Relic

= 39 =

The door to the lab banged open, then eased back slowly. Margo looked up to see Frock backing himself inside, his wheelchair creaking. She quickly stood up and helped wheel him over to the computer terminal. She noticed he was already dressed in his tuxedo. Probably put it on before he came to work, she thought. The usual Gucci handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket.

“I can’t understand why they put these labs in such out-of-the-way places,” he grumbled. “Now what’s the great mystery, Margo? And why did I have to come down to hear it? Tonight’s foolishness is getting underway shortly, and my presence will be required on the dais. It’s a hollow honor, of course—it’s only due to my best-selling status. Ian Cuthbert made that abundantly clear in my office this morning.” His voice again sounded bitter, resigned.

Quickly, she explained how she had analyzed the fibers from the packing crate. She showed him the incised [280] disk with its harvest scene. She described the discovery and contents of Whittlesey’s journal and letter, and the talk with Jörgensen. And she mentioned how the hysterical old woman described in Whittlesey’s journal could not have been referring to the figurine when she warned the scientist about Mbwun.

Frock listened, gently turning the stone disk over in his hands. “It’s an interesting story,” he said. “But why the urgency? Chances are your sample just got contaminated. And for all we know, that old woman was insane, or Whittlesey’s recollections just got a bit scrambled.”

“That’s what I thought originally. But look at this,” Margo said, handing Frock the printout.

He scanned it quickly. “Curious,” he said. “But I don’t think that this ...”

His voice trailed off as his pudgy fingers ran down the columns of proteins.

“Margo,” he said, looking up. “I was far too hasty. It is contamination of sorts, but not from a human being.”

“What do you mean?” Margo asked.

“See this hexagonal ambyloid reovirus protein? This is the protein from the shell of a virus that infects animals and plants. Look at how much of it there is in here. And you have reverse transcriptase, an enzyme almost always found in association with viruses.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Frock turned to her impatiently. “What you have here is a plant heavily infected with a virus. Your DNA sequencer was mixing them up, coding for both. Many plants carry viruses like this. A bit of DNA or RNA in a protein coat. They infect the plant, take over some of its cells, then they insert their genetic material into the plant’s genes. The plant genes start producing more viruses, instead of what they’re supposed to produce. The oak-gall virus makes those brown balls you see on oak leaves, but otherwise it’s harmless. Burls on maple and [281] pine trees are also caused by viruses. They’re just as common in plants as they are in animals.”

“I know, Dr. Frock, but—”

“There is something in here I don’t understand,” he said, laying down the printout. “A virus normally codes for other viruses. Why would a virus code for all these human and animal proteins? Look at all these. Most of them are hormones. What good are human hormones in a plant?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Margo said. “I looked up some of the hormones. A lot of them seem to be from the human hypothalamus gland.”

Frock’s head jerked as if he had been slapped. “Hypothalamus?” His eyes were suddenly alive.

“That’s right.”

“And the creature that’s loose in this Museum is eating the hypothalamus of its victims! So it must need these hormones—perhaps it’s even addicted to these hormones,” Frock blurted. “Think: there are only two sources: the plants—which, thanks to this unique virus, are probably saturated with the hormones—and the human hypothalamus. When the creature can’t get the fibers, it eats the brain!”

“Jesus, how awful,” Margo breathed.

“This is stunning. It explains exactly what’s behind these terrible murders. With this, we can now put the pieces together. We have a creature loose in the Museum, killing people, opening the calvaria, removing the brain, and eating the thalamoid region where the hormones are most concentrated.”

He continued to look at her, his hands trembling slightly. “Cuthbert told us that he’d hunted up the crates in order to retrieve the Mbwun figurine, only to find one of the crates broken open and the fibers scattered about. In fact, now that I think of it, one of the larger crates was nearly empty of fibers. So this creature must have been eating the fibers for some time. Maxwell obviously used the same fibers to pack his crates. The creature may [282] not need to eat much—the hormonal concentration in the plants must be very high-but it obviously needs to eat regularly.”

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.