Lasher (9 page)

The top of the desk was blank. Behind Mitchell’s head of scarecrow hair was a great abstract painting that resembled nothing so much as a spermatozoon swimming like mad to a fertilized egg. It was wonderfully colored, however—full of cobalt and burning orange and neon green—as if painted by a Haitian artist who, having stumbled upon a drawing of sperm and egg in a scientific journal, had chosen it for a model, never guessing or caring what it was.

The office reeked of wealth. The Keplinger Institute reeked of wealth. It was reassuring that Mitch looked sloppy, incapable and even a little dirty—a mad scientist who made no concessions to corporate or scientific tyranny. He had not shaved in at least two days.

“God, am I glad you finally got here,” said Mitch. “I was about to go out of my mind. Two weeks ago you dump this on me, with no explanation except that Rowan Mayfair sent it to you…and that I have to find out everything that I can.”

“So did you?” asked Lark. He started to unbutton his raincoat, then thought better of it. He eased his briefcase to the floor. There was a tape recorder inside but he didn’t want to use it. It would inhibit him and possibly scare Mitchell to death.

“What do you expect in two weeks? It’s going to take fifteen years to map the human genome, or haven’t you heard?”

“What can you tell me? This isn’t an interview with the science editor of the
New York Times
. Give me a picture. What are we dealing with here?”

“You want that sort of speculation?” Mitch gestured to the computer. “You want to see something three-dimensional and in living color?”

“Talk first. I distrust computer simulations.”

“Look, before I say anything, I want more specimens. I want more blood, tissue, everything I can get. I’ve had my secretary calling your office every day about this. Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Impossible to get anything more. What you’ve seen is what you get.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got the only samples to which I have access. You have the only data which came to me. There is something else in New York…but we’ll get to that later. The point is, I can’t give you any more blood, tissue, amniotic fluid or anything else. You have everything Rowan Mayfair sent to me.”

“Then I have to talk to Rowan Mayfair.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Can you turn off that blinking fluorescent light up there? It’s driving me crazy. Do you have an incandescent lamp in this fancy room?”

Mitchell looked startled. He sat back as though he’d been pushed. For a moment, he seemed not to understand the words, and then he said, “Oh yes.” He touched a panel under the lip of his desk. The overhead light went out suddenly and finally, and a pair of small lamps on the desk were quickly illuminated, soft, yellow, pleasant. They made the deep green of the desk blotter come to life.

Lark hadn’t noticed the perfect, markless blotter, or its leather corners. Or the still, odd-shaped black phone hunkering there with its numerous and mysterious buttons like a symbolic Chinese toad.

“That’s better. I hate that kind of light,” said Lark. “And tell me exactly what you know.”

“First tell me why I can’t talk to Rowan Mayfair, why I can’t get more data. Why didn’t she send you photographs of this thing? I have to talk to her—”

“Nobody can find her. I’ve been trying for weeks. Her family has been trying since Christmas Day. That’s when she disappeared.
I’m on an eight-thirty plane tonight to see her family in New Orleans. I’m the last one to have heard from Rowan. Her phone call to me two weeks ago is the only current evidence that Rowan is even alive. One phone call, then the specimens. When I contacted her family for funds, which is what she asked me to do, they told me about her disappearance. She has been spotted once since Christmas Day…maybe…in a town in Scotland called Donnelaith.”

“What about the courier service which delivered the specimens? Where was the pickup? Trace it.”

“Done. Dead end. The service picked them up from a hotel concierge in Geneva, to which they were given by a female guest as she was checking out. The woman does fit Rowan’s description, somewhat, but there’s no proof that Rowan was ever a guest in this hotel, at least not under her own name.

“The whole thing was surreptitious. She’d given the concierge info as to the destination of the package several days before. Look, the family has investigated all this, believe me. They’re more eager to find Rowan than anybody else. When I called to tell them about all this, they went nuts. That’s why I’m going down there. They want to see me personally, and it’s their nickel, and I’m happy to oblige. But these people have had detectives all over Geneva. No trace of Rowan. And believe you me, when this family can’t find someone, that person cannot be found.”

“How come?”

“Money. Mayfair money. You couldn’t have not heard of Rowan’s plans last fall for Mayfair Medical. Now talk, Mitch, what are these samples? I have to make that plane. Count on my common sense. If you don’t mind the expression, let yourself go!”

Mitchell Flanagan reflected quietly for a moment. He folded his arms, his lower lip jutting a little, and then absently he pulled off his glasses, stared into space, then put his glasses back on, as though he could not think except when he was behind them. He stared intently at Lark.

“OK. It’s what you said,” said Mitch, “or what you said Rowan said.”

Lark didn’t respond. But he knew that he had registered his reaction before he could stop himself. He bit his tongue. He wanted Mitch to go on.

“This offspring isn’t Homo sapiens,” Mitch continued. “It’s primate, it’s mammalian, it’s male, it’s potent, it has a dynamite
immune system, it appears in the final tests to have reached maturity, but this is by no means certain, and it has a baffling way of using minerals and proteins. Something to do with its bones. Its brain is enormous. It may have profound weaknesses. Until I run more tests I don’t know.”

“Draw me a picture in words.”

“Based on the X rays alone, I’d say it is one hundred fifty pounds in weight or less, and that when the final tests were done in late January, it was six and one-half feet tall. Its height changed remarkably between the first X rays taken on December twenty-eighth in Paris, and those taken in Berlin on January fifth. There was no change between January fifth and January twenty-seventh. No change in any measurement. Which is why I’m saying it may have reached maturity, but I don’t know. The skull is not fully developed, but that may be as developed as it gets.”

“How much did it grow between December and January?”

“It grew three inches. Growth took place mostly in the thighs, with some growth in the forearms and a very slight lengthening of the fingers. Its hands, by the way, are very long. The head became slightly larger. Not enough to attract attention, probably. But it’s larger than a normal head. Say the word and I’ll show what I mean on the computer. I’ll show you how it looks, moves…”

“No, just tell me. What else?”

“What else?” Mitch demanded.

“Yes, what else.”

“That’s not enough? Lark,
you
have to explain all this to
me
. Where were these tests taken? This stuff is from clinics all over Europe. Who did these tests?”

“Rowan did the tests, we
think
. The family’s been working on it. But the clinics never even knew what was going on. Apparently Rowan slipped in with this creature, had the X rays taken and slipped out, before anybody ever realized there was an unauthorized doctor on the premises, or that her male subject wasn’t a patient. In fact, in Berlin, nobody remembers seeing her at all. It’s only the computerized date and time on the X-ray film that confirms she was there. Same with the brain scans, the electrocardiogram and the thallium stress test. She entered the clinic in Geneva, directed the laboratory herself for the tests she wanted, wasn’t questioned for obvious reasons—white coat, authority, speaks German—and then she took the results and left.”

“How incredibly simple that must have been.”

“It was. These were all public facilities, and you remember Rowan. Who would question Rowan?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“The people in Paris who do remember her, by the way, remember her well. But they can’t help us find her. They don’t know where she came from or where she went. As for the male friend, he was ‘tall and thin and had long hair and wore a hat.’ ”

“ ‘Long hair’! You’re sure of that.”

“As sure as the woman in Paris who told this to the family’s detectives.” Lark shrugged. “When Rowan was seen in Donnelaith it was also with a tall thin male companion who had long black hair.”

“And you haven’t heard one word from her since the night before she sent you this stuff.”

“Correct. She said she’d get in touch as soon as she could.”

“What about the call? Any record? Did she call collect?”

“She told me she was in Geneva. She told me what I already told you. She was desperate to get this stuff to me. That she’d try to get it out before morning, that I was to bring it to you. She said that she gave birth to the subject in question. The amniotic fluid was in the pieces and bits of towel. Her own blood, sputum, and hair was included for analysis as well. I hope you did that analysis.”

“You bet I did.”

“How did she give birth to something that isn’t a human being? I want everything you’ve discovered, no matter how random or contradictory. I have to explain all this to the family tomorrow! I have to explain it to myself.”

Mitch curled his right hand and pressed it to his mouth to cover a slight cough. He cleared his throat.

“As I said, it isn’t Homo sapiens,” he began, looking directly at Lark. “It may look like Homo sapiens, however. Its skin is much more plastic—in fact, you only find skin like that in human fetuses, and apparently the creature will retain this plasticity, though only time will tell. The skull appears to be malleable, like that of an infant, and that too may be permanent, but it’s impossible to tell. It still had the soft spot, the fontanel, when it was last X-rayed; indeed there’s some indication the fontanel is permanent.”

“Lord God,” said Lark. He couldn’t resist touching his own head. The fontanels of babies always made him nervous! But
then Lark didn’t have any children; mothers seemed to get used to it, having little critters around with skin-covered holes in their skulls.

“This thing was never a conventional fetus, by the way,” said Mitch. “The cells from the amniotic fluid indicate it was a fully developed diminutive male adult when it was born; it probably unwound itself with remarkable elasticity and walked away from its mother, the way a young colt or a young giraffe walks away after birth.”

“A total mutation,” said Lark.

“No, put that word out of your mind entirely. This is no mutation. This appears to be the product of a separate and complex evolutionary process. The end product of a whole different set of chance mutations and choices over some millions of years. If Rowan Mayfair hadn’t given birth to this—and it is certain now to me from the specimens that she did—my guess is we would be dealing with some creature developed in full isolation on some unknown continent, something older than Homo erectus or Homo sapiens, much older in fact, and with an entire spectrum of genetic inheritance from other species, which human beings don’t possess.”

“Other species.”

“Exactly. This thing climbed its own evolutionary ladder. It is not alien to us. It evolved from the same primal soup. But its DNA is much more complex. If you took its double helix and flattened it out, it would be twice the length of that of a human being. The creature seems—superficially at least—to have carried up the ladder with it all kinds of similarities to lower life forms which we as humans no longer have. I’ve only begun to break it down. That’s the problem.”

“Can you work any faster? Can you find out more.”

“Lark, this isn’t only a matter of speed. We’re just beginning to understand the human genome—what’s a junk gene and real gene. How can we break down the genotype of this thing? It has ninety-two chromosomes, by the way—that’s double the number of a normal human being. The makeup of its cell membranes is obviously very different from ours, but how I can’t tell you, since I can’t tell you very much about our own cell membranes since nobody knows what they’re made of, either. That’s the dominant theme here. The limits of what I know about this being are the limits of what I know about us. But it is not us.”

“I still don’t understand why it can’t be a mutant.”

“Lark, it’s far too much of a departure. It’s way beyond the orbit of mutation. It’s highly organized and complete in itself. It’s no accident. And it’s just too beautifully developed as it is. Think in terms of percentages of chromosomal similarity. Man and the chimpanzee are ninety-seven percent similar. This thing is no more than forty percent similar at most. I’ve already run simple immunological tests on its blood which prove this. That means it diverged off the human family tree millions of years ago, if it was ever part of the human family tree. I don’t think it was. I think it was another tree altogether.”

“But how could Rowan be the mother? I mean you can’t just—”

“The answer is as surprising as it is simple. Rowan also has ninety-two chromosomes. The exact same number of exons and introns. The blood, the amniotic fluid and the tissue samples she sent confirm it. I’m sure she’d figured out that much herself.”

“But what about Rowan’s past records? Didn’t anybody ever notice this woman had double the number of human chromosomes?”

“I’ve verified everything through blood samples on file at University from her last physical. She has ninety-two chromosomes, though there is no evidence in the rest of the physical picture to indicate the additional chromosomes were anything but dormant in her case. Nobody ever noticed because nobody ever took a genetic blueprint of Rowan. Who would? For what? Rowan has never been sick a day in her life.”

“But someone…”

“Lark, DNA blueprinting is in its infancy. Some people are totally opposed to doing it on anyone. There are millions of doctors all over the world who have no idea what’s in their own genes. Some of us don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. My grandfather died of Huntington’s chorea. My brothers don’t want to know if they carry the gene for it. Neither do I. Of course sooner or later I’ll have myself tested. But the point is, genetic research has just begun. If this creature had surfaced twenty years ago, it would have passed for human. It would have appeared to be some kind of freak.”