organs, he kept going. There was only one thing he wanted to accomplish.
Sara saw where he was headed, and in a flash of insight, understood what was about to happen. She had passed the conspicuous looking red button on the way in and recognized it as part of the lab’s emergency fail-safe containment system. The CDC employed a similar mechanism, which could be triggered by any number of remote sensor devices, or by a manual device just like that big red button. Evidently, even bioweapons designers were concerned about the accidental release of a deadly pathogen.
Before she could so much as squeak in protest, the man’s essentially lifeless body slammed into the button, and the fail-safe was activated. She knew that it would do a lot more than simply sound an alarm.
14.
The Great Rift Valley
Dominance.
It was the way of the world.
The Old Mother understood this. There could not be two dominant males in a clan. There could not be two clans in a territory. And though the world itself seemed as vast as the night sky, its limits beyond her ability to grasp, she knew that it was not large enough to sustain two dominant minds.
For more turnings of the seasons than she could imagine, the great beasts had trod the earth. Their size and strength ensured that the dominance of their common mind would not be shaken. Why they, above all other creatures, had received this gift of wisdom did not concern them any more than the fact that some who shared their blood did not share their thoughts. These latter ones were no threat to the dominance of the great beasts; they were permitted to roam the earth, gathering in herds of their own according to the dictates of their instincts rather than at the guidance of the common mind. But the children of the Old Mother…that was another matter entirely.
The herd could have crushed the Old Mother’s clan beneath their feet, torn them asunder with their powerful trunks, impaled them on their mighty tusks. But dominance was not about physical might or even strength of numbers.
No battle would be fought for supremacy, or rather if such a conflict were necessary, it had taken place long before. The herd of great beasts had not assembled in order to contest that outcome, but rather to submit to dominant mind, to the Old Mother.
Lead us, Old Mother.
And she understood.
The time of the great beasts was at an end, as was her own. She had dreamed of a place of death, and now it was time to journey there.
The oldest matriarch gently embraced the Old Mother with its trunk and lifted her onto its back. Then, guided by a single common purpose, the herd began to move again.
They journeyed toward the place where the sun rises, and soon found a land where the rocks burned and the earth bled steam and fire. It was a place where nothing would grow; it was a place of death. With no food or water, many of the herd simply dropped dead in their tracks, but their flesh and blood was offered to the Old Mother for sustenance, and she endured.
On the fourth day, they found the cave.
There was no hesitation. The beasts filed in under the watchful eye of the Old Mother astride the eldest matriarch, and as the sun sank over the distant horizon, only a few of the strongest bulls remained outside, watching reverently as the Old Mother herself at last went in. As soon as she had, they began to use their tusks and trunks to collapse the entrance, sealing their brethren in place of death.
In the darkness, the Old Mother could not see the fate of the herd, but she felt their breath and tasted the air as it grew hot and stale. Sensing that her time had at last come, she lay down and embraced the final sleep…
# # #
“Look at this.”
“What is that doing here?”
“Primate. An ape of some kind. There’s still a lot of preserved tissue. Maybe even some brain matter. I’ll bet we can get a viable sample from this.”
The Old Mother awakened.
# # #
Felice awoke screaming as the memories flooded into her. She saw Sigler, his gun raised, his finger poised on the trigger. Then she saw the others-her friends and co-workers-advancing from the perimeter of the clearing, moving toward her.
She understood everything.
And screamed again.
15.
Manifold laboratory ship, Indian Ocean
A steel door slammed down like a guillotine blade, blocking the only exit from the laboratory. In the same instant, a magnesium charge inside the containment vessel holding the ape skull flared to life. It flamed hot and fast, incinerating the skull and consuming all the available oxygen in the container, and then just as quickly, burned itself out. Then, the strident wailing of a claxon suddenly filled the room.
“What the hell was that?” Fulbright demanded, spinning Dave around to face him.
“It’s the fail-safe,” Sara supplied before the compliant Manifold researcher could answer. “It’s supposed to keep the rest of the ship safe in the event of an accident in the lab.”
“Not quite,” Dave cut in, his voice quavering. “It does lock down the lab, but it also starts a self-destruct sequence.”
“Self destruct?” Fulbright said. “The lab is going to be destroyed?”
Dave shook his head. “Not just the lab; it’s already contained. We’re not getting out of here. The alarm is to give everyone outside time to abandon ship before…”
“Shit. How long?”
“Five minutes.”
Fulbright checked his wristwatch and clicked on a button, before turning to the commandos. “Get that door open.”
“It’s three inches of solid steel,” Dave protested half-heartedly. “We’re finished.”
“Three inches. Good to know.”
The men from the assault team appeared unfazed by the news of the death sentence. They deftly produced blocks of plastic explosives, along with what appeared to be water bladders for hydration packs, and began taping these to the security gate to form a three-foot square. The process took only a few seconds, during which time Fulbright overturned a stainless steel lab table and pulled Sara behind it. Realizing what he intended, she hastily unplugged the flash-drive and stuffed it in the water-tight bag. The commandos joined them, and as soon as they were all down, one of them shouted: “Fire in the hole.”
The concussion reverberated through the closed room, hammering into Sara’s gut like a punch from a prizefighter, and the smell of high explosives residue made her gums hurt. That she recognized was a manifestation of her SDD.
Fulbright checked his watch before standing up to survey the effects of the breaching charges. “We’ve got three minutes people. Move.”
The shaped explosive charges had done the trick, blasting an opening in the steel gate, large enough for one person at a time to crawl through. Without asking, Fulbright propelled Sara forward, and she hastily pulled herself through the still smoldering hole.
