Monster (23 page)

“Fair enough,” Spark glanced at t
he
door
to make sure no
one
was listening in from the other room
. “
The organism
con
cerned
me because it was not in any book. It has a DNA
struc
ture
unlike anything on record. In fact,
I c
an go so far
as to
say it doesn
't have DNA in the usual sense.”

“
Wait a second. If it is so different, wouldn't half the
biolo
gists
in the country be studying it?”

Spark
spoke with anger.
“
There are four full professors
of biology here on this campus.
I have been unable to
pers
uade even o
ne of them to peek at this organ
ism.
”

“That seems absurd.”

“You
don't know how badly my reputation was tarnished
by m
y protesting the use of Point Lake as a source of
drink
ing
water. When I approached my colleagues about
the
organism and told them how unique I thought it was,
they
weren't interested. They thought I was unstable at the
least.
But to be fair, it is not as if a biologist can glance in a
mic
roscope
and note the unusual qualities of the organism.
It h
as to be studied for some time. My colleagues didn't
want
to put in the time. But let me go on. Point Lake is
not
the only ho
me of this particular organism.”

“
But
you said it wasn't in any book.”

“I
t isn't,
” he said. “
But
I
have found it elsewhere.”

“
Where?
”
she asked.

“
In
Chile, in South America. High in the Andes.”

Angela
took in a sharp breath.
“
Where the other meteor
crashed –
the one that
you mentioned in your article?”

“T
hat is correct. It is curren
tl
y called Lake Curro
.
But
in
the language of the Ropans who used to live there,
it was
known
as Lake Sentia.”

“Sethia,” Angela whispered.

S
park sat
up. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“
I
heard
you. I see you have done your research. The
Man
ton used to call Point Lake, Sethia, or Bath of Blood.
The
similarity in the names is disturbing, and I have no
way
of explaining
it.
Worse, I have no reasonable way of
explaining why the histories of the two lakes are the same
.
The Ma
nt
on considered Point Lake an evil place. They
—”

“
I have read the sto
ri
es
,”
Angela interrupted.

“
I'm sure you
have. You know about the KAtuu?”

“
Yes, I do.”

“
You might be surprised to learn that the Ropan
s spoke
of a similar race of beings that came from Lake
Sentia.
They were called the
Kalair.
”

“
The names
.”
Angela gasped.

“
Again, similar. I know. It's peculiar, because the
Manton
and the Ropans have entirely different language
s. But as f
ar as the two meteor lakes were concerned, they w
ere speaking the same language.”

“
What were
the Kalair supposed to be like?”
An
gela asked.

“
The legends depict them as being like the KA
tu
u
in many respects. They were evil
. They craved hum
an
flesh. They could transform people into creatures
like themselves.”

“Could they fly?”

“
I know nothing about that attribute
,” Spark said.

“
The Kalair were transformed human beings?
” Angela
asked.

Spark hesitated. “
It
is
my understanding from stud
ying
the Kalair myths that the original ones were not
s
up
posed to be from this planet.”

“
Which planet were they from?
”
Angela asked
.

“
Now we are way off the train of scientific conj
ecture.”

“I don't care. Tell me what you know.”

Spark shrugged
. “
The Ropa
n
s were excellent
astron
omers
.
They knew the planets orbited the sun
before Western civiliz
ation did. They believed the Kalair
came from the fifth planet.”

M
os
t humans would travel from the third planet to the
fifth,
and more of her kind would take birth.

Where did that come from? Her dream?

What an amazing coincidence.

As amazing
as the coincidence of the names.

“
W
hi
ch planet is that?
”
Angela asked.

“T
he fifth planet from the sun right now i
s
Jupiter. But
the
Kalair definitely
could not have come from there.
J
u
piter
is a gas giant. It has a poisonous atmosphere and a crushing gravitational field.
L
ife as we know it could not evolve there. But
…
”
Spark hesitated.

“What?”

“
You have to understand that talk like this has little to
do
with scientific theory. It is more in the region of wild
speculation.”

“T
hat doesn't bother me. This whole subject is wild.
”

“You have a point there,” Spark said. “I
t is likely that in
the past
just the fifth planet from the sun was not Jupiter, but
anoth
er planet
.”

“Do t
hey often switch places with each other?
”

Spark
chuckled
. “N
o. But between Mars and Jupiter is
the a
steroid
belt. It is commonly accepted that the asteroids
are
what is left of the original fifth planet.
”

“What happened to it?”

“N
o one knows. For one reason or another it blew up.
”

“When?”
Angela asked.

“
Most astronomers would say it was millions if not billions
of years
ago. They base that estimate on the time when
many
meteors hit the Earth. These ancient meteors
,
both
large
and small, are believed to have hit the Earth when
the
original fi
f
th planet broke up
.”

“
Do you believe that?
”
Angela asked.

“
I believe that when the fifth planet exploded it threw
good-
size rocks our way. Most must have landed in the
oce
ans. We se
e evidence of a few on l
and, however
.”

“Wait a second,”
Angela interrupted.
“
You said in your
arti
cle that Point Lake was formed less than a hundred
th
ousand years ago. You said that the Lake in South America
wa
s formed at the same time
.”

“At about the same time, yes.”

Angela
saw what he was driving at, even though he
wa
s
reluctant to say it aloud. “So you believe the fifth planet
blew up then
–
not millions of years ago, but only
a
hundred thousand y
ears ago. You think these two meteors
came
from that planet's breaking up.”

Spark nodded in
admiration. “You're perceptive. Yes, I
think the main meteoric bombardment of our planet
was
from another source, at a time near the formation of
our
solar system. But
I
think Point Lake and Lake Curro
were formed by meteors that
came from a planet that had
life on it.”

Angela almost jumped out of her chair. It was
all
coming together.
“Because of the micro-organisms?” she
exclaimed.

Spark sighed. “Yes.”

“Because it doesn't l
ook as if they came from he
re!”

Spar
k
sighed again
. “Yes.”

“Why does
that depress you?
”

“
You have to under
stand the sc
ientific view of life in the solar system
. Besides Earth,
Mars was the only planet thought to have a chance of having evolved life. But
the
findings of the
Voyager
probes made it appear unlikely
that
the place is anything but dead. My esteemed scientific colleagues would, therefore, be reluctant to sanction
the
theory that life had evolved on a world even further fr
om
the sun than Mars, such as our original fifth plan
et.”

“
But it could have
,” Angela said.

“
Yes, I think so. If the atmospheric conditions were id
eal
the surface of the original fifth planet could have
be
en
every b
it as warm as Earth is today.”

“
Then what's the problem? Why did they hound you
out the door?”

“
Because of what I
mentioned a moment ago. That the fossiliz
ed micro-organism
has an extraterrestrial origin.”
Spark
stopped and cleared his throat. “
I made the
mistake
of suggesting the possibility in the wrong circle of
people.”

“
But it seems a reasonable theory to me. Especially
since
the micro-organism has only been found in the vicinity
of these two meteor hits.”

“
I appreciate your support, believe me. But you have
to
understand the contex
t in which these theories of mine were
brought
up
against me.
I
was warning against
using
Point Lake as
a source of drinking wa
t
er for high school students.
I
had
already published my article connecting
Point
Like to Lake C
urro.
I
had already spoken abou
t th
e
si
milar
micro-organisms located at the
two
places, although
I had
not written about them. The supporters
of
the school
location –
parti
cular
l
y the contractor who was to build
the
school –
used
that
information to portray me as a charlatan
. Little
green bugs from outer space
–
they made it into
a circ
us. They even tried to demolish the theory that a
mete
or had originally
f
ormed the lake, which of course
was
ridic
ulous.
” Spark paused to smile. “
But that same
contrac
tor ch
anged his mind when he tried
to
dig the foundation
for th
e school. He could hard
l
y cut into the ground,
it
was
so ha
rd.
I
heard he lost
a
lot of money on
the
job.”

“I’d
like
to
backtrack
for
a second,”
Angela said.
“
You said
the ex
perts
were not concerned about the micro-organism
because
it
was dead. But
you were concerned. Why?
”