Petrified Read online

  Braydon lay back on the gurney and the woman paramedic buckled him in. He closed his eyes as the ambulance swerved and bumped its way to North Broad Street. He didn’t pray any more. All he wanted to do was to fall asleep. If he could fall asleep, maybe he could wake up and find that it was still seven a.m. this morning, and that he hadn’t yet set out for Baltimore to kidnap Sukie from Melinda’s parents.

  He would rather that he had never seen Sukie again than have her burned alive.

  He would rather that she had never been born at all.

  THREE

  Monday, 6:17 p.m.

  Nathan tore the wrapper off his Baby Ruth bar and bit off almost half of it at once. ‘Well, compadres,’ he said, with his mouth full of chocolate and peanuts. ‘We’re about as ready as we’re ever going to be. In about ten minutes’ time we’re going to make scientific history. Either that, or we’re going to end up as a laughing stock.’

  ‘We’ve done everything according to the book, haven’t we?’ Kavita insisted.

  ‘Oh, sure. But what a book! Kitab Al-Ajahr, The Book of Stones. An eighth-century treatise on alchemy. It’s not exactly Kleinman’s Mesenchymal Stem Cell Regeneration, Volume Three, is it?’

  ‘You should have more faith in yourself,Professor,’ said Aarif. ‘And faith in the wisdom of Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān.’

  ‘Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān died over thirteen centuries ago.’

  ‘What does that matter? It is one of the greatest scientific collaborations of all time, you and he. It is like Francis Crick working with Copernicus.’

  ‘I hope this isn’t a prelude to your asking for a pay rise,’ said Nathan.

  ‘I admit that I would not refuse one, if it were offered,’ Aarif replied. ‘However, I am simply speaking the truth. Look what you have done here. You have given life to a creature which has not been seen on this earth since the days of Rameses the Fourth.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Nathan. ‘But like I’ve said so many times, a worm is one thing and a bird is quite another.’

  ‘We shall just have to see if you and Jābir can prove between you that this is not so, and that a worm can also be a bird, and a bird can also be a worm.’

  The early-evening skies were beginning to clear, and in downtown Philadelphia an orange sun was making a brief guest appearance behind the trees around the Schiller Medical Research building, so that Nathan’s fourth-floor laboratory was filled up with honey-colored light.

  The light lent an almost holy radiance to the huge vivarium made of Pyrex glass that stood in the center of the workspace, reaching nearly to the ceiling. Roughly heaped on the floor of the vivarium was a tangled nest of twigs and leaves and dry vegetation; and resting on top of this nest was a fat pale-gray worm that was nearly twenty-two centimeters in length and eighteen centimeters in circumference. Its skin was thick and wrinkled and covered all over with coarse knobbly spots. Kavita had already dubbed it ‘Grubby’.

  Nathan was exhausted. His short blond hair was scruffed up and his eyes were puffy. He had been preparing for this final experiment for over a week, and for the last four nights he had slept on an air bed in his office, so that he could carry out two-hourly checks on the worm’s development.

  For the past forty-eight hours the worm had shown no increase whatsoever in size or weight, and its movements had slowed down to a barely-perceptible ripple, so Nathan guessed that it must have reached maturity. It had to be a guess, because this was the first worm of its kind that had been conceived since 1150 BC.

  If the eighth-century alchemist Jābir was right, the worm was ready to enter the most dramatic stage in its life cycle, just as a chrysalis bursts open and a butterfly emerges. As the critical moment came nearer, however, Nathan was beginning to harbor a nagging suspicion that in The Book of Stones, Jābir might have simply been retelling a well-known Egyptian myth, rather than describing successful experiments that he had actually carried out in his own laboratory.

  He held up the most recent CGI scan. ‘This is what concerns me. There’s still no suggestion of any incipient bone structure inside the nematode, only these random clumps of fibrous tissue.’

  ‘But Jābir says that once the fire has reached a sufficiently high temperature, the bird’s skeleton is created by fusion,’ said Aarif.

  ‘Well, that’s your interpretation. What he actually says is “at their hottest pitch, the flames of the inferno take on the shape of wings”. That’s if my ancient Persian serves me right.’

  Aarif shook his head. ‘You should not be so pessimistic, Professor. After all, this entire project came from your inspiration. We are standing on the brink of a defining moment in modern science.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nathan. He rubbed his face with both hands. ‘I’ve been here too many times before, standing on the brink of a defining moment in modern science. And what happened? Last time I ended up with a rotten gryphon’s egg with a stink that hung around for a week.’

  ‘This will be different, Professor. I am convinced of it.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Kavita. ‘It’s going to be fame at last! We’ll all be on the cover of next month’s Time magazine. Or American Biology Today, anyhow.’

  Nathan managed to smile. ‘You’re right. I guess I’m bushed, is all. Listen – I just want to call Grace and tell her I’m going to be late. Aarif – can you make sure that all of the video and infrared cameras are up and running? And run another soundcheck, too?’

  ‘Of course, Professor,’ said Aarif, with a courteous nod of his head.

  Aarif was in his late twenties, a tall Egyptian, thin as a rail, with a vertical shock of wiry black hair and near-together eyes and a hawk-like nose. He was a graduate in developmental biology from the University of Cairo. He was polite and good-humored, but almost terrifyingly academic. Nathan had first met him when he flew over to Egypt last summer to collect DNA samples of dragon-worms from the Nile basin at Ain Shams.

  Aarif had helped him to collect his samples, and had then volunteered to return with him to Philadelphia so that he could assist with this experiment. After seven months, and more than three hundred tests, they had at last succeeded in fusing the DNA from a dragon-worm with the DNA from an Egyptian scavenger hawk, and the result had been this fat gray phoenix-worm. Half worm, half bird. Theoretically, anyhow.

  ‘How about you, Kavita?’ Nathan asked her, laying his hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all set?’

  ‘All set, Professor. I sorted out that glitch with the multi-gas monitor, and all of the other instruments are reading well within tolerance.’

  Kavita was a young biochemist whom Nathan had wooed away from SupremeTaste Pet Foods in Pittsburgh. Now that he was privately funded by Schiller, he had been able to tempt her with nearly double the salary that she had been making at SupremeTaste. But it wasn’t only the money that had attracted her; the cutting-edge stem cell research that Nathan was working on was infinitely more glamorous than dog-food development.

  Kavita’s mother was a full-blooded Mohawk, and Kavita had inherited her glossy black hair, her sharp, distinctive cheekbones, and her full, pouting lips. She also had a figure that had led Nathan’s son Denver to ask if he could help out in the laboratory after school, even if it meant sweeping up.

  It was Kavita’s job to filter and analyze the airborne chemical residue that resulted from this experiment. Then she had to produce a computer model of exactly what had happened during combustion – even if it turned out to be a disaster.

  ‘OK, Kavita, that’s great,’ Nathan told her. ‘Just give me a moment and then we’ll be good to go.’

  He went through to his office, picked up his phone, and punched out his home number. As he waited for Grace to answer, he could see his reflection in the office window, in his white lab coat. Forty-five years old, but very young-looking for his age. Nobody ever believed that he and Grace had a son of nineteen.

  Grace sounded out of breath when she answered him.

  ‘Sorry,’ she panted. ‘The
rain eased off so I went out for my run.’

  ‘I’ve decided to start the test right now,’ Nathan told her. ‘I guess I could have waited until tomorrow morning but I’m worried that the nematode might have grown too mature to metamorphose by then. So – listen, I don’t know what time I’m going to get home, if I get home at all.’

  ‘I’m beginning to suspect that you’ve got yourself another woman, not a worm. I miss you.’

  ‘I miss you, too, sweetheart. But tonight’s the night. Wish me luck, won’t you?’

  ‘You don’t need luck, Nathan. You’re the best there ever was. Oh, before I forget – you had three phone calls today. A young man, by the sound of it. He was very persistent. I think he must have been German, by his accent. Or maybe Russian, or Polish. Something like that.’

  ‘Did he leave his name?’

  ‘No, but he said he’d be sure to call back tomorrow.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He said he had something very important to discuss with you. He kept saying, “I vont to leave no stone unturned, tell Professor Underhill that.”’

  ‘Hey. Very convincing accent.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t quite as thick as that. But he must have repeated it five times at least. “I vont to leave no stone unturned. He vill understand.”’

  ‘Sounds like a nut job to me. Just hang up on him if he calls again. Listen – I have to go. It’s T minus two minutes.’

  ‘I love you, Nathan.’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  He hesitated for a moment. He felt like saying something more, like telling Grace that she was more important to him than all of the scientific breakthroughs he had ever made, or ever would. But he knew she understood that, and he hung up.

  When he came out of his office, Aarif said, ‘Everything is ready, Professor! We are all prepared! Video running, infrared running, ultraviolet running, audio on!’

  Nathan took one last look at the phoenix-worm lying at the bottom of its glass case. Aarif had constructed its nest exactly in accordance with Jābir’s description in The Book of Stones – out of oak branches, cinnamon sticks, frankincense, spikenard and twigs of Yemeni myrrh. The myrrh twigs were clustered with thorns, but they didn’t seem to cause the phoenix-worm any discomfort. Its skin-surface was gently rippling, and the two glistening sensors just above its mouth were repeatedly rolling and unrolling like a snail’s eyes.

  ‘Look at you, Grubby,’ said Nathan. ‘Only a mother could love an ugly bastard like you. That’s if you had a mother, which you don’t. If anybody’s your mother, it’s me.’

  He paused, and then he turned to Aarif and Kavita and said, ‘Hard to believe that Grubby cost upward of eight and a half million dollars, isn’t it? Let’s hope we’re not about to watch all of that investment going up in smoke.’

  Aarif swung open a glass panel on the left-hand side of the case and reached inside. He arranged the twigs so that the phoenix-worm was completely covered over. Then he attached a strong magnifying glass to an adjustable chrome stilt, and set up a halogen lamp to direct an intense spot of light into the branches. Even before he had lowered the panel and closed up the case, the dry oak twigs had started to smolder, and a thin wisp of smoke was curling up into the air.

  It would have been more practical to light the fire with a match, but in The Book of Stones, Jābir was adamant that the nest had to be ignited ‘as if by the rays of the sun, shining through a jewel’.

  ‘It is burning, Professor!’ said Aarif, clenching his fists in excitement. Already the first thin tongues of flame were flickering up from the nest, and the Pyrex cabinet was filling up with clouds of blue smoke.

  Nathan wished that he could have attached electrodes to the worm’s outer skin, to monitor its nervous responses, but he had been anxious to follow Jābir’s instructions to the letter, and Jābir had insisted that ‘the phoenix-worm be not bound nor tied nor trammeled in any way, nor marked with dyes or henna, nor tattooed’.

  In countless previous experiments, Nathan had already seen the consequences of trying to recreate mythical creatures without adhering strictly to the ancient formulae. It didn’t work and it could be highly dangerous. If this experiment failed, he knew that he would risk losing his sponsors’ money. More than that, though, he didn’t want anybody to get themselves injured, or even killed. As he had warned Aarif and Kavita over and over, ‘We’re not dealing with pets here, or even zoo animals. We’re dealing with primeval birds and beasts and reptiles, and sometimes a mixture of all three, with powers that we can’t even begin to understand. What’s more, they’ve never encountered humans before – unlike wolves and bears and coyotes and alligators – so they have absolutely no fear of us whatsoever.’

  FOUR

  Monday, 6:22 p.m.

  Inside the vivarium, the flames crackled even more briskly. The oak branches began to char, and the spikenard curled up, and the thorny cuttings of commiphora myrrha were all reduced to fragile black prickles. There was a strong, aromatic smell of burning spices.

  As the nest was reduced to ashes, the phoenix-worm itself gradually reappeared, and Nathan could see that its pale gray skin was starting to shrivel and flake off in the heat. Underneath its skin, however, its flesh was glowing dull red, like a hot coal; and as Nathan watched it, it began to glow brighter and brighter. Within a few seconds, it was incandescent, not like a hot coal any longer, but more like a white gas mantle. It was so bright that Nathan could hardly look at it.

  ‘Can you see if it is metamorphosing, Professor?’ asked Aarif, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘There is so much shining! So much smoke!’

  Nathan said, ‘I don’t know yet. To tell you the truth I can’t see a goddamned thing.’

  Now the phoenix-worm burned more intensely than ever. Even through the thick fire-resistant glass, Nathan could hear a low flaring sound as it burned. The flames leaped up fiercer and higher until they filled the whole vivarium, and as minutes went past they showed no signs of dying down. Nathan began to feel the heat on his face, and he stepped back two or three paces, as did Kavita.

  ‘It is incredible,’ said Aarif. ‘How long can such a small creature burn? And all of the oxygen inside the vivarium, that must be used up. This is against all of the laws of physics!’

  At that moment there was an explosive crack, and the front glass panel of the vivarium broke in half diagonally and dropped out on to the floor. Flames rolled out with a hungry roar and enveloped Aarif’s video cameras, almost as if the blazing worm was angry at being filmed. Aarif dodged forward to rescue them, but the flames came rolling out again, and he had to back away, both arms crossed in front of him to protect his face.

  The heat that came blasting out of the shattered vivarium was overwhelming. Papers strewn on top of the laboratory workbenches caught fire and whirled up into the air. Bottles of chemicals exploded, one after the other. Even the varnish on the floor burst into flames. There was a sharp click, and fire-suppressant F-200 gas began to hiss out of the pipes in the laboratory’s ceiling, but to begin with, even that seemed to have no effect.

  ‘My cameras!’ screamed Aarif.

  But Nathan shouted, ‘Forget them! Just get the hell out of here!’

  They hurried to the door. Nathan opened it and pushed Aarif and Kavita outside, but then he unhooked the fire extinguisher that was hanging beside it and turned back toward the blazing vivarium.

  ‘Professor!’ said Aarif.

  ‘Call nine-one-one!’ Nathan told him. He hit the button on top of the fire extinguisher and slowly started to walk back toward the vivarium, spraying foam from side to side. But the flames continued to blaze with undiminished ferocity. In fact they almost seemed to eat the foam that he was spraying at them. The heat was searing. Nathan could feel his forehead and his cheeks scorching, and one by one, the three remaining glass panels in the vivarium cracked and fell out.

  ‘Professor!’ called Aarif. ‘The fire department will be here in just a few minutes!’

&
nbsp; Nathan gave the wreckage of the vivarium a last spray of foam before his extinguisher ran out. He dropped it on to the floor with a clang and retreated toward the door.

  He was only halfway there when there was a devastating bang, and for a split second the whole laboratory was filled floor-to-ceiling with fire. Nathan was thrown against the wall so hard that he was stunned and dropped to his knees. Aarif rushed to help him and started hitting him repeatedly on the back of the head.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Nathan protested.

  ‘Your hair is alight, Professor. I am putting you out.’

  ‘Is it? Are you? OK, thanks.’

  Aarif helped Nathan to his feet. Nathan turned around and saw that the fire had extinguished itself. Nothing was left of the vivarium but its twisted metal frame and its ventilator hood, and two workbenches were scorched and littered with broken glass. Apart from that, however, the damage was superficial. The fire may have burned at an unfeasibly high temperature, but it had burned for only two or three minutes.

  Nathan walked across to the remains of the vivarium, his shoes scrunching on shattered glass. He sniffed. The laboratory reeked of smoke, but something else, too, like joss sticks from his student days.

  Aarif said, ‘Maybe I had better call the fire department and tell them that we have no need of them after all.’

  ‘No . . . they’ll want to come and take a look. In any case, the company will have to have the fire marshal’s report before they can claim on their insurance. We don’t want them accusing us of negligence, do we?’

  ‘It was not our fault. How could we have foreseen this fire would be so intense? It defies all scientific principles.’

  ‘Trying to recreate mythical creatures, Aarif – that defies all scientific logic, too.’

  Nathan picked up a long steel rule. He bent over the remains of the vivarium and started to poke through the heaps of hot ashes.

  Jādir had written that each phoenix was supposed to live for five hundred years. When its time came, it flew to the ancient city of Heliopolis, city of the sun, which used to be located five miles to the east of modern-day Cairo. There, it built a nest out of branches and spices, and crept inside, and died, and became a phoenix-worm. Then the rays of the sun set the nest alight, and out of the flames a new phoenix appeared.