Ultimate Thriller Box Set (7 page)

“I think, well, I guess I think he's a little bit of everything. A mutation. Maybe he's a member of a prehistoric race that became extinct... since he's intelligent it would reason that we've never found fossils of his kind, perhaps they cremated their dead, or buried them at sea. Or maybe he's a genetic experiment. Maybe our own government created him.”

“In 1906?” snorted Harker.

“Dr. Harker, what proof do we have that he's actually been here since 1906? Were you here when he arrived? How do we know that we're not caught up in some crazy conspiracy to help test the latest in biological weapon technology?”

“At least that would stir things up a bit around here.” Race gave a wide Southern grin.

“How about an extraterrestrial?” Andy asked. “Isn't there any possibility Bub is from another planet?”

Frank shook his head.

“Even if we discounted the problems associated with space travel from another galaxy, it would be a zillion to one, a gazillion to one, that life formed on another planet with the exact same genetic make-up as life on earth. It would be easier for the same lottery number to come up every single night for a hundred years...”

“Unless it was intentional.” Father Thrist cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “Unless God created Bub the same way He created man and all life on earth. That would explain Bub's genetic code without the need for evolution, molecular engineering, or space travel.”

Frank raised an eyebrow. “I thought demons and angels had no physical presence. They're ethereal, only existing in heaven and hell.”

Thrist laughed. It was the first time Sun had seen mirth from the terminally serious priest.

“All of my life, people have questioned my beliefs because there has been no physical evidence to substantiate them. Now here we have something that is clearly a demon, or even Satan himself. Something we can see and touch. And everyone is looking for a new answer, rather than the answer that Christianity has had for two thousand years.”

“Judaism has had it for over three thousand,” Rabbi Shotzen said, wagging a finger.

Thrist gave him a sideways glance. “All around is proof of God's creation. Me, you, trees, birds, the earth, the universe—but since the beginning of this century mankind has worshiped the god of science, rather than our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here is something science cannot explain, yet you refuse to believe. Andrew,” Thrist gave the linguist his full attention. “What was your reaction when you first saw Bub?”

“Fear,” Andy answered.

“But what did Bub represent to you? When you saw him?”

“A devil.”

Thrist nodded. “Everyone who sees Bub recognizes a devil. They are concerning themselves with the how and the why, but the 'what' has been answered. Bub is a devil. Where do devils come from, Andrew?”

“This one came from Panama.”

Sun and the others laughed. Rabbi Shotzen had to be nudged by Thrist because his laughter went on longer than the others'.

“But before he was found in Panama, where did Bub come from?”

“Devils usually come from hell,” Andy said.

“Or heaven,” Shotzen added. “Depending on your interpretation of his creation. Lucifer, the Morning Star, had tried to shine brighter than Adonai, was cast out of heaven for his pride.”

“Or, according to Enoch,” Thrist said, “Devils are angels who chose to fornicate with humans. Wasn't that the explanation Rabbi Elkiezer gave in the 8th century? Something about fornicating with the daughters of Cain?”

Shotzen dismissed him. “Remember, Enoch wrote pseudepigrapha and apocrypha—nothing the scribe did went into the Torah.”

“But,” Thrist countered, “if we were to base our conceptions solely on the Bible, which encompasses the Torah, we'd have very little to go on.”

“Devils and angels were created by ha-shem as separate entities,” Shotzen insisted. “Had adonai created angels that became devils, it would contradict His perfection. Instead, ha-shem created devils to punish sin. It can be interpreted that all evil, in fact, is Satanic rather than Divine. The Book of Jubilees agrees.”

“Either way,” Thrist said, “we have a being here that is obviously supernatural, and obviously created by God. Shouldn't we be focusing our efforts on attempting to figure out why He allowed us to find Bub, and what He expects us to do with this knowledge? Is this the beginning of the apocalypse? The first sign of Armageddon? Or should we take this as a message that God indeed exists, and use it to spread His word? And why, after almost a hundred years at this facility, and who knows how many more years buried in the ground, did Bub finally wake up?”

“That's why Andy is here,” Race said. “To ask him. Right Andy?”

Sun glanced at Andy, who squirmed under the spotlight. She raised an eyebrow.

“Uh... are we sure he can't escape?” Andy asked.

Race grinned. “His enclosure is four foot concrete with steel plates sandwiched in between each foot. The Plexiglas is bullet proof, shatter proof, fire proof, and has been tested up to sixteen thousand pounds per square inch. Even if he did escape the habitat, he's two hundred feet underground, and he'd have to go through those two titanium doors. Plus, there are safeguards.”

“Such as?”

“In the eighties, the President decided that if Bub were to ever wake up, we'd need to have some control over him. Bub has two explosive charges surgically imbedded inside of him, one in the neck and one in the heart. Either one would render Bub out of commission, even with his rapid healing abilities. He's got enough boom in him to blow up a tank.”

Andy's face scrunched up in thought. Sun watched him. She wanted him to stay, she realized, and that surprised as much as scared her.

“I'll need some things; books, programs, access to the Internet. And that capsule that Bub was found in, are there pictures of the writing?”

“Son, we've got the whole damn capsule, you want to see it.”

“I want to see it. It's as good a starting place as any. I also need the video recordings of Bub since he's been awake, anything that has him speaking. He's only said a few things to me so far.”

“Could you understand him?” Race asked. The excitement was apparent in his voice.

“I'm not sure. But it sounded like an Indio language. I think he said
how are things with you
and
I am very hungry
.”

“Doesn’t sound hostile to me. Dr. Jones, would you mind taking Andy to Red 6 to see the capsule?”

Sun gave Race a look, knowing she was being used, and why. But it didn't bother her as much as she thought it should.

“I have some things to finish up in the records room, but I can free up some time.”

“Great,” Race said. He was one big smile, ready to shake hands with the world. “Now who wants a microwave chili dog?”

Sun turned to Andy, who was staring at her with a lopsided grin on his face. Part of her wanted to smile back, but she held that part in check.

“Need some help?” Andy asked. “In the records room?”

“You sure you want to help me again?”

Andy smiled. “After watching Bub eat, I think I could handle just about anything.”

“How about chili dogs?”

The pain showed in his face. “I don't think I'm quite ready for chili dogs.”

“Then let's go.”

As they left the Mess Hall, Sun noticed that Race winked at her. She restrained herself and didn't wink back.

CHAPTER FOUR

Andy surprised Sun by being helpful in Red 3. For the first twenty minutes he was chatty and full of questions, but once he settled in with the actual organizing he proved himself a hard worker. They toiled for over two hours in companionable silence, Andy once going for Diet Cokes, and Sun once leaving for the bathroom (and to touch up her make-up, even though she didn't actually touch it up, just check it.)

While rifling through a large stack of invoices, Sun became absorbed in an inventory sheet listing some of the medical supplies and pharmaceuticals on site.

It staggered her. Samhain was better stocked than a hospital pharmacy. Why the staff here would need seven gallons of morphine, or ten thousand tablets of aspirin, was beyond her scope of understanding. Total cost to the taxpayer: seven million dollars in drugs that would never be used. Not for the first time since her arrival, Sun felt underpaid.

“Look at this,” Andy said. He handed her a piece of paper written in a language other than English.

“Spanish?” she asked.

“Italian. It's from Pope Pius the tenth.”

Sun briefly returned to the long, boring mornings of her youth, trapped in Sunday school memorizing prayers.

“St. Pius,” she corrected. “He was canonized in 1954.”

“You're Catholic?”

“I was.”

“When did you leave the church? Or is that too personal a question?”

“I don't think I really left the church. More like the church left me.”

“How so?”

Sun hadn't ever talked about this with anyone. No one had ever asked.

“Five years ago... it was a bad time for me. I had a lot of problems. I met a man, Steven, he was a psychiatrist. I didn't meet him professionally—I met him in a bar, actually.”

Sun turned away from Andy and busied herself moving papers around on the desk.

“He was a very sensitive man. Compassionate. We fell in love, got married. We wanted to start a family. I'm sure you know where this is going; woman gets a new shot at happiness, drunk driver kills her husband, woman loses faith in God. Cliché. Soon after that I lost my veterinary clinic.”

Sun thought back to the creditors, one even calling her at Steven's wake. Steven had been kept alive for almost six months. Six months of wretched, useless hoping. Six months, at a cost of three thousand dollars a day. Insurance didn't even cover a third of the expense, and of course the asshole who ran head first into Steven was uninsured as well.

“So you blame God for taking him.”

“What? No. At first, sure. It made no sense. When Steven died, I lost everything. But then it did make sense. I didn't blame God, because there was no God to blame. Shit just happens.”

Sun finished fussing with the papers and turned back to Andy with a question of her own.

“You said to the holies that you were an atheist. Why?”

“It's kind of complicated. I never had any sort of organized religion in my life. God was something that other kids believed in.”

“So you never learned about religion?”

“I had a friend, in grade school, his parents tried to take me to church once. I loved it.”

“Why'd they only take you once?”

“Oh, I didn't love the Mass. I loved the language. The priest spoke in Latin, asking a question, I think it was something like
'Are you truly thankful?'
or something like that. Well, I thought he was asking us, so I answered.”

“In Latin.”

“Yeah. And it freaked him out. Everyone else too. So he asked me, in Latin, how I knew Latin. So I told him I knew about ten different languages. And he said that it’s a miracle, that God has blessed me with the gift of tongues. I told him, in English, God didn't bless me, I studied my ass off!”

Sun laughed.

“Needless to say, the family never took me with them again. When I got into college, I read a lot of religious texts—for the language, not the content. But some of the content leaked through, obviously. And in every case, whether I was translating Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, whatever, I found the same theme within the writing.”

“Which was?”

“Scared men, looking for answers. I think that as a species, being self-aware means we have questions. Some of those questions are: What created the universe, where do we go when we die, and why do bad things happen? These questions don't have answers, but need to be answered. That's why men, all men, every people and tribe from Cro-Magnon on up, had to create gods. To answer these questions.”

“So here we are, two atheists, trying to find the origin of a demon.”

Andy grinned. “Almost seems as if God put us here, to show us the truth, doesn't it?”

Sun could tell Andy was joking, but she got a chill. That
was
what it seemed like. A second chance at faith.

“So what does St. Pius say in the letter?”

“That the Vatican was sending over a bishop, and if President Roosevelt was wise he would not let Bub's existence be known because the panic could destroy the western world. And that he was praying for everyone involved.”

Andy took the paper back and ran his finger over the Vatican seal.

“Funny, yesterday I was wondering how I was going to pay my electric bill, and now here I am holding a letter that is probably worth more than I make in a year. Sotheby's would kill for it.”

“Sotheby's? You're thinking historical worth. Try the media.  You could make a fortune, up until you were executed for treason.”

Andy filed the paper away and Sun suggested they quit and go take a look at the capsule. She felt pretty good for someone who'd just recounted the biggest tragedy of her life. And for once, there was no guilt to accompany feeling good. Was there a statute of limitations on grieving?

Andy held the door for her and they took a short walk from Red 3 to Red 6. The room was small and brightly lit. It reminded Sun of an autopsy room. A small dehumidifier ran nonstop in the corner, humming quietly. In the center, sprawled out like a baby elephant corpse, was the capsule.

It was pale gray, so pale that it seemed to absorb the fluorescent light. Sun was again intrigued by the shape: it was a tube with rounded ends, almost like giant sausage, but the curves were perfect in their simplicity. It had been measured back in the '70s, and the scientist in charge found it was symmetrical to within ten thousandths of an inch.

“It looks like a sarcophagus,” Andy ran his hand over the carvings on top. “And it's so smooth! How can it feel so silky when it has all of these glyphs engraved into it? You can barely feel them. What's it made of?”

“A lot,” Sun laughed. “Analysis came back with traces of everything: carbon, ferrite, silicon, lead, silver, iridium, petroleum, ivory...”

“Like elephant tusks?”