Chimera, p.15
Chimera, page 15
“I have something to show you too, but it can wait until you’re able to catch up on a little sleep,” Mira said. “Why don’t I help you to your room—”
“They eclosed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The sculpins,” Sammie said. “They emerged from their chrysalises while you were gone.”
Mira glanced at the aquarium. The white lights were on, rendering the biofilm invisible. There was no movement inside the tank, save for the wavering of the kelp on the artificial current, the crabs scuttling across the sediment, and the tubeworms opening their feathery mouths—
Her breath caught in her chest when she saw a pair of tiny black eyes staring back at her from an ugly little face resembling that of a horned frog. She’d seen eyes just like them looking up at her from between the gaps in the webbing cocooning the specimen she’d exhumed from the substrate.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Sammie said.
Mira leaned closer to get a better look. The fish vanished into a cloud of disturbed sediment. She crouched and peered through the vegetation, searching for where it had gone. It wasn’t until the silt settled upon its nearly invisible form that she realized it hadn’t moved more than a few inches. It had simply vanished in plain sight. Its spiny dorsal fins formed a mohawk down its back, its pectoral fins expanding to frame its face like the frill of a dilophosaurus, its mouth gulping dramatically.
“It can control the cloaking effect,” Mira whispered.
“Which implies a relationship between the chimeras and the sculpin beyond simple parasitism,” Sammie said. At the sound of her voice, the fish hopped behind a rock. “Remember what happened when I applied static electricity to the dragline silk that had passed through the fish’s scales and perforated its flesh? It’s as though those filaments have tapped into the fish’s central nervous system and the chimeras have become an extension of it, a living skin connected to the neural network by strands of silk capable of transmitting faint electrical currents.”
“You think the chimeras used their webbing to hijack the fish’s brain?”
“Like a hacker into a mainframe.” Sammie sat on the edge of her desk and finished off the last of the coffee from her thermos. “On its most basic level, thought is nothing more than a series of electrochemical impulses passed along chains of sensory and motor neurons that cause the body to detect sensations, interpret their meaning, and act upon them. Surely a similarly conductive material could substitute for those neural pathways if it could transmit the same impulses. The animal kingdom is full of examples. There’s a species of fungus—Ophiocordyceps unilateralis—that infects ants and uses chemical signals to control their brains, forcing them to climb to a suitable height from which to disperse its spores. Another kind of fungus—Massospora cicadina—infects cicadas and produces a psychoactive compound that triggers their mating instincts, causing them to spread the spores throughout the swarm. A species of parasitic wasp known as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga stings other insects, lays its eggs inside them, and then stabs their brains with its stinger, using it as a joystick to control their movements.”
“This isn’t necessarily a catastrophic development,” Mira said. “A primitive version of our chimera existed millions of years ago. I’ve seen proof with my own eyes.”
“But the bacterium we incorporated into ours contains the genes of an arachnid, a class of life that has never existed in a marine environment.”
Mira fell silent. She’d so desperately wanted to believe that the frozen creatures she’d found in the cave proved that they had no reason to worry.
“On the positive side,” Sammie said, “the engineered bacterium allows the chimeras to do things we would never have dreamed possible.”
“Like what?” Mira asked.
“Think about it. That sculpin is essentially covered with biofilm and yet we can still see it, which implies that not only can the cloaking effect be turned on . . . it can be turned off.”
Mira looked into the tank, searching for the fish she knew had to be in there somewhere, while she struggled to wrap her mind around the implications.
“Mind turning on the green lights?” Sammie said.
She waited until Mira had done as she’d asked before killing the overhead lights.
The biofilm appeared inside the aquarium, now nearly three inches thick and surrounded by webbing that ascended the glass like vines. Ghostly strands connected it to the surface of the water, where they adhered to the aquarium’s rim. Impossibly thin filaments also traveled in the opposite direction, clinging to the rocks and the tips of the kelp. Broken lengths of dragline silk and tattered clumps of shredded cocoon floated on the current. One of the sculpins appeared as if from nowhere, its spiked form shimmering with iridescence as it clung, upside down, to the biofilm. It scrabbled across it, using its fins like hands and the spines jutting from them like fingers.
“Now watch this,” Sammie said. She climbed the ladder to the top of the tank and crouched on the platform beside a five-gallon bucket. “In the wild, a sculpin’s diet consists primarily of crabs, mollusks, and the occasional minnow. Basically, anything small enough to fit in its mouth.”
She thrust a net into the bucket, swished it around, and held up what appeared to be a juvenile cod, larger than any of the individual sculpins. Its tail slapped at the mesh as it tried to escape.
“Where’d you get those?” Mira asked.
“Swearengin managed to catch a few for us, although I’m not sure what it’ll end up costing us yet.”
“Perfect.”
Sammie smirked and, for the briefest of moments, looked like her old self. She leaned over the tank and inverted the net. As soon as the cod hit the water, it streaked straight down, passing through the biofilm—
The sculpin struck at it the moment it was within range, impaling it with its spines and driving it toward the bottom, where the other sculpins appeared as if from nowhere. The cod struggled valiantly, but it was no match for the ferocity of the benthic fish and the toxins they pumped into its body, its movements growing increasingly sluggish until its tail merely flicked at the kelp tangled around it. The sculpins attacked it with open mouths, latching down upon it and jerking at its flesh, like so many hyenas with the remains of a gazelle. When they were done, the desiccated carcass floated away, mealy white flesh disgorging from the ragged wounds.
The entire process had taken less than thirty seconds.
Mira couldn’t seem to form a single coherent thought as she watched the dead cod drift on the current, which carried it upward toward the biofilm. It finally came to rest near a bulge in the webbing, which contained the body of another cod, presumably the specimen Sammie had used as her first test subject.
Sammie again turned on the light, and the entire scene vanished, transforming into an amorphous liquid mirage that blended into the surrounding seawater.
Mira thought about the extinct creatures she’d seen in the ice cave, their bodies concealed by the chimeric organisms. Either every single one of them had frozen while the chimeras were demonstrating their ability to refract light, or the ancient microorganisms hadn’t been able to control the expression of their lenticular properties. If that were the case, then the life forms she and Sammie had inadvertently created were nothing like their extinct ancestors.
Their chimeras had subsumed the bodies of the sculpins and established a relationship that went beyond mere parasitism.
They were using the cloaking effect as a defensive mechanism.
The implications struck Mira all at once.
“The chimeras have evolved sentience.”
29
“They’re called Kerygmachela kierkegaardi,” Amy said. Mira had forwarded the photos she’d taken inside the cave to the chief scientific officer in hopes that she’d be able to help identify the creatures.
“So you’ve seen them before?” Mira said.
“Of course.” Amy swiveled around in her chair and gestured to her computer monitor with a flourish. On the screen was a detailed image of a stone slab, at the center of which were the petrified remains of a creature resembling those they’d discovered frozen in the ice. “One of our former researchers chiseled this fossil from the talus downhill from where the boathouse now stands, back before we erected the dam. It might look like a trilobite crossed with a scorpion, but it turns out that it’s actually an ancestor of modern arthropods like lobsters, butterflies, and spiders, if you can believe that. Carbon dating revealed this one to be somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred and fifty million years old, more than three hundred million years older than the dinosaurs.”
“And around the same time that levels of atmospheric oxygen rose high enough to sustain cellular respiration, leading to the Cambrian explosion and—”
“All forms of terrestrial life,” Amy finished for her. “Without the photosynthetic powers of the phytoplankton in the very waters below us, life as we know it wouldn’t exist today, but I don’t suppose I need to tell you that. It’s the whole reason you’re here, isn’t it? To essentially trigger the same reaction that caused nightmarish creepy-crawlies like these to evolve in the first place?”
Amy rocked back and laughed. Her humor died when she realized that Mira wasn’t laughing along with her.
“Why the Gloomy Gus routine?” she asked.
“I’m worried about Sammie,” Mira said. She wasn’t sure how much she should share with the woman who wielded the power to cancel their grants and send them home, but the bottom line was that her partner was burning the candle at both ends, and it was only a matter of time before she flamed out.
“Anxiety, irritability, depression, difficulty sleeping, changes in grooming habits?” Amy asked.
“Yes.” Mira pulled up a chair and took a seat beside the chief scientific officer at her computer. “All of the above.”
Amy smiled patiently and took Mira’s hands in her own.
“We see that a lot here, especially during a new resident’s first few months. They’re all classic symptoms of cabin fever, which isn’t technically a formal psychological diagnosis, but it’s real enough up here. People don’t realize how reliant they’ve become on their daily routines until they’re taken away. We’re social animals. We thrive on sunlight and human interaction, on being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. With the UV-B bulbs, timed lighting, and automatically tinted windows, we’ve done our very best to replicate the circadian rhythms of life back in the States, but it’s simply not the same thing.”
“So what am I supposed to do to help her?”
“Just keep an eye on her. If her condition worsens and you start to genuinely fear for her health or—God forbid—her life, then you need to drag Dr. Porter away from his work to examine her. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before her body succumbs to exhaustion and she crashes hard for a few days. I can’t count how many researchers have practically gone into hibernation on my watch. Once she stops fighting it and allows herself to rest, she’ll be up and about and as good as new.”
Mira nodded and offered the best smile she could muster. She’d never been a big fan of letting events run their course. Still, it was comforting to know that Amy had encountered this kind of apparent physical deterioration plenty of times before and didn’t seem at all worried.
“You’re a good friend for looking out for Sammie,” Amy said. “She’s lucky to have you. Just be careful not to internalize her problems, or you’ll find yourself suffering right along with her. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen that, either. The most important thing to do here—especially right now, as the days are getting shorter and shorter and you’re staring down the barrel of three months of night—is to take care of yourself. Make sure you’re eating well and taking your vitamins. Do your best to exercise every day, even if it’s just climbing those infernal stairs. And—for the love of God, child—stop trading away all of that chocolate you brought with you and indulge yourself a little bit every now and then.”
She winked at Mira, who had to admit that she did feel better. As usual, she was probably just overreacting.
Amy sat up straight and clapped, startling Mira.
“You know what always brightens my day?” she asked. “A couple of roly-poly polar bear cubs. What do you say we take a peek at the satellite and see what kind of trouble Shila and Suka are getting themselves into this morning?”
“I’d love to,” Mira said. “I could use a little cuteness in my life right about now.”
Amy swiveled back to her computer and awakened the sleeping monitor on the right. A few clicks of the mouse and she brought up an image of the northeastern coastline, from Academy Glacier through the finger-like fjords projecting into the Arctic Ocean. Dozens of colored dots stood out from the seamless white expanse. Each represented an individual polar bear from the population roaming this region. They spread farther apart as Amy zoomed in until there were only six of them within the frame, which covered an area encompassing the station, the lake, and several miles of inland terrain.
It struck Mira that she’d likely driven right past these polar bears on her snowmobile without having the slightest idea that they were lurking in the storm. For as cute as the cubs were, the adults were undoubtedly equally ferocious, especially when startled.
Amy adjusted the view until it was centered over three tracking beacons in various shades of red, with a fourth blue dot in the upper left corner. She clicked the mouse several times and the glacier came into sharp focus. The mother polar bear, Miska, stood apart from the blowing snow thanks to a yellowish streak along her back. It took several seconds for Mira to find the cubs. Shila and Suka wrestled downhill, nearly indistinguishable from the accumulation, especially in the civil twilight before dawn.
“They’re just too adorable,” Mira said.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Amy said, although Mira suspected the older woman was talking to herself. “It’s only a matter of time before they strike off on their own. Maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to still be here when they have cubs of their own.”
One of the balls of fluff clobbered the other, burying it under the snow, and then ran to her mother’s side before her sibling could retaliate. It was a universal behavior that Mira had experienced with her own brother, seemingly a lifetime ago.
“I don’t see anything where the blue dot was,” she said.
“That’s Chinook,” Amy said. She adjusted the centering and leaned closer to get a better look. Sheets of snow gusted across the ice, alternatingly concealing and revealing broad swaths of the underlying hillside, which ascended to a glacial steppe hidden beneath the storm. “Miska’s den is somewhere through there. I wonder if he crawled inside, although none of the other adults has ever done that before . . . ”
She bit her lip as she backed out of the satellite feed and scrolled through the list of available live cameras until she found the one she wanted. Mira recognized the interior view of the den as soon as it opened.
“There you are, you sneaky bugger,” Amy said. She turned the camera ever so slightly until the massive ursine mound was right in the middle. Chinook’s fur had a subtle golden coloration and appeared clumped, as though he’d recently emerged from the water. He’d buried his muzzle under his enormous, upturned paw, which was easily the size of a dinner plate. A crust had formed in the lashes of his closed eyes. Brown fluid leaked from the corners. His nose ran and his mouth frothed.
“He doesn’t look so good,” Mira said.
Amy looked blankly at the screen, her face etched with fear.
“No, he doesn’t, does he?”
She abruptly stood, grabbed a medical kit from the cabinet, and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Mira asked.
“Where do you think?”
And without another word, Amy was gone, her footsteps trailing her down the corridor toward the staircase.
Mira stared at the giant paw of the polar bear on the monitor. It was just about the same size as the tracks she’d seen heading down to the lake.
30
The cafeteria was busier than usual when Mira arrived. Swearengin was conspicuously absent; however, he’d left several sleeves of crackers alongside heated drums of chili and containers of shredded cheddar cheese that hadn’t quite thawed. She filled bowls for Sammie and herself and was just about to head down to her lab when she saw an empty chair between Carrie and Leo at one of the tables, where they huddled around a laptop with Moore. They were so wrapped up in whatever they were doing that they didn’t even notice when she joined them.
“It’s impossible to tell,” Leo said. “Based on the relatively shallow depth of the ice, I’m confident that the cavern was filled with water for the majority of its existence, which makes accurately dating any core sample a whole lot trickier than one taken from, say . . . the top of the glacier, where ice accumulates at a fairly steady, if not entirely predictable, rate.”
“That layer right there,” Moore said, tapping the screen. “That’s tephra. No doubt about it.”
“What’s tephra?” Mira asked.
“Tiny shards of a glass-like material that accumulate in the wake of volcanic activity. Finding tephra inside of our cave means that at some point, it was open to the air during an eruption. I’m just trying to figure out when that was, and I can’t just assume that it was at the same time that those . . . whatever the hell they are—”
“Kerygmachela kierkegaardi.”
“They named an extinct sea creature after the Father of Existentialism?” Leo said.
“What they’re called isn’t important,” Moore said. The volcanologist slapped his palm on the table for emphasis. “What matters is that we can’t simply assume that the foundation ice corresponds to the same timeframe that the bloody monsters were frozen.”
“We ran a sample of the tephra through the GC-mass spec,” Carrie said. “It showed elevated levels of sulfates—”
