Island 731

16.

“I don’t understand,” Hawkins said. “How is any of this possible?”

He lay on his cot, staring up at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his head and feet crossed. Outwardly, he looked no tenser than a vacationer lying in a cot and sipping a mixed drink. But the tension gripping him made his body ache, never mind the fact that the jungle hike, and run, had worn him out. A month on board a ship with less exercise than he was accustomed to had taken a toll on his stamina.

“Which part?” Bray asked. He sat at the room’s only desk, looking at Hawkins’s sketch of the draco-snake, which Bray had dubbed “minidrakes,” by combining “draco” and “snake,” but also because drakes were a type of dragon.

Bray hadn’t used the term in front of Captain Drake yet, but Hawkins had a feeling the man wouldn’t appreciate being associated with the creatures, so he tried to refer to them as chimeras or draco-snakes. “Let’s start with the chimeras.”

After the revelation that the draco-snakes were two creatures merged into one, and likely another experiment, the dinner group had gone silent. Perhaps sensing that a conversation based on the few, but frightening, facts they’d uncovered would lead to wild speculation, Drake had quickly dismissed the group. He asked them to go to bed early so that they might be rested for the search, but Hawkins suspected the dismissal was more for the benefit of the nonscience crewmembers. Their jobs required focus. Worrying about flying lizards and freakish experiments could slow their work, or result in sloppy work, which could endanger all of them in the long run. So they’d returned to their quarters, staying silent for nearly thirty minutes, each lost in thought. Joliet had left, saying she’d needed time to think and process, but she’d come see them soon. She had yet to return.

Bray stood, turned around, and sat back down in the backward-facing chair. “First of all, the idea of a chimera is nothing new. Homer describes a creature in the Illiad that is part lion, part goat, and part snake. The Bible mentions creatures called the Nephilim, which are half-human, half-demon, but then goes on to say that all flesh—including animals—became corrupted. Some people actually believe that the Greek myths, which are full of chimeras, might be based on actual creatures alluded to in the Torah—the first five books of the Bible—as well as the Book of Enoch, an ancient text supposedly written by Noah’s great-grandfather, but not included in the Christian canon. The manticore—part human, part lion, and with three rows of shark teeth. The griffin—part lion, part eagle. The hydra—part serpent, part squid, which might explain its regenerative abilities.”

“But that’s all myth, not reality,” Hawkins said. “Nephilim and hydras might make great fiction, but I can’t take them seriously.” He didn’t care if the pope himself believed chimeras were real. As far as he could tell, myths stayed in the past and he was much more concerned about the present. As much as Bray’s passion and knowledge about history impressed him, thinking about flying lions with shark teeth couldn’t possibly help him understand the draco-snakes.

“Okay, let’s talk science.” Bray rubbed his chin for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “First, it’s important to understand that chimeras can form naturally.”

“C’mon,” Hawkins said, fearing that Bray was about to make a case for the reality of mythological chimeras.

“Just listen,” Bray said. “Chimeras are formed when two fertilized eggs, or embryos, fuse in the womb. I’m not talking cross-species chimeras here. A chimera can develop from a single species if two distinct embroyos become one.”

“Like conjoined twins?” Hawkins asked.

“In the loosest sense, sure, but what I’m talking about is a much deeper joining. Okay, here’s a gross example. A farmer in India went to have a massive tumor removed. Was so big it made him look pregnant. When the surgeons opened him up, the tumor had hands. And limbs. A jaw. Hair. Even nads. Wicked gross, right?”

When Hawkins grimaced, Bray continued. “The body was seriously deformed, but lived inside the guy for thirty-six years. When he was an embryo, he wrapped around his twin brother and the two merged into one.” Bray raised his index finger. “Oh! There was this lady in Britain who merged so completely with her twin, down to the cellular level, that she actually had two different blood types. She was literally two people at once. What’s really crazy is that chimerism is becoming more common in people because of in vitro fertilization. So we’re doing it in labs all the time, just not on purpose.”

“So we’re accidently merging twins,” Hawkins said. “I’m still not seeing how it applies to flying sea snakes.”

“Minidrakes,” Bray said, “and it does apply. If you’d let me finish a thought, you might learn something.”

“You have very long thoughts.”

“Thank you,” Bray said.

Bray had a habit of saying “thank you” whenever someone described something as being large, long, or delicious. He never said it, but everyone knew he was implying they’d been talking about his manhood. Hawkins had no doubt Bray had picked it up from one of his high school students. Had that vibe. It was funny at first, especially when he did it to Joliet, but the joke was getting old so Hawkins tried not to grin. It would only encourage the man. “Continue, Professor Bray. Educate me.”

“Gladly,” Bray said. “This is where things get freaky.”

“I thought we crossed into ‘freaky’ five minutes ago.”

“It’s far freakier when it’s intentional,” Bray said.

Hawkins couldn’t argue with that. The idea of someone merging a sea snake and draco lizard together just felt wrong. Never mind the fact that they’d also tried to transplant adult human limbs from one person to another.

“The main difference between natural chimerism and laboratory chimerism is that the process can be controlled in a lab. Instead of randomly merging—which, by the way, most often results in both fetuses dying before birth. That the farmer was born and then lived thirty-six years with a twin in his belly is miraculous. Anyway, instead of randomly merging embryos, scientists can select specific embryonic cells from one organism—say, a bird’s wings and breast muscles strong enough to use them—and transplant them onto the embryo of something else. Like a lion.”

“So griffins could be real?” Hawkins asked with a raised eyebrow.

“In theory, yes.”

“But isn’t that just a hybrid? What makes the draco-snakes chimeras?”

“Hybrids are a fusion of gametes.”

“Lost me already,” Hawkins said.

“Did you ever take biology in school?” Bray asked, shaking his head. “Gametes are cells that merge with others cells during fertilization. Eggs. Sperm. Those kinds of things.”

“So humans are hybrids?” Hawkins asked.

Bray nodded. “Kind of, but not really, because we’re talking about gametes from different species, not Mom and Dad. So these gametes come together and form a single zygote. That’s a fertilized egg to the layman. This can pretty much only happen in a lab, or with very closely related species, like lions and tigers.”

“Ligers,” Hawkins said. He’d seen some of the giant cats on TV. They occasionally made the news when an illegal private zoo got shut down. Lions and tigers kept together could mate and have offspring that were equal parts of both species, but often twice the size.

“Exactly,” Bray said. “The end result is a new species with a single, merged genetic code. A chimera is different because each individual part has distinct genetic codes.”

“Like the lady with two blood types?”

“Right. The minidrakes aren’t a new species. They’re still two distinct species with separate genetic codes brought together as a single organism. Like the Trinity. God the Father. Jesus. Holy Spirit. Separate, but joined.”

Hawkins just stared at him.

“Sorry,” Bray said. “Raised Catholic. Forget it. Okay, here’s a question for you. Ever heard of a geep?”

“No.”

“’Course not,” Bray said. “Geep are lab-created goat-sheep. They were created in the eighties. Lived full lives. Gets worse. In China, a human-rabbit chimera was created. They claim to have destroyed the embryos, which I doubt, but the point is, the cells were successfully merged.”

“That’s sick,” Hawkins said.

“Seriously,” Bray said. “A rabbit? Were they trying to make an Easter Bunny? Why not give someone tiger claws? You’re probably thinking that shit went down because it was China. Well, guess what? The University of Nevada School of Medicine made a chimera that was eighty-five percent sheep and fifteen percent human. Now that’s nuts.”

A dull sound suddenly reverberated through the ship. The low, rumbling tone sounded like a fog horn. The lone blast of sound lasted three seconds and then faded.

“Someone must be testing the horn,” Bray said.

A thud on the floor above them turned their heads up.

“Sounds like the horn caught someone by surprise,” Bray said with a grin.

Hawkins just looked at the ceiling like he could see through it.

Bray gave a shrug. “On to the craziest thing you’ll hear all day. Spider silk. Stuff is stronger than steel, but fibrous. Lots of potential applications. Bulletproof vests. Airbags. Hell, someone could probably make space suits out of the stuff. But they can’t harvest it in large quantities. Spiders aren’t only small, but when researchers set up a spider farm, the spiders went on a Highlander-like killing spree.”

Bray saw the confusion on Hawkins’s face. “Highlander, the movie. ‘There can be only one.’ No? Nothing? Forget it. When they couldn’t get a lot of spiderwebs from the spiders, they made a chimera from spiders. And goats. Instead of producing milk, the goats now squirt out spider silk. How fu—”

A second thud, louder than the first, reverberated from the floor above.

“What’s going on up there?” Bray asked.

Hawkins said nothing. He sat up in bed, listening. But the sound did not repeat. He slid his feet onto the floor. “I’m going to check it out.”

Bray once again shrugged off the interruption, but had finished his lecture. He picked up the sketch pad from the desk and flipped through the images. Most were quick sketches of wildlife, sometimes landscapes or random images of whatever happened to be in front of Hawkins at the time.

Hawkins stood to leave, but Bray’s next words froze him in place.

“Oh ho!” Bray said, stopping his rapid-fire page flipping. “Nice.”

He turned the sketch pad around so Hawkins could see the drawing. It was a detailed sketch of Joliet. In a bikini. She’d been tanning on deck when he came across her. He had realized she was sleeping when he spoke to her, but got no reply. After finishing the sketch, he woke her with a cough so she wouldn’t get sunburned. But he never mentioned the drawing. Not to Joliet. Or Bray. “Say a word about that and I’ll make you afraid to close your eyes at night.”

Bray laughed and turned the pages again. “Fine. Fine. Just say something to her soon. Your pining is killing me.”

“I don’t pine,” Hawkins said.

“I work in a high school,” Bray replied. “I know pining when I see it.” He stopped flipping pages again. “What’s this?”

Bray showed Hawkins the image. It was a sketch of the pillbox he’d done from memory before drawing the draco-snakes.

“That’s the pillbox,” Hawkins said.

Bray pointed to the text above the entrance. “Looks Japanese.”

“Know what it says?” Hawkins asked.

“I think we’ve established that neither of us reads Japanese, or maybe you think I just struggle with the word ‘broccoli’? Drake might know, though. He’s been around the world a few times.”

A third loud bang sounded from above. This time, the boom was followed by rapid-fire bumps moving across the ceiling.

“Someone’s running,” Bray commented.

Hawkins looked at him. “Where’s Joliet?”