Reliquary (32 page)

“Just a minute,” Waxie began. “I was saying that--”

Horlocker turned to him. “Waxie, shut up. Dr. Green, I think you’d better tell us exactly what you’ve been doing and what you’ve discovered.”

Margo took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Lieutenant D’Agosta has told you already,” she began, “so I’ll be brief. You know that the badly deformed skeleton we found belongs to Gregory Kawakita, a former curator here at the Museum. He and I were both graduate assistants. After leaving the Museum, Greg apparently ran a series of clandestine laboratories, the last one being down in the West Side railyards. My examination of the site turned up evidence that, before his death, Greg was manufacturing a genetically engineered version of
Liliceae mbwunensis
.”

“And that’s the plant the Museum Beast needed to survive?” Horlocker asked. Margo listened for a sarcastic edge to his voice, but could not detect one.

“Yes,” she replied. “But I now believe that this plant was more than just a food source for the beast. If I’m right, the plant contains a reovirus that causes morphological change in any creature that ingests it.”

“Come again?” Waxie said.

“It causes gross physical alteration. Whittlesey, the leader of the expedition that sent the plants back to the Museum, must have ingested some himself--perhaps unwittingly, or perhaps against his will. We’ll never know the details. But it seems clear now that the Museum Beast was, in fact, Julian Whittlesey.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Frock. Nobody else spoke.

“I know this is difficult to believe,” Margo said. “It certainly wasn’t the conclusion we came to after the beast was destroyed. We thought the creature was simply some evolutionary aberration that needed the plants to survive. We assumed that, when its own ecological niche was destroyed, it followed the only remaining plants back to the Museum. They’d been used as packing fibers for the artifacts that were crated up and shipped back to New York. Then later, when the beast couldn’t get the plants, it ate the nearest available substitute: the human hypothalamus, which contains many of the same hormones found in the plant.

“But I now think we were wrong. The beast was a grossly malformed Whittlesey. I also think Kawakita stumbled on the true answer. He must have found a few specimens of the plant and begun altering them genetically. I guess he believed he’d been able to rid the plant of its negative effects.”

“Tell them about the drug,” D’Agosta said.

“Kawakita had been producing the plant in large quantities,” Margo said. “I believe that a rare designer drug--didn’t I hear you call it ‘glaze’?--is derived from it, though I can’t be sure. It probably has potent narcotic or hallucinatory properties in addition to its viral payload. Kawakita must have been selling it to a select group of users, probably to raise money for more research. But he was also testing the effectiveness of his work. Clearly, he ingested the plant himself at some point. That’s what accounts for the bizarre malformations to his skeletal structure.”

“But if this drug, or plant, or whatever, has such terrible side effects, why would this Kawakita take it himself?” Horlocker asked.

Margo frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “He must have continued perfecting new strains. I assume he felt he’d bred out the negative elements of the drug. And he must have seen some beneficial aspect to it. I’m conducting tests on the plants I found in his laboratory. We’ve introduced them into various test animals, including white mice and some protozoans. My lab assistant, Jennifer Lake, is going over the results now.”

“Why wasn’t I informed--?” Waxie began.

D’Agosta rounded on him. “When you finally get around to checking your in box and listening to your messages, you’ll find that you were informed of every goddamn step.”

Horlocker held up his hand. “Enough. Lieutenant, we all know that mistakes have been made. We’ll leave the recriminations for later.”

D’Agosta sat back. Margo had never seen him so angry. It was almost as if he blamed everyone in the room--himself included--for the subway tragedy.

“Right now, we’ve got an unbelievably serious situation on our hands,” Horlocker continued. “The mayor’s on my back, screaming for action. And now, with this massacre, the governor’s joined in.” He wiped his brow with a damp handkerchief. “All right. According to Dr. Green here, we’re dealing with a group of drug addicts, supplied by this scientist, Kawakita. Only now, Kawakita is dead. Maybe their supplies have run out, or maybe they’ve gone wild. They’re living deep underground, in these Astor Tunnels D’Agosta was describing, abandoned long ago because of flooding. And they’re going mad with need. When they can’t get the drug, they’re forced to eat the human brain. Just like the Mbwun beast. Hence, all the recent killings.” He looked around, glaring. “Supporting evidence?”

“The Mbwun plants we found at Kawakita’s lab site,” Margo said.

“The bulk of the killings parallel the route of the Astor Tunnels,” D’Agosta added. “Pendergast showed that.”

“Circumstantial.” Waxie snorted.

“How about testimony of countless homeless, all stating the Devil’s Attic has been colonized?” Margo said.

“You’d trust a bunch of bums and drug addicts?” Waxie asked.

“Why the hell would they lie?” Margo demanded. “And who’s in a better position to know the truth than they are?”

“Very well!” The Chief raised his hand. “In the face of the evidence, we’re forced to agree. No other leads have panned out. And the powers that be in this city want immediate action. Not tomorrow, or the next day, but right now.”

Frock cleared his throat quietly. It was the first sound he’d made in some time.

“Professor?” Horlocker said.

Frock rolled forward slowly. “Forgive my skepticism, but I find this a little too fantastic,” he began. “It all seems too much an extrapolation from the facts. Since I wasn’t involved in the most recent tests, I can’t speak with authority, of course.” He looked at Margo with mild reproof. “But the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

“And what
pray tell
is the simple explanation?” D’Agosta broke in.

Frock moved his gaze to the Lieutenant. “I beg your pardon,” he said icily.

Horlocker turned to D’Agosta. “Stow it, Vincent.”

“Perhaps Kawakita
was
working with the Mbwun plant. And I see no reason to doubt Margo when she says that our own assumptions of eighteen months ago were a trifle hasty. But where is the evidence of a drug, or of the distribution of a drug?” Frock spread his hands.

“Jesus, Frock, he had a stream of visitors out at his lab in Long Island City--”

Frock turned another cool stare at D’Agosta. “I daresay
you
have visitors at your apartment in
Queens
”--the distaste in his voice was evident--“but that doesn’t mean you’re a drug peddler. Kawakita’s activities, however professionally reprehensible, do not have any bearing on what I think is probably a gang of youths on a homicidal rampage. Kawakita was a victim like the rest. I fail to see the connection.”

“Then how do you explain Kawakita’s deformities?”

“Very well, he was making this drug, and perhaps he
was
taking it. In deference to Margo, I’ll go even further and say--without any proof, of course--that perhaps this drug does cause certain physical changes in the user. But I have yet to see one iota of evidence that he was distributing it, or that his, ah, clients are responsible for these killings. And the idea that the Mbwun creature was once Julian Whittlesey ... come now. It goes directly against evolutionary theory.”

Your evolutionary theory
, Margo thought.

Horlocker passed a weary hand over his brow and pushed litter and papers away from a map that was lying across the table. “Your objections are noted, Dr. Frock. But it no longer matters exactly
who
these people are. We know what they do and we have a good idea where they live. All that’s left now is to take action.”

D’Agosta shook his head. “I think it’s too soon. I know every minute counts, but we’re still in the dark about too many things. I was in the Museum of Natural History, remember. I
saw
the Mbwun creature. If these drug users have even a trace of that thing’s abilities ...” He shrugged. “You saw the slides of Kawakita’s skeleton. I just don’t think we should move until we know what we’re dealing with. Pendergast went down for his own reconnaissance over forty-eight hours ago. I think we should wait until he returns.”

Frock looked up in surprise, and Horlocker snorted. “Pendergast? I don’t like the man and I
never
liked his methods. He has no jurisdiction here. And frankly, if he went down there alone, that’s his lookout. He’s probably history by now. We’ve got the firepower to do whatever needs to be done.”

Waxie nodded vigorously.

D’Agosta looked dubious. “At the most, I’d propose some kind of containment effort until we get more information from Pendergast. Just give me twenty-four hours, sir.”

“
Containment
effort,” Horlocker repeated sarcastically, looking around the room. “You can’t have it both ways, D’Agosta. Didn’t you hear me? The mayor is screaming for action. He doesn’t want containment. We’ve run out of time.” He turned to his assistant. “Get the mayor’s office on the phone. And locate Jack Masters.”

“Personally,” Frock said, “I’m of the same opinion as D’Agosta. We shouldn’t be precipitous--”

“The decision’s made, Frock,” Horlocker snapped, returning his attention to the map.

Frock flushed a deep crimson. Then he spun his wheelchair away from the table and rolled toward the door. “I’m going to take a turn around the Museum,” he said to nobody in particular. “I can see my usefulness here has ended.”

Margo began to rise, but D’Agosta placed a restraining hand on her arm. She watched the door close with regret. Frock had been a visionary, the one person most instrumental in her own choice of careers. Yet now she could only feel pity for the great scientist who’d grown so set in his ways.
How much less painful,
she thought,
if only he’d been allowed to enjoy his retirement in peace.

= 39 =

Pendergast stood on a small metal catwalk, watching the mass of sewage moving sluggishly four feet below him. It glowed faintly green and surreal in the artificial phosphor of the VisnyTek night-vision goggles. The smell of methane gas was dangerously strong, and every few minutes he reached inside his jacket for a whiff of pure oxygen from a hidden mouthpiece.

The catwalk was bedecked with rotten strips of paper and other, less identifiable things that had caught in the metal slats during the last rainstorm. With every step, Pendergast’s feet sunk into puffy mounds of rust that coated the metal like fungus. He moved quickly, examining the slimy walls, looking for the thick metal door that signified the final descent to the Astor Tunnels. Every twenty steps, he removed a small canister from a pocket and sprayed two dots on the wall: markers for long-wavelength light. The dots, invisible to the human eye, glowed a ghostly white when the VisnyTeks were in infrared mode. This would help him to find his way back. Especially if--for whatever reason--he was in a hurry.

Ahead, Pendergast could now make out the faint outlines of the metal door, plated with rivets and heavy with a crust of calcite and oxides. A massive lock hung from its faceplate, frozen by time. Pendergast dug into his jacket, removed a small metal tool, and flicked it on. The high whine of a diamond blade sang down the sewer line, and a stream of sparks flickered into the darkness. In seconds the lock fell onto the catwalk. Pendergast examined the rusted hinges, then positioned the small blade and cut through the three sets of door pins.

He replaced the saw and gave the door a long, appraising glance. Then, grasping the faceplate with both hands, he jerked it toward him. There was a sudden shriek of metal and the door came away, falling off the catwalk and landing with a splash in the water below. On the far side of the door was a dark hole, leading down into unguessable depths. Pendergast switched on the goggles’ infrared LED and peered down the hole, wiping the dust from his latex gloves. Nothing.

He played a thin Kevlar rope down into the darkness, fixing the end to an iron bolt. Then, taking a nylon-webbed Swiss seat from his pack, he stepped gingerly into it, locked on a carabiner with a motorized brake bar, and stepped into the well, sliding quickly to the bottom.

His boots landed in a soft, yielding surface. Pendergast unhooked the Swiss seat and tucked his gear away, then did a slow scan with the VisnyTeks. The tunnel was so hot that everything was burned to white. He adjusted the amplitude and slowly the room swam into view, illuminated in a monochromatic landscape of pale green.

He was standing in a long, monotonous tunnel. The muck on the ground was about six inches deep and thick as axle grease. Completing the visual sweep, he pulled open his cammos and consulted the diagrams inside. If the map was correct, he was in a service tunnel, close to the main line. Perhaps a quarter of a mile down the passage lay the remains of the Crystal Pavilion, the private waiting area deep beneath the long-forgotten Knickerbocker Hotel, which once stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. It was the largest of the waiting areas, larger than the platforms beneath the Waldorf and the great Fifth Avenue mansions. If there was a central hub of the Devil’s Attic, he would find it within the Crystal Pavilion.

Pendergast moved carefully down the tunnel. The smell of methane and the stench of decay were dizzying; nevertheless, he breathed deeply through his nose, aware of a certain goatish odor he remembered all too well from the darkened Museum subbasement eighteen months before.

The service tunnel merged with another and made a slow bend toward the main line. Pendergast glanced downwards and froze. There in the sludge was a trail of footprints. Bare footprints, apparently fresh. They headed down the track toward the main line.

Taking a long whiff of oxygen, Pendergast bent to examine the track more closely. Allowing for the elasticity of the sludge, the footprints looked normal, if a little broad and squat. Then he noticed the way the toes narrowed to thick points--more like talons than toenails. There were certain depressions in the muck between the toe imprints that suggested webbing.