Douglas Preston - Relic

“No one knows.”

“And the saliva?”

“Indeterminate.”

Frock’s head sank down on his chest. After a few minutes, he looked up.

“You continue to call the claw a weapon,” he said. “I assume, then, that you continue to believe the killer is human?”

Pendergast closed his briefcase. “I simply don’t see any other possibility. Do you think, Dr. Frock, an animal could decapitate a body with surgical precision, punch a hole in the skull and locate an internal organ the size of a walnut that only someone trained in human anatomy could recognize? And the killer’s ability to elude our searches of the subbasement has been impressive.”

[202] Frock’s head had sunk on his chest again. As the seconds ticked off into minutes, Pendergast remained motionless, watching.

Frock suddenly raised his head. “Mr. Pendergast,” he said, his voice booming. Margo jumped. “I’ve heard your theory. Would you care to hear mine?”

Pendergast nodded. “Of course.”

“Very well,” Frock replied. “Are you familiar with the Transvaal Shales?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Pendergast.

“The Transvaal Shales were discovered in 1945 by Alistair Van Vrouwenhoek, a paleontologist with South Africa’s Witwatersrand University. They were Cambrian, about six hundred million years old. And they were full of bizarre life forms the likes of which had never been seen before or since. Asymmetrical life forms, not showing even the bilateral symmetry of virtually all animal life on earth today. They occurred, coincidentally, at the time of the Cambrian mass extinction. Now most people, Mr. Pendergast, believe the Transvaal Shales represent a dead end of evolution: life experimenting with every conceivable form before settling down to the bilaterally symmetric form you see today.”

“But you do not hold such a view,” Pendergast said.

Frock cleared his throat. “Correct. A certain type of organism predominates in these shales. It had powerful fins and long suction pads and oversized crushing and tearing mouth parts. Those mouth parts could saw through rock, and the fins allowed it to move at twenty miles per hour through the water. No doubt it was a highly successful and quite savage predator. It was, I believe, too successful: it hunted its prey into extinction and then quickly became extinct itself. It thus caused the minor mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian era. It , not natural selection, killed off all the other forms of life in the Transvaal Shales.”

Pendergast blinked. “And?”

“I’ve run computer simulations of evolution [203] according to the new mathematical theory of fractal turbulence. The result? Every sixty to seventy million years or so, life starts getting very well adapted to its environment. Too well adapted, perhaps. There is a population explosion of the successful life forms. Then, suddenly, a new species appears out of the blue. It is almost always a predatory creature, a killing machine. It tears through the host population, killing, feeding, multiplying. Slowly at first, then ever faster.”

Frock gestured toward the sandstone fossil plaque on his desk. “Mr. Pendergast, let me show you something.” The agent stood up and moved forward.

“This is a set of tracks made by a creature that lived during the Upper Cretaceous,” Frock continued. “Right on the K-T boundary, to be exact. This is the only such fossil of its kind we’ve found; there is no other.”

“K-T?” asked Pendergast.

“Cretaceous-Tertiary. It’s the boundary that marks the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.”

Pendergast nodded, but still looked puzzled.

“There is a connection here that has so far gone unnoticed,” Frock continued. “The figurine of Mbwun, the claw impressions made by the killer, and these fossil tracks.”

Pendergast looked down. “Mbwun? The figurine that Dr. Cuthbert removed from the crates and put on display?”

Frock nodded.

“Hmm. How old are these prints?”

“Approximately sixty-five million years old. They came from a formation where the very last of the dinosaurs were found. Before the mass extinction, that is.”

There was another long silence.

“Ah. And the connection?.. .” asked Pendergast after a moment.

“I said that nothing in the anthropology collections matches the claw marks. But I did not say there were no representations , no sculptures of such a claw. We’ve [204] learned that the forelimbs on the figurine of Mbwun have three claws, with a thickened central digit. Now look at these tracks,” Frock said, pointing to the fossil. “Think back to the reconstruction of the claw and the claw marks in the victim.”

“So you think,” Pendergast said, “that the killer might be the same animal that made these tracks? A dinosaur?” Margo thought she detected amusement in Pendergast’s voice.

Frock looked at the agent, shaking his head vigorously. “No, Mr. Pendergast, not a dinosaur. Nothing as common as a dinosaur. We’re talking about the proof of my theory of aberrant evolution. You know my work. This is the creature I believe killed off the dinosaurs.”

Pendergast remained silent.

Frock leaned closer to the FBI agent. “I believe,” he said, “this creature, this freak of nature, is the cause of the dinosaur’s extinction. Not a meteorite, not a change in climate, but some terrible predator—the creature that made the tracks preserved in this fossil. The embodiment of the Callisto Effect. It was not large, but it was extremely powerful and fast. It probably hunted in cooperative packs and was intelligent. But because superpredators are so short lived, they aren’t well represented in the fossil record. Except in the Transvaal Shales. And in these tracks here, from the Tzun-je-jin Badlands. Are you following me?”

“Yes.”

“We are in a population explosion today.”

Pendergast remained silent.

“ Human beings , Mr. Pendergast!” Frock continued, his voice rising. “Five thousand years ago there were only ten million of us on the globe. Today there are six billion! We’re the most successful form of life the earth has ever seen!” He tapped the copies of Fractal Evolution that lay on his desk. “Yesterday, you asked about my next book. It will constitute an extension of my theory on the Callisto Effect, applying it to modern life. My [205] theory predicts that at any moment, some grotesque mutation will come about; some creature that will prey on the human population. I’m not saying the killer is the same creature that killed off the dinosaurs. But a similar creature ... well, look at these tracks again. They look like Mbwun! We call it convergent evolution, where two creatures look alike not because they’re necessarily related, but because they evolve to do the same thing. A creature that’s evolved to kill. There are too many similarities, Mr. Pendergast.”

Pendergast brought his briefcase onto his lap. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Dr. Frock.”

“Don’t you see? Something came back in that crate from South America . Unleashed in the Museum. A highly successful predator. That figurine of Mbwun is the proof. The indigenous tribes were aware of this creature, and built a religion around it. Whittlesey inadvertently sent it into civilization.”

“You’ve seen this figurine yourself?” Pendergast asked. “Dr. Cuthbert seemed reluctant to show it to me.”

“No,” Frock admitted. “But I have it on the best authority. I plan to make my own observations at the earliest opportunity.”

“Dr. Frock, we looked into the matter of the crates yesterday,” Pendergast said. “Dr. Cuthbert assured us there was nothing of value in them, and we have no reason to disbelieve him.” He stood up, impassive. “I thank you for your time and help. Your theory is most interesting, and I truly wish I could subscribe to it.” He shrugged. “However, my own opinion remains unchanged for the time being. Forgive me for being blunt, but I hope you will be able to separate your conjectures from the cold facts of our investigation, and help us in any way you can.” He walked toward the door. “Now, I hope you’ll excuse me. If anything comes to mind, please contact me.”