Species

by Yvonne Navarro

  The other man tilted his head inquisitively. “What do you do, Dan?” He resembled a doctor making notes in his mental filing cabinet.

  “They call me an ‘expert at human motivation.’ In more understandable terms, I’m an empath.” Dan clasped his hands, working his fingers nervously. “Sometimes they show me awful things that people have done. And I try to tell them why.” He shuffled his feet, worn sneakers making squeaking noises as they rubbed against each other. “The rest of the time I work in the passport office as an indexing clerk.”

  Press was curious. “What qualifies you to do that . . . you know, empath thing?”

  A slight frown creased the smooth, ebony skin of Dan’s forehead. “I . . . feel things deeply. They say I have direct access to my emotions.”

  “Really?” Press eyed him speculatively. “And what am I feeling now?”

  He looked like he didn’t want to answer, as if he were afraid of violating Press’s privacy and alienating him. Finally, out of courtesy, he gave in. “You’re . . . like the rest of us. Curious.”

  “Stephen Arden, Harvard Anthropology Department.” The other man offered his hand to the red-headed woman before Dan could continue. “I’m in human research, an expert in cross-cultural behavior.”

  She shook his hand without hesitation, her deep blue eyes bright with interest. “Laura Baker. I’m a molecular biologist. Why do you think they called us here?”

  Press answered that one, the words grinding out of the corner of his mouth around a chewed toothpick as he slumped against the chair back. “If I’m here, the excrement has definitely hit the fan. I’m Preston Lennox.”

  Stephen Arden leaned forward. “And what exactly is your particular area of specialty, Mr. Lennox?”

  “I’m an . . . investigative specialist for the army.”

  “Really?” Stephen looked intensely interested. “And what does that mean to we the public?”

  Press paused for a moment, his glance flicking to Dan. “Let’s just say that I have a talent for finding people. That makes me a freelance solution for some of our government’s problems.”

  “Really,” Stephen said again and folded his arms. “What kind of problems are we talking about, Mr. Lennox?”

  For a moment they all thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he shrugged. “Problems,” he eventually said, “that nobody likes to talk about.”

  The look on his face said they’d get no more out of him.

  Fitch had the group sent to C-G-1, one of the research labs with a netlink to several eighty-inch NEC projection monitors. When Fitch finally got there, the four members of the team were already seated in the chairs that had been placed in front of the screens. In the rear of the room, a computer technician sat at the unit’s console, sequencing the upcoming high-resolution images. From the frustrated looks on most of the faces, Fitch knew the tech had brushed off their questions—as he had been instructed. Smithson, Arden and Baker looked at the doctor expectantly as he joined them, but Preston Lennox—not one of his favorite people, but unfortunately efficient—just acknowledged Fitch’s nod with a sort of “Now, what have you done?” sneer. Fitch ignored it and decided to skip the niceties.

  “I’m Xavier Fitch,” he said. “I’m in command of this operation. Lights out.”

  A mini-movie started on one of the oversized monitors, a spectacular aerial shot of the Arecibo radio telescope and the surrounding forests. Dimming the lighting in the room wasn’t really necessary, but it would make the resolution on the screens seem better; Fitch wanted to make damned sure these people missed nothing.

  “In November of 1974,” Fitch began, “a small group from SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, used the giant radio dishes at Arecibo to send out a message to whoever might be listening in space. They broadcast about a quarter of a kilobyte of information, including the structure of human DNA, a map of our solar system, the population of the earth—lots of helpful facts like that.” Dan Smithson looked at him in surprise and Fitch had to remind himself to keep the sour tone out of his voice. “On March 21, 1992 Arecibo received a signal back from what it believed to be an extraterrestrial source, something from a nonnatural origin. It was also picked up at the Very Large Array in New Mexico and at the Australia Telescope National Facility in Parkes, Australia. The signal—or message, as we decided to label it—came in two sections. Each was repeated twenty-seven thousand times, making it clear that the transmission was intentional.”

  Dan’s attention was no longer on Fitch himself, but on the scientist’s conclusion. “They’re out there!” he said in wonder. “They really are!” He wasn’t the only team member with a shocked expression.

  “Well,” Stephen Arden said, “it makes sense they’d travel by information.” His surprised expression had been replaced by something much more contemplative. “It’s ridiculous to think they’d come here in some sort of a big metal can. They’d probably be wary—”

  “Intelligent life beyond this planet?” Laura’s eyes were locked on the computer images.

  “Space itself exists far beyond our ability to comprehend it,” Stephen remarked unnecessarily. “Why should we be the only life-form capable of intelligent evolution? For us to believe so is the ultimate arrogance.” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Where did it come from? Were you able to find out?”

  “No,” Fitch admitted. “The means of transmission were indisputably beyond our present ability to trace or decipher. We’ve had the country’s most brilliant astronomers and astrophysicists working solely on tracing its origins since the message’s receipt. The best they’ve been able to speculate is that the sender was somehow able to pull the signal around a series of black holes in a manner of conveyance which we have not yet grasped. The black holes may or may not exist anymore—the sender may not exist anymore.”

  “In other words, you don’t know how the hell they got it here. Keep going,” Press interjected. He looked bored and Fitch fought the smirk that wanted to slip out. The man—assassin was a better term—was still wondering why he’d been called here; he’d learn soon enough.

  “As I’ve said, there were two distinct communications,” Fitch told them as the technician waited dutifully. “When the first message was decoded, it turned out to be a superior catalyst for methane. In layman’s terms, that means we now have the potential to produce an infinite amount of energy from a clean-burning fuel. This convinced us that we were dealing with a benevolent civilization.”

  “What was the second?” Professor Arden asked.

  Fitch took a deep breath. “The second message turned out to be a new sequence of DNA and the rather . . . friendly suggestion that we combine it with ours.”

  “Friendly?” Dan asked doubtfully.

  Fitch motioned to a double row of heavy binders lined up on the tabletop next to the computer console. “Here’s the technical data on the whole operation. You can get feedback on it from Dr. Baker after she has a chance to go through these.”

  “That’ll be fun,” Press muttered.

  “So you did it.” Laura’s voice was matter-of-fact. She and Professor Arden exchanged glances. “And then . . . ?”

  “The resulting DNA sequence was injected into one hundred human ova.” Fitch nodded at the technician; the man pressed a button and the panorama of Arecibo was replaced by laboratory film, less scenic images of microscope slides on a grid marked with three-letter codes. A motorized syringe began moving across the grid, following a preset computer program as it injected the untried DNA into the waiting ova, its maneuvers accompanied by the low hum of motors as the technician at the console punched a few keys and added sound. Each injection generated a tiny flow of iridescent color in the receiving dish. A message typed itself across the bottom of the screen: 93% FAILURE RATE; SEVEN DIVISIONS; TWO ASSIGNED TO LIQUID NITROGEN STORAGE.

  “Four of the remaining five divisions deteriorated and were disposed of,” Fitch stated, “and we allowed one to grow. Watch very carefully now.” On the s
creen, time-lapse photography showed the minuscule life-form in the dish expanding rapidly. Type ran briefly across the screen: CODE NAME: SIL.

  The image flashed and began with a glass container filled with fluid. The mass of tissue was growing incredibly fast, and in only a few breathtaking moments it became recognizable as a human fetus. Even Press leaned forward to watch as Dr. Fitch began a countdown to go with the illustrations, pointing with his finger to make sure they knew which number went with which picture.

  “After two hours,” he observed. “Now after two days.” A newborn floated in the container, and Dan jumped visibly when the infant opened its eyes. Offscreen, somebody lifted the infant gingerly from the fluid and placed it in a waiting bassinet. The person doing it was wearing bulky rubber gloves and a reinforced suit that looked like it belonged on an astronaut.

  “My God!” Stephen’s mouth dropped open.

  Laura sat up straight, her eyes fixed on the screen. “This timetable can’t be accurate—the growth is amazing!”

  “It’s the actual time frame, all right.” Fitch sounded grim. “I was there and witnessed it, supervised this footage myself.” The image on the screen flicked again, and there was project SIL, now about four years old. “A week,” he said flatly.

  “It’s a girl,” Dan said softly. “A miracle.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Fitch agreed. “We decided to make it a girl so it would be more docile and controllable.”

  This time a glance passed between Laura and Press. She rolled her eyes and Press looked disgusted as he sneered, “More docile and controllable? You guys don’t get out much, do you?”

  “You kept her caged like that?” Laura demanded. “The whole time? No socialization or interaction with a maternal figure?”

  Fitch seemed startled by the question. “Outside of the workers, no. Of course we kept her secluded. We didn’t know what we were dealing with here, so we agreed it would be safer to keep her in isolation for two weeks. Our initial assumption was that we were building a creature with which we could communicate, from which we could learn. Because of her half-human lineage, we assumed she would be able to talk to us. Unfortunately, we were not able to convince her to do so.” Another image flashed on the screen and the group saw a more mature young girl in a large glass enclosure, Sil at twelve years old. Technicians moved around her, filling out charts and adjusting the dials on the medical monitors scattered around the cage, while guards watched the whole procedure, their expressions mirroring the mistrust on the faces of their white-coated coworkers.

  Stephen watched her movements speculatively. “Not much warmth or interaction,” he said, “but she can talk, all right.”

  Laura’s forehead creased. “How do you know that? She hasn’t said anything. What’s to say she understands?”

  “Here.” The professor leaned toward one of the monitors, paused a second, then tapped the screen. “And . . . here. Watch her eyes. They move from person to person—she’s reading their lips.”

  “Fascinating,” Laura breathed. “And in only two weeks.”

  Suddenly Dan leaned forward, his eyes locked on the film. “She’s hiding something.”

  “You’re absolutely correct, Dan.” Dr. Fitch motioned to the technician; a few keystrokes and the film shot became another one of Sil, this time asleep under a blanket. The image stopped for a moment, then began to replay in slow motion. “Watch carefully.”

  For about five seconds nothing happened. Then, concealed beneath the white blanket, something sharp jutted from the girl’s back, its silhouette lean and long, like a pointed spike. In an instant it was gone and the line of her back was smooth again, the normal spinal curve of an adolescent.

  “What the hell was that?” Press demanded. His full attention was on the screen now, his light blue eyes sharp in his handsome face.

  “Rewind the tape,” Stephen ordered. “Run it again.” The technician obeyed and the five of them watched it carefully. Even with image enhancement and stop motion, whatever came out of her back was so fast that all they got was a brown-black blur on the screen. “Watch her face while it’s happening,” the professor pointed out excitedly. “Look at her eyes. She’s undergoing REM—rapid eye movement. She’s dreaming.”

  “A nightmare?” Laura asked. “Maybe what happened was an anxiety reaction to her dream.”

  “Makes me pretty anxious,” Press muttered. His gaze sought Fitch’s and the older man nodded.

  “It had the same impact on the research team, and the result was the decision to terminate the physical experiment until we could conduct further theoretical research. We needed to determine more about what we were dealing with—”

  “No kidding,” Stephen interjected, his eyes bright.

  Dr. Fitch’s expression darkened. “This is what happened when we attempted to terminate the project.”

  The footage shifted into a replay of Sil’s escape and the volume escalated as the computer presented the viewers with full details. “That’s Kyle,” Press said somberly as the security camera showed Fitch’s former assistant sinking to his knees, retching miserably, then toppling forward. “I wondered what happened to him.”

  “This is very bad,” Dan said. “Those people—”

  “Are all dead,” Fitch said.

  “So it—she—got away,” Laura said quietly.

  “It, and yes.” Fitch’s mouth turned down farther and Dan winced openly as the next footage gave the team a gruesome view of a twisted, blood-streaked corpse. “And yesterday morning the body of a transient was found in a boxcar on a siding near Salt Lake City. Preliminary DNA tests indicate the man was killed by our creature.”

  “Nice kid,” Press remarked, pointing to the bottom part of the shot. “Look at the food wrapper next to the man’s body in the lower right of the screen. It’s on top of the puddle of blood—she slaughtered the guy, then stayed next to him and ate his food.”

  “Not exactly a promising start to her tour of the country. Have you found any more bodies?” Stephen asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You will,” Dan said unexpectedly. All eyes turned toward him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Her eyes are in front. That makes her a predator. Predators have their eyes in front so they can judge the distance to their prey.”

  Press touched his own eyes thoughtfully, then frowned. “What about the dinosaurs, the ones who were meat eaters? They had eyes on the sides of their heads.”

  “They don’t qualify for modern equations because they’ve been extinct for so long,” Laura answered when Dan looked stumped. “Besides, the dinosaurs were reptiles. In the modern world, Dan is mostly right.”

  “And where did you pick up this information, Dan?” Professor Arden asked.

  “I saw it on a documentary on the Discovery Channel,” Dan responded with a touch of pride. “I thought it was really interesting.”

  “Why did you say he was ‘mostly’ right?” Press asked Laura.

  “I think what Dan picked up from the program he watched was information on stereoscopic vision in the order of carnivora, a category of carnivorous mammals—a good portion of which has stereoscopic vision. There are, of course, predators in other orders—reptiles, rodents, and fish, for instance. Just as not all mammals with stereoscopic vision are predators, not all predators have front-facing eyes. Only those predators whose primary hunting sense is vision have front-facing eyes and stereoscopic vision; on the other hand, having both doesn’t automatically mean the animal is a predator. Primates, for example, are largely vegetarian, yet they are mostly associated with stereoscopic vision because they evolved in trees. Thus they needed stereoscopic vision for exceptional depth perception.”

  “Stereoscopic vision?” Dan asked.

  “The ability to see things in three dimensions,” Laura clarified. “Stereoscopic perception is possible because of binocular vision, or the ability to use the image seen by both eyes to result in a single view that appears to have three dimensions . . . which is where
it ties into the program you watched, Dan. If one animal is incapable of accurately judging the distance to another, it cannot be a predator . . . because it could never catch its prey.”

  The scenes playing on the computer monitor ended and they all blinked as the lights came on. Fitch turned to Press. “Mr. Lennox, as a nonscientist, are you at all clear on what’s happening?”

  Press glowered at him from his slumped position on his chair, his face cold. “Oh, I think so, Doctor Fitch. In layman’s terms, you made a monster with a formula from outer space, it’s escaped and is going around killing people.” He fixed each of the others with a glance. “Now you want us to hunt it down and kill it.”

  “You have quite a talent for simplicity, Mr. Lennox,” Fitch said peevishly.

  “Thank you.”

  Laura ran her hands through her hair in a gesture that seemed more disheartened than anxious. “There’s no way we can capture her and keep her alive to study further? I mean, she is half-human.”

  There was a hushed moment as they all considered this. Dr. Fitch looked as though he wanted to agree but oddly, didn’t dare. After they’d all thought about the idea for a minute, Press stood, ready to leave. “Laura,” he said quietly, “I think this is strictly a search-and-destroy mission.” His gaze brushed Fitch then wandered to the floor, and he didn’t look back up.

  “They’ve never asked me to find anyone they didn’t want killed.”

  12

  Looking at Union Station for the first time through a slit in the curtain, Sil could see that this was a world apart from Brigham City, Utah. In fact, she thought the population of that entire town could have been outnumbered just by the people milling about on the platforms here as they waited for trains to arrive and depart.

  Before leaving the sleeping compartment and its decaying contents behind, Sil smoothed the front of her new conductor’s uniform and checked to make sure the fanny pack was adjusted properly—her hips were slightly narrower than A. Cardoza’s had been. Stepping off the train, she followed the rest of the disembarking passengers down a ramp to a tunnel that apparently led to the main station.