Categories > Books > Relic
Human Remains
0 ReviewsWhere has Mbwun been lurking? In the place you'd least expect it.
HUMAN REMAINS
There came another knock at the door.
Greg Kawakita glanced up irritably from rabbit serum he was purifying. The knocking sounded again, hesitant and rapid. Kawakita slipped his shoes back on and hurried over. He wasn't expecting any of his regular buyers, but that didn't mean this might not be a new client. At the door, he paused and loaded a clip into the small handgun he kept nearby. Just in case.
For a moment Kawakita didn't recognize the man on the doorstep, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing around apprehensively at the surrounding darkness of the docks. He was no cop, though, nor some drug lord's thug looking to get rid of competition.
Kawakita replaced the handgun in its hiding place and opened the door, smiling. "You made it! I'm so pleased."
The visitor stepped inside hurriedly, then froze, looking surprised at his own impudence. It had been almost a month since he'd seen August Strindberg, but the man was as irritatingly shy as ever.
"Thank you for having me over. I was worried about you. You left so abruptly . . . I was afraid . . . you know. That it was personal. My fault."
"Not at all," Kawakita said smoothly, taking him by the elbow and guiding him in. "I thought you might have assumed that, and I am sorry. I know I come off as kind of acidic and abrupt - "
"Oh, no, Greg." Strindberg stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor, squinting into the gloom and twisting his baseball cap in his bony, long-fingered hands.
"I do," he said emphatically. "And I got so caught up with my idea, I just put everything else on the backburner. Even you. That's why I invited you here tonight. I don't know if I can make it up to you, but I'd like to try."
Strindberg glanced up obliquely, still the whipped puppy ever-eager to forgive. "Thank you, Greg. It's an honor. It really is."
"If it hadn't been for you, none of this would have happened."
Kawakita thumbed the potentiometer controlling the light level, bringing it up just enough so that Strindberg could see the banks of softly bubbling aquaria, the massive filtration machinery nested in intertwined piping, the array of tinted, filtered lamps that bathed the warehouse's work area in a subtle, subaqueous glow.
He was staring hard at the aquaria. "But what is all of this, then?"
Kawakita grinned. "Remember that little theory you had?"
Five weeks ago
Kawakita leaned hard on the buzzer, the only connection between the Biohazard Level Four necropsy room and the outside world.
Through the surveillance camera, he saw the figure of the pathologist working on the remains of the creature that had been dubbed "the Museum Beast", among other colorful monikers. The man wore a bright orange space suit inflated by an air hose that made him look ridiculously like a toddler in an overstuffed snowsuit. He was rooting around in the viscera and vital organs, removing bits and pieces and sealing them into jars of preservatives, so deeply absorbed in his work that he didn't hear the buzzer.
Kawakita rang it again, and the pathologist, Strindberg, looked up. He glanced from the creature on the table to the door a few times as if making a difficult decision.
Strindberg carefully dunked his instruments in a pan of disinfectant. The pale green chemical turned dark and cloudy with the creature's blood. He washed his hands in another pan, until the gloves were free of any residue. Then he unplugged the air hose that kept his suit inflated and his oxygen supply refreshed, and stepped into the air lock, slamming the vault-type door behind himself.
Kawakita waited impatiently as the decontamination cycle began. It took seven minutes in all, repeated jets of water, EnviroChem disinfectant, and being bathed in intense ultraviolet light to completely sterilize the suit of any harmful microorganisms.
Eventually, Strindberg emerged, looking as if he'd been through a shower himself. His dark, lank hair straggled down into his face, and the acne on his cheeks and chin stood out like beacons against his flushed skin. Christ, thirty-odd years old and he still had acne. He swept his bangs up under his X-Files baseball cap, which he'd put on backwards. Gangly, gawky and socially maladroit - if you were trying to cast a science geek, you couldn't do better then August Strindberg.
"You, ah, wanted to see me, Mr. Kawakita?"
"Come here."
Strindberg shuffled over, hunching his shoulders in a habitual gesture. It was irritating, to be sure, looked as if he were apologizing for being taller than his superior. But Kawakita found he didn't mind the man's cringing deference. It was a refreshing change being on the top of the dog pile, and Strindberg's flagrant servility only enhanced it.
Kawakita threw the copies of the RFLP autoradiographs down on the table, stabbing at them with his finger. "Look at this."
"I don't know much about DNA stuff," Strindberg temporized.
"Come on, just look at it and tell me what you think. Tell me, for example, if both these look like they came from the same individual."
Strindberg, like a dog expecting to be kicked, could not make himself meet Kawakita's eyes. Instead, he frowned studiously at the alternating bands of light and dark on the autorad.
Kawakita snatched up the prints and threw them against the wall, getting a nasty little satisfaction watching the pathologist flinch. "You fucked up. Contaminated it somehow. That's almost 70 hours of runtime wasted."
"S-sorry." Strindberg rubbed his hands, then, palms pressed together, raised them and touched his thumbs to his lip. The gesture reminded Kawakita irresistibly of an enormous housefly. Disgusting. The whole of the pathologist's job, grubbing around in the putrefying remains of the creature, was totally repellant. He longed to get back to his computers, away from the necropsy room and the endless jars of sliced-up beast.
"Well, look at this, though." Strindberg was gesturing at a microscope on the bench. "I've prepared some slides. You might find them rather interesting."
Kawakita obligingly bent over the eyepiece, and let out a whistle of surprise. The cells were studded with inclusion bodies, thick accretions of replicating viruses. It was a good thing they'd decided to dissect the museum mystery monster in a Level 4 area - it was massively infected with an unknown virus.
"It's got a heavy viral load," Kawakita said. "I'm just not sure which virus. Nothing I can identify by the naked eye. We'd have to run it through the electron microscope."
"It's almost as if the cells are in the process of mutating, and some are more mutated than other. Is it a reovirus, maybe? That would explain the discrepancies in the DNA. Some of the tissue isn't as heavily affected."
Kawakita looked at Strindberg with new respect. He has been thinking exactly the same thing. A reovirus acted like nature's genetic engineer, clipping DNA from one host and inserting it into another. These "jumping genes" were not uncommon (even the common house cat proved to have DNA sequences in common with rats and baboons) and some scientists suspected they might be a hidden, driving force in evolution.
"We may never get a pure DNA sample, then, Greg," Strindberg said sadly.
Kawakita slowly forced his fist open. The stifling, oppressively muggy heat, the horrible clinging stench, the long hours cooped up in the claustrophobia-inducing space suit or trapped in the lab with Strindberg. It was making him crazy. Normally he wasn't this aggressive, or when he did get the urge to beat someone to a pulp, he kept it under exquisite control. It wasn't Strindberg's fault he was so exasperating.
He took out a handkerchief and swabbed his face and neck. The whole place stank of the creature, its musky personal reek added to the putrid perfume of decomposition. It didn't help matters any that the temperatures had soared the last week, unseasonably warm for early spring in New York.
"Smells like two pigs fucking on top of a manure pile in here," he opined, then eyed Strindberg, who was shifting around, looking more wretched and nervous than usual. "What is it?"
"Menzies called again a few hours ago."
"God dammit, what does he want this time," Kawakita exploded.
"He just wants to know, ah, if we found anything in the creature that might have . . . you know . . . medicinal properties. Something . . . some, some link, you know . . . why the Kothoga might have . . . kept . . . " Strindberg trailed off, miserable.
Kawakita felt drained, suddenly. He didn't enjoy dealing with people, especially those like Menzies. Outward politeness concealing a fierce, incisive inquisitiveness. He preferred superiors who gave him more of a free reign, as Frock had. So much more got done that way.
Not that Menzies was a superior, lord knows. He'd been hired by the government, same as Kawakita and Strindberg and the others on the team, but his role was a bit nebulous. Frock had insisted that the creature was vitally important to the vanished Kothoga culture, and Menzies had been an associate of Whittlesey in some capacity. He'd been given curatorial possession over the expedition notes, and was calling almost every day trying to pry details of the creature's physiology from the necropsy workers. Claimed it was important to understanding the creature's origin, whether it might have been deliberately hybridized and bred by the tribespeople.
Why this made any sort of difference, Kawakita had no idea. His self control cramped and oppressed him, like a permanent suit of rusty armor. He'd left off answering the phone, let the spineless Strindberg, who couldn't stand to hear it ring more than three times in a row, pick up and deal with Menzies and all the others who called.
"God, he's persistent, isn't he? You told him there was no news, and we'd call him back if there was any, right? Good, good. I'm so sick of him." Kawakita sat down in Strindberg's chair and leaning back until it creaked loudly. "He's almost as obnoxious as Pendergast."
"Pendergast?" Strindberg leaned forward. "You actually met him?"
"Briefly, yes. That was long enough. He was one of the ones who helped me get this job. Why, you know him?"
"I know of him."
"Brother. What a character. Looks like a cross between David Bowie and Sherlock Holmes, dipped in whitewash."
Strindberg cocked his head, politely inquiring.
"He's an albino. Either the grey-eyed type, or he's wearing colored contacts. Goes around dressed like he's on a Caraceni photo shoot, as if he doesn't stand out enough already, and he's got an accent out of a bad production of a Tennessee Williams play."
"I've heard that about him, yeah." Strindberg covered his mouth, trying ineffectually to muffle a laugh. "Um, so he recommended you for this?"
"Let's just say, he didn't have much choice. My services are pretty unique." Kawakita smiled wickedly. When it came to connecting to people in high places, he was a positive genius. Pendergast was trouble, that was clear from the people he'd talked to. He was the classic nail that stuck out to far and was just tempting the hammer. However - and this was where Greg's skill at manipulating people came into play - the FBI agent was highly regarded by some extremely important, well-placed people. A few judiciously chosen hints, a little glossing over of their exact relationship in the museum beast incident, and plenty of plain old relentless pestering and pouring honey had landed Kawakita his position on the team.
Kawakita glanced at the mess of Strindberg's desk. How did the pathologist find anything here? On top of his computer was a Museum Beast action figure, a cheap plastic thing. It looked like someone had welded the top half of a gorilla to the bottom half of a carnivorous dinosaur. Probably exactly what the toymaker had done, a rush job to capitalize on a passing sensation.
And yet, it wasn't entirely inaccurate. The creature, against all reason, seemed to possess characteristics of both primates and theropod dinosaurs, the group that included famous creatures such as Tyrannosaurus rex and, at some time in the early Jurassic, gave rise to birds.
"So how's it going on your end, Augie? Find anything in that carcass to prove what it is? Or are we going with Menzies's theory that the Kothoga persuaded a crocodile to rape a baboon?"
"It can't be anything. It's an impossible combination, a total chimera!" Strindberg still avoided meeting his eyes, concentrating on playing with the action figure. He pressed a button on its back, and the upraised arms swung down, the plastic trident claws miming a disemboweling strike. How cute.
"Convergent evolution?" Kawakita suggested. This was the theory that form followed function, so two animals of dissimilar ancestry would evolve to look similar if they occupied the same environmental niches, because the niches demanded a certain ideal bodily form. For example, dolphins, ichthyosaurs and sharks had similar shapes because they were all fast-swimming, backboned marine predators, even though one was a mammal, one was a reptile, and one was a cartilaginous fish.
Strindberg looked pained. "That can only take you so far. And the resemblances break down on closer inspection. Octopi and vertebrates evolved camera-type eyes independently, but I can still tell the difference between them when I start dissecting. This thing is so bizarre, it's almost artificial."
Kawakita took off his glasses and mopped his brow. "Artificial? You're not going to lay some sort of X-files crap on me, are you, Strindberg? Genetic engineering can't do that. At least, not yet."
Much to his amusement, Strindberg seemed to be doubting his own sanity at what the examination showed.
"I don't know how else it could occur. For it to have both reptile and mammal features, its closest ancestor would have to be a gorgonopsid, something like /Lycaenops/. Leaving aside the astronomical odds against it evolving features only found in apes, protomammals went extinct at the same time the dinosaurs were grabbing all the large land animal niches. Over two hundred million years ago! Hiding in a jungle for a few million years is one thing . . . or in the ocean, maybe, like a coelacanth. But what we consider an ancient jungle is just a blip in history. In the time since the therapsids, entire continents have appeared and disappeared. Plus, we're talking about a large predator here. Predator species, especially large-bodied ones like this, usually don't last very long. About five million years or so, give or take, before the next improved version comes along."
"It's been hiding somewhere," Kawakita insisted.
Strindberg traced his finger along the prints. "I think I know where it's been hiding."
"Alien space ship?"
"No." The pathologist looked up at Kawakita with atypical slyness, almost grinning. "Right under our noses."
"In New York?!" Kawakita pictured some sort of urban Bigfoot, alligators in the sewers. Maybe Strindberg needed a few days off.
"To be more specific, in flesh and bones and nerves and blood. In the meat, as you might say. It's been hiding in the DNA of some other creature," Strindberg said softly. "A completely impenetrable jungle. One we didn't even know existed until 40 years ago. We only have the vaguest idea of its geography. And even when we do eventually map it, we still have to interpret the Rosetta stone of its keys."
This was brilliant, fucking brilliant. He wouldn't have thought Strindberg capable of it. "Frock's fractal evolution," Kawakita agreed.
Strindberg frowned. "Not . . . not quite. He thinks that these things just spontaneously emerge, convergently resembling each other, correct? But what I'm thinking is, this sort of thing is in all of us. In the junk DNA."
Kawakita sat up straight, his weariness suddenly forgotten. "So you're saying, something - some monkey, some leopard, some lizard - is walking around in the jungle with the ability to become a monster like that?" He gestured to the submarine-type door, indicating the corpse beyond.
"Yes, exactly." Strindberg became animated now, pacing about and waving his bony hands in the air to illustrate his points. It gave Kawakita a migraine just watching him. "I'm talking more about an atavism. A horse born with toes, like its Eohippus ancestor. Or babies with tails, or covered with hair."
Kawakita was shaking his head. "False atavisms. Those examples aren't really expressions of ancestral forms. Horses with toes, for example. It's a mutation in the Hox15 gene, which should be suppressing the development of digits, not a reversion to /Eohippus/."
"It's the only good explanation. There are true atavisms, Mr. Kawakita. Like /Opisthocomus hoazin/. The bird, you know? When dinosaur forelimbs evolved into bird wings, the plan to build digits wasn't lost, another gene just evolved to suppress them. Turn the suppressor off, and you have a bird with dinosaur claws."
He picked up the toy again, running his finger over the taloned forelimbs. It was one detail the model had exactly right.
"Obviously, the ancestral Mbwun didn't disappear and leave no descendants. It simply evolved very rapidly into a strikingly dissimilar, innocuous-looking form. And it has remained that way, until some individuals encountered this reovirus which released its genetic shackles, so to speak."
Kawakita shook his head again, but there was no stopping Strindberg now. Excitedly, he continued, "It's happened again and again in evolution. Neotony, for example. Take axolotls, cave salamanders. They remain in their larval form instead of dropping gills and growing legs. But if you inject them with the proper hormones, they'll develop into an adult form, something that is never seen in nature."
"I thought you said you didn't know much about DNA."
Strindberg flinched, and looked away uncomfortably. "Ah, about the mechanics of it, which gene does what? No, no."
"Sure, it sounds good, but you need to look past the meat end of it, August. Flesh and blood and bones and nerves, they're all the byproduct of the gene's desire to reproduce itself. It's like trying to dissect out granules of paint from the Mona Lisa to discover the genius of DaVinci. The paint, the meat - it's just a vehicle."
"I don't understand," Strindberg said. "It doesn't make sense." His eyes were fixed on the floor. It was the closest he'd yet come to standing up to Kawakita. "Anyways, what I'm saying is, something activated the junk DNA, turned an otherwise normal creature into the Mbwun beast. It's the only explanation."
"You're forgetting something, Strindberg. The selfish genes . . . the reovirus. What's in it for the virus?"
Strindberg's shoulders slumped, the whole of the man seemed to deflate like a punctured balloon. A beautiful theory destroyed by a troublesome little fact. He pondered out loud, "The virus, it looked oddly inert, didn't it? The cells were deeply affected, but there were no signs it was, you know, infectious. No burst cells, no free viruses. It was as if the reovirus had insinuated itself into the creature's DNA, and just sort of stayed there. Why would it do that?"
Kawakita collapsed back into the crepitant chair, fanning himself with the file folder. "You got me there, buddy. The virus reproduced in the lily, but did something totally different in the creature. There's got to be a link, and we just don't know it yet. Maybe the virus was too 'hot' for its own good, like Ebola Zaire. It was so successful at reproducing and killing its host that it didn't give itself time to spread. The really successful strains, like AIDS or rabies, they don't kill you right away. Viruses have no interest in killing their hosts. They want to take over your cells to reproduce themselves, but they also want you to be shedding viruses and infecting other hosts."
"It still doesn't make sense," he said stubbornly. "It has such a precise and startling effect. I doesn't just make the creature sick, it changes it into something else! What other virus does that?"
Kawakita was getting sick of the argument. It was hot, too hot, and he was having trouble thinking. The rank smell of rotting Mbwun-meat seemed to have sunk into his skin. He wanted a long, scalding bath, and yet he felt even that would not free him of it.
"It could be very useful in genetic engineering, if you could figure out how to make it insert the genes you want it to. You could back-engineer cures for just about any disease out there. Or," Strindberg added, in a tone of studied nonchalance, "You could create a disease and the cure. If you were the only source of the antidote, you could set your price. You'd be a multi-billionaire. Shoot, you would own the world."
Kawakita stared at him in astonishment and rising excitement. "Ah, Augie, that's not very . . . I mean, as scientists . . . you couldn't hold something like that back. It wouldn't be very altruistic, would it?"
Strindberg turned to him, wide-eyed. "I know! Isn't it an awful thought? Imagine if something like this got into the wrong hands!"
Kawakita swallowed. Suddenly it felt as though he had a mouthful of blotter paper, soaking up all his saliva.
"A new Hitler," Strindberg mused, "Could design a virus just to infect people of a certain ethnicity, like those conspiracy theorists think AIDS was designed to do. Or if you decided to improve on the human genome, wow, think about that! You could create a race of super-men, designed to your specifications, but only the people you chose to sell to."
Somehow, Kawakita found his voice. "It's academic, though, isn't it? The reovirus only grew in the lily, and the lily is extinct. All the extant samples were destroyed. There's no way anyone could recreate it."
"Yes. We certainly lucked out, didn't we?"
Back at the warehouse
Strindberg sat at the small table where Kawakita took his infrequent meals, his jaw hanging open in an expression of gormless adoration. "You figured it out, all by yourself? Cultivating the, the Mbwun lily?" He stumbled over the Kothoga word. "All because of what I said?"
"I owe it all to you."
Kawakita put a hand on Strindberg's wrist, and watched with secret glee as the pathologist blushed and squirmed, but did not pull away. Just as he'd thought. He'd picked up the vibes from Strindberg, and although he had no intention of actually doing anything with the man, he wasn't above a little platonic teasing to put him off balance.
"That means so much to me," he said, choking up a bit.
Kawakita poured hot water into his cup, watching in satisfaction as the tea leaves floated up for an instant, then grew soggy and sank.
To Strindberg, tea was apparently something you drank cold out of a Snapple bottle. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, but raised the cup politely to his lips.
Just as he was about to swallow, the man grinned and joked, "Say, you aren't trying to dope me up with dried lily leaves, are you?"
Kawakita hesitated. It was just the tiniest of guilty pauses, but a horrible feral expression came over Strindberg's face, and he immediately leapt out of the chair, lunging towards him with his arms raised defensively. Kawakita swung the pot full of water up, and Strindberg recoiled with a loud cry, dropping to his knees and clawing at his eyes. He'd never seen Strindberg - seen anyone - move so fast.
Kawakita dropped the pot, letting it shatter to pieces. "Oh, god, oh, god!" His mind was racing, trying to figure out what had happened.
Strindberg glanced up, and Kawakita recoiled in shock. The man's eye was ruined, an all-over clouded grey. He stammered out an apology, wondering if he could risk calling 911. How could the hot water have caused so much damage so fast?
But Strindberg was standing calmly now, not in any apparent pain whatsoever. Then Kawakita noticed the tiny piece of brown-and-clear plastic stuck to his cheek by a runnel of tears. Strindberg rubbed his face, found it, and held it out on the tip of his finger. A contact lens. It had disguised the color of his dead eye, and incidentally protected it from the boiling water.
Before he could process what he saw, Strindberg gripped him by the arms and forced him down into the chair. Kawakita struggled, but the man's grip was like iron. Strindberg let go of one arm, and quick as a striking rattlesnake, slapped Kawakita across the face. He sagged in Strindberg's grip, shocked senseless by the pain. He was pretty sure his nose was broken. It felt numb, and he could taste hot, salty blood running into his mouth. In a detached way, he realized Strindberg was tying him down with electrical cord. He began to struggle weakly.
"None of that, now," the man said. "What a naughty boy you are."
Kawakita went still obediently, hating himself.
Now that he was secure, Strindberg strolled around the warehouse, hands clasped behind his back, closely scrutinizing the equipment and flipping imperiously through Kawakita's handwritten notes. He opened the one of the small refrigeration units, and exclaimed in pleased surprise, removing a vial full of a pale green liquid. Rummaging around in a few drawers awarded him an unused syringe and some other small necessities. He leisurely strolled over, leaning down in front of his victim, his face only a few inches away.
"Awfully resourceful, Kawakita. I knew you'd think of a source for the lily, and you didn't disappoint me. 'No way anyone could recreate it'," he mimicked Kawakita's Oxford-inflected accent. "I can't take full credit, of course, but I like to think I set you on the path to discovery. Tell me, where did you find cells to cultivate?"
Kawakita unstoppered his throat. "Margo Green. Her purse. Carried some fibers . . . it's been burned since."
"Green." He nodded thoughtfully. "We'll have to think of a way to thank her for her contribution."
Kawakita found it very difficult to concentrate on what Strindberg was saying. One deep-set hazel eye was dark, sardonic, vibrantly alive, the other featureless, an eerily vacant light blue. It made his face seem lopsided and subtly, disturbingly deformed. And yet, there was something oddly familiar about those pale, angular features. They had met so briefly, yet the man had made such a violently intense impression on him . . .
"Pendergast?" Kawakita gasped.
He bowed slightly from the waist. "Yes, but not the one you're thinking of. I believe you've mistaken me for my brother. Understandable. I've been told we resemble each other quite remarkably. And of course, I haven't made it easy for you."
As he spoke, he grabbed a handful of his dripping wet hair and tugged, grimacing. Kawakita stared in confusion, then realized it was a wig. A very good one, obviously, and it had been pinned and glued on tightly. Underneath, the man's hair was quite short and brilliant coppery-red.
"Much better." He let the wig drop to the floor, where it lay looking like a drowned cat. In a conversational tone, he continued, "I've been following my brother's career for quite some time now. A little too closely for my own safety, as it turns out. I was one of the people trapped in the exhibit when the security measure malfunctioned. What a disgraceful experience - wandering around in the abject blackness of those subterranean tunnels, covered with filth, threatened with being swept away by frigid water, and ignominiously stalked by that stinking degenerate beast."
The man, Pendergast, rolled up Kawakita's sleeve, and tied a bit of cloth tightly around his upper arm. "I'd ask you to make a fist, but I doubt you'd co-operate," he said pleasantly, and then began to poke around Kawakita's inner elbow.
He tried to speak, but his lips were numb with fear. It didn't matter. He knew full well what the man was about to do, and he knew pleading for mercy would make no difference. It might even amuse the bastard, and he'd be damned before he did that.
"At any rate, when we emerged I made my way as swiftly as possible back to the museum. Missed the fun, rather. But I did manage to see the beast's corpse being loaded into an unmarked van with government plates. I managed to insinuate myself - ah, there we go."
He'd located a vein, plump and dark with trapped blood. With the syringe, he siphoned up some of the glaze in liquid suspension, held it upright and tapped it to force any air bubbles to the surface, then squeezed until fluid beaded at the tip of the needle. Kawakita moaned as Pendergast thrust the needle into his arm and emptied the massive load of reovirus directly into his bloodstream.
And still the man chattered away as he undid the tourniquet and dabbed fastidiously at the little drop of blood on Kawakita's skin with an alcohol wipe. "As I was saying, a bit of subterfuge, and I had managed to take the place of one August Strindberg, zoological pathologist. That creature came very, very near to killing my dear brother, you see. I had to know more about it. Little did I suspect that there was more to the beast than fangs and claws and cunning. Thanks to you, Gregory."
He stepped behind the chair and released his bonds. Kawakita tried to stand, but his knees gave way, and he slumped bonelessly to the floor. Not since he was four years old had he felt so much like weeping. All he could think about were the millions of viral fragments swarming in his body, attaching themselves to his DNA.
"Why?"
"You're already infected, you know," Pendergast said, with a trace of black amusement. "Breathed in tiny particles of the plant as you were processing it, I wager. I'm just speeding the process along. You would have figured it out sooner or later. It's a kindness, really. A short, sharp shock. Much preferable to slowly dawning horrified realization, wouldn't you agree?"
Now he could understand why the man had never looked him in the eyes. Pendergast would not have been able to conceal this ghastly, debauched and dark unreason behind the Strindberg-mask of insipid servility.
"But why . . . /why?/"
"You're quite brilliant," Pendergast said patronizingly. "However, a rather different energy and focus is brought to one's work when you, yourself, are the object of study. I'm intrigued by what you've accomplished here. The reovirus is capable of becoming something I'd find useful and . . . well, very amusing. I would liked to have let your creative genius flower, fruit and ripen under its own time. Regretfully, I am on a deadline."
Kawakita stared at his hands. Already, he could picture the scimitar claws sprouting from the fingertips, the thumb and smallest finger withering away, his smooth skin creasing and hardening into pebbled scales. In a harsh whisper, he asked, "And what if I fail?"
An airy wave of the hand. "I shall have to find other ways to amuse myself. Until then . . . "
And with that, Pendergast was gone.
Kawakita roused himself from his horrified stupor and stumbled to the door. He grabbed his gun, fumbling it in his shaking hands, and flung open the door. The street beyond was dark and empty. The gun dropped from his nerveless fingers, and Kawakita collapsed against the doorframe as the first of the burning, shameful tears rolled down his cheek.
Outside, a refreshing night breeze blew in off the Hudson, scattering the foul and sooty air, dispelling the clinging, murky, musky scent the lilies gave off. Diogenes threw back his head and inhaled deeply, savoring it as he savored his temporary freedom.
He would only be Diogenes for a bit longer, until he found a new name, a new identity to conceal his actions. Someone local, perhaps. He had no intention of straying very far. Maybe even get a job at museum itself. A nice, relaxing job doing something he enjoyed while waiting for his brother's return.
Inevitable, for what his brother had done was undergo the archetypical hero's journey, but he had failed. In the belly of the beast, Aloysius had faced his demon, his dragon, his inner shadow . . . and had not integrated with it. The shadow, the part of the unconscious mind which was despised for its irrational, instinctive drives, its fierce, uncivilized desires, its mysterious cunning and uncontrolled savagery. His dark self. His opposite, his alter ego -
Rejected it, killed it, blew out its brains as it had destroyed the brains of others. Failed.
Diogenes was reminded of the story of Hell's Harrowing, when Christ basically went to hell, fought and defeated Satan and his minions, then set the tormented souls free. Oh, Aloysius saw himself in that role, and Diogenes obligingly planned on creating a hell for him to harrow. There was no way now that Kawakita would refrain from illicit human experimentation, not when his own life was on the line.
And along the way there would be suffering and disfigurement and hell enough even to satiate him, if only briefly and indirectly.
Would he kill, kill again, try and kill his shadow? An old Romany saying, you can't jump over your shadow. Nor can you kill it. The things one represses are slippery as a handful of squirming serpents, and sure to pop up again.
Perhaps this time his dear brother would accept his own darkness. Perhaps not. Perhaps not until Aloysius faced he, himself . . .
end
There came another knock at the door.
Greg Kawakita glanced up irritably from rabbit serum he was purifying. The knocking sounded again, hesitant and rapid. Kawakita slipped his shoes back on and hurried over. He wasn't expecting any of his regular buyers, but that didn't mean this might not be a new client. At the door, he paused and loaded a clip into the small handgun he kept nearby. Just in case.
For a moment Kawakita didn't recognize the man on the doorstep, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing around apprehensively at the surrounding darkness of the docks. He was no cop, though, nor some drug lord's thug looking to get rid of competition.
Kawakita replaced the handgun in its hiding place and opened the door, smiling. "You made it! I'm so pleased."
The visitor stepped inside hurriedly, then froze, looking surprised at his own impudence. It had been almost a month since he'd seen August Strindberg, but the man was as irritatingly shy as ever.
"Thank you for having me over. I was worried about you. You left so abruptly . . . I was afraid . . . you know. That it was personal. My fault."
"Not at all," Kawakita said smoothly, taking him by the elbow and guiding him in. "I thought you might have assumed that, and I am sorry. I know I come off as kind of acidic and abrupt - "
"Oh, no, Greg." Strindberg stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor, squinting into the gloom and twisting his baseball cap in his bony, long-fingered hands.
"I do," he said emphatically. "And I got so caught up with my idea, I just put everything else on the backburner. Even you. That's why I invited you here tonight. I don't know if I can make it up to you, but I'd like to try."
Strindberg glanced up obliquely, still the whipped puppy ever-eager to forgive. "Thank you, Greg. It's an honor. It really is."
"If it hadn't been for you, none of this would have happened."
Kawakita thumbed the potentiometer controlling the light level, bringing it up just enough so that Strindberg could see the banks of softly bubbling aquaria, the massive filtration machinery nested in intertwined piping, the array of tinted, filtered lamps that bathed the warehouse's work area in a subtle, subaqueous glow.
He was staring hard at the aquaria. "But what is all of this, then?"
Kawakita grinned. "Remember that little theory you had?"
Five weeks ago
Kawakita leaned hard on the buzzer, the only connection between the Biohazard Level Four necropsy room and the outside world.
Through the surveillance camera, he saw the figure of the pathologist working on the remains of the creature that had been dubbed "the Museum Beast", among other colorful monikers. The man wore a bright orange space suit inflated by an air hose that made him look ridiculously like a toddler in an overstuffed snowsuit. He was rooting around in the viscera and vital organs, removing bits and pieces and sealing them into jars of preservatives, so deeply absorbed in his work that he didn't hear the buzzer.
Kawakita rang it again, and the pathologist, Strindberg, looked up. He glanced from the creature on the table to the door a few times as if making a difficult decision.
Strindberg carefully dunked his instruments in a pan of disinfectant. The pale green chemical turned dark and cloudy with the creature's blood. He washed his hands in another pan, until the gloves were free of any residue. Then he unplugged the air hose that kept his suit inflated and his oxygen supply refreshed, and stepped into the air lock, slamming the vault-type door behind himself.
Kawakita waited impatiently as the decontamination cycle began. It took seven minutes in all, repeated jets of water, EnviroChem disinfectant, and being bathed in intense ultraviolet light to completely sterilize the suit of any harmful microorganisms.
Eventually, Strindberg emerged, looking as if he'd been through a shower himself. His dark, lank hair straggled down into his face, and the acne on his cheeks and chin stood out like beacons against his flushed skin. Christ, thirty-odd years old and he still had acne. He swept his bangs up under his X-Files baseball cap, which he'd put on backwards. Gangly, gawky and socially maladroit - if you were trying to cast a science geek, you couldn't do better then August Strindberg.
"You, ah, wanted to see me, Mr. Kawakita?"
"Come here."
Strindberg shuffled over, hunching his shoulders in a habitual gesture. It was irritating, to be sure, looked as if he were apologizing for being taller than his superior. But Kawakita found he didn't mind the man's cringing deference. It was a refreshing change being on the top of the dog pile, and Strindberg's flagrant servility only enhanced it.
Kawakita threw the copies of the RFLP autoradiographs down on the table, stabbing at them with his finger. "Look at this."
"I don't know much about DNA stuff," Strindberg temporized.
"Come on, just look at it and tell me what you think. Tell me, for example, if both these look like they came from the same individual."
Strindberg, like a dog expecting to be kicked, could not make himself meet Kawakita's eyes. Instead, he frowned studiously at the alternating bands of light and dark on the autorad.
Kawakita snatched up the prints and threw them against the wall, getting a nasty little satisfaction watching the pathologist flinch. "You fucked up. Contaminated it somehow. That's almost 70 hours of runtime wasted."
"S-sorry." Strindberg rubbed his hands, then, palms pressed together, raised them and touched his thumbs to his lip. The gesture reminded Kawakita irresistibly of an enormous housefly. Disgusting. The whole of the pathologist's job, grubbing around in the putrefying remains of the creature, was totally repellant. He longed to get back to his computers, away from the necropsy room and the endless jars of sliced-up beast.
"Well, look at this, though." Strindberg was gesturing at a microscope on the bench. "I've prepared some slides. You might find them rather interesting."
Kawakita obligingly bent over the eyepiece, and let out a whistle of surprise. The cells were studded with inclusion bodies, thick accretions of replicating viruses. It was a good thing they'd decided to dissect the museum mystery monster in a Level 4 area - it was massively infected with an unknown virus.
"It's got a heavy viral load," Kawakita said. "I'm just not sure which virus. Nothing I can identify by the naked eye. We'd have to run it through the electron microscope."
"It's almost as if the cells are in the process of mutating, and some are more mutated than other. Is it a reovirus, maybe? That would explain the discrepancies in the DNA. Some of the tissue isn't as heavily affected."
Kawakita looked at Strindberg with new respect. He has been thinking exactly the same thing. A reovirus acted like nature's genetic engineer, clipping DNA from one host and inserting it into another. These "jumping genes" were not uncommon (even the common house cat proved to have DNA sequences in common with rats and baboons) and some scientists suspected they might be a hidden, driving force in evolution.
"We may never get a pure DNA sample, then, Greg," Strindberg said sadly.
Kawakita slowly forced his fist open. The stifling, oppressively muggy heat, the horrible clinging stench, the long hours cooped up in the claustrophobia-inducing space suit or trapped in the lab with Strindberg. It was making him crazy. Normally he wasn't this aggressive, or when he did get the urge to beat someone to a pulp, he kept it under exquisite control. It wasn't Strindberg's fault he was so exasperating.
He took out a handkerchief and swabbed his face and neck. The whole place stank of the creature, its musky personal reek added to the putrid perfume of decomposition. It didn't help matters any that the temperatures had soared the last week, unseasonably warm for early spring in New York.
"Smells like two pigs fucking on top of a manure pile in here," he opined, then eyed Strindberg, who was shifting around, looking more wretched and nervous than usual. "What is it?"
"Menzies called again a few hours ago."
"God dammit, what does he want this time," Kawakita exploded.
"He just wants to know, ah, if we found anything in the creature that might have . . . you know . . . medicinal properties. Something . . . some, some link, you know . . . why the Kothoga might have . . . kept . . . " Strindberg trailed off, miserable.
Kawakita felt drained, suddenly. He didn't enjoy dealing with people, especially those like Menzies. Outward politeness concealing a fierce, incisive inquisitiveness. He preferred superiors who gave him more of a free reign, as Frock had. So much more got done that way.
Not that Menzies was a superior, lord knows. He'd been hired by the government, same as Kawakita and Strindberg and the others on the team, but his role was a bit nebulous. Frock had insisted that the creature was vitally important to the vanished Kothoga culture, and Menzies had been an associate of Whittlesey in some capacity. He'd been given curatorial possession over the expedition notes, and was calling almost every day trying to pry details of the creature's physiology from the necropsy workers. Claimed it was important to understanding the creature's origin, whether it might have been deliberately hybridized and bred by the tribespeople.
Why this made any sort of difference, Kawakita had no idea. His self control cramped and oppressed him, like a permanent suit of rusty armor. He'd left off answering the phone, let the spineless Strindberg, who couldn't stand to hear it ring more than three times in a row, pick up and deal with Menzies and all the others who called.
"God, he's persistent, isn't he? You told him there was no news, and we'd call him back if there was any, right? Good, good. I'm so sick of him." Kawakita sat down in Strindberg's chair and leaning back until it creaked loudly. "He's almost as obnoxious as Pendergast."
"Pendergast?" Strindberg leaned forward. "You actually met him?"
"Briefly, yes. That was long enough. He was one of the ones who helped me get this job. Why, you know him?"
"I know of him."
"Brother. What a character. Looks like a cross between David Bowie and Sherlock Holmes, dipped in whitewash."
Strindberg cocked his head, politely inquiring.
"He's an albino. Either the grey-eyed type, or he's wearing colored contacts. Goes around dressed like he's on a Caraceni photo shoot, as if he doesn't stand out enough already, and he's got an accent out of a bad production of a Tennessee Williams play."
"I've heard that about him, yeah." Strindberg covered his mouth, trying ineffectually to muffle a laugh. "Um, so he recommended you for this?"
"Let's just say, he didn't have much choice. My services are pretty unique." Kawakita smiled wickedly. When it came to connecting to people in high places, he was a positive genius. Pendergast was trouble, that was clear from the people he'd talked to. He was the classic nail that stuck out to far and was just tempting the hammer. However - and this was where Greg's skill at manipulating people came into play - the FBI agent was highly regarded by some extremely important, well-placed people. A few judiciously chosen hints, a little glossing over of their exact relationship in the museum beast incident, and plenty of plain old relentless pestering and pouring honey had landed Kawakita his position on the team.
Kawakita glanced at the mess of Strindberg's desk. How did the pathologist find anything here? On top of his computer was a Museum Beast action figure, a cheap plastic thing. It looked like someone had welded the top half of a gorilla to the bottom half of a carnivorous dinosaur. Probably exactly what the toymaker had done, a rush job to capitalize on a passing sensation.
And yet, it wasn't entirely inaccurate. The creature, against all reason, seemed to possess characteristics of both primates and theropod dinosaurs, the group that included famous creatures such as Tyrannosaurus rex and, at some time in the early Jurassic, gave rise to birds.
"So how's it going on your end, Augie? Find anything in that carcass to prove what it is? Or are we going with Menzies's theory that the Kothoga persuaded a crocodile to rape a baboon?"
"It can't be anything. It's an impossible combination, a total chimera!" Strindberg still avoided meeting his eyes, concentrating on playing with the action figure. He pressed a button on its back, and the upraised arms swung down, the plastic trident claws miming a disemboweling strike. How cute.
"Convergent evolution?" Kawakita suggested. This was the theory that form followed function, so two animals of dissimilar ancestry would evolve to look similar if they occupied the same environmental niches, because the niches demanded a certain ideal bodily form. For example, dolphins, ichthyosaurs and sharks had similar shapes because they were all fast-swimming, backboned marine predators, even though one was a mammal, one was a reptile, and one was a cartilaginous fish.
Strindberg looked pained. "That can only take you so far. And the resemblances break down on closer inspection. Octopi and vertebrates evolved camera-type eyes independently, but I can still tell the difference between them when I start dissecting. This thing is so bizarre, it's almost artificial."
Kawakita took off his glasses and mopped his brow. "Artificial? You're not going to lay some sort of X-files crap on me, are you, Strindberg? Genetic engineering can't do that. At least, not yet."
Much to his amusement, Strindberg seemed to be doubting his own sanity at what the examination showed.
"I don't know how else it could occur. For it to have both reptile and mammal features, its closest ancestor would have to be a gorgonopsid, something like /Lycaenops/. Leaving aside the astronomical odds against it evolving features only found in apes, protomammals went extinct at the same time the dinosaurs were grabbing all the large land animal niches. Over two hundred million years ago! Hiding in a jungle for a few million years is one thing . . . or in the ocean, maybe, like a coelacanth. But what we consider an ancient jungle is just a blip in history. In the time since the therapsids, entire continents have appeared and disappeared. Plus, we're talking about a large predator here. Predator species, especially large-bodied ones like this, usually don't last very long. About five million years or so, give or take, before the next improved version comes along."
"It's been hiding somewhere," Kawakita insisted.
Strindberg traced his finger along the prints. "I think I know where it's been hiding."
"Alien space ship?"
"No." The pathologist looked up at Kawakita with atypical slyness, almost grinning. "Right under our noses."
"In New York?!" Kawakita pictured some sort of urban Bigfoot, alligators in the sewers. Maybe Strindberg needed a few days off.
"To be more specific, in flesh and bones and nerves and blood. In the meat, as you might say. It's been hiding in the DNA of some other creature," Strindberg said softly. "A completely impenetrable jungle. One we didn't even know existed until 40 years ago. We only have the vaguest idea of its geography. And even when we do eventually map it, we still have to interpret the Rosetta stone of its keys."
This was brilliant, fucking brilliant. He wouldn't have thought Strindberg capable of it. "Frock's fractal evolution," Kawakita agreed.
Strindberg frowned. "Not . . . not quite. He thinks that these things just spontaneously emerge, convergently resembling each other, correct? But what I'm thinking is, this sort of thing is in all of us. In the junk DNA."
Kawakita sat up straight, his weariness suddenly forgotten. "So you're saying, something - some monkey, some leopard, some lizard - is walking around in the jungle with the ability to become a monster like that?" He gestured to the submarine-type door, indicating the corpse beyond.
"Yes, exactly." Strindberg became animated now, pacing about and waving his bony hands in the air to illustrate his points. It gave Kawakita a migraine just watching him. "I'm talking more about an atavism. A horse born with toes, like its Eohippus ancestor. Or babies with tails, or covered with hair."
Kawakita was shaking his head. "False atavisms. Those examples aren't really expressions of ancestral forms. Horses with toes, for example. It's a mutation in the Hox15 gene, which should be suppressing the development of digits, not a reversion to /Eohippus/."
"It's the only good explanation. There are true atavisms, Mr. Kawakita. Like /Opisthocomus hoazin/. The bird, you know? When dinosaur forelimbs evolved into bird wings, the plan to build digits wasn't lost, another gene just evolved to suppress them. Turn the suppressor off, and you have a bird with dinosaur claws."
He picked up the toy again, running his finger over the taloned forelimbs. It was one detail the model had exactly right.
"Obviously, the ancestral Mbwun didn't disappear and leave no descendants. It simply evolved very rapidly into a strikingly dissimilar, innocuous-looking form. And it has remained that way, until some individuals encountered this reovirus which released its genetic shackles, so to speak."
Kawakita shook his head again, but there was no stopping Strindberg now. Excitedly, he continued, "It's happened again and again in evolution. Neotony, for example. Take axolotls, cave salamanders. They remain in their larval form instead of dropping gills and growing legs. But if you inject them with the proper hormones, they'll develop into an adult form, something that is never seen in nature."
"I thought you said you didn't know much about DNA."
Strindberg flinched, and looked away uncomfortably. "Ah, about the mechanics of it, which gene does what? No, no."
"Sure, it sounds good, but you need to look past the meat end of it, August. Flesh and blood and bones and nerves, they're all the byproduct of the gene's desire to reproduce itself. It's like trying to dissect out granules of paint from the Mona Lisa to discover the genius of DaVinci. The paint, the meat - it's just a vehicle."
"I don't understand," Strindberg said. "It doesn't make sense." His eyes were fixed on the floor. It was the closest he'd yet come to standing up to Kawakita. "Anyways, what I'm saying is, something activated the junk DNA, turned an otherwise normal creature into the Mbwun beast. It's the only explanation."
"You're forgetting something, Strindberg. The selfish genes . . . the reovirus. What's in it for the virus?"
Strindberg's shoulders slumped, the whole of the man seemed to deflate like a punctured balloon. A beautiful theory destroyed by a troublesome little fact. He pondered out loud, "The virus, it looked oddly inert, didn't it? The cells were deeply affected, but there were no signs it was, you know, infectious. No burst cells, no free viruses. It was as if the reovirus had insinuated itself into the creature's DNA, and just sort of stayed there. Why would it do that?"
Kawakita collapsed back into the crepitant chair, fanning himself with the file folder. "You got me there, buddy. The virus reproduced in the lily, but did something totally different in the creature. There's got to be a link, and we just don't know it yet. Maybe the virus was too 'hot' for its own good, like Ebola Zaire. It was so successful at reproducing and killing its host that it didn't give itself time to spread. The really successful strains, like AIDS or rabies, they don't kill you right away. Viruses have no interest in killing their hosts. They want to take over your cells to reproduce themselves, but they also want you to be shedding viruses and infecting other hosts."
"It still doesn't make sense," he said stubbornly. "It has such a precise and startling effect. I doesn't just make the creature sick, it changes it into something else! What other virus does that?"
Kawakita was getting sick of the argument. It was hot, too hot, and he was having trouble thinking. The rank smell of rotting Mbwun-meat seemed to have sunk into his skin. He wanted a long, scalding bath, and yet he felt even that would not free him of it.
"It could be very useful in genetic engineering, if you could figure out how to make it insert the genes you want it to. You could back-engineer cures for just about any disease out there. Or," Strindberg added, in a tone of studied nonchalance, "You could create a disease and the cure. If you were the only source of the antidote, you could set your price. You'd be a multi-billionaire. Shoot, you would own the world."
Kawakita stared at him in astonishment and rising excitement. "Ah, Augie, that's not very . . . I mean, as scientists . . . you couldn't hold something like that back. It wouldn't be very altruistic, would it?"
Strindberg turned to him, wide-eyed. "I know! Isn't it an awful thought? Imagine if something like this got into the wrong hands!"
Kawakita swallowed. Suddenly it felt as though he had a mouthful of blotter paper, soaking up all his saliva.
"A new Hitler," Strindberg mused, "Could design a virus just to infect people of a certain ethnicity, like those conspiracy theorists think AIDS was designed to do. Or if you decided to improve on the human genome, wow, think about that! You could create a race of super-men, designed to your specifications, but only the people you chose to sell to."
Somehow, Kawakita found his voice. "It's academic, though, isn't it? The reovirus only grew in the lily, and the lily is extinct. All the extant samples were destroyed. There's no way anyone could recreate it."
"Yes. We certainly lucked out, didn't we?"
Back at the warehouse
Strindberg sat at the small table where Kawakita took his infrequent meals, his jaw hanging open in an expression of gormless adoration. "You figured it out, all by yourself? Cultivating the, the Mbwun lily?" He stumbled over the Kothoga word. "All because of what I said?"
"I owe it all to you."
Kawakita put a hand on Strindberg's wrist, and watched with secret glee as the pathologist blushed and squirmed, but did not pull away. Just as he'd thought. He'd picked up the vibes from Strindberg, and although he had no intention of actually doing anything with the man, he wasn't above a little platonic teasing to put him off balance.
"That means so much to me," he said, choking up a bit.
Kawakita poured hot water into his cup, watching in satisfaction as the tea leaves floated up for an instant, then grew soggy and sank.
To Strindberg, tea was apparently something you drank cold out of a Snapple bottle. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, but raised the cup politely to his lips.
Just as he was about to swallow, the man grinned and joked, "Say, you aren't trying to dope me up with dried lily leaves, are you?"
Kawakita hesitated. It was just the tiniest of guilty pauses, but a horrible feral expression came over Strindberg's face, and he immediately leapt out of the chair, lunging towards him with his arms raised defensively. Kawakita swung the pot full of water up, and Strindberg recoiled with a loud cry, dropping to his knees and clawing at his eyes. He'd never seen Strindberg - seen anyone - move so fast.
Kawakita dropped the pot, letting it shatter to pieces. "Oh, god, oh, god!" His mind was racing, trying to figure out what had happened.
Strindberg glanced up, and Kawakita recoiled in shock. The man's eye was ruined, an all-over clouded grey. He stammered out an apology, wondering if he could risk calling 911. How could the hot water have caused so much damage so fast?
But Strindberg was standing calmly now, not in any apparent pain whatsoever. Then Kawakita noticed the tiny piece of brown-and-clear plastic stuck to his cheek by a runnel of tears. Strindberg rubbed his face, found it, and held it out on the tip of his finger. A contact lens. It had disguised the color of his dead eye, and incidentally protected it from the boiling water.
Before he could process what he saw, Strindberg gripped him by the arms and forced him down into the chair. Kawakita struggled, but the man's grip was like iron. Strindberg let go of one arm, and quick as a striking rattlesnake, slapped Kawakita across the face. He sagged in Strindberg's grip, shocked senseless by the pain. He was pretty sure his nose was broken. It felt numb, and he could taste hot, salty blood running into his mouth. In a detached way, he realized Strindberg was tying him down with electrical cord. He began to struggle weakly.
"None of that, now," the man said. "What a naughty boy you are."
Kawakita went still obediently, hating himself.
Now that he was secure, Strindberg strolled around the warehouse, hands clasped behind his back, closely scrutinizing the equipment and flipping imperiously through Kawakita's handwritten notes. He opened the one of the small refrigeration units, and exclaimed in pleased surprise, removing a vial full of a pale green liquid. Rummaging around in a few drawers awarded him an unused syringe and some other small necessities. He leisurely strolled over, leaning down in front of his victim, his face only a few inches away.
"Awfully resourceful, Kawakita. I knew you'd think of a source for the lily, and you didn't disappoint me. 'No way anyone could recreate it'," he mimicked Kawakita's Oxford-inflected accent. "I can't take full credit, of course, but I like to think I set you on the path to discovery. Tell me, where did you find cells to cultivate?"
Kawakita unstoppered his throat. "Margo Green. Her purse. Carried some fibers . . . it's been burned since."
"Green." He nodded thoughtfully. "We'll have to think of a way to thank her for her contribution."
Kawakita found it very difficult to concentrate on what Strindberg was saying. One deep-set hazel eye was dark, sardonic, vibrantly alive, the other featureless, an eerily vacant light blue. It made his face seem lopsided and subtly, disturbingly deformed. And yet, there was something oddly familiar about those pale, angular features. They had met so briefly, yet the man had made such a violently intense impression on him . . .
"Pendergast?" Kawakita gasped.
He bowed slightly from the waist. "Yes, but not the one you're thinking of. I believe you've mistaken me for my brother. Understandable. I've been told we resemble each other quite remarkably. And of course, I haven't made it easy for you."
As he spoke, he grabbed a handful of his dripping wet hair and tugged, grimacing. Kawakita stared in confusion, then realized it was a wig. A very good one, obviously, and it had been pinned and glued on tightly. Underneath, the man's hair was quite short and brilliant coppery-red.
"Much better." He let the wig drop to the floor, where it lay looking like a drowned cat. In a conversational tone, he continued, "I've been following my brother's career for quite some time now. A little too closely for my own safety, as it turns out. I was one of the people trapped in the exhibit when the security measure malfunctioned. What a disgraceful experience - wandering around in the abject blackness of those subterranean tunnels, covered with filth, threatened with being swept away by frigid water, and ignominiously stalked by that stinking degenerate beast."
The man, Pendergast, rolled up Kawakita's sleeve, and tied a bit of cloth tightly around his upper arm. "I'd ask you to make a fist, but I doubt you'd co-operate," he said pleasantly, and then began to poke around Kawakita's inner elbow.
He tried to speak, but his lips were numb with fear. It didn't matter. He knew full well what the man was about to do, and he knew pleading for mercy would make no difference. It might even amuse the bastard, and he'd be damned before he did that.
"At any rate, when we emerged I made my way as swiftly as possible back to the museum. Missed the fun, rather. But I did manage to see the beast's corpse being loaded into an unmarked van with government plates. I managed to insinuate myself - ah, there we go."
He'd located a vein, plump and dark with trapped blood. With the syringe, he siphoned up some of the glaze in liquid suspension, held it upright and tapped it to force any air bubbles to the surface, then squeezed until fluid beaded at the tip of the needle. Kawakita moaned as Pendergast thrust the needle into his arm and emptied the massive load of reovirus directly into his bloodstream.
And still the man chattered away as he undid the tourniquet and dabbed fastidiously at the little drop of blood on Kawakita's skin with an alcohol wipe. "As I was saying, a bit of subterfuge, and I had managed to take the place of one August Strindberg, zoological pathologist. That creature came very, very near to killing my dear brother, you see. I had to know more about it. Little did I suspect that there was more to the beast than fangs and claws and cunning. Thanks to you, Gregory."
He stepped behind the chair and released his bonds. Kawakita tried to stand, but his knees gave way, and he slumped bonelessly to the floor. Not since he was four years old had he felt so much like weeping. All he could think about were the millions of viral fragments swarming in his body, attaching themselves to his DNA.
"Why?"
"You're already infected, you know," Pendergast said, with a trace of black amusement. "Breathed in tiny particles of the plant as you were processing it, I wager. I'm just speeding the process along. You would have figured it out sooner or later. It's a kindness, really. A short, sharp shock. Much preferable to slowly dawning horrified realization, wouldn't you agree?"
Now he could understand why the man had never looked him in the eyes. Pendergast would not have been able to conceal this ghastly, debauched and dark unreason behind the Strindberg-mask of insipid servility.
"But why . . . /why?/"
"You're quite brilliant," Pendergast said patronizingly. "However, a rather different energy and focus is brought to one's work when you, yourself, are the object of study. I'm intrigued by what you've accomplished here. The reovirus is capable of becoming something I'd find useful and . . . well, very amusing. I would liked to have let your creative genius flower, fruit and ripen under its own time. Regretfully, I am on a deadline."
Kawakita stared at his hands. Already, he could picture the scimitar claws sprouting from the fingertips, the thumb and smallest finger withering away, his smooth skin creasing and hardening into pebbled scales. In a harsh whisper, he asked, "And what if I fail?"
An airy wave of the hand. "I shall have to find other ways to amuse myself. Until then . . . "
And with that, Pendergast was gone.
Kawakita roused himself from his horrified stupor and stumbled to the door. He grabbed his gun, fumbling it in his shaking hands, and flung open the door. The street beyond was dark and empty. The gun dropped from his nerveless fingers, and Kawakita collapsed against the doorframe as the first of the burning, shameful tears rolled down his cheek.
Outside, a refreshing night breeze blew in off the Hudson, scattering the foul and sooty air, dispelling the clinging, murky, musky scent the lilies gave off. Diogenes threw back his head and inhaled deeply, savoring it as he savored his temporary freedom.
He would only be Diogenes for a bit longer, until he found a new name, a new identity to conceal his actions. Someone local, perhaps. He had no intention of straying very far. Maybe even get a job at museum itself. A nice, relaxing job doing something he enjoyed while waiting for his brother's return.
Inevitable, for what his brother had done was undergo the archetypical hero's journey, but he had failed. In the belly of the beast, Aloysius had faced his demon, his dragon, his inner shadow . . . and had not integrated with it. The shadow, the part of the unconscious mind which was despised for its irrational, instinctive drives, its fierce, uncivilized desires, its mysterious cunning and uncontrolled savagery. His dark self. His opposite, his alter ego -
Rejected it, killed it, blew out its brains as it had destroyed the brains of others. Failed.
Diogenes was reminded of the story of Hell's Harrowing, when Christ basically went to hell, fought and defeated Satan and his minions, then set the tormented souls free. Oh, Aloysius saw himself in that role, and Diogenes obligingly planned on creating a hell for him to harrow. There was no way now that Kawakita would refrain from illicit human experimentation, not when his own life was on the line.
And along the way there would be suffering and disfigurement and hell enough even to satiate him, if only briefly and indirectly.
Would he kill, kill again, try and kill his shadow? An old Romany saying, you can't jump over your shadow. Nor can you kill it. The things one represses are slippery as a handful of squirming serpents, and sure to pop up again.
Perhaps this time his dear brother would accept his own darkness. Perhaps not. Perhaps not until Aloysius faced he, himself . . .
end
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