Douglas Preston - Reliquary

A young man hustled up to Mrs. Wisher. “It’s the mayor,” he panted, holding out a cellular phone.

Tucking the microphone into her purse, Mrs. Wisher took the phone. “Yes?” she said coolly, without breaking stride. There was a long silence. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but the time for permits is long past. You don’t seem to realize this city is in an emergency. And we’re putting you on notice. This is your final chance to bring peace to our streets.” There was a pause while she listened, placing a hand over her free ear to shut out the noise of the crowd. “I’m grieved to hear that the march is hindering your policemen. And I’m pleased to know that the Chief of Police is mounting some operation of his own. But let me ask you a question. Where were your policemen when my Pamela was murdered? Where were your—”

She listened impatiently. “No. Absolutely not. The city is drowning in crime and you are threatening me with a citation? If you have nothing else to say, I’ll hang up. We’re rather busy here.”

She handed the phone back to her assistant. “If he calls again, tell him I’m engaged.”

She turned to Smithback, slipping one hand into his arm. “This next stop is the site where my daughter was killed. I need to be strong for this, Bill. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Smithback licked his lips. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

= 42 =

D’AGOSTA FOLLOWED Margo down a dusty, poorly lit hall on the first floor of the Museum. Once part of an ancient exhibit, the hall had been sealed from public view for years, and was now used primarily as overflow storage space for the mammalian collection. Various stuffed beasts, in postures of attack or defense, lined both sides of the narrow corridor. D’Agosta nearly snagged his jacket on the claw of a rearing grizzly. He found himself keeping his arms close to his sides to avoid brushing against the rest of the moldering specimens.

As they rounded a corner into a cul-de-sac, D’Agosta saw a huge stuffed elephant dead ahead, its much-repaired gray skin tattering and flaking. Beneath its massive belly, hidden in shadow, was the two-story metal door of a freight elevator.

“We gotta make this quick,” he said as Margo pressed the elevator button. “One Police Plaza has been mobilizing all afternoon. Looks like they’re getting ready to storm the Normandy beaches. Besides that, there’s some kind of surprise rally by Take Back Our City forming along Fifth Avenue.” There was a smell in the air that reminded him of certain summer crime scenes he’d visited.

“The preparation lab is just down the hall,” Margo said, watching as D’Agosta’s nose wrinkled. “They must be macerating a specimen.”

“Right,” said D’Agosta. He glanced up at the huge elephant overhead. “Where are the tusks?”

“That’s Jumbo, P. T. Barnum’s old showpiece. He was hit by a freight train in Ontario and his tusks were shattered. Barnum ground them up, made gelatin out of them, and served it at Jumbo’s memorial dinner.”

“Resourceful.” D’Agosta slid a cigar into his mouth. Nobody could complain about a little smoke with a reek like this.

“Sorry,” said Margo, grinning sheepishly. “No smoking. Possibility of methane in the air.”

D’Agosta put the cigar back in his pocket as the elevator door slid open. Methane. Now there was something to think about.

They stepped out into a sweltering basement corridor lined with steam pipes and enormous packing crates. One of the crates was open, exposing, the knobby end of a black bone, big as a tree limb. Must be a dinosaur, D’Agosta thought. He struggled to control a feeling of apprehension as he remembered the last time he’d been in the Museum’s basement.

“We tested the drug on several organisms,” Margo said, walking into a room whose bright neon lights stood in sharp contrast to the dingy corridor outside. In one corner, a lab worker was bending over an oscilloscope. “Lab mice, E. coli bacteria, blue-green algae, and several single-celled animals. The mice are in here.”

D’Agosta peered into the small holding area, then stepped back quickly. “Jesus.” The white walls of the stacked cages were flecked with blood. Torn bodies of dead mice littered the floors of the cage, shrouded in their own entrails.

Margo peered into the cages. “You can see that of the four mice originally placed in each cage, only one remains alive.”

“Why didn’t you put them all in separate cages?” D’Agosta asked.

Margo glanced up at him. “Leaving them together was the whole point. I wanted to examine behavioral as well as physical changes.”

“Looks like things got a little out of hand.”

Margo nodded. “All of these mice were fed the Mbwun lily, and all became massively infected by the reovirus. It’s highly unusual for a virus that affects humans also to affect mice. Normally, they’re very host-specific. Now watch this.”

As Margo approached the topmost cage, the surviving mouse leapt at her, hissing, clinging to the wire, its long yellow incisors knitting the air. Margo stepped back.

“Charming,” said D’Agosta. “They fought to the death, didn’t they?”

Margo nodded. “The most surprising thing is that this mouse was badly wounded in the fight. But look at how thoroughly its cuts have healed. And if you check the other cages, you’ll see the same phenomenon. The drug must have some powerful rejuvenative or healing properties. The light probably makes them irritable, but we already know that the drug makes one sensitive to light. In fact, Jen left one of the lights on and by morning the protozoan colony directly beneath it had died.”

She stared at the cages for a moment. “There’s something else I’d like to show you,” she said at last. “Jen, can you give me a hand here?”

With the lab assistant’s help, Margo slid a divider across the topmost cage, trapping the live mouse on one side. Then she deftly removed the remains of the dead mice with a long pair of forceps and dropped them into a Pyrex basin.

“Let’s take a quick look,” she said, carrying the pieces into the main lab and placing them on the stage of a wide-angle Stereozoom. She peered through the eyepieces, probing the remains with a scapula. As D’Agosta looked on, she sliced open the back of a head, peeled the skin and fur away from the skull, and examined it carefully. Next, she cut open a section of spinal cord and peered closely at the vertebrae.

“As you can see, it looks normal,” she said, straightening up. “Except for the rejuvenative qualities, it seems the primary changes are behavioral, not morphological. At least, that’s the case in this species. It’s too early to be sure, but perhaps Kawakita did succeed in taming the drug in the end.”

“Yeah,” D’Agosta added. “After it was too late.”

“That’s what’s been puzzling me. Kawakita must have taken the drug before it reached this stage of development. Why would he take such a risk, trying the drug on himself? Even after testing it on other people, he couldn’t have been sure. It wasn’t like him to act so rashly.”

“Arrogance,” said D’Agosta.

“Arrogance doesn’t explain turning yourself into a guinea pig. Kawakita was a careful scientist, almost to a fault. It just doesn’t seem in character.”

“Some of the most unlikely people become addicts,” D’Agosta said. “I see it all the time. Doctors. Nurses. Even police officers.”

“Maybe.” Margo sounded unconvinced. “Anyway, over here are the bacteria and the protozoans we inoculated with the reovirus. Strangely enough, they all tested negative: the amoebas, paramecia, rotifers, everything. Except for this one.” She had open an incubator, exposing rows of Petrie dishes covered with purple agar. Glossy, dime-sized welts in each dish of agar indicated growing colonies of protozoans.