“ Nancy, I just don’t know.”
“Robert, it’spossible. As far as our bat knows, this is the same thing that happened once before, a month or so after she was born.”
“Abandonment.” Gentry rose. “How did our lady bat find the dead male bat?”
“She probably traced it by smell.”
“By smell. So wouldn’t the big bat also have smelled that her motherwasn’t here?”
“Olfactory memory doesn’t work that way. Bats, people, most animals recognize a smell if they encounter it again. But they can’t summon it up like they can sounds or images. If she heard something that sounded like her mother, she would believe it was her mother, smell or no smell.”
“And you’re saying this is theonly sound that ever reminded her of her mother’s heartbeat?”
“Why not? Until yesterday this bat lived her entire life in the wild. And she was with her sibling. They were brother and sister, mother and father to each other, mates.”
“Death, incest, and Oedipus,” Gentry said. “This is a goddamn Greek tragedy.”
“That’s the way some mammals are. And now, for the first time, the bat’s alone. When better to listen for her mother?”
Gentry still had problems with it, problems with all of it. Big mutant bats. Little bats driven mad by echolocation. But it didn’t change the fact that New York was under siege, and that the bats had to be dealt with.
“So how does this help us?” Gentry asked.
“I’m not sure,” Joyce said.
Once they crossed West Houston Street, the city was deserted except for police officers patrolling in cars and riot gear-and bats. They were hanging from streetlamps and awnings, from walk signs and traffic lights.
A tired-looking Marius Pace met Joyce and Gentry in the lobby of the new Office of Emergency Management headquarters. Pace took the pair directly to the elevator; on the way to the eighteenth floor, he reported where things stood as of one hour before. That was when Gordy Weeks had come out from his meeting and briefed his deputies during a short recess.
“The impact assessment is obviously pretty grim.” Pace consulted a legal notepad that was spotted with round coffee mug stains. “The subway patrols obviously weren’t able to deal with the bat, so all of New York ’s roadways, rails, and bridges have been shut down. Nothing leaves or enters the borough. All businesses here and in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx are closed except for food-service and health-care providers, but the roads are still open. The area airports have also been closed from Westchester down to New Jersey, and all incoming traffic is being diverted to Hartford, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. Only emergency aircraft can come or go locally.”
“Have there been any incidents?” Joyce asked.
“Yes. Not attacks per se, but two aircraft had to be evacuated just before takeoff, after they sucked groups of bats into the engines. The towers at all the fields are reporting radar problems due to the bats. If we haven’t cleared this up by tomorrow night, the National Guard will be mobilized to get food and medical supplies into the city. An immediate curfew will be in effect from six-thirtyP.M. until six-thirtyA.M. We’ve got a good group of people working with the media to keep the public informed, and each of the officials you’ll meet upstairs has teams dealing with problems involving health, fire, looting, sanitation, and other issues. As it happens, your timing is very good. When I E-mailed Director Weeks to tell him you were here, he informed me that they’d just started discussing what kind of offensive the city is going to mount.”
“Who’s in charge of going after the big bat?” Joyce asked.
“That information,” said Pace, “I do not have.”
They emerged in a brightly lit hallway decorated with framed newspapers of disasters going back to the blizzard of 1888. It was almost as unsettling here as it was in the streets. People were moving quickly in all directions, shouting into phones and passing papers, folders, and diskettes like batons in a relay race. The conference room was in a corner on the southwest side of the building, overlooking the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay. After they entered, Pace closed the door and left. The room was refreshingly quiet. There was artwork on the walls here, very loud and busy expressionistic prints of New York landmarks.
“To bring you up to speed, I have declared a state of emergency,” Mayor Taylor said as Joyce and Gentry took empty seats at the far end of the long table. Everyone chuckled.
The mayor was seated at the head of the table, his back to the door. He was the only one in shirtsleeves and the only one without a laptop or cellular phone in front of him.
Gordy Weeks was seated to his left. Al Doyle was on his right. Weeks introduced the others who were present: Police Commissioner Veltre, Fire Chief Pat Rosati, Department of Health director Kim Whalen, Emergency Medical Services head Barry Lipsey, and the mayor’s press secretary Caroline Hardaway.
The newcomers sat beside Department of Environmental Protection director Carlos Irizzary and Child Welfare commissioner Valari Barocas. Everyone looked a little emotionally threadbare-eyes tired, hair wandering, jaws locked. But Gentry got the impression from the very tight expressions worn by Carlos and Valari that this was the outcast section of the conference room. The people who got in the way of action with finger-wagging “what-ifs.” Of everyone present, only Commissioner Veltre seemed happy-proud?-to see Gentry. When the patrol car had radioed OEM that they were coming in, Weeks had asked that Gentry be brought up with Dr. Joyce. Veltre was pleased that “one of his own” had been in the thick of this from the start.
Doyle did not appear pleased to see either of them.
“Thank you for coming,” the mayor said.
Mayor George Taylor was a tall, robust man. He had a resonant voice that started from somewhere around his knees and picked up power in his broad chest.
“I know it’s been a long, hard day for the two of you, and we all very much appreciate everything you’ve both done.” He turned his steel gray eyes on Nancy. “I understand, Dr. Joyce, that you have specific knowledge of the oversized bat.”
“I do, sir.”
“If you would, bring us up to speed.”
There was strength and confidence in Nancy ’s voice and in her eyes, even in her straight posture. After everything that had happened, Gentry couldn’t imagine where it was coming from.
From knowing what you’re talking about,he decided.
“Mr. Mayor, this bat is a mutation, the offspring of an irradiated vespertilionid bat from Russia.”
“Vespertilionid is the name of the species,” Doyle said, leaning toward the mayor.
“Actually, that’s the family,” Joyce said to the mayor. “Vespertilionidae. Forty-two separate genera, three hundred and fifty-five species. They live almost everywhere in the world-very hardy. This particular bat and her mate came to the city from New Paltz to have pups. I believe, sir, that the birth is imminent.”
Doyle gave her a look.
“Excuse me,” Weeks said, “but how many ‘pups’ do bats have at one time?”
“One or two,” Doyle said.
Joyce glared a look at the pest control chief. Gentry could see the steel in her eyes go molten. After a moment Joyce looked down, took a shallow breath, and continued.
“The small bats-also vespertilionids-apparently came to the city in response to a signal emitted by the male. We don’t know whether the female has the same ability to control the bats. But we do know that whenever she echolocates or generates any sound in the ultrasonic, the bats go wild.”
“Meaning,” Weeks said, “if we stop her, we stop the others.”
“Yes. And I think I have a way to stop her.”
Save for the sound of forced air coming from the vents in the ceiling and Doyle turning a paper clip over and over against the table, the room was silent.
“The bat came to a women’s shelter on Twenty-third Street, I believe, because-and I know this may be a little difficult to accept-she heard a television video game that she thought was her mother’s heartbeat.”