Relic

by Douglas Preston

  “Is that what you think?” Margo blazed. “You don’t—”

  She broke off abruptly as her eye fell on the wall clock. “Jesus. I’m late for my meeting with Dr. Frock.” She grabbed her carryall and headed for the door. Halfway into the hall, she turned around. “I’ll speak to you later,” she said.

  The door slammed.

  God, Moriarty thought, sitting at the darkened [196] terminal and resting his chin in his hands. If a graduate student in plant genetics actually thinks Mbwun might be loose—if even Margo Green starts seeing conspiracies behind every door—what about the rest of the Museum?

  = 29 =

  Margo watched Frock spill his sherry down his shirtfront.

  “Blast,” he said, dabbing with plump hands. He set the glass down on the desk with exaggerated care and looked up at Margo.

  “Thank you for coming to me, my dear. It’s an extraordinary discovery. I’d say we should go down there this moment and take another look at the figurine, but that Pendergast fellow will be here shortly to make a further nuisance of himself.”

  Bless You, Agent Pendergast, Margo thought. The last thing she felt like doing was going back down into the exhibition.

  Frock sighed. “No matter, we’ll know soon enough. Once Pendergast leaves, we’ll learn the truth. This Mbwun figurine could be the additional proof I’ve been searching for. If, that is, you are correct about the claws matching the lacerations in the victim.”

  [198] “But how could such a creature be loose in the Museum?” Margo asked.

  “Ah!” Frock exclaimed, eyes shining. “That’s the question, is it not? And let me answer a question with a question. What thing, my dear Margo, is rugose?”

  “I don’t know,” Margo said. “Rugose, as in bumpy?”

  “Yes. It’s a regular pattern of ridges, wrinkles, or creases. I’ll tell you what’s rugose. Reptilian eggs are rugose. As are dinosaur eggs.”

  A sudden current passed through Margo as she remembered. “That’s the word—“

  “—that Cuthbert used to describe the seed pods missing from the crate,” Frock finished her sentence. “I ask you: were they really seed pods‘? What kind of seed pod would look wrinkled and scaly? But an egg ...

  Frock drew himself up in his wheelchair. “Next question. Where have they gone? Were they stolen? Or did something else happen to them?”

  Abruptly, the scientist stopped, sinking back in his wheelchair, shaking his head.

  “But if something ... if something hatched, something broke out of the crates,” Margo said, “how does that explain the killings on board the freighter that carried the crates from South America?”

  “Margo,” Frock said, laughing quietly, “what we have here is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It is essential that we gather more facts without wasting additional time.”

  There was a soft rapping at the door.

  “That must be Pendergast,” Frock said, drawing back. Then, louder: “Come in, please!”

  The agent walked in, carrying a briefcase, his black suit as ever impeccable, his blond white hair brushed back from his face. To Margo, he looked as collected and placid as before. When Frock gestured to one of the Victorian chairs, Pendergast seated himself.

  “A pleasure to see you again, sir,” Frock said. “You’ve [199] met Miss Green. We were once again in the middle of something just now, so I hope you won’t mind if she remains.”

  Pendergast waved his hand. “Of course. I know you’ll both continue to respect my request for confidentiality.”

  “Of course,” said Frock.

  “Dr. Frock, I know you’re busy and I’ll keep this short,” Pendergast began. “I was hoping you’d had some success in locating the artifact we spoke about. An artifact that might have been used as a weapon in these murders.”

  Frock shifted in the wheelchair. “As you requested, I considered the matter further. I ran a search of our accession database, both for single items and for items that could potentially have been broken apart and recombined.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, I found nothing that even remotely resembled the imprint you showed us. There has never been anything like it in the collections.”

  Pendergast’s expression betrayed nothing. Then he smiled. “Officially, we’d never admit this, but the case is—shall we say—a trying one.” He indicated his briefcase. “I am awash in false sightings, lab reports, interviews. But we’re slow in finding a fit.”

  Frock smiled. “I believe, Mr. Pendergast, that what you do and what I do are not all that different. I’ve been in the same predicament myself. And no doubt His Eminence is acting as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening.”

  Pendergast nodded.

  “Wright is very eager that the exhibition go on as scheduled tomorrow night. Why? Because the Museum spent millions it didn’t really have to put it together. It’s vital that admissions be increased to keep the Museum from slipping into the red. This exhibition is seen as the best way to do that.”

  “I see,” Pendergast said. He picked up a fossil lying on a table next to his chair, turning it over idly, in his hand. “Ammonite?” he asked.

  [200] “Correct,” replied Frock.

  “Dr. Frock—” Pendergast began. “Pressure is now being brought to bear from a variety of quarters. As a result, I must be doubly careful to conduct this investigation by the book. I can’t share our results with outside entities such as yourself—even when the conventional avenues of investigation are proving fruitless.” He put down the fossil carefully and crossed his arms. “That said, do I understand correctly that you are an expert on DNA?”

  Frock nodded. “That’s partly true. I have devoted some study to how genes affect morphology—the shape of an organism. And I oversee the projects of various graduate students—such as Gregory Kawakita, and Margo here—whose studies involve DNA research.”

  Pendergast retrieved his briefcase, snapped it open, and withdrew a fat computer printout. “I have a report on DNA from the claw found in one of the first victims. Of course, I can’t show it to you. It would be highly irregular. The New York office wouldn’t like it.”

  “I see,” said Frock. “And you continue to believe that the claw is your best clue.”

  “It’s our only clue of importance, Dr. Frock. Let me explain my conclusions. I believe we have a madman loose in the Museum. He kills his victims in a ritualistic fashion, removes the back of the skull, and extracts the hypothalamus from the brain.”

  “For what purpose?” asked Frock.

  Prendergast hesitated. “We believe he eats it.”

  Margo gasped.

  “The killer may be hiding in the Museum’s subbasement,” Pendergast continued. “There are many indications that he has returned there after killing, but so far we’ve been unable to isolate a specific location or retrieve any evidence. Two dogs were killed during searches. As you probably know, it’s a perfect warren of tunnels, galleries, and passages spread over several subterranean levels, the oldest dating back almost 150 [201] years. The Museum has been able to furnish me with maps covering only a small percentage of its total area. I call the killer ‘he’ because the force used in the killings indicates a male, and a strong one at that. Almost preternaturally strong. As you know, he uses some kind of three-clawed weapon to disembowel his victims, who are apparently chosen at random. We have no motive. Our interviews with selected Museum staff have turned up no leads as yet.” He looked at Frock. “You see, Doctor, our best clue remains our only clue—the weapon, the claw. That is why I continue to search for its origin.”

  Frock nodded slowly. “You mentioned DNA?”

  Pendergast waved the computer printout. “The lab results have been inconclusive, to say the least.” He paused. “I can see no reason not to tell you that the test on the claw turned up DNA from various species of gecko, in addition to human chromosomes. Hence our assumption that the sample might be degraded.”

  “Gecko, you say?” Frock murmured in mild
surprise. “And it eats the hypothalamus ... how extraordinary. Tell me, how do you know?”

  “We found traces of saliva and teeth marks.”

  “Human teeth marks?”

  “No one knows.”

  “And the saliva?”

  “Indeterminate.”

  Frock’s head sank down on his chest. After a few minutes, he looked up.

  “You continue to call the claw a weapon,” he said. “I assume, then, that you continue to believe the killer is human?”

  Pendergast closed his briefcase. “I simply don’t see any other possibility. Do you think, Dr. Frock, an animal could decapitate a body with surgical precision, punch a hole in the skull and locate an internal organ the size of a walnut that only someone trained in human anatomy could recognize? And the killer’s ability to elude our searches of the subbasement has been impressive.”

  [202] Frock’s head had sunk on his chest again. As the seconds ticked off into minutes, Pendergast remained motionless, watching.

  Frock suddenly raised his head. “Mr. Pendergast,” he said, his voice booming. Margo jumped. “I’ve heard your theory. Would you care to hear mine?”

  Pendergast nodded. “Of course.”

  “Very well,” Frock replied. “Are you familiar with the Transvaal Shales?”

  “I don’t believe so,” said Pendergast.

  “The Transvaal Shales were discovered in 1945 by Alistair Van Vrouwenhoek, a paleontologist with South Africa’s Witwatersrand University. They were Cambrian, about six hundred million years old. And they were full of bizarre life forms the likes of which had never been seen before or since. Asymmetrical life forms, not showing even the bilateral symmetry of virtually all animal life on earth today. They occurred, coincidentally, at the time of the Cambrian mass extinction. Now most people, Mr. Pendergast, believe the Transvaal Shales represent a dead end of evolution: life experimenting with every conceivable form before settling down to the bilaterally symmetric form you see today.”

  “But you do not hold such a view,” Pendergast said.

  Frock cleared his throat. “Correct. A certain type of organism predominates in these shales. It had powerful fins and long suction pads and oversized crushing and tearing mouth parts. Those mouth parts could saw through rock, and the fins allowed it to move at twenty miles per hour through the water. No doubt it was a highly successful and quite savage predator. It was, I believe, too successful: it hunted its prey into extinction and then quickly became extinct itself. It thus caused the minor mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian era. It, not natural selection, killed off all the other forms of life in the Transvaal Shales.”

  Pendergast blinked. “And?”

  “I’ve run computer simulations of evolution [203] according to the new mathematical theory of fractal turbulence. The result? Every sixty to seventy million years or so, life starts getting very well adapted to its environment. Too well adapted, perhaps. There is a population explosion of the successful life forms. Then, suddenly, a new species appears out of the blue. It is almost always a predatory creature, a killing machine. It tears through the host population, killing, feeding, multiplying. Slowly at first, then ever faster.”

  Frock gestured toward the sandstone fossil plaque on his desk. “Mr. Pendergast, let me show you something.” The agent stood up and moved forward.

  “This is a set of tracks made by a creature that lived during the Upper Cretaceous,” Frock continued. “Right on the K-T boundary, to be exact. This is the only such fossil of its kind we’ve found; there is no other.”

  “K-T?” asked Pendergast.

  “Cretaceous-Tertiary. It’s the boundary that marks the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.”

  Pendergast nodded, but still looked puzzled.

  “There is a connection here that has so far gone unnoticed,” Frock continued. “The figurine of Mbwun, the claw impressions made by the killer, and these fossil tracks.”

  Pendergast looked down. “Mbwun? The figurine that Dr. Cuthbert removed from the crates and put on display?”

  Frock nodded.

  “Hmm. How old are these prints?”

  “Approximately sixty-five million years old. They came from a formation where the very last of the dinosaurs were found. Before the mass extinction, that is.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Ah. And the connection?.. .” asked Pendergast after a moment.

  “I said that nothing in the anthropology collections matches the claw marks. But I did not say there were no representations, no sculptures of such a claw. We’ve [204] learned that the forelimbs on the figurine of Mbwun have three claws, with a thickened central digit. Now look at these tracks,” Frock said, pointing to the fossil. “Think back to the reconstruction of the claw and the claw marks in the victim.”

  “So you think,” Pendergast said, “that the killer might be the same animal that made these tracks? A dinosaur?” Margo thought she detected amusement in Pendergast’s voice.

  Frock looked at the agent, shaking his head vigorously. “No, Mr. Pendergast, not a dinosaur. Nothing as common as a dinosaur. We’re talking about the proof of my theory of aberrant evolution. You know my work. This is the creature I believe killed off the dinosaurs.”

  Pendergast remained silent.

  Frock leaned closer to the FBI agent. “I believe,” he said, “this creature, this freak of nature, is the cause of the dinosaur’s extinction. Not a meteorite, not a change in climate, but some terrible predator—the creature that made the tracks preserved in this fossil. The embodiment of the Callisto Effect. It was not large, but it was extremely powerful and fast. It probably hunted in cooperative packs and was intelligent. But because superpredators are so short lived, they aren’t well represented in the fossil record. Except in the Transvaal Shales. And in these tracks here, from the Tzun-je-jin Badlands. Are you following me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are in a population explosion today.”

  Pendergast remained silent.

  “Human beings, Mr. Pendergast!” Frock continued, his voice rising. “Five thousand years ago there were only ten million of us on the globe. Today there are six billion! We’re the most successful form of life the earth has ever seen!” He tapped the copies of Fractal Evolution that lay on his desk. “Yesterday, you asked about my next book. It will constitute an extension of my theory on the Callisto Effect, applying it to modern life. My [205] theory predicts that at any moment, some grotesque mutation will come about; some creature that will prey on the human population. I’m not saying the killer is the same creature that killed off the dinosaurs. But a similar creature ... well, look at these tracks again. They look like Mbwun! We call it convergent evolution, where two creatures look alike not because they’re necessarily related, but because they evolve to do the same thing. A creature that’s evolved to kill. There are too many similarities, Mr. Pendergast.”

  Pendergast brought his briefcase onto his lap. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Dr. Frock.”

  “Don’t you see? Something came back in that crate from South America. Unleashed in the Museum. A highly successful predator. That figurine of Mbwun is the proof. The indigenous tribes were aware of this creature, and built a religion around it. Whittlesey inadvertently sent it into civilization.”

  “You’ve seen this figurine yourself?” Pendergast asked. “Dr. Cuthbert seemed reluctant to show it to me.”

  “No,” Frock admitted. “But I have it on the best authority. I plan to make my own observations at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Dr. Frock, we looked into the matter of the crates yesterday,” Pendergast said. “Dr. Cuthbert assured us there was nothing of value in them, and we have no reason to disbelieve him.” He stood up, impassive. “I thank you for your time and help. Your theory is most interesting, and I truly wish I could subscribe to it.” He shrugged. “However, my own opinion remains unchanged for the time being. Forgive me for being blunt, but I hope you will be able to separat
e your conjectures from the cold facts of our investigation, and help us in any way you can.” He walked toward the door. “Now, I hope you’ll excuse me. If anything comes to mind, please contact me.”

  And he left.

  [206] Frock sat in his wheelchair, shaking his head. “What a shame,” he murmured. “I had high hopes for his cooperation, but it seems he’s like all the rest.”

  Margo glanced at the table next to the chair Pendergast had just vacated. “Look,” she said. “He left the DNA printout.”

  Frock’s eyes followed Margo’s. Then he chuckled. “I assume that’s what he meant by anything else coming to mind.” He paused. “Perhaps he isn’t like all the rest, after all. Well, we won’t tell on him, Margo, will we?” he said, picking up the phone.

  “Dr. Frock to speak with Dr. Cuthbert.” A pause. “Hello, Ian? Yes, I’m fine, thank you. No, it’s just that I’d like to get into the Superstition exhibition right away. What’s that? Yes, I know it’s been sealed, but... No, I’m quite reconciled to the idea of the exhibition, it’s just that ... I see.”

  Margo noticed Frock’s face redden.

  “In that case, Ian,” Frock continued, “I should like to reexamine the crates from the Whittlesey expedition. Yes, the ones in the Secure Area. I know we saw them yesterday, Ian.”

  There was a long silence. Margo could hear a faint squawking.

  “Now look here, Ian,” Frock said. “I’m chairman of this department, and I have a right to ... Don’t you speak to me that way, Ian. Don’t you dare.”

  Frock was shaking with rage in a way Margo had never seen before. His voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

  “Sir, you have no business in this institution. I shall be making a formal grievance to the Director.”

  Frock slowly returned the phone to its cradle, his hand trembling. He turned toward Margo, fumbling for his handkerchief. “Please forgive me.”

  “I’m surprised,” said Margo. “I thought that as a Chairman ...” She couldn’t quite complete the sentence.