Spiral

by Paul Mceuen

  “No,” Jake said.

  Vlad jumped in. “Neither do I. We develop technology on harmless stuff. Cold rhinoviruses. E. coli. Nothing that is not in you already.”

  Becraft looked unsatisfied. “Could the Crawlers be used for something dangerous?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Could they be used to make a pathogen instead of test for one?”

  “No,” Vlad said. “You would need more than just Crawlers. You would need an entire lab.”

  The inspector rubbed his eyes. “So. Let me be clear. A few missing Crawlers by themselves would be completely harmless.”

  Jake started to answer, but Vlad got there first. “Well. No. Not necessarily.”

  Becraft stared at the Russian.

  Jake knew what was coming. He and Vlad occasionally strayed into this kind of territory in their late-night drinking-and-tale-spinning sessions. Wars fought by insect robot proxies. A disgruntled kid crossing a rhinovirus with smallpox and killing off half the country.

  Vlad said, “What if you already had pathogen? You could store it inside Crawler. Then you could carry Crawler around in package of Chiclets. Shake it out, it could find its way anywhere. Crawl into a ventilation duct. Slip under a door. The Crawler could even bite someone. Inject pathogen into wound. You have a pathogen you want to get out? A Crawler would make hell of a vector.”

  Jake’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out, surprised by the name on the screen.

  “Yes?”

  “Jake. It’s Maggie Connor. Can we talk?”

  13

  TIMES SQUARE WAS A CACOPHONOUS SYMPHONY. ADVERTISEMENTS screamed down from the JumboTrons. The streets were packed with city buses and yellow cabs. The occasional bike messenger ducked though cracks in the traffic. Pedestrians ran, walked, shuffled, and backtracked.

  Officer James Ostrand loved the place. He had loved it for the twenty-two years he’d been a cop. He’d watched it evolve from grit to glamour, from strip joints to the advertising center of the universe. His wife was always after him to move, leave the city, maybe down to Pennsylvania, where her sister lived, but Ostrand would never do it. He loved the mix of rich and poor, the debutantes and the destitute. He loved Times Square. You stand here long enough, you’d see every kind of person that God ever made.

  Unfortunately, that included crazy freaks like this one.

  “Jesus Christ, stop squirming!” Ostrand yelled as he struggled to get the cuffs on the Japanese kid. He’d spotted the guy two minutes ago, shirt half off, running past the TKTS booth at the north end of the square, screaming his head off about dragons, blood, and darkness. His right hand was wrapped in gauze, bloodstained and half unraveled.

  The psycho had knocked over a couple of tourists, pushed an old lady to the side, leaving a trail of mayhem until Ostrand got to him. The guy’s eyes were wide, his pupils the size of quarters. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, relatively clean cut, which was a surprise. You get one of these every now and then—someone off their meds or on a bad acid trip. This guy was the latter, he was pretty sure. He had every indication of being blown out of his mind. Not unusual in itself, but this one looked like a business-school kid. It was nearly five p.m. on a Wednesday. Maybe on a Saturday night in the Village, but a Wednesday afternoon?

  Ostrand took a closer look at the gauzed hand. The bloodstains were centered at a spot where his middle finger should have been. Shit.

  “Can you hear me?” Ostrand asked once he had the guy cuffed and sitting up, being careful of his injured hand.

  “I am the blood,” the guy said, eyes rolling back in his head.

  “What is your name?”

  “I am the blood. My lady can see in the darkness.”

  Jesus. Look at that. Ostrand pulled back the unbuttoned oxford shirt. His chest was a mess. Some kind of symbols carved into the flesh.

  “Hey, Officer?”

  Ostrand ignored the voice behind him, mesmerized. Blood was caked around the edges of the cuts. What did he do this with? A knife? A razor blade?

  “Officer?”

  “Get back.”

  “Hey man, I got a picture.”

  Ostrand turned to face the guy. He was skinny, maybe twenty-five, with a shaved head. A crowd had started to form behind him.

  “A picture of what?”

  “The woman. The babe that dropped him off.”

  “Dropped him off? You saw it?”

  The kid nodded. “He was in the trunk, man. She just popped the lid, he jumped out, and she took off. Right over there.” He pointed.

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know. Red.” He held out his phone. “Check it out. It’s a good shot.”

  Ostrand took the phone. It was a good shot. Broadside, catching her in profile. Mid-twenties, Asian, pretty face. A gray jacket, green cap on her head.

  Ostrand held up the phone to the crowd, a bad feeling rising up his spine. “Anybody else see this woman?”

  14

  JAKE BROUGHT HIS SUBARU TO A STOP IN FRONT OF MAGGIE Connor’s place. He glanced down at the letter. It was a single sheet of blank yellow paper, no letterhead, no date, only six handwritten words. Liam Connor’s lawyer had delivered it to him twenty minutes before. After talking to Maggie, he’d gone to his office and found the lawyer there, a tall, silver-haired man Jake had never met.

  He gave an envelope to Jake. No explanation, just an envelope. The letter inside was to the point: Jake, Please watch over them. —Liam.

  The sun was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, stippling the walkway with light and shadow as Jake approached the front door. He had never been to Rivendell before. Liam had introduced him to Maggie years ago, and he’d felt an immediate attraction. They’d seen each other at one function or another, and once or twice in the lab when she came to see Liam. She was very attractive, that was certain, in the casual, no-makeup-and-old-jeans Ithaca way. And wicked smart. She’d left her mark on the mycological literature, with a citation record that would be a ticket to a faculty job at most any institution in the country. Liam was forever going on about her encyclopedic knowledge of everything from hockey to Hockney. But she’d stepped off the academic fast track, more interested in making fungus art with her son than winning at the publish-or-perish rat race. Jake respected her for that. He definitely had a thing for her, and he thought she knew it. Yet Maggie was always reserved around him.

  About a year ago, one hot day in July, Jake stopped in at Liam’s lab after a run, sweating like a river. July 23, he remembered. Maggie and her son Dylan were there, visiting Liam.

  Jake also took an instant liking to the boy.

  Dylan was a fanatic for the Crawlers, immediately hitting him with question after question. Why six legs and not eight? Answer: six was enough; you don’t put in more than you need. How much does each Crawler cost? The first one? Millions. But if put in full production, a Crawler should set you back no more than a mocha Frappuccino. They’d kept going like this for half an hour, talking shop, until Maggie dragged him away.

  By that winter, Jake was spending time with Dylan almost weekly. He showed him the tools of the trade, the scanning electron microscopes and confocal imagers, the micromanipulators and optical tweezers that were a scientist’s hands and eyes in the nanoscale world. Dylan soaked it all up. He possessed an intimate grasp of things mechanical that Jake wished more of his students had. Jake also knew of Dylan’s troubles. Once, after Jake had left him alone in the lab, the boy had a mini-meltdown. Jake was sympathetic. From the war, he had his own bad dreams. They talked about fears, of getting past them and feeling safe. Jake wasn’t half bad at calming the kid down.

  Jake also began to piece together a more complete picture of Maggie, from both their brief meetings and his conversations with Dylan and Liam. In addition to her job as the curator of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, she volunteered for something called Cayuga Dog Rescue. He’d thought seriously about asking her out, but he’d always held
back. He told himself it was because she was the granddaughter of Liam Connor. He respected the old man too much to risk a mess. But down deep there was something else.

  THE RIVENDELL KITCHEN WAS LARGE AND MESSY, WITH POTS and pans hanging from the ceiling haphazardly and two big old refrigerators flanking the stove. Most notable were the statuettes: funny little creatures, some with pointed ears. A big one carved in wood in the corner, almost four feet tall. Two smaller plastic ones on top of one of the refrigerators. The clock was a little blue man in white gloves, pointing out the time. Jake let his gaze wander over the room. The place was a stark contrast to his Spartan two-bedroom apartment.

  She saw him glancing at the statuettes. “Rivendell,” she said. “Elf city.”

  “Got it.” He pointed to the clock. “But technically, that one’s a Smurf.”

  Maggie tried to smile.

  Jake said, “I’m still in shock. Devastated is a better word. He was… he was the most amazing man I’ve ever known.”

  “He cared about you a great deal.”

  “He wouldn’t shut up about you.”

  Dylan emerged from the dark hallway.

  “Hey,” Jake said. “You okay, big guy?”

  “I’m sad.”

  “Me, too. You’d be crazy if you weren’t.”

  Jake pulled Liam’s note from his pocket, handed it to Maggie. “I got this a half-hour ago.”

  “Who gave you this?” she asked, after taking a look.

  “Liam’s lawyer.”

  “Melvin?”

  “I don’t know. He just used his last name. Lorince.”

  “He was here, too.” Maggie handed Jake her own note. He recognized the stationery and the handwriting, both the same as the note he’d received. Her note said: “Tell Dylan that it’s one last trip to the moors. Jake knows the territory. Ask him where the elephants perch.”

  “Liam put it in with a bunch of legal papers,” Maggie said. “To be delivered on his death.”

  “But why?” Jake asked.

  “He’s leading us. The moors reference—”

  “Pop-pop said it all the time,” Dylan interjected. “When we were about to go on a letterboxing expedition.”

  “Letterboxing?”

  “It’s a kind of treasure hunt,” Maggie said. “A combination of hiking and puzzle solving.”

  Dylan scrunched up his face. “How ’bout a trip to the moors, laddie?” he mimicked, in a surprisingly good rendition of his great-grandfather’s intonation. “Letterboxing was invented in the moors of England.”

  “So Liam was into letterboxing?” Jake asked.

  “Pop-pop and I did it together,” Dylan said. “It was my idea—I read about it online. But Pop-pop loved it, too.”

  “He and Dylan went all the time. I tagged along once or twice, but I thought it was better to let the boys have it to themselves.”

  Jake said, “And I know where an elephant perches.”

  “Anywhere it wants to,” Dylan answered.

  Jake smiled. “Why shouldn’t you sit under an elephant’s perch?”

  “Because of the elephant,” Dylan said.

  Maggie looked to Jake. “What are you two talking about?”

  “The elephant’s perch. It was something I told Liam. I know where the elephant’s perch is.”

  “Where?”

  “The Sawtooth Mountains. Near Stanley, Idaho.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Elephant’s Perch is an eight-pitch rock-climbing route. I almost got killed there. The woman I was dating at the time took me up it. A rope got stuck, a storm came in. The lightning nearly nailed us before we got down. Liam turned it into one of his elephant jokes: ‘Where does an elephant perch?’ ”

  “How did Liam know about it?”

  “From one of our bull sessions. Talking about brushes with death. First war stories, then outdoor disasters. I told him about Elephant’s Perch, he told me about nearly drowning in a box canyon in China.”

  “What does this have to do with letterboxing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dylan? Do you have any—”

  But Dylan was gone.

  THEY FOUND HIM IN HIS ROOM, SEATED AT HIS LAPTOP, FINGERS flying over the keyboard. Jake watched, the back of his neck tingling. He was at a site called Letterboxing North America.

  Maggie said, “A letterbox is—it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s usually a small box of some sort hidden in the woods, with a notebook and a rubber stamp inside.”

  “There’s one on the desk, Mom. Over there. Pop-pop and I were going to put it out near Lucifer Falls.”

  It was a cigar box. Inside was an inkpad in a thin snap-shut metal case, a logbook, and a little wooden block with a rubber stamp on one surface. Maggie picked up the logbook. “People who visit the letterbox will make their own personal stamp inside, a record of their visit, that they found the letterbox.”

  She took the stamp and inked it, then stamped it on the page. The image was a spiral.

  “That’s Liam’s letterboxing stamp. That swirl.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everyone has their own stamp. Liam’s is a spiral. Mine’s a mushroom. Dylan’s is an arrowhead.”

  “What’s the purpose?”

  “Nothing. It’s just an adventure, a treasure hunt. You follow clues to find the letterbox, and stamp the logbook inside the box.”

  “So you hide these. How do people get the clues?”

  Dylan said, “The instructions on how to find letterboxes are on this site. There are thousands of letterboxes listed.”

  Jake watched over his shoulder and quickly began to understand. They entries were organized by geography, by state and region, followed by city. Dylan was on the central Idaho list.

  “I think Pop-pop might have been playing. That the elephant stuff was part of the riddle. There are four letterboxes near Stanley, Idaho.”

  Maggie nodded. “I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t leave us without an explanation. I knew it.”

  Dylan clicked on one.

  The Spiral LbNA # 23877

  Placed by: FungusAmongUs

  Placement date: October 17

  State: Idaho

  County: Tompkins

  Nearest city: Stanley

  Number of boxes: 1

  “Look who placed it: FungusAmongUs,” Maggie said. “Click on the directions.”

  Dylan clicked on the icon.

  LETTERBOX CLUES

  The hollow hides a footpath, follow it you must,

  to the settler’s creek that dances across the land held in trust.

  After spotting a ship, veer left and keep going,

  to water and up is a tree pregnant and showing.

  After making a choice, move up toward the left,

  then seek among fallen one whose life’s long bereft.

  A new kingdom you seek, so continue the fight,

  to a marriage of royals, darkness and light.

  Can’t find them here, this geezer and hag?

  Then seek among stones, don’t dally or lag.

  Though comes the darkness, though the cold winds blow,

  This will banish the worst, set the whole world aglow.

  “You think Liam wrote this?” Jake asked.

  “It sounds like him,” Maggie said. “He often wrote his clues as silly poetry. But why would he give us clues to a letterbox in Idaho? He wants us to go to Idaho?”

  Dylan stared at the screen. “What land in trust?”

  “Oh my God,” Maggie said. Her eyes were on fire. She reached over her son’s shoulder, hit print. An inkjet in the corner sprang to life.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “This letterbox isn’t in Idaho. It’s a couple of miles from here.”

  THEY PARKED IN A LITTLE LOT OFF ELLIS HOLLOW CREEK Road, next to a sign that said FINGER LAKES LAND TRUST PRESERVE.

  “Did Liam come here with Dylan a lot?” Jake asked.

  “We both di
d,” Maggie said. “Liam’s on the board of advisers of the Finger Lakes Land Trust. And Dylan and I did a couple of Fungus-Among-Us art projects out here. It’s a beautiful area, mostly forests, gorges, and streams, all owned by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. Over a hundred acres total. It used to be a hunting ground for the Cayuga Indians.”

  The sun was low, the trail cut by long, dark shadows, as they worked their way through the brush. Maggie read the second pair of lines: “ ‘After spotting a ship, veer left and keep going/to water and up is a tree pregnant and showing.’ There’s a rotten old rowboat near the trail juncture,” she said. “It’s about a quarter of a mile up. Dylan loved to play in it when he was younger.”

  “He seems to be holding up pretty well.”

  “He puts up a good front—it’s a Connor trait. But Liam’s death has been very hard on him, I can tell. He’s hurt, and he’s confused. Just like me.” Dylan had fought to come with them, but Maggie wasn’t having any of it. She didn’t know what they were going to find, but she didn’t want her son to see it until she knew what it was.

  A slight breeze was in the trees, setting off the eerie squeaking of tree branches rubbing against one another. They half walked, half ran down the trail. On the way over, Jake had told her about his conversation with the Cornell police, that people were coming from Fort Detrick to investigate Liam’s death and search his labs. And about Vlad’s comment that a Crawler would make a great vector for a pathogen.

  “You think he would’ve kept any dangerous fungi in his lab?” Jake asked.

  “It’s possible. There are thousands of deadly strains. Fungi are mostly feeders on the dead, but more than a few are willing to speed up the process and create their own food. There it is,” she said, spying the broken-down rowboat in the shadows on the side of the trail. Maggie had a flashlight with her, played the beam up and down the rotting boards. The trail forked, one part continuing straight, the other dropping off to the left. Maggie veered left, Jake behind her. A few hundred yards later was a stream. From there, the path went up a small rise, a larger ridge to the left. She stopped and flashed the beam around, the woods swallowing it. She reread the note.