Fire with Fire

Chapter Thirty-Six

MENTOR

“We found this in Nolan.” Downing moved to the head of the conference table, dimmed the lights and snapped on the display screen. The diagram of a torso-the heart outlined in muddy maroon-faded in. A moment later-in Day-Glo green-a sinuous collection of filaments sprung into existence on the heart itself, first winding along the external walls of its chambers and then sending strands into the spine and upward from there. There was a second of silence.

“What the hell is that?” Trevor’s outburst was raw, emotional.

Downing shrugged. “We don’t know, despite a painstaking post-mortem analysis that took Bethesda the better part of two months. Even so, they almost missed it.”

Trevor gaped at the intricate windings. “They almost missed that?”

“Yes. Because, by the time they were conducting the post-mortem, there was almost nothing left of it. This is only an approximate reconstruction of what was in Nolan when he died. By the time they were examining his body in detail, these filaments had almost totally denatured. They deliquesced even as the specialists were trying to run tests. All that was left were traces: simple proteins, amino acids, nothing definitive.”

“So, was this some kind of infection?” Elena sounded lost.

It was Opal who spoke, and with singular decisiveness. “That’s no infection. Not in the regular sense of the word. Look at how it went straight from the heart toward the spine, and braided itself up toward the skull. Excuse me, Elena, Trevor, but there’s no delicate way to ask these questions-”

Elena nodded. “Certainly; we understand.”

“-but what was found upon examination of the cerebral cortex?”

“Nothing definitive. If there was something there, it decayed before the rest of-whatever this is.”

Opal stared. “It’s a parasite,” she announced.

“Or-” The voice was Caine’s. Downing saw him staring at the screen over steepled fingers.

“Or?” prompted Opal.

“Or it’s a symbiote.”

She looked surprised and turned back to the screen. Then she nodded. “He’s right. There’s no way-looking at this-to tell how the organism functioned in relation to its host. But if it was Nolan’s cause of death-”

Caine smiled and looked at Downing. “But it wasn’t, was it?”

Downing felt the small hairs on his neck rise up: how did he know? “No, it wasn’t. At least, we have no conclusive evidence that it was.”

Everyone was staring at Caine, except Elena, whose eyes were aimed off into the darkness.

Trevor sounded truculent. “Okay, I’ve had just about enough of this episode of Mystery Theater. This is my father we’re talking about, and I’d be a lot happier if people start talking plainly.”

Caine held up one hand. “Hey, look: I’m no expert. I’m just guessing.”

“Yeah-but you’re guessing pretty well.”

Caine shrugged. “Look, Opal-Major Patrone-is the one with the zoology degree, so I’m sure she’s already way ahead of me on this, but look at the layout of that ‘organism.’ And then add that to the fact that it spontaneously denatured upon the death of its host, leaving no signs of toxins or virus, or bacteria, or foreign DNA. This thing-whatever it is-broke down into the same goo that you’d get if our own biochemistries were broken down. And I’ll bet the remains are a close or exact chemical match for a particularly part of our bodies: our nervous system.”

Downing nodded. “Caine is correct.”

“So then what was it?” Trevor sounded a little more patient again.

“Best guess?” Caine shrugged. “An independent nervous system of some kind.”

“Which could have turned off my father’s heart.”

“Maybe, Trevor, but let’s look at some of the other facts.” Caine’s voice was calm. “First, it’s a pretty extensive organism if that’s its only purpose. And I do mean purpose, because I’m guessing this thing can’t be natural-not in the evolutionary sense of the word.”

Opal nodded. “I’m about a half-century out of date in terms of designer organisms, but this doesn’t look natural at all. Particularly its speedy decomposition into materials that mimic the body’s own byproducts.”

“So you’re saying that thing was designed to disappear as soon as it killed Dad.”

“If it did kill him,” Caine persisted. “And we’re still waiting for Mr. Downing to tell us what the coroners found in that regard.”

Now all the eyes came back to rest on Downing.

“They found very little-except that when they polled the chip in Nolan’s coronary controller, they found that it failed to operate at the moment he went into arrest.”

“Preposterous.” Elena’s voice was sharp, declarative. “Dad always had the best controller available, and Mom’s colleagues at Johns Hopkins always reviewed his test results.”

Riordan’s eyes hadn’t left Richard’s face. “But Mr. Downing didn’t say the coronary controller broke; he said that it ‘failed to operate.’ I’m betting that it’s not a typical malfunction either, is it, Richard? Any more than the security system and power failures at Alexandria were typical malfunctions.”

Trevor looked from Caine to Downing. “What are you talking about?”

Downing shrugged. “During Caine’s sequestration at a safe facility in Alexandria, the internal power and security systems were mysteriously ‘turned off’ right before he-and Opal-were attacked there.”

“You mean someone broke in and cut the systems?”

“No. That has been ruled out. It looks like they were shorted by a focused EM pulse.”

“That’s damn near impossible.”

“Perhaps. But that is the closest the scientists can come to an explanation of what happened-in both cases.”

“So you’re saying that this…thing”-Trevor waved at the screen-“didn’t cause my father’s death? That it was an EMP burst?”

Downing shrugged. “It’s possible that this organism could have been capable of the electric discharge itself, like an eel. In that event…”

Opal frowned. “In that event, Richard, wouldn’t there be other gross anatomical signs of such a trauma? And wouldn’t the chemical residues be different and the controller burnt out?”

Downing sighed. “It’s true that there are weakness with that explanation-but the alternative is the ranged EM pulse theory, which, as Trevor rightly points out, seems impossible.”

“No, Richard, we don’t know it’s impossible.” Caine leaned forward. “We only know that it is beyond our present capability. But so is generating, and sending, enough of an electrical spike from this filmy organism. And to have it send that discharge straight into Nolan’s cardiac controller? That’s a feat of bioengineering that’s at least as ‘impossible’ as a focused EM pulse. More so, I should think.”

It was Elena who engaged the conundrum head-on. “So what is your point, Mr. Riordan?”

“I’m saying that there may be a connection between the controller malfunction and this organism, but it may not be the simple connection we’re postulating. Even if this organism was the means whereby Nolan was killed, that only gives us more questions to ask: how was it implanted, and when, and by whom?”

Elena nodded. “Perhaps by whoever put in the coronary controller. Probably the last time it was replaced.”

“Right. But that’s how many years ago? And how did they-whoever ‘they’ are-manage to get the organism to respond, to cause his cardiac failure, so soon after Parthenon?”

Elena was staring at the strange tendrilled mass on the screen. “It would mean that someone had to be able to send commands to this ‘thing.’”

Opal shrugged. “Which makes it an even more amazing piece of bioengineering. And that still doesn’t explain how none of Nolan’s interior tissue shows any of the signs of thermic trauma that would be consistent with electric discharge.”

Trevor had nodded at each separate point. “Okay-so let’s assume this ‘organism’ didn’t kill my father. Which means it was put in for a different reason.”

Caine pulled closer to the table. “And, therefore, maybe by entirely different persons with entirely different motives.”

“Okay.” Trevor kept nodding. “But either-or both-of those persons would have to know about his cardiac weakness. And both can use his treatment visits as either a way to insert a foreign body-the organism-or to fiddle with his coronary controller.”

Opal leaned forward. “Well, at least you can find out who performed the last surgery for his controller upgrade. Someplace in that file, there is the name of a person we can interrogate: if not the surgeon, then a nurse or technician or somebody who-”

Downing shook his head. “No.”

Opal and Trevor looked at Downing in surprise. Elena just looked. Caine didn’t bother: he was the one who answered: “Because an investigation would reveal to them that we’re aware of their actions. And that we know what to look for from this point forward. And that will render this knowledge useless: they’ll change their game. Besides, we don’t know that this organism was malign. For all we know it was benign-or even beneficial. Maybe Nolan’s cardiac weakness would have been more profound without it. Maybe the organism was turned off along with the controller-”

Downing blinked: Crikey, he has a point-

“-But even if the organism was beneficial, it’s pretty clear that whoever put it there wanted to remain anonymous. And something else is pretty clear: whoever did either or both of these things has access to some technology that defies the boundaries of what we generally consider possible. That’s got to be factored into all future operations.”

Elena had half risen. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this seems a likely point for me to excuse myself. From the sound of it, you are about to begin secret discussions with persons who are evidently going to be the new ‘insiders,’ Uncle Richard.” She looked around the table meaningfully.

Downing waved her back down. “That is true. And you need to be a part of those discussions.”

“Uncle Richard, I haven’t the qualifications or the desire-”

“Actually, for what I’m announcing today, you have urgently needed qualifications. And as for what you desire-I’m afraid that doesn’t really factor into our decisions.”

“So now you’re telling me what to do, Richard? On what authority?”

She’s got her father’s anger, too. “Let’s not call it authority; let’s call it an invitation-which you must accept because of your obligations.”

That stopped her. “My obligations? To whom, or what?”

“To your father: his life, his work, his legacy.”

“Richard, you’ll have to come up with a more compelling recruiting pitch than some vague-”

“Elena, this isn’t my idea, and this isn’t my pitch.”

“Oh? Then whose is it?”

Richard allowed himself to smile. “The request was made by a group calling themselves the Dornaani.”

Silence. God, how I do love shutting them all up. And those priceless, confused expressions. Except Caine, damn him. Those suddenly wider eyes: he’s already half-guessed what I’m leading up to. Nolan was right about him.

Opal was the first to speak. “Who or what are the Door-Nonny? Secret society? Rock band?”

“No, Major. The Dornaani are exosapients.”