Vespers

Thirty-Six

Gentry and Joyce went back to the car and continued downtown. Joyce was revved up again. Gentry was not. He had some major problems with what Joyce had come up with.

“You really believe that a bat flying through a subway tunnel heard a video game that sounded like her mother-”

“Her mother’s heart.”

“Like her mother’s heart,” he said. “She heard that and she flew over to check it out?”

“Yes. It’s very possible.”

“One sound in a city of millions upon millions of sounds.”

“That’s right. Again, think like a bat. Its hearing is extraordinarily sensitive and multidirectional. A bat can pick up and follow a distinctive sound the same way a shark sniffs blood in the water.”

“But even if that’s true, her mother died eight years ago,” Gentry said. “How could the bat remember that?”

“It’s not in the conscious mind, but it’sthere, ” Joyce said. “The sound triggered some kind of memory. Think about it. She left at peace, without hurting anyone, without stirring up the small bats again. She was obviously calmed by whatever happened here.”

“All right. Assuming that’s true, why didn’t she get angry when she saw that her mother wasn’t here? She was in a rage when she left the museum.”

“You just said why.”

“I did?”

“All the giant bat knows is that her mother wasn’t in the playroom,” Joyce said. “As far as the bat knows, she might still be alive somewhere. But when the bat came to the museum laboratory, shesaw that her mate was dead. She didn’t see or smell anything to suggest death here in the shelter. Maybe one of the kids accidentally pulled out the cable when the bat came in. Maybe the bat did. So the video sound stopped suddenly, and the bat-”

“-thinks that mommy may still be alive?” Gentry said.

“We’ve got a name for that at the zoo,” she said. “It’s called the Dumbo effect. We use smells and sounds to wean animals from their parents.”

“ Nancy, I just don’t know.”

“Robert, it’spossible. As far as our bat knows, this is the same thing that happened once before, a month or so after she was born.”

“Abandonment.” Gentry rose. “How did our lady bat find the dead male bat?”

“She probably traced it by smell.”

“By smell. So wouldn’t the big bat also have smelled that her motherwasn’t here?”

“Olfactory memory doesn’t work that way. Bats, people, most animals recognize a smell if they encounter it again. But they can’t summon it up like they can sounds or images. If she heard something that sounded like her mother, she would believe it was her mother, smell or no smell.”

“And you’re saying this is theonly sound that ever reminded her of her mother’s heartbeat?”

“Why not? Until yesterday this bat lived her entire life in the wild. And she was with her sibling. They were brother and sister, mother and father to each other, mates.”

“Death, incest, and Oedipus,” Gentry said. “This is a goddamn Greek tragedy.”

“That’s the way some mammals are. And now, for the first time, the bat’s alone. When better to listen for her mother?”

Gentry still had problems with it, problems with all of it. Big mutant bats. Little bats driven mad by echolocation. But it didn’t change the fact that New York was under siege, and that the bats had to be dealt with.

“So how does this help us?” Gentry asked.

“I’m not sure,” Joyce said.

Once they crossed West Houston Street, the city was deserted except for police officers patrolling in cars and riot gear-and bats. They were hanging from streetlamps and awnings, from walk signs and traffic lights.

A tired-looking Marius Pace met Joyce and Gentry in the lobby of the new Office of Emergency Management headquarters. Pace took the pair directly to the elevator; on the way to the eighteenth floor, he reported where things stood as of one hour before. That was when Gordy Weeks had come out from his meeting and briefed his deputies during a short recess.

“The impact assessment is obviously pretty grim.” Pace consulted a legal notepad that was spotted with round coffee mug stains. “The subway patrols obviously weren’t able to deal with the bat, so all of New York ’s roadways, rails, and bridges have been shut down. Nothing leaves or enters the borough. All businesses here and in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx are closed except for food-service and health-care providers, but the roads are still open. The area airports have also been closed from Westchester down to New Jersey, and all incoming traffic is being diverted to Hartford, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. Only emergency aircraft can come or go locally.”

“Have there been any incidents?” Joyce asked.

“Yes. Not attacks per se, but two aircraft had to be evacuated just before takeoff, after they sucked groups of bats into the engines. The towers at all the fields are reporting radar problems due to the bats. If we haven’t cleared this up by tomorrow night, the National Guard will be mobilized to get food and medical supplies into the city. An immediate curfew will be in effect from six-thirtyP.M. until six-thirtyA.M. We’ve got a good group of people working with the media to keep the public informed, and each of the officials you’ll meet upstairs has teams dealing with problems involving health, fire, looting, sanitation, and other issues. As it happens, your timing is very good. When I E-mailed Director Weeks to tell him you were here, he informed me that they’d just started discussing what kind of offensive the city is going to mount.”

“Who’s in charge of going after the big bat?” Joyce asked.

“That information,” said Pace, “I do not have.”

They emerged in a brightly lit hallway decorated with framed newspapers of disasters going back to the blizzard of 1888. It was almost as unsettling here as it was in the streets. People were moving quickly in all directions, shouting into phones and passing papers, folders, and diskettes like batons in a relay race. The conference room was in a corner on the southwest side of the building, overlooking the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay. After they entered, Pace closed the door and left. The room was refreshingly quiet. There was artwork on the walls here, very loud and busy expressionistic prints of New York landmarks.

“To bring you up to speed, I have declared a state of emergency,” Mayor Taylor said as Joyce and Gentry took empty seats at the far end of the long table. Everyone chuckled.

The mayor was seated at the head of the table, his back to the door. He was the only one in shirtsleeves and the only one without a laptop or cellular phone in front of him.

Gordy Weeks was seated to his left. Al Doyle was on his right. Weeks introduced the others who were present: Police Commissioner Veltre, Fire Chief Pat Rosati, Department of Health director Kim Whalen, Emergency Medical Services head Barry Lipsey, and the mayor’s press secretary Caroline Hardaway.

The newcomers sat beside Department of Environmental Protection director Carlos Irizzary and Child Welfare commissioner Valari Barocas. Everyone looked a little emotionally threadbare-eyes tired, hair wandering, jaws locked. But Gentry got the impression from the very tight expressions worn by Carlos and Valari that this was the outcast section of the conference room. The people who got in the way of action with finger-wagging “what-ifs.” Of everyone present, only Commissioner Veltre seemed happy-proud?-to see Gentry. When the patrol car had radioed OEM that they were coming in, Weeks had asked that Gentry be brought up with Dr. Joyce. Veltre was pleased that “one of his own” had been in the thick of this from the start.

Doyle did not appear pleased to see either of them.

“Thank you for coming,” the mayor said.

Mayor George Taylor was a tall, robust man. He had a resonant voice that started from somewhere around his knees and picked up power in his broad chest.

“I know it’s been a long, hard day for the two of you, and we all very much appreciate everything you’ve both done.” He turned his steel gray eyes on Nancy. “I understand, Dr. Joyce, that you have specific knowledge of the oversized bat.”

“I do, sir.”

“If you would, bring us up to speed.”

There was strength and confidence in Nancy ’s voice and in her eyes, even in her straight posture. After everything that had happened, Gentry couldn’t imagine where it was coming from.

From knowing what you’re talking about,he decided.

“Mr. Mayor, this bat is a mutation, the offspring of an irradiated vespertilionid bat from Russia.”

“Vespertilionid is the name of the species,” Doyle said, leaning toward the mayor.

“Actually, that’s the family,” Joyce said to the mayor. “Vespertilionidae. Forty-two separate genera, three hundred and fifty-five species. They live almost everywhere in the world-very hardy. This particular bat and her mate came to the city from New Paltz to have pups. I believe, sir, that the birth is imminent.”

Doyle gave her a look.

“Excuse me,” Weeks said, “but how many ‘pups’ do bats have at one time?”

“One or two,” Doyle said.

Joyce glared a look at the pest control chief. Gentry could see the steel in her eyes go molten. After a moment Joyce looked down, took a shallow breath, and continued.

“The small bats-also vespertilionids-apparently came to the city in response to a signal emitted by the male. We don’t know whether the female has the same ability to control the bats. But we do know that whenever she echolocates or generates any sound in the ultrasonic, the bats go wild.”

“Meaning,” Weeks said, “if we stop her, we stop the others.”

“Yes. And I think I have a way to stop her.”

Save for the sound of forced air coming from the vents in the ceiling and Doyle turning a paper clip over and over against the table, the room was silent.

“The bat came to a women’s shelter on Twenty-third Street, I believe, because-and I know this may be a little difficult to accept-she heard a television video game that she thought was her mother’s heartbeat.”

Doyle tossed the paper clip on the table and sat back. The room was somehow much quieter. Even Gentry had to admit that, hearing it spoken here, the notion sounded absurd.

“Why do you believe that?” Weeks asked. There was nothing judgmental in his tone.

“Because there was nothing else in that building that would have attracted the bat. She ate nothing at the shelter. She was there only a minute or two. And she attacked no one, which suggests a mollifying factor, a mollifyingpresence. God knows she wasn’t calm when she left the museum. The children at the shelter were playing the game when the bat came. It apparently became unplugged after that, but when we put it back on it had a sound very much like a heartbeat.”

“You put it back on?” Doyle said.

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t your bat return?”

“Because she would have been out of range by then.”

Weeks asked, “Assuming this is true, about the heartbeat, what do you propose?”

“I suggest we set a trap for her,” Joyce said. “The bat is nesting somewhere downtown. We’ll probably know her exact location very soon. She’s very close to giving birth, and I suspect she’s stockpiling food for the event even as we speak.”

“Human victims?” Commissioner Veltre asked.

“Possibly. No, probably. She’ll want enough food to tide her over for several days.”

“Gordy,” Veltre said, “I want to pull my people out of the subway stations. I’ll put them on the street where they stand less chance of being caught like that man at Christopher Street.”

“Do it,” said Weeks.

Veltre turned from the table and called on his cell phone.

“How large will this offspring be?” Weeks asked.

“Maybe twenty or thirty pounds,” Joyce said. “A wing-span of possibly two feet, maybe a little more. But its size won’t be the big problem. Nor will its mobility, which will be limited for a few days. The problem is if it starts making the same high-frequency sounds as its mother. The bats in the area will probably respond just as they did to the giant male and female.”

“By gathering around it,” Weeks said.

Joyce nodded.

The mayor said, “Gordy, if Dr. Joyce is correct and we find out exactly where she is, why don’t we just throw everything we’ve got at her?”

“Because, Mr. Mayor,” said Joyce, “you’ll still have the little bats to deal with.”

“You mean her offspring?”

“No. The million other vespers in the city. When she came to the shelter, the small bats were nonaggressive because the giant bat was calm. We have to keep her that way. If you try to sneak up on her, she’ll hear. If she hears, she’ll call for backup, as it were.”

Weeks turned back to Joyce. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’m sort of improvising,” she said, “but I propose we lure the she-bat out of her nest using the video game sound. Bring her to wherewe want her, whether that’s somewhere in the subway tunnels or out in the open. Once we have her there, we kill her in a way that doesn’t involve anyone trying to close in on her.”

“Kill a pregnant female animal,” said Press Secretary Hardaway. “The animal rights activists will excoriate us for that.”

“Sane humans will applaud us,” the mayor said dismissively.

“The question is, how do we kill the bat without getting close to her?” Weeks asked. “Could we put snipers on surrounding rooftops?”

“No,” Joyce said. “The smaller bats would muck things up for a telescopic sight.”

Commissioner Veltre looked at her. “You’re sure of that?”

“I do a lot of shooting,” Joyce said. “The little bats would crisscross the line of fire at different depths of field, making it extremely difficult for a marksman to focus on the target.”

“What about poison gas?” the mayor asked. “We were talking about this before you arrived, Dr. Joyce. The Pied Piper aspect could be perfect. If we have the ability to bring the bat to a specific section of tunnel, then all we have to do is keep everyone away from that area until we’re finished.”

“And I still say that’s much too dangerous,” Department of Health director Whalen and Environmental Protection head Irizzary both said almost at once and with the same exasperation.

“As if a few hundred thousand bats, a mad giant, and tons of bat shitaren’t dangerous,” contributed Doyle.

“They are,” Whalen agreed, “only we don’t even know how large a dose it will take to kill the bat.”

“Plus leaks can and will happen,” added Irizzary. “Especially if we have to keep pouring it on.”

“And then there’s the cleanup afterward,” Whalen said. “It could leak into the water, kill fish, birds-”

“We can always use a shitload of hair spray and a really big tennis racket,” Veltre suggested, only half in jest.

“There is one thing to keep in mind,” Joyce said. “I have no idea how long the bat will sit still when she realizes that the heartbeat isn’t a heartbeat. We may have only a few seconds to destroy her. And I don’t think we’ll be able to draw her out a second time. This creature’s smart.”

Doyle said, “Assuming we can even get the bat where we want her using this dubious Pac-Man gambit, we can always use ethyl chloride.”

“Yes,” Weeks said. “Yes, I like that.”

“What’s ethyl chloride?” the mayor asked.

“It’s a congealant,” Weeks said. “A liquid that vaporizes at room temperature and freezes whatever it comes in contact with.”

“We use it as a local to numb kids’ skin before we give them stitches,” said Emergency Medical Services chief Lipsey. “Fast-freeze-turns everything white. A large enough dose will induce hypothermia.”

“We’ve got a lot of it on hand from the rat sweep we just finished. All we’d have to do is barge it down from the boat basin on West Seventy-ninth,” Doyle said.

“What are the risks?” the mayor asked.

“Frankly, not many,” Weeks said.

“Do you agree?” Taylor asked Whalen and Irizzary.

They both nodded.

The mayor looked at Joyce. “So we have the agent. But do we have the subject? Doctor, I’m more than a little worried about betting everything on-what did you call it, Al?”

“The Pac-Man gambit.”

“It’s the Dumbo effect,” Gentry muttered.

“The what?”

“The Dumbo effect,” Gentry repeated. “Using a mother image to lure out a child. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Doyle said nothing. Joyce smiled slightly.

Weeks asked Joyce, “If what you’re saying is true, why not use a recording of a real bat heartbeat?”

“Because the video gameworked. The bat’s mother had been exposed to nuclear waste and God knows what else in Russia, then came to a totally new environment in New Paltz. I have no idea what effect the radiation and the change in climate and diet had on her metabolism-whether her heartbeat was normal or irregular, whether it was stronger or weaker than that of a normal bat. Whatever the special sound or rhythm was in that video game, it ‘spoke’ to the giant vesper. I suggest we stick with it.”

Everyone was silent.

The mayor nodded thoughtfully. “Gordy?”

Weeks sighed. “Dr. Joyce is the expert on bats.” He looked over at her. “I say we bet on her game plan.”

The mayor slapped the table. “Then let’s make it happen. Otherwise we’ll all be living in Jersey.”

The mayor thanked everyone, rose, and left the room. The press secretary was sitting to Joyce’s left and thanked her for her efforts. Commissioner Veltre came over to congratulate Gentry on the fine work he’d done since the crisis began.

“The fine work you’ve doneagain,” was how Veltre put it.

Doyle slipped away without a glance.

As everyone else left, Weeks came over, thanked them both, and asked them to continue as members of the team.

“There’s a lot of work we’re going to have to do over the next few hours,” the OEM director said. “We’ll have to get the ethyl chloride down here and figure out exactly where to draw the bat to, and also how loud the video game has to be relative to where the bat is.”

“You don’t want to make it so loud that the sound is distorted,” Joyce said. “Then it may not sound like what she heard. And the time factor is very important. Bats usually stop flying twelve to twenty-four hours before giving birth.”

“We’re going to move this along as fast as possible,” Weeks assured her. “What I think is that you and Detective Gentry should get some food and rest. We’ve got a cafeteria downstairs and rooms you can use. When we need you, we’ll come and get you.” He smiled. “I’ll also scare up a pair of jumpsuits. Looks like you two’ve been living in those clothes for quite a while.”

Joyce and Gentry both smiled, after which Marius Pace led them to the small, busy cafeteria. After picking up a few sandwiches and sodas, they were taken to the “crash pads” on the tenth floor-small, quiet, prison-size cubicles each with a cot, a shower, and a toilet.

Gentry made sure that Joyce was comfortable before heading to his own cubicle next door. After showering, eating, and pulling on the baggy blue jumpsuit Weeks had sent to the room, Gentry felt three things. One was pain from all the cuts and gashes the bats had inflicted. They were superficial enough that they could be washed out and seemed to disappear. But each of those little cussers stung. He also felt totally exhausted. Now that he’d stopped running, all his muscles wanted to do was nothing. They didn’t want to lift, adjust, or move in any way. They let him know that by complaining each time he shifted his shoulders, his arms, his legs, and even his fingers.

As he lay there, he forced himself to enjoy the respite, the sense of accomplishment-of survival-and he imagined he could hear Nancy’s heartbeat from the other side of the wall.