“Let’s get this done,” he says.
He opens up the cache and takes out the first of the cylinders. The seal seems to be intact but there’s nothing growing inside the glass jar: just a smear of brown jelly at the base of it. He’s seen enough of them by now to know that that’s wrong.
“Bloody waste of time,” he mutters.
“What? Why?”
McQueen shakes his head. It’s not worth explaining. The cold is starting to bite into him and the way down is going to be harder because they’ll have to be careful not to damage the specimen jars. “Come on,” he says. “Load up.”
There are twelve jars. They take six each, stowing them in their packs between layers of wadded towels. Phillips dawdles, distracted by the view and by unprofitable thoughts. When they’re done, he’s still eyeing up the cache itself. McQueen can tell he’s thinking about history and the point where he butts up against it. He’s about to snap his fingers under the private’s nose, but then an idea occurs to him and very much to his own surprise he voices it.
“Leave your dogtags.”
Phillips gives him a sidelong glance, alarmed at having his mind read so easily.
“For future generations,” McQueen says. “In case there are any. Why the fuck not?”
“The colonel will have my guts.”
“The colonel won’t care. I doubt he’ll even notice. Go on, if you want to. We haven’t got time for you to write a personal message.”
Phillips nods slowly. He unfastens his dogtags and sets them down in the bottom of the cache. He fastens the lid back on carefully, testing it to make sure that it will hold against the insistent easterly wind.
“All right?” McQueen tries to keep all inflection out of his voice.
“Yeah.”
“Then for fuck’s sake let’s go.”
He gives the plastic crate a ringing kick. It stays where it is: steel brackets at each corner have been driven down into the rock, holding it firmly in place.
“You’re all good, Phillips. That’s what eternity sounds like.”
Normally Greaves finds the lab a calming and comforting place to be. It’s a place full of certainties, and it’s a place where new certainties can be hammered out.
But today he can’t find comfort and can’t make himself be calm. He keeps seeing Rina falling backwards, her face twisted in pain and shock; hearing the sharp huff of breath as she hits the floor. His perfect memory torments him with perfect reproduction.
She could have died. In many different ways, the fall was potentially fatal.
Her head could have hit one of the storage or base units, causing a haematoma, intraparenchymal haemorrhage or crush injury to the brain.
The shock of the impact could have brought on an early labour, with significant risk of death from post-partum bleeding, infection or hypertensive disorders.
Conversely, she could have suffered a miscarriage, necessitating surgical removal of the dead foetus in an environment in which medical support and expertise are limited.
Greaves runs through all the scenarios he can think of that would have ended with Rina lying dead at his feet. There are dozens. Though none of them happened, he feels them clustering around him, thickening the air in the lab until he starts to hyperventilate. His vision darkens.
If Rina were to die, what would he do?
But that’s the wrong question. What can he do to make sure she doesn’t die? They are surrounded by risks both quantifiable and otherwise. Granted, they are inside an impregnable tank, but outside its hull is a world where life expectancy has dropped back to levels not seen since the early middle ages. Even Beacon isn’t safe, although it is safer than Rosie by several orders of magnitude.
He will have to be vigilant until they get back there, and he will have to make sure that if dangerous situations arise the risks are borne by others. The soldiers for example, who have the best weapons, the most relevant skill set and a specific brief to protect the science team. They should be ready to fight and die to protect Rina if the need arises.
He will be ready, too. He is ready right here and now, and that won’t change. He will keep her safe, no matter what.
With his mood a little restored, he turns his attention to the tissue samples.
But the calm does not last. The samples and the findings he is getting continue to confound him.
Should he classify the dead child as a hungry? Amazingly (and it hurts a little, burrows through his nerves and makes them twinge) he is still undecided.
For: the boy had the Cordyceps infection in an advanced form, and some of the salient behavioural symptoms. Specifically, he had the consuming urge to feed on fresh protein from a living source.
Against: in other ways his behavioural repertoire was more like that of a human being. He was still capable of thought, and of emotional attachment. If he was an animal, he was a social animal. And a tool-using one.
A hungry, then, but with provisos. A hungry of a type that Greaves has never observed or seen described. He notes, with a slight prickle of alarm, that by using the personal pronoun he has partially prejudged the question he is meant to be deciding. That isn’t like him. He watches himself for subjective error all the time, alert for premonitory urgings of presumption or prejudice. His mind is an instrument, and you have to keep all your instruments in balance if you want them to be fit for purpose.
The brain. The explanation for this paradox has to lie in the child’s (no, the specimen’s) brain. Cordyceps is abundantly present there, as Greaves has already verified. But natural brain tissue is healthy and robust. And whereas in a regular hungry the tide of native neurotransmitters has ebbed once and for all, in this brain roughly half of all chemical messengers are present and correct.
So who is in charge here? The human or the fungus? And either way, what is the afferent mechanism that carries orders from the control room—wherever that is—to the nerves and muscles of the body?
Greaves draws off more samples. He adds more stains and reagents, searching all over again for the brain’s missing messengers. Dopamine. Acetylcholine. Adenosine. Noradrenaline.
He doesn’t find them. They’re not there to be found.
But he finds something else.
Checks, finds it again.
And again.
And again.
The brain is swimming in mycoproteins, long-chain molecules manufactured by the fungus. Greaves has dissected and studied the brains of fifty or sixty hungries, and he has never seen any of these molecular structures before.
A suspicion strikes him. A hypothesis.