Origin (12 page)

Thrist’s God.

“Habesne cognitionem viri religiosi ex Galileo, qui in Bethlehem natus est? Iudaes qui multos disipulos habebat?”

Did you know of a religious man from Galleli, born in Bethlehem? A Jew with a large following?

“Jeeeesus Christ,”
Bub said the name in English.
“I haaaaave seeeeen Jeeeeesus.”

The breath caught in Thrist’s throat and his lower jaw began to tremble. All the Bible study, all the research, all the prayers, none of it had brought Thrist as close to God as he was feeling right now.

“Narro de eo, sis.”

Please, tell me of him.

“Father,” Rabbi Shotzen cut in. “We have time for this later.”

“Narro de eo,” Thrist implored.

“Father,” Shotzen sighed, “please let them get on with their work. This can wait.”

“Bullshit!” the priest spat at Shotzen. The rabbi recoiled in surprise. “You don’t want to hear of it because you don’t want to hear the truth! For two thousand years you’ve been waiting for a Messiah that already came! You missed Him! Now’s your chance to atone for your mistake!”

Thrist turned to Bub and begged, “Tell me of Jesus! Tell me what you know!”

The demon stretched his mouth wide in a grin.

“Serius, Pater. Tempus sine arbitrus mox habebimus.”

Later, Father. We’ll have time alone soon.

Bub was using the same soothing voice that he’d used with the sheep.

“Sciendus sum! Eratne Deus? Estne natus ex virgine? Cognitionem eius habebas… erasne qui in desertis eum temptabas? Heu, sciendus sum!”

I must know! Was he God? Was he born of a virgin? You knew him… were you the one that tempted him in the desert? I must know dammit!

“Soooooon,”
soothed the demon. He gave his attention back to Andy and Sun.

Thrist banged on the glass, but Bub paid him no mind.

Thrist stepped back and looked at the others. Andy looked embarassed. Sun was frowning. He turned to Rabbi Shotzen, and was stunned to see the sadness on his friend’s chubby face.

“I… I’m…”

Shotzen gave him his back.

“For a man of faith you’re showing surprisingly little,” the Rabbi said.

Thrist opened his mouth, closed it again. His face became very hot. He didn’t trust his voice. He reached for the crucifix hanging from his neck.

Christ felt cold in his hand.

Thrist hurried out the door, hurried down the Red Arm, fumbling the code for the first gate several times, fumbling several more times at the second, racing to his room and falling on his knees next to his bed, his hands clasped in prayer but his mind unable to dismiss Shotzen’s words and the possibility that they might be true.

F
rank Belgium watched from the sanctuary of his computer terminal. He’d returned to Red 14 after spending half an hour in the bathroom, feeling the urge to vomit but unable to.

Belgium knew it was a physical response to fear. When the demon awoke last week, that was frightening enough. But his voice—soft, low, almost seductive—was the voice of a thousand nightmares.

Though he sat far enough away from the speech lesson to be unable to hear Bub, watching proved disconcerting all by itself. There was something upsetting and grotesque about a demon watching a children’s television show. Bub’s blank stare made Belgium wonder if he was indeed learning how to conjugate verbs, or if he was wondering how the child actors tasted.

The doctor shivered, nibbling on his lower lip.

Get a grip,
he told himself. The demon seemed to be cooperating so far. Maybe it wasn’t his fault he was so frightening.

Andy stood, stretched, and said something to Sun. She stood as well, answered him and nodded, and they walked out of the room.

Bub watched them leave. His stare lingered on the door for almost ten seconds, then his eyes locked on Belgium.

Belgium tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

“Fraaaaaank,”
Bub said, loud enough to be heard from across the room.
“Fraaaaaank Beeeeeelgium…”

Belgium turned away, wondering if the demon would leave him alone if he pretended to be working.

“Fraaaaaank…”

“I’m busy,” he said, trying to make his voice sound unafraid.

“Fraaaaaank…… what does Craaaaay computer dooooo?”

That seemed like an innocent enough question.

“Umm, The Cray? It stores and processes information.”

“In Englisssssssh?”

“In computer language.”

“Dooooooes it… taaaaaaalk?”

“Talk? No no no. Computers don’t talk. But we can use them to talk to others who have computers with an Internet connection.”

“Internet coooooonnection?”

“The World Wide Web lets people with computers access all the information available in the world.”

“Would the Woooorld Wide Web help me learn Engliiiiiiish?”

Belgium hunched down lower and ruffled some papers on his desk.

“Sure. The Internet has everything on it.”

“I waaaaant Internet coooooonnection,”
Bub said.

Dr. Belgium turned around and ratcheted up his spine. He didn’t quite stare at Bub so much as stare in his general direction.

“You’re too too too big. Sorry. You couldn’t use the keyboard.”

Bub didn’t answer, and Belgium hoped the conversation had ended. Being alone in the room with the creature was freaking him out. He got up to leave.

“Come heeeeere,”
Bub said.

Belgium stopped, mid-stride, his mouth going dry.

“Coooooome heeeeeere, Fraaaaaank.”

Relax,
Belgium though.
He’s behind the Plexiglas. He can’t hurt me.

He changed direction and approached Bub.

“Yes? What is it?”

Bub extended a claw and touched it to the Plexiglas. Then there was a shrill screeching sound and his finger became a blur, moving faster than any human being possibly could.

It was over in an instant, and Dr. Belgium was amazed to see that Bub had etched the entire English alphabet, both upper case and lower case letters, onto the glass in a space less than the size of a credit card. So impressed was the doctor, that it didn’t occur to him that Bub had written it as a mirror image, which allowed Frank to see it the normal way.

“Well, I guess typing wouldn’t be too difficult for you then. Remarkable small muscle control. Yes yes yes.”

“I waaaaant Internet cooooonnection,”
Bub said.

“I I I don’t see how. We’d have to rig something up. Maybe we could use, um, a wireless router.”

Bub moved closer to the Plexiglas, the corners of his mouth turning up into a smile. He moved quite well for such a large creature, thought Belgium. Like a dancer, smooth and quick.

Or like a cobra.

“Let meeee ooooout,”
Bub said,
“I caaaan use your compuuuuuuter.”

Dr. Belgium blinked. “Uh, no Bub. It’s safer for you in there.”

“Yoooou aaaare afraaaaaid.”

“No no no. Not at all. I’m a scientist, Bub. I study things.”

“You study meeeeee.”

“Yes.”

“With the Craaaaay compuuuuuuter.”

“Yes. That’s part of it.”

“Hoooooow?”

“Well, Bub, I’m trying to sequence your DNA. Your karyotype shows you have 88 chromosomes. This is over 300,000 genes, about six billion base pairs. I want to figure out what your genes are, so I can see what you’re related to. All life on earth is related to something, some things more than others.”

Bub stared, saying nothing. Belgium continued, fear making him ramble.

“What I’m doing is using the Sanger procedure, along with whole genome shotgun sequencing. First, I take some of your DNA—a blood sample—and make a template by subcloning into a YAC. I’m using restriction enzymes in gel electrophoresis to get a 1000 sequence base read that the computer can interpret as a chromatogram. It’s all very simple, really. Simple simple simple.”

“Hoooow much of my DNA haaaaave you seeeequenced?”

“Only about forty percent. The problem comes from not knowing enough about DNA. Only ten percent of an organism’s chromosomes contain exon genes—those are the ones that protein code, which account for an organism’s physiology. Intron genes are responsible for growing, aging, things we don’t know yet… so sequencing is only half the battle. The Cray is also trying to sort out what is exon and what is intron, and trying to find matches with other life forms.”

Bub blinked. Belgium had never noticed him blink before. His eyelids closed sideways, like elevator doors. It was disconcerting.

“You analyze my bloooooood,”
Bub said. His voice had dropped an octave.
“What else do you anaaaaaaalyze?”

“We have tissue samples going back 100 years.”

Bub appeared to think about this.

“Why do yooooou study meeee, Fraaaaaaank?”

“Hmm? Oh. To figure out what you are, my friend. Physiologically, you’re more advanced than anything on earth. Mentally too. You’ve been learning English for less than six hours and already you’re conversant. You’re an amazing specimen.”

“Amaaaaaazing.”

“Very. For example, you clearly have the X and Y chromosomes, making you a male, but you have no genitalia… at least not that we’ve been able to find. Nor do you have a belly button. How were you born? How does your kind reproduce? Or is there only one of you? Questions questions questions.”

“Why are you heeeeere, Fraaaank?”

“To study you, Bub. The opportunity you represent is limitless, I’ve been doing research for…”

Bub cut him off.
“You have to beeee heeeeeere.”

Frank’s words died in his mouth, leaving a foul taste. “What?” he managed.

“Did you do something wrong, Fraaaaank?”

Dr. Belgium swallowed. His mind involuntarily returned to his prior life, graduating top of his class at Berkeley, already thrice published, a Nobel Prize almost a foregone conclusion…

He’d first taken speed in graduate school. The courses were highly demanding, and he had to postpone sleep in order to learn everything that needed to be learned. Simple caffeine pills at first. Then ephedrine, available over the counter in health stores as ma haung extract. These worked for a time, limiting his sleep to five hours a night, but when five hours became too long, he switched to harder stuff.

A friend was able to hook him up with a Benzedrine supply. Bennies got him through school, got him his job at BioloGen, the largest genetics lab in the world, got him his Porsche, his house, his trophy wife.

But the work was even more demanding than school had been. He switched from Benzedrine pills to injecting Methedrine. To come down after a Methedrine buzz he started taking Librium and later Nembutal. He was stoned on Nembutal when he blew up Labs 4, 5, and 6 at BioloGen.

The police report called it criminal negligence. He’d left the gas line live on a Bunsen burner after the flame had gone out. Not even a kid in high school would have made such a careless mistake. The irony was that the burner wasn’t even being used in an experiment. Frank had been using it to heat his coffee.

The explosion caused almost two million dollars worth of damage and lost research. Three people were killed. Frank had been in the bathroom, and walked away without a mark.

He hid nothing. After admitting to the drugs, he demanded to be arrested.

A lawsuit was filed. So were manslaughter charges. Frank lost it all; career, money, wife, and he went to jail. That’s where President Reagan found him.

Prison gave him a chance to kick the drugs, and it also gave him penance for his wrongs. Frank didn’t want to leave. Reagan arranged for a trip to Samhain, to give Frank an idea of what his country needed him for.

Frank never left. He traded prison of one type for prison of another. This new one was quieter, more demanding, and gave him a chance to help the world while being punished at the same time. Frank hadn’t seen a sunset in twenty years. He missed it every day, and that’s why he stayed.

Even when the incumbent President pronounced his sentence over, Frank stayed. He would finish the job he started; sequencing Bub’s DNA. Only then would his penance be complete.

“That was a long time ago,” Frank whispered.

“I can help yoooou.”

“How?”

“I knoooow of genetics. I can give you my whole seeeequence. But I need a compuuuuuter.”

Frank thought it over. Twenty years without seeing the light of day. Was that long enough? Had he paid for his mistakes?

“I can get you a computer,” Dr. Frank Belgium said.

The demon made a sound that Belgium swore was laughter.