Jenny agreed that she was the one best suited, and Sara helped her get into the harness, and they were ready for the battle.
Still no sign of the shape-changer.
Sara wiped sweat from her brow. “All right. The instant it shows itself, spray it. Don't waste a second. Spray it, saturate it, keep backing away if possible, try to draw more of it out of hiding, and spray, spray, spray.”
“Is this some sort of acid — or what?” Bryce asked.
“Not acid,” Sara said, “Although the effect will be something very like acid — if it works at all.”
“So if it's not an acid,” Tal said, “what is it?”
“A unique, highly specialized microorganism,” Sara said.
“Germs?” Jenny asked, eyes widening in surprise.
“Yes. They're suspended in a liquid growth culture.”
“We're gonna make the shape-changer sick?” Lisa asked, frowning.
“I sure to God hope so,” Sara said.
Nothing moved. Nothing. But something was out there, and it was probably listening. With the ears of the cat. With the ears of the fox. With highly sensitive ears of its own special design.
“Very, very sick, if we're lucky,” Sara said, “Because disease would seem to be the only way to kill it.”
Now their lives were at risk because it knew they had tricked it.
Flyte shook his head. “But the ancient enemy's so utterly alien, so different from man and animals… diseases dangerous to other species would have no effect whatsoever on it.”
“Right,” Sara said, “But this microbe isn't an ordinary disease. In fact, it isn't a disease-causing organism at all.”
Snowfield shelved down the mountain, still as a postcard painting.
Looking around uneasily, alert for movement in and around the buildings, Sara told them about Ananda Chakrabarty and his discovery.
In 1972, on behalf of Dr. Chakrabarty, his employer — the General Electric Corporation — applied for the first-ever patent on a man-made bacterium. Using sophisticated cell fusion techniques, Chakrabarty had created a microorganism that could feed upon, digest, and thereby transform the hydrocarbon compounds of crude oil.
Chakrabarty's bug had at least one obvious commercial application: It could be used to clean up oil spills at sea. The bacteria literally ate an oil slick, rendering it harmless to the environment.
After a series of vigorous legal challenges from many sources, General Electric won the right to patent Chakrabarty's discovery. In June, 1980, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, ruling that Chakrabarty's discovery was “not nature's handiwork, but his own; accordingly, it's patentable subject matter.”
“Of course,” Jenny said, “I read about the case. It was a big story that June — man competing with God and all that.”
Sara said, “Originally, GE didn't intend to market the bug. It was a fragile organism that couldn't survive outside of strictly controlled lab conditions. They applied for a patent to test the legal question, to settle the matter before other experiments in genetic engineering produced more usable and more valuable discoveries. But after the court's decision, other scientists spent a few years working with the organism, and now they have a hardier strain that'll stand up outside the lab for twelve to eighteen hours. In fact it's been on the market under the trade name Biosan-4, and it's been used successfully to clean up oil slicks all over the world.”
“And that's what's in these tanks?” Bryce asked.
“Yes. Biosan-4. In a sprayable solution.”
The town was funereal. The sun beat down from an azure sky, but the air remained chilly. In spite of the uncanny silence, Sara had the unshakable feeling that it was coming, that it had heard and was coming and was very, very near, indeed.
The others felt it, too. They looked around uneasily.
Sara said, “Do you remember what we discovered when we studied the shape-changer's tissue?”
“You mean the high hydrocarbon values,” Jenny said.
“Yes. But not just hydrocarbons. All forms of carbon. Very high values all across the board.”
Tal said, “You told us something about it being like petrolatum.”
“Not the same. But reminiscent of petrolatum in some respects,” Sara said. “What we have here is living tissue, very alien but complex and alive. And with such extraordinarily high carbon content… Well, what I mean is, this thing's tissue seems like an organic, metabolically active cousin of petrolatum. So I'm hoping Chakrabarty's bug will…”
Something is coming.
Jenny said, “You're hoping it'll eat into the shape-changer the same way it would eat into an oil slick.”
Something… something…
“Yes,” Sara said nervously, “I'm hoping it'll attack the carbon and break down the tissue. Or at least interfere with the delicate chemical balance enough to-”
Coming, coming…
“… uh, enough to destabilize the entire organism,” Sara finished, weighed down by a sense of impending doom.
Flyte said, “Is that the best chance we have? Is it really?”
“I think it is.”
Where is it? Where's it coming from? Sara wondered, looking at the deserted buildings, the empty street, the motionless this.
“Sounds awfully thin to me,” Flyte said doubtfully.
“It is awfully thin,” Sara said, “It's not much of a chance, but it's the only one we've got.”
A noise. A chittering, hissing, hair-raising sound.
They froze. Waited.
But, again, the town pulled a cloak of silence around itself.
The morning sun cast its fiery reflection in some windows and glinted off the curved glass of the streetlamps. The black slate roofs looked as if they had been polished during the night; the last of the mist had condensed on those smooth surfaces, leaving a moist sheen.
Nothing moved. Nothing happened. The noise did not resume.
Bryce Hammond's face clouded with worry. “This Biosan… I gather it isn't harmful to us.”
“Utterly harmless,” Sara assured him.
The noise again. A short burst. Then silence.
“Something's coming,” Lisa said softly.
God help us, Sara thought.
“Something's coming,” Lisa said softly, and Bryce felt it, too. A sense of on rushing horror. A thickening and cooling of the air. A new predatory quality to the stillness. Reality? Imagination? He could not be certain. He only knew that he felt it.
The noise burst forth again, a sustained squeal, not just a short blast. Bryce winced. It was piercingly shrill. Buzzing. Whining. Like a power drill. But he knew it wasn't anything as harmless and ordinary as that.
Insects. The coldness of the sound, the metallic quality made him think of insects. Bees. Yes. It was the greatly amplified buzzing-screeching of hornets.
He said, “The three of you who aren't armed with spray guns, get in the middle here.”
“Yeah,” Tal said, “We'll circle around, give you a little protection.”
Very damned little if this Biosan doesn't work, Bryce thought.
The strange noise grew louder.
Sara, Lisa, and Dr. Flyte stood together, while Bryce and Jenny and Tal ringed them, facing outward.
Then, down the street, near the bakery, something monstrous appeared in the sky, skimming over the tops of the buildings, hovering for a few seconds above Skyline Road. A wasp. A phantom the size of a German shepherd. Nothing remotely like this insect had ever existed during the tens of millions of years that the shape-changer had been alive. This was surely something that had sprung. from its vicious imagination, a horrible invention. Six-foot, opalescent wings beat furiously upon the air, glimmered with rainbow color. The multifaceted black eyes were slant-set in the narrow, pointed, wicked head. There were four twitching legs with pincered feet. The curled, segmented, mold-white body terminated in a foot-long stinger with a needle-sharp point.