The Wave (8 page)

20

Wheeler and Gregory led us down a wide tunnel that spiraled like a corkscrew into the earth. Every twenty feet or so was an armed sentry standing against one side of the passageway or the other. These uniformed soldiers all carried automatic weapons and wore body armor.

At last we came to a gigantic metal door that swung inward as we approached. Dr. Gregory ushered the crowd into a darkly lit passageway that was at least twenty yards wide, went on for hundreds of yards, and was lined with glass-walled cells on either side.

Wheeler addressed us when we reached the first compartment on the left, a blue chamber cut from stone and sealed by an extra-thick plate of glass.

“This man was dead and buried seven years ago,” Wheeler said.

The prisoner was naked and in his mid-twenties. He was sitting on a stool, the only piece of furniture in the twenty-foot-wide room, and looking down at a spot between his feet.

“You have proof of this?” a woman with a German accent asked.

“There,” Wheeler said, pointing at a small table standing outside the glass cage. “Those folders give all the information you will need to believe our claims. There are fingerprints and gene testing, retinal scans where they have been possible, and family and public photographs of the prisoners in life and in death.”

The audience lined up to see the folders, but I stayed back. I didn’t care what they said. I was worried about my sister and, at the same time, numbed by the notion that my father had possibly come back to life.

“What’s so special about this prisoner, other than these documents?” a Spanish-sounding dark-skinned man asked.

“The atmosphere in that cell is fifty percent carbon monoxide,” Wheeler said with a smirk.

“No.”

“Arnold,” Wheeler said to one of the soldier-aides. “Admit the bird.”

The soldier went in through a door on one side of the blue cell and came out with a small cage that contained a gray dove. He went to the other side of the glass wall and opened a hatch in the stone. Placing the fluttering bird in the small space, he closed the tiny door and then pushed a button that opened a panel inside the cage, allowing the bird to enter. The dove took wing, crossed half the width of the room, and then fell dead before the naked man.

The prisoner picked up the little corpse and stared at it a moment. Then he looked up at me. He shook his head, dropped the dove, and returned his attention to the space between his bare feet.

“Carbon monoxide,” a black man with a French accent said. “How is that possible?”

“These creatures are almost invulnerable to harm,” Wheeler replied. “They bleed but don’t die. They choke but don’t expire. They are extraordinarily strong, and for all intents and purposes, they don’t age.”

“What are they?” the man asked.

“Demons from hell.”

We visited forty-seven cages in all. There were male and female prisoners. Some in subzero environments, others in temperatures above anything a human could survive. One man was completely submerged in water, while others were in various forms of poisonous atmospheres. All of them were alive and conscious, but none spoke, unlike the child who had been slaughtered by the soldier.

The tour took over four hours. No one complained or asked to leave. I don’t even remember anyone asking for a toilet, though someone must have.

I was sickened by the display. So far Wheeler hadn’t proved the threat of these creatures. All he had shown was that they were superior and helpless. It was as if a bunch of apes had captured a heavenly host of angels and were torturing them for their beauty.

When we returned to the auditorium, the crowd was nearly silent.

“There you have it,” David Wheeler announced from the dais. “You men and women represent nations and consortiums from around the globe. But more important, you are the last hope for humankind. If these creatures are allowed a foothold in our world, they will devour us.”

“Where are they from?” a woman asked in a tremulous voice.

As if her question had been planned, the lights went down and the screen behind Wheeler lit up. An image appeared, containing a few dozen small amoeba-like creatures, each of which had triangular trunks surrounded by myriad waving tentacles. The organisms were swimming around in a clear liquid.

“These are the microorganisms that have been found in of all the prisoners,” Wheeler said. “They are DNA-based, so we are sure that they are of earthly origin. But they are unlike any life-form now extant on the face of the planet. They are small but extraordinarily complex.”

The image changed to a greater magnification, showing only a few of the organisms swimming together. They were beautiful. Scarlet and turquoise and sky blue flecked with silver and ebony and a deep forest green. One of the amoebas swam into another; they combined for a moment, creating a long abacus-like life-form that glimmered for a brief time. Then the amoebas flowed out of each other. This process was repeated six or seven times among the three beings, and then they flowed away from one another.

“They have all the appearance of the basis of animal life,” Wheeler continued, “but the makeup of their basic DNA is much closer to that of bacteria.”

“Impossible!” a man shouted.

“We thought so, too,” Dr. Wheeler agreed. “But the evidence is irrefutable. You are welcome, Dr. Hingis, to evaluate our studies for yourself.”

“And where do you suppose such an impossible life-form emerged?” Dr. Hingis asked.

The image on the screen was replaced by a three-dimensional image of a planet, a huge globe that might have been the earth at one time. A small object was depicted moving toward the planet, and when it collided, a great cloud rose in the northern hemisphere of the gray and blue world. The image switched to a close-up of the depth of damage incurred.

“A billion years ago,” Wheeler intoned, “more, a meteorite struck our planet and drove a significant portion of rudimentary life deep into the crust of the earth. There this life clung to existence. For eons it struggled against and then finally mastered its environment.”

“How?” a woman asked.

“By developing a means of merging and measuring, of combining with its mates, of defining its surroundings and then altering structurally to survive. This was a very early form of life and not easily retarded by extreme temperatures or the lack of sun. These creatures learned to live on the minerals and elements of the earth.”

The image began going through a series of different phases, all of them contained by the same globe. A purple cloud formed far below the surface, and as one image replaced the other, the cloud changed hue—growing sometimes larger, sometimes smaller—and began a slow migration toward the surface.

I remembered GT’s explanation of the Wave and its movement toward his grave. I gave in completely then to the idea that he was, or at least had been, my father. While representatives of every major nation and corporation pondered the so-called threat to our species, I lamented my words to the man whom I had denied. I’d been given a second chance to have him in my life, and I’d turned away.

“The communal organism moved for millennia toward the surface of the planet—”

“You believe that this—this mass of microscopic creatures has intelligence?” Dr. Hingis asked.

“Not exactly,” Wheeler replied. “These beings’ existence has developed around an intense struggle for survival. You have seen how three XTs spend ninety-four seconds merging and sharing calculations. We have recorded images of millions of such transitions. The XT has developed the ideal society. An environment in which all experience is shared—physically. It wasn’t until the colony had migrated to the DNA of simple creatures and maybe even the corpses of dead animals that they began to develop what we call intelligence. Their form of survival gave them the ability to digest the genome and to repeat it. This is life using the basic trait of life to merge with and dominate the environment.”

The hush in the hall was almost maddening. Even I understood the ramifications of the scientist’s claims. This new life-form, the XT, had the ability to
read
DNA and every other quantifiable thing about a human being. Thoughts, dreams, instincts, images, emotions—everything that made up life could be quantified and repeated.

If the XT was our enemy, we would be defenseless against it. It was too small to shoot, resistant to heat and cold, seemingly impervious to poison or lack of air. And if every cell knew everything—or even almost everything—that all other cells knew, then it was nearly immortal in a real way.

“You say colony,” a woman said. “Singular. Do you believe that there is only one mass of this contagion?”

“It’s likely,” Dr. Gregory said, stepping up to the podium. “There may have been many such groups at first, but we believe they were all in the same area and that they ultimately either perished or merged. It would be improbable for them to be more widely dispersed because of the impediment of stone.”

“What about reproduction, David?” someone asked even as the question was forming in my mind.

“A good question, Mr. Tron,” the host replied. “Using the most advanced computer system in the world, the Japanese Nine-two, we have continuously observed twelve million individual cells for over seven months. In that time there have been only fourteen hundred and ninety-eight reproductions and nearly a thousand deaths.”

“These beings can die?”

“So it seems, my friend.” Again the screen changed images. Whoever was at the video controls had worked so closely with Gregory and Wheeler that he knew instinctively what to put up on the screen.

This new picture was a microphotographic image of one of the XTs. At first it was swimming along just fine, but then it began to vibrate. The tremors became more and more violent until finally the triangular head vaporized, leaving the tentacles to wilt into dust.

“What causes this demise?” Dr. Hingis asked.

“We believe,” Dr. Wheeler said, “it has something to do with the atmosphere. Methane, ammonia, and alcohol. We’ve tried to reproduce the toxin, but our studies have so far proved fruitless.

“The reason we have called together this eminent body of scientists and ambassadors is therefore twofold. First, you must convince your governments that this threat is real and must be dealt with before it is too late. Second, you must take our studies and help us create the toxin to destroy this menace.”

The discussion became more and more complex after that. Hingis and Tron and many other scientists started asking questions that I didn’t understand. For a while everyone spoke in French and then in equations and calculations. Their communication was so technical that they seemed to me somewhat like the XTs they were so frightened of.

After another ten minutes, I got up and walked out of the auditorium.

I was met at the exit by the two soldiers who had driven me to the compound.

“Please come with us, Mr. Porter,” the taller one said.

There was no option for me to refuse.

21

They showed me to a small apartment far removed from the scientific center and the seemingly endless number of cells for the XTs.

There was a bedroom, a toilet with a shower stall, and a combination kitchen-sitting room. The refrigerator contained a dozen eggs, a package of processed cheese slices, a pillowy loaf of white bread, some sliced ham, and a jar of grape jelly. In the cabinet was government-issue peanut butter, instant coffee, and a big bottle of nondairy creamer.

There were no books, no television, no radio. There was a desk next to my bed, which was only a cot. A desk drawer contained a ream of white typing paper and a yellow plastic disposable mechanical pencil. No more than five minutes after I entered into the apartment-cell, I began to write this history.

I wrote obsessively, putting down every experience, every word that I could remember. I had scrawled over the front and back of almost twenty sheets when somebody knocked. I hurriedly shoved the pages into the top drawer of the desk and said, “Yes?”

“May I come in, Mr. Porter?” David Wheeler asked pleasantly.

I opened the door and ushered my jailer into the room.

“Not much of a home, but you won’t be here long,” he said, looking around the bleak chamber. He sat on the small bed, and I settled back into my chair.

“It’s illegal for you to hold me like this, against my will,” I said.

“Not when it comes to Homeland Security,” he said with an ironic smile.

“You can hardly call amoebas terrorists.”

“What did she say to you?” he asked.

It might have seemed like a non sequitur, but I knew what he was talking about.

“Who?”

“That thing who called herself MaryBeth. You know what I mean, Errol.”

“No, David,” I said. “No, I don’t. She screamed and called us scum or something like that. But she didn’t say anything to me specifically.”

“She looked you in the eye.”

“Maybe she could tell that I didn’t want her to come to harm.”

“Maybe. What were you writing?”

“Are you having me watched?”

“Every room in this facility is monitored, Errol,” he said. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. When you come to stay at my home, you’ll have a bit more privacy.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Wheeler smiled. He held up his hands and hunched his shoulders, telling me that he understood but there was nothing that he or I could do about the situation.

In a flash, I understood the difference between human beings and the cellular life that made up the XTs’ reanimations. There was no inflection for those tiny beasts. They merged, shared completely. Such communication was a kind of surrender that had no use for subterfuge or misdirection. All knowledge for the XT was concrete and complete. All intelligence was also instinct. How amazing it must have been for them to discover a life-form that used primitive gestures and sounds to communicate. How lonely we must have seemed in our separateness.

“I just came by to ask you about that look,” David said. “Gregory wants to hold you for further study, but that’s useless. We’ve already examined you, and there’s no sign of any XT activity in your systems.”

“Are they deadly?” I asked, worried about the wounds that had healed overnight.

“To living beings?” Wheeler asked rhetorically. “We don’t know. Certain soldiers have volunteered for living XT cells to be introduced to their systems. So far the cells have remained separate from their internal biology. They are very brave men and women, knowing that if we are unable to remove the alien cells from their systems, they will have to be destroyed, along with the rest of the infestation, when we develop a toxin to kill them off.”

“That doesn’t sound very scientific, Doctor,” I said. “I mean, don’t you believe in the sanctity of life?”

“Yes, I do, Errol. But if I look up and see a tiger stalking me, the first thing I do is open fire. The most precious life is my own.”

“But you have no proof that these organisms are stalking us.”

“They are taking over the bodies of our dead, rising from the graves, and they’re all but indestructible,” he said very reasonably. “We must strike before we are destroyed by them.”

I felt a thrill of fear while he spoke. After all, he was the expert, while I was just an unemployed computer programmer turned potter. Maybe the fate of humanity was at stake.

Maybe I shouldn’t have lied to my captors.

Wheeler chose that moment to rise from the cot.

“I’ll leave you now, Errol. You are invited to join me for breakfast in the morning.”

He left before I could speak up. Maybe the future of the world would have been altered if he hadn’t had somewhere to be just then.

Maybe.

I fell asleep at the desk writing. I knew that the pages would be confiscated, but there was no other way to occupy my time. I roused somewhere in the night and crawled into the bed, falling into a deep slumber. I don’t know the time, because I didn’t have a watch and there was no clock in my cell.

In my dreams, I was floating in the earth, moving through stone as if it were air. Sensations came from all around me: gravities and vibrations (not sounds) and other events that had no other correlation to my corporeal existence. I was immense, moving leisurely through solid stone at the rate of an inch a century. Time passed. Time stayed the same. But every micron was filled with the ecstasy of numbers and sameness and matchless difference. I was many and one. I was forever, remembering back before I was conceived, into the far reaches of the beginning. There was joy and the anticipation of a light of exquisite brightness waiting above.

And then there were small single-celled moments of life that began and ended but stayed the same. They moved so quickly through the soil and waters. They devoured and digested, multiplied and died. There was experience, separate and alone. And there was loneliness breaking upon stone.

The life-forms became more complex until one day I found myself a man. He had died, was killed (murdered), and was thrown into a deep pit. He made sounds rather than merging. He multiplied far faster than we could imagine. He moved through openness and had senses that amazed me. That was over 412,362 times around the firmament. His name was Veil, and he was the first man we became.

I fell back into stone, moving slowly upward, creeping toward—the sun?