“I will,” Joyce told him. “He usually gets in at seven o’clock.”
Gentry asked Joyce if she wanted something from the “chuck wagon,” the coffee-and-muffin cart that the DOT had set up by the river for the crews. She said she wouldn’t mind a bran something-or-other, so they got that and then headed over to CARV.
Gentry made sure that the paperwork from OEM had arrived, giving Joyce authority to take charge of the bat. It had, brought by one of Gordy Weeks’s assistants who would be accompanying Dr. Joyce to the museum. The assistant, a twenty-something biologist named Heidi Daniels, would be taking notes and writing the report that was going to Al Doyle.
Joyce thanked Gentry for everything he’d done, then climbed into the back of the truck with Heidi and an ESU sergeant. They headed uptown.
Joyce was very intense and focused and she hadn’t said anything about seeing Gentry later or getting together again. Maybe she didn’t plan to. Or maybe she’d just assumed they would.
Gentry had. That was a swift, disturbing sock in the gut.
When she left, the slightly shell-shocked Gentry bummed a ride up to the station house. There would be paperwork and voice mail to attend to. He’d also try to stay on top of any other missing person or animal reports, information that might tell them something about the whereabouts of the female bat.
A reason to call Nancy.
And he’d get a little rest if possible. With all those bats roosting in town-including the big one-Gentry had a feeling that sundown was going to rock New York.
Thirty-One
Marc Ramirez joined the museum autopsy group in the late afternoon. He came to the fifth floor wearing a black leather jacket and carrying his bat helmet under his arm.
He noticed Heidi right off. He kept his eyes on her as he greeted Dr. Joyce and Professor Lowery. The young woman gave him only a passing look.
“How are things going?” Joyce asked.
“Outside?” He asked, shifting his eyes toward the scientist. “You’ve got a few quintillion reporters waiting at the delivery dock.”
“I mean at the zoo,” she said.
“Oh. No one is there. Zerobody. And even fewer people are coming to see the bats. There’s a fall-of-Saigon rush to get out of town.Worse than the day before Thanksgiving.”
Ramirez hung his jacket across the desk chair, then looked toward the black laboratory table. Joyce was in the center, Professor Lowery was on her left, and Heidi Daniels was on her right. All three were wearing lab coats and masks. The young man opened the locker beside the desk. He removed the last mask and lab coat and slipped them on.
“I thought it would be like when a singer dies and people put the CDs back on the charts,” Ramirez said as he walked over. “But uh-uh. After last night no one wants to know from bats.”
“That’s because most people are not curious by nature,” Lowery said without turning.
“I think they’re just scared shitless, Professor,” Ramirez said. “And after the news footage I saw this morning, I don’t blame them. Nobody wants anything to do with bats.”
Lowery responded with silence. Even bent over the bat, Joyce was very much aware of his displeasure. That had always been his way: he passed on his wisdom, and you either accepted it or you didn’t. If you didn’t, he had no time for you. That could be hurtful to a career in a field as small as this one.
But Marc, bless his strange little self, didn’t seem to care.
The grad student walked over and stood between Heidi and Dr. Joyce. The OEM deputy scooted over several steps so Ramirez could move in. He smiled at her through his mask. She looked at him again, nodded once, then went back to writing in her steno pad.
Then Ramirez saw the bat.“ Madre de Dios!” he said.
The giant creature was lying on its belly on the canvas. Its wingtips were hanging over the sides of the table. Its head was turned sideways against the wall so the body could fit. An incision had been made along the shoulders and along the neck. There were dark, red muscles roped one over another, giving the bat fat mounds on the shoulders, down the back, and along the neck. Joyce was carefully removing layers of muscle with a scalpel while Lowery watched. A video camera set on a tripod behind Lowery was recording the dissection.
“Forget what you said last night about bats as territorial carnivores,” Ramirez told Joyce. “Thisis my doctoral thesis.”
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And you bagged it.”
“Barely.”
Ramirez glanced at her. “How’re you doing?”
“I’ve had quieter nights,” Joyce said.
Lowery exhaled impatiently.
Ramirez stopped talking. But only for a moment.“Is he a vespertilionid?”
“He is,” Joyce said. “Myotis mystacinus.”
“How much does he weigh?”
“Five hundred and sixty-six pounds, seven and one-half ounces,” Joyce replied. “A lot of that’s muscle, though not as much as you might think. There’s an extremely high percentage of fat in the lower thorax, roughly forty-six percent of its body weight.”
“That makes sense,” Ramirez said. “He’d need to burn a lot of fuel when he flies.”
“But he’d burn that up very fast,” Joyce said, “which would account for his enormous appetite and the need to shift, very quickly, from insects to other life-forms.”
“And there’s a female like it still out there.”
“Right.”
“She’s probably, what? Seventy percent as large?”
“If the normal ratios hold, yes. I couldn’t tell when I saw her. She was too far away. It’s amazing, though, Marc. We were just looking in this one’s chest. The lungs and heart are enlarged seven percent more than the bat’s overall size increase, though all the other organs are proportionately smaller.”
“Providing more oxygen and increased blood flow, less flying weight,” Ramirez suggested.
“That would be my guess.”
Ramirez slowly shook his head. “So what part of them did the radiation kick into overdrive?”
“I haven’t gotten to the microscope yet,” Joyce said, “but the database references a similar mutation among mice. In their case, probably this one as well, the mutation was centered in the muscle. Radiation affected the gene that encodes myostatin-”
“Right,” Ramirez said. “So the growth-regulating protein shut down, growth continued unchecked outside the womb, and in just one generation you end up with Mothra.”
“Exactly.”
Ramirez thought for a moment. “How old is this bat?”
“About eight years.”
“Long past the age when it could have sired pups.”
“Right, and I know exactly where you’re going with that. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Increased musculature usually leads to reduced fertility, just as it does with heavy-duty human weightlifters. So when an animal like thisdoes become pregnant-”
“Its mate does everything it possibly can to ensure the safety of the offspring,” Ramirez said. “It searches for a place where there’s enough water, food, shelter, warmth, and privacy to suit the mother and child. It prepares a nest. Then it goes and gets her.”
“Or given the infestation we saw last night, she or he summons an escort,” Joyce said.
Lowery shook his head. “That kind of call-pattern communication among bats would be unprecedented, and I don’t see how radiation would affect that.”
“Not directly,” Joyce said, “as in increased intelligence. But we have no way of knowing what effect a larger larynx and a lower vocal range would have on a colony.”
“You haven’t done the larynx yet?” Ramirez asked.
Joyce shook her head. “The pest control people wanted the mechanics of the bat itself first. What it’s capable of, what its weaknesses might be in case they have to-”
There were pops in the distance. Joyce stopped cutting.
“What’s the matter?” Lowery asked.
“That sounded like gunfire.”