The Tomorrow Code Part 22

ZETA Tane watched the chimpanzee, watching him. There were two chimpanzees, actually, but only one was watching him. The other was watching Rebecca. His was called Z2. At least that was what it said on the cage. Rebecca's was Z1. him. There were two chimpanzees, actually, but only one was watching him. The other was watching Rebecca. His was called Z2. At least that was what it said on the cage. Rebecca's was Z1.

Z1 was the younger of the two, as far as Tane could tell, but he was no expert at guessing the age of chimpanzees. It was just the wise, almost serene expression in the eyes of Z2 and the way she sat, erectly, regally, with her hands clasped together in her lap. Hers was the face of a sad clown.

Z1 had a more mischievous expression. Impish, if you could call a chimpanzee "impish." Perhaps that would make it "chimpish," Tane thought.

The cages were set up near the center of what should have been the central restaurant of a fancy new hotel, the Hyatt Kingsgate in the seaside town of Orewa, except that the chairs and tables were stacked against the walls.

Not all the chairs and tables. The two chimpanzee cages rested heavily on the polished wooden surface of a couple of tables. Other tables were full of test tubes and petri dishes, being worked on by men in black s.p.a.ce suits with open faceplates.

In the very center of the restaurant, three tables supported a long gla.s.s tank of some kind, covered with white tablecloths.

Rebecca and Tane sat quietly. The soldiers who had brought them here had not exactly encouraged talking, but Tane suspected that Rebecca would not have had a lot to say to him if it had been allowed. Nothing nice anyway.

They had been brought here half an hour ago. The troopers who had raided their house in West Harbor had brought them directly here, sat them down, and left them in the care of these other men, in the black s.p.a.ce suits.

Where was Rebecca's mum? he wondered. he wondered. Had she been arrested also? Had she been arrested also?

The troopers at the house had been New Zealanders. SAS, Tane guessed. But these were not. The murmured conversations all had an American burr to them. Anyway, he recognized the uniforms, the s.p.a.ce suits. These were the men they had met on the island.

They waited, and watched the chimps. The chimps watched them back until eventually they tired of that and started watching each other and playing with the newspaper that lined the bottoms of their cages.

Eventually, a door opened and a tall man entered, talking into a mobile phone. Tane recognized him immediately. The leader of the soldiers: Dr. Anthony Crowe.

Two other soldiers entered behind Dr. Crowe. Between them they held the defiant shape of Harley Rawhiri Williams. Fatboy. His arms, like those of Tane and Rebecca, were fastened behind his back by a plastic tie, but his chin jutted staunchly. He walked with his usual swagger, and he still wore his hat. The scientist they had seen on the television, Dr. Lucy Southwell, followed.

Dr. Crowe pocketed his mobile phone and stopped in front of Rebecca and Tane. He opened his mouth to speak, but Fatboy spoke first.

"Sorry, guys," he said.

Tane glanced involuntarily at Rebecca. Would she tell? Let Fatboy know what he had done? She didn't get the chance.

"Found your voice at last," Crowe said amicably. "That's two more words than I've heard out of you the entire time I've known you. Sit down."

He motioned to the other two soldiers, who sat Fatboy down next to Rebecca.

Crowe pulled up a chair, turned it backward, and straddled it, facing them, resting his arms on the chair back.

He pulled Rebecca's notebook from a pocket on his leg and thumbed through it, frowning. Eventually, he closed it and put it back in his leg pocket.

He looked at them for a few moments, then said, with a glance at Southwell, "Cut them loose."

An even taller man with a mop of curly hair and a Texan accent said, "You sure, Stony?"

Crowe nodded. "These kids aren't terrorists. I'd stake my life on it. Him, I wasn't sure about"-he jerked his head at Fatboy-"but these two, definitely not."

The Texan produced a pair of cutters and motioned them to lean forward, so he could reach behind and cut the plastic ties.

"Just promise me you won't go jumping overboard again," Crowe said with something that approached a quick smile.

"Can't promise anything," Rebecca said.

"Well, if you must," he sighed, "but we're two stories up, and I think you'll find the landing a bit harder this time."

"How did you find us?" she asked.

"Fingerprints," Crowe answered.

"From the air bottles?"

Fatboy said, "There was a roadblock at the end of the street. I didn't even have time to call and warn you."

Rebecca glared at Crowe. He picked at something in a tooth with his tongue and stared back at her. Southwell pulled up a chair and sat next to him. After a while, Crowe asked, "Who are you? And what were you doing on the island? Why were you at the research lab?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"You have no idea what I would believe. Especially today. Especially here."

Tane could see Rebecca thinking. He wondered if she would tell the full truth. They might not believe all of it. Which would make them not believe any of it.

Rebecca must have thought the same, because she just said, "We were trying to stop the Chimera Project."

"Why?"

Why! He hadn't said He hadn't said what, what, Tane realized. So he knew about the Chimera Project. Tane realized. So he knew about the Chimera Project.

"Because we believed that bad things would come of it, if it was allowed to proceed. That there might be a man-made disaster."

"Do you think this is that man-made disaster?" Crowe asked, waving a hand toward the north.

"Do you?"

He pursed his lips a moment before answering. "I think we have a bunch of bioterrorists loose with some new weapon. What that has to do with Professor Green, I couldn't say. So tell me why you were so worried about the project. Tell me how you knew about the project."

"We met Professor Green on the island a few weeks earlier," Rebecca said truthfully, then lied, "She told us all about it."

Crowe considered that for a few moments.

"Do you believe them?" Southwell asked.

Crowe looked around. "It fits the facts. The fact that they arrived on the island after everyone had disappeared."

He turned back to Rebecca. "I sure would like to know how a bunch of kids could afford that d.i.n.ky little submarine, though."

"We won the Lotto," Rebecca said evenly. "Where's the sub now?"

Southwell answered, "It's safe. Don't worry about it. We towed it to the naval base at Devonport."

Crowe said, "So you won the lottery and decided to spend your winnings on a submarine, then used it to sneak onto an island and try to break into a genetics lab?"

"Yes. That pretty much sums it up."

"And the cryptic messages in the notebook?"

"Our plans. We wrote them in code in case the notebook got lost."

Good call, Tane thought. The cryptic messages would look like code to an outsider.

"And I'm sure there's a very glib explanation for the strange transmitter in the aluminum briefcase."

"Sure," Rebecca said easily. "We were going to connect it to a mast at the Skytower. It uses gamma rays, which transmit through water. It lets us connect to the Internet, even when we are submerged." She smiled. "Check our e-mail, you know."

It almost seemed believable.

Crowe thought it over. "Gamma rays, huh?" He seemed uncertain. "There are some holes in what you're telling me. Some d.a.m.n big holes. But overall, I'll buy it."

He took out the notebook and handed it to her. "Seems we got off on the wrong foot. I'm Stony Crowe, from the U.S. Army Bioterrorism Response Force."

"Rebecca Richards." She took the book tentatively, as if there might be a trap of some kind in it.

"Harley Williams," Fatboy said.

"Tane Williams," Tane said in turn.

Lucy Southwell introduced herself.

"Well, seeing as you know so much about the Chimera Project," Crowe said, "perhaps you could enlighten us a little. We've been through Professor Green's notes, but there's nothing to indicate any kind of a problem or how it could be used by terrorists."

Tane started to protest that they knew absolutely nothing about the Chimera Project, but Rebecca shot him a warning glance. An icy-cold warning glance.

"Happy to help," she said.

"Did Professor Green mention anything to you about macroscopic pathogens or bacterial cl.u.s.ters?"

She hadn't. Tane had never heard of either. Rebecca evidently had, though, as she said, "That's impossible."

"So you are familiar with the concept, the theory, of macroscopic pathogens."

"No," Rebecca said, as if it were a stupid question, "but I know what a pathogen is, and I know what macroscopic macroscopic means. But that's impossible. Surely!" means. But that's impossible. Surely!"

Tane had no idea what macroscopic macroscopic meant. He tried to work it out. meant. He tried to work it out.

Crowe said, "Just because something is beyond the realm of what we already know doesn't make it impossible. You'd better come and look at this."

He stood and led them toward the long gla.s.s tank, still covered, in the center of the room.

They stood around the tank as he reached out and pulled off the cover in a single movement. The tank was filled with thick, impenetrable fog. Thick rubber gloves were embedded into the sides of the tank at intervals down its sides.

"You got a sample of the mist," Rebecca said. "Have you a.n.a.lyzed it?"

"Mmmm." Crowe seemed distracted. "Inconclusive results as yet. But that's not what I wanted to show you."

Tane looked deeply into the mist. Was there something moving around in there?

"What, then?" Rebecca asked.

"This."

Crowe placed one hand on the side of the gla.s.s tank, then tapped the gla.s.s with his free hand. There was a low whistling noise from within the tank, and suddenly, from out of the mist, a shape materialized, flying at high speed toward the palm of his hand. Tane, Rebecca, and Fatboy jumped, and even Crowe flinched involuntarily as the shape slammed into the side of the tank. He withdrew his hand.

"What the h.e.l.l is that?" Fatboy asked. Tane just stared, openmouthed.

"We call them jellyfish, jellyfish," Crowe said. "They seem to be attracted by vibrations. Either movement or sound."

Tane could see where the name had come from, although this creature was far smaller than any jellyfish he had ever seen in the ocean. It was about the size of a large b.u.mblebee, a bulbous shape made of a gelatinous, translucent material. The main body seemed to be in three parts, forming a Y shape, with a ma.s.s of thin fibrous tentacles trailing underneath.

"You caught that in the fog?" Rebecca asked.

Crowe shook his head. "Nope. We just sucked up a sample of the fog and released it into this tank, to help us study it. There were no jellyfish in it then."

"Then how...?"

"They just formed, out of the mist. Little dense patches at first that gradually got bigger."

"Holy c.r.a.p," said Fatboy.

Rebecca said incredulously, "You're not trying to tell me that that is a macroscopic pathogen."

"What on earth is a macroscopic pathogen?" Tane asked.

Crowe looked appraisingly at him. "A pathogen is an organism that attacks another larger organism. Like bacteria or a virus attacks the human body. All the pathogens we know of are microscopic. Too small to be seen with the naked eye."

Southwell added, "Macroscopic means large enough to be seen without a microscope." means large enough to be seen without a microscope."

Rebecca scoffed, "You're not trying to tell me that this creature is some kind of giant virus!"

Crowe almost smiled, just a brief twitch at the corners of his mouth. "A giant virus? No. Viruses are subcellular. Smaller than a human cell. They have to be. They crawl into cells to attack them. No, not a giant virus."

The small jellyfish-like creature drifted slowly away from the wall of the tank, losing definition gradually in the mist.

Crowe continued, "I attended a lecture a few years ago. At Oxford. A Doctor Hans Heinrich was the lecturer, a highly respected immunologist. He hypothesized the existence of macroscopic pathogens. Not viruses, but bacterial cl.u.s.ters."

He paused and looked around the little group. "Bacteria are single-celled organisms. But if you grow a whole lot of them together, then they form a colony, or cl.u.s.ter together, in what we call a biofilm. biofilm. And a bacterial cl.u.s.ter can show characteristics quite different from those of a single bacteria. They exchange chemical signals between cells, and the cl.u.s.ter itself can grow into a quite specific shape. We see wave patterns, towers, and other structures. Dr. Heinrich suggested the existence of bacterial cl.u.s.ters that behaved as a single organism. Perhaps as large as a grain of salt. Thousands of individual bacteria, acting in concert. A single macroscopic pathogen. Invading the body, then overwhelming its defenses by the sheer volume of the bacterial cells released. To the best of our knowledge, that is what we have here." And a bacterial cl.u.s.ter can show characteristics quite different from those of a single bacteria. They exchange chemical signals between cells, and the cl.u.s.ter itself can grow into a quite specific shape. We see wave patterns, towers, and other structures. Dr. Heinrich suggested the existence of bacterial cl.u.s.ters that behaved as a single organism. Perhaps as large as a grain of salt. Thousands of individual bacteria, acting in concert. A single macroscopic pathogen. Invading the body, then overwhelming its defenses by the sheer volume of the bacterial cells released. To the best of our knowledge, that is what we have here."

Fatboy mumbled, "It's a bit bigger than a grain of salt."

Rebecca said, "You're not trying to tell us that these terrorists, these 'snowmen' in the fog, have developed bacterial cl.u.s.ters that are trained to attack humans."

Crowe shook his head. "They're not 'trained' to attack humans any more than a cold virus is 'trained' to attack us. It's just what they are. It's what they do. But we can't find any reference to bacterial cl.u.s.ters, or anything even remotely connected to it, anywhere in Green's journals. That is where I was hoping you might have a little more inside knowledge."