Ancestor (25 page)

His gloved hands set the little corpse on a scale. Twenty-one pounds. In just
six days
. But why should he be surprised? From the earliest planning stages they’d sought rapid growth. That was how he’d found Jian in the first place.

He’d read her published research and realized she could theoretically create an artificial genome, then experiment digitally until they could alter normal growth rates. It was on reading Jian’s second or third paper, he wasn’t sure which, that the whole ancestor project came to him in a flash of brilliance. His work on the quagga cloning project, breakthroughs in computing power, advances in oligo machines—the parts clicked, and he knew his destiny. The pieces existed, the required technology just a bit beyond what was already available off the shelf. All it really took, of course, was enough money.

Venter had funded the quagga cloning, but the man wouldn’t touch the ancestor project. He had even called the idea
ludicrous
. So Claus had secured a meeting with Danté Paglione, CEO of Genada, Inc.

Danté jumped on the project. He saw the real possibility of Claus’s
vision. Danté obtained Jian, and the project was born. Erika Hoel’s leading-edge expertise in large-mammal cloning was the perfect parallel to Jian’s theoretical work, so Danté hired her as well. And now, after several abandoned lines of experimentation, after five long years, Claus’s vision was a reality.

Tim Feely came up the ladder to the second deck. He looked sweaty, harried. His nose looked a little red. “What did you find, bro?”

Such a loser. Oh, how Claus longed to have Erika back. Just to see her face again …

“I’m still working on it, Mister Feely. And stop calling me
bro.”

Tim poked the dead fetus, then quickly pulled his finger back. “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.”

“You have such an eloquent way with words.”

“Funny,” Tim said, “your mom told me the same thing.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t reference my mother.”

“And I prefer box seats at a Pistons game followed by a Texas reach-around, but I’m not going to get either.”

Claus paused, thought of asking what a
Texas reach-around
was, then shook his head and let it go.

“Goddamn spooky,” Tim said. “The physiology looks so familiar, almost first-trimester human if you factor in the large size.”

Tim was right. It
did
look a little like a human fetus. Claus cut out the heart. It was already well developed and looked
very
human. So much, in fact, the two might be indistinguishable. Transplanting it into a human would prove exceedingly easy.

The ancestor’s limbs were already forming into their final shape. Somewhat disturbing were the tiny, needlelike claws at the end of each finger.
Claws
, like a cat’s, not
hooves
, like a cow’s. Had Jian coded for that? Maybe it was part of her broad integument swap. As long as the organs were right, the feet didn’t really matter.

The size of the head and braincase also surprised Claus. Obviously, Jian had used a great deal of genetic information from higher mammals. But it was far too early to tell if the current body proportions would remain through birth and into adulthood.

“Hey, bro,” Tim said. “You wanna hear something
really
scary?”

Claus sighed. “Just say it, Doctor Feely.”

“I did some calculations. I’m estimating the fetuses have a fifty percent food conversion rate.”

Claus stopped and looked at the younger man.
“Fifty
percent?”

Tim nodded. “Based on the amount of food the mothers have ingested, minus their baseline metabolic rate and factoring in the fetal weight.”

Claus looked at his subject in a new light.
Fifty percent
of everything the ancestor took in was converted to muscle or bone or other tissues. Vastly higher than any other mammal.

“That’s significant, but not the scary part,” Tim said. “What makes my nut sack shrivel up and head for higher ground is Jian’s weight projections. According to her tables, a six-day-old fetus should weigh
five
pounds, not
twenty.”

Claus looked up. He’d known the numbers but hadn’t stopped to realize that the fetus on the table was more than
four times
the size Jian had coded for. Shorting her meds had produced the needed breakthrough, but Claus found himself wondering what details she might have missed in her creative state. What things might she have failed to document?

Or, possibly, were there things she didn’t even
know
she’d done?

But none of that mattered. The bottom line was they had living animals gestating inside the surrogate hosts. From here on out, all they had to do was study the growth patterns and adjust the genome accordingly. Success was a given; the only variable was time.

Claus continued the autopsy, slicing open the stomach. The contents spilled onto the dissection tray.

Neither man said a word.

The mystery of the missing embryos lay on the wax tray in front of them. Rhumkorrf stared at the tiny, half-digested bones. He could clearly make out bits of a skull.

The ancestors were eating each other inside the womb.

Implantation +7 Days

PAUL FISCHER STARED at the sealed envelope on his desk. He was almost afraid to open it. If it didn’t contain information that would help him, he had few options left.

Other than the contents of the envelope, his only real lead had been uncovered by Interpol. The agency had discovered a shoestring connection between Genada and a U.K. company called F. N. Wallace, Inc., that had purchased parts from a scrapped C-5 Galaxy. That discovery made the pieces fall into place for Paul; a plane that large could move the entire Rhumkorrf experiment anywhere in the world. But knowing Genada had a C-5 only helped if the plane was out in the open, or if it flew again. Paul knew Colding would make sure neither of those things happened.

No, Paul’s best chance now was to find Galina Poriskova.

And that was why he was scared to open the report that sat in front of him. It could be the key to Poriskova’s whereabouts. An actual Russian lieutenant, escorted by two MPs, had hand-delivered it just minutes earlier. The Russian had actually asked for Paul’s ID and carefully examined it before asking Paul to sign for the report. Galina’s involvement could be enough to convince Switzerland, the Caymans and China to freeze Genada’s assets. If Paul couldn’t make that happen, there was no way to flush out Colding.

Paul couldn’t put it off any longer. He opened the sealed envelope, finding two manila folders inside: one thick, one thin. The thick one was on top, so he started with that. It contained page after page of financial records, records that seemed to confirm Galina had been living a lavish lifestyle all across Russia and Eastern Europe. After the financial records, though, came something far more interesting. It seemed that when Russian investigators followed up on the plane tickets and hotel stays purchased in Galina’s name, they discovered that more often than not, no one showed up. At times, a tall blonde did purchase big-ticket items like art and jewelry—but Galina was a five-foot-four brunette. Bottom line? Galina hadn’t been
seen in Russia or anywhere else since shortly after her meeting with Paul two years ago.

Which meant the second report could contain only one thing.

Paul opened it. If the words on the four pages chilled him, the photos damn near froze him cold.

He picked up his phone and hit the extension for his assistant.

“Yes sir?”

“Get me Longworth, please. Immediately.”

“Yes sir.”

Paul hung up and waited for the callback. The second report changed everything. As gruesome as it was, it provided the leverage he desperately needed. If the C-5 lead panned out, he could combine it with this and make his case for freezing Genada’s accounts worldwide. But that would take time. And with Genada’s mole inside the U.S. governmental system, Danté might
still
stay one step ahead.

Unless Paul found a way to make sure the mole couldn’t find anything at all.

He looked at the Russian report. Not at the contents, but at the report itself, at the folder.
Paper
. A courier. That’s what he needed, not emails, databases and phone calls … nothing electronic.

The phone rang.

“This is Colonel Fischer.”

“What do you have for me, Paul,” Longworth said. “You find them yet?”

“I have an interesting lead. If you approve, I’d like to try something different. We have to catch them off guard if we’re going to gain the momentum, go on the attack.”

“I like the sound of that,” Longworth said. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’d rather not say at the moment, sir. I’ll have a courier deliver you a memo.”

“A courier? Just email me.”

“No,” Paul said. “I can’t.”

Longworth paused for a second. “I see. Good, Colonel. Send your memo. And while you’re at it, send memos to anyone else you need help from. I’ll make a call and ensure you have as many couriers as you need.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Paul hung up and did some mental math. To do this right would take three days, maybe four. If it went well, he’d soon be making another visit to a Genada facility.

And this time, he’d find much more than an empty building.

Implantation +8 Days

COLDING AND SARA walked along Rapleje Bay. Snow, stones and sand crunched under their feet. The bay’s two tongues of land on either side made for a mile-long, water-filled U that pointed northeast toward the unending expanse of Lake Superior. Stars sparkled like diamond chips on a blanket of black velvet.

He had to get some personal time, even if it was only an hour or so. Jian had recovered from her panic attack. Not all the way, but some—she was still twitchy, eyes always darting to corners. She was hallucinating again, even though she denied it. Colding had told Rhumkorrf to up her meds a little bit more.

Rapleje Bay was ten miles away from the mansion, from the hangar … from the lab. Sara had borrowed Clayton’s crazy Bv206, the Nuge, so they could get away from everyone for a little bit. It was all getting to be too much: the fetus biting the camera, Jian going off the deep end, Danté’s evasiveness, Fischer out there hunting for them. But it was all worth it … wasn’t it? Saving millions of lives, sparing people the pain his wife had gone through—didn’t that end justify the means? A week ago, he would have said yes. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

A stiff wind blew from the northeast, rippling the nylon of his black Otto Lodge parka. He was ice-cold. Sara seemed perfectly comfortable in only jeans, a sweatshirt and a windbreaker.

“You must be part penguin,” Colding said. “I know you were born around these parts and all, but it’s freezing out here.”

“Technically, thirty-two degrees is freezing. It’s at least forty-five out here. Like spring, really.”

Colding smiled and shook his head, wondering how she might handle a sweltering summer day in Atlanta.

“Besides,” Sara said, “you better soak up this heat wave while you can.
On an island like this you can bet it’s below freezing every day from December to February.”

Colding shuddered at the thought. “That’s horrifying. I had enough of that at Baffin Island.”

“Oh come on, Peej. This place is beautiful. This is where the jet set from the fifties came to relax, and you’re being
paid
to be here. Do you know what a resort like this would cost you a night?”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn’t pay a dime.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “That’s you, Peej, last of the tightwad romantics.”

Colding stopped and looked at Sara. Her short blond hair flopped in the stiff breeze. She had a beauty he’d never seen in another woman, including, he realized, in Clarissa. Even when Sara squinted her eyelids against the stiff wind, he found himself admiring her laugh lines.

She turned and met his eyes, then smiled. “I’ve decided to forgive you for being a rotten douchebag.”

“Good news for me.”

“Uh-huh. But you still owe me.”

“I do?”

“Yeah.
Big
time.”

“I see. And how can I ever make this up to you?”

She grinned. “There’s a heater in the Nuge. Wouldn’t it be fun to know you put Clayton’s pet vehicle to …
other
uses?”

He felt a tingly rush in his chest, a vibration that reached into his fingers and toes. In the Nuge?

“Uh …” he said.

She took his hand and led him back to the zebra-striped vehicle.

Implantation +9 Days

P. J. COLDING KNEW HE had said something very, very wrong. He just didn’t know what it was.

Danté stared out from the secure terminal screen, his eyes narrow slits of barely controlled fury. “I can’t believe you could be this stupid.”

“But I don’t understand.” All he’d done was give Rhumkorrf’s latest update. “Things are going better than we ever expected. The autopsies show incredible, healthy growth.”

Danté shook his head the way you might when you hear someone say something so incredibly stupid it barely merits a response. “You’re a smart man. Or at least I thought you were. See if you can guess which word in your sentence pissed me off.”

Colding’s mind raced for an answer. “I … I still don’t understand.”

“Autopsies!”
Danté shouted. He banged his fist on the desk to punctuate each syllable. “Aw … fuck … king … top …
sies!”

“But, sir, after the first fetus attacked the fiber-optic camera, the mother—”

“Spontaneously aborted, I know. Of
course
you do an autopsy on
that
fetus, you idiot, but how many more did you murder?”

Murder
. Used in association with a lab animal.

“Two,” Colding said. “They’re growing so fast, Claus wants to properly document their development.”

“I don’t need
documentation!”
A thin line of spit dangled from Danté’s lower lip. “I need living animals! What is there about the phrase
we’re running out of time
that you don’t understand?”