Species (21 page)

“Moas were large, flightless birds native to New Zealand. Some scientists believe there may have been as many as twenty-five different species of moa, all of which are now extinct.”

“All of them?” Dan looked surprised.

“Yes. The smallest moa was about the size of a turkey; the largest was bigger than an ostrich, perhaps ten feet high and two hundred pounds plus. Their size was deceptive, though; they were docile herbivores, more like giant chickens than anything else, surviving successfully on the islands for millions of years.”

“And here come the Maoris,” Press said gloomily.

“Exactly.” Stephen rotated his chair until he faced the computer again. He pressed a series of keys. “The indigenous species—moas—are green. The predators are red.”

“The Maoris,” Dan said.

Stephen nodded. “Watch what happens.” He flicked the mouse and the cursor jumped to a button at the upper right that said
START PROGRAM.
When he double-clicked the mouse, a counter appeared in place of the button. Starting at 1,000, it began to roll forward by tens.

The screen map flashed and the earth tones of the geographical format shifted to green, except for the highest mountain ridges. At the eastern edge of the islands, a few red dots appeared at the lips of protected bays. The dots began to expand to small patches as on the map the Maori established colonies and instituted landholding. As the counter rolled into 1,100 the red began to expand rapidly, forcing the green into retreat. For a brief moment the green dots expanded on the mountain ridges, then the red tide overwhelmed it again.

“If I were to add a third color to represent the arrival and beginning colonization of New Zealand by the British in the mid-seventeen hundreds,” Stephen said a little dreamily, “say . . . blue, you would see a triple impact. The green would retreat before the red, and the red would begin to disintegrate, more akin to a thinning of the herd than outright exhaustion of the species.” The counter turned over to 1,300; wide-eyed, they all watched as scattered outposts of green remained in the isolated valleys, then fell before the spreading mass of red.

“Wow,” Dan breathed. He leaned on the edge of the computer table and Stephen saw that Dan’s hands were shaking. “This really happened to these birds?”

“Yes. Keep watching.” As the computer counter hit 1,500 the red color swept into the mountain passes and flooded the last of the valleys, swallowing every spot of green in its wake. A few dots of green materialized now and then in the remotest areas, and then, when the computer counter stopped at 1,740, the final green speck had vanished. Red blanketed the islands from nearly coast to coast. “And finally,” Stephen said softly, “the extinction of the moa.”

“That’s a lot of chicken dinners,” said Press. “Brutal. Mankind certainly wasn’t the saint in this saga.”

“There are no saints in biology,” Laura remarked. “Only survivors.”

“It’s the history of life,” Stephen responded. “A species will expand unless something stops it from doing so. In the case of the Maori, they ran out of moas.”

“The moas are all gone?” Dan asked. “Forever?”

“The larger ones were extinct by the end of the seventeenth century. A few of the smaller species may have survived into the nineteenth, but not beyond.” Stephen cleared the screen and punched in a new set of instructions. “You’ve seen what people can do to animals; now watch what people can do to people.”

Fitch leaned forward, his eyes sharpening. “What are we looking at, Arden?”

“The Ainu,” Stephen answered as the computer image shifted to a different map, one showing the four major Japanese islands. “Physically unlike the Japanese, they spoke a different language with a number of dialects. Their customs were unique and their religious beliefs centered around the forces of nature. They were masterful hunters, fishermen, and trappers until the Japanese migrated to Hokkaidō and attempted to settle them with agriculture.” This time the computer counter ran to 1,995 before it stopped, leaving a weak scattering of green dots amid the overlay of red on the islands. “Unlike the moas in New Zealand, about fifteen thousand Ainu still exist in Japan, but hardly any of the survivors are of pure blood. The language is almost dead, as is the religion.” Stephen sighed. “Intermarriage and cultural assimilation have even made them look like the Japanese now. They’re still twitching, but extinction is unavoidable.”

“But they’re
people!”
Dan protested. “People can’t go extinct . . . can they?”

Stephen gave Fitch a dark frown before he looked back at Dan. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He cleared the screen a second time and began typing new instructions. “Let’s redefine the guidelines to show the human race now that Sil is among us.” The screen flickered and a world map came up, smaller to accommodate the expanded area, and covered with lush green. The counter reappeared at the top right, set at 1,995.00 “This program will run in increments of one month; therefore, when the counter says 1,995.06, you will be looking at June 1995.” He hit the enter key and a tiny red dot appeared in Los Angeles. “Here are the new parameters: It’s 1995, and the predator makes its first contact with the indigenous species and reproduces, bearing one male offspring. The offspring matures in six months—a more than generous estimate given how fast Sil matured—and successfully impregnates thirty indigenous females.”

Stephen’s gaze flicked to the team as he began running the program; they all watched the computer screen with growing horror. His own palms felt damp and cold. “We don’t know for sure, but given that the mother is still a slower-growing species, we’ll assume the gestation period is two weeks. To keep the program parameters simple enough for us to visually consider, we will also surmise that the indigenous mother will expire upon giving birth. Realistically, the predator female probably
won’t
die after reproducing, and may even proceed to another breeding cycle. We don’t know.” He took a deep breath and ran the back of his hand across his clammy forehead before continuing. “For argument’s sake, we’ll speculate that the rate of offspring will be fifty-fifty—half male, half female. At the present time we must conclude that the alien species exists in this environment with no natural predators. Thus each generation will be able to proceed at this rate of procreation.”

For the first time the computer gave a warning sound—
bleep!
—and the single red spot instantly appeared in places around the globe.

“What happened?” Press demanded. “I figured it would be fast, but—”

“The predator has established itself in every place an air link is available,” Stephen announced. “The miracle of flying.”

Suddenly the world map exploded in red splotches, like someone had stood over it and let loose with an atomizer of scarlet paint. From the centers of the established spots to the most remote areas around the globe, the red began to spread. Larger cities swelled and ebbed, swelled and ebbed, then the red swept across Africa with barely a pause.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Laura. “This is
terrifying.”

The counter spun to 2,002.4—April, about seven years in the future. The red splotches were everywhere—from virtually uninhabited Antarctica to the broiling center of the Australian outback. The Pacific Islands were quickly obliterated, and the green resistance in Japan was hardly more than a pulse. As island after island yielded, the red splotches grew into a wave that spread across China and beyond.

Behind Stephen, Fitch gave a strangled cough. “This is preposterous,” he choked out. “Pure speculation—”

“Shut up,” Press said in a steely voice. “I don’t think we want to hear you right now.”

“It’s like an epidemiological map of a viral infection,” Laura murmured.

“A what?” Press asked.

“A foreign organism,” Laura explained, “entering a system and taking it over completely.”

“As in an intergalactic virus,” Stephen said softly.

“More like a retrovirus.” Laura’s eyes were wide as she stared at the screen. “One that changes faster than the host organism can defend against it.”

Dreading the outcome, Stephen watched with the rest of the group as the red closed in on the remaining major cities. Holdouts of green disappeared, each with a nasty, metallic
bleep!
from the computer. For some unknown reason, as the remainder of the world was engulfed in red, the last of the green held tight in Finland and actually expanded a little; then it, too, was overwhelmed. With a final, stretched-out alarm noise that reminded Stephen of a flat-lining heart monitor, the global map showed only red.

Silence filled the room, then Dan pointed hesitantly at the screen. “Where are we?”

“We’re the green,” Laura said as gently as she could.

Dan stared at the others, his face full of terror. “There
is
no green.”

Press responded, but Stephen saw that he couldn’t meet the empath’s eyes as he said the bleak words.

“That’s the point, Dan. There is no
we.”

25

S
il was closer to Santa Monica, but the familiarity she’d expected wasn’t there. Viewing the Pacific Coast Highway as a pedestrian gave her a totally different perspective, detail magnified a thousandfold. The highway was beautiful, lush and sunny, with wide, clean streets that seemed the antithesis of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Traffic was abundant, but not the bumper-to-bumper mass that allowed pedestrians to amble into the street at will. People here waited on the corners for the traffic lights to change from red to green before they tried to cross, and it wasn’t a fraction as crowded as Sil was used to.

About a quarter block in front of Sil, a young boy who reminded her of the kid in the train station zipped along on a skateboard. She watched him as she walked, interested in the skateboard and the way he worked at learning to control it. It was evident that he wasn’t an expert—yet—but he was certainly enthusiastic in his efforts as he twirled and stopped, then did a chopping hop-jump that looked like he was leaping over something invisible before landing on the skateboard again. Coming to the corner, Sil saw him glance at the red light facing him in exasperation, then at the vehicles moving along the roadway. Too impatient to wait, the boy gave a sturdy double push with his right leg and launched himself into the street. Halfway across, the front wheel of the skateboard dropped into a rut and the skateboard flew out from under him. He pitched forward, his arms pinwheeling for balance, then gave a cry of surprise as an oncoming truck, a white Toyota 4-Runner speeding along at fifteen MPH over the posted limit, slammed on its brakes.

The driver’s face went white as the brakes locked and the 4-Runner slewed sideways. Sil watched the boy trip and fall to his knees, then saw too late that the truck was swerving right for
her.
She screamed and threw her arms up instinctively as it jumped the curb and struck her, and was amazed when the ground and the trees switched places. The impact knocked her into the air and backward a good twenty paces.

The sound of shattering glass filled her ears as she landed, giving her a quick, disconnected memory of her escape from the compound. Dazed, she struggled unsuccessfully to sit upright amid a thousand sharp-edged pieces of glass, the remains of a glass-walled bus stop at the side of the road. The backs of her arms and legs stung from dozens of glass cuts and she couldn’t get her mind to focus, couldn’t find the right commands to bring her to her feet. Her vision was blurred and disjointed, but she recognized the kid on the skateboard as he began yelling something at the driver of the truck, who promptly leaped from the cab and took off down the street at a full run. He left the truck where it had stopped, door open with the engine stalled.

People were running toward her from every direction and Sil knew she should get up and leave before they got to her and started asking questions. But something was wrong with her shoulder, and when she looked she found a ragged gash running from the center of her collarbone straight across to her arm. Pinkish-white shards of bone glimmered deep within the wound and that side of her body was drenched with blood. Seeing the injury was a sort of nerve trigger, and Sil was unprepared and unable to block the agony that blasted through her arm and across her chest. She tried again to rise but blackness took her suddenly, sweeping her down and into painless unconsciousness.