bottom of the front page promised a supplement in Sunday’s July 4 edition, to be published in cooperation with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The booklet would detail how to recognize and report traitors among your neighbors and family members.

  Genya had a habit of memorizing a newspaper or a book and leaving it in pristine condition, or what he called “with eye marks only.” He politely left the Eagle, which had cost him three cents, on the counter for the next customer, and stepped out into a bright New York morning, carrying a paper bag of refreshments for Victor. What he read in the diner left him simultaneously saddened and satisfied that the Americans were now turning on each other like wolves. He estimated that for every real Stalinist actually brought to committee “justice,” a hundred innocents would be accused and sacrificed. Soon a strengthening vortex of false accusations would provide the perfect camouflage for the real agents of the Kremlin.

  The Russian whistled confidently—a French marching tune—as he walked back to his apartment listening post. He waved to the newsboy, who ignored him. Letting his mind wander, he reminded himself of something that could be noticed only by reading between the lines of the newspaper. He could have told Stalin today that if Russians really wanted to damage America, all they needed to do was sit back and watch the escalating rate at which Americans were willing—sometimes with malicious joy—to inflict misfortune upon other Americans. He could also have told Stalin (but dared not utter it) that if Americans could see what was happening in Russia, they too could just sit back, and watch, and gloat, for the very same reason.

  Chapter 10

  A Meeting with Medusa

  Five thousand years . . . fifty thousand years . . . five hundred thousand years . . . If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever.

  —John McPhee

  July 2, 1948

  Santorini

  Port of Fira

  R. J. MacCready helped two nervous-looking crew members finish anchoring a portable walkway linking the Catalina to one of Fira’s docks. They had assembled and slammed the aluminum pieces into place with reckless disregard for the safety of their own fingers.

  And we might have saved ourselves the trouble, Mac realized. Around him, the rest of the crew had decided not to wait. Most of them, including Nesbitt, leaped down among half-submerged rocks into chest-deep water as if they were charging the beach at Normandy. Although there were no obvious signs of pursuit, Mac did not begin to breathe comfortably again until he saw that the others had climbed safely onto the dock.

  As he looked back across Thera Lagoon, the number of boats hurrying toward land on the far side drove home the reality of how quickly the waters had transformed from a place of mysterious healings and a rare shark attack to the lair of a sinister, alien intruder. Along what was normally a small but bustling waterfront, Mac could see that commercial activity at Fira had just died. He secured the machine gun, then stepped away and ducked out through the blister window.

  The locals know it’s all going south fast, he thought, noting that all of the dockside action was reduced to a half-dozen men and their donkeys. The stragglers must have been anticipating porter jobs hauling whatever gear came off the newly arrived seaplane.

  Scanning for Yanni, he saw that she was helping Cousteau. The Frenchman had arrived only minutes earlier in the motorboat and was now securing it to an adjacent dock. Out on the lagoon, Mac had covered Cousteau’s departure from the Catalina with the Browning, then tracked his friend’s zigzagging return as best he could from a water-skimming plane, convincing himself that once the boat was away from the red plume, they would step safely ashore without incident.

  Mac craned his neck up toward the thousand feet of cliffs and road cuts leading to Fira. Up there, he told himself. These Kraken—or whatever they are—may be able to get onto boats and pull people out of planes, but up there should be high enough.

  Now he turned toward a new sound—a commotion in front of a nearby market stall that elicited a brief smile. Nora Nesbitt was in an animated dispute with two men, one of whom was holding a rope attached to a sad-looking donkey.

  And who the hell is she working for? Mac wondered, watching the exchange. First she all but completely disappears for two years to some mystery lab that officially doesn’t even exist. Now she flies in with a fully armed Catalina, ordering everybody around. “Like the queen of freaking Sheba,” he muttered.

  The invertebrate biologist’s murky allegiances had in fact been the topic of recent conversations with Yanni; Mac found himself smiling again, this time at the memory. “I’m tellin’ ya, Mac, this Nesbitt knows what color underwear Hendry’s chosen for the day. But what the crotch? She damn well ain’t military.”

  Yanni does have a way with words, Mac thought as he approached the dispute.

  Acknowledging the group with a friendly wave, he turned to Nesbitt. Although tempted to say something rude, Mac bit his tongue, knowing that the woman had just lost a colleague to the Kraken. “What’s the problem, Nora?”

  “I’m trying to hire these guys and one or two of their donkeys to carry my gear to wherever the hell it is we’re staying.”

  Mac shot a quick glance back toward the plane, then threw a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Private McQueen and four reasonably portable crates he had retrieved and now seemed to be guarding on the dock. “Are those all ya got?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, ’cept for my backpack.”

  “Give me a sec,” MacCready said, gesturing for her to take a few steps back.

  After she did so, Mac addressed each of the locals with a nod, then made an effortless transition into New York City bargaining mode, in a mixture of Brooklyn-ese and Greek.

  Less than a minute later he returned to where Nesbitt was standing, hands on her hips.

  “Eight hundred drachmae would be fair,” Mac told her. He could sense that she was about to respond. “Unless you want to wait till nobody’s looking. Then you could just steal the donkey.”

  Nesbitt ignored the jab, and after quickly peeling off eight 100-drachmae notes she completed the transaction and watched as the men headed for the dock.

  “Thanks, Mac,” she said coldly.

  “Hey, anything for an old pal,” Mac replied. Then, as nonchalantly as possible, he added, “So, you want to tell me why you’re here on Santorini?”

  “Soon, Mac,” Nesbitt said, quickly, “but not right now.” Then she flashed him a smile. “So where are we headed?”

  “Up there,” MacCready said, pointing to a winding trail, barely visible along the face of the cliff.

  “That’s funny,” she said, before gesturing toward the lagoon. “Seems like all the action is taking place out there.”

  Mac shrugged his shoulders, “Yeah, you know, more local mumbo jumbo.”

  Nesbitt shook her head. “You know, Mac, I was starting to think your pals back at the museum were the
worst liars I’d ever met.”

  “Guess some of us missed those courses in bullshit you must have taken,” Mac replied, his anger rising like a sour tide. “I’m thinking you aced those, huh?”

  “Look, what’s important here is what’s out there. The microbes we were exposed to in those valleys changed us, may still be changing us and are probably just itching to get to work on our ovaries and sperm. And if there’s more of it around here—and apparently there’s much more—then we need to get a handle on it before someone else does.”

  “You lost a man—about when? Maybe twenty minutes after setting down? Does that mean anything to you?”

  “There are going to be casualties, Mac,” Nesbitt said, then her tone softened. “You know that as well as anyone.”

  MacCready paused. Then, sensing that she was about to press him for additional information, he headed off the request with “Excuse me,” and turned to leave.

  What he saw beyond the dock stopped him cold.

  Yanni Thorne had just finished assisting Cousteau, and now, with everyone ashore, she planned to take a closer look at a pair of circular markings the recent attack had left on the outside of the Catalina. She’d thought about calling Mac over but he was in an animated discussion with everyone’s favorite bad-luck charm, so she and Cousteau decided to conduct the examination by themselves.