Relic

by Douglas Preston

  “And what, exactly, do I have to do with all of this?” Kawakita asked.

  “Nothing. But you’re an Assistant Curator. You have high-security access to the Museum computer. You can query the accession database, find out about those crates.”

  “I doubt they’ve even been logged,” Kawakita said. “But either way, it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Why not?” Smithback asked.

  Kawakita laughed. “Wait here a minute.” He stood up and headed for the lab. In a few minutes he returned, a piece of paper in one hand.

  “You must be psychic,” he said, handing over the paper. “Look what I found in my mail this morning.”

  NEW YORK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

  INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

  To: Curators and Senior Staff

  From: Lavinia Rickman

  CC: Wright, Lewallen, Cuthbert, Lafore

  As a result of recent unfortunate events, the Museum is under intense scrutiny by the media and by the public in general. This being the case, I [169] wanted to take the opportunity to review the Museum’s policy on external communications.

  Any dealings with the press are to be handled through the Museum’s public relations office. No comments on Museum matters are to be made, either on or off the record, to journalists or other members of the media. Any statements made or assistance given to individuals who are engaged in preparing interviews, documentaries, books, articles, etc. dealing with the Museum are to be cleared through this office. Failure to follow these guidelines will result in disciplinary action from the Director’s Office.

  Thank you for your cooperation in this difficult time.

  “Christ,” muttered Smithback. “Look at this. ‘Individuals engaged in preparing books.’ ”

  “She means you, Bill,” Kawakita laughed. “So you ace? My hands are tied.” He extracted a handkerchief From his back pocket and blew his nose. “Allergic to bone dust,” he explained.

  “I just can’t believe this,” Smithback said, rereading the memo.

  Kawakita clapped an arm around Smithback’s shoulder “Bill, my friend, I know this story would make great copy. And I’d like to help you write the most controversial, outrageous, and salacious book possible. Only I can’t. I’ll be honest. I’ve got a career here, and—” he tightened his grip “—I’m coming up for tenure. I can’t afford to make those kinds of waves right now. You’ll have to go some other route. Okay?”

  Smithback nodded with resignation. “Okay.”

  “You look unconvinced,” Kawakita laughed. “But I’m glad you understand, anyway.” He gently propelled the writer to his feet. “I’ll tell you what. How about a [170] little fishing on Sunday? They’re predicting an early hatch on the Connetquot.”

  Smithback finally grinned. “Tie me some of your devilish little nymphs,” he said. “You’re on.”

  = 26 =

  D’Agosta was all the way on the other side of the Museum when yet another call came in. Emergency sighting, Section 18, Computer Room.

  He sighed, shoving his radio back into its holster, thinking of his tired feet. Everyone in the damn place was seeing bogeymen.

  A dozen people were crowding the hall outside the Computer Room, joking nervously. Two uniformed officers were standing by the closed door. “Okay,” said D’Agosta, unwrapping a cigar. “Who saw it?”

  A young man edged forward. White lab coat, slope-shouldered, Coke bottle glasses, calculator and pager dangling off the belt. Cripes, thought D’Agosta, where did they get these guys? He was perfect.

  “I didn’t actually see anything,” he said, “but there was this loud thumping noise in the Electrical Systems Room. It sounded like banging, someone trying to get through the door—”

  [172] D’Agosta turned to the two cops. “Let’s check it out.”

  He fumbled at the door knob and someone produced a key, explaining, “We locked it. We didn’t want anything coming out—”

  D’Agosta waved his hand. This was getting ridiculous. Everyone was spooked. How the hell could they be planning a big opening party for the following night? They should have shut the damn place down after the first murders.

  The room was large, circular, and spotless. In the center, standing on a large pedestal and bathed in bright neon lights, was a five-foot-tall white cylinder that D’Agosta supposed was the Museum’s mainframe. It hummed softly, surrounded by terminals, workstations, tables, and bookcases. Two closed doors were visible on the far walls.

  “You guys poke around,” he told his men, popping the unlit cigar in his mouth. “I wanna talk to this guy, do the paperwork.”

  He went back outside. “Name?” he asked.

  “Roger Thrumcap. I’m the Shift Supervisor.”

  “Okay,” D’Agosta said wearily, making notations. “You’re reporting noises in Data Processing.”

  “No, sir, Data Processing’s upstairs. This is the Computer Room. We monitor the hardware, do systems work.”

  “The Computer Room, then.” He scribbled some more. “You first noticed these noises when?”

  “A few minutes after ten. We were just finishing up our journals.”

  “You were reading the paper when you heard the noises?”

  “No, sir. The journal tapes. We were just finishing our daily backup.”

  “I see. You were just finishing at ten o’clock?”

  “The backups can’t be done during peak hours, sir. [173] We have special permission to come in at six in the morning.”

  “Lucky you. And you heard these noises where?”

  “They were coming from the Electrical Room.”

  “And that is—?”

  “The door to the left of the MP-3. That’s the computer, sir.”

  “I saw two doors in there.” D’Agosta said. “What’s behind the other one?”

  “Oh, that’s just the lights-out room. It’s on a carded-entry system, nobody can get in there.”

  D’Agosta gave the man a strange look.

  “It contains the diskpacks, things like that. You know, the storage devices. It’s called a lights-out room because everything’s automated, nobody goes in there except for maintenance.” He nodded proudly. “We’re in a zero-operator environment. Compared to us, DP’s still in the Stone Age. They still have operators manually mounting tapes, no silos or anything.”

  D’Agosta went back inside. “They heard the noises on the other side of that door to the left, there in the back. Let’s take a look.” He turned around. “Keep them out here,” he said to Thrumcap.

  The door to the electrical room swung open, releasing a smell of hot wiring and ozone. D’Agosta fumbled along the wall, found the light and snapped it on.

  He did a visual first, by the book. Transformers. Grillwork covering ventilation ducts. Cables. Several large air-conditioning units. A lot of hot air. But nothing else.

  “Take a look behind that equipment,” D’Agosta said.

  The officers nosed around thoroughly. One looked back and shrugged.

  “All right,” said D’Agosta, walking out into the computer room. “Looks clean to me. Mr. Thrumcap?”

  “Yes?” He poked his head in.

  “You can tell your people to come back in. Looks okay, but we’re gonna post a man for the next thirty-six hours.” He turned to one of the policemen emerging [174] from the electrical room. “Waters, I want you here till the end of your shift. Pro forma, all right? I’ll send your relief.” A few more sightings and I’ll be fresh out of officers.

  “Right,” said Waters.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Thrumcap. “This room is the heart of the Museum, you know. Or rather, the brain. We run the telephones, physical plant, network, mini-printing, electronic mail, security system—”

  “Sure,” said D’Agosta. He wondered if this was the same security that didn’t have an accurate blueprint of the subbasement.

  The staff began filing back into the room and taking up their places at the terminals. D’Agosta mopped his brow. H
ot as balls in here. He turned to leave.

  “Rog,” he heard a voice behind him. “We got a problem.”

  D’Agosta hesitated a moment.

  “Oh, my God,” said Thrumcap, staring at a monitor. “The system’s doing a hex dump. What the hell—?”

  “Was the master terminal still in backup mode when you left it, Rog?” a short guy with buck teeth was asking. “If it finished and got no response, it might have gone into a low-level dump.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Roger. “Abort the dump and make sure the regions are all up.”

  “It’s not responding.”

  “Is the OS down?” Thrumcap asked, bending over bucktooth’s CRT. “Lemme see this.”

  An alarm went off in the room, not loud, but high-pitched and insistent. D’Agosta saw a red light in a ceiling panel above the sleek mainframe. Maybe he’d better stick around.

  “Now what?” said Thrumcap.

  Jesus, it’s hot, D’Agosta thought. How can these people stand it?

  “What’s this code we’re getting?”

  “I don’t know. Look it up.”

  [175] “Where?”

  “In the manual, fool! It’s right behind your terminal. Here, I’ve got it.”

  Thrumcap started flipping pages. “2291, 2291 ... here it is. It’s a heat alarm. Oh, Lord, the machine’s overheating! Get maintenance up here right away.”

  D’Agosta shrugged. The thumping noise they’d heard was probably air-conditioner compressors failing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. It must be ninety degrees in here. As he began moving down the hall, he passed two maintenance men hurrying in the opposite direction.

  Like most modern supercomputers, the Museum’s MP-3 was better able to withstand heat than the “big iron” mainframes of ten or twenty years before. Its silicon brain, unlike the older vacuum tubes and transistors, could function above recommended temperatures for longer periods of time without damage or loss of data. However; the hardwired interface to the Museum’s security system had been installed by a third party, outside the operating specifications of the computer manufacturer. When the temperature in the computer room reached ninety-four degrees, the tolerances of the ROM chips governing the Automatic Disaster Control System were exceeded. Failure occurred ninety seconds later.

  Waters stood in a corner and glanced around the room. The maintenance men had left over an hour before, and the room was pleasantly chilly. Everything was back to normal, and the only sounds were the hum of the computer and the zombies clicking thousands of keys. He idly glanced at an unoccupied terminal screen and saw a blinking message.

  EXTERNAL ARRAY FAILURE

  AT ROM ADDRESS 33 B1 4A 0E

  It was like Chinese. Whatever it was, why couldn’t they just say it in English? He hated computers. He couldn’t think of one damn thing computers had done for him except leave the s off his last name on bills. He hated those smart-ass computer nerds, too. If there was anything wrong here, let them take care of it.

  = 27 =

  Smithback dumped his notebooks beside one of his favorite library carrels. Sighing heavily, he squeezed himself into the cramped space, placed his laptop on the desk, and turned on the small overhead light. He was only a stone’s throw from the oak-panelled reading room, with its red leather chairs and marble fireplace that hadn’t seen use in a century. But Smithback preferred the narrow, scuffed carrels. He especially liked the ones that were hidden deep in the stacks, where he could examine documents and manuscripts he’d temporarily liberated—or catch forty winks—in privacy and relative comfort.

  The Museum’s collection of new, old, and rare books on all aspects of natural history was unrivalled. It had received so many bequests and privately donated collections over the years that its card catalogue was always hopelessly behind. Yet Smithback knew the library better even than most of the librarians. He could find a buried factoid in record time.

  [178] Now he pursed his lips, thinking. Moriarty was a stubborn bureaucrat, and Smithback himself had come up empty with Kawakita. He didn’t know anyone else who could get him into the accession database. But there was more than one way to approach this puzzle.

  At the microfilm card file, he started flipping through the New York Times index. He backtracked as far as 1975. Nothing there—or, as he soon discovered, in the relevant natural history and anthropological journals.

  He checked the back issues of the Museum’s internal periodicals for information on the expedition. Nothing. In the 1985 Who’s Who At NYMNH, a two-line bio of Whittlesey told him nothing he didn’t already know.

  He cursed under his breath. This guy’s hidden deeper than the Oak Island treasure.

  Smithback slowly put the volumes back on their racks, looking around. Then, taking some sheets from a notebook, he strolled nonchalantly up to the desk of a reference librarian, first making sure he hadn’t seen her before.

  “Gotta put these back in the archives,” he told the librarian.

  She blinked up at him severely. “Are you new around here?”

  “I’m from the science library, just got transferred up last week. On rotation, you know.” He gave her a smile, hoped it looked bright and genuine.

  She frowned at him, uncertain, as the phone on her desk began to ring. She hesitated, then answered it, distractedly handing him a clipboard and a key on a long, blue cord. “Sign in,” she said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

  The library archives lay behind an unmarked gray door in a remote corner of the library stacks. It was a gamble in more ways than one. Smithback had been [179] inside once before, on legitimate business. He knew that the bulk of the Museum’s archives were stored elsewhere, and that the library’s files were very specific. But something was nagging him. He closed the door and moved forward, scanning the shelves and the stacks of labeled boxes.

  He had progressed down one side of the room and was starting up the other when he stopped. Carefully, he reached up and brought down a box labeled CENTRAL RECVG/SHPG: AIR CARGO RECEIPTS. Squatting down, he rustled quickly through the papers.

  Once again, he went back as far as 1975. Disappointed, he rustled through them again. Nothing.

  As he returned the box to its high perch, his eye caught another label: BILLS OF LADING, 1970-1990. He couldn’t risk more than another five minutes, tops.

  His finger stopped near the end of the pile. “Gotcha,” he whispered, pulling a smudged sheet free of the box. From his pocket, he extracted his microcassette recorder and quietly spoke the pertinent words, dates, and places: Belém; Port of New Orleans; Brooklyn. The Strella de Venezuela—Star of Venezuela. Odd, he thought. Awfully long layover in New Orleans.

  “You seem pretty pleased with yourself,” the librarian said as she stowed the key back in the desk.

  “Have a nice day,” Smithback said. He finished the entry on the archives clipboard: Sebastian Melmoth, in 11:10, out 11:25.

  Back at the microfilm catalog, Smithback paused. He knew the New Orleans newspaper had a strange name, very antebellum-sounding—Times-Picayune, that was it.

  He scanned the catalog quickly. There it was: Times-Picayune, 1840-present.

  He snapped the 1988 reel into the machine. As he neared October, he slowed, then stopped completely. A [180] large, 72-point banner headline stared at him out of the microfilm viewer.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed.

  He now knew, without a shred of doubt, why the Whittlesey crates had spent so long in New Orleans.

  = 28 =

  “I’m sorry, Miss Green, but his door is still closed. I’ll give him your message as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks,” Margo said, hanging up her phone with frustration. How could she be Frock’s eyes and ears if she couldn’t even talk to him?

  When Frock was deeply involved in a project, he often locked himself in his office. His secretary knew better than to disturb him. Margo had tried to reach him twice already that morning, and there was no telling whe
n he’d re-emerge:

  Margo glanced at her watch. 11:20 A.M.—the morning was almost gone. She turned to her terminal and tried logging on to the Museum’s computer.

  HELLO MARGO GREEN@BIOTECH@STF

  WELCOME BACK TO MUSENET

  DISTRIBUTED NETWORKING SYSTEM,

  RELEASE 15-5

  COPYRIGHT © 1989-1995 NYMNH AND CEREBRAL SYSTEMS INC.

  CONNECTING AT 11:20:45 03-30-95

  PRINT SERVICE ROUTED TO LJ56

  ***ALL USERS-IMPORTANT NOTICE***

  DUE TO THIS MORNING’S SYSTEM OUTAGE, A RESTORE WILL BE PERFORMED AT NOON. EXPECT DEGRADED PERFORMANCE. REPORT ANY MISSING OR CORRUPTED FILES TO SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR ASAP.

  ROGER THRUMCAP@ADMIN@SYSTEMS

  YOU HAVE 1 MESSAGE(S) WAITING

  [182] She brought up the electronic mail menu and read the waiting message.

  MAIL FROM GEORGE MORIARTY@EXHIB@STF SENT 10:14:07 03-30-95

  THANKS FOR THE LABEL COPY—LOOKS PERFECT, NO CHANGES NECESSARY. WE’LL PUT IT IN WITH OTHER FINISHING TOUCHES BEFORE OPENING TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

  CARE TO HAVE LUNCH TODAY?

  —GEORGE

  REPLY, DELETE, FILE (R/D/F)?

  Her telephone rang, shattering the silence. “Hello?” she said.

  [183] “Margo’? Hi. It’s George,” came Moriarty’s voice.

  “Hi,” she replied. “Sorry, just got your message now.’

  “I figured as much,” he responded cheerfully. “Thanks again for helping out.”

  “Glad to,” replied Margo.

  Moriarty paused. “So...” he began hesitantly. “How about that lunch?”

  “Sorry,” Margo said. “I’d like to, but I’m waiting for a call back from Dr. Frock. Could be five minutes, could be next week.”

  She could tell by the silence that Moriarty was disappointed.