Douglas Preston - Relic

Frock leaned back in the wheelchair. “Ten days ago, the crates were moved into the Secure Area, and then three days later, the two boys are killed. Another day, and a guard is killed. What has happened‘? Simple: the beast cannot get to the fibers anymore, so it kills a human being and eats its hypothalamus, thus satisfying its craving. But the hypothalamus only secretes minute amounts of these hormones, making it a poor substitute for this fiber. Based on the concentrations described in this printout, I’d hazard a guess that it would require fifty human brains to equal the concentration found in half an ounce of these plants.”

“Dr. Frock,” Margo said, “I think the Kothoga were growing this plant. Whittlesey collected some specimens in his plant press, and the picture on this incised disk is of a plant being harvested. I’m sure these fibers are just the pounded stems from the lily pad in Whittlesey’s press—the plant depicted on this disk. And now we know: these fibers are what the woman was referring to when she screamed ‘Mbwun.’ Mbwun , son of the devil: That’s the name of this plant!”

She quickly brought the strange plant out of the press. It was dark brown and shrivelled, with a web of black veins. The leaf was thick and leathery, and the black stem as hard as a dried root. Gingerly, Margo brought her nose close to it. It smelled musky.

Frock looked at it with a mixture of fear and fascination. “Margo, that’s brilliant,” he said. “The Kothoga must have built a whole ceremonial facade around this plant, its harvest and preparation—no doubt to appease the creature. And no doubt that very beast is depicted in the figurine. But how did it get here? Why did it come?”

“I think I can guess,” Margo said, her thoughts racing. “Yesterday, the friend who helped me search the crates told me he read of a similar series of murders in [283] New Orleans several years ago. They’d occurred on a freighter coming in from Belém. My friend located the shipping records of the Museum crates, and he found that the crates were on board that ship.”

“So the creature was following the crates,” said Frock.

“And that’s why the FBI man, Pendergast, came up from Louisiana,” Margo replied.

Frock turned, his eyes burning. “Dear God. We’ve lured some terrible beast into a museum in the heart of New York City. It’s the Callisto Effect with a vengeance: a savage predator, bent on our destruction this time. Let’s pray there’s only one.”

“But just what kind of creature could it be?” asked Margo.

“I don’t know,” Frock answered. “Something that lived up on the tepui , eating these plants. A bizarre species, perhaps surviving since the time of the dinosaurs in tiny numbers. Or perhaps the product of a freak turn of evolution. The tepui , you see, is a highly fragile ecosystem, a biological island of unusual species surrounded by rain forest. In such places, animals and plants can develop strange parallels, strange dependencies on each other. A shared DNA pool—think of it! And then—”

Frock was silent.

“Then!” he said loudly, slapping his hand on the arm of the wheelchair. “Then they discover gold and platinum on that tepui ! Isn’t that what Jörgensen told you? Shortly after the expedition fell apart, they fired the tepui , built a road, brought in heavy mining equipment. They destroyed the entire ecosystem of that tepui , and the Kothoga tribe with it. They polluted the rivers and swamps with mercury and cyanide.”

Margo nodded vigorously. “The fires burned for weeks, out of control. And the plant that sustained this creature became extinct.”

[284] “So the creature started on a journey, to follow these crates and the food it so desperately craved.”

Frock fell into silence, his head settling on his chest.

“Dr. Frock,” Margo finally said quietly. “How did the creature know the crates had gone to Belém?”

Frock looked at her and blinked. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

Suddenly Frock was gripping the sides of the wheelchair, rising up in his excitement. “Margo!” he said. “We can find out exactly what this creature is. We have the means right here. The Extrapolator! We’ve got the creature’s DNA: we’ll feed it into the program and get a description.”

Margo blinked. “You mean the claw?”

“Exactly!” He wheeled around to the lab’s workstation and his fingers began moving over the keys. “I had the printout Pendergast left us scanned into the computer,” he said. “I’ll load its data into Gregory’s program right now. Help me set things up, will you?”

Margo took Frock’s place at the keyboard. In a moment, another message flashed:

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 55.30 minutes.

Hey, Margo, this looks like a big job. Why don’t you send out for pizza? The best place in town is Antonio’s. I recommend the green chili and pepperoni. Shall I fax them your order now?

The time was quarter past five.

= 40 =

D’Agosta watched with amusement as two burly workmen unrolled a red carpet between two lines of palm trees in the Museum’s Great Rotunda, out through the bronze doors and down the front steps.

That’s gonna get rained on , he thought. It was dusk, and outside D’Agosta could see big thunderheads piling up to the north and west, rising like mountains above the wind-lashed trees along Riverside Drive. A distant roll of thunder rattled the artifacts in the Rotunda’s preview case, and a few stray drops began to pelt the frosted glass of the bronze doors. It was going to be a monster storm—the satellite picture on the morning news left no doubt. That fancy red carpet was going to get soaked. And a lot of fancy people along with it.

The Museum had closed its doors to the public at five o’clock. The beautiful people wouldn’t be arriving until seven. The press was there already: television vans with satellite uplinks, photographers talking loudly to each other, equipment everywhere.

[286] D’Agosta spoke into his police radio, giving orders. He had close to two dozen men stationed strategically around the Hall of the Heavens and in other areas inside and outside the Museum. It was lucky, he thought, that he’d finally figured out his way around much of the place. Already, two of his men had become lost and had to be radioed back out.

D’Agosta wasn’t happy. At the four o’clock briefing, he had requested a final sweep through the exhibition. Coffey had vetoed it, as well as heavy weapons for the plainclothes and uniformed men inside the party. Might scare the guests, Coffey had said. D’Agosta glanced over toward the four walk-through metal detectors, equipped with X-ray conveyor belts. Thank God for those, at least , he thought.

D’Agosta turned and, once again, looked around for Pendergast. He hadn’t been at the briefing. In fact, D’Agosta hadn’t seen him since the meeting with Ippolito that morning.

His radio crackled.

“Hey, Lieutenant? This is Henley. I’m here in front of the stuffed elephants, but I can’t seem to find the Marine Hall. I thought you said—”

D’Agosta cut him short, watching a crew testing what had to be the biggest bank of lights since Gone with the Wind . “Henley? You see the big doorway with the tusks? Okay, just go through that and take two hard rights. Call me when you’re in position. Your partner is Wilson.”

“Wilson? You know I don’t like partnering with a woman, sir—”

“Henley? There’s something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Wilson’s gonna be carrying the twelve-gauge.”