Prophet of Bones (16 page)

“Indeed, sir.”

“Dark times,” Martial wheezed.

The old man walked more slowly than the last time Gavin had seen him. His breath came in shallow gasps. If the rumors were true, he was on his third pair of lungs, and the anti-rejection drugs had compromised his immune system, rendering him susceptible to infections. Consequently, he didn’t get out much. Instead, he brought the world to him.

They followed the trail down to an opening in the dense brush. Huge cages loomed before them, and in them, big cats.

“I come down here every day to watch them feed,” Martial said. “Of all the animals at the facility, the cats are the ones I respect the most.”

An enormous feline paced in the nearest enclosure, huge feet padding across packed dirt. The cage was a dozen feet high, a hundred feet long.

They moved closer, and Gavin could see that it wasn’t a lion. Not really. Something close, but not a lion. It was four feet tall at the shoulder. A freight train of fur and bone and muscle.

The old man stood facing away from him, but Gavin noted his posture—the rigid shoulders had slumped a bit in the intervening years. The old man coughed, and it was a deep, hacking sound that didn’t speak well of his health.

Gavin was startled to realize that in the decade since last he’d seen Martial, a chink had formed in his shell of seeming immortality. He was a sick man who’d grown used to being sick. Maybe the old oak was finally dying. Or maybe that was the thing about oaks. They can die for a long, long time.

The old man turned, and his eyes were red and rheumy. “It’s a liger,” he said, gesturing toward the enclosure. “You’ve heard of them, no doubt.”

“Of course.”

“The odd thing about ligers, they’re always bigger than either of their parents. Ask why and you’ll get some blather about imprinting, differential growth controls, the privileging of plus over minus alleles, et cetera. But the fact is that we really don’t know why they get bigger. Most chalk it up to heterosis. Hybrid vigor. But that’s a description, not an explanation.”

Gavin nodded.

“This one’s a cross of a lion father and a tiger mother. Nine feet long and still growing, as far as we can tell. Like a tiger, it swims. There’s also a lesser-utilized cross—the tiger father and lion mother. This makes a completely different animal, did you know that?”

“No.”

“The tigon isn’t as large. They tend to have darker fur and smaller manes. They’re also less social and behave more like tigers, but they do something true tigers don’t. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“They roar.”

The old man stared through the bars. His face made an expression that might have been a smile. “We house a lot of animals here at the facility.” He swept his arm wide. “I’ve been called a collector, but that isn’t true. Collectors wish only to possess, but there’s work being done here. Important work. We
do
things here, you understand.”

“Yes.”

At that moment, a cry rose up from the distance—a strange sound that Gavin couldn’t place. It came from somewhere around the next bend of the trail, from a different series of cages no doubt, nestled somewhere farther out on the grounds. At first the sound seemed to be the howl of a wounded dog, or perhaps a monkey. But it changed as it rose in pitch, transforming into a screech of anguish.

Gavin looked to the old man for an explanation, but the old man offered only, “There are places here where the work is lost. Places I don’t visit anymore.”

It was then that Gavin noticed the bucket. It sat in the trampled grass by the old man’s feet, white plastic, a five-gallon bucket coated in gore, dried blood and fat accreted along the lip and sides. The old man followed Gavin’s gaze and bent toward the bucket, reaching inside. He pulled out a thick slab of dripping red meat. He held the meat in his gnarled hands for a moment, its bulk sagging in the middle like one of those novelty steaks served as marketing ploys in certain kinds of restaurants: five or six pounds, finish it in an hour and your meal is free.

With a grunt of effort, the old man tossed it through the bars, into the cage.

The giant cat lumbered forward and sank its teeth into the flesh. Its mouth jerked twice, movements too quick to follow, and the meat was gone. The old man continued, “Years ago, when I first started my work, I didn’t truly understand the scope of what I’d undertaken. It was after graduate school, before the genetics boom, back before cytology caught my interest. I was unsure of the direction I wanted to take. I had only questions, and no clear path before me by which I might someday arrive at the answers.”

Gavin tried to picture Martial Johansson unsure of anything. His imagination failed him.

“Working with animals reveals many things about nature,” the old man continued. “Animals, you see, will develop a compromise with captivity.” And here Martial paused; he bent and pulled from the bucket another dripping slab of meat. His hands were coated in blood. “With enough time, they come to understand it. They need to eat, after all.”

Martial tossed the second slab of meat through the bars, and the big cat snatched it out of the air with paws the size of dinner plates. It gulped the meat down in a single swallow. The big cat’s head came up, and its eyes locked on them through the bars. Huge tan eyes—a liquid predator stare that raised the hair on Gavin’s arms. The big cat began to pace.

“But not so with the lion,” Martial continued. He gestured through the bars. “The lion is different from other animals. The lion is an animal with whom no compromise is possible.”

The old man kicked the white bucket over and blood poured out, draining into the grass. A clutch of black flies sprang from the bucket and circled angrily as the old man bent and picked up a last chunk of meat. “I came to realize that for the lion, its hatred outweighed its need for food.” Martial gestured toward the cage again. “Like this big beast’s father here.”

The big cat followed the old man’s gestures with its eyes.

“Every day I’d go down to the cages, and I’d watch the lion watching us. And when I fed it, those eyes would turn toward me, three feet away, and my insides would go all soft, because my body knew that stare. Even the first time it happened, my body knew—some feedback mechanism in my brain recognizing what death looks like, that big beast staring at me. And I knew something else. I knew what none of the other researchers knew. I knew, absolutely, that if anyone ever left the cage door open, that lion wouldn’t just escape. It would kill as many people as it could before it was shot.”

The old man threw the last chunk of meat through the bars. The cat was on it in a flash of movement. A moment later, the meat was gone. “Now this one, this half lion, I’m not sure of. Is it like its father, I wonder?” The old man stared at the big cat. “If so, I don’t see it. Or maybe it’s too sly to let me see.”

The big cat resumed its pacing.

“That lion,” Gavin asked, “where is it now?”

“I killed it,” the old man said. “That was a long time ago.”

They watched the big cat in silence.

“There is an ancient proverb,” the old man said at last. “Begrudge not the lion’s existence. Be thankful God didn’t give it wings.”

The old man started coughing. He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a blue handkerchief. He coughed into the blue cloth for a moment and then wiped his hands meticulously with it before putting it back in his pocket.

Seconds more passed in silence as they watched the big cat pacing, and Gavin realized that the old man was waiting for something.

“Flores, sir?” It was the only way to encapsulate the question, the only way to phrase it in its entirety.

“Things went badly in Flores,” Martial said.

“They did.”

“People died.”

“Yes,” said Gavin.

“The reports I read made me very unhappy. It was a mess. Come, there’s something else I want you to see,” the old man said. He turned and headed farther up the trail.

Gavin followed. Here the trail was well marked, a short path through a stand of trees to another ring of cages.

There was a paddock and, inside it, a small group of horses. Looking closer, Gavin noticed a small zebra mixed in with the herd.

“The horses are a special treat,” Martial said. “The meat is delicious, by the way. Zebras hybridize very easily with horses, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“The offspring are sterile, of course, but they’re strong and healthy. They grow large. The stripes are codominant, extending up the legs but usually without spreading over the torso.”

Gavin watched the herd graze.

“Do you know what you get if you shave a zebra?” the old man asked.

“No.”

“A zebra, still. The stripes are on the skin as well.”

Gavin nodded.

“Horses, zebras, and donkeys all hybridize easily. All you have to do is put them in the same enclosure. Lock them up together, and they take care of it. No cloning required. Nothing fancy. Put sperm in contact with egg, and Mother Nature handles all the heavy lifting. As species, they aren’t particularly closely related to each other, separated by nearly eight percent of their genomes. A donkey is as different from a zebra as an orangutan is from a gorilla.”

The old man led Gavin past the paddock, toward a row of large cages attached to a small building. The cages were obviously runs of some sort. Whatever animals they housed were hidden in the building.

These cages were taller. The bars closer together.

The old man gestured toward them. “I wouldn’t get any closer to the bars. They’re very fast when they want to be, and they have access to their run; I see the door is open.” Ignoring his own advice, he took another step forward. “Chimps,” he said. “Have you ever worked with them?”

“No.”

“They are fucking bastard animals.” Spittle flew from the old man’s mouth when he spoke.

The sound of his voice drew them.

They entered the runs through a small steel door in the side of the building. Four of them, one after another, knuckle-walking the packed earth, moving in single file. They stopped a few feet from the bars, staring out at their visitors. Then the largest chimp sat, seeming to lose interest.

“No closer,” the old man muttered. “If we went just a few feet closer…” His hand reached out, trembling slightly. A sheen of sweat covered his scalp. “A few feet closer, and it could reach us through the bars.”

Martial dropped his hand to his side. “The chimp is a strange creature. Very like the lion in some respects.” He chuckled, with a bitter, humorless sound. “It has the ability to be offended. It can hold a grudge. But it is in some ways more dangerous.”

“More dangerous than a lion?”

“It has one major difference from the lion. It can
feign
docility, you see.” He waved a hand in the direction of largest of the chimps—a thick-limbed, muscular form squatting in the dirt. “This one here … is the worst of our pets. It bit off the face of one of our keepers. It bit off his fingers and his toes. It broke his arms. But it left him alive. Why would it do that?”

“I don’t know,” Gavin said, resisting the urge to step back from the man who sweated and shook before the cage.

The beast looked dumbly on. Gavin watched it, its dark eyes following the old man’s face.

“I am not so good at feigning, Gavin. I never have been.”

“Sir?”

“And there are certain things coming. Things I will need help with. Can I count on you?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean it. I am not the man I once was. I have become impatient in my increasing years. I have no patience for fools. I am not a politician, and yet I am forced to deal with politicians.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I will need you here from now on.”

Gavin stared at him, uncomprehending.

“An executive position, you might call it,” the old man continued. “There are difficult things coming, and I can use a man like you. I will need you here full-time from this day forward.” There was finality in his tone. Gavin realized this wasn’t a suggestion.

“But my … my work,” Gavin stammered.

“Will continue. Will expand. You’ll find opportunities here that you never knew existed.”

There came a howling again from the distance. The same strange, twisted cry.

“Things you never dreamed of,” the old man said. “But I need two things from you.”

“What?”

“Loyalty. Commitment.”

“You—”

The old man held up one hand to stop him. “Do not say it unless you’re prepared to back it up.”

“You’ve
alway
s had that, was what I was going to say. But this is a different kind of arrangement than what we had before. I have my career, after all.”

“You do,” the old man said flatly. “You still have it.”

Gavin stared at the old man. The grizzled old visage.

“And if I don’t come?”

“Then who can say.”

Martial turned back toward the chimps. “But that’s the stick, Gavin. You haven’t seen the carrot. There are things happening that you couldn’t possibly guess at. Important things. Things that you’ll now be a part of. Things that will change the world.”

Gavin was silent.

The largest chimp rose and moved closer to the bars.

“You’ve been on my payroll, in some capacity or other, for the last twenty years, but only in a part-time, as-needed capacity; it’s time you received a promotion. Do I have your commitment?”

In the end, there wasn’t a choice. When working with Martial, there was never a choice. Gavin wondered, vaguely, what he was losing. What was he giving up? “You have it,” he said.

“Good,” the old man replied. His tone was matter-of-fact. “Then that is settled. Now, about the subject of Flores, which you mentioned. The reports I’ve read are serious. Very serious indeed.”

Gavin said nothing.

“It couldn’t be helped,” the old man said. “Everything that happened. I want you to know that.”

“I don’t understand,” Gavin said.

“Who controls the bones controls their interpretation. You understand that, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“We got word that the Indonesians were going to shut down the dig, so we had to act. Still, death wasn’t part of the plan.”