The God Gene: A Novel

by F. Paul Wilson

  He was spun back to face Razi who pulled one of Garrick’s zip ties from his pocket and handed it to Marten. Through hand signals Marten gathered he was supposed to tie it around his right wrist. He did as indicated, making sure he didn’t pull it too tight. Razi turned him around again and pushed his face against the green bamboo rods. From the corner of his eye, Marten watched as a second zip tie slipped through the first and was fastened to a particularly sturdy-looking rod—a good four inches in diameter—locking Marten in place.

  Okay … one hand free. At least he could take a leak when he needed to. But more importantly, he could use his phone. They’d searched Garrick and his woman, but not Marten. After he’d fled, they’d no doubt searched his things and found the phone he’d brought along, but it would never occur to them that he’d had another waiting for him here. It rested now in a back pocket, under his loose shirt.

  The big question: Should he use it?

  As far as he was concerned, Amaury and his men were expendable. They were the worst sort of people, profiting from the sale of living creatures. The world would be a better place without them.

  But Garrick and the woman … what was her name? Laura. Yes, Laura. They were innocent, and they were the best sort of people. Keith had thought Garrick had no regard for him, yet he’d traveled thousands upon thousands of miles to find him. Downright shocking, one might say. Shocking in many ways. They’d been raised in the same family but they shared no blood, and Garrick had been estranged from the family for years. His name was never mentioned—certainly not by his mother—and he’d made no attempt at contacting Keith or even Cheryl, with whom he’d had a decent relationship in their formative years.

  And yet … here he was. All those miles, all that effort, and he’d found the island, of all things. Who’d have thought he cared so much?

  Garrick apparently had unplumbed depths, and Marten did not want to be responsible for his death.

  One way or another, however, the C-4 would be detonated and the VX dispersed throughout the caldera—ideally, with Marten and Garrick and Laura airborne or shipboard miles away. But if Marten had no choice, if his back were to the wall and he was faced with sacrificing innocent lives to do what he must, then he would not hesitate.

  Razi made a final inspection of the zip ties. He must have thought the tie around Marten’s wrist was too loose, because he gave it a firm tug. The loop became snug enough to keep Marten from wriggling free but loose enough to keep blood flowing to the hand and fingers.

  Satisfied, he started to walk away, but stopped short. For a heartbeat or two he stared at the back of Marten’s shirt, right at the spot where the phone hid.

  No!

  Marten rotated his body away but Razi was having none of it. He grabbed Marten and pushed him roughly against the bamboo again. He patted down his backside and grunted when his hand landed on the phone.

  No! Please!

  He pulled it free and waggled it before Marten’s face, as if to say, Naughty boy!

  Whistling tunelessly through the gap in his teeth, Razi strolled off without a backward glance.

  Marten didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. The numbers of the trigger phones were programmed into the speed dialer. If anyone decide to test them out …

  8

  After Razi had disappeared into the trees with Keith, Rick turned to Laffite.

  “He needs psychiatric help. Keith trying to poison anyone is totally out of character. Whatever price bump you think you’ll get from any scientific paper published by him will be cancelled out once people realize he’s got a bunch of stripped gears in his head.”

  The Frenchman glanced at Laura. “You tell me he is a respected zoologiste, oui?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That is enough. People get ‘missing link’ in their heads and it will stay there.”

  Laffite stared at Laura, giving her a long, hard look that made her uncomfortable.

  “What?” she said finally.

  “The card in your wallet says you are a medical examiner. A coroner?” He used the French pronunciation.

  “Yes.”

  “This means you see only the dead?”

  “Only the dead.”

  “But in your training, you must fix a broken bone at some time, yes?”

  “I did some ER moonlighting where I splinted an occasional simple fracture until they could get to an orthopedist. I’ve helped apply a cast, but I’ve never done one by myself.”

  Where was this going?

  “What’s with the twenty questions?” Rick said, restless beside her. “Is someone hurt?”

  He smiled. “Not ‘someone.’ Not a person. Come. I will show you.”

  He led them to the cage with its solitary occupant. The dapi backed away at their approach. Its crippled gait answered a lot of questions. And engendered more.

  “How did he break its leg?” she said.

  Laffite offered a totally Gallic shrug. “An accident. We do not wish to harm the dapis, only find them good homes.”

  “Out of the goodness of your heart, right?” Rick said.

  Laffite pursed his lips. “Well, a man must eat, and these trips are expensive. But I want to know: Can you fix this poor creature’s leg?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Laura squatted next to the cage and checked out the dapi. The little male stood with its back pressed against the opposite wall and stared at her with its huge sky-blue eyes.

  She’d seen the photo of Mozi, but it conveyed only a fraction of the reality of these things. Like a lemur but much more appealing.

  “The way he stares … it’s mesmerizing.”

  “Oui,” Laffite said, squatting beside her. “One could drown in those eyes.”

  Laura didn’t know why, but she replied in French. “Tout à fait extraordinaire.”

  He gasped. “Vous connaissez la langue?”

  She waggled her hand. “Un peu.”

  “Intelligente et belle et vous parlez français. Je pourrais tomber amoureux de toi!”

  “Don’t get carried away, monsieur. And we’ll stick to English for the sake of my friend here.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to where Rick stood with his arms crossed, watching them.

  “He is a big one.”

  “Right. And don’t forget it.”

  She refocused her attention on the dapi. He stood on his left leg, with his right knee flexed to keep weight off it. The lower leg was swollen. Fractured tibia? If it wasn’t displaced—or better yet, incomplete …

  “I might be able to make a splint for that leg.”

  “We have a first-aid kit.”

  She snaked her index finger through the mesh of the cage.

  “Careful,” Laffite said. “He bites. He bit Bakari.”

  “The splint will be easier if we can be friends.”

  And if I were an animal trapped by that brute, I’d bite him too.

  The dapi held back. At least he wasn’t attacking.

  “What have you been feeding him?”

  “They like the protein bars we brought for ourselves.”

  “Give me one.”

  Laffite pulled a bar from a breast pocket and began unwrapping it. The name High5 flashed on the label. She’d never heard of that brand. Laffite handed her a piece.

  “What flavor?”

  “Banana vanilla.”

  “Maybe that’s why they like it.”

  She dropped a piece through the mesh to bring the dapi closer, but he still hung back, his gaze repeatedly flicking to Laffite. Maybe he associated him with getting hurt.

  “Why don’t you and Rick back off a bit. Give me and my little friend some space.”

  As the two men moved a dozen or so feet away, Laura wiggled her finger and made cooing noises. She dropped another bit of bar through the mesh. Finally the dapi made a tentative move forward on three legs, keeping the rear right leg flexed and off the floor. He stretched and snagged the piece of bar closest to him. After gob
bling it down, he reached for the second. All the while, Laura kept wiggling her finger and cooing.

  When he’d swallowed the second piece, he stayed there, his gaze alternating between Laura’s face and her finger.

  This is where he either takes a piece of out me or …

  He reached out and poked her fingertip with his own.

  Laura stifled a laugh. “Not quite a high five,” she said softly, smiling at him. “But a high one is a start.”

  “Check it out,” Rick said from somewhere behind her. “You’ve got an audience.”

  She craned her neck. Sure enough, the branches above and all around were crammed with dapis, chattering and watching.

  And then her dapi wrapped his little hand around her finger and rubbed his face against it, almost like a cat.

  He’s lonely, she thought. Hurt and lonely.

  She worked three more of her fingers through the mesh and played with the little guy for about ten more minutes.

  “Are we ready?” Laffite said.

  “Ready as ever, I guess. Bring that first-aid kit over. Better yet, have Rick bring it over.”

  Rick tried to play with the dapi as she inventoried the kit. He could fit only his pinky through the mesh. The dapi backed off at first, but he seemed to have become desensitized to humans and soon was fondling Rick’s finger.

  Laura in the meantime had found some cotton, gauze, tape, and a packet of tongue depressors.

  Yeah, this might work … if she could immobilize the dapi long enough.

  Razi returned then. Speaking in Portuguese, he handed Laffite a satellite phone. Laffite held it up and called to Rick.

  “Razi found this on your brother. Did you give it to him?”

  “No. I assume that’s his.”

  “But we have his phone. He left it here when he ran off after trying to kill us. This is different. Where did he get it?”

  Rick shrugged. “No law against having two phones.”

  “No, I suppose not. I wonder who he was calling.” He began tapping away at Keith’s phone. “Hmmm … only two numbers here … both with Mozambique area codes … called early this morning. I wonder who they are.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t sent him to ‘Elba,’ you could ask him.”

  “I told you: He has been exiled for his own good.”

  “So you say.” Rick’s tone told Laura his patience was fraying. “Hey, if you really want to know who he called, instead of standing there talking about it, why don’t you dial them and see?”

  “I believe I will do just that.”

  Laura could feel her own patience thinning. “Can we save the phone games for later? I’m going to need help here.”

  9

  In an attempt to break the towering bamboo rod that held him fast, Marten hung all his weight on it.

  He used to weigh more, but his wandering up and down the Mozambique coast in search of another Mozi, combined with the lack of fast-food places along the way—how he missed Starbucks—had melted a lot of his fat. Not that weight mattered much in this case. Being a grass, green bamboo tended to bend instead of break. And even if it did break, he doubted very much it would snap off like a dry twig. But he had to try.

  He guesstimated the time at a couple of hours past noon. If he was going to get free, he needed to do it in daylight. Direct sunlight cut off early in the caldera, and after sunset the darkness down here became impenetrable.

  The rod suddenly jerked lower as he heard a crack near its base. Could it be? Was it going to break? He swung a leg over and hauled himself up into a precarious straddle. He remembered seeing a Chinese movie once—something with a nonsensical name—that had a scene with a man and a woman leaping from rod to rod in a bamboo forest.

  He started bouncing up and down on the rod, steadily gaining momentum while fighting to keep his balance. Suddenly a louder crack like a shot, and the rod dropped to the ground. Pain shot through him as the rod jammed against his perineum.

  He rolled off in agony. He’d done it! He’d broken the bamboo but damn near castrated himself in the process.

  When the spasms subsided, he dragged the zip tie around the rod as near as he could to the base. He groaned when he saw it. Yes, the rod had broken, but it was a green-stick break, with the majority of the fibers still intact. He’d need a sharp knife or axe or, better yet, a saw to cut through those.

  He looked back along the twenty-five-foot length of the rod. Wait a minute. He didn’t need to snap it off. It tapered toward the top.

  Marten slid the second zip tie along the length of the rod, ripping off some of the larger leaves along the way. In minutes he was free.

  But now what? He needed his phone and he didn’t see any way to sneak into that tiny camp and retrieve it.

  That left the almost unthinkable: He’d have to throw himself upon the mercies of his enemies. They wouldn’t accept Marten, and would only exile him again, more securely this time.

  But they might accept Keith. And he knew he could fake Keith.

  10

  “Done?” Rick said.

  Laura leaned back and wiped perspiration and a few strands of hair from her forehead. “That’s as good as it’s gonna get. I hope it works.”

  She’d been great—gentle but firm about getting the job done while he’d kept a tight grip on the little creature. Watching her work, he’d been amazed by her concern, her constant stream of encouragement, even though the animal couldn’t understand a word she was saying.

  The dapi seemed to have calmed now. The splinting process had been one hell of an ordeal. He hadn’t liked being immobilized—had struggled and screamed bloody murder through the whole procedure. Not from any real pain, as far as Rick could tell. More from fear and frustration.

  Holding him steady hadn’t been easy. The protective gloves Laffite had provided were clumsy and the dapi had had a field day snapping at them. But Laura had managed to wrap the leg and tape a tongue depressor along its inside and outside, starting above the knee and ending below the foot.

  And all around and above, the other dapis watched her every move, their chatter subdued by the drama below.

  “If I remember,” she said, “you’re supposed to immobilize the joint proximal and distal to the fracture.” She took a breath. “Been so long. I hope I did this right. Okay. Put him down and let’s see how he does.”

  “Don’t let him run off!” Laffite said.

  “I don’t think he’ll be running anywhere for a while,” she said.

  Rick eased the dapi gently to the ground where it stood uncertainly, bearing all its weight on its three good limbs. It swayed awkwardly because it couldn’t bend the right leg—Laura had immobilized the knee. It looked at Laura, then back at Rick, then at Laura again. Slowly it lowered its broken leg until the tips of the tongue depressors below the ankles touched the ground.

  Apparently it didn’t hurt, or didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it had before, because it took a tentative step, and then another. It limped in a slow circle and then stopped to stare up at Laura with what Rick could only describe as wonder in its huge eyes.

  Laffite laughed. “Splendide!”

  Just then Bakari blundered in, carrying a large canvas sack over his shoulder, and in his other hand … were those spears?

  The dapi screeched at the sight of him and leaped straight at Laura. To her infinite credit, she didn’t duck but caught the little creature and clutched him to her chest. It clung and stared at Bakari whose broken nose was only slightly less swollen than before.

  The native seemed upset about something but Rick couldn’t tell what. Maybe more than one something.

  Bakari and Laffite shared an animated conversation and gradually Bakari calmed. Rick wished to hell he understood Portuguese. Laffite turned to Laura.

  “Our little friend seems to have bonded to you. I thank you very much for what you have done, but now he needs to be returned to the cage.”

  “Aw, let him stay out a little longer.”

>   Laffite shook his head. “I am sorry, but we cannot risk his escaping.”

  Rick gestured to all the watching dapis. “Not as if there’s any shortage of replacements.”

  “But that is just the problem, monsieur. These dapis are very clever. Too clever, perhaps. They have learned to … to circonvenir—what is the English?”

  “Circumvent,” Laura said.

  “Ah, oui. They have learned to circumvent our traps. They take the bait and do not get caught.”

  Rick remembered the videos of Mozi when she’d been caged at Schelling, opening the combination lock. He wasn’t surprised they’d found a way to hack a Havahart trap, or whatever they were called in these parts.

  Rick shook his head. “That sort of makes your trip a waste of time then, doesn’t it?”

  And ain’t that just too damn bad for you, froggy.

  Rick couldn’t ever imagine himself going the PETA route, but it galled him to see a bunch of poachers barge into a pristine ecosystem like this and mess up the balance. Laura had said he couldn’t call them poachers because the island was unclaimed and no one had jurisdiction over it. Uh-uh. As far as Rick was concerned, these primates had jurisdiction. This was dapi turf. They’d been here millions of years without screwing it up, so in his book, they had squatters’ rights. The island belonged to them.

  “It might prove to be a waste of time and treasure, yes,” Laffite said. “Then again, it might not.”

  Uh-oh. Rick didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Meaning?”

  Laffite smiled. “I am not about to let these little primates, no matter how clever they might be, get the better of me.”

  Rick gestured to the pair of six-foot spears Bakari had brought along. “Gonna have your guys run them through?”

  “Of course not. The brothers always bring their spears on our trips. Often they catch us dinner. We will be staying here longer than I anticipated. Maybe they can find a wild boar or the like. Have you ever eaten fresh wild boar, monsieur?”

  “Tried just about everything once, so I’m pretty sure I have. Don’t know how fresh it was, though. So if not spears, what? Tranquilizer darts?”

  “An excellent idea, but I did not bring any because I never dreamed we would need them.” He gestured to the bag Bakari had brought. “So I must improvise with netting.”