Origin (37 page)

“He does remind me a bit of Anthony Quinn.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that; he’d be insufferable. I’m to understand that you’ll begin your investigation tomorrow?”

Bill nodded. “It’s not an investigation, really. All I do is review your testing and give a preliminary report to the committee.”

“But you have the power to stop the process before it gets to that, correct?”

“Yes.”

She took a sip of wine, leaving the tiniest trace of red lipstick on the glass. The rim had a complete circle of half moons around it, like a deliberate design. Bill thought of his own wine, back at the other table. A nice Merlot would take off the edge.

“I’ve seen Dr. Nikos lecture before, but this was the first time he introduced Manny. It’s incredible.”

“Yes, we’re all terribly excited. Manny especially. This drug has done wonders for him.”

“Was he the first human test subject?”

Theena’s demure expression flickered.

“Actually, no. There was someone else who began the program at the same time as Manny. But there were… complications.”

“Something to do with the drug?”

“No, nothing like that. It was a personal matter. The N-Som worked fine.” Theena smiled. “I hope you aren’t ignoring Mrs. May to be sitting here with me.”

Bill automatically looked at his wedding band.

“She… died last year.”

“I’m so sorry. Was it sudden?”

Bill almost blurted out a yes. He caught himself in time.

“She was sick for a long time.” The image of Kristen, lying in the hospital bed, filled his mind. “And you? Is Mr. Boone off mingling?”

Theena wiggled her large diamond ring. It caught the light and winked.

“Last I heard he was in Texas. I kept the name because anything is preferable to Stefanopolous. So, how does one get a job at the FDA?”

Bill thought about the long, boring version. After completing his studies at the University of Chicago and his internship at Rush-Presbyterian, Bill was undecided between a residency or private practice. He’d known from a young age that he’d be an M.D., but when the day finally came he realized that he enjoyed learning about medicine more than actually practicing it.

Congress made the decision for him. The year was 1992, and they’d just passed PDUFA—the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which authorized the FDA to charge drug sponsors for their services, expediting the approval process. Suddenly CDER, which had been impossible to break into, had hundreds of openings for reviewers. Bill had leapt at the chance.

“I was just in the right place at the right time. How about you? You’re a chemist, right?”

“Actually, I’m a pathologist, like my father. Specializing in neuropathology, of course.”

Bill’s confidence slipped another notch. Beautiful, and a brain surgeon.

“Exciting work?”

Theena laughed, a rich, warm sound.

“I think I’ve developed a permanent squint from looking in the microscope so often. No, it’s not what I would call exciting. But it’s not without rewards, either. What time shall we expect you at DruTech tomorrow?”

“Whenever is convenient.”

“Anytime is fine. Research continues around the clock. Your predecessor preferred to work during the night shift.”

Bill raised an eyebrow. “My predecessor?”

“The prior CDER agent. Did you ever find out what happened to him?” Theena studied Bill’s face. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? He was sent by the FDA last month to review some preliminary research, worked with us for a week, and then left without a word. A Dr. Bitner?”

Bill knew Michael Bitner. They’d golfed on several occasions. He’d have to give him a call, find out what had happened.

“Someone call the police!”

The cry came from the other side of the banquet room, followed by shouts for a doctor. Bill hurried through the crowd, Theena on his heels. The activity was centered around the Men’s Room. Bill had to shove gawkers out of his way to get in.

“I’m a doctor! Give me some room!”

At first, all Bill saw was blood. It took his brain a second to register that under all that blood was Dr. Nikos.

Theena screamed.

Bill knelt down, soaking his pants leg. He automatically reached for the carotid artery, then stopped his hand when he saw the gash in the doctor’s throat, deep enough to expose the esophagus. Dr. Nikos was gone, long beyond anyone’s help.

“Over here! There’s another!”

Bill was ushered over to a second pool of blood. In the center of it was Manny. His tuxedo shirt was shredded, over half a dozen wounds covering his abdomen and chest. A scalpel handle protruded from his sternum.

“Tried… tried to save… da…”

Manny coughed, spitting red. Bill tilted Manny’s face to the side so the blood didn’t run down his throat. His pulse was strong, but when Bill tore off Manny’s shirt he didn’t hold out much hope. The guy looked like a lasagna.

Bill left the scalpel embedded, concerned that removal would cause more bleeding. He enlisted four guys with cloth napkins to keep pressure on Manny’s many wounds. He also put Manny’s feet up on a chair to stave off shock.

The paramedics arrived shortly thereafter, intubing Manny and carting him away.

Bill looked around the room, trying to spot Theena. He went back into the banquet hall, the crowd parting for him when they noticed his bloody clothing. He checked her table, the hotel lobby, and finally the parking lot.

She was gone.

G
lowing dully in the light cast from the distant sun, a spinning chunk of interwoven nickel and iron the size of Khufu’s Pyramid, cruised past the outer fringes of our solar system, missing Pluto by a miniscule six hundred thousand miles.

Moving at 75,000 miles per hour, the asteroid sped past the orbits of Uranus, Neptune and Saturn, bringing it deeper into the solar system and on a direct collision course with Earth. But, as often happens with solar intruders, a slight tug, a nagging pull of gravity began to exert its force on the interplanetary projectile. The course of the asteroid was modified and redirected towards the solar system’s vacuum cleaner, mighty Jupiter.

Just as the ancient god Jupiter protected the Roman Empire by reaching out and smiting enemies with lightning bolts, so too did the solar system’s guardian. Reaching out with its gravity, Jupiter pulled the asteroid toward its surface, threatening to crush it within a high pressure atmosphere of hydrogen, nitrogen, helium and other gases. The asteroid, now on a collision course with the outer atmosphere of Jupiter, began building speed, pulled in faster by Jupiter’s influence.

Passing Jupiter’s outer moons in rapid succession, the asteroid’s fate seemed clear. But a near miss with Callisto, Jupiter’s eighth and second-largest moon, altered its course ever so slightly, just enough to cause a premature collision. Noiselessly, the asteroid impacted with the frozen surface of Jupiter’s sixth moon, Europa. The surface of the moon exploded with energy created by the impact and massive chunks of ice, launching stone and other materials into space. Some were pulled back by Jupiter’s gravitational grip, but other chunks, moving fast enough to escape, tumbled into space and scattered across the solar system like a broken dinner plate across a tile floor.

One object in particular made off like a fleeing prisoner, toward the center of the solar system—toward Earth. The football-field-sized asteroid which once threatened Earth had been replaced by a smaller chunk of Europa, which slowly spun through the solar system, passing through the asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars without incident.

The house-sized object passed the moon and burst into flames as it entered Earth’s atmosphere—3,053 years later

M
uscles stretched and bones cracked as Michael Peterson twisted his own neck with his hands. His mother had always told him that cracking his own neck would one day paralyze him. But Peterson had stretched his neck to the point where his vertebrae popped every morning since he was a child. He stepped out of the tent and shivered as the frigid air struck his lungs.

If only mom could see me now
, he thought as he looked out at the white expanse of the Arctic where he’d come in search of meteorites. Every year, thousands of space rocks made their permanent home on the surface of the Earth, or in this case, the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean . It wasn’t that meteorites were more plentiful at the North Pole, just that they were easier to spot. Black specks on the stark ice usually meant one of two things, a polar bear’s snout or a meteorite.

Peterson had the rugged look of a man who ought to be out in a cold expanse, seeking out new-found wonders. His face was covered in stubble, which helped block out the unending cold. His jet black hair had a slight wave to it, but was now covered by a wool cap and parka hood. Some teenagers might consider him old, but he was still ready to take on most any challenge his profession could throw at him. Not that there was much to being an astrogeologist with a specialization in meteorites. If he wasn’t collecting rocks from around the world, he was dissecting them in a warm, cozy lab. But it was exciting work. He believed that the evidence for life on other worlds wouldn’t be found through monitoring radio waves like the folks at SETI or by finding traces of water on the surface of Mars. No, the proof would come to us, in the form of microorganisms embedded in a meteorite. It only needed to be found.

He was only a child when the news of ALH84001 hit the papers in 1996, but it was one of his sweetest memories. The meteorite had been found on Antarctica in 1984, but wasn’t analyzed for years. When it was…it rocked the world with the possibility of extraterrestrial microbial life on Mars. The president addressed the nation about the find. Conversations of life on other worlds ran rampant. Peterson based his school science project on the Martian stone, earning him an A in eighth grade astronomy. He was devastated when the stone was proven to contain no evidence of life, but the flame had already been ignited. Earning his doctorate degree by age twenty-five garnered him the respect of his peers and allowed him to start working on his life’s dream at a young age. It was now 2021 and after seven years of searching, he was no closer to his life’s goal than he was at the millennium.

Peterson lifted a stone in his gloved hand and let it drop. He watched as the rock hit the snow, creating a small plume of icy dust, and a tiny pockmark. Lifting the stone, Peterson smiled at the mini crater. He had often pictured what it would be like, witnessing a meteorite crashing to Earth; bursting through the atmosphere and crashing to the ground. He’d seen the results when such collisions took place in the civilized world; car engines torn through like a tank had just taken a pot shot, living rooms destroyed, trees severed in half. It was a miracle no one had yet been brained by one of the falling stones. He’d seen it all, but when it happened to him, for all his years of dreaming, he found himself completely unprepared.

The streak overhead caught his attention as he stretched in the early morning, preparing for another long day of scouring the frozen cap of the world. His first thought was that it was a crashing plane, or perhaps a satellite. But something about the way it glowed and broke up told him the object falling across the deep blue sky was not man made. This was the real thing. An asteroid turned meteorite plummeting to Earth before his eyes.