Authors: J.A. Konrath,Jack Kilborn
Tags: #General Fiction
She settled for finger-combing her bangs back, and went into the cafeteria. The holies were already there, locked in their usual intense debate. Dr. Belgium was measuring coffee to put into the automatic maker, his actions as meticulous and precise as they were in the lab. Andy was leaning against the water cooler, hands in his pockets. Sun caught his eye and tried to look sympathetic. He gave her a shy smile back and walked over to her.
“Sorry about…”
“No need,” Sun interrupted. “We’ve all been there.”
“I haven’t thrown up since doing keg stands in college.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Oh. Harvard.”
He said it as if it embarrassed him. Sun had met plenty of Harvard men, and they usually wore it like a badge of honor.
Interesting.
“How about you?” Andy asked.
“Johns… uh Iowa State.”
“Were you going to say Johns Hopkins? I didn’t know they offered veterinary medicine.”
Sun thought fast. “I lived in Maryland, took some undergrad classes there. Transferred to Iowa.”
If he’d caught her lie she couldn’t tell.
“Is that what you always wanted to be? A vet?”
“Yeah.” Another lie. “Did you always want to be a linguist?”
“I never really thought about it. It’s something I’ve always been good at.”
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t know. I guess I do, or why would I do it, right? Do you like being a vet?”
“Yes,” Sun said, happy to say something honest. “I don’t beat myself up if my patients die.”
Andy smiled. He had a pleasant smile, she thought. She smiled back, surprised at how good it felt.
“I’m still not sure if I want to stay,” Andy said. “This isn’t a normal translating job for me. I don’t know if I can do it.”
“It’s okay to be afraid.”
“I’d bet you’ve never been afraid of anything in your entire life.”
“Not true. When I was seven, a bat got in my bedroom. Harmless, couldn’t have been bigger than a tennis ball. But the way it flew; in a figure eight, unbelievably fast, inches from my face on every pass—it terrified me. Then it landed on my head, got tangled up in my hair. I was so scared I couldn’t move. Took about five minutes to get up the guts to scream. Seemed like an eternity.”
“What happened?”
“Dad came in, caught it with a blanket, let it outside. He said it must have come in through the window. I didn’t open my window again until I was eighteen.”
They shared a small laugh, which felt even better than the smile.
“Well, now you’re taking care of the biggest bat in the history of the world,” Andy said.
“Gotta face your fears sometime. Besides, I think Bub’s a wee bit too big to get tangled in my hair.”
“You don’t find him terrifying?”
“At first I did. Now I’m more intrigued than scared. Aren’t you just a little bit curious about him?”
Andy rubbed his upper lip. “It’s hard to be curious when breakfast is coming out of your nose.”
“Just think about it for a second. Every person on earth, no matter what country or culture, has some kind of idea of the devil. But no one has ever seen him before. Don’t you want to know more about him?”
“You think he’s really Satan?”
“Actually, I find that pretty hard to believe.”
“So what is he? An alien or something?” Andy asked.
“That’s hard to believe too. But of the two, I’d buy the alien theory more than the biblical one. His physiology is just too strange.”
“An alien, huh? So is he the kind that flies around with Elliot, or the kind that eats Sigorney Weaver?”
“I don’t know yet. He seems friendly.”
“Maybe that’s because he’s locked up. I wonder how friendly he’d be on the
other side
of the Plexiglas.”
Race entered the Mess Hall with Dr. Harker. They were in mid-conversation and Sun caught the end of it.
“…for what you’ve done with her. I still can’t accept why you’re here, but—”
“No thanks needed, General.” A frowning Harker cut him off. “It’s my job.”
Just visited Helen,
Sun guessed. Both looked grim. Harker retained the look; she probably scowled in her sleep as well.
Race, with the poise of any good leader, quickly hid his feelings with a good ole boy smile. “Good, we’re all here. Before we get started with the intros I’d like to announce that the Jacuzzi should be operational again by tomorrow. The same rules apply as with the pool, swimming suits are mandatory. You got that, Frank? We have ladies present.”
Dr. Belgium gave Race a nod without turning his attention from the brewing coffee.
“Good. Now I think all of you have met Andy Dennison by now, except for Julie. So let’s start with you.”
Harker had a long, hound-doggish face and a droning voice which left no doubt that she didn’t kindly suffer fools. Sun learned after only a few meetings with her that Harker considered everyone a fool.
“I’m Dr. Julie Harker. I came on in 1980 to oversee the medical well-being of the Samhain team, including the dispensing of medication and monthly physicals. I’ve also been monitoring Bub’s vitals since my arrival, and have been attending to the treatment of General Race’s wife Helen.”
It didn’t surprise Sun that it was the exact same speech she’d given to her a week prior, right down to the nasally inflection.
“Thank you, Julie,” Race said, and Dr. Harker took a seat and removed a nail clipper from the chest pocket of her lab coat. She began to snip away at a hangnail. “How about you, Frank?”
“Hmm? Oh, sure.”
Dr. Frank Belgium touched the fresh cup of coffee to his lips and took a large slurp.
“Frank Belgium, molecular biologist. I’m the gene guy. I’ve been mapping Bub’s genes. Hard, very hard. As you may know, or, well, maybe you don’t, it took ten years for the human genome to get sequenced, and we’ve only got 23 pairs of chromosomes, and less than 25,000 genes. We’ve isolated 44 pairs of chromosomes in Bub. Hard work. Hard hard hard.”
Belgium took another loud slurp of coffee.
“But he’s from earth. I’m sure. Bub has the same twenty amino acids as all life on this planet. Why is this important? Well there are about 80 different types of amino acids, and all can create proteins, but nothing on earth uses those extra sixty. All life—plant, animal, bacteria—uses different combinations of those same twenty, and the reason is because we all evolved from one common ancestor. That’s why all living organisms share genes. Everyone in this room, on this planet, shares 99.9 percent of the same DNA. We share 98.4 with chimpanzees, 98.3 with gorillas, all the way on down to blue-green algae.”
Sun glanced at Andy. He was being drawn in by Frank’s words, the same way Sun had been upon first hearing them.
“Now,” Belgium continued, “if life started several times, rather than just once, we’d probably find different amino acids in different things on earth. But we don’t, we all have the same genetic code, and Bub shares it as well.
“What I’m doing, is mapping sequences in Bub’s genome to find out what on earth he shares the most genes with. Very hit or miss when we’re not sure where to look. It’s kind of like searching for a single sentence in a single book in the Library of Congress.”
Frank shrugged and drank more coffee.
“What do you believe Bub is, Doctor?” Race asked, glancing at Andy while he spoke.
“I think, well, I guess I think he’s a little bit of everything. A mutation. Maybe he’s a member of a prehistoric race that became extinct… since he’s intelligent it would reason that we’ve never found fossils of his kind, perhaps they cremated their dead, or buried them at sea. Or maybe he’s a genetic experiment. Maybe our own government created him.”
“In 1906?” snorted Harker.
“Dr. Harker, what proof do we have that he’s actually been here since 1906? Were you here when he arrived? How do we know that we’re not caught up in some crazy conspiracy to help test the latest in biological weapon technology?”
“At least that would stir things up a bit around here.” Race gave a wide Southern grin.
“How about an extraterrestrial?” Andy asked. “Isn’t there any possibility Bub is from another planet?”
Frank shook his head.
“Even if we discounted the problems associated with space travel from another galaxy, it would be a zillion to one, a gazillion to one, that life formed on another planet with the exact same genetic make-up as life on earth. It would be easier for the same lottery number to come up every single night for a hundred years…”
“Unless it was intentional.” Father Thrist cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “Unless God created Bub the same way He created man and all life on earth. That would explain Bub’s genetic code without the need for evolution, molecular engineering, or space travel.”
Frank raised an eyebrow. “I thought demons and angels had no physical presence. They’re ethereal, only existing in heaven and hell.”
Thrist laughed. It was the first time Sun had seen mirth from the terminally serious priest.
“All of my life, people have questioned my beliefs because there has been no physical evidence to substantiate them. Now here we have something that is clearly a demon, or even Satan himself. Something we can see and touch. And everyone is looking for a new answer, rather than the answer that Christianity has had for two thousand years.”
“Judaism has had it for over three thousand,” Rabbi Shotzen said, wagging a finger.
Thrist gave him a sideways glance. “All around is proof of God’s creation. Me, you, trees, birds, the earth, the universe—but since the beginning of this century mankind has worshiped the god of science, rather than our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here is something science cannot explain, yet you refuse to believe. Andrew,” Thrist gave the linguist his full attention. “What was your reaction when you first saw Bub?”
“Fear,” Andy answered.
“But what did Bub represent to you? When you saw him?”
“A devil.”
Thrist nodded. “Everyone who sees Bub recognizes a devil. They are concerning themselves with the how and the why, but the ‘what’ has been answered. Bub is a devil. Where do devils come from, Andrew?”
“This one came from Panama.”
Sun and the others laughed. Rabbi Shotzen had to be nudged by Thrist because his laughter went on longer than the others’.
“But before he was found in Panama, where did Bub come from?”
“Devils usually come from hell,” Andy said.
“Or heaven,” Shotzen added. “Depending on your interpretation of his creation. Lucifer, the Morning Star, had tried to shine brighter than Adonai, was cast out of heaven for his pride.”
“Or, according to Enoch,” Thrist said, “Devils are angels who chose to fornicate with humans. Wasn’t that the explanation Rabbi Elkiezer gave in the 8th century? Something about fornicating with the daughters of Cain?”
Shotzen dismissed him. “Remember, Enoch wrote pseudepigrapha and apocrypha—nothing the scribe did went into the Torah.”
“But,” Thrist countered, “if we were to base our conceptions solely on the Bible, which encompasses the Torah, we’d have very little to go on.”
“Devils and angels were created by ha-shem as separate entities,” Shotzen insisted. “Had adonai created angels that became devils, it would contradict His perfection. Instead, ha-shem created devils to punish sin. It can be interpreted that all evil, in fact, is Satanic rather than Divine. The Book of Jubilees agrees.”
“Either way,” Thrist said, “we have a being here that is obviously supernatural, and obviously created by God. Shouldn’t we be focusing our efforts on attempting to figure out why He allowed us to find Bub, and what He expects us to do with this knowledge? Is this the beginning of the apocalypse? The first sign of Armageddon? Or should we take this as a message that God indeed exists, and use it to spread His word? And why, after almost a hundred years at this facility, and who knows how many more years buried in the ground, did Bub finally wake up?”
“That’s why Andy is here,” Race said. “To ask him. Right Andy?”
Sun glanced at Andy, who squirmed under the spotlight. She raised an eyebrow.
“Uh… are we sure he can’t escape?” Andy asked.
Race grinned. “His enclosure is four foot concrete with steel plates sandwiched in between each foot. The Plexiglas is bullet proof, shatter proof, fire proof, and has been tested up to sixteen thousand pounds per square inch. Even if he did escape the habitat, he’s two hundred feet underground, and he’d have to go through those two titanium doors. Plus, there are safeguards.”
“Such as?”
“In the eighties, the President decided that if Bub were to ever wake up, we’d need to have some control over him. Bub has two explosive charges surgically imbedded inside of him, one in the neck and one in the heart. Either one would render Bub out of commission, even with his rapid healing abilities. He’s got enough boom in him to blow up a tank.”
Andy’s face scrunched up in thought. Sun watched him. She wanted him to stay, she realized, and that surprised as much as scared her.
“I’ll need some things; books, programs, access to the Internet. And that capsule that Bub was found in, are there pictures of the writing?”
“Son, we’ve got the whole damn capsule, you want to see it.”
“I want to see it. It’s as good a starting place as any. I also need the video recordings of Bub since he’s been awake, anything that has him speaking. He’s only said a few things to me so far.”
“Could you understand him?” Race asked. The excitement was apparent in his voice.
“I’m not sure. But it sounded like an Indio language. I think he said
how are things with you
and
I am very hungry
.”
“Doesn’t sound hostile to me. Dr. Jones, would you mind taking Andy to Red 6 to see the capsule?”
Sun gave Race a look, knowing she was being used, and why. But it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it should.
“I have some things to finish up in the records room, but I can free up some time.”
“Great,” Race said. He was one big smile, ready to shake hands with the world. “Now who wants a microwave chili dog?”
Sun turned to Andy, who was staring at her with a lopsided grin on his face. Part of her wanted to smile back, but she held that part in check.