Instinct (2010) Read online

  ‘It’s remarkably clean down here. You know, I always wondered what the James Bond villains did with the builders who made the secret hideouts. Is it the same thing you do with the cleaners?’

  ‘Hardly. These labs are all self-cleaning. You may not have noticed but, in the elevator, you were being sterilized. The environment here is micro-organism-free through the use of convection currents. They circulate the air through gaps in the walls into a cavity of microscopic incinerators, which destroy 99.9 per cent of anything they come into contact with, so no cleaners to kill. It’s all part of the way this facility was built: automation wherever possible. It reduces the need for staff, something which has obvious benefits.’

  He turned to the next window. ‘These are the experimental labs where David’s work was taken on and developed with a little more rigour. The stations at the front are used to conduct research with individual subjects, while the wider area behind it creates simulations of field conditions.’

  Bishop pointed to a tall, thin man who was better dressed than the others, his white lab coat covering a brown wool suit whose cream pinstripes made him appear even taller. His face had a jowly length to it, as if it had melted a little in the heat, and it was topped off by a shining dome, cropped close in the few places where it had yet to go bald. As he looked up and made eye contact with Laura, he smiled with a warmth that was at odds with his otherwise unforgiving demeanour.

  ‘That’s Harry Merchant. He’s in charge of the day-to-day lab work. He oversees the other scientists’ testing of Heath’s advances to make sure they are applied correctly. He’s managed to isolate many emotional and behavioural characteristics of wasps in such a way that we can use them almost like the ingredients of a cake. A very complicated cake, of course, but to Harry it’s so much flour and butter. The labs go back a way. Usually there’s something like fifty separate experiments at various stages of development helping us to improve the methods we use to deploy the wasps.’

  ‘And why are there so few people working here? I have more in my lab at home.’

  ‘Well, we can’t exactly advertise in the wanted column. This is a very specialized job, and as much as we keep an eye on all the rising stars of genetic entomology, there is a small supply against an increasing demand. Over the years, we have designed operations here to take that into account. Many of the experiments can simply be set automatically and monitored as required.’

  Laura was glad to move on. They returned to the start of the corridor and now faced the elevator in the wide lobby area. The rooms to their right looked very different to the labs: darker, yet friendlier and more accessible. Laura could see a locker room, with doors beyond it leading off to other areas that looked similarly basic.

  ‘These are the living quarters, where all the personnel except for myself are based. The scientists’ rooms are on the left, while Major Webster’s team lives and trains on the other side.

  ‘Just quickly, the major is one of those old pros who can do his job in the dark and the snow because sometimes he has to. He’s reliability personified and has run the military part of this operation since day one. SAS, Navy Seals, Israeli Special Forces, he’s done years with them all. We only got him because he was going through his second divorce, needed a lot of money, signed up for a year and stayed ever since. There’s usually ten in the team; unfortunately, that’s down to eight, for the reasons you already know about. Those are the first casualties Carl has had to deal with for a long time, and he doesn’t want any more. The team is at your disposal though, if you need them.’

  A couple of days ago, Laura could not have envisaged a situation where she would have to make use of a team of highly trained soldiers; now, she could think of many.

  ‘OK, that’s the basic tour over.’ Bishop unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt.

  ‘Major Webster, can we have you plus whoever is available to escort us to Station A.’ He turned to Laura. ‘Best to be on the safe side.’

  They waited for Webster, Bishop rocking on his heels and Laura trying to see what was going on in Harry Merchant’s lab. The closest person to the window was Harry himself, and Laura watched as he injected a wasp with a tiny syringe. He withdrew the syringe, and let the wasp go, keeping an eye on its progress as it pottered unsteadily around the glass cube that enclosed it. Obviously this was not what Harry had been looking for, but Laura was taken aback to see him reach into one of the gloves that was attached to the near side of the cube and squash the insect to a mustard-yellow smear. As soon as he did that, a small swarm in an adjacent tank flew towards what was left of the dead wasp, and Harry noted their behaviour on a handheld computer. It was at that moment that Laura realized how MEROS research differed from her own: all her experiments were carried out in such a way that the potential harm to any living creature was kept to an absolute minimum. Here there was something more purposeful; more of a sweeping stride than a gentle amble to greater knowledge.

  She was of course aware of the alarm pheromone that was released when a wasp was in danger or engaged in an attack, which drew all the other nearby wasps to its aid, but she would never have killed one wasp to provoke that reaction in others. Harry looked up to see Laura watching the commotion, and his smile became a look of uncomfortable embarrassment, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  The awkwardness was cut short by the arrival of Major Webster.

  ‘I thought it would be useful to have the major around when we go into the surveillance room to check on the renegade nest,’ said Bishop. ‘He can tell you anything that he and his team have already tried and perhaps give you his opinion on whatever measures you might suggest.’ He then beckoned to Harry Merchant to join them. ‘And I think Harry’s read would also be useful. He knows what we can do here, so between the four of us we should work out whatever solutions there might be.’

  Harry removed his safety equipment and stood beside the others before Bishop introduced him to the newcomer.

  ‘Harry Merchant, Laura Trent.’ He shook her hand a little too hard.

  ‘Dr Trent, of course, from the British Entomological Association. I found your paper on the effects of photoperiods and host quality on reproduction most enlightening.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Laura, disarmed.

  ‘I know it must all be a bit much at the moment and, without wanting to sound condescending, things are a little different around here, but we’ll do our best to bring you up to speed.’

  ‘Shall we?’ said Bishop, gesturing towards a locked door just beyond the barracks. Webster’s palm print opened it to reveal an extensive internal security room. There were three banks of monitors, each covering a different part of the complex. A thin black microphone stuck out in front of the three chairs, currently occupied by an exhausted Garrett, Van Arenn and Mills. On Bishop’s instructions for backup, Webster had roused them from their bunks, to a chorus of bitter cursing. The soldiers shared security duties when they were not actively involved in clean-up, but they all hated spending more time than necessary down here, especially when they were just an hour into a day-long sleep. There was hardly anything that actually required their attention, but they were employed and paid, so they were often given tasks that veered very close to the definition of pointless. As ex-army grunts they were used to nine parts boredom against one of extreme excitement, but it didn’t make the boring times any more welcome.

  Another issue was their current attitude towards Bishop. The deaths of Roach and Martin were fresh in their minds, so when the man they held responsible walked into the room, they were not inclined to hide their disdain. Bishop caught their sour looks the moment he walked through the door.

  ‘Uh, on second thoughts, perhaps this conversation need not concern your troops, Major Webster.’ The three soldiers turned to their commanding officer.

  ‘OK, you three: stand down, but be ready to return at 1300 hours.’ A welcome reprieve for the soldiers, who
immediately made their way back to collapse on to their bunks.

  ‘Now let’s take a look at Lab 23.’ Webster was already in the process of tuning as many of the monitors as possible to transmit what was happening in the area around the lab. Screen by screen, an entire wall was given to increasingly comprehensive glimpses of the corridor, the door and the view from outside the lab. The final three screens showed the inside, and a clear view of the wasps. Laura remained deeply disturbed by the footage Bishop had shown her, but this time, there was no Dr Heath, so she found herself able to watch the insects with a degree of professional detachment. Although the wasps were indeed the size of bricks, with wings as big as snowshoes, they moved with astonishing speed, flitting and hovering with the agility of their smaller counterparts.

  She was also reacting as a human being, particularly when she saw the images from the final camera. They revealed an arrangement of gnawed bones which lay on the floor in roughly the poses in which David Heath, Frank Roach and Hayley Martin must have died: arms trying to cover skulls, knees tucked up into ribs and jaws wide open in the form of the grotesque screams they tried to give before the paralysis seeped into their bloodstreams. It was all too easy to imagine their last moments; knowing that death was inevitable but still praying for the horror to end.

  The light colour of the bones was offset by the dark cloud-shaped stain that lay beneath them. The blood was mottled with clots and gore, as well as the results of bowels and bladders loosened through fear. Laura noted that there were no clothes to be seen, then looked up to the deep, wide nest and realized where they had gone.

  Back on the floor, each bone was pitted like something a dog had spent a few days chewing, with the shadows of hundreds of scrapings darkening the white. The determined savagery this suggested sent a hard shudder through Laura.

  Suddenly one of the wasps flew up to the camera, knocking it sideways and scratching the lens with its jaws. Everyone instinctively jerked backwards before remembering there was no threat and returning to their positions. As it dragged its mandibles across the glass they could see right into its mouth. It was like a machine, grinding and swallowing even when there was no food.

  ‘It’s probably attracted to the whirring of the camera, but that will give you an idea of the kind of aggression we’re dealing with,’ said Webster.

  ‘By any chance, is that the one you thought of as the leader, Mr Bishop?’ asked Laura. Webster looked surprised, then interested in how Bishop was going to answer this. He had not heard this theory and was not happy to be left uninformed.

  ‘Uh … impossible to say, really,’ said Bishop, without taking his eyes off the main screen. ‘They all look pretty much alike to me.’ He then took a piece of paper and sketched a layout of the room for Laura.

  ‘It can get a little abstract looking at the same view from six different angles. The door is here on the left. In the opposite corner is the computer with the nest above it. The … um … bones are mainly in this central area and the other computers are on the right-hand side.’

  The wasps were agitated. Laura thought it might be because of the cameras, but then she spotted something on the ground in the corner of one of the shots.

  ‘Can you move the cameras?’ she asked. Webster responded by pressing a button and pushing a joystick, giving a panned view of the whole room. This immediately attracted the wasps, which then attacked the lens and body, causing it to judder violently.

  ‘That one.’ Laura pointed to a dark shape in the corner of one of the monitors. ‘Can you point it more over there and zoom in?’ They had to wait for the wasps to tire of attacking the camera and move away to reveal its view.

  ‘Is that … ?’ began Harry.

  ‘I think it must be,’ confirmed Laura. Now they were all looking at two of the wasps, their abdomens partly obscured by the edge of a table, fighting over something thin, fibrous, black and yellow.

  ‘Must be what?’ snapped Bishop.

  ‘They’re cannibalizing,’ said Laura, staring at the leg sections and wing fibres the wasps were passing back through their mandibles.

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Bishop asked.

  ‘They need to eat,’ said Harry quietly.

  ‘I assume you know that several normal species of wasp live off insects. I suppose these wasps count each other as such. Other insects, such as woodlice, will eat their own, but I’ve never known this to happen with wasps. I suppose that’s because, in the open, wasps can always find something other than themselves to consume, no matter how hungry they get, but here … Well, like Mr Merchant said, they need to eat.’

  As the meal neared its conclusion, a larger wasp landed between the two and seemed to scare them off with its greater aggression and status. With the outer parts of its jaw, it grabbed the scraps and took them back to the nest.

  Laura frowned. ‘There may be another reason why they are doing this. I can only guess at their behavioural make-up, and we wouldn’t normally see this in wasps, but we may be watching survival of the fittest in action. It looks like they’re honing the quality of the swarm by removing the weakest and feeding the strongest. If there is a leader, a queen if you will, then she’ll be getting fed by the others.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s reducing their number,’ remarked Bishop.

  Harry turned to Laura to see if she was considering the same possibility he was. ‘Not necessarily.’ Bishop looked at Harry first with incomprehension, then with fear.

  ‘You don’t mean they’re … breeding?’ Harry looked at Laura again, then she turned to Bishop.

  ‘Possibly,’ she said.

  ‘No, not possibly. Impossibly. I mean, first off they’re all female, but even if we could cause same-sex reproduction, the one absolute in all the experimentation we have undertaken to this point, the one hard, fast, unbreakable rule is that they must be unable to breed with each other. Even David would not have been so irresponsible as to create anything capable of self-procreation.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said Harry. ‘We have no idea what these wasps are capable of. We have no idea if they are a product of David’s intentions or something that went wrong. Perhaps he tried to achieve one effect but happened upon another. It’s a regular occurrence in my labs. Until we get hold of that book’ – Harry pointed to a notebook wedged between the computer monitor and the hard drive – ‘we will not be able to deal with them effectively. And, by the way, it’s only a matter of time before the wasps realize that David’s notes would make excellent nesting material, then we’re really in trouble.’

  ‘Good lord,’ said Bishop, ‘this situation can actually get worse.’

  ‘Much worse,’ added Laura.

  ‘OK, we need a plan, and we’re not going to leave this room until we’ve got one,’ said Bishop. ‘All suggestions welcome because, at this precise moment, we have zip.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ said Laura. ‘Shut off the heat. Shut it off now. You have no choice.’

  ‘I can’t sanction the destruction of all the work in this laboratory on the off-chance that it will bring this situation to an end. For all we know these wasps have been mutated to deal with colder temperatures.’

  ‘Mr Bishop. You. Have. No. Choice.’ Laura could not believe further persuasion was required.

  ‘There must be another way. We have an obligation to exhaust all other avenues before we try something so potentially disastrous. I don’t need to remind anyone here that we are required to provide these wasps for military use. It will be bad enough telling the Pentagon we were unable to contain one isolated problem in the facility, but if we explain that our action was something other than a last resort …’

  ‘Will it be worse than what they’re going to do?’ asked Harry as he watched a wasp tearing the head off one of its sisters before using its mandibles to chew up the meat and pass it back through its mouth.

  ‘Mr Bishop,’ said Laura, ‘t
hese wasps will only get more dangerous, and quickly by the looks of things. You will still have the research and knowledge. This place can start again.’ Bishop flashed a look to Webster, who pretended not to notice.

  ‘If the cold works.’ He paused and thought. ‘No, I am not prepared to allow the end of this project and facility to happen on that basis. How long have they been in there?’

  ‘From surveillance records, around two weeks,’ said Webster.

  ‘OK, then another hour or two won’t make much difference. What about poison?’

  ‘We’ve tried the conventional combinations of acetamprid, pymetrozine and novaluron, but without much effect. We could up the dose; fill the room with chemicals. It just means that, with the current ventilation system, it might be difficult to enter for maybe a day, or we’d have to go in with masks.’

  Bishop was delighted that Webster was even entertaining the possibility of sending more of his squad in. He had thought such a suggestion would be met with steadfast refusal. For now, though, in the absence of any further ideas, they may as well try pumping the place with insecticide.

  ‘OK, that’s the default idea. Major Webster, until we get something better, you can assume that what you have just outlined will be our primary course.’

  Webster went to the barracks to put Bishop’s orders into action, and Harry continued to look at the nest while Bishop escorted Laura back to his office.

  She tried not to let it show, but the last few minutes had concerned her a great deal.

  ‘Mr Bishop, I’d like to get out of here.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to take Andrew and wait for the next flight on the surface.’

  ‘Dr Trent, you can’t leave us now. Please. We’ve barely begun to explore our options.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s all fine, but I’d rather not be down here while you do the exploring.’