A low rumble shook Frock’s capacious front, finally erupting as a chuckle. “Margo, I would say it is definitely time for a break,” he said. “This is wild speculation.”
“Perhaps,” Margo said. “But I’d prefer to call it a hunch.”
Frock looked at her a moment, then sighed deeply. “As you wish,” he said. “But I, for one, need my rest. I’ll be at Morristown Memorial tomorrow, enduring that annual battery of tests they seem to force on you in retirement. See you Wednesday morning, my dear.”
Margo said good-bye, watching as Frock wheeled himself out into the corridor. She was beginning to realize that the famous scientist did not enjoy being crossed. When she’d been his graduate student, timid and compliant, he’d always been utterly charming, the soul of gentility. But now that Frock was emeritus and she was a curator in her own right, expressing her own ideas, he sometimes seemed less than pleased with the new assertiveness.
She brushed the tiny sample into a specimen well and carried it to the freeze-fracture machine. Inside the machine, it would be encased in a small plastic block, frozen to nearly absolute zero, and cleaved in two. Then the scanning electron microscope would make an extremely high-resolution picture of the fractured surface. Frock was right, of course: under normal circumstances, a procedure such as this would have no bearing on their research. She’d called it a hunch, but in reality it was for lack of anything else to try.
Soon, a green light appeared on the cryogenic machine. Handling the block with an electronic cradle, Margo moved it onto the cleaving stage. The diamond cleaver descended with a smooth motion, there was a faint click, and the block separated. Placing one of the halves in the SEM, she carefully adjusted the mount, scanning controls, and electron beam. In a few minutes, a crisp black and white image appeared on the adjoining screen.
Staring at it, Margo felt her blood run cold.
As expected, she could make out small hexagonal particles: the reovirus that Kawakita’s extrapolation program had originally detected in the plant fibers eighteen months earlier. But here, it existed in an unbelievably high concentration: the plant organelles were literally packed with it. And surrounding the particles were large vacuoles that held some kind of crystallized secretion—that could only come from the reovirus itself.
She breathed out slowly. The high concentrations, the crystallized secretions, could mean only one thing: this plant, Liliceae mbwunensis,was only a carrier. The virusmade the drug. And the reason they couldn’t find traces of the drug was because the drug was encapsulated inside the vacuoles.
Well then,she thought. The answer was simple. Isolate the reovirus, grow it in a medium, and see what drug it produces.
Kawakita must have thought of this.
Perhaps Kawakita hadn’t been trying to genetically engineer the plant, at all. Perhaps he was genetically engineering the virus.If that were the case…
Margo sat down, her mind working furiously. At last, things seemed to be dovetailing: the old research and the new; the viral matter and its host plant; Mbwun; the fibers. But it still didn’t explain why Kawakita had left the Museum to do this. And it didn’t explain how the Mbwun creature could have come all that distance from the Amazon rain forest, in search of the plants that the Whittlesey expedition had…
Whittlesey.
In an instant she was on her feet, hand pressed to her mouth, the lab chair clattering to the linoleum floor.
Suddenly, everything had become perfectly, terrifyingly clear.
= 33 =
THIS TIME, WHEN Smithback was shown into the eighteenth-floor foyer of Nine Central Park South, he noticed immediately that the windows of the vast drawing room beyond had been thrown wide. Sunlight streamed in, gilding the sofas and rosewood tables, turning what had once seemed like a funeral parlor into a blaze of warmth and brilliance.
Anette Wisher was sitting at a glass-topped table on the balcony, wearing a fashionable straw sun hat and dark glasses. She turned to him, smiled slightly, and motioned him to take a seat. Smithback did so, glancing admiringly at the vast green carpet of Central Park, unrolling itself northward to 110th Street.
“Bring Mr. Smithback some tea,” Mrs. Wisher said to the maid who had shown him in.
“Call me Bill, please,” Smithback said, shaking the proffered hand. He couldn’t help noticing that, even in the bright unforgiving light of the summer sun, Mrs. Wisher’s skin looked remarkably free from the ravages of time. It had a youthful resiliency, creamy and smooth without the flabby softness of age.
“I appreciate the patience you’ve shown,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I think you’ll agree it’s about to be rewarded. We’ve decided on a course of action, and, as promised, I wanted you to be the first to know. Of course, it’s to be kept a secret.”
Smithback accepted the tea, drinking in the faint expensive aroma of jasmine. He felt a warm glow, sitting in this lovely apartment, with all of Manhattan spread out below him, drinking tea with the one woman every journalist in the city wanted to interview. It even made up for being scooped so humiliatingly by that smug bastard Bryce Harriman.
“The Grand Army Plaza rally was so successful we’ve decided to push Take Back Our City into a new phase,” Mrs. Wisher said.
Smithback nodded.
“Our plan is quite simple, really. All future actions will be unannounced. Each will take place on a grander scale. And for every new murder that is committed, our people will descend on police headquarters, demanding an end to the outrage.” She raised one hand, smoothing a stray wisp of hair. “But I don’t expect we shall have to wait long to see some real changes.”
“And why’s that?” Smithback asked eagerly.
“At six o’clock tomorrow evening, our people will gather outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Believe me, the group you saw at Grand Army Plaza will seem minuscule by comparison. We mean to show this city we are deadly serious. We will move up Fifth Avenue, across Central Park South, and then north on Central Park West, stopping for a candlelight vigil at the site of every murder. Then we shall converge on the Great Lawn in Central Park for a final midnight prayer.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid the government of this city still hasn’t gotten the message. But when they see midtown Manhattan immobilized by countless voters, all demanding action—they willget the message, mark my words.”
“And the mayor?” Smithback asked.
“The mayor may well show up again. Politicians of his ilk can never resist a crowd. When he does, I plan to tell him that this is his last chance. If he fails us again, we are ready to mount a recall campaign. And when we’re finished with him, he won’t be able to get a job as dogcatcher in Akron, Ohio.” A wintry smile crossed her lips. “I’ll expect you to quote me on that, at the appropriate time.”
Smithback couldn’t help smiling himself. This was going to be absolutely perfect.
= 34 =
IT WAS ALMOST complete.
He stepped into the humid darkness of the Temple, running his fingers lightly along the cool orbs that made up the walls, caressing the organic surfaces, the hollows and swells. It was right that it should be built here: so like what had come before in that other place, yet so unlike. He turned and settled into the throne they had crafted for him, feeling the rough leathery surface of the seat and the slight give of the lashed members, hearing the faint creak of sinew and bone, his senses alive as never before. It would soon be complete. As he, now, was complete.