Relic

“There is something in here I don’t understand,” he said, laying down the printout. “A virus normally codes for other viruses. Why would a virus code for all these human and animal proteins? Look at all these. Most of them are hormones. What good are human hormones in a plant?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Margo said. “I looked up some of the hormones. A lot of them seem to be from the human hypothalamus gland.”

Frock’s head jerked as if he had been slapped. “Hypothalamus?” His eyes were suddenly alive.

“That’s right.”

“And the creature that’s loose in this Museum is eating the hypothalamus of its victims! So it must need these hormones—perhaps it’s even addicted to these hormones,” Frock blurted. “Think: there are only two sources: the plants—which, thanks to this unique virus, are probably saturated with the hormones—and the human hypothalamus. When the creature can’t get the fibers, it eats the brain!”

“Jesus, how awful,” Margo breathed.

“This is stu

He continued to look at her, his hands trembling slightly. “Cuthbert told us that he’d hunted up the crates in order to retrieve the Mbwun figurine, only to find one of the crates broken open and the fibers scattered about. In fact, now that I think of it, one of the larger crates was nearly empty of fibers. So this creature must have been eating the fibers for some time. Maxwell obviously used the same fibers to pack his crates. The creature may [282] not need to eat much—the hormonal concentration in the plants must be very high-but it obviously needs to eat regularly.”

Frock leaned back in the wheelchair. “Ten days ago, the crates were moved into the Secure Area, and then three days later, the two boys are killed. Another day, and a guard is killed. What has happened‘? Simple: the beast ca

“Dr. Frock,” Margo said, “I think the Kothoga were growing this plant. Whittlesey collected some specimens in his plant press, and the picture on this incised disk is of a plant being harvested. I’m sure these fibers are just the pounded stems from the lily pad in Whittlesey’s press—the plant depicted on this disk. And now we know: these fibers are what the woman was referring to when she screamed ‘Mbwun.’ Mbwun, son of the devil: That’s the name of this plant!”

She quickly brought the strange plant out of the press. It was dark brown and shrivelled, with a web of black veins. The leaf was thick and leathery, and the black stem as hard as a dried root. Gingerly, Margo brought her nose close to it. It smelled musky.

Frock looked at it with a mixture of fear and fascination. “Margo, that’s brilliant,” he said. “The Kothoga must have built a whole ceremonial facade around this plant, its harvest and preparation—no doubt to appease the creature. And no doubt that very beast is depicted in the figurine. But how did it get here? Why did it come?”

“I think I can guess,” Margo said, her thoughts racing. “Yesterday, the friend who helped me search the crates told me he read of a similar series of murders in [283] New Orleans several years ago. They’d occurred on a freighter coming in from Belém. My friend located the shipping records of the Museum crates, and he found that the crates were on board that ship.”

“So the creature was following the crates,” said Frock.

“And that’s why the FBI man, Pendergast, came up from Louisiana,” Margo replied.

Frock turned, his eyes burning. “Dear God. We’ve lured some terrible beast into a museum in the heart of New York City. It’s the Callisto Effect with a vengeance: a savage predator, bent on our destruction this time. Let’s pray there’s only one.”

“But just what kind of creature could it be?” asked Margo.

“I don’t know,” Frock answered. “Something that lived up on the tepui, eating these plants. A bizarre species, perhaps surviving since the time of the dinosaurs in tiny numbers. Or perhaps the product of a freak turn of evolution. The tepui, you see, is a highly fragile ecosystem, a biological island of unusual species surrounded by rain forest. In such places, animals and plants can develop strange parallels, strange dependencies on each other. A shared DNA pool—think of it! And then—”

Frock was silent.

“Then!” he said loudly, slapping his hand on the arm of the wheelchair. “Then they discover gold and platinum on that tepui! Isn’t that what Jörgensen told you? Shortly after the expedition fell apart, they fired the tepui, built a road, brought in heavy mining equipment. They destroyed the entire ecosystem of that tepui, and the Kothoga tribe with it. They polluted the rivers and swamps with mercury and cyanide.”

Margo nodded vigorously. “The fires burned for weeks, out of control. And the plant that sustained this creature became extinct.”

[284] “So the creature started on a journey, to follow these crates and the food it so desperately craved.”

Frock fell into silence, his head settling on his chest.

“Dr. Frock,” Margo finally said quietly. “How did the creature know the crates had gone to Belém?”

Frock looked at her and blinked. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

Suddenly Frock was gripping the sides of the wheelchair, rising up in his excitement. “Margo!” he said. “We can find out exactly what this creature is. We have the means right here. The Extrapolator! We’ve got the creature’s DNA: we’ll feed it into the program and get a description.”

Margo blinked. “You mean the claw?”

“Exactly!” He wheeled around to the lab’s workstation and his fingers began moving over the keys. “I had the printout Pendergast left us sca

Margo took Frock’s place at the keyboard. In a moment, another message flashed:

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 55.30 minutes.

Hey, Margo, this looks like a big job. Why don’t you send out for pizza? The best place in town is Antonio’s. I recommend the green chili and pepperoni. Shall I fax them your order now?

The time was quarter past five.

= 40 =

D’Agosta watched with amusement as two burly workmen unrolled a red carpet between two lines of palm trees in the Museum’s Great Rotunda, out through the bronze doors and down the front steps.

That’s go