Invasive (9 page)

T
hey come up out of the rain forest. What rises up from the shade of the island reminds her of Luke Skywalker's house on Tatooine.

“They're called mod-pods,” David says. “Module-Pods. That's their official name. One of Einar's friends from college invented them. They're 3-D printed buildings.” He rubs a chin wispy with little hairs. “Actually, I'm surprised Einar hasn't gotten into the 3-D printing gig yet.”

“He will,” Ray says, coming up behind them, looking at his phone. The 8-bit chirps and warbles of some kind of game rise from the device as his thumbs make quick work.

The lab—with a modest sign reading
ARCA
in Futura font above the double doors—is a chain of these modular pods: one round plastic dome after the next, linked together by telescoping tunnels and pressurized doors. Some pods are larger than others, some have a different arrangement of windows (round portholes or rectangular wraparounds that look almost like windshields), some seem to have HVAC split systems. A few in the back look particularly large—two, maybe three stories tall.

“We don't call them mod-pods, though,” David says. “We call them bubbles. The lab bubble, the dorm bubble. Pretty cool how they build them. These robot arms work along these two axis poles—rotatable—and the nozzles and lasers print a flexible honeycomb skeleton of stainless steel. Then it adds layers of plastic, then insulation, then more plastic. I've seen some that spray in concrete, too.” As he talks, he moves his hands around like it's
happening in real time, his own limbs turned into imaginary maker bots.

“Impressive,” Hannah says. She has her doubts about 3-D printing. If people think that hacking intellectual property is a problem now, just wait till what they're hacking isn't books and movies but entire blueprints. Third world countries might benefit from 3-D printing, particularly using stolen intellectual property and forbidden patents. They could build cheap, storm-resistant structures or make new farm equipment or—

“You okay?” David asks her.

“Just lost in my own head,” she says. Then, given the company she's in, she decides to float a more honest answer: “Dreaming about the future. The good stuff and the bad stuff.”

He chuckles. “We like to think it'll be a dream, but it's good to remember it could be a nightmare, too. That's why we gotta do good things now. Make good decisions. Try to move the rudder long before the boat ever gets near the iceberg, right?”

Ray grouses: “Can we just go inside?” He pockets his phone. Hannah assumes he lost his game.

They pass through an empty reception area bubble.

(David says: “I don't even know why we have this area, to be honest with you.” Ray answers: “Because it's what Einar wanted, David.” To Hannah, David mutters: “A familiar refrain.”)

The second bubble serves only as a fork in the road.

Go left, David points out, and you head toward the living quarters: the dorms, the kitchen, the rec area. “Bathrooms and showers,” Ray adds.

Go right, and you head toward Arca proper: the labs, the offices, the conference room, the science library, the cafeteria.

The living area is open. The lab area is protected by RFID locks. “Everybody who works here gets a wristband with a chip in it.
Silicone-encased. Water resistant, but not waterproof. We can code who can get through which door from the main computers in the lab.”

“Not everybody has access to every bubble?” she asks.

David says, “We have thirty-three people here, but some are just support staff. Two cooks. Two janitorial. One maintenance. The cooks don't need to go deep into the labs, and only one of the custodians is trained to handle hazardous or biological containment—not that we have that problem around here.” He seems suddenly defensive. “Anyway. Let's get you set up.”

David hard-charges into the living area. Ray follows behind Hannah. They pass through a rec room lined with severe-looking European couches, a bookshelf holding hardcovers, ratty paperbacks, board games like Settlers of Catan, a whole shelf of vinyl records, a small metal bucket with LEGO bricks in it, and a coloring book.
Is there a child here?
Hannah wonders.

David talks as he walks: “This is the rec room. You know, just a hangout space. Though sometimes people hang in the dorms, too. Play cards, music. They're pretty soundproof.” He changes the topic so fast she feels like she just fell out of a moving car: “We won't have a badge for you, so when you go to the labs or the caf you'll need to have one of us with you. But that should be no problem, no problem at all.”

Directly connected to the side of the rec room is a small kitchen bubble. Narrow fridge, microwave, a set of burners, cabinets. Past that: the dorms themselves. David points down the long hallway, its edges crinkled like the elbow in a bendy straw. “See here, these doors?” All along the cylindrical hallway are narrow, windowless doors. “Fourteen rooms. Seven doors on each side, usually two to a room, though there's four beds in each room because they're bunks. At the end, bathrooms and showers. Communal and unisex.”

“Okay,” Hannah says.

“It's dinnertime in the caf.”

“It's a little early yet. I could use a shower.”

“No time. Unless you don't want to eat.”

“I . . . want to eat.” She's exhausted. But she's hungry. And it would be best to get to work.

“Let's eat,” Ray says.

The cafeteria is the first bubble heading toward the labs. David moves his wristband with its diamond-shaped swatch of white plastic toward the RFID lock, and the door opens onto a room holding five long, heavy tables. While everything else in Arca has been austere, this room is not: the tables are a burnished red wood and Hannah sees centerpieces of white orchids, palm fronds in bronze vases, a ceiling fan, and an outrigger canoe propped up against the curvature of the far wall. The windows—round portholes—are open, letting in a breeze that smells of salt air and flowers.

The kitchen is open air, on the side of the room opposite the decorative canoe. Dinner is serve-yourself, though she sees a couple of cooks working behind the scenes—one who looks like a stout, linebacker-bodied native woman and the other a wan wisp of a man.

Those in attendance—maybe twenty-five people—turn, juddering their chairs to see who's coming in. Judging by the looks they give her, they know who she is and they are not pleased to see her. But judging by the looks they give Ray, they don't want to see him, either.

Interesting,
Hannah thinks.

David Hamasaki, his smile never wavering, claps his hands. “Everybody, our guest has arrived. This is Hannah Stander of the FBI—”

“Consultant,” she asserts, but David doesn't correct himself.

“She's going to be with us for the next two to three days, and she'll go back on the boat with some of you who are cycling out of the lab rotation. I expect all of you to give her your attention when
she requires it so she can make the best assessment possible for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

A few people lift their chins or offer a small wave in greeting. Most don't do a damn thing. They run the gamut, though Hannah can tell most of these folks are scientists and not support staff. A few are even in their lab coats. Most of them are young.

David pulls up a chair for her at one of the tables toward the canoe. “This is us,” he says, smiling warmly and patting the chair: a move that is either pedantic and condescending or genuinely welcoming. She can't quite tell yet.

They join a narrow-shouldered, big-hipped woman with punky bleach-blond hair; a severe-looking Indian man; a scruffy, average-looking white guy with a muss of hair, dark stubble, and horn-rim glasses; and an impossibly tiny Filipino woman with a disdainful set to her lips and a pair of hot-coal eyes searing holes right through Hannah.

Before Hannah even sits, the little woman twists up her face and says, “
Kalokohan
.” It's said so vehemently she's amazed the woman doesn't spit afterward.

“I'm sorry?” Hannah says.

The man in the glasses smiles. “It's Tagalog for ‘trivial.'”

“It's Tagalog for ‘
bullshit,
'” the woman corrects. Then she offers up the fakest smile Hannah has ever seen. “Hello, I'm Dr. Mercado.”

David laughs nervously. “Nancy is our team lead.” Then he goes on to introduce the others, all project leaders:

He points to the one with spiky bleach-blond hair. “That's Kit Reed, leader on the
Aedes aegypti
mosquito project. Next to her”—he points to the stone-faced Indian man—“is Ajay Bhatnagar, project leader on what we call the ‘pollinator project.' And the man who has clearly forgotten to shave yet again is Will Galassi, head of Special Projects. We are missing one person, though—”

As if on cue, a big-bellied, blush-cheeked man in a pink polo and a rumpled lab coat comes bolting through the doors that lead deeper into the labs themselves. He's got a mess of dirty-blond hair,
the curls kept tight to his bowling-ball head. “Sorry! Sorry,” he says, adjusting himself as he sits. “Hey, everybody. Hope I didn't miss anything.” Before anybody can speak, he turns to Hannah. “You must be the lady from the CIA—”

“FBI,” Hamasaki corrects.

“Right! Right.
Right.
I'm Barry.”

“Dr. Barry Lowe,” Hamasaki says, more formally.

Then, in what must be his version of a deep, sultry soul-singer voice: “Or as they call me,
Barry Love
.” He laughs big and bold: a kind of donkey bray. When nobody else laughs with him, he clears his throat into his fist and says, “Sorry. I'm head of the sustainable edible insect project and—”

A flash of movement on his shoulder. A burst of green. Hannah pushes her chair back in startled surprise. It's a praying mantis.

Barry rolls his eyes and smiles in an
aw-shucks
way. With a lift of his finger he teases the mantis onto his hand. “This is Buffy.” The mantis tilts its alien head.

“Well, hi,” Hannah says. All eyes are on her now. These people do not like her. They do not trust her.
And,
she reminds herself,
one or more of them may be involved in creating those ants.
She remembers a day way back when, after she left her parents and moved in with her aunt, Sugi, when nothing felt familiar, and the woman's three dogs—two mastiffs and one Chihuahua—stared at her as if she were a trespasser whose smell did not belong. She'd waited for those animals to decide one day they would tear her apart. This feels very much like that. Better then to just cut to the chase. “So, what exactly is bullshit?” She remembers suddenly that Ray used the same word.
Bullshit.

Dr. Mercado—Nancy—seems surprised at her boldness, and then answers: “Your reason for being here. You really think we're capable of doing what you're implying? Creating a whole new ant species out of
thin air
is just not possible. Ask Ajay.”

Dr. Bhatnagar barely moves his facial muscles when he breathes loudly through his nose and says, “We have focused on modifying ants to serve as a replacement pollinator. Ants indeed go from
flower to flower, and the fine hairs that cover many ants do indeed carry pollen.” His face shows a faint veneer of distaste as he adds, “Problem is, the kind of ants that would be best geared toward pollination often secrete a natural kind of antibiotic that damages the pollen and makes them inefficient pollinators. We tried to remove the antibiotic, but that makes them particularly susceptible to disease—and so the quest continues.” He offers a polite, sad smile before staring off into the middle distance.

“What you found? Those ants?” Nancy says. “They were not engineered. That is foolishness. It's a new species. It has to be a new species.”

“The ants had your signature genetic markers,” Hannah says. “The ones from the mosquito project. I brought the data with me on a USB. You can see for yourself.”