“Yet this one did,” Press commented. “I’m out of my field, but that seems to indicate it would be an extremely strong creature without our help.”
“Even so,” Stephen cut in, “we could deal with it—”
“I disagree entirely,” Press interrupted hotly. “I’ve never heard a more dangerous proposal.”
“But Laura’s idea does make sense,” argued Stephen. “We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t see what this creature looks like without a human life-form behind which it can hide. To see it without its camouflage would be our best weapon.” He glanced meaningfully at each of the others.
“All right,” Fitch agreed reluctantly. “Maybe Dr. Baker has a point. At least then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
Press opened his mouth to object, but the arrival of the elevator, crowded with civilian passengers from the lower floor of the hotel, stifled the rest of his remarks.
14
“When we pierce the cells, the alien DNA will be introduced into the host specimen. The specimen has been contained in a nutrient solution which will provide the appropriate sustenance to promote growth and cell division.”
Press could tell from Laura’s tone of voice that she was used to explaining her procedures to an audience; more than likely, she often had assistants and grad students watching her methods and asking questions while she worked. Right now the group was in the observation room in an unused portion of the Virus Research Lab at the Los Angeles campus of the University of California. Laura was operating two levers—they looked like joysticks—and controlling the precise movements of a mechanism within a glass box inside an isolation chamber from which they were separated by a five-foot-square quartz window. A lab worker with a name tag that said MICHELLE PURDUE stood to the side, ready to assist. Gathered around, the team watched the process on two video monitors mounted on the console directly in front of the controls. One recorded the overall layout of the isolation chamber, while the other showed the viewpoint of a smaller, high-resolution camera integrated within the microscope and mounted inside the glass box to show the actual process of injecting the DNA.
“If we’re not using human cells,” asked Stephen, “what are we using?”
“Bat.”
“Why bat?” asked Press. “Don’t experiments like this generally use amphibians? Or rats?”
“I don’t like bats,” Dan said. He was looking at the monitors as if they were showing scenes from a particularly scary movie. “They can fly.”
Laura smiled a little. “True,” she agreed, “but they’re small and not very strong. Our host cells were limited to what had been prepared and was still available at this lab. We can’t exactly go to a pet shop and buy prepared embryonic cells.”
“I can’t believe the biology department didn’t have any frogs,” Press argued. “I’m with Dan—bats would be last on my list of choices. Besides, I thought we were going to try and see what the alien would look like by itself. Won’t it end up looking like a bat this way?”
“It might,” Laura said. “But without host cells from the original species itself, we’ll never be absolutely sure we’re seeing its true form anyway—who’s to say that the DNA sequence we received accurately represents them? Even if it does, we have no idea what to expect—what if it’s twenty feet tall? Our own safety mandates we mix the alien DNA with something known. We all know what a bat looks like, so we’ll be able to pick up any differences immediately. My thinking is that the alien DNA will be the more advanced anyway, thus any resemblance to a bat will be recessive. And without human intelligence, the resulting creature won’t know it can or should change its form—it will simply look like what it is. There are canine cells, but the resident DNA was removed before the viral studies shut down, so we can’t use those—we’d have to insert a complete strand of DNA instead of half and run the risk of creating a creature we can’t control. We also considered using human cells, as Dr. Fitch did originally. Increasing the number of alien chromosomes and decreasing the number of human might make the creature less intelligent, but remember the footage of Sil’s reaction to her nightmare at the compound? The resulting creature could, again, be too large to control, and the aliens are obviously quite intelligent. In any case, the equipment needed to process a human cell and remove its DNA was moved elsewhere when the research here ended—and, of course, we have no idea if our alien-to-human chromosome ratio will produce a viable mix. We’ll have to make do with what’s available, and I’m afraid human isn’t one of the options. Plus there are other things to keep in mind.”
“Such as?” Press’s eyes were keen.
“Thinking this through more carefully raised the possibility that the alien in its natural state might not be able to breathe this atmosphere,” Laura pointed out. “That alone is sufficient to explain the message suggesting we combine DNA from the two species. In its true body, the life-form may not be able to exist on our food, and there’s always susceptibility to viruses and bacteria to which the existing life-forms on Earth are immune. Did you know that hydrophobia—rabies—never existed in Hawaii before outside explorers ‘discovered’ the islands?”
“Which brings us to these cells,” Fitch added. “Apparently this lab was working on studies involving hydrophobia—rabies—before it closed down. There were several host choices, and bat seemed the least offensive, taking into consideration size and strength.”
“What were the others?” Stephen asked.
“Dog, raccoon, and skunk,” Fitch said. “Are we ready?”
“Raccoons are nice,” Dan suggested.
“They’re too smart,” Laura said absently. “They learn very quickly to open things. Dogs are too large, and I don’t think we want to deal with a skunk hybrid.” She flicked a switch, then nodded. “Here we go.”
All eyes went to the smaller monitor as the mechanism moved into place to inject the DNA into the host cell. “Right . . . ther—damn it.” Laura released the controls and sat back, disgusted.
“What happened to the picture?” Dan glanced through the widow into the empty isolation chamber, then gave Laura a perplexed look.
“Modern technology at its finest.” Stephen sniffed. “Looks like you’re out a microscope camera.”
“Do we have a replacement?” Laura asked Dr. Fitch.
Fitch looked stumped and Purdue answered for him. “Sure, we have a stand-in. But it will take some time to get a technician here to replace it.”
“Why do we need a tech?” Laura complained. “We have this problem at my lab all the time—everyone does. Camera replacement is a simple chore, standard operating procedure.”
“Meaning you can do it?” Fitch asked dryly.
“Of course, if someone’s willing to pitch in a pair of hands to hold the top of the box open.”
Press took the toothpick he’d been chewing out of his mouth and flicked it at a nearby trash can. “Let’s not have a big conversation about this. I’m your man. Let’s do it and get on with the show.”
“Camera’s right here,” the lab worker said. She plucked a sealed cardboard box off an overhead shelf, slit the top open with a pair of scissors and pulled out a new camera. “You guys sure you want to go into the isolation chamber?”
Laura took the camera from her and checked it quickly. “We’ll be in and out in no time,” she said. “Normally we wouldn’t do something like this in an isolation chamber, but we’re dealing with DNA, not airborne viruses. Let’s go.” Press followed her obediently to the heavy fire door separating the isolation chamber from the observation room. Fitch pressed a button on the control console and the door slid open; they stepped through and it closed behind them and locked with a clang.
“Can you hear me?” Fitch’s voice sounded metallic and strangely high-pitched as it reached them through an unseen speaker. “We can see you both through the window, but I need to know if the speaker is working properly.”
“It’s working,” Press said loudly, glancing around in a fut
ile effort to pinpoint the source of Fitch’s voice.
“You don’t have to shout,” Laura admonished. “He won’t have any trouble hearing you if the speaker’s in working condition at his end. We’ll be able to hear everybody out there as well.”
“Oh.” He and Laura stepped to the table bearing the glass minicrate and Laura handed Press the camera to hold. About three feet square, the box was made of heavy, sterilized glass and the top was hinged and locked down with two substantial wing nuts opposite the hinges. Press watched as she struggled to unscrew them, then tucked the camera under one arm and pitched in. Together they lifted the lid, then he held the disabled camera in place while she disconnected it. When it was free of the box, he lifted it out and slid the new one in position. She quickly pushed the video cables into their connections and stepped back. Suddenly, she jerked.
“Hey—”
“Christ!” Fitch screamed over the speaker. “We’ve got a picture. The process has already started—get the top back on!”
Press was grabbing for his side of the crate’s top when the organism in the petri dish became visible to the naked eye. Already a smushy, brownish-pink crust was rising, pushing up and out like a defective loaf of bread. “This is incredible,” Laura breathed. Despite her astonishment, she moved swiftly to help slam the cover over the rapidly expanding mass. The wing nuts were still in Press’s hand and he slid one in place and tightened it, then bounded to Laura’s side of the glass box. “No known form of life can multiply this fast!”
“Wonderful.” Press pushed the other locking mechanism home and ground his teeth as the wing nut fumbled around in his grasp. He let out a yell when it slipped out of his fingers and dropped to the floor. “Shit!”
She didn’t need an invitation to join him on the floor in a frantic search. On the table above them, Press heard a click and knew instinctively that with no wing nut to hold it in place, the second locking lever had slipped to the side; it wouldn’t take much—a little leverage against the bottom of the case, for instance—to force the unlocked end open. Something else wormed into his hearing, beyond the unexpected thundering of his heart and the rasp of Laura’s panicked breathing somewhere off to his right. Dan’s voice, sounding clear and inescapably correct:
“I think Laura and Press should come back in here now.”
“Where is that damn thing?” Press cried. “I—”
“There!”
Laura jabbed a finger to the left of his field of vision and he snapped his head in that direction. Two feet away, three—it didn’t matter; his fist closed around it and he leaped to the table, jammed the lock in place and spun the wing nut on the end of the screw. He sucked in his breath as he realized what he was staring at: a miniature chrysalis, like the ravaged one they’d found in the bathroom on the train. The microscope’s camera—the reason they were in the isolation chamber in the first place—had immediately been rendered virtually useless by the cocoon’s size.
“Amazing,” Laura said from beside him. “It’s like watching a fetus grow without the protection of a womb.”
“Or a spider entombing its dinner,” Press retorted.
“Dr. Baker, I’m not sure this was such a good idea.” Fitch’s metallic-screened voice sounded stiff.
“What do you think it is?” asked Dan in a worried tone.
The next voice was Stephen Arden’s. “That’s the million-dollar question, Dan. Laura?”
“I can’t answer that,” she said without taking her eyes from the vibrating structure shifting within the glass box. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She stepped back involuntarily as an area on the side of the chrysalis split and something whipped out of it and cracked against the glass top, making the box vibrate. Another snap and the cocoon broke apart entirely.
“Jesus,” Press muttered as a queer, batlike face momentarily flattened itself against the underside of the glass top. Nothing remained of the creature’s chrysalis but fragments littering the floor of the cage. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t like this,” Dan said abruptly over the speaker.
“Let’s go.” Press took Laura’s arm, then both he and Laura recoiled as the face squashed itself against the glass again and then shrieked, a circular mouth ringed with pointed teeth clicking savagely against its enclosure. Before they could react, there was a blur of motion from the box’s interior and something—a spike-studded tail vaguely reminiscent of the shape that had bulged from under the sleeping Sil’s sheet—snapped forward and hit the glass with a hefty-sounding click! Press and Laura stood, frozen, as it happened again—click!
Jolted into motion, the two flung themselves backward as a spiked tail struck at the glass a third time. This time the box shattered under the force, and Laura screamed as the life-form, a grotesque shape similar to a bat with tentacles and a barbed tail, catapulted from the enclosure and straight at Press. He threw himself to the side and into Laura as the creature sailed over his shoulder. “Come on!” he shouted as the bat-thing fell. It struck the concrete floor tiles with a sound like an oversized rattlesnake’s tail and quickly righted itself; hissing, it sped under a wooden table at the rear of the isolation chamber.
Bubble lights at ceiling height in each corner of the chamber began to pulse red in time to an onslaught of earsplitting sirens. Fitch’s words came clearly over the speaker despite the noise, sounding professional and far too cold.
“I’ve hit the automatic clock,” his disembodied voice said. “You have two minutes to destroy it. If you can’t accomplish that task within that time frame, I’ll have to burn the room.”
Laura gasped and Press spun and glared at Fitch through the window. Affixed to the wall just below the video camera was a digital clock already descending from 2:00. “What!”
“I’ll have to burn the room,” Fitch repeated. Through the clear quartz glass, his expression was utterly bland, while Stephen and Dan were gaping at him with slack-mouthed dismay. “You’ve got less than two minutes to kill the creature.”
“Bullshit!” Press stalked to the door, Laura on his heels, her gaze flicking around the chamber. “Open this door, damn you!”
“I can’t do that. It might escape. I have to follow protocol.”
“What fucking protocol?” Press roared. He hauled vainly on the door handle. “Open the door, Fitch!”
“The protocols by which these experiments are run.”
Fitch sounded absurdly patient and Press wanted to scream; more than that, he wanted to wrap his hands around the older man’s neck and see if he could twine his fingers together like he was praying.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before you suggested we go in here and replace the camera?” Laura demanded through the window. “What were you thinking, anyway?”
“I think you should let them out.” Although they could see him clearly, Dan’s voice sounded tinny and faraway, as if he’d been pushed off to the side. “Please, Dr. Fitch—”
Fitch’s words cut him off. “There’s nothing I can do now. You’re wasting valuable time.” At the end of the word time, Press heard a scurrying sound from under the table. Laura pulled him farther away from it.
“I’m scared,” Dan said shakily.
“There are two incineration lines running to the isolation box.” The lab worker’s frantic voice came over the speaker, overriding all other sound from the control room. “Green is oxygen, red is gas. Disconnect the red one and try to use it as a flamethrower. You’ll get gas through it as long as you keep a finger pushing on the safety valve at the end of the piping. Hurry—you’ve only got a minute and forty seconds!”
“Fitch, you son of a bitch,” Press growled at the camera. He sprang to the box and ripped the red connection free as Laura opened the valve. Gas hissed and Press dug in his pocket and came up with a Bic lighter; he thumbed the strike wheel and a small jet of flame shot from the line. He and Laura whirled, but the life-form was nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell’d it go? Here—”
He tossed Laura the lighter. “Hang on to this.” He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward, trying to keep the flame directed away from him. A faint hiss came from his right, then another, much louder than the sound the gas made spilling from the open line. Press scuttled backward as he saw the creature fastened to the inside of one of the table legs; at the sight of Press, it scooted along the underside, going as far back as it could.
“Don’t let it eat anything,” Laura said urgently. “It might not be all the way through its growing phase—we mustn’t let it get any bigger before we can get out!”
Revolted, Press peered under the table. The life-form was there, in the shadows at the far rear. Wood splintered and Press saw with horror that it had appendages resembling arms and was ripping away at the bottom of the tabletop. Then it got worse, as the thing’s back split, revealing another circular tooth-filled mouth. Like obscenely blooming flowers, two smaller openings unfolded on either side and the creature began voraciously stuffing the pieces of broken wood into the three openings.
Press didn’t hesitate. He aimed the flaming end of the gas line at the creature and thrust it forward, stretching as far under the tabletop as he could without actually crawling beneath it and trapping himself. The small jet of flame barely licked at the thing, and it screeched and scampered away. As Press scrambled out from under the table his gaze skipped to the LED display of the clock: 1:15 . . . and passing far too quickly.
Press yanked the table recklessly aside, but their creation was gone. “Fitch, you bastard, open the fucking door!”
There was a pause, then Fitch’s voice came over the speaker a final time.
“I’m sorry, Press, Laura. I simply can’t do that.”
“Please, Dr. Fitch,” Dan pleaded. “Look at them in there—you can’t just burn them up!”
Species Page 8