Micro

by Michael Crichton

  “Not exactly,” Minot answered. “We’re in Ben Rourke’s fortress.”

  “What?”

  “He’s got all kinds of equip—”

  “You’re telling me Ben Rourke is alive?”

  “Absolutely,” Minot answered knowingly. “And he doesn’t like you, Mr. Drake.”

  “Describe this…fortress.”

  “It’s an old rat’s nest. I need medical help—”

  Drake cut him off. “Where is this, uh, rat’s nest? Exactly.”

  “It’s six feet up the hillside from Tantalus Base.”

  Drake was silent for a moment. They had climbed those cliffs. They had made it alive through unexplored super-jungle that should have rendered them dead in minutes.

  “Mr. Drake! I need to get to a hospital!” Minot’s voice went faster. “My arm. It’s infected. Look—”

  Drake watched on the screen of his phone as Danny raised his arm and peeled back the sleeve. The arm had been transformed into a bubbly sack dotted with…whiteheads. Enormous boils. The boils were…moving…twitching. Drake’s stomach turned at the sight.

  “They’re hatching, Mr. Drake!” Danny moved his arm closer to the camera. The scene zoomed in, until Drake could see one of the whiteheads clearly. It was the head of a larva, struggling, pushing up through a hole in Danny’s skin. The grub’s mouth pulsed and it spat out a thread of silk. The camera moved, and he saw more grubs, waving and struggling, popping up through his skin. “Thank you, Mr. Minot, I can see very well—”

  “It’s horrible! My arm’s all numb.”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel—” He felt his throat tighten. He glanced back at Emily St. Claire, who seemed impatient.

  “For God’s sake, help me!” the little face on his cell phone beseeched him.

  “Who is with you?” Drake said sharply, holding the phone close to his ear.

  “I can’t see your face!”

  Drake turned the phone so Danny could see him. “We will help you,” he said gently. “Who else is with you?”

  “I want to go to a top hospital—”

  “Yes, yes, a top hospital. Who is with you?”

  “Karen King and Rick Hutter.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They’re all dead, Mr. Drake.”

  “Peter Jansen is dead, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “He got shot. His chest exploded. I saw it.”

  “How terrible. Where are King and Hutter?”

  “I don’t care about them! Get me to a hospital!”

  “But where are they?”

  “Asleep,” Danny said sullenly, jerking his head. “Rourke’s in the hangar.”

  “Hangar? What hangar, Daniel?”

  “Rourke stole some planes from Tantalus Base. He’s a thief, Mr. Drake—”

  So Rourke had micro-planes. How had he survived the bends? Rourke had learned of a way to deal with the bends. This was incredibly valuable. “How did Rourke escape the bends, Daniel?”

  A shrewd look flickered on Danny’s face. “That? Oh, it’s simple.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I’ll tell you…if you help me.”

  “Daniel, I am doing my utmost to help you.”

  “Ben knows the secret,” Danny said.

  “What is it exactly?”

  “Totally simple.”

  “Tell me!”

  Danny knew he’d gotten Drake where he wanted him. He didn’t trust the man, but he knew he was smarter than Drake. “Get me to a hospital, Mr. Drake, and I’ll tell you how to survive the bends.”

  Drake’s lips compressed. “All right—”

  “That’s the deal, Mr. Drake. It’s not negotiable.”

  “Of course I agree. Now here is what I want you to do, Daniel. You must do exactly as I say.”

  “Just help me—!”

  “Can you fly one of those planes?” Any idiot could fly one, even you, my little Daniel.

  “Listen, get me help—”

  “That’s what I’m desperately trying to do.”

  “Just get me out of here—!” Danny was screaming over the cell phone.

  “Can you listen to me for one moment?” Drake stepped to the open window and leaned out. He needed to get him out of there. Talk to him, pump him, get the information on Rourke…then take care of all the little people in short order. Drake looked along the length of Waikiki Beach. Little Daniel would need a landmark. He saw a light blink on, off…

  Diamond Head Lighthouse.

  To his left, inland, he could see clouds hovering over the mountain peaks. It meant that the trade wind was blowing. Blowing from Tantalus toward Diamond Head. That was important. “Daniel, you know what Diamond Head looks like, don’t you?”

  “Everybody does.”

  “I want you to take one of those planes and fly toward Diamond Head.”

  “What?”

  “They’re easy to fly. You can’t crash. You just bounce off things.”

  Silence.

  “Are you listening to me, Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “As you get closer to Diamond Head, you will see a blinking light near the sea. This is the Diamond Head Lighthouse. Fly toward the lighthouse. You can’t possibly miss it. I will be in a red sports car parked as close to the lighthouse as possible. Land on the hood of my car.”

  “I want a medevac helicopter waiting for me.”

  “First we need to get you decompressed. You’re too small for a helicopter.”

  Minot began giggling. “They could lose me in a helicopter, couldn’t they? Ha, ha!”

  “That’s funny, Daniel,” Drake said. “We’ll take you to the best hospital.”

  “They’re hatching!”

  “Just fly to the lighthouse.” Drake disconnected and pocketed the phone, and returned to the table, where he kissed Emily St. Claire on the cheek. “Total screaming emergency. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Christ, Vin. Where are you going?”

  “Nanigen. I’m needed.” He caught the waiter’s eye; the waiter moved toward them.

  Emily St. Claire shook her hair and took a sip of wine. She put the glass down. Without looking at Drake, she said, “Suit yourself.”

  “I’ll make this up to you, Emily, I promise. We’ll do Tahiti in the Gulfstream.”

  “That’s so old. I’d prefer Mozambique.”

  “Done,” he said. He reached into his jacket and lifted a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills from his billfold. He handed them to the waiter without looking at them and said, “Take care of the lady.” He hurried out.

  Vin Drake drove to a large discount store off Kapiolani Boulevard. On the way, he called Don Makele. “Meet me at the Diamond Head Lighthouse as soon as you can. Bring a micro communication radio. Come in the security truck. I will need the truck.”

  Drake emerged from the store carrying a plastic bag with something bulky in it. He placed the bag in the trunk of his car.

  Danny turned off the video screen and went back into the main hall, and took a drink of water from a bucket. He felt unbearably thirsty. Fluid had been leaking from his arm as the grubs began to break out, wetting his shirt and dribbling onto his pants. And the horror was that the grubs were spinning silk around themselves: they were turning into cocoons! Stuck to his arm! His heart was beating too quickly; he felt terrified, but knew what he had to do. It was kill or be killed in this world. He curled up in the chair by the fire. When Rourke returned from the hangar, he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, snoring to make sure Rourke got it.

  He watched through slitted eyes while Rourke added fuel to the fire and climbed into his bed.

  Danny got up, began creeping toward the tunnel.

  “Where are you going?” Rourke asked.

  Danny froze. “Just the privy.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Sure, Ben.”

  He went down the tunnel, past the opening to Ben’s p
rivy, and hurried down the corridor to the hangar. Once he got there, he turned on the lights. There were three micro-planes, which to choose? He selected the largest one, hoping it would have the greatest range and most power. A cable led from the plane’s battery pack into the dirt floor. He unplugged the cable. He had forgotten to open the hangar doors.

  The doors were held in place with metal pins. He pulled out the pins, and slid open the rolling doors, revealing a night sky studded with tropic stars, a waxing moon, and ghostly shapes of trees. He climbed into the cockpit and settled himself, buckled up, and touched the instrument panel.

  At that moment, a terror struck him: he didn’t have a starter key.

  He searched the control panel, and found a button with a power symbol on it. He pressed it. The panel lit up and he felt the plane lurch as the electric motor turned over. Ready for takeoff. His left arm lay on his lap like a prop from a horror movie; the sleeve had shredded as the grubs chewed their way out. Two more grubs had broken through his skin and begun to spin cocoons around themselves. It was horrible; how could Nature be so cruel? It was so gruesome, so inhuman, and it really didn’t seem fair.

  He took the stick in his hands and moved it, and saw the ailerons waggle. He pushed the throttle forward. The propeller wound up fast, whining at the back of the plane. The plane began bumping along the floor. He slopped the stick around, cursing, and got the plane under control, and the plane shot out of the hangar and climbed into the voracious night.

  Chapter 42

  Waikiki 31 October, 11:15 p.m.

  Eric Jansen had gone out on Kapiolani late to get something to eat, and he walked back to the apartment carrying a styro box of kalua pork and rice. In the driveway he said hello to two guys, who were sitting on lawn chairs by the colorful pickup truck, drinking beer and listening to music. He went around to the back, and up a flight of steps to a second-floor apartment.

  The apartment was a furnished one-bedroom. Eric sat at a tiny table and opened the box and began eating. He thought he’d better check the monitor, since he’d been gone for over an hour. He went into the bedroom, opened a drawer in the dresser. In the drawer sat the laptop computer, and next to it a metal box dense with electronic parts, along with an electric soldering iron, cutters, pliers, tape, and a roll of solder wire.

  A light on the box was blinking. It meant that an emergency call had been made over Nanigen’s intracompany network. Shit, he’d missed it.

  The message was encrypted. He tapped the keys of the laptop, and ran the de-encryption program, the one he’d downloaded from Nanigen’s VPN. It took a minute to unscramble the call, and then he began to listen as voices came out of the laptop. “You say you’re at Tantalus Base?” “Not exactly. We’re in Ben Rourke’s fortress.” “What?” “He’s got all kinds of equip—” “You’re telling me Ben Rourke is alive?” “Absolutely. And he doesn’t like you, Mr. Drake.”

  Eric leaned over the dresser, listening more intently. This had been an emergency call made through the videoconference link with Tantalus. He couldn’t get the image, but he could get the sound. The voices went on. “What about the others?” “They’re all dead, Mr. Drake.” “Peter Jansen is dead, too?” “Yes.” “Are you sure he’s dead?” “He got shot. His chest exploded. I saw it.”

  Eric gasped as if he’d been punched. “No,” he said. He closed his eyes. “No,” he said again. He made a fist and slammed it on the dresser. “No!” He turned around and pounded the bed with both fists, and picked up a chair and threw it against the wall, and sat down on the bed and buried his face in his hands. “Peter…oh, Peter…God damn you Drake…God damn you.”

  Eric Jansen didn’t cry for long. He didn’t have time right now. He got up and restarted the playback, and listened to the end of the message. “As you get closer to Diamond Head, you will see a blinking light by the sea…Fly toward the lighthouse.”

  He had been monitoring all the major intracompany data feeds, waiting, and hoping, for news of his brother and the other graduate students. He had felt pretty sure that Drake had dumped them somewhere, maybe at the arboretum, though he couldn’t be certain. He had gone there in the truck and walked into the valley through the tunnel, and had listened with the equipment but heard nothing. Nevertheless, he had hoped that Peter would turn up sooner or later. He had had faith in Peter’s resourcefulness. He had waited, hoping he could rescue Peter and the others.

  He had made a terrible mistake. He should have gone to the police immediately, even if it had guaranteed his own death.

  The call had come in almost an hour ago. Damn! He had taken his sweet time getting that food! Eric swore and dragged open the drawer, scooped up the laptop and a radio headset, and ran down the stairs. In the driveway, the two guys were sitting beside the parked truck. Eric didn’t have a car. He had worked out a deal with one of the guys to rent the truck, paying fifty bucks every time he used it. Now, he handed the guy fifty dollars and got in, placing the equipment on the seat next to him.

  “When you be back?”

  “Don’t know.” He started it.

  “You okay, man?”

  “There’s been a death in my family.”

  “Oh, sorry, man.”

  He swung onto Kalakaua Avenue and immediately realized he’d made a mistake. Kalakaua was the main drag of Waikiki, and the crowds had flooded the avenue, people going on foot and in cars. He should have gone the other way to Diamond Head. But that probably would have been just as bad. As he inched his way through the stoplights, past the major hotels, he began to cry again, and this time he let it happen. It’s my fault, he told himself. My brother is dead and it’s my fault.

  Drake had planned the killing with extra layers of security, different ways to make Eric die. Eric wasn’t sure exactly how Drake had done it, but Drake had made the boat stall in heavy surf, and he’d rigged something that had launched two Hellstorms at Eric. The killer bots flew out of the cuddy cabin after the boat stalled. At first Eric had thought they were flies or moths, but then he saw the propellers, and the munitions, too. After he jumped out of the boat with the killer bots flying after him, he had to keep himself under water, to avoid them. He had texted Peter just before he jumped, warning Peter to stay away, but there had been no time to explain things.

  Eric was a strong swimmer and knew how to handle himself in surf. He had gone into the surf without a life jacket, diving deep whenever a breaker passed over him, in order to keep himself safe from the bots. He had considered the surf the safest place to be. Safer than anywhere else just then. He swam into a small cove, where there was a pocket beach known locally as the Secret Beach. The beach was tucked among the headlands. You couldn’t see it from most places. It could only be reached by a hiking trail.

  He had come out of the water at the Secret Beach only after he was reasonably sure no one had seen him swim there. He had bagged a ride into Honolulu from some local guys, who asked no questions and could not have cared less where he came from. Going to the police had not been a good option. The police would never believe his story, that tiny flying robots armed with super-toxin weapons had been sent by the CEO of the company to kill him: they would think he was schizophrenic. And if he went to the police, Drake would learn he was alive, and would send more Hellstorms, and he’d be killed for sure and very fast. In Honolulu, he had not returned to his apartment: Drake might have set a trap for him there. Instead, he’d visited a pawnshop, and taken his Hublot chronograph watch off his wrist and pawned it for several thousand dollars. He needed to go into hiding, and figure out how to bring Drake to justice. He had put down cash for a seedy, low-profile rental.

  As Nanigen’s vice president for technology, Eric Jansen knew a lot about the company’s communication network. A degree in physics helped. After a trip to Radio Shack, he had tweaked up a listening device. He had begun scanning the Nanigen intracorporate channels, and learned that his brother had shown up in Hawaii immediately, then had disappeared along with the other students. He suspect
ed Drake had done something with the students. He had not believed Drake would murder them; that would be too obvious, and Drake was a clever man. So Eric had assumed that Drake had made them disappear in the micro-world temporarily, and that they would eventually reappear.

  Eric had been waiting for the moment when his brother would come to the surface, for he had faith in Peter. He had thought that Peter would get through this, and come to light, somehow, and that he, Eric, would eventually rescue him. If the two of them could go to the police, there would be two corroborating witnesses to Drake’s crimes.

  This was not to be.

  He had screwed up massively. He should have gone to the police right away. Even if the police didn’t believe him, even if it meant that Drake would kill him, because it just might have saved Peter’s life. The whole source of the problem was Omicron. Eric had been very careful not to tell Peter what he had discovered about Project Omicron. Eric had been trying to protect his younger brother. None of this had done any good.

  He swung through Kapiolani Park, picking up speed and weaving around the cars, hoping he would get to the lighthouse in time.

  Chapter 43

  Ko‘olau Mountains 31 October, 11:10 p.m.

  At an altitude of 2,200 feet, Danny Minot pointed the nose of his micro-plane upward, gaining height in order to be sure he would clear the sides of Tantalus Crater. The crater was lined with entrapping trees, black and menacing. He looked back, wondering if any micro-planes were following him. But he couldn’t see anything. He headed upward, gaining altitude.

  This was easier than a video game; the micro-planes had been designed to be almost crash-proof. Did the plane have running lights? He found a switch, and the running lights came on, red and green on the wingtips, white pointing forward. He turned them off so that the others couldn’t follow him, but after a little while he switched the lights on again. It made him feel better, somehow, to see the familiar winking lights on the wings.

  And he saw the city of Honolulu spread out below him. The hotels of Waikiki towered and seemed impossibly huge. Red-and-white lines of cars moved along the boulevards, and he saw a cruise ship docked in the harbor. The ocean was an inky expanse beyond the city. The moon floated over the ocean, casting a sparkling highway of light on the water. To the left of Waikiki Beach a dark mass spread out. It was Diamond Head, and he was looking down on it. Seen from above, Diamond Head was a crater, a ring. A few lights burned in the center of the crater. He could make out the shape of Diamond Head itself, a mountainous headland at the highest lip of the crater. But he did not see any blinking light. Just the dark shape of Diamond Head. Where was the lighthouse?