Reliquary

Then she frowned. I’ve never seen a green sunset before.

She strained to make out the darkening surface of water, rapidly disappearing into shadow. In the dying glow she could clearly see dull patches of green on the surface of the water. A strange and awful thought had crept unbidden into her mind. Still water and fresh air…

It’s impossible, she thought. Someone surely would have noticed. Or would they?

She turned from the window and glanced at Pendergast. He caught her eye, saw the look in it, and ceased his pacing.

“Margo?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

She said nothing, and Pendergast followed her gaze out toward the Reservoir, stared for a moment, then stiffened visibly. When he looked back at her, she could see the same dawning realization in his own eyes.

“I think we’d better take a look,” Pendergast said quietly.

The Central Park Reservoir was separated from the surrounding jogging path by a tall chain-link fence. D’Agosta grasped the base of the fence and tugged it violently from the ground. With Pendergast and D’Agosta close behind, Margo scrambled down the gravel service path to the water’s edge, wading out to a patch of small, oddly shaped lily pads, terrifying in their familiarity. She tore the closest one from the group and held it up, water dripping from its pulpy roots.

“Liliceae mbwunensis,” she said. “They’re growing it in the Reservoir. That’s how Kawakita planned to solve his supply problem. Aquariums are limited. So not only did he engineer the drug, but he was also hybridizing the plant to grow in a temperate climate.”

“There’s your alternative source,” D’Agosta said, still puffing on the cigar.

Pendergast waded in after her, his hands sweeping the dark waters, ripping up plants and examining them in the twilight. Several joggers stopped abruptly in their robotic courses around the water, staring wide-eyed at the bizarre sight: a young woman in a lab coat, an overweight man with a cigar glowing like a firebrand in his mouth, and a tall, strikingly blond man in an expensively tailored black suit, standing up to their chests in the Manhattan drinking supply.

Pendergast held up one of the plants, a large nut-brown pod hanging from its stem. The pod had curled open. “They’re going to seed,” Pendergast said quietly. “Flushing the Reservoir will simply dump this plant and its deadly cargo into the Hudson River—and into the ocean.”

There was a silence, punctuated only by the distant cacophony of horns.

“But this thing can’t grow in saltwater,” Pendergast continued. “Can it, Dr. Green?”

“No, of course not. The salinity…” A sudden terrible thought burned its way through Margo’s consciousness. “Oh, Jesus. How stupid of me.”

Pendergast turned toward her, eyebrows raised.

“The salinity,” she repeated.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Pendergast replied.

“The only single-celled animal affected by the viral drug was B. meresgerii,” Margo continued slowly. “There’s one difference between B. meresgerii and the other organisms we tested with the drug. The agar plates for B. meresgerii were saline plates. B. meresgerii is a marine organism. It lives in a saline environment.”

“So?” asked D’Agosta.

“It’s a common way to activate a virus. Just add a small amount of saline solution to the viral culture. In the cold, fresh reservoir water, the plant stays dormant. But when those seeds hit the saltwater, it’ll activate the virus. And dump the drug into the ecosystem.”

“The Hudson,” said Pendergast, “is tidal all the way up past Manhattan.”

Margo dropped the plant and took a step back. “We saw what the drug did to just one microscopic organism. If it’s released into the ocean, God knows what the end result would be. The marine ecology could be totally disrupted. And the food chain is dependent on the oceans.”

“Hold on,” said D’Agosta. “The ocean’s a pretty big place.”

“The ocean distributes many seeds of freshwater and land-growing plants,” Margo said. “Who knows what plants and animals the virus will colonize and multiply in? And if the plant propagates in the ocean—or if the seeds find their way into estuaries and wetlands—it won’t make any difference.”

Pendergast waded out of the water and slung the plant over his shoulder, its bulbous, knotted roots staining the narrow line of his shoulders.

“We’ve got three hours,” he said.

PART THREE

HUT OF SKULLS

It can be illustrative to view the various stratum of subterranean New York society in the same way one would view a geologic cross section, or a food chain showing devolvement from predator to prey. Highest on the chain are those who inhabit a twilight world between the underground and the surface; who visit soup kitchens, welfare offices, or even places of employment by day, only to return to the tunnels by night to drink or sleep. Next come the long-term, habitual, or pathologically homeless persons who simply prefer the dark, warm filth of the underground to the sunlit, often freezing filth of the city streets. Below them—often literally—are the multiple substance abusers