It was over.
Mitch kept his head down and pressed one eye with a finger, but the pain was coming anyway. Price to be paid.
Rod Taylor pushes the lever forward on the old time machine. The mud hardens under the gray pall of falling ash. Time flies past. The bodies decay within their molds, staining the hard mud. The flesh seeps away and the bones rattle with earthquakes and the mud and stone cracks and fresh water and mud enters, filling the hollow with mud of different density, different composition, holding the bones, finally, still.
The men can rest.
Mitch knew they were still here, somewhere.
He stopped walking and looked to his right, into a step cut into the bluff by hundreds of centuries of erosion. At first he could not see what had attracted his attention; it was hidden by the painful little sliver of light.
The top of the mudstone step was at least six feet above his head. A streak of dark gray capped the step beneath a superficial wig of soil and brush. But his vision tunneled into a bright ball and all he saw was the shiny brown prominence lying horizontally in the stone.
He hardly dared to breathe.
Mitch stooped, arm hanging, propping his knees against the mound of weathered-out clods and pebbles. Reached out with his right finger and brushed along the compacted gray ash and caked mudstone.
The prominence was firm in the hardened layer. It could have been a bone from a deer, a mountain goat, or a bighorn sheep.
But it was not. It was a human shin, a tibia. In this layer, it had to be at least as old as the bones in the camp. He reached down with one hand, sparks flying in his right eye, and felt for the small piece he had seen there, a dark brown talus of bone amongst the rocky talus.
He held it up, turning it until he could see it clearly. It was small, but also from a human. Homoat least. He replaced it. Position would be important when they surveyed.
He took a dental pick from his jacket and worked at the hardened mud and ash around the tibia until he was sure, fighting the pain in his cranium for long minutes. Then he sat back and drew up his knees.
He could no longer put it off. The migraine had arrived. He hadn't had one this bad in more than ten years. The dental pick fell from his hand as he curled up on the ground, trying not to moan.
He managed to reach up with one finger and stroke the half-buried length of bone.
“Found you,” Mitch said. Then he closed his eyes and felt his own lahar wash over him.
33
NEW MEXICO
Dicken's monitor was filled with comparisons of protein expression in embryonic tissues at different stages of development, looking for the elusive retroviral or transposon trigger that might have crept into a complex of developmental genes, promoting the hymen in human females. Even using prior searches and comparisons—incredibly, he had found some in the literature—it looked as if this would take months or years.
Dr. Jurie had shunted Dicken into the safest and least interesting position at Sandia Pathogenics. Putting him in safe, cold storage until needed.
An odd little dance of utility and security. Jurie was keeping Dicken under his thumb, as it were, just to know where he was and what he was up to, and possibly to pick his brain.
But also to confess? To be caught out?
Dicken would not rule out anything where Aram Jurie was concerned.
The man had passed along a list of rambling, long e-mail messages, cryptic, elusive, and a little too evocative for Dicken's comfort. Jurie might be on to something, Dicken thought, a twisted and crazy but undeniably big insight.
Jurie held the belief—not exactly new—that viruses played a substantial but crude role in nearly every stage of embryonic development. But he had some interesting notions about how they did so:
“Genomic viruses want to play in the big game, but as genetic players go, they're simple, constrained, fallen from grace. They can't do the big stuff, so they engage in cryptic little elaborations, and the big game tolerates and then becomes addicted to their subtle plays . . .
“Weak in themselves, endogenous viruses may rely on a very different form of apoptosis, programmed cell suicide. ERVs express at certain times and present antigen on the cell surface. The cell is inspected by the agents of the immune system and killed. By coordinating how and which cells present antigen, genomic viruses can participate crudely in sculpting the embryo, or even the growing body after birth. Of course, they work to increase their numbers and their position in the species, in the extended genome. They work by maintaining a feeble but persistent control in the face of a constant and powerful assault by the immune system.
“And in mammals, they've won. We have surrendered some of the most crucial aspects of our lives to the viruses, just to give our babies time to develop in the womb, rather than in the constraining egg; time to develop more sophisticated nervous systems. A calculated gamble. All our generations are held ransom because of our indebtedness to the viral genes.
“Like getting a loan from the Mafia . . .”
Maggie Flynn knocked on the open door to Dicken's office. “Got a moment?” she asked.
“Not really. Why?” Dicken asked, turning in his rolling chair. Flynn looked flushed and upset.
“Something's come up. Jurie's off the campus. He tells us to sit tight. I don't think we can. We just aren't prepared.”
“What is it?”
“We need expert advice,” Flynn said. “And you could be the expert.”
Dicken stood and stuck his hands in his pants pockets, alert and wary. “What sort of advice?”
“We have a new guest,” Flynn said. “Not a monkey.” She did not appear at all happy with the prospect.
If Maggie Flynn believed Dicken had Jurie's confidence, who was he to correct her? Flynn's pass could clear them both if his own pass was blocked—he had learned that much yesterday, visiting Presky's monotreme study lab.
Flynn took him outside the building to a small cart and drove him around the five linked warehouses that contained the zoo. Out in the open, away from listening devices, she expressed herself more clearly.
“You've worked with SHEVA kids,” Flynn began. “I haven't. We have a tough situation, medically speaking, ethically speaking, and I don't know how to approach it. As the only married female in this block, Turner picked me to provide some moral support, establish a rapport . . . but frankly, I haven't a clue.”
“What are you talking about?” Dicken asked.
Flynn stopped the cart, even more nervous. “You don't know?” she asked, her voice rising a notch.
Dicken's mind started to race and he saw he was on the edge of screwing up a golden opportunity. You've worked with . . . As the only married female . . .
They're doing it. They've done it.He felt his pulse going up and hoped it did not show.
“Oh,” he said, with a fair imitation of casualness. “Virus children.”
Flynn bit her lip. “I don't like that phrase.” She pushed the cart forward again with the little control stick. “Jurie never worked directly with them. Only with specimens. Neither has Turner, and of course Presky is an animal guy, no bedside manner whatsoever. We thought of you. Turner said that must be why you're here, and why you're being given shit theoretical work—so you can be pulled loose for something like this when the time comes.”
“Okay,” Dicken said, putting on a mask of professional caution. He pressed his lips together to keep from saying anything revealing or stupid.
“Something's gone wrong at the border, I don't know what. I'm not in that particular loop. Jurie's in Arizona. Turner told me to bring you in before he gets back.” Her smile was fleeting and desperate. “The cat's away.”