Micro - Michael Crichton [107]
He said, “Did the autopsies turn up any more of these devices? In the wounds, in the blood?”
“No,” Girt said. “But the examiners probably wouldn’t have noticed them.”
“What’s the status of the bodies?”
“Fong was cremated. Rodriguez got buried. John Doe is in the fridge.”
“He needs a second look.”
“Will do.”
Watanabe stood back from the microscope and put his hands in his pockets, and began to walk up and down the lab. He frowned. “Why was the device found on a window? If it came out of a body, how did it get to the window? How did it get into the body in the first place?” He returned to the microscope, and studied the little device’s fan-like housing. Whoa—it was a propeller. “My gosh. This thing could fly, Dorothy.”
“That’s speculative,” Dorothy Girt said dryly.
“It could swim in blood.”
“Possibly.”
“Can you recover DNA from the blood that’s stuck on the device?”
A prim smile. “I can get DNA from a flea’s sneeze, Dan.”
“I’d like to see if the blood on the device matches any of the victims’ blood.”
“That would be interesting,” Dorothy Girt said, her cynical eyes brightening a little.
“They make small robots,” he murmured.
“What, Dan?”
He stood up. “Nice work, Dorothy.”
Dorothy Girt gave Lieutenant Watanabe a faint smile, hardly a smile at all. What did the lieutenant think she did with her time in the forensic lab, other than nice work? With exquisite care, she picked up the tiny object with a pair of tweezers and lowered it into a plastic vial smaller than her pinky, and carried the vial into the evidence locker area. After all, she could be handling a murder weapon.
Watanabe went out thinking. Nanigen. Small robots. Now there seemed to be a link between the Willy Fong mess and Nanigen.
Time to have a chat with the CEO.
Vin Drake had dropped by the communications center. He had kicked the young woman operator out of the room and locked the door, and had taken over the pinger himself. Now he gazed into a screen that displayed a three-dimensional terrain map of the northwest cliffs of Manoa Valley, from the valley’s bottom to the structure of Tantalus Crater, two thousand feet above. Near the top of Tantalus Cliffs, at the base of the crater, he saw a circle with crosshairs over it.
This showed the approximate location of the stolen hexapod. The survivors, he could see, had made it nearly to the lower slopes of Tantalus Crater. At the rate they were climbing, they would reach Tantalus Base maybe by tomorrow morning, unless a predator got them. He couldn’t control the predators. What he could control was Tantalus Base.
Sitting in the communications room, Drake got out his encrypted corporate phone and called Don Makele. “The hexapod is getting close.”
Chapter 32
Tantalus Cliffs
31 October, 9:45 a.m.
The truck climbed up over a lip of rock and emerged into a pocket of mossy ground. A small pond gleamed, and a miniature waterfall dribbled into the pond. As the drops landed in the water, they made the water shimmer with prismatic flashes.
Rick, Karen, and Erika climbed down from the truck. They stood by the pool, gazing into it. It was crystal-clear, with a mirror-like surface.
“We’re so dirty,” Erika said.
“I could use a swim,” Karen said.
They saw their reflections in the water; they were tired-looking and sweaty, and their clothing had become ragged and grimy. Karen knelt and touched the water. Her finger dented the water but didn’t break it. She was touching the meniscus, the rubbery surface of the water. She pushed against the meniscus, putting her weight into it, and her hand broke through the surface. “It’s so tempting,” she said.
“Don’t do it. You’ll be killed,” Danny said from the truck.
“There’s nothing dangerous here, Danny,” Karen said.
Rick wasn’t so sure. He took the harpoon