The answer came to him immediately. The brain.
Brambell exhaled loudly in chagrin at his stupidity. Here he had carefully assembled the face and skull on the gurney: ears, nose, lips, hair, the works. But he’d forgotten about the brain. Where was it? He bent over the gurney, but there was no trace of it. Could they have overlooked it when extracting the body from Paul?
No. Impossible.
Could the brain, which was also watery, have dissolved and drifted away in the extreme water pressure?
The feeling he’d had when they’d taken apart Paul, back on the hangar deck—the feeling that something wasn’t quite right—came back again now, full force.
He picked up a pair of rubber tweezers and leaned over the assembled cranium, turning over the largest pieces of skull. The inside of the cranium was totally clean—licked clean, one might even say. Even the dura membranes normally found inside the cranium were gone—gone completely. And those were tough.
He pulled the tray of surgical tools close and carefully dissected the first two cervical vertebrae, C1 and C2. They had survived the crushing fairly intact. He quickly located the main anatomical points, the dens of axis and the transverse ligament of axis. With the utmost care he rotated C1 and teased apart the partially crushed mess to expose the vertebral foramen. There, inside, he found the spinal cord enclosed in the thecal sac. The top of it, right where the cord emerged from C1 and connected to the medulla oblongata, looked precisely as if it had been cut with a scalpel. Indeed, it had a seared aspect that suggested heat had been involved.
“Bloody hell,” Brambell muttered to himself. He was utterly discomposed. Had the creature eaten the brain? But no: that didn’t seem likely, given such a clean-cut removal. Rather, the bastard had—with almost surgical precision—taken the brain.
Brambell backed away from the gurney, a feeling in the pit of his stomach that was not good. He took a few deep, shuddering breaths. And then, recovering himself, he did a quick bioassay of the brain stem. Then he pulled off his gloves, hung up his apron, washed his hands, straightened his lab coat—and went off to look for Glinn.
35
GIDEON CREW STOOD with Glinn and Manuel Garza at the foredeck rail. They were speaking in low tones. Their conversation was about the nature of the Baobab, but as usual it seemed to wander into wild speculations and crazy theories. It frustrated Gideon that, even now, they had so little hard evidence on the thing. They didn’t know even the basics: was it a machine or a life-form, or some bizarre combination of the two? Was it intelligent—or just a dumb plant? This lack of information was becoming a serious problem on board ship, because the resulting vacuum was being filled with rumor and speculation.
At least the remarkable weather was still holding, the ocean as calm as a millpond. Every day brought them closer to summer, and the calving of the icebergs seemed to be accelerating in the advancing spring weather. As Gideon looked out, he counted six stately bergs dotting the sea. The rising sun hung low, casting a golden pathway over the water. The calmness of the scene belied the turbulent atmosphere on the ship.
“Excuse me, gentlemen?”
Gideon turned to see Dr. Patrick Brambell approaching, looking neat as a pin, but with such a concerned expression on his normally placid face that Gideon grew instantly alarmed.
“Dr. Brambell?” said Glinn.
Brambell came up with tentative steps, hands clasped together. “I’ve completed the autopsy,” he said. “Of Lispenard,” he added, unnecessarily.
Gideon felt a tightness in his chest. He had viciously suppressed all thoughts of Alex, which otherwise seemed to erupt regularly out of nowhere and stagger his peace of mind. But this he had to hear. He waited.
“Well?” Glinn asked when Brambell didn’t go on.
“The brain is missing,” said Brambell.
“What do you mean, missing?”
“Absolutely missing. Not a trace of it, not a trace.” The words came tumbling out, his Irish brogue heavier than usual. “It appears to have been removed at the brain stem, severed as if with a scalpel, and with evidence of the application of searing heat. I did a quick section and bioassay, and found that the proteins at the site of the removal had denatured—proof of heat.”
Gideon stared at him. “Removed? Not crushed?”
Brambell ran a hand across his bald head. “It appears the brain was removed before the skull was crushed—otherwise there would have been traces of it on the inside of the skull, neural matter forced into the fractures. But no—there’s no trace of gray or white matter anywhere in the remains. Not even microscopic traces. The Baobab seems to have…well…”
His face collapsed into confusion.
“Eaten it?” Garza completed the sentence.
Listening, Gideon heard himself tense up.
“That’s what I thought at first. But if it was going to be absorbed as nourishment, why remove it intact? And I have no doubt it was removed. What happened to it after that, I don’t have a clue—eaten, absorbed, whatever.”
“Scanned?” Gideon heard himself ask.
Garza turned sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
“Her brain was removed intact,” Gideon said. “Why? Maybe the creature wanted to interrogate it, download its contents—that would be a good reason to take the brain out undamaged.”
“Improbable,” said Garza. “To say the least.”
“Think about Alex’s final message. Let me touch your face. She was in contact with something. She spoke—or, at least, her brain did.”
“If your theory is true,” said Garza, “how did she speak? She had no mouth—her body was crushed.”
Gideon winced inwardly. Don’t remind me. He tried to stay focused, to think through the problem logically. “Her brain, removed intact, spoke through the creature. Let me touch your face. Her brain was in contact with something, but her brain was confused, disoriented. I mean, it had just been removed from her body.”
Garza’s face displayed broad irritation. He shook his head. “Good God, if this isn’t pure science fiction.”
There was a long silence. Glinn, as usual, took everything in while displaying an impassive face. Maybe Garza’s right, Gideon thought: maybe it is science fiction. It sounded pretty ridiculous in retrospect. But he wasn’t going to give Garza the satisfaction of admitting it.
“And there’s another little thing,” Brambell said after a moment.
Glinn raised his eyebrows.
“It seems someone swiped part of the specimen from exo lab. The four lab assistants kept a log of all sections removed, but there’s a large piece missing—and no one seems to know where it went. Did any of you by any chance take a piece without logging it?”
Garza turned an accusatory stare on Gideon.
“Not me,” said Gideon. Garza was proving to be a bigger pain in the ass than usual this morning.
“None of us would have done anything that irresponsible,” said Glinn crisply.
“Well,” said Brambell, “the lab might have made a mistake in its initial measurement of the tentacle. Or maybe they forgot to log a removal.” He cleared his throat. “Or perhaps the whole thing is a smokescreen to conceal unprofessional behavior. I say this because those four gentlemen had a party last night in the lab—when I passed the lab just now on the way here I found the remains of a bash, the four of them fluthered and washing the barroom floor, so to speak.”
“You mean, passed out?” Garza asked.
“That is precisely what I mean. The only one conscious was Frayne—if you can call it conscious—and it was he who told me of the missing piece of tentacle.”