James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

Not that my creations need much nurturing at this point .

“Look, Papa! A frog!”

Jori went to touch the black-skinned amphibian as it clung to a vine.

“No, no…” Cutter warned and pulled the boy’s hand back.

He could understand his son mistaking this sinkhole denizen for its common cousin up top, a frog unique to this tepui. The native species found above, Oreophrynella , could not hop or swim, but had developed opposable toes for a better grip on the slippery rock surfaces.

But the specimen here was not native .

“Remember,” Cutter warned his son, “down here, we must be careful.”

This frog had a potent neurotoxin engineered into the glandular structure of its skin. He had culled the sequence of genes from the Australian stonefish, the most venomous species in the world. One touch and a painful death would soon follow.

The frog had few enemies — at least in the natural world.

Disturbed by their voices, it skittered farther up the vine. The motion drew the attention of another predator. From under a leaf, diaphanous wings spread to the width of an open hand. The leaf fluttered free of its hold on the stem, revealing its clever bit of mimicry.

It was part of the Phylliidae family, sometimes called walking leaves.

Only this creation didn’t walk.

Its wings fluttered through the mists, its tiny legs scrabbling at the air as it fell silently toward the frog.

“Papa, stop it!” Jori must have sensed what was about to happen. His son had a boyish affinity for frogs. He even kept a large terrarium in his bedroom, holding a collection of several species.

Jori moved to swat at the gently fluttering wings, but Cutter caught his wrist — not that the modified insect would do anything worse than sting the boy, but here was another teachable moment.

“Jori, what did we learn about the Law of the Jungle, about prey and predator? What’s that called?”

He hung his head and mumbled to his toes. “Survival of the fittest.”

He smiled and gave his son’s hair a tussle. “Good boy.”

Landing on the frog’s back, the insect sank its sharp legs through the toxic skin and began to feed. As son and father watched, those pale outstretched wings slowly turned rosy with fresh blood.

“It’s pretty,” Jori said.

No, it’s nature .

Beauty was simply another way Mother Nature survived, whether it be the sweet-smelling flower that drew the bee, or the wings of a butterfly that confused a hunter. All of the natural world had one goal: to survive, to pass its genes on to the next generation.

Cutter stepped to the edge of the landing and stared down that mile-long drop to the bottom. Every tens of meters the ecosystem changed. Near the top of the sinkhole, it was clammy and cold; down at the bottom, hot and tropical. The gradient in between allowed for the creation of test zones, unique ecological niches, to challenge his works in progress. Each level was color coded, running from lighter shades above to darker below, each separated by biological and physical barriers.

Black was the deepest and most deadly.

Even under the glow of the orchids, he could barely make out the dark humid jungle that grew along the bottom, its loam enriched by the detritus that rained down from above. That patch of isolated rain forest made a perfect hothouse furnace — where his greatest creations took shelter, growing stronger, learning to survive on their own.

The native tribes of this region feared these mist-shrouded tepuis, claiming dangerous spirits lurked here.

How true that was now.

Only these new spirits were his creations, designed for what was to come. He stood at the edge, looking across the expanse of the sinkhole.

Here was a new Galápagos for a new world.

One beyond the tyranny of humankind .

“Where’s the damned sun?” Kowalski groaned.

Gray understood the big man’s frustration. He stood in the pilothouse of the massive treaded vehicle and studied the landscape beyond its tall windows. Though it was midmorning, it was pitch-black outside. With the moon already down, bright stars twinkled coldly across a cloudless sky. Occasional ethereal waves of brilliance rolled across the starscape, in hues of emerald and crimson, amid splashes of electric blue.

This dramatic storm of the aurora australis — the southern polar lights — had chased them across the frozen expanse of Queen Maud Land during their overnight trek. The fierceness of the display reflected the severity of the solar flare that compromised satellite communication across Antarctica. Each dazzling dance of the aurora reminded Gray how isolated they were out here.

He studied the terrain for some clue to where they were going. After abandoning Karen and the other researchers at the lone remaining Halley module, Gray and his team had headed east in the large vehicle, trundling across a flat sea of snow and ice. According to the dynamic map display above the pilot’s station, their path paralleled the distant coastline. But out the window, there was no sign of sea or ocean, just a frozen world of white and blue. The only feature that broke up the monotonous landscape rose to the south of their position. A line of black craggy peaks poked out of the ice, marking the tops of buried mountains. Razor-sharp, the crags looked like a row of fangs and were in fact named Fenriskjeften — or the Jaws of Fenris, named after the mythic Nordic wolf.

Conversation drew his attention back to the control deck behind him — and to their host, Stella Harrington, daughter of the reclusive professor they were headed to meet.

“We actually designed our CAAT after the prototype built by DARPA,” Stella explained to her avid pupil.

Jason stood next to her at the helm station, looking at a set of schematics for their strange vehicle. He plainly could not get enough information about their unique mode of transport.

Or maybe it was his teacher.

In her early twenties, Stella was the same age as Jason, with a pixie blond cut, stunning green eyes, and curves that showed even through her heavy wool sweater and thick polar pants. She was also whip-smart, holding a dual master’s in botany and evolutionary biology, a challenging match for Sigma’s resident computer genius.

“I remember seeing a video of that DARPA prototype,” Jason said. “It was one-fifth this size. Can you still travel over water in this larger craft?”

“Why do you think it’s called a Captive Air Amphibious Transport?” Stella teasingly rolled her eyes. “Each individual tread of the belts is made of a buoyant foam, allowing us to travel over both land or sea. And out here, that’s important.”

Jason frowned, glancing out to the frozen expanse. “Why do you need to be amphibious out here?”

“Because we use the CAAT mostly—” She suddenly stopped, perhaps knowing she was speaking too freely.

It had been that way since they boarded. Any conversation was laced with gaps and silences. She still hadn’t told them what sort of trouble her father was in, only that he needed their help.

She looked away, her voice lowering guiltily. “You’ll see.”

Jason didn’t press the matter.

“But the CAAT is still useful over the ice,” Stella continued more confidently. “We can get her up to eighty miles an hour on flat terrain, and her length allows us to forge narrow crevasses.”

Jason studied the schematics. “The vehicle reminds me somewhat of Admiral Byrd’s snow cruiser, the big polar truck built just after World War II. Are you familiar with it?”