Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

  Diana hugged herself, shivering almost uncontrollably. The air in the room was now frosted and a thin film of rime covered the walls. “H-H-How can we s-s-top it?’ she asked.

  Logan moved closer to the oval. He put one hand out and then pulled it away quickly. The cold was so intense he couldn’t keep his fingers near it, like the flame on a stove.

  “Look out,” said Alan. He picked up a long, solid piece of oak from the firebox and swung it with all his might at the oval. The wood snapped in two and the device remained unscathed. Alan rubbed his hands as they ached from the vibration of the blow.

  “This thing may have survived for billions of years,” said Marcia. “Crossed deep space, endured hits by meteors and comets, as well as the fiery entry through planetary atmospheres. I hardly think a whack with a piece of wood is going to have much effect.”

  They stared at the oval, fascinated. So ancient. So inscrutable. So powerful. For all they knew, it had been directing the course of the universe since almost the beginning, destroying civilizations and intelligence, redirecting the energies of evolution in profound and terrible ways.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Leeanne.

  “Frankly,” said Marcia, “no. You might as well ask an ant if there’s anything it can do to keep you from stepping on it. For all their personal flaws, the creators’ technology is far beyond us. Another way in which we resemble them, actually. Our own technology has far surpassed our ability to control our fate.”

  The oval began to spin more rapidly, and the cold became too intense to bear. They were driven out of the room, the walls of which were now ice-covered and splitting from the bitter air. Xuemin seemed incapable of moving; Marcia had to guide him forcefully out of the room. They stood on the stairs, peering in at the incredible sight.

  It began to glow, a sort of frigid, blue-green sheen, not unlike that of the Northern Lights. Then, just as the light grew too intense for them to look, the oval appeared to turn. It pointed skyward, and, with a flash that made them turn away, vanished completely.

  As his eyes slowly readjusted, Logan stared at the empty space above the desk where the device had floated. Nothing else in the room had changed, although the cold still hung over everything. “How could it get out without blasting a hole in the ceiling?” he asked.

  “I imagine,” said Marcia, “it simply rearranged its molecules. A ceiling would prove no obstacle. Like neutrons that can penetrate the entire planet without striking anything.” She stared at the cold, empty room. “It’s gone,” she said simply. “God help the next planet.”

  EPILOGUE

  DIANA PAUSED, HER bare toes sinking into the tilled earth, and stared at the monastery. Home. She’d actually come to think of it that way. The winter had been long, cold, dark . . . and lonely. There had been no response to their regular searches for contact. But with the arrival of spring, there was inevitably a sense of renewal. Here she was, sowing the seeds of the future, she thought in amazement.

  Logan stood up from where he’d been trying to repair a break in the primitive tiller. He leaned over and kissed her, then rubbed her belly, which had begun to swell.

  She put her arms around him contentedly. What kind of world would their child have to live in? A lonely one, certainly. But Leeanne and Alan were also expecting a child, and Gaoming and Yä Ling were working diligently as well. Even Marcia, at fifty years of age, had taken a young lover from among the soldiers. Perhaps even she would defy the years and produce.

  “It feels so strange, Eric, to be bringing life into an empty world.”

  “It’s a new beginning. That’s all we can hope for. Maybe others are taking beginning steps as well in remote spots around the world. Our children may go out and search for them someday, just as Columbus once set out for the new world. A challenge. That’s all humans really need to thrive.”

  “But I still don’t understand why we were spared. If the purpose of the oval was to destroy intelligence, why didn’t it destroy us all?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps the sickness had a preset duration. When it was reached, the disease simply stopped and the bodies deteriorated. Maybe there was always the likelihood that remote pockets would survive. But we’d be thrust so far back along our technological path as to no longer pose a threat to them—those incredibly insecure gods that Marcia posits.”

  “Still a doubting Thomas?” asked Kessler, coming up silently in the thick, loamy soil. Her voice was clear and strong. There were no more cigarettes, after all, and the vigorous life they all now led had been good to her health. Her new young lover may also have been responsible for some of the spring in her step.

  “I think I’ve finally learned not to doubt you about anything, Marcia.” He looked at her. “Have you had your dream again? You know, the one with the strange tribe and the woman you said resembled the body we found in the ice?”

  “No,” She hesitated. “You remember when we talked about Mitochondrial Eve a long time ago, Eric?”

  He nodded.

  “I—discovered last night that I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.

  Diana beamed. “Oh Marcia, I’m so happy for you!”

  Kessler smiled shyly. “Having a family is something I never thought would happen for me. But it’s made me think, given our strange circumstances in this new world, that we four women, Leeanne, Yä Ling, Diana, and, incredibly, me, may actually be the next Mitochondrial Eves. We’ve passed through a new bottleneck in human history and are now beginning a new line.”

  “My God,” said Diana. “I never thought of it like that.”

  “A few hundred thousand years from now, when scientists talk about Mitochondrial Eves, they’ll be talking about us,” said Marcia.

  Diana stared at her with wide eyes. “It feels like such an awesome responsibility.”

  “There’s something else.” Marcia stared across the terraced fields. “My dreams have stopped. I sense somehow the dream was my connection with the Mitochondrial Eves of the past. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I think all the Eves through human history must have had some kind of link, on a personal, almost . . . a spiritual level. Maybe it’s something that was in our DNA . . . something that set us apart.” She shook herself. “There’s no way to know, of course. But any connection to the past now that that world is gone makes me feel whole and . . . happy.”

  Logan smiled broadly. It was good to see her in such form. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Marcia. Assuming the oval has gone merrily on its way wiping out intelligent life wherever it encounters it—doesn’t that mean the natural course of evolution has been destroyed? Assuming intelligent life is the highest form.”

  “Why Eric, I’m impressed. That’s precisely the subject I’ve been thinking about lately during my study sessions in the library.”

  “And?”

  “And I think that life—DNA—will come up with something new. It’s all but inevitable.”

  “What do you mean, something new? A new kind of intelligence?”

  “Who says intelligence has to be the highest form? We don’t know that. Simply because it was on our planet doesn’t give us any empirical proof that that would be the case elsewhere. If evolution is blocked from proceeding to intelligence, it will move in a different direction, that’s all.”

  “You’re saying . . . to a higher order of life . . . but without intelligence?” asked Diana.

  “Why not?”

  “What would that be like?” asked Logan.

  Marcia shrugged her sloping shoulders. “Ask me in a billion years,” she said.

  Liu Xuemin stepped in his slow, measured pace through the dark and empty courtyard. It was early morning, before the sun had found its way into the recesses of the Bogda Feng massif. The damp morning air penetrated his withered flesh and aggravated his arthritis painfully.

  Existence is suffering, he reminded himself. It was one of the four noble truths of Buddhism. He passed by the stone armaments building, once again d
evoted to the storage of cheese and vegetables, and hesitated before the entrance to the building that led to the vast underground chambers. He stared about the compound to make sure he was alone, then entered and closed the heavy door behind him.

  As he made his way down to the lower levels, he reflected upon his recent work with Dr. Kessler. Hers was a brilliant mind, and he’d come to enjoy their long conversations. He tried not to lead her in any certain direction, helping her instead to interpret whichever of the scrolls she fancied.

  He reached the subterranean cavern and pushed open the door leading to the burial room. It took all his strength to open the heavy door. As he passed the crumbling caskets of his ancient brethren, he chanted a soft prayer.

  Finally, he stood before the section of wall that had hidden the oval. Logan had ordered the stones replaced and the bricks mortared back into place. It was a symbolic action, nothing more. Only a handful of survivors were left now, following the epidemic. Nevertheless, intelligence had survived. He had always known it would.

  The elderly monk felt something pull him close to the wall. Trembling, he raised one hand and placed it gently against the bricks. He sensed the presence of his ancient comrades most strongly here. After a lifetime of reading the scrolls and forming his library, he knew how powerful the thinking of his predecessors had been. Eventually, Marcia would come to understand as well. For now, he was content to let her conclude that she had witnessed proof of other life in the universe. Her scientist’s mind seemed to crave such a belief. And she had been partly right. The oval, indeed, represented another, higher intelligence. But it was not from another planet. Of this, he was as certain as he could be.

  The path of enlightenment stretched back far beyond the earliest monks, back to a time when life itself was just beginning on Earth. Enlightenment was the life force. Perhaps it was the basic substance of the universe itself, transmitted through DNA. DNA—that unchanging stuff of existence. His predecessors had uncovered that ultimate truth long before anyone. They had nurtured it down the millennia.

  Xuemin lifted his hand from the bricks. There was something beyond that was familiar and very, very cold.

  CHRIS ANGUS

  CHRIS ANGUS COMES from a literary family consisting of seven published writers. His father and mother, both professors of English literature and authors of numerous works of fiction, were the best-selling collaborators of a series of anthologies published by Random House.

  For ten years the book review editor for Adirondac magazine, he has also been a newspaper columnist and has published more than 400 essays, articles, book introductions, columns, and reviews in a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Albany Times-Union, Adirondack Life, Canoe, American Forests, Wordsworth American Classics, Adirondack Explorer, and many more.

  He is the award-winning author of several works of nonfiction, including Oswegatchie: A North Country River (North Country Books, 2006), The Extraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty: Wilderness Guide, Pilot and Conservationist (Syracuse University Press, 2002), Images of America: St. Lawrence County (Arcadia Press, 2001), and Reflections from Canoe Country (Syracuse University Press, 1997).

  He has been active in efforts to reopen Adirondack rivers to the public.