Instinct (2010) (14 page)

‘Does that mean three days or five minutes?’

‘A couple of hours.’

Andrew scrutinized his mum’s expression.

‘Riiiight, ’cos even if it’s a couple of hours, I’m getting really bored.’

‘Of course you are.’
I’m not
. ‘Look, sweetie, you know why I’m here.’

‘Yes, you’re the insect professor. You’ve got some insect stuff to take care of. This is like a big research lab in the jungle. I’ve got to hang around here watching DVDs while you do it, then we get to go home.’

‘Yes, sweetie, I’m the insect professor and I’ve got some insect stuff to take care of, then we’ll go home.’

‘Can I do anything except sit here and watch films?’

‘I’ll see.’

Bishop opened the door and noticed the discontent.

‘Anything I can help with?’ He gave a cursory smile to Andrew, who did not smile back.

‘Actually, there is. I don’t want to leave Andrew in here watching more movies. What are the alternatives?’

‘Well, there’s a pool table across in the living quarters, but otherwise I could get Major Webster to send one of his crew here to pick up Andrew on their way to the outside. Maybe they can play some football.’

‘How about that, sweetie? Would you like to go outside?’

‘I’d rather play pool.’

‘I’d rather you went outside. If you could sort that out, Mr Bishop …’

‘Sure. The soldiers will be glad to have you. I’ll make sure of it.’

‘How does that sound, sweetie? Do you want to go with the soldiers?’

‘OK. Could you stop calling me sweetie, though?’

As she watched the elevator doors close on Andrew and Lieutenant Carter, Laura wished she were going with them. Even though she was separated from that nest by a hundred yards and ten security doors, it felt much closer than that, and far more dangerous. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see were those voracious mouths feeding on Heath like piglets on a sow.

‘Dr Trent.’ It was Harry Merchant. He had appeared
behind her in silence and now stood over her like a camel, all height and teeth and smell.

‘Mr Merchant,’ said Laura, after a moment to take him in.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, but with things as they are, I wasn’t sure we’d get a chance to discuss some quite pressing entomological matters which I think you should be made aware of.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Perhaps if you’d follow me to the lab. There are some specimens there which will make it easier for me to clarify certain aspects of how we operate.’

Laura looked confused. ‘Well, if you think it’s important.’

‘I do indeed,’ replied Harry, ushering Laura in the direction of his lab.

This was Laura’s first chance to get a close look at the everyday lab equipment of MEROS. As Bishop had promised, it was far in advance of what was available at the BEA. The readings on the thermoperiodic and photoperiodic chambers showed they could be calibrated to one thousandth of a degree, a level of precision Laura did not even know was possible. Even the basic insect equipment – the aspirators, magnifiers, sliding boards and pinning blocks – all looked as if they had been removed from their packaging that morning.

‘Is that a thermal cycler?’ she asked.

‘One of them. That’s just for short-term experiments. The proper ones are over there.’ He pointed to
three similar but much larger units encased in brushed steel. ‘They allow us to expand the range of any genetic research, both in time and physical size.’

Laura smiled. ‘They make my one look like it’s held together with chewing gum and shoelaces.’

‘They’re actually last year’s models, due for replacement. What’s really getting us going down here are the molecular dynamics simulators and visualization software.’ He showed Laura to a desk on the far side of the lab. ‘We fund a team of forty postgrads at MIT all year round to come up with this stuff.’

Laura shook her head gently. ‘The things I could do with these.’

‘With respect, I think we may already be doing them, but I’d love to get your perspective on any ways we could squeeze any more out of them. Perhaps later. If you wouldn’t mind, the specimens I’d like you to take a look at are back here.’ Harry showed Laura to an electron microscope that stood in a corner at the rear of the lab.

Gesturing towards the eyepiece, Harry said, ‘As you can see, Dr Trent, the contents of this artificial environment are very dysfunctional.’ Laura peered through the lenses, only to discover an empty petri dish. Momentarily perplexed, she paused before realizing that Harry wasn’t talking about insects.

‘Er … yes. That certainly appears to be the case.’

‘And recent developments are not as unusual as you may have been led to believe.’

‘No?’

‘No. Similar incidents have been characteristic of the environment since its inception.’

‘Really? That is worrying.’

‘Well, I don’t mean to alarm you. It’s just that you might be able to make sense of things more readily if you are apprised of the available facts. You see, Dr Trent, some of us here believe that the introduction of a newcomer to the nest may force certain issues.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, to be blunt, the destruction of this particular environment may be the most beneficial development for the subjects.’

‘I would agree with that, yet I can’t help suspecting that such a development would be difficult to bring about.’

‘Perhaps so, Dr Trent. I just thought that you might like to know what some of us are working towards.’

Laura moved away from the microscope and looked Harry in the eye.

‘Thank you, Mr Merchant.’

‘I’d really prefer it if you called me Harry. I find the prevalent use of surnames down here both reminds me of boarding school and serves to dehumanize us.’

‘I understand, Harry. Maybe we should go and see what Mr Bishop is up to.’

Harry and Laura arrived at the surveillance room separately, to avoid arousing suspicion. As it turned out, they needn’t have worried; Bishop was far more interested in what he could see on the monitors. Beside him, Webster was controlling proceedings by using a walkie-talkie to instruct Wainhouse, who was standing in the maintenance room adding insecticide to a run-off duct that led to the ventilation system.

‘OK, Wainhouse, send it in slowly for the first thirty seconds – we want to see how they’re going to react.’ A crackly
Roger that
was heard, and everyone in the room leaned into the monitor that showed the wide view of the lab with the nest visible at the back.

Two of the wasps were buzzing idly around the ventilation shaft, as their smaller versions might do on discovering a discarded wrapper smeared with a residue of melted chocolate. Wainhouse pumped the poison through the duct, sending a cold fog pluming into the lab and curling in on itself as it spread into the corners.

It took only a few seconds for the wasps to notice that something unusual was happening. The first pair buzzed louder and faster, simultaneously assessing this intrusion and sounding the alarm. Several more appeared from the nest to confirm that they had heard.
A few seconds afterwards they had all retreated into the brown honeycomb, leaving the lab looking still and empty.

A minute passed, and no one thought to tell Wainhouse to stop. They were all transfixed by the wasps’ behaviour.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Bishop.

It was difficult to tell that there were any wasps in the lab at all. The only clues to their whereabouts were some distinctive yellow and black markings striped across the many entrances of the nest.

‘They’re being very clever,’ replied Laura, as the answer dawned on her. ‘They’re blocking off the holes in the nest to stop the poison getting in. If the insecticide kills the ones on the outside, and of course we have no guarantee of that, they will have died protecting the others.’

‘But they can’t just stay there for ever,’ said Bishop.

‘Well, not for ever, but a good long time. There’s no reason why they couldn’t just shut down and hibernate,’ said Laura, taking her eyes off the screen.

‘Then we’re back to square one,’ said Bishop. ‘And that one’s still moving.’ He pointed to a hole where he could see the poison was not having the desired effect, even on the wasps whose spiracles were exposed to it.

‘Can you not see? Do you still need persuading to freeze them out?’ said Laura.

‘Yes, Dr Trent. I still need persuading. I have already explained why that is not currently a viable option, so I would appreciate it if we could have some more constructive suggestions.’

His words were met with a muted response. Laura, Webster and Harry realized that any other ideas could detract from the option of freezing. No one wanted that to happen, but they also knew Bishop was not going to drop the temperature until the situation became critical, and possibly too late. Was it better to think of a less good solution to try to improve things, or stay quiet and hope the unlikely happened and Bishop gave in? In the end, the decision was made for them, as no one had any good ideas anyway.

Bishop didn’t like the silence; every second of it made his failure here seem more likely. Perhaps if he reduced his requirements he’d have more chance of getting the response he was looking for?

‘Come on! What about the notebook? If we could get hold of that, then we would at least know what we’re up against. Can we incapacitate them long enough for one of the soldiers to go in there and retrieve it?’

‘We could if we reduced the heat to a level that made them sluggish and disorientated,’ conceded Laura.

‘That is, if they get sluggish and disorientated,’ Harry added.

Bishop was keen to push past that thought before it became another anchor. ‘OK. Good. I think we can do that by turning the emergency freeze on temporarily. Harry, can we contain the other experiments so that they can be protected for that time? I’m talking about, what would you say, Major, ten minutes altogether?’

Webster nodded. ‘We could also use a liquid-nitrogen canister to put some extra cold into the area around
the nest, but we’ll need the temperature to be as low as possible in the room to give my guys the best chance.’ He looked to Harry. ‘Can we cool the place down by ten degrees without jeopardizing your experiments?’

Harry thought for a moment. ‘I guess so. We can incubate the important ones in separate, heated areas. It’s just that, at this stage, these subjects are very delicate. It’s not ideal, and we might lose a few but, against the greater good, I’m sure we can make it back up with no significant losses.’

‘Great! That’s what I want to hear: solutions, not problems. Thank you,’ said Bishop.

Harry was worried Bishop was getting a little too optimistic. ‘OK, but I’m just going to say that we don’t know exactly how long these wasps are going to take to respond to the lack of heat. Liquid nitrogen will give you the best chance, but their size alone means they are going to be much less vulnerable than even the A-22s we’ve been sending on the most recent missions.’

‘Sure, sure. We’ll see where we are when the temperature comes down and take a judgement call then. OK, everyone?’ Of course, no one thought this was OK, but rather than say so, they shuffled out of the security room while Harry arranged for the heating to be turned off.

Webster had to decide which two members of his team would have to risk their lives entering the lab. Before, this would have been simple, as none of the current squad had experienced any fatalities since arriving at MEROS. They knew there was dangerous work to be done, but they also believed it was never going to get critical.

Until the deaths of Roach and Martin.

These first military casualties had caused the team to reappraise the situation they found themselves in. Some were fine with the reality that they were indeed putting their lives at risk; after all, they were soldiers, and it was not an alien concept. However, there were those who had taken this job because they were not fully at ease with the business end of the military. They had considered this a softer option, a well-paid mercenary job that would set them up for retirement.

Webster had been aware of this during recruitment, but his choice had been restricted by the fact that this was not the most attractive of postings. He hadn’t been spoilt for choice: weak soldiers or strong ones who lacked discipline.

Carter had lost his place as a Navy Seal through his final reaction to a series of racist provocations from his
immediate superior. Sergeant Elias Wilkie had remarked that they had to throw something useless over the side of a navy dinghy to keep it afloat and it was therefore a shame that Carter’s ‘nigger-fuck mother’ was not present. Carter had responded to this by breaking his jaw in three places and bringing to a premature conclusion an otherwise unblemished service record.

He was not one for excuses and refused to blame anyone but himself for what had happened. His only real worry was how to keep sending his mother the monthly cheque she relied on when he was locked up in Fort Leavenworth. That was when Webster stepped in. His offer was far from Carter’s hopes when he had joined the military but, like most of those in MEROS, he had little alternative but to accept.

The recruits were not always so accomplished. Peter Mills, for example, was getting old. His discharge from the British Marines could have been for any one of a variety of reasons, from gross insubordination to being drunk on duty. Following a series of incidents that occurred as a result of his poor behaviour, he joined MEROS because no one else wanted him.

It was his failure to secure the ice screws on manoeuvres in Bolivia’s Cordillera Central that led to the paralysis of the three men following him up Chaupi Orco. He expressed some regret, but by insisting that the true blame lay in faulty equipment, his fellow soldiers lost any remaining respect they had for him and it was felt he should move swiftly on to a new regiment.

Six months into his posting in the northern forests
of East Timor, he dozed off during his lookout shift. Ten minutes later he was woken by a bullet whistling past his left ear and the swift approach of a dozen enemy soldiers. Despite outnumbering their ambushers five to one, his section spent the next three hours pinned down under heavy fire, waiting for ground support to arrive. Although that incident did not result in any fatalities, for the second time that year he was left in no doubt that his colleagues did not want him fighting alongside them.