Cameron felt the blood leave her face. If she contracted the virus, it would go to work on the embryo inside her. She had stood in the freezer with the others, the infected bodies swinging and dripping all around her. She'd already had morning sickness once-she was hardly at the top of her game, and if things went south, there was nothing anyone could do for her. Tank was watching her, maybe with concern, but he averted his eyes quickly when she looked over.
"But if this is how the virus works," Diego was saying, "then why do all the larvae look identical? Why are they not all different like the last generation we saw captured in the specimen freezer?"
"The virus must go dormant after the first generation," Samantha answered.
"So the first generation is all different," Szabla said, "but the second wave of offspring resemble their parents."
Savage lit a cigarette and Diego didn't even bother to comment.
"Of course," Rex said. "From a fitness perspective, if one of the mutated organisms survives to reproduce, it would be advantageous for it to replicate its own phenotype in its offspring. Continued mutation would compromise stability."
"It's like the virus found a working model, so it's sticking with it," Szabla added.
There was a rush of air as Samantha sighed into her telephone in the slammer. "It's amazing," she said. "The virus has evolved such that it provides a one-time opportunity for massive mutation. An unthinking yet solution-oriented process to create new animals capable of filling environmental niches."
Savage exhaled a long, thick ribbon of smoke. "Evolution in over-drive," he said.
Diego stood up, sweat glistening on his forehead. "This could be an age-old process-the virus locked in the earth's core, living in ther-mophilic microbes, springing up at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years to revolutionize life forms. It could explain instances of rapid origination, anomalies in the fossil records. The jump from cold- to warm-blooded vertebrates. The archaeopteryx. The Cambrian explo-sion. The Burgess shale. We may be on the precipice of such a period." His hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets.
Cameron held up her hand. "Stop," she said. "First things first. How does the virus spread? Could we get it from one of these creatures?"
"It seems to spread in similar fashion as a blood-borne pathogen," Samantha said.
"What's that mean?" Justin asked.
"If you fuck one," Savage growled, "wear a condom."
"Don't have open contact with the larvae's secretions," Samantha said.
"Well, don't viruses mutate all the time?" Justin asked, his voice lined with panic. "I mean, what if this thing goes airborne?"
"Let's not get dramatic," Samantha answered calmly. "It's not aerosolinfectious now, and generally, viruses tend to retain similar properties as they evolve. Besides, you guys don't have mission-oriented protective posture suits, and even if you did, you wouldn't be able to bend over and touch your toes if you put 'em on."
"What steps should we take to ensure we don't get infected?" Cameron asked.
"Well, we don't even know if it can infect humans, though, clearly, we don't want to resolve that issue the hard way. So, for one, I'd steer clear of that specimen freezer. Those bodies are packed with the virus, and from what you said, they're discharging secretions copiously. The large body you have at the camp is probably still shedding. Burn it-for your safety, and so it doesn't work its way through the food chain as it decom-poses. Do you have any antibacterial gel?"
"Yes," Justin said. "One bottle."
"If you come into contact with any secretions, rinse off and apply the gel. Handle the larva with care, but there's no need to be paranoid. Touching it won't spread the virus." Her sneeze echoed through the transmitters. " 'xcuse me. I do have some good news for you. As Rex pointed out, the confluence of conditions that allowed the Darwin virus to find its way into a single viable animal host is quite extraordinary. If it operates like viruses that are similarly transmitted, the rate of infection we would anticipate in the type of contact between a virus-bearing microorganism and an insect embryo is only one in eight. Taking into account the wasp and mantid populations of the island, and the odds of infected dinos going to spore state, UV weakening an ootheca so it could be compromised by parasitic wasps, and the virus hitting the unhatched nymphs at precisely the right timing-we're looking at an estimated one in one hundred twenty-one shot that another mantid ootheca was infected. The odds that the infected ootheca would produce offspring that pulled the right combination of organs and structures from the resultant DNA soup to be viable are even lower, probably infinitesimal. It looks like the assumption you've been operating on-that there's only one mantid line-age-stands an extremely good chance of being accurate."
"So the larvae are infected," Diego said despondently. "All of them."
There was a pause before Samantha answered. "Yes, I would imagine so."
"If this virus does indeed increase mutation and speed generational turnover," Donald said, "that would explain a number of the things you've described about the animals."
"Like what?" Cameron asked.
"Well, the switch from incomplete to complete metamorphosis, for one."
"A two-stage metamorphosis allows an organism to take advantage of variant food sources," Rex murmured. "It opens up the range of food available to it through its life cycle. The larvae seem primarily herbivorous-"
"While the adults seem to prefer people food," Szabla said. No one laughed.
"It would also explain the mantids' accelerated rate of development," Donald said. "Early reproduction is one of the keys to rapid increase. A ten percent decrease in age at first reproduction is roughly equivalent to a one hundred percent increase in fecundity. The rapid cycling of gener-ations entails, of course, extremely short intergenerational gaps. Think of the Aphis fabae."
"I often do," Szabla said.
"It's an aphid. Embryonic development for the next three generations actually begins in the mother's body before her own birth. If all her off-spring survived, a single female could produce five hundred twenty-four billion progeny in a year. Not to mention cecidomyian gall midges, who eat their mother alive from the inside, only to crawl from her shell and be devoured by their own offspring two days later." There was a silence as Donald paused. "If this virus indeed hastens the infected species' radiation, don't expect your larvae to hold in instar stages too long. After another molting or two, you're due for a metamorphosis."
Derek gazed at the larva in his lap, clearly upset. "But how does the virus know to do all this?" he asked.
"It doesn't know anything," Donald answered. "It has adapted to act certain ways because it's been shaped over thousands, maybe millions, of generations by random mutation and natural selection. Its actions merely give the appearance of motive."
"Do you think the adults will actively hunt us?" Justin asked.
"As Rex pointed out, aside from the occasional dog, no other sizable and appropriate food source on the island comes to mind," Donald said slowly. "Livestock would be too large, iguanas too small, and they'd be unable to crack a tortoise."
"I know we're all in a bit of a creature feature mindset," Rex said. "But let's bear in mind that the mantids are not malevolent. They're ani-mals that act on need and instinct-no more, no less."
Savage covered one nostril with a thumb and blew snot on the ground. He wiped his hand off on his cammies.