Читать книгу Arachnosaur - Richard Jeffries - Страница 16

Chapter 9

Key didn’t know whether it was his increasing exhaustion and desperation, or simply the seemingly bottomless, concerned eyes of a new player, an assistant professor, that suddenly turned him very, very honest. Whatever it was, Key felt certain that time was running out. And not just for him.

He didn’t think he was just being an alarmist here. That wasn’t his nature. But how many times in human history had something unanticipated, like fleas on rodents, caused something unexpected, like the Black Death, that killed around 200 million human beings and came perilously close to wiping us out?

Probably more than I’m aware of, Key thought, wondering how many extinctions had taken a poke at the dinosaurs before their clock was punched by an asteroid.

Gonzales had been driving him all over the capital in search of what he had asked for, a universal translator as well as an expert in communicable diseases. They had used up most of the eight hours they had gained by flying here going from hospital to hospital. Muscat had at least five dozen of them, and almost nine hundred clinics, dispensaries, and medical centers.

But Gonzales may have introduced him to both when they finally stepped into an office marked Professor Basheer Davi at Oman Medical College—the first private Health Sciences College in Oman—and met the twenty-seven-year-old Esherida Rahal.

“I’m sorry,” she said while coming around a lab table covered with equipment, “but the Professor is not in.”

To Key’s ears, it sounded as if she had been saying that a lot—so much, in fact, that it was beginning to become automatic.

“That’s all right,” he answered, the weariness in his voice matching her own verbal knee jerk. “My friend here”—he motioned toward Gonzales—“thinks you might be able to help us just as well.”

Key watched a variety of reactions flit across her face like a wheel of fortune: it’s too late in the day, I’m really too busy, you’ll have to make an appointment, and some unformed others. But then her oval head and deep eyes lowered, and he saw a resigned, empathetic smile touch her soft, smooth, dark rose lips.

“Please,” she said politely. “Come sit down.” She led them into what was obviously Professor Davi’s office, which reminded Key of many a professor’s office he had seen over the years. Amid piles and piles of papers and books crammed everywhere in the small rectangular room, two simple, inexpensive school chairs flanked a small desk.

“What is the problem?” she asked, her voice the same modulated, lightly accented English it had always been, as she rested against the edge of the desk. Gonzales stood by the door, naturally, and seemingly automatically, assuming the role of a lookout. Key, however, tiredly and gratefully thudded into the chair nearest her.

As Key and Gonzales had come through the halls, they had seen students, both male and female, wearing black pants, white lab coats, and running shoes. There were even coeds without headdresses. But Rahal wore Omaniya, the national dress of the country, only hers was a deep red, and her waqaya headscarf was dark and beautifully embroidered with what looked like representations of constellations. Despite it covering her from her forehead to the ankle of her five-foot-four-inch frame, he could tell she was a fit, very poised young lady.

“The problem”—Key sighed—“is that something is making people explode.” Despite his tiredness, Key carefully noted her reaction of shock. Key’s admission was so blunt that the normally reticent Gonzales stepped forward.

“It’s true,” Gonzales informed her. “I witnessed it. First in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait.”

Rahal’s mouth opened and closed several times as she blinked. To her added credit in Key’s mind, she didn’t even suggest the two were joking. “Explode—exactly how, if I might ask?”

Key nodded in satisfaction. “Good question,” he answered appreciatively, then plunged ahead without reservation. “It wasn’t as if there were a bomb in their chest or anything like that. It didn’t explode outward in that pattern. Their entire bodies seemed to be afflicted. Every limb and every joint.”

“The eyes bulged, tearing just before the detonation,” Gonzales said. “Hot, dark, lumpy liquid came out of every orifice we could see.”

“Hot?” she echoed.

“It was smoking,” Key added.

“Light or dark smoke?” she asked.

The soldier and mechanic looked to each other for corroboration.

“Not sure,” said Gonzales.

“Neither light nor dark,” Key decided. “Somewhere in the middle.”

That didn’t faze her. “Tell me about the detonation,” she urged. “How long did they convulse before it happened?”

Key and Gonzales shared another collaborative look.

“Less than a minute,” Gonzales offered, and Key didn’t dispute him.

“Go on,” she advised. “Every detail you can remember.”

For the first time since entering the room, Key lowered his gaze from hers. He looked at nothing in particular to see into his memory.

“The first explosion happened in my peripheral vision,” he said. “A piece of the skull hit my forehead and knocked me out for a few seconds.”

Rahal’s luxurious, well-shaped eyebrows rose.

“I had to take cover from the second,” Key continued, raising his gaze back to hers. “But I’ll never forget the sound.”

Her eyes held an equal mix of curiosity and concern. Key went on because she said nothing.

“It was as if every internal part of their body was erupting,” he told her.

“Every part?” she asked. “Bones, fingernails, body hair?”

“No,” Key said while Gonzales nodded in agreement. “I heard the bones shattering into shards, but I’m certain they weren’t exploding. If they were, the skull piece that hit my forehead would’ve behaved differently.”

Rahal nodded, her lips tightening, then she spun off the desk and grabbed a scroll that was wedged atop two piles of files. She spread it on the desk, motioning with her head for the two to join her. Key approached her from the right, and Gonzales from the left, though he kept his eyes mostly on the door.

She was holding open a biological chart of a male anthropoid body. “The human circulatory system consists of three parts,” she said intently, her eyes darting around the complex map. “The cardiovascular, pulmonary, and the systemic.”

Key remembered it from his mother’s teachings. “The heart, lungs, arteries, and veins,” he said, following her eyes.

She glanced at him, her look of impressed approval reminding him of his mother. “You missed the coronary and portal vessels,” she said, “but yes. The system controls the flow of blood, gasses, hormones, nutrients, oxygen, and other vapors to and from the cells.”

“Other vapors?” Key echoed, looking directly at her.

She returned his gaze. “Yes. This system stretches for about ninety-six thousand kilometers.”

Gonzales automatically translated it for Key. “Sixty thousand miles.”

“So if one of those other vapors turned poisonous—” Key asked.

“Not poisonous,” she corrected. “Not even venomous.”

“There’s a difference?” Gonzales interjected, his mind reeling from all the new information.

“A big difference,” she stressed, looking up at him.

“Yes, the unnatural element would have to be volatile,” Key said. “As if the blood had been replaced with nitroglycerine.”

When he looked back to her, she met his gaze with an expression that mixed concern with growing certainty. “And you want to know how that could have happened?” she asked him directly.

“Yes,” he answered just as directly. “But maybe more importantly, whether it’s contagious, and if so, how it travels. Because we’ve been in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait. Now we’re here.”

The import of his words were not lost on Rahal. Her eyes widened, but she neither recoiled nor became flustered. “How long ago did this last happen?”

“Twelve hours ago.”

“Male or female?”

“What?” Gonzales reacted in surprise.

“The victims,” Rahal elaborated. “Male, female, or both?”

“Male,” Key answered, again glad that Daniels hadn’t come along. He probably would have, in his standard operating chauvinism, asked if that was important. Gonzales knew, like Key did, that it might be.

“Do you have any possibilities that—” she started, but then the trio was surprised by a fourth voice.

“Assistant Professor Rahal?”

The three behind the desk looked up, Gonzales cursing himself for not maintaining his self-appointed lookout responsibility. It was a student, holding his books, looking at them all both expectantly as well as regretfully.

Rahal recovered briskly. “Yes, Malik?”

The student looked sheepish. “We had a meeting about my grades,” he said. “I’m sorry again that I had to schedule it so late in the day, but my make-up classes—”

“Of course, of course,” Rahal said apologetically. She raised her right hand and the chart rolled up to her left hand. “Yes, your graduation depends upon it, doesn’t it?”

The comment was for Key and Gonzales’s benefit, letting them know that she would not have truncated their talk if it wasn’t important. But she seemed to know that a young man’s future might be null and void if the problem Key was chasing wasn’t solved.

As she started to follow the student out she quickly returned her attention to Key. “Where are you staying?” she whispered urgently.

“The Five Centses Restort,” Gonzales answered, having to enunciate the unusual name carefully, and Key didn’t miss the way Rahal’s eyebrows raised in response. “Staff Suite Two-A.”

“I will be there as soon as possible,” she assured them. She continued for the student’s benefit. “Thank you so much for conferring with me. From what Professor Davi tells me, you can find your way out without problem, yes?”

“Yes,” Gonzales assured her, taking a reluctant Key by the crook of his arm. “Thank you, Assistant Professor.”

The two made their way out the three-story, rose-colored building flanked by palm trees.

“Everybody speaks English,” Key marveled.

“Not everywhere,” Gonzales reminded him. “But Oman Medical College is in an academic partnership with West Virginia University. That’s why I saved it for last. I thought its rep as something of a ferenji—outsider—wouldn’t help us as much.” He shrugged. “Live and learn.”

Once outside, despite everything on his mind, Key was again impressed by Muscat’s relaxed, charming, peaceful energy and beautiful surroundings. Gonzales had told him that the Sultan had decreed that new buildings couldn’t be more than seven stories, and everything had to be designed beautifully and traditionally, as well as compliment the mountains beyond.

It would be a shame, Key thought, if all the residents started exploding.

They stayed silent, that very possibility foremost in their minds, as they neared the parking lot.

“Five Cent-ses Rest-ort?” Key finally repeated, just as carefully as Gonzales had said it to Rahal. “That should come with an automatic ‘sic’ after every mention. What are they trying to do, attract the hipster, who-gives-a-shit-about-spelling-anymore crowd?”

“Good guess,” Gonzales said, “but they’re trying to be different. You’ll see.”

“Assistant Professor Rahal’ll be okay there?”

“She’ll be fine,” Gonzales assured him as they reached the Yaris. “She’s everything my contact said.”

“And more.” Key ruminated as he waited for Gonzales to unlock his door.

The mechanic was struck by the comment, so he just stood for a moment between the driver’s side open door and the wheel. “What do you mean?”

Key halted his own descent into the passenger seat then rose and faced him. “You happen to notice her reaction when I first told her?”

Gonzales considered the question. “Yeah,” he finally said with a tinge of defensiveness. “Shocked, speechless, maybe even a little scared.”

“All of that,” Key agreed. “But you missed one ‘s’ word.”

“Huh?” Gonzales reacted. “What ‘s’ word?”

“Surprised,” Key informed him.

Gonzales reflected on that, shaking his head as he failed to grasp the other man’s meaning.

“She was everything but surprised,” Key clarified. “My friend, she has heard about this before.”