Doyle tossed the paper clip on the table and sat back. The room was somehow much quieter. Even Gentry had to admit that, hearing it spoken here, the notion sounded absurd.
“Why do you believe that?” Weeks asked. There was nothing judgmental in his tone.
“Because there was nothing else in that building that would have attracted the bat. She ate nothing at the shelter. She was there only a minute or two. And she attacked no one, which suggests a mollifying factor, a mollifyingpresence. God knows she wasn’t calm when she left the museum. The children at the shelter were playing the game when the bat came. It apparently became unplugged after that, but when we put it back on it had a sound very much like a heartbeat.”
“You put it back on?” Doyle said.
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t your bat return?”
“Because she would have been out of range by then.”
Weeks asked, “Assuming this is true, about the heartbeat, what do you propose?”
“I suggest we set a trap for her,” Joyce said. “The bat is nesting somewhere downtown. We’ll probably know her exact location very soon. She’s very close to giving birth, and I suspect she’s stockpiling food for the event even as we speak.”
“Human victims?” Commissioner Veltre asked.
“Possibly. No, probably. She’ll want enough food to tide her over for several days.”
“Gordy,” Veltre said, “I want to pull my people out of the subway stations. I’ll put them on the street where they stand less chance of being caught like that man at Christopher Street.”
“Do it,” said Weeks.
Veltre turned from the table and called on his cell phone.
“How large will this offspring be?” Weeks asked.
“Maybe twenty or thirty pounds,” Joyce said. “A wing-span of possibly two feet, maybe a little more. But its size won’t be the big problem. Nor will its mobility, which will be limited for a few days. The problem is if it starts making the same high-frequency sounds as its mother. The bats in the area will probably respond just as they did to the giant male and female.”
“By gathering around it,” Weeks said.
Joyce nodded.
The mayor said, “Gordy, if Dr. Joyce is correct and we find out exactly where she is, why don’t we just throw everything we’ve got at her?”
“Because, Mr. Mayor,” said Joyce, “you’ll still have the little bats to deal with.”
“You mean her offspring?”
“No. The million other vespers in the city. When she came to the shelter, the small bats were nonaggressive because the giant bat was calm. We have to keep her that way. If you try to sneak up on her, she’ll hear. If she hears, she’ll call for backup, as it were.”
Weeks turned back to Joyce. “So what’s your plan?”
“I’m sort of improvising,” she said, “but I propose we lure the she-bat out of her nest using the video game sound. Bring her to wherewe want her, whether that’s somewhere in the subway tunnels or out in the open. Once we have her there, we kill her in a way that doesn’t involve anyone trying to close in on her.”
“Kill a pregnant female animal,” said Press Secretary Hardaway. “The animal rights activists will excoriate us for that.”
“Sane humans will applaud us,” the mayor said dismissively.
“The question is, how do we kill the bat without getting close to her?” Weeks asked. “Could we put snipers on surrounding rooftops?”
“No,” Joyce said. “The smaller bats would muck things up for a telescopic sight.”
Commissioner Veltre looked at her. “You’re sure of that?”
“I do a lot of shooting,” Joyce said. “The little bats would crisscross the line of fire at different depths of field, making it extremely difficult for a marksman to focus on the target.”
“What about poison gas?” the mayor asked. “We were talking about this before you arrived, Dr. Joyce. The Pied Piper aspect could be perfect. If we have the ability to bring the bat to a specific section of tunnel, then all we have to do is keep everyone away from that area until we’re finished.”
“And I still say that’s much too dangerous,” Department of Health director Whalen and Environmental Protection head Irizzary both said almost at once and with the same exasperation.
“As if a few hundred thousand bats, a mad giant, and tons of bat shitaren’t dangerous,” contributed Doyle.
“They are,” Whalen agreed, “only we don’t even know how large a dose it will take to kill the bat.”
“Plus leaks can and will happen,” added Irizzary. “Especially if we have to keep pouring it on.”
“And then there’s the cleanup afterward,” Whalen said. “It could leak into the water, kill fish, birds-”
“We can always use a shitload of hair spray and a really big tennis racket,” Veltre suggested, only half in jest.
“There is one thing to keep in mind,” Joyce said. “I have no idea how long the bat will sit still when she realizes that the heartbeat isn’t a heartbeat. We may have only a few seconds to destroy her. And I don’t think we’ll be able to draw her out a second time. This creature’s smart.”
Doyle said, “Assuming we can even get the bat where we want her using this dubious Pac-Man gambit, we can always use ethyl chloride.”
“Yes,” Weeks said. “Yes, I like that.”
“What’s ethyl chloride?” the mayor asked.
“It’s a congealant,” Weeks said. “A liquid that vaporizes at room temperature and freezes whatever it comes in contact with.”
“We use it as a local to numb kids’ skin before we give them stitches,” said Emergency Medical Services chief Lipsey. “Fast-freeze-turns everything white. A large enough dose will induce hypothermia.”
“We’ve got a lot of it on hand from the rat sweep we just finished. All we’d have to do is barge it down from the boat basin on West Seventy-ninth,” Doyle said.
“What are the risks?” the mayor asked.
“Frankly, not many,” Weeks said.
“Do you agree?” Taylor asked Whalen and Irizzary.
They both nodded.
The mayor looked at Joyce. “So we have the agent. But do we have the subject? Doctor, I’m more than a little worried about betting everything on-what did you call it, Al?”
“The Pac-Man gambit.”
“It’s the Dumbo effect,” Gentry muttered.
“The what?”
“The Dumbo effect,” Gentry repeated. “Using a mother image to lure out a child. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Doyle said nothing. Joyce smiled slightly.
Weeks asked Joyce, “If what you’re saying is true, why not use a recording of a real bat heartbeat?”
“Because the video gameworked. The bat’s mother had been exposed to nuclear waste and God knows what else in Russia, then came to a totally new environment in New Paltz. I have no idea what effect the radiation and the change in climate and diet had on her metabolism-whether her heartbeat was normal or irregular, whether it was stronger or weaker than that of a normal bat. Whatever the special sound or rhythm was in that video game, it ‘spoke’ to the giant vesper. I suggest we stick with it.”
Everyone was silent.
The mayor nodded thoughtfully. “Gordy?”
Weeks sighed. “Dr. Joyce is the expert on bats.” He looked over at her. “I say we bet on her game plan.”
The mayor slapped the table. “Then let’s make it happen. Otherwise we’ll all be living in Jersey.”
The mayor thanked everyone, rose, and left the room. The press secretary was sitting to Joyce’s left and thanked her for her efforts. Commissioner Veltre came over to congratulate Gentry on the fine work he’d done since the crisis began.
“The fine work you’ve doneagain,” was how Veltre put it.
Doyle slipped away without a glance.
As everyone else left, Weeks came over, thanked them both, and asked them to continue as members of the team.