Текст книги "The Judas Strain"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

He’d sworn to Kat that he would return from this mission, and he had kissed Penelope with the same silent promise.

I’m sorry…

He reached one arm up, praying for some rescue.

His hand found a hole in the tangled net. He used the stump of his other arm to force it wider. He kicked both legs, ignoring the pain from his right calf. He struggled to worm through the opening.

Then something snagged his broken leg, latching to his ankle, and tugged hard. Bone ground against bone. Agony lanced from leg to spine. Monk gasped out his last breath and stared down.

Lights in the water streaked up toward him.

Arms climbed his body, wrapped around his waist, over his chest. A rubbery limb clamped across his face, across the same lips that had once made a promise, once kissed a child.

Lights flashed around him as Monk was dragged down, down, down…

Still, he searched up one last time.

As the glow of the cruise ship faded and darkness closed over him, he sent his heart out to the two women who gave his life any meaning.

Kat.

Penelope.

I love you, love you, love you…

6:05 A.M.

Lisa sat in the backseat of the Sea Dart,bent over her knees, sobbing.

Susan sat next to her, resting a hand on her back.

No one spoke.

Ryder fought the winds as he flew the Sea Dartacross the open water. The island of Pusat faded behind them.

The storm blew them like a leaf in a gale. There was no use fighting it. They simply fled with the wind, skimming north.

They had no radio. A stray round had punched through the unit.

“The sun’s rising,” Susan mumbled, staring out the window, ignoring the navigation map on her lap.

Her words broke some barrier.

Ryder spoke from the pilot’s seat. “Maybe he made it to shore.”

Lisa sat back. She knew Monk had not. Still, she wiped her eyes. Monk had sacrificed himself so they might escape. So that those left behind aboard the Mistress of the Seashad some chance of rescue, that the world had some hope of a cure.

Still, Lisa only felt numb and dead.

“The sun…” Susan said.

Ryder banked east, skirting around another island peak. Off near the horizon, there was some sign of an end to the night’s storm. The black clouds split enough to allow sunlight to stream toward them. The first edge of the day’s sun peeked above the horizon.

Through the windshield, light flooded the cabin with brilliance.

Lisa stared toward it, seeking some absolution, to bask in the brightness, to let it inside her, to chase away the darkness there, too.

And it seemed to work – until Susan let out a terrifying scream.

Lisa jumped and turned. Susan sat bolt upright in her seat, staring wide-eyed toward the sun. But something in her eyes shone even brighter.

Raw fear.

“Susan?”

The woman continued to stare. Her mouth moved, breathless. Lisa had to read her lips. “They must not go there.”

“Who? Where?”

Susan didn’t answer. Without looking down, she took a finger and placed it on the navigation map in her lap.

Lisa read the name under her finger.

“Angkor.”

16
Bayon

JULY 7, 6:35 A.M.

Angkor Thom, Cambodia

GRAY MARCHED WITH the others toward the massive gates of the walled temple complex of Angkor Thom. The morning sun, low on the horizon, cast long shadows across the south causeway. Cicadas buzzed, along with the morning chorus of frogs.

Except for a handful of tourists and a pair of saffron-robed monks, they had the bridge to themselves at this early hour. The causeway stretched a full football field in length, framed along the edges by rows of statues: fifty-four gods on one side and fifty-four demons on the other. They overlooked a moat, mostly dry now, where once crocodiles swam, protecting the great city and the royal palace inside. The deep moat, bordered by earthen embankments, now languished in emerald expanses of algae-covered pools and swaths of grass and weeds.

As they marched, Vigor reached out to one of the bridge’s demon statues and placed a palm upon its head. “Concrete,” he said. “The original heads were mostly stolen, though some remain in Cambodian museums.”

“Let’s hope what we’re looking for wasn’t stolen,” Seichan said dourly, plainly still upset after the conversation in the van with Nasser.

Gray kept his distance from her. He wasn’t sure which of the two Guild agents was the more dangerous.

Nasser’s team of forty men spread ahead of them and behind, an escort in khaki and black berets. Nasser kept a yard behind them, continually searching around warily. Some of the tourists showed interest in their large group, but mostly their party was ignored. The ruins ahead held everyone’s attention.

At the end of the causeway, thirty-foot-tall walls of laterite stone blocks enclosed the four square miles of the ancient city. Their goal – the Bayon – lay within the enclosure. Dense forest still enveloped the city ruins. Giant palm trees shaded the walls, shrouding the massive eighty-foot-tall gate. Four giant faces had been carved into the stone tower, facing each cardinal direction.

Gray studied the faces, painted in lichen, worn by cracks. Despite the corruption of age, there remained a certain peacefulness in their expressions: broad foreheads shadowed downcast eyes, while thick lips curved gently, as enigmatic as any Mona Lisa.

“The Smile of Angkor,” Vigor said, noting his attention. “The face is that of Lokesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.”

Gray stared a breath longer, praying for that compassion to spread to Nasser. Gray checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes until the next hour mark, when Nasser would order another of his mother’s fingers chopped off.

To stop that they needed some bit of progress to appease the bastard, to hold him off longer. But what?

Gray’s breathing became more pained at this thought. His objectives tugged between two extremes: a desire to hurry forward and discover those clues that would stay Nasser’s hand andan equally strong need to delay Nasser for as long as possible, to give Director Crowe more time to find his mother and father.

Stretched between the two, Gray fought for focus, for his center.

“Look…elephants!” Kowalski said, and pointed a bit too excitedly toward the massive gateway. He took a few hurried steps forward, his long duster jacket billowing out behind his legs.

Past the entrance, Gray spotted a pair of whitish-gray Indian elephants, trunks hanging slack to the stones, eyes smattered with flies. One of the tourists, burdened by a massive camera around his neck, was being helped to mount the great animal’s back, where a teetering colorful saddle, called a howdah, had been strapped. A hand-painted sign stood on a post cemented into a tire, announcing in a variety of languages: ELEPHANT RIDES TO THE BAYON.

“Only ten dollars,” Kowalski read.

“I think we’ll be walking,” Gray responded, disappointing the man.

“Yeah, straight through elephant shit. Before long, you’ll be wishing we paid that ten bucks.”

Gray rolled his eyes and waved Kowalski to follow the trail of Nasser’s men through the gate and into Angkor Thom.

Past the wall, a paved walkway shot straight ahead, shaded by towering silk-cotton trees, whose twisted roots snaked under and over stone blocks. Seedpods from the trees littered the way, crunching underfoot.

The forest grew denser ahead, obscuring the view.

“How much farther?” Nasser asked, joining them, but keeping a yard away, a hand in the pocket of his jacket.

Vigor pointed ahead. “The Bayon temple lies a mile into the jungle.”

Nasser checked his watch, then glanced significantly toward Gray, the threat plain.

One of the ubiquitous tuk-tuks buzzed past them, the main means of transportation, basically a rickshaw hooked to a two-stroke motorbike. A pair of tourists snapped pictures of their legion in black berets, chattering away in German. Then they vanished ahead.

Gray followed its trail of exhaust, picking up the pace.

Kowalski stared into the dense forest of palms and bamboo. His face pinched with suspicion.

Vigor spoke as they walked. “Over one hundred thousand people once lived here in Angkor Thom.”

“Lived where?” Kowalski asked. “In tree houses?”

Vigor waved an arm toward the forest. “Most of the homes, even the royal palace, were made of bamboo and wood, so they rotted away. The jungle consumed them. Only the temples were made of stone. But this once used to be a bustling metropolis, with markets selling fish and rice, fruit and spices, with homes crowded with pigs and chickens. The city planners had engineered a great irrigation and canal system to support the populace. It even had a royal zoo, where elaborate circuses were performed. Angkor Thom was a vibrant city, colorful and boisterous. Fireworks filled the skies during celebrations. Musicians outnumbered the warriors, ringing out with cymbals, hand bells, and barrel drums, playing harps and lutes, blowing trumpets made of horns or conches.”

“A regular orchestra,” Kowalski groused, unimpressed.

Gray tried to picture such a city as he studied the dense forest.

“So what happened to all these people?” Kowalski asked.

Vigor rubbed his chin. “Despite what we know of daily life, much of Angkorian history remains a mystery, or at least remains purely hypothetical. Their writings were in sacred palm-leaf books called sastras. Which, like the homes here, did not survive. So Angkorian history was gathered piecemeal from studying the carved bas-reliefs on the temples. As a consequence, much of its history remains a mystery. Like what happened to the populace. Their true fate remains cloudy.”

Gray kept pace with the monsignor. “I thought they were invaded by the Thai, who trampled the ancient Khmer civilization?”

“Yes, but many historians and archaeologists believe the Thai invasion was secondary, that the Khmer people had already been weakened in some manner. One theory is that the Khmer had become less militarized due to a religious conversion to a more peaceful form of Buddhism. Yet another theory holds that the massive irrigation and water-management system that sustained the empire fell into disrepair, silting up, weakening the city, leaving it susceptible to invasion. But there is also historical evidence of repeated and systematic outbreaks of plague.”

Gray pictured Marco’s City of the Dead. They were walking those same death fields, now overgrown with forest and jungle. Nature had returned, erasing the hand of man.

“We know that Angkor persisted after Marco,” Vigor continued. “There is a brilliant account of the region by a Chinese explorer, Zhou Daguan, a full century after Marco passed through here. So the cure that was offered Marco must have eventually allowed the empire to survive, but the viral source must have persisted and continued in outbreaks of plague after plague, weakening the empire. Even the Thai invaders did not occupy Angkor. They left the vast infrastructure abandoned and fallow, letting the forest take it over. Makes you wonder why? Had they heard the stories? Had they purposefully shunned the region, believing it somehow cursed?”

Seichan had drawn closer during Vigor’s account. “So you’re suggesting that the source may still be here.”

Vigor shrugged. “Answers await at the Bayon.” He pointed through a break in the forest.

Ahead, framed by the jungle, a sandstone mountain appeared, climbing high, stippled by the morning sun into shining outcroppings of dew-damp rock and pockets of deep shadows. Smaller peaks surrounded it, clustered close, massed together into a single crag. The temple reminded Gray of something organic, like a termite mound, an ill-defined pile, as if the centuries of rain had melted the sandstone into this pocked and flowing mass.

Then a cloud passed over the sun, and shadows deepened, shifted. From out of the mass, giant stone faces appeared, pushing forth with their sphinxlike smiles, covering every surface, staring outward in all directions. The initial mass of peaks became discernible as scores of towers, rising in different levels, piled close and tight, each decorated with massive visages of Lokesvara.

Vigor mumbled, “‘Lit by the fullness of the moon, a great mountain towered above the forest, carved with a thousand faces of demons.’”

Gray’s skin chilled. He recognized the words from Marco’s text. It was where Polo’s confessor, Friar Agreer, had last been seen heading, toward a mountain carved with faces. Gray was suddenly conscious of his own feet slowing with dread. He forced his pace back up.

They had followed Marco’s trail here…now it was time to follow the last steps of Polo’s confessor. But where did Friar Agreer go?

6:53 A.M.

As the temple grew before them, a heavy silence fell over the group. Most eyes were raised toward the ruins ahead, but Vigor took the moment to study his companions. Ever since they had arrived at Angkor Thom, he had sensed an unspoken tension between Gray and Seichan. While the two had never been bosom companions, there had always been a strained intimacy between them. And though their arguments had remained heated, the physical distance between the pair had diminished over the past day, a narrowing of personal space.

Vigor doubted either one was aware of it.

But since they’d stepped out of the vans here, it was as if some internal polarity had reversed inside them, repelling them far apart. Not only did they keep well away, he noted a heaviness to Gray’s study of Seichan when her back was turned, and Seichan had grown harder again, her eyes tighter, her lips thinner.

Seichan kept closer to Vigor, as if needing some reassurance from him, but was unable to ask for it. Her gaze remained fixed on the ruins. They were close enough that the true breadth of the Bayon was now discernible.

Fifty-four towers clustered on three rising levels.

But the most striking feature was the number of carved faces.

Well over two hundred.

The morning light shifted with the clouds, creating the illusion that the faces were alive, moving, observing those who approached.

“Why so many?” Seichan finally mumbled at his side.

Vigor knew she was asking about the stone visages. “No one knows,” he answered. “Some say they represent vigilance, faces staring out from a secret heart, guarding inner mysteries. It is also said that the Bayon’s foundations were built upon an even earlier structure. Archaeologists have discovered walled-up rooms, where more faces were hidden, forever locked in darkness.”

Vigor waved ahead. “The Bayon was also the last temple ever built in Angkor, marking the end of a period of almost continuous construction that spanned centuries.”

“So why did they stop building?” Gray asked, moving closer.

Vigor glanced to him. “Maybe they uncovered something that discouraged further excavations. When the Khmer engineers built the Bayon, they dug down. Deep. A quarter of the Bayon is buried.”

“Buried?”

Vigor nodded. “Most of the Angkor temples are based on the design of mandalas. A series of stacked rectangles, that represent the physical universe, surround a circular tower in the center. The middle tower represents the magical mountain of Hindu mythology, Mount Meru, where the gods reside. By partially burying the temple, the central tower embodies Mount Meru, demonstrating the penetration of this magical mountain from the earth up to heaven. Stories persist of both treasures and horrors hidden in those lower levels of the Bayon.”

By now they had reached the end of the pathway. It widened into an open stone plaza. The bulk of the temple rose ahead of them. Dozens of faces stared down. Tourists could be seen climbing about the temple’s various levels.

They continued forward, crossing alongside a row of parked tuk-tuks. Ahead, a small line of roadside stands proffered fruits in all their variety: mangoes, jackfruit, tamarind, Chinese dates, even small softball-size watermelons. Thin-limbed children dashed among the stands, reviving a little of the ancient city’s vibrancy with their laughter and calls. Off to another side, a more solemn group of six saffron-robed monks sat on woven mats, heads bowed, praying amid a cloud of incense.

Vigor added his own silent appeal as he passed, praying for strength, wisdom, and protection.

Ahead, their man Kowalski had stopped at one of the stands. A wrinkled old woman with a perfectly round face stood bent over an iron brazier, cooking breakfast on sticks. Chicken and beef roasted alongside turtle and lizard. The man sniffed at an appetizing skewer.

“Is that soft-shell crab?” he asked, leaning closer for a whiff. The skewer speared something meaty with jointed legs, blackened and curled by the fire.

The woman nodded her head vigorously, smiling broadly at his interest. She spoke rapidly in Khmer.

Seichan stepped to Kowalski’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder. “It’s fried tarantula. Very popular for breakfast in Cambodia.”

Kowalski shuddered and backed away. “Thanks. I’ll stick with an Egg McMuffin.”

A less picky thief – a macaque monkey – bounded out of the ruins, grabbed an ear of corn from behind the woman, and dashed straight in front of Kowalski. The large man startled back, bumping into Gray, scrambling out of the way.

Kowalski’s hand jerked back under his jacket.

Gray stopped him, pinching his elbow hard, too hard. Gray’s eyes flicked back to Nasser, then away again. “It was only a monkey.”

Kowalski shook free of Gray’s hand. “Yeah, well, I don’t like monkeys.” The large man glowered and stormed ahead. “Had a bad experience with ’em once before. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Vigor shook his head and led them around to the eastern entrance to the Bayon. The stone causeway here was a ruin of jumbled blocks, studded with giant date palms and more of the silk-cotton trees with their snaking tangles of roots. They crossed in a crooked line through the entrance to the first level, passing under the watchful gaze of more bodhisattva faces.

They entered an inner courtyard, framed in galleries. The walls were carved in intricate bas-reliefs, covered from top to bottom in strips of story. Vigor glanced at the nearest. They depicted everyday scenes: a fisherman casting nets, a farmer harvesting rice, two cocks fighting amid a crowd, a woman cooking skewers over a charcoal. The last reminded Vigor of the old woman with the fried tarantulas, demonstrating how the past and present were still entwined.

“Where do we begin?” Gray asked, daunted at the ten acres of temple grounds to search.

Vigor understood his consternation. Even from here, it was evident that the temple was a veritable three-dimensional maze of stooped passages, squared archways, dark galleries, steep steps, sunlit courtyards, and cavelike rooms. And all around, towers or gopurasrose in giant spears and cones, decorated with the ubiquitous faces.

It would be easy to get lost in there.

Even Nasser seemed to sense this. He waved a portion of his men into a tighter clutch around Gray’s group. He sent a few others running forward to take up key positions in the courtyard here, covering all the exits, setting another level of defense.

Vigor felt the noose around his neck, but there was only one way to go. He pointed ahead.

“From a map I studied, the next level from here is another square court, like this one. But I think we should continue directly to the third level. To where the central sanctuary lies. We can get to it by going this way.”

Still, as they made their way around the first level, Vigor paused by a spectacular bas-relief on the north wall, larger than all the rest, covering an entire section all by itself. His feet slowed as he passed it.

It depicted two forces – gods and demons, the same as the statues along the causeway. They were playing tug-of-war with a great snake as a rope. Between them, the snake was wrapped around a mountain seated on the back of a turtle.

“What is it?” Gray asked.

“One of the main Hindu creation myths. The Churning of the Ocean of Milk.” Vigor pointed out details. “On this side are the devasor gods…on the other are the demonic asuras. They are using the snake god Vasuki as a rope to turn the great magical mountain. Back and forth, back and forth. Stirring the cosmic ocean into a milky froth. It is from this froth that the elixir of immortality called amritawill be churned. The turtle underneath the mountain is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who aids the gods and demons by holding up the mountain so it doesn’t sink.”

Vigor pointed to the central tower of the Bayon. “And supposedly there is that mountain. Or at least its representation here on Earth.”

Gray glanced to the fifteen-story tower, then back to the bas-relief. He trailed a finger along the carved mountain, his brow furrowed. “So what happened? Did the elixir get made?”

Vigor shook his head. “According to the story, there were some complications. The snake Vasuki got sick from all the tugging and vomited a great poison. It sickened both gods and demons, threatening to kill them all. Vishnu saved them by drinking up the poison himself, but in the process of detoxifying it, he turned blue, which is why he is always depicted with a blue throat. And with his help, the churning continued that produced not only the elixir of immortality but also the dancing celestial spirits called apsaras. So all ended well.”

Vigor tried to urge them onward, but Gray remained where he was, staring at the bas-relief, an odd expression on his face.

Nasser came up to him. “Time has run out,” he said, tapping his wristwatch with his cell phone. His voice was thick with disdain. “Do you have any sudden insights?”

Vigor felt coldness flowing from the man amid a dark amusement. He was enjoying torturing Gray. Vigor started to step between them, fearing Gray might react badly and attack Nasser again.

But instead Gray only nodded. “I do.”

Nasser’s eyes widened, surprised.

Gray placed a palm on the bas-relief. “The story here. It’s not a creation myth. It’s the story of the Judas Strain.”

“What are you talking about?” Nasser asked.

Vigor had the same question.

Gray explained. “From what you told us about the exposure over in Indonesia, the disease all started with seas in the area glowing with bacteria. Seas described as frothy and white. Like churned-up milk.”

Vigor straightened, stepping around Gray to view the bas-relief with new eyes. He stood with his hands on his hips.

Seichan joined him. Off to the side, Kowalski remained where he was, studying a line of bare-breasted women, his nose close to the stone.

Gray continued, pointing to the snake. “Then a great poison was released that threatened all life, good and bad.”

Seichan nodded. “Like the toxic bacteria, spewing poison and laying a swath of death.”

Nasser looked unconvinced.

Gray pressed his point home. “And according to this myth, someonesurvived the exposure and saved the world. Vishnu. He drank the poison, detoxified it, and turned blue…”

“As if he were glowing,” Vigor mumbled.

“Like the survivors described in Marco’s book,” Gray added. “And like the patient you described, Nasser. All glowing blue.”

Vigor slowly nodded. “It’s too perfect to be coincidence. And many ancient myths grew out of true histories.”

Gray turned to Nasser. “If I’m right, here is the first clue that we’re on the right track. That perhaps there is more yet to learn.”

Nasser’s eyes narrowed, momentarily angry – but he slowly nodded. “I believe you may be right, Commander Pierce. Very good. You just reset the clock for another hour.”

Gray attempted to hide his relief, letting out his breath with a slight rattle.

“So let us continue,” Nasser said.

Vigor drew them toward a shadowed flight of steep stairs. Behind him, Gray lingered a moment more, studying the carving. He reached out and ran a finger along the carved mountain – then back to the central tower.

Gray’s eyes met Vigor’s. Vigor noted the barest shake of the commander’s head when he turned away.

Did Gray know something more?

Vigor ducked into the narrow stairs. Before Gray had turned, Vigor had noted something else, something in the commander’s face.

Fear.

7:32 A.M.

Island of Natuna Besar

“They must not go there…” Susan moaned again.

The woman lay sprawled across the rear seats of the Sea Dart,slipping into and out of consciousness, close to rolling back into a full catatonic stupor. Susan fought to pull away the fire blanket that Lisa had spread over her.

“Lie still,” Lisa urged. “Try to rest. Ryder will be back soon.”

The Sea Dartrocked and bumped against the end of the fuel dock. They had landed in the sheltered bay of a small island, somewhere off the coast of Borneo. Rain continued to pour out of low clouds, but the dark anger of the typhoon had swept away. Thunder rumbled, but it sounded distant and fading.

Still leaden with grief over Monk, Lisa stared past the Sea Dart’s windshield. While she waited, her thoughts slipped easily into recriminations. She could have done more. Moved faster. Thought of something clever at the last moment. Instead, Monk’s prosthetic hand still hung from the wing’s strut. Ryder hadn’t been able to pry it off.

Lisa glanced to the hatch, wishing Ryder would get back soon. He had topped off his boat’s petrol tank and gone in search of a telephone with a fistful of emergency cash he had stored here.

But his chances looked doubtful. The nearby village lay dark along the beach, storm-damaged with stripped roofs, downed palm trees, and beaches littered with overturned skiffs and debris. There had been no power at the dock’s fuel pumps. Ryder had to hand-crank the petrol, passing a wadful of cash to a wet dog of a man in flip-flops and knee-length shorts. The man had left with Ryder on a motorcycle, assuring him they could find a phone near the island’s small inland airport.

The tropical island of Natuna Besar served the tourist trade with its abundant snorkeling reefs and excellent sport fishing. But it had been evacuated with the threat of the typhoon. The place looked deserted.

Most of the islands they had flown over had been in a similar state of shambles.

From the air, Ryder had spotted the airport on Natuna Besar. “Surely someone down there has a sat-phone we could borrow,” he had said. “Or a way to repair our radio.”

Needing to fuel anyway, they had made a landing in the sheltered bay. Lisa now waited with Susan.

Worried, Lisa placed a hand on the woman’s damp brow. In the dimness of the cabin, Susan’s face shone with a deeper glow, seeming to rise more out of her underlying bones than her skin. Lisa felt a burn under her palm as she rested it on Susan’s forehead.

But it was not a fever.

Lisa lifted away her hand. It still continued to burn.

What the hell?

Lisa frantically rinsed her palm with water from a canteen and dried it on the fire blanket. The smolder subsided.

Lisa stared at the sheen of Susan’s skin, rubbing the sting from her fingertips. This was new. The cyanobacteria must be producing a caustic chemical. And while it burned Lisa’s skin, Susan remained resistant or protected.

What was happening?

As if reading her thoughts, Susan squirmed an arm out from under the blanket. Her hand stretched toward the square of weak sunlight flowing through the hatch window. The glow in her flesh vanished in the brighter light.

The contact seemed to settle Susan. She let out a long sigh.

Sunlight.

Could it be?

Curious, Lisa reached to Susan’s hand and brushed a fingertip across her sunlit skin. Lisa yanked her arm back, shaking her fingers. Like touching a hot iron. She again doused her skin with water, the fingertip already blistering.

“It’s the sunlight,” Lisa said aloud.

She pictured Susan’s earlier outburst, when she’d first set eyes on the rising sun. Lisa also remembered one of the unique features of cyanobacteria. They were the precursors to modern plants. The bacteria contained rudimentary chloroplasts, microscopic engines to convert sunlight into energy. With the rise of the sun, the cyanobacteria were ramping up, energizing in some strange manner.

But to do what?

Lisa glanced to the navigation chart on the floor. She remembered Susan’s earlier outburst, pointing down to a spot on the map.

“Angkor,” Lisa mumbled.

Lisa had attempted to convince herself it was just a coincidence. But now she was less sure. She remembered eavesdropping on a conversation while strapped to a surgical table. Devesh had been on the phone, speaking in Arabic. She had made out only one word.

A name.

Angkor.

What if it wasn’t a coincidence?

And if not, what else did Susan know?

Lisa suspected one way to find out. She shifted over and cradled Susan’s shoulders in her arms, keeping the blanket between them. Lisa lifted Susan into the shaft of sunlight flowing through the front windshield.

Susan shuddered as soon as her face touched the brightness. Her eyes fluttered open, black pupils shifted toward the weak light. But rather than constricting in the brightness, Susan’s pupils dilated, taking in more light.

Lisa remembered the bacterial invasion of the woman’s retinas, centered around the optic nerve, direct conduits to the brain.

Susan stiffened under her. Her head lolled – then grew steadier.

“Lisa,” she said, thick-tongued and slurred.

“I’m here.”

“I have to…must get me there…before it’s too late.”

“Where?” But Lisa knew where.

Angkor.

“No more time,” Susan mumbled, and swung her face toward Lisa. Her eyes twitched from the sunlight, shying from it. Frightened. And not just because of the danger to come. Lisa saw it in her eyes. Susan was scared of what was happening to her body. She knew the truth, yet was unable to stop it.

Lisa lowered Susan out of the sunlight.

Susan’s voice momentarily steadied. One hand clutched Lisa’s wrist. Out of direct sunlight, the touch burned, but it was not blistering hot. “I’m…I’m notthe cure,” Susan said. “I know what you’re all thinking. But I’m not…not yet.”

Lisa frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I must get there. I can feel it, a pull at my bones. A certainty. Like a memory of something buried just beyond my ability to recall. I know I’m right. I just can’t explain why.”

Lisa recalled her discussion back aboard the ship. About junk DNA, about old viral sequences in our genes, collective genetic history in our code. Were the bacteria awakening something in Susan?