Karen began to take off her clothes in a matter-of-fact way. Rick Hutter wasn’t sure what to do; he felt embarrassed to be looking at Karen while she undressed, more embarrassed to be swimming with her and Erika naked. He got his clothes off fast, and jumped into the water.
“Welcome to Eden,” Erika said.
“A dangerous Eden.” Rick ducked down, and began scrubbing his head.
As Karen explored the pool, she saw it was like a fish tank full of living things, but they weren’t fish, they were single-celled organisms. The creatures spun and darted and drifted. A torpedo-shaped creature swam up against her.
It was a Paramecium, a pond-water animal, a protozoan consisting of a single cell. The Paramecium was covered with rippling hairs that propelled the creature through the water. It began bumping along Karen’s arm, tickling her skin. She cupped her hands and picked up the Paramecium, holding it in a handful of water. She could feel the hairs beating on her palms, and the cell squirmed. It reminded her of a cat that didn’t like being held. “I won’t hurt you,” she said to the cell, stroking it gently with a fingertip. As she touched the hairs, they reacted by reversing direction, beating against her finger. It was like stroking velvet that fought back.
Why am I talking to a cell? Karen thought. That’s pretty silly. A cell is a machine, she told herself. It’s just a clockwork of proteins inside a water-filled bag. And yet…she couldn’t help feeling that the cell was also a small being, full of its own purposes and desires. A cell wasn’t intelligent the way a human is, of course. A cell couldn’t imagine galaxies or compose a symphony, yet it was a sophisticated biological system, perfectly adapted to survive in this environment, and bent on making copies of itself, as many as possible. “Good luck,” she said out loud, opening her hands and letting the cell go free. She watched it hurry away, corkscrewing as it swam. She said to Rick, “We’re not so different from these protozoa.”
“I don’t see the resemblance,” Rick said.
“A person is a protozoan on the day the person is conceived. As the biologist John Tyler Bonner likes to say, ‘A human being is a single-celled organism with a complicated fruiting body.’”
Rick grinned. “The fruiting body is the best part.”
“Crude,” Karen remarked. Erika smirked at him.
A shadow crossed the pool, and a scream echoed above. Instinctively they ducked their heads under the water. When they came up, Rick looked around and said, “Birds.”
“What kind?” Karen said.
“No idea. They’re gone, anyway.” They washed their clothes in the pool, rinsing the dust and mud out. Afterward, they spread their clothes to dry, and sunbathed for a little while on the moss. The clothes dried quickly.
“We need to get going,” Rick Hutter said, buttoning his shirt.
Just then, the distant cries grew louder, and dark shapes flashed through the air above them. The humans leaped to their feet.
A flock of birds was cruising along the cliffs, landing and taking off. The birds were foraging. Their cries shattered the air.
A bird landed before them. It was enormous, with shiny black feathers, a yellow bill, and an alert gaze. It hopped around, investigating the spot, and screamed, a raspy, echoing cry. And then suddenly it took off. More birds arrived overhead, and they began circling, inspecting the scene, and landing in trees that clung to the cliff face. The humans became aware of many eyes watching them. The cries of the birds surrounded the pool.
Rick dashed for the truck, grabbed the gas rifle. “They’re mynahs!” he shouted. “Get cover!”
Mynahs were carnivores.
Danny had tumbled out of the truck, and he cowered underneath it. Karen had thrown herself down behind a rock, while Erika wedged herself down into clumps of moss. Rick knelt in the open, holding the gas rifle, watching the black shapes as they swept past the cliff, their cries streaming in the wind.
The birds saw him. They had no fear of something so small. A mynah cruised in and landed, and hopped across the ground toward him. He fired at the bird. The gun erupted with a hiss, kicking him backward, but at that instant the mynah leaped into the air and soared away, downwind. He had missed. He reloaded frantically, slamming another pin into the chamber. The gun was a bolt-action rifle: it fired one projectile at a time.
He thought there must be twenty or thirty of them, anyway. They swirled around the cliffs, their cries deafening. “They hunt in packs,” Rick said.
Another mynah landed.
He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Shit!”
A jam. He frantically worked the bolt. The bird took one hop toward him and cocked an eye at him. Then it pecked at him, and grabbed the gun. It was a shiny object; it had attracted the bird’s eye. The mynah slammed the gun against a rock, crumpling it, and tossed it aside. Then it held up its head, opened its beak, and howled, letting out a cry that seemed to make the ground shake.
Rick, meanwhile, had thrown himself flat, and was crawling for the harpoon, which lay near the pool.
The mynah turned its attention to Erika, who cowered in the moss. She crouched, staring up at the bird, and suddenly lost her nerve. She broke and ran, ducking her head, whimpering.
“Don’t, Erika!” Rick shouted at her.
Erika’s motion drew the bird’s attention, and it hopped toward her.
Karen King had been watching, and she made a sudden decision. She would sacrifice her life for Erika. She would give Erika a chance to live. It was good while it lasted, she thought, and stood up and ran toward the bird, waving her arms. “Hey! Take me!”
The bird swerved, and pecked at Karen, but missed her, and she went sprawling. Erika had now jumped into the truck and was attempting to start it. Erika had gone into a full-blown panic; she didn’t know what she was doing, other than trying to get away. Danny shouted at her, “Stop! I order you to stop!” Erika paid no attention. The truck lurched off, and began climbing upward along the rocks. But it was very exposed.
She was deserting the others.
“Erika! Turn around!” Karen screamed.
Erika had gone past the point of hearing anybody.
The truck, shiny and moving up the cliff, its six legs working, must have seemed like something tasty or interesting. A mynah coasted in and plucked Erika out of the driver’s seat. Packs and gear flew out of the truck as it tumbled down the cliff and bounced out into sheer air. And then it was gone.
The mynah landed, carrying Erika Moll in its beak. The bird slammed her several times against the cliff, whipping its head back and forth to kill its prey. The bird then took off, carrying the corpse. Immediately it got into a squabble with another mynah, and they fought with each other over the remains of Erika Moll, and tore the body apart in midair.
It wasn’t over. Rick had gotten his hands on the harpoon, and he looked around: where was Karen? She was lying on the ground, out in the open, underneath a mynah. The bird, which had an unusual black streak on its bill, had landed, and was staring down at Karen. It seemed to be trying to make up its mind about her. Was this thing edible?
“Karen!” Rick shouted, and threw the harpoon at the bird.
The harpoon, a thread of metal, went into the bird’s feathers. Not very far. The bird shook itself, and the harpoon dropped to the ground. The bird studied Karen.
She crouched, trying to make herself look small and unappetizing.
“Over here!” Rick shouted, and started running, hoping to distract the bird.
“No, Rick!”
The mynah cocked its eye at Karen when she spoke. It lunged for her and picked her up in its beak, threw its head back, and swallowed Karen in one gulp. Then it flew off, wings thundering.
“Damn you!” Rick yelled at the mynah. He waved the harpoon at the bird, which had become a fluttering speck in the distance. “Come back with her!” The flock in the trees chattered and roared. Now he couldn’t tell which of them had eaten Karen. “Come back! Come back for a fair fight!” He jumped u
p and down, waving his arms, shaking the harpoon.
He felt like crying. He would have done anything to get the mynah bird to come back, the one with the streak on its bill. He couldn’t give up now.
But then he remembered something he’d learned about birds. A bird does not have a stomach. It has a crop.
Chapter 33
Edge of Tantalus 31 October, 10:15 a.m.
Karen King was curled up in a fetal position inside the crop of the mynah bird, holding her breath. The muscular walls of the crop pressed in on her, clamping her in place so that she couldn’t move. The walls were slimy, slick, and smelled foul. However, there were no digestive juices in the crop. It was simply a bag for storing food, before the food was passed down into the rest of the digestive system.
She knew the bird was flying, because she felt the regular thump-thump of the bird’s pectoralis muscles, driving its wings. She got her arms around her face and pushed outward, and managed to open a space for her nose and mouth.
She took a breath.
The air smelled horrible, with an acid stench of rotting insects, but at least it was air. Not much air, though. Almost immediately it became stifling hot and she began to pant. A wave of claustrophobia came over her. She wanted to scream. With an act of will she tried to calm herself. If she began to scream and struggle, she would use up the air quickly and would suffocate. The only way to stay alive was to stay calm, move sparingly, and try to make the air last as long as possible. She straightened her spine and pushed her legs out. This stretched the crop and opened up a little more space. Even so, she was running out of air.
She tried to get her knife in her hand, but she’d tucked it down deep in her hip pocket. She couldn’t reach the knife. The muscular walls of the bird’s crop held her arm back.
Damn. Gotta get that knife.
Right then she vowed to hang her knife around her neck, in the future. If there was a future…she drove her right arm downward, fighting against the rubbery walls that surrounded her. She forced her fingertips into the pocket, and let her breath out with a whoosh, gulped in nasty air, and coughed. Her fingertips closed on a bottle in her pocket—what was this? It was the spray bottle. Filled with beetle spray. Rick had filled it.
A weapon.
She grimaced, and dragged the bottle out.
At that moment, the bird maneuvered in flight. The crop tightened, the muscles squeezing the breath out of her lungs with a whoosh. A sensation of weightlessness came over her, a sense of falling. Then came a lurch and a bump. The bird had landed. She lost consciousness.
The mynah had returned to the same spot where it had caught Karen, looking for more food. It stared at Rick Hutter, cocking its head.
Rick recognized the black streak on its bill. The same bird. It had eaten Karen; no way of knowing if she was still alive. But she might be. He waved the harpoon in front of him and advanced toward the bird. “Come and get me, you cowardly bastard.”
The Masai thrust. That was what he had to do to this bird. A young Masai warrior, a boy of thirteen or fourteen, can kill a lion with a spear. It’s doable, he told himself. It’s all about technique.
The bird hopped toward him.
He watched, judging the distance, timing his move, planning what he would do with his body, the angle of the harpoon. He would have to use the animal’s own strength and weight against itself, as Masai hunters do with lions. The Masai hunter provokes the lion to charge him, and at the last instant he plants the butt of his spear in the ground, with the point angled toward the lion, and he kneels behind the spear: the lion runs onto the spear and impales itself.
The bird struck at him with its beak. As the strike came, Rick jammed the harpoon’s butt at an angle into the ground with the point aimed upward at the bird. He took his hand off the harpoon and threw himself forward, diving under the bird’s chest to get out of the way.
The harpoon caught the bird in the neck as the bird pecked down at Rick. With a barbed tip honed to greater fineness than a surgical needle, and drenched with poison, the weapon pierced the bird’s neck, breaking through the skin, and the barb stuck there. The bird backed off with the harpoon dangling from its neck. It shook its head, trying to dislodge the harpoon, while Rick crawled away. He sat up and drew his machete. “Come on, fight!” he shouted at the bird.
Karen heard Rick’s voice. It brought her to her senses—she had passed out momentarily. She started hyperventilating, drawing air into her lungs, but she couldn’t get enough to breathe. Prickles of light flashed in her eyes, a sign of oxygen starvation. She became aware of the spray bottle clutched in her fist. She pulled the trigger, and felt a horrible burning sensation as the chemicals surged out and spread around her. The muscles squeezed tighter, and the stars turned into fog and then into nothing—
The mynah wasn’t happy. The harpoon had pricked it, and there were unpleasant sensations in its crop. It vomited.
Karen King landed in the moss and the bird took off.
She was unconscious. Rick knelt by Karen and felt her neck for a pulse, and discovered that her heart was still beating. He placed his mouth on hers and drove a breath into her lungs.
With a rasping sound, she took a breath on her own. She coughed, and her eyes opened.
“Ohh.”
“Keep breathing, Karen. You’re okay.”
She still gripped the spray bottle; her hand was locked around it. Rick pried her hand open and released the bottle. Then he dragged her under a fern. There, he helped her to sit up, and then he cradled her in his arms. “Take deep breaths,” he said. He pulled a strand of hair off Karen’s face, and smoothed her hair. He didn’t know where the birds were, whether they were still hunting in the area or had moved on, but their screams had grown more distant. He propped Karen against a stem and sat beside her, drawing his knees up. He kept his arms around her.
“Thank you, Rick.”
“Are you injured?”
“Just a little dizzy.”
“You weren’t breathing. I thought you were…”
The cries of the birds faded. The flock had moved on.
Rick made a quick survey of their remaining gear. Their survival was in real jeopardy. The truck was gone. Erika dead. Most of their supplies had gone over the cliff with the truck. The harpoon was gone, as well, for the mynah had flown off with the barb still lodged in its neck. The backpack lay near the pool. They still had the blowgun and the curare. A single machete lay on the ground. Danny Minot was nowhere to be seen.
But then they heard his voice coming from above. In his panic, he had climbed up a vine, and had come out at the top of the rock. They saw him crouched up there, waving his good arm. “I see the Great Boulder! We’re almost there!”
Chapter 34
Nanigen 31 October, 10:20 a.m.
Drake had taken over the communications room. He was staring at the screen of the remote tracking system that had been pinging the hexapod truck. Right now, he was a little puzzled by what he saw on the screen. The crosshairs on the cliff face, indicating the approximate position of the truck, had suddenly shifted downward by a hundred and fifty meters—by about five hundred feet. At first he suspected a system error. But as he watched, and waited, the truck’s location didn’t change. It wasn’t moving.
He allowed himself a modest smile. Yes. It looked like the damn truck had fallen off the cliff. That had to be it. The truck had plunged down the cliff face.
He knew that a micro-size human body could survive any fall, any distance. But the fact that the truck wasn’t moving meant that, at the very least, the truck had been damaged. It might be busted.
The survivors would be in a total panic by now, he realized. They weren’t getting any closer to Tantalus. And the bends would be just starting to affect them. They would not be feeling exactly chipper.
He got Makele on his phone. “Have you been to Tantalus?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I didn’t do anything. Didn’t need to. I
t’s—”
“They’re not going to make Tantalus anyway. They took a tumble, poor souls.”
Chapter 35
Kalikimaki Industrial Park 31 October, 10:30 a.m.
Lieutenant Dan Watanabe parked his brown Ford in the single, lone parking space marked VISITORS. The painted metal building stood next to the skeleton of a half-finished warehouse on one side and an empty lot on the other side dotted with thickets of underbrush. By the warehouse, he noticed an area covered with gravel. He walked over to it and picked up a few pieces. Crushed limestone. Interesting. It looked like the same stuff trapped in the PI Rodriguez’s tires. He dropped a few pieces in his shirt pocket, for Dorothy Girt to have a look at.
The parking lot around Nanigen’s building was full of cars.
“How’s business?” he said to the receptionist.
“They don’t tell me much.”
A coffeemaker on a table diffused the sour smell of coffee that had been heating for hours.
“Would you like me to make some coffee?” the receptionist asked.
“I think you already did.”
The company’s security chief walked in. Don Makele was a heavyset man packed with muscle. Makele said, “Any news on the missing students?”
“Could we talk in your office?”
As they entered the main part of the building, they passed doors that were shut. Windows looked into rooms, but the windows were covered with black blinds on the inside. Why were the blinds all drawn? Why were they black? As he walked along, Dan Watanabe felt the presence of a hum, a vibration coming up through the floor. That hum meant there was a lot of AC electrical current running in the building. For what?
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