Monster (22 page)

CHAPTER
NINE

Classes were not in session at the University of Mi
chigan on Sunday.
An
gela didn't expect them to be. B
ut
she
drove the two hours to the college with the hope
that
she'd at least be able to find one person who cou
ld tell
her how to ge
t
hold of Professor Alan Spark, the a
uthor
of the article she had read on the meteor. Luck was
with
her. She spoke to only one janitor and two students in
the
science building and was
directed straight to the professor
himself. It seemed Spark reserved private tutorial hou
rs on
the weekends for his students
.

He was unoccupied when she entered his
of
fice. A
tall thin man of about forty, he had a trimmed
b
rown
moustache and the nervous movements of a bona f
id
e bookworm. Judging by the photographs hanging on
his
walls, which showed him in various exotic parts of the wor
ld,
he
l
ed an interesting life
.
He welcomed her and asked
her
to have a seat
.
A
t
first he thought she was one of
his
st
ude
nts.
She quickly explained that she was a senior at Point H
igh and that she was doing an article f
or
The
P
oint
Herald
on
the s
afety of the water sh
e and her classmates were drinking.
He asked where she had heard of him, and she showed
him the arti
cle from the science journal, which she had s
tolen
from the library
. He was immediately interested.

“
I
can give
you my point of view on the matt
er
,” he said. “
But I'll have to ask that
you keep my name out of your article.”

“
Why's that?
” she asked.

He gave a wry smile. “
Because I want to continue
to t
each at t
his fine institution of higher learning, and – according to my superiors
a
n
d my wife
– I've created e
nou
g
h controversy in regard
t
o the water in Point Lake.
Of course,
you remember the illnesses reported among the student
s
at your high school
l
ast fall.
I
assume that's
w
hy
you're doing your article.”

“I
didn't live in Point then, but I've read about them
.”

“
Over thirty students reported various symptoms: nausea, headaches, blurred vision. There were several episodes of
fainting.
Experts were called in to study the matter: p
hysici
ans
and
chemists and the like,
I
wasn't invited, however, because
I
was not a favourite
of
the local school bo
ard.”

“Why didn't they like you?”
Angela asked.

“
I
had already spoken out against placing the school next
to the lake well before it was built.
I was specifically worried
about
having the school's drinking water come from the
lake.
I didn't believe it was hea
lthy to drink.”

“Why?”
she asked.

“This is
where I ran into difficulty with the school board
and their ass
emb
led experts. I am a geologist. I
am not a
physician
or a biol
ogist or a chemist. My specialty was not viewed
as relevant to the matter of the drinking water, a
ltho
ugh I had done extensive studies on the lake and the
local
terrain. My specific views, when
I
finally aired them,
were
seen as irrelevant. In fact, I could go so far as to say
I seriously
damaged my reputation as a scientist in general
by s
peaking against the loca
tion of the school.”

“
What did
y
ou
think was wrong with the water?”
she
aske
d. He was slow getting to the point, and she was already hungry, although she had eaten in the car before going
t
o
loo
k for him. She had eaten pretty much non-stop since
she
had awakened that morning. It was the only thing that
sooth
ed the throbbing inside her head. It was ten times
worse
than it had been the day before. What the hell had
Jim
done to her last night? she wondered. Besides bite off
a chu
nk of her tong
ue. Her mouth continued to ache.

“You
have read
my article on the meteor that f
ormed
Point
Lake
,”
Spark said.
“
In it I talk about the high magnetic
content of the iron ore
that
was thrown off when
the
meteor struck the Earth. The effect of that magnetism
is
strong at the location of the school. It is extreme
ly
stro
ng
on the bedrock of the lake.
” He paused. “
Have you
ever
read about the health problems of people who live
next to high-
tension electrical wires?
”

“
No
,”
Angela said.

“
They often complain of headaches and fatigue. Not all people, you understand, just some. There are various theories as to why this is so. A popular one is that t
he
electromagnetic balance of the body is upset by the mag
netic field the wires give off.”

“
Wires give off magnetic fields?
”
she asked. He was too
much the scientist
–
he was losing her.

“
Yes,
” he said. “
A magnetic field is generated in
a circular
direction around electrical current of a wire. That's simple physics
.
Now, at Point Lake we have a situation where a large body of water is resting on top of highly magnetic iron ore bedrock. When the plans for the school we
re
being drawn up
I
raised the point th
at I thought
it
might be unhealthy for the students to drink water that had been subjected to a magnetic
field on a continuous basis.”

“Can water become magnetized?”
she asked.

“
This is one place where
I
ran into trouble with
the
school board and the scientific community as a whole. To answer your question
– in the traditi
onal sense, no.
You
cannot have magnetic water. You need a material such
as
iron to create a positive an
d magnetic polarity. By the way, do you know how many polariz
ed atoms are required
for
an ent
ire iron body to become magnetized?”

“I can't say that I do,”
Angela replied.

“
Less than one in a hundred,
” Spark said.

“Really?”
Angela no
dded as if she was impressed. What
he was saying
was
interesting, but she wasn't sure where
he
was going with it. Her stomach growled. Feed me or
I
w
ill
eat you, it seemed to be saying to her.

“It is a phase transition,” Spark continued. “
One mom
ent an iron ore is
non-magnetic, and then just a few
more atoms
are polari
z
ed and the whole body of matter becomes magnetic. I
t’s
a fascinating phenomenon. Anyway, where
was I? Oh,
yes. I spoke against the students drinking water
t
ha
t
had been exposed to such a magnetic field. Even though water itself cannot be made magnetic, there are subtle changes that take place in water that has been exposed to such a field. Water is made up of two hydro
gen at
om
s
for every one of o
xygen. That arrangement is n
ot changed when wat
er is placed close to a magnet.
Bu
t
the arrangement of the molecules themselves in the
water probably does change.”

“
P
robably?” Angela asked. “Does it or doesn't it?”

“
That change is debatable, I think
it
happens
.
I
think
the
molecules all line up in certain ways, and
that
affects ho
w
the water reacts with other molecules. Other scient
ists say
it
doesn't, but in experiments it has been proven that pl
a
nt
s
that are watered with water that has sat in a magnetic container either die or don't do well.
”

“
Then the
water must change in some way,”
Angela
said.

“
That's what
I
say. The physicians your school board
consulted
with said I was talking pseudo-science. But there
is o
ne thing that is interesting about Point Lake on the
surface
, that makes it different from any other lake in the
area.”

“
What'
s that?”

“T
here are no fish in it
.
There never have been. No fish, n
o
wor
ms, no aquatic plants. Nothing.”

“That's interesting,” Angela said. “
You'd think that would
have sounded an alarm.”

“
It
didn't. But let me continue. The magnetism was only
one of the thi
ngs that bothered me about the water in Point
Lake
. There is also
a
high concentration of an unidentified
fossilized
micro-o
rganism in and around the lake.”

“
Are you serious?
”
Angela asked.

“
Ye
s
.
”

“
But
I
thought the water was thoroughly tested. I didn't
read about an unidentified micro
-organi
sm.”

“
And you won't read about it anywhere unless
I
write
an article on the matter,” Spark said matter-of-f
act
ly. “I
've studied
th
is particular orga
nism more closely than anybody.”

“
Bu
t
didn't other people know about the organism?
”
Angela asked.
“
I can't believe they'd let us drink wa
t
er
that had something deadly in it.”

“
Many people
knew about the organism, although
, except for me, nobody knows its specific qualities
.
No
body considered it dangerous.”

“Why not?”
she asked.

“
Beca
use, as I said, it is a fossilize
d organism. It's dead. You cannot
be infected by a dead organism.”

“
Then why were you concerned about the organism?
” she asked.

Spark hesitated. “
That question opens the door to a mystery, or pseudo-sc
ience, depending on how you want to look at it.”
He paused
. “I
don't know if this is the ti
me or place to go into it.”

Ange
la leaned forward in her seat. “
Please do.
I
won’t
put it in my a
rticle if you don't want me to.”

“
If it is of no use to your article, why do you want to
hea
r
about it?”

“
Because I'm curious,
”
Angela said honestly.

Spark considered. “
What inspired you to write this article
now,
a year
after the students' complaints?”

Angela stared him in the eye
. “Students are getting sick again.”

Spark raised an eyebrow. “
I didn't know about
that.”

“We who go there know.”

“
Interesti
ng,”
Spark said.
“I read about that girl at Point
High who shot her friends. Did that have anything to d
o with what we are discussing?”

“I think it did,”
Angela said.

“Could you elaborate?”

“
First I'd like to hear what led you to believe that a de
ad
organis
m could be unhealthy.”

“
Then you will tell me
what is happening at the school?”

“I can tell you what I know,”
Angela said