“The water is full of rip currents. And sharks. The sea swallows the dead. That’s why we’re doing it this way, Alyson.”
“Okay, okay,” she answered wearily. “Who’s back rear?”
“Danny.”
She got out a sweater and a well-thumbed Conrad novel, Chance. “Are you sure, Vin? Seems like a setup.”
“Has his name in it.”
“All right. Who’s next to him?”
“Jenny. She feels sorry for him.”
A delicate printed scarf, a belt of white python, shoved back.
“Expensive. Isn’t that illegal?”
“Python? Just in California.”
Then Peter Jansen’s glasses, a pair he was always losing; Erika Moll’s bathing suit; and a pair of board shorts.
They went on to finish dressing the front seat, with Karen King driving. Then Vin Drake splashed lab alcohol over the back of the car, cracked the bottle, dropped it in the front, where it would catch under the dashboard.
“Don’t want to overdo it.” He looked around, at the fleecy clouds in dark blue, the white surf far below. “Beautiful night,” he said, shaking his head. “Beautiful world we live in.” He walked to the left side of the car and surveyed it from a distance. “There’s a downslope just ahead,” he said. “Drive a few yards until you hit the downslope, and then you can get out and we can push the rest.”
“Hey.” Alyson held up her hands. “I, uh…I don’t want to get in there again, Vin.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re talking ten feet of driving. Just ten feet.”
“But what if something—”
“Nothing will happen.”
“Why don’t you drive to the downslope, Vin?”
“Alyson.” A firm eye in the darkness. “I’m taller, I’d have to move the seat back, it would look suspicious in a police investigation.”
“But—”
“We agreed.” He opened the door for her. “Come on, now.”
She hesitated.
“We agreed, Alyson.”
She got behind the wheel, shivering despite the evening warmth.
“Now put up the top,” he said.
“The top? Why?” she asked.
“To keep everything in the car.”
She turned on the engine, pressed a button, and the Bentley’s top rose and folded over. Vin stood some distance away, and with his hand indicated for her to move the car forward. The car tilted downward, slid a few feet—she yelped—then it skidded to a stop.
“Okay, perfect,” Vin said, reaching into his pocket for the nitrile lab gloves. “Keep it there. In park, engine on.”
He came forward, and she started to get out. She didn’t hear the snapping sounds as he drew on the gloves. In a swift movement he slammed the door shut, locked it, reached in through the window, and grabbed her by the hair with both hands. He slammed her head against the metal of the windshield frame, where there was less padding. She started to scream but he pounded her head again and again. Then he banged her forehead on the steering wheel a few times to be sure. She was still conscious but that wouldn’t matter for long. He reached across her back and jerked the car into drive. It was awkward. He fell backward as the Bentley rolled past him, over the broken bridge, and then twisting, dropping six hundred feet to the river and ocean below.
Drake scrambled to his feet. He was too late to see the impact. Yet he heard it, the rending of metal against stone. The convertible had landed upside down, and he watched for a while, to see if there was any movement from beneath. One wheel spun loosely, but otherwise nothing. “Trust is everything, Alyson,” he said softly, and turned away, peeling off the gloves.
He had left his own car a hundred yards back, and the dirt path was rock-hard, dry, and would take no tire impressions. He got in his car and backed slowly down the narrow path—no mistakes now!—until he found a space wide enough to turn his car around. Then he headed south, back to Honolulu. It would be several days before the police discovered the fallen car, and he should probably hurry things along. He’d call in the morning to report that his graduate students were missing and he was worried about them. They’d been taken for a night on the town by the lovely Ms. Alyson Bender.
As for wider publicity, reaching back to Cambridge and Boston, Vin Drake had few fears. Hawaii would be helpful in this regard. Hawaii was a tourist destination, traditionally reluctant to report how many visitors died from rogue waves, strong surf, crumbling hiking trails, and the other attractions of the beautiful outdoors. The Cambridge story would play for a few days, particularly since several of the kids were attractive, but inevitably it would be replaced by juicier fare: Austrian princess dies in helicopter skiing on Mount Rainier; divers lost off Tasmania; Texas millionaire dies at Khumbu base camp; freak CinqueTerra accident; tourist eaten by giant Komodo lizard.
There was always juicier news. It would pass.
Of course, there would be difficulties inside the company itself. This visit was to have been a major addition to Nanigen staffing, a very needed addition, too, because of the recent losses of staff. And therefore it would have been a major boost to his company. He would have to finesse this matter with skill.
The sports car scraped and lurched along the dirt road; he gripped the wheel firmly. He was heading south to Kaena Point (“where souls leave the planet”) and the surf raged up on both sides of the trail. He made a mental note to wash the salt water off his car and tires. Better to take it to a standard car wash over in Pearl City.
He checked his watch. Three thirty a.m.
Oddly enough, he felt no urgency, no nervousness. There was time enough to get back to the other side of the island, to Waikiki, near Diamond Head. And time enough to check the kids’ hotel rooms for artifacts, scientific objetsthey had brought with them.
And then plenty of time for Vin to drive back to his own luxurious apartment on the Kahala side, and slide into bed. So he could awaken shocked to learn of the absurd behavior of his chief financial officer and the talented students she had led astray.
Chapter 14
Manoa Valley
29 October, 4:00 a.m.
T he seven students and Kinsky walked through the forest single-file, listening, watching, steeped in darkness and deep shadow, and enveloped in alien sounds. As Rick Hutter moved along, stumbling his way among leaves on the ground and scrambling under dead branches that seemed bigger than fallen redwoods, he held a homemade grass spear across his shoulder. Karen King wore the backpack, and kept her knife gripped in her hand. Peter Jansen led the group on point, peering around, trying to pick a route. Somehow, in his quiet way, Peter Jansen had become the leader. They were not using the headlamp, for they didn’t want to attract any predators. Peter couldn’t see much of the terrain in front of him. “The moon has gone down,” he said.
“Dawn must be—” Jenny Linn began.
A terrible cry drowned her out. It began as a low wail and rose into a series of throaty shrieks, coming from the depths somewhere above. It was an eerie sound, dripping with violence.
Rick spun around, holding his spear up. “What the hell was that?”
“A bird singing, I think,” Peter said. “We’re hearing sounds at a lower pitch.” He looked at his watch: 4:15 a.m. It was a digital watch. It was running normally, even when shrunk. “Dawn’s coming,” he said.
“If we could find a supply station, we could try to call Nanigen on the radio,” Jarel Kinsky suggested. “If they heard our signal, they would rescue us.”
“Drake would kill us,” Peter said.
Kinsky didn’t argue, but it was clear he didn’t agree with Peter.
Peter went on, “We have to get ourselves into the tensor generator, so that we can be restored to full size. To do that, we have to get back to Nanigen. Somehow. But I think it would be a mistake to ask Drake for help.”
“Can we call 911?” Danny broke in.
“Great idea, Danny. Just tell us how,” Rick said scornfully.
Jarel Kinsky explained that the radios in the supply stations only had a range of about a hundred feet. “If somebody from Nanigen is nearby and listening at the right frequency, they can communicate with us. Otherwise nobody will pick up our signal.” And the radios, he explained, didn’t broadcast on any frequency that the police or emergency services used, anyway. “The Nanigen micro-sized radios broadcast at around seventy gigahertz,” Kinsky explained. “That’s a very high frequency. It works well for the field teams over short distances, but it’s useless for long-distance communication.”
Jenny Linn said, “When Drake was showing us around the arboretum, he mentioned there’s a shuttle truck that goes to Nanigen from here, from Manoa Valley. We could stow away on the truck.”
Everybody fell silent. Jenny had come up with what sounded like a good idea. Indeed, as they thought about it, Vin Drake had mentioned a shuttle truck. But if the field teams had been withdrawn from the micro-world, would the shuttle still be running? Peter turned to Jarel Kinsky. “Is the shuttle truck still making runs to Nanigen, do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“What time does the truck normally arrive at the arboretum?”
“Two o’clock,” Kinsky answered.
“Where does it stop?”
“The parking lot. Next to the greenhouse.”
Everybody absorbed that, thinking about it.
“I think Jen’s right. We should try to get on that truck,” Peter said. “Get ourselves back to Nanigen, then try to get into the tensor generator—”
“Wait—how the hell are we going to climb up onto a truck when we’re this small?” Rick Hutter demanded. He faced Peter Jansen. “It’s a crazy plan. What if there’s no truck? Nanigen is fifteen miles from here. We’re a hundred times smaller than we used to be. Think about it. It means that one mile is like a hundred miles for us. If it’s fifteen miles from here to Nanigen, that’s really like fifteen hundredmiles for us. Basically we have to do what Lewis and Clark did. And we have to do it in less than four days or we’ll die of the bends. It’s a shitty bet, guys.”
“Rick’s idea is to wring his hands and give up,” Karen said.
Rick turned on her angrily. “We need to get practical—”
“You’re not being practical. You’re whining,” Karen said to him.
Peter tried to defuse the argument. He put himself between Rick and Karen, figuring he could make himself a target of their wrath rather than let them continue to pick at each other. “Please,” he said, putting his hand on Rick’s shoulder. “Arguing isn’t going to help anybody. Let’s take things one step at a time.”
The group set off again, walking in silence.
Half an inch tall on the forest floor, they had difficulty seeing much of anything, even as the sun rose. Ferns, thick and abundant, grew everywhere, and were especially difficult to deal with, for they blocked the view and created deep shadows. They lost sight of the greenhouse building, and couldn’t find any recognizable landmarks. Still, they kept moving. The sun broke forth, and beams of light slanted through the forest canopy.
In the daylight, they saw the soil more clearly. It was churning with small organisms—nematode worms, soil mites, and other little, abundant creatures. This is what Jenny Linn had felt wriggling against her feet in the dark. The soil mites were very small, spider-like creatures of many different species, crawling around or hiding in cracks in the soil. The mites would have been almost invisible to the naked eye of a normal-size person, but in relation to the micro-humans the soil mites were much larger. To the micro-humans, the mites appeared to be anywhere from the size of grains of rice up to the size of golf balls. Many of the mites had small, egg-shaped bodies covered with thick armor and spiky hairs. The mites were arachnids; Karen King, the arachnologist, kept stopping to gaze at them. She didn’t recognize a single mite; they all seemed to be unknown, a vast number of different kinds of mites. She couldn’t get over the richness of nature: here was biodiversity as far as the eye could see. The mites were everywhere. They reminded her of crabs on a rocky seashore: small and harmless, busy and scuttling, carrying on their small, hidden lives. She picked up a mite and set it down on the palm of her hand.
The creature seemed so delicate, so perfect. Karen felt her spirits lifting. What was going on? To her surprise, she realized that she felt happy in this strange new world. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve been searching all my life to find a place like this. It’s like I’m coming home.”
“Not me,” Danny said.
The mite walked up Karen’s arm, exploring it.
“Watch out, it could bite you,” Jenny Linn said.
“Not this little guy,” Karen answered. “See his mouth parts? They’re adapted for sucking up detritus—dead stuff. He eats crud.”
“How do you know it’s a he?”
Karen pointed to the mite’s abdomen. “Penis.”
“A guy’s a guy, no matter how small,” Jenny remarked.
As they hiked along Karen grew animated. “Mites are incredible. They’re highly specialized. Many mites are parasites, and they’re particular about their hosts. There’s a kind of mite that lives only on the eyeballs of a certain fruit bat—nowhere else. There’s another mite that lives only on the anus of a sloth—”
“Please, Karen!” Danny erupted.
“Get over it, Danny, it’s just nature. About half of all people on earth have mites living in their eyelashes. Many insects get mites on them, too. In fact, there are mites that live on other mites—so even mites get mites.”
Danny sat down and pulled a mite off his ankle. “Little monster chewed a hole in my sock.”
“Must be a detritus eater,” Jenny said.
“That’s not funny, Jenny.”
“Anybody want to try my natural latex skin cream?” Rick Hutter said. “Maybe it’ll keep the mites off.”
They stopped and Rick took out a plastic lab bottle, and passed it around. They rubbed small amounts of the cream on their faces, hands, and cuffs. It had a pungent smell. And it worked. It did seem to repel mites.
For Amar Singh, the reality of the micro-world seemed to assault his senses. He noted that being small even changed the sensations he felt on his skin. His first impression of the micro-world involved the feeling of air flowing over his face and hands, tugging at his shirt and ruffling his hair. The air seemed thicker, almost syrupy, and he could feel every ripple of breeze as the air coiled and flowed around his body. He waved his arm, and felt the air sliding between his fingers. Moving through the air in the micro-world was a bit like swimming. Because their bodies were so small, the friction of air passing over their bodies became more pronounced. Amar staggered a little, feeling a puff of air pushing him sideways. “We’re going to have to get our sea legs in this place,” he said to the others. “It’s like learning how to walk all over again.” The others were having similar difficulties: staggering, feeling the air tugging at them, and sometimes miscalculating the steps they took. Trying to jump up on something, they would jump too far. Their bodies were clearly stronger in the micro-world, but they hadn’t learned how to control their movements.
It felt like moonwalking.
“We don’t know our own strength,” Jenny said. She gathered herself, leaped high, and grabbed the edge of a leaf in both hands. She hung by her hands for a moment, then from only one hand—it was easy. She let go and fell back to the ground.
Rick Hutter had taken a turn wearing the backpack. Though it was loaded with gear, he discovered he could jump up and down pretty easily even with the pack on—and he got himself fairly high in the air without much effort. “Our bodies are stronger and lighter in this world, because gravity’s no big deal here.”
“Small has its advantages,” Peter remarked.
“I don’t see them,” Danny Minot said.
As for Amar Singh, a feeling of dread crept over him. What lived among these leaves? Meat-eaters. They were many-legged animals with jointe
d armor and unusual ways to kill prey. Amar had been raised in a devout Hindu family—his parents, immigrants from India who’d settled in New Jersey, did not eat meat. He had seen his father open a window and chase a fly out rather than kill it. Amar had always been a vegetarian; he had never been able to eat animals for protein. He believed that all animals were capable of suffering, including insects. In the laboratory, he worked with plants, not animals. Now, in the jungle, he wondered if he would have to kill an animal and eat its meat in order to survive. Or whether an animal would eat him. “We’re protein,” Amar said. “That’s all we are. Just protein.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rick asked him.
“We’re meat walking on two legs.”
“You sound kind of gloomy, Amar.”
“I’m being a realist.”
“At least…it’s interesting,” Jenny Linn remarked. Jenny noted the smell of the micro-world: it had a smell all its own. A complicated earthy scent filled her nose, and it wasn’t bad, actually quite nice, in a way. It was an odor of soil mixed with a thousand unknown scents, some sweet, some musky, drifting in the liquid air. Many of the smells were pleasant, even lovely, like exquisite perfumes.
“We’re smelling pheromones, the signaling chemicals that animals and plants use for communication,” Jenny said to the others. “It’s the invisible language of nature.” It lifted her spirits—here, she could experience the full spectrum of scents in the natural world for the first time. This revelation both thrilled her and made her feel afraid.
Jenny held a chunk of soil up to her nose and sniffed it. It was teeming with tiny nematode worms and numerous mites and several plump little creatures called water bears, and it smelled faintly like antibiotics. She knew why: the soil was full of bacteria, and many of the bacteria were different kinds of Streptomyces. “You can smell Streptomyces,” Jenny said to the others. “They’re one of the types of bacteria that make antibiotics. Modern antibiotics are derived from them.” The soil was also laced with thin threads of fungus known as hyphae. Jenny pulled a fungal thread out of the soil: it was stiff but slightly stretchy. A cubic inch of soil could hold several miles of these threads of fungus.