Fragment

7:29 P.M.

Thatcher patted Cane’s heaving back, looking over the twilit fields below as wheels turned in his mind like the gears in a slot machine. He noticed strange shapes were sprouting out of the purpling field below the tree, attracting little clouds of glowing bugs.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into them,” the zoologist said. “This is exactly what the President warned us about, trying to get live species off this island. How are you feeling, Sergeant?”

“Feeling fine, sir!” Cane sounded off, lying.

Thatcher helped Cane over the stepping stones to the Humvee. He climbed in first and reached down to help the soldier, who shrugged off his help as he gripped the doorframe and pulled himself into the driver’s seat.

Cane quickly slammed the door behind him. His face was very pale and streaked with sweat. He squeezed the steering wheel, hanging his head between his arms as he took long, shuddering breaths.

Thatcher looked out the windshield over the island. Glowing swarms drifted like ghosts over the fields below. The ring of the jungle had a dim pink glow as a wispy fog filled the basin around the barren core, which stood out like an island in the fog. “Well, this is far worse than anyone could have imagined, Sergeant. It’s an abomination.” He turned to look at Cane. “Against God.”

Cane closed his eyes, breathing faster and gripping the steering wheel with one hand, his crucifix in the other.

“These freaks of nature were not meant to coexist with humans on this Earth.” Thatcher was an atheist, but this approach seemed like the best bet, he thought, given the circumstances. “Why else would they have been separated from us since the beginning of time, Sergeant? My God, what in heaven’s name are we trying to do? The scientists back at the base are going to want to save this species-precisely because it is intelligent!”

Thatcher glanced at the soldier and then looked back out the window as swarms of bugs moved across the slopes below. “I guess after you win some of the most prestigious awards in science your colleagues just stop listening to you.”

“You’d think they’d listen to you more,” Cane muttered.

Thatcher snorted laughter and stared thoughtfully at the Army base, a mile in the distance. This discovery would certainly derail the entire thesis of his book just as his career was taking off. The fact that he was here when intelligent life was discovered living in the oldest sustained ecosystem on the planet would cause a sensation. And a professional humiliation after his Redmond Principle had predicted intelligent life must destroy its own environment. His Tetteridge Award would suddenly be worthless. Ridiculed, even. It could even be revoked. The other precious awards would never materialize. The markers would come due, the alimony. But there was something else, something irrational pulling him, a primal temptation that he had faced many times, a belief in his luck-which placed him in natural opposition to the world. He could never resist betting against the house.

Thatcher sighed. “I wish I hadn’t won those awards, Sergeant. Maybe if I had never won them my colleagues would listen to me now. Maybe they would listen.”

“I hear you, sir.” Cane’s voice was low and serious.

Thatcher shook his head, not looking at Cane. “Those things will become part of our society now, Sergeant, if they leave this island. They’ll be sharing our neighborhoods, our jobs, our schools-even our hospitals and cemeteries. How are you going to explain that to your children? They’re clearly physically and mentally superior. They probably procreate faster than we do. We’ll be signing our world over to them. What are your orders, Sergeant? I mean, I don’t wish to interfere with military matters, of course. But, what if you were to find someone trying to smuggle live species off the island…”

“My orders are to shoot on sight anyone attempting to smuggle live specimens off the island, sir!”

“Ah, yes. That’s right. Tell me, Sergeant, just hypothetically- if you found yourself in the extraordinary position, if you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to save life on Earth, even if it meant disobeying your orders-are you the sort of person who would do it? Or are you the sort of person who would obey your orders, no matter what the consequences might be for the human race?”

“Hypothetically how, sir?”

“What if you radioed in and told the base we are collecting specimens but don’t mention exactly what we found? It’s 7:30 now. Could you meet me at 9, down there, out of sight?”

Thatcher indicated a slight rise in the ground about thirty yards down the slope from Hender’s home. It was probably one of the moldered wings of the B-29, long ago engulfed and dissolved by clover.

Cane looked hard at Thatcher. “Then what, sir?”

“Then we might be able to just drive away, Sergeant.”

“Sir?”

Thatcher shrugged. “They have no other means of transportation. And while you’re gone I can make certain that they don’t have any way to communicate with the base.”

“That would be murder, sir.”

“Taking those creatures off this island would be genocide, Sergeant. Of the entire human race.”

After a moment of silence, Cane asked, “Where would I go?”

“Anywhere. Until nine o’clock.”

“What would we say?”

“We could say we got attacked while collecting specimens and that the others didn’t make it, Sergeant. Our companions foolishly insisted on leaving the vehicle and we wisely stayed inside. That almost happened already today, didn’t it? You haven’t yet told them what happened to Dr. Cato. We say they all died with him. In less than forty-eight hours, this whole island is going to be nuked. How much more simple could it be?”

Cane stared ahead through the windshield for a long moment. Then he switched on the Hummer’s ignition. “Rendezvous at twenty-one hundred hours, sir,” he said. But he refused to look at Thatcher.

Thatcher got out and heard the distant din of the jungle below as Cane drove away.

He noticed the faintly glowing swarm on the field below change direction and streak up the slope toward him.

Thatcher turned, tripping, and ran.