The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

  “It’s an anagram for ‘slime.’ ‘Substance A’ is pretty lame.”

  She watched his look of expectation fade. Sorry. You guessed wrong. You lose.

  “An anagram for slime … how … interesting. Well, be that as it may, if I had shown up on a Saturday at any of those other facilities, I am quite sure I would not have found the designated researcher in his lab.”

  Okay, she admitted it … well, to herself, at least: She’d become fixated on melis. Obsessed was probably more like it. Since that first instant when it had weighed in at zero, she hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. It had taken over her brain.

  She’d subjected it to thousands of degrees of heat, but it didn’t boil, desiccate, or harden. She’d cooled it to near absolute zero, but it remained pliant and pourable. She’d electrocuted it and dropped it into caustic acids. She’d put it into a blender and emulsified it in various fluids, but when the mix dried out it returned to its original state.

  After exposing mice and rats to melis with no ill effects, she tried feeding it to them, but they weren’t interested. So she emulsified it in normal saline and administered it via intraperitoneal injection, again with no ill effects. She determined it was not toxic. The damn stuff was too inert to be toxic.

  “Your most recent fax stated that you had some unexpected results from the rodent studies, but you didn’t mention what they were.”

  “I wanted to confirm the preliminary reports. The rodents injected with the melis-saline emulsion appeared unaffected, so I sent them off to be studied for changes in motor function. They were run through standard mazes and performed no better or worse than their unexposed brethren.”

  Greve looked bored. “How, pray tell, was that unexpected?”

  “It wasn’t. But some of the rats happened to be pregnant at the time of the injection.”

  “Oh?” He straightened in his chair. “You have my interest. Mutagenic effects?”

  “If you call improved maze performance a mutation, then yes.”

  “Improved how?”

  “The animal behavior people called me all excited, wanting to know what I’d done to the rats.”

  Greve leaned forward. “I trust you didn’t—”

  “Of course not.” She remembered the stringent terms of the NDA she’d signed. “I said it was classified.”

  “And why were they excited?”

  “The melis offspring were absolute star performers in the mazes. But I didn’t want to report that unless I was sure they could replicate the results.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s where I was when you called—watching maze-naïve baby rats zoom this way and that toward the cheese.”

  “Let me get this straight: The melis-treated rats showed no effects one way or the other, but their offspring demonstrated increased intelligence?”

  “I didn’t say that. No one’s ready to say any more than the offspring demonstrated improved maze performance. Assessing actual intelligence will take more refined testing.”

  He waved her off. “Spoken like a true scientific tight-ass. We’ll arrange for it.”

  She groaned. “That’ll mean applying for grants and—”

  “Grants? Wherever did you get that idea? Did you know that there are one thousand three hundred thirty-seven words in the Declaration of Independence, and twenty-six thousand nine hundred eleven words in federal laws regulating the sale of cabbages? We do not want bureaucratic oversight.”

  Great. She hated applying for grants.

  “I’ll need more melis.”

  “No problem. We have plenty of it.”

  “Can I ask where—?”

  “No, you may not.”

  Maureen vented a blast of frustration. “After all the work I’ve done? I probably know more about this damn stuff than anyone on Earth, but I’m not cleared to know where it came from?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “Because it’s not from Earth, is it?”

  Greve’s expression froze. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it behaves like nothing on Earth. Our spectrometers here are capable of analyzing the molecular structure of anything, but they can’t analyze melis because they don’t recognize its existence. We enter a sample for analysis and the machine tells us it’s waiting for a sample. Under an electron microscope it looks like a glob—no resolution. Melis is like nothing on Earth, so it has to be from someplace other than Earth.”

  Greve shot to his feet behind the desk. “You will keep your unfounded opinions to yourself, Doctor LaVelle! Your duty here is to provide us with facts, not wild speculation.”

  He was right, of course, but damn, she wanted to know where this stuff came from.

  He added, “You are, however, correct about one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “You are indeed the world authority on what you call melis. And as such you will be involved in every phase of the investigation.”

  Yes! If she stayed with this wonderfully mysterious goop, she was confident she’d learn where it came from. Unfounded opinion it might be, but she was positive melis was not of Earthly origin.

  “I won’t let you down.”

  “To that end, we will begin primate trials immediately and you will oversee them.”

  “I’m a molecular biologist. I don’t do animal studies.”

  “You just did—the mazes, remember?”

  “That was an ad-hoc thing, and only rodents.”

  She considered melis hers—her baby. She didn’t want anyone else taking over. But primates? Too much like humans.

  “They’re just dumb animals,” Greve said.

  “I don’t do primates.”

  “You do now.”

  NOW

  Wednesday

  1

  QUEENS, NEW YORK

  Laura inspected the newspaper clipping framed on the wall of Stahlman’s office.

  Do you have a special talent?

  One you keep to yourself?

  You know what we mean.

  Let us help you develop it.

  “That’s the personals ad I placed to start things rolling,” Stahlman said.

  “But why? What inspired you to place it?”

  She’d arrived on time but couldn’t find a parking spot. As usual, Rick had anticipated that, waiting out front to direct her to the garage built into the rear of the building.

  The sight of him had stirred such an odd mix of emotions, most of them good, except for regret that they’d drifted apart. And that was all on her. Tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered—the classic hunk. Seeing him made her realize how much she missed him.

  After a brief awkward hug—yeah, after all their intimacies, they’d regressed to the brief-awkward-hug stage—he’d led her inside to where Stahlman waited. He started with the “Doctor Fanning” stuff but she put the kibosh on that, insisting on “Laura.”

  Stahlman said, “One of my janitors in the main office, a young fellow named Cyrus, was the kick-off. I was working late and he was emptying the wastebaskets. As he was leaving I pointed out a scrap of paper he’d left on the floor. I happened to glance his way as he bent and picked it up. He didn’t realize I was watching when he closed it in his fist. As he straightened up, he opened his hand and I saw it was empty.”

  “Sleight of hand,” Laura said.

  “Exactly what I thought. And that’s exactly what he told me when I called him on it and asked him to do it again. I gave him a small stone I use as a paperweight.” He pointed to a beige-brown rock on his desk. “Pretty much exactly like this one. He took it, closed it in his fist, and when he opened up again—nothing.”

  “There must be a zillion amateur magicians who can do that,” she said.

  “As a matter of fact, he works as a magician—small-time stuff, kids’ parties and the like. But here’s the thing: When I asked him for the stone back, he couldn’t give it to me. I demanded it back because, like this one, it was one of a number of souvenir rocks I broug
ht back from a trip to the cave in Bronson Canyon.”

  “Souvenir rocks?” Laura said.

  “Yeah-yeah. Out near Hollywood. But that’s not important. The point is, he said he was sorry but it was gone for good. Cyrus was my first nadaný.”

  He’d already explained the term to her, but Laura found herself far from convinced about this supposed gift.

  “You believed him? You truly believed it had vanished?”

  Stahlman spread his hands. “I know it sounds incredibly gullible, but—here, see for yourself.” He indicated the door. “Rick, would you be so kind as to ask Cyrus to come in?”

  Rick had kept his distance since their hello hug. She was glad for that, and then again she wasn’t. Not like she was contagious or anything.

  Rick stepped outside and returned with a chubby twenty-something black man. Stahlman introduced him, then faced him toward Laura.

  “Doctor Fanning here doesn’t believe in your gift, Cyrus. Care to convince her?” He held up a half-foot length of quarter-inch wood doweling. “Try this.”

  Laura could see she was going to have to take control here. She waited until Cyrus reached out with his right hand.

  “If I may,” she said, taking the doweling from Stahlman and approaching Cyrus. “Would you please roll up your left shirtsleeve?”

  “Sure.” Cyrus smiled as he pulled it above his elbow.

  Laura had him stretch his arm out, left palm up. She checked between all his fingers, then placed the doweling on his palm.

  “Okay. Make it disappear.” As he started to close his fingers—“Uh-uh. Leave them open.”

  “I can’t do it unless I close my fist.” His accent was Deep South, thick as molasses.

  “How convenient. Go ahead then.”

  He closed his fingers around the doweling, leaving the ends exposed. Those ends abruptly fell to the floor, and when he spread his fingers his palm was empty.

  “Impressive,” Laura said, checking his hand. No sign of anything amiss. “Very impressive. Where is it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just goes away.”

  “Can you bring it back?”

  “Nope.”

  “What kind of a magician are you?”

  “It’s really gone,” Stahlman said.

  She looked at him. “And your souvenir rock?”

  He shook his head. “Gone for good.”

  She turned back to Cyrus. “Let me get this straight: You hold something and it vanishes to who-knows-where and you can’t bring it back?”

  “Yeah. But it goes away only if I want it to.”

  “You wish it away?”

  A shrug. “Yeah, I guess. But only little things that can fit in my hand—like candy wrappers and bugs and stuff.” A shy smile. “I’m kind of a garbage disposal.”

  “Except for something like this,” Stahlman said, holding up a length of solid steel curtain rod.

  Cyrus took it, squeezed, but it remained whole.

  “Density of the material seems to be a factor.” Stahlman grinned at Laura. “I know you’re a skeptic, and I took some convincing myself. But the clincher was this.” He held up a blue plastic disk the size of a quarter. “It’s a tracker. You attach it to your key chain or wallet, anything you might misplace or might get stolen.”

  He placed the disk on Cyrus’s palm and handed Laura his iPhone. The screen showed a blue dot blinking on a map of Long Island City at the address of the warehouse.

  “Okay, Cy,” Stahlman said. “Do it.”

  He made a fist around the tracker and the blue dot winked out on the phone. He opened his hand again. The tracker was gone.

  Laura felt her stomach ripple. Okay. This was a little scary. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  “Convinced?” Stahlman said.

  “I think so. Maybe. You could be pranking me.”

  Stahlman smiled. “Of course I could. I’ve got nothing better to do than hoodwink the woman who saved my life.”

  Laura raised her hands, surrendering. “Okay. Touché.”

  “After finding the panacea, I’m surprised you’re such a hard sell.”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  He sent Cyrus off with a thank-you, then pointed again to the framed clipping.

  “Cyrus’s gift prompted me to look for someone else who could do the same. But I didn’t feel I could be too specific, so I advertised for ‘special talents.’ ”

  Rick laughed. “Bet you wound up with a parade of stupid human tricks.”

  “You wouldn’t believe. But I found Leo in the crowd. And then Ruth. Knowing Laura, I think I’d rather show you than tell you.”

  “Fair enough.” She turned to Rick. “How long have you known about this?”

  “Since last night. I’m learning right along with you.”

  “It was Rick’s idea to bring you on board. He said you were heading for a neurology residency, and since these gifts seem to be brain wave–based, I—”

  A zap of excitement hit her.

  “Brain waves? Really? How do you know?”

  “Because that’s what Doctor Montero tells me, and if he says so, I believe.”

  “Is he here? I’d like to meet him.”

  “He’s here and you’ll meet him in a moment. But first …” He tapped out a message into his cell phone. A text? “There’s someone else I’d like you to meet first.”

  A young woman entered—white, maybe late twenties, with short dark hair. Stahlman introduced her as Marie Novotna.

  “Marie is absolutely critical to this project. She answered the ad and said, ‘I know what you are looking for. I can find them for you.’ And she’s done just that.”

  “How?” Laura said.

  She shrugged. “My gift is knowing when someone has a gift,” she said with a slight Eastern European accent.

  Laura had to ask. “Do I?”

  Marie shook her head. “I am the only nadaný in the room.”

  Laura wasn’t sure if she felt disappointed or relieved.

  “Marie found Ellis for us. She was walking by a pool hall and sensed a nadaný inside. She can point and say ‘a nadaný is over there.’ ”

  “But I can’t say how far over there.”

  “How many are we talking about, say, here in New York?” Rick said, speaking for the first time in a while.

  “Maybe twenty-five.”

  “Just in New York?” Laura didn’t know whether to consider that a lot or a little, but her thoughts were veering in an epidemiological direction. “What about the country?”

  A shrug. “Hundreds. Not thousands, but hundreds.”

  “Maybe there’s a connection between these … nadaný.” There. She’d used the word.

  “We’ve been looking into that,” Stahlman said. “So far, no correlations. Now, do you want to meet our neurobiologist?”

  “Most certainly.”

  As Stahlman led her out to the vast expanse of the warehouse’s first floor, she noticed Rick hanging back. She paused.

  “You’re awfully quiet this morning.”

  He shrugged. “I had last night and earlier this morning to get ahead of you on the learning curve, so I’m staying out of the way.”

  Far out of the way. Even now he was keeping his distance.

  I don’t have cooties.

  And then the thought struck her: Maybe he thinks I believe he has cooties—moral cooties.

  Not even close.

  She stepped up to Rick, took his arm, and towed him toward the door.

  “Come on. We’ll learn together.”

  Ellis

  They found Dr. Montero standing by a pool table, watching his iPad as a whippet-thin young man wearing strange headgear worked a cue.

  “I’ll hang back on this one,” Rick said. “I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting Mister Reise.”

  Something about the way he said that …

  After an introduction to Dr. Montero and some small talk, during which she reveal
ed her intended career switch to neurology, Montero explained that the fellow playing pool, Ellis Reise, was able to move small objects simply by thinking about it.

  “He’s wearing an ambulatory EEG headset,” Montero said. “His gift is telekinesis. And, just like every other nadaný I’ve tested, use of his gift causes zeta waves to appear on his EEG.”

  “Zeta waves?” Laura had been boning up on neurology during her unaccustomed free time. She ran through the five types of brain waves: gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta. “I’m not familiar with—”

  “It’s a rare slow delta-wave variation, sometimes seen with structural lesions in the brain. So far all the brain MRIs on our nadaný show no abnormalities, so it’s something else. A clue to their gifts.” He turned to the young man at the table. “Ellis, give our guests a demonstration, if you will?”

  He scowled. “What am I? A trained seal?”

  Nice attitude, Laura thought. Now she understood Rick’s tone when he mentioned Mister Reise.

  “Never mind,” Montero said. “I’ll get someone else.”

  “Nah. Forget it. I’ll play. Just remember to throw me a fish when I’m done.”

  Laura figured a gummy fish would be emotional age–appropriate.

  “They’re gifted,” Montero said under his breath, “but not always with a pleasant personality.” Then louder as he held out his iPad: “Watch the screen here. No zeta waves.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it,” Laura said, eying the confusing array of squiggles trailing across the screen. “What do they look like?”

  “Trust me, you’ll know when they appear.”

  Laura positioned herself so she could see both the tablet and the pool table. She watched Ellis hit one of the balls, sending it toward the far left corner pocket. Halfway there it veered sharply to the right.

  The move took her by surprise. Yes, she’d been told he could move an object by thinking about it, but she hadn’t quite accepted it. She was so taken she almost forgot about the EEG. The tablet screen now showed a large, slow, saw-toothed waveform joining the others. When the ball dropped into the far right pocket, the wave stopped.

  Laura blinked at the table. Had she really seen that?