Mute (37 page)

“I would never!”

“You took their heads. Where did you put them? In
some secret lab of yours? Where did you take the explosives? If you kill any
more…”

“Explosives? I don’t know a thing about that. But
if that’s the subject we’re on, what about all the rocket exhaust from the
launches at the Space Center? How could you blame me—the defender of the lagoon—for
what’s going on when you’ve got tons, and tons of airborne debris from these
launches seeping into the water? Wouldn’t you think this played a bigger role
in triggering the bacterial mutations?”

“Okay Harry, that’s enough.” Swartzman finally
waved his friend quiet. Aaron noted that it took bringing up the sore subject
of NASA’s launch emissions, which nearly got Swartzman canned, for him to
interject. “You’re not doing yourself any favors with these tirades. Pretend
this is a research paper and just get to the point.”

Aaron had read plenty of academic research papers—reluctantly,
of course. They were about as clear-cut as the user manual for the space shuttle.
It didn’t matter that his professor might understand it. Of all the people in
the room, only Sneed’s opinion truly mattered regarding Trainer’s fate. Aaron
didn’t want anything for the Lagoon Watcher short of an extended stay in the
slammer after his kidnapping of Mariella, and his brawl with Moni. Yet, he
could see through the political ramblings. He recognized the man’s basic point:
there’s no way he could have managed all of this, at least not by himself.

After nearly losing Mariella in the Enchanted
Forest following Trainer’s arrest, Aaron knew that the threat against the girl,
and Moni hadn’t ceased. He’d love to take the girls windsurfing out there one
day and see them laughing and smiling without a fear in the world. Yet the
lagoon still reeked of decay.

“A research paper might be kind of ambitious right
now, Mr. Watcher. I mean, Mr. Trainer,” Aaron said. His professor rolled his
eyes as if Aaron had wasted perfectly good air by opening his mouth. The Lagoon
Watcher focused on him with those erratic blue eyes, momentarily calm. “We’ve
done some investigating and I know you’ve gotten down and dirty digging for
answers too. It can’t hurt to compare notes. Right?” The man nodded as eagerly
as a kid who had been asked whether he fancied visiting an amusement park. “So
what have you seen in the water?”

“Well, all kinds of fascinating phenomenon,” the
Lagoon Watcher began. Already, Sneed crossed his arms and leaned his head off
to the side in a sculpture of disinterest, as much as
The Thinker
is a
sculpture of calculating thought. Aaron reassured Trainer by scooting forward
in his chair. “Dolphins have become mischievous thieves for their masters. When
you see a bird flying all crooked, and following you around town, you know it’s
one of their spies. Gators and snakes are like the frontline soldiers. And that
turtle you tagged, Herb, it’s a real wild one. It swims like a barracuda.”

“Come on, Harry. We all know you gave that sea
turtle lifts on your boat to spook me,” Swartzman said.

“You think I’m giving the turtle rides? I couldn’t
even catch it in a speed boat,” Trainer said. The professor covered his face
with his hand and sighed. “These enhancements are part of their remodeling of
the local species. Now, they’ve started melding two or three species together
and finding new tasks for them. They’re crafted to adapt to their environment,
however hostile it may be to other forms of life. It’s amazing that it all
starts with the little guys.”

“You mean the bacteria?” Aaron asked.

“No, no, no. I’m talking about the other little
guys—the smaller ones.”

Aaron and his professor exchanged puzzled glances.

“You’ve seen them right?” the Lagoon Watcher asked.
“The carbon-mechanical hybrids? That’s one name for them. Really, there is no
category for organisms, or machines, like this. Herb, how do you think their
nervous system functions?”

“There’s nothing unusual in the infected animals
besides bacteria,” Swartzman said. “The bacteria are the source.”

“No. The bacteria are their weapons,” the Lagoon
Watcher said. “They’re the foot soldiers. They’re not the generals. That would
be the smaller guys.”

“If there really is something else in the infected
animals, how come we haven’t seen it in their blood?” Aaron asked.

“Are you examining the blood of dead animals?” the
Lagoon Watcher asked. Aaron nodded. “Well, there you are. Try capturing a live
infected animal. Don’t bother with blood that’s been outside of its body for
more than a few seconds. You need to get a piece of live tissue under a
microscope. Otherwise the little goobers will scurry off.”

“Oh right, because these hybrid beings are smart
enough to know when a microscope is coming and recognize the second their hosts
die,” Swartzman said.

“You got it,” Trainer said, without detecting his
friend’s strong hint of sarcasm. “They’re real clever. Now do you see how this
works? Bacteria are dumb. They can’t control an animal, much less a person. But
these hybrids imbed themselves into the nervous system, and the brain. They
rearrange the chemistry, and the interior makeup. We’re talking more than just
redecorating here. The hosts acquire the same biological preferences as the
bacteria. They crave iron and sulfur. They relish baths in sulfuric acid—like
what the lagoon is turning into. I don’t understand how they do it, but somehow
they tinker with the genetic code, and the hormones get all out of whack. Then
the animal takes orders from their hybrid masters.”

His aggravation finally swollen so large that it
popped, Sneed smacked his hand on the edge of the table. “Listen old man,
blaming your crimes on corporations and politicians is offensive enough, but at
least it doesn’t insult my fucking intelligence. Now, making this a yarn about
body snatchers? This doesn’t sit well with me. Do you think I’m a complete
idiot? Or are you still trying to sucker me into declaring you insane?”

The Lagoon Watcher slumped to his side. He raised
his hands so he could bury his face in them, but the shackles limited his
reach. Instead, he wiped his nose on his shirt. The man’s theories had been
ignored for decades, yet he apparently had never lost the impassioned belief
that he stood on the right side. This time, Aaron believed that he did.

Those “hybrids” could serve as the missing piece
that fills the enormous hole in this case, Aaron thought. Moni had described a
gator with the two snakes growing out of it. Aaron had seen that video of the
dolphins with human hands. These mutations went beyond what bacteria alone
could do. The murder victims had organs removed cleanly from the inside almost
as if they were disassembled from their bodies. Aaron had first compared it to
tiny construction workers. Maybe those early impressions were right on the
money. If they could remove organs, they could carve off a head just as
smoothly.

Sneed signaled to the officer standing behind
Trainer. The husky man approached the inmate’s back. If they dragged him out
that door, they wouldn’t see him for a long time.

“Hold on a second. I’ve got another question,”
Aaron said.

“Will this episode of the
X-Files
ever end?”
Sneed remarked, as he waved the officer back into the corner.

“I only wish it was fiction,” Swartzman said. “I’m
afraid that what Mr. Trainer described might be all too real.” Almost giddy,
the shackled man tapped his feet. Then the professor delegated the next move to
his student. “Didn’t you have a question for the gentleman?”

Despite the gravity of the moment, Aaron couldn’t
contain his goofy grin at having his professor finally recognize that he could
actually help him in a tight spot. It counted as more than a tight spot,
really. The task was stopping a false conviction of one of Swartzman’s friends—the
man who had saved his career. And then they had this little issue with the
heinous water quality in the lagoon.

Aaron cleared his throat and dove right in. “When
you saw these hybrids, what were they made out of? What exactly has been
blended together?”

“I’d call it nanobot, but it’s not anything like we
know it. I could call it a highly adaptive virus, but it’s not completely
organic.” The Lagoon Watcher held his hands in a ball as if he were molding a
new form of life. “It’s nanobiotechnology. We’ve only begun to scratch the
surface in this field, or that’s what I thought until I saw them. Someone has
advanced it centuries into the future. Part of it is a composite metal. I’m not
sure if it’s a shield or a battery pack or a mini computer. It might be all
three. This metal can slice and dice its way through anything in the body, even
bone. Then it has interfaces made of biomaterial that work sort of like keys.
They unlock a genetic code and change it. When they need some bacteria
soldiers, they pop one out and it starts dividing into an army.

“Remember the Borg on
Star Trek
? It’s kind
of like that, but a tiny version of those cyborgs.”

Wearing a serious expression, Sneed leaned in close
to the man. “I had no idea it was so serious. Are the Klingons involved too?”
The detective threw his head back and guffawed. “What about the guys with the
pointy ears? I bet they’re inside our bodies blasting their phasers.”

As the officer behind him joined the laughter, the
Lagoon Watcher’s face burned so hot that Aaron could see the red through his
over-crisped tan.

“Stop it! This is no joke,” Trainer said. “The
hybrids are real. If you’re looking for who’s responsible for the polluting of
my lagoon and all the murders, blame them, not me. Want evidence? Look into a
microscope for once in your life, and you’ll see.”

Sneed got in the man’s face again. This time he
didn’t seem so jovial. “I don’t need to search the globe looking for the killer
who poisoned the lagoon. I’m looking right at him. If you’re an innocent man,
why’d you kidnap that child?”

“Kidnapping? Please. I was trying to save her,”
Trainer said.

“From the real killer?” Swartzman asked.

“From herself,” he replied. “Or, what’s inside her.
I heard that she hasn’t said a word since spending the night along the lagoon.
That’s consistent with the behavior of the infected animals. None of them can
vocalize. The hybrids are in that girl. I’m not sure how strongly they’ve taken
hold, or whether they can control the human brain, but they’re doing some
damage, or else she would talk. I was looking for a blood sample so I could at
least see how potent the bacterial infection has become.”

When Aaron thought of the diminutive girl, he
couldn’t compare her to the frenzied snake that tore through the window screen
after him, or the dolphins drowning those teenagers in the harbor. She didn’t
bath in sulfuric acid and eat bowls of iron for breakfast. But at the same
time, he knew the girl didn’t come anywhere close to acting like a normal kid.
He had assumed that the apprehension that backed her into a silent corner came
from her fear of being victimized again. Perhaps what really scared Mariella
was dwelling among people and socializing in a culture she didn’t understand.
How could little bio-machines make sense of a second grader’s world?

He couldn’t say for sure whether the Lagoon Watcher
had just blown open the case. For Mariella,and Moni’s sake, he wished that he
hadn’t. Not this way. But if Trainer was right, Aaron couldn’t let the girl
succumb to the invaders inside her body.

“You believe me, don’t you Herb?” the Lagoon
Watcher asked.

“It certainly is plausible. But it’s not important
whether I believe you. It’s all about what this man right here believes.” The
professor pointed at the detective seated beside him.

“Damn straight,” Sneed said. “And if I were you, I
wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

Trainer hung his head.

“Then it’s a good thing we can test this
hypothesis,” the professor said. “We’ll go over some live samples from an
infected rat tomorrow and see if we find what you described.” Trainer nodded
eagerly. His face beamed as if he were one step away from leaping out of his
seat and clicking his heels together as a free man. “I didn’t say it would
completely exonerate you. But it might lead us to the real inventor of this
bizarre technology and help us clean up the lagoon.” Swartzman faced Sneed.
“What do you say? Can we have another day or two to examine the suspect’s claim?”

Sneed gazed upon the pencil-pusher as if he would
rather yank his tie until his windpipe caved in than give him the privilege of
yet another scientific jaunt.

“You’ve got two days until I start lining up a
grand jury,” the detective said. “If you find anything, you better get it on
video or else I’m liable to accuse you of forgetting.”

Swartzman nodded in spite of the obvious slight.
With that, Sneed had the other officer pull the Lagoon Watcher from his seat,
and drag him away. The moment before his head passed out the door, the man
stopped and faced his three former interrogators.

“Since you’ve only got two days, I figure I better
tell you.” Trainer planted his feet and resisted the guard’s tugging on his
arm. “The most startling stuff is at the bottom of the lagoon. Not at the sea
grass beds, but deep in the Intracoastal channel that runs down the middle.
Show the detective a few photos from there. That’ll be proof enough.”