Spider Legs (12 page)

Now she had to laugh. “Yes, let's talk,” she agreed gladly. He had made it easy, again.

She marshaled her memories and plunged in. “I might as well start at the beginning. Stop me when I get boring, and I'll try to cut to the chase. It—it's just not entirely comfortable getting into this particular matter.”

“It would be a dull life indeed that had no discomfort. There's a Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ “

“I fear it is possible to live in boring times, and still be spoiled.” She took a breath. “I was born in Ossining, New York, and moved with my family to New York City when I was eight years old. My father was a physician and chemist. My mother, the former Antonia de Paiva Pereira, was the daughter of a high ranking official in the Brazilian government.” She glanced at him, but he showed no sign of boredom yet. “So it was a mixed family, of a sort, but fairly bright.”

“So your intellect did not appear from nowhere,” Nathan said. “I hadn't really supposed that it had.”

He seemed to know just what to say! Or maybe she was primed to react positively to any remark he made. That notion made her nervous. She knew she had to get this done with soon, and suffer the worst before she allowed herself to get in any deeper emotionally.

“I was stimulated by the intellectual climate of New York City and did quite well in my school classes. When my family returned to Ossining during my high school years, I was at first depressed. But when I graduated second in my class from Ossining High School, my spirits improved, and I went on to Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania where I double-majored in criminology and botany.”

“And you thought this was routine?” he asked with a lifted eyebrow.

She smiled. He really did seem interested. “No. I always loved the look on friends’ faces when I told them of my odd mixture of interests. Unfortunately, my father grew ill at the same time, and I had to drop out of college early to help support my family and pay the medical bills. My parents died when I was in my early twenties, at which point I was more interested in supporting
myself than in returning to college. So at the age of 21 I moved to Las Vegas where I worked as a self-employed horticulturist who did work for several of the casinos.”

“You majored in criminology and associated with casinos?”

“I didn't touch their business. I hate gambling. But they paid excellent money for suitable plants. It was a living, doing what I liked. But I wasn't satisfied. I'm—” She paused. “I have a great need for affection, love, and physical pleasure. I didn't like living alone. So maybe I was too ready to find romance. To convince myself.

“Aren't we all,” he said.

She was glad for the pretext to delay her conclusion. “You got into something?”

“I was really too busy. But I confess that on occasion I might have wished to know one of the female students better. But who would want to share a life with a man whose passion is sea creatures without backbones?”

She had a ready answer for that, but this was not the time. “Did you ever actually inquire?”

He grinned ruefully. “Not after my first failure. I couldn't find the words, ironically. I was never at a loss for words in the classroom or on field trips, but the moment I strayed from zoology I lost my tongue. Especially in the presence of an interesting woman.”

“Well, that explains why you've had no such difficulty today!”

He actually blushed. “That's not—I didn't mean—it's been so natural with you that—” He shook his head. “ ‘I guess I put my foot in it. I apologize. I do find you—that is—” He stalled out.

She realized that he was having extreme difficulty telling her that he liked her. He really did lack ready words in this connection. She hadn't realized it before because she had pretty much carried the ball to him, so far. He wasn't short of feeling, just nerve. And—she liked that too. “No offense taken,” she said, keeping her gaze on the stone. “I shouldn't have teased you.” Such teasing had come so naturally to Garth and Kalinda, but obviously Natalie herself lacked the touch for it.

“I think I have just sufficiently clarified why I never married again,” he said. “Or even came close to it. It was not for lack of desire. It's simply not a specialty of competence for me.”

He didn't realize how attractive that made him to her. But it was best to cool it until she had said her piece. She didn't want the kind of disappointment she would otherwise risk. “At any rate, I was too eager,” she continued. “I married a tall Dutch chef for the John Ebersole Restaurant in Vegas.” She swallowed, then hurried on. “But the marriage ended after two years. Despite his pre-marriage promises to stop smoking and drinking, my husband continued. In fact, he began to drink more and more, and paid me less and less attention.”

“What a waste,” Nathan murmured.

“Maybe I was too demanding,” she said, trying to be fair. “I had always been smart in school instead of popular. I simply may have expected too much of marriage.”

He shook his head. “He was an alcoholic. They can be very good at placing the blame for their condition elsewhere. That marriage was surely doomed, regardless.”

“Maybe so. I tried so hard, but the Dutchman seemed totally uninterested.
How could someone change so abruptly after marriage?
I wondered. I was finally happy when I had the courage to end it.”

Nathan looked at her penetratingly. “I have had no personal experience with this sort of thing, but I think I ought to ask. Was he—?”

“Abusive? Yes. I didn't really understand the way of it at first. I blamed myself. And I think I am scarred.”

“Emotionally,” he said.

“When it started moving from the verbal to the physical, I—well, I had had training in self defense, of course. So he didn't actually beat on me. I beat on him, technically, when he tried it. But the whole thing disgusted me so much that I lost my taste for any kind of romance for some time. Now I—I would like to have a relationship with someone. With you, perhaps. But I'm just not ready for—”

“I understand,” he said quickly. “I had too little; you had too much.”

“But you see, if you have hopes of—of an affair—I'm probably wasting your time. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be willing to try, just that it might lead to disaster. Because of my—reactions. For example, the moment I smell liquor I get tense. Arresting drunks is fine, but I don't—don't—”

“You don't have to kiss a drunk,” he said. “I well understand the aversion.”

“I thought I should tell you that up-front. To free you, in case—”

“I think I am not at all like your ex-husband,” he said seriously. “My problem is the opposite extreme. You need have no fear of any untoward expectations. I'm quite satisfied just to be looking for rocks and lakes with you.” He considered. “But I must admit that I would like to hold your hand again.”

“My hand you may have,” she said, smiling. She set down the rock and put out her hand with a little flourish, and he took it. “The rest is readily told. After I left the Dutchman, I once again packed my bags. This time I took a vacation in Newfoundland—where I have been ever since. I love the land, the people, the sea, and everything. I joined the police force two years ago when I was 28. And that's my life history.”

“I wasn't bored at all.” He smiled ruefully. “In fact, I think this is the closest I have ever been to a woman. Emotionally. I realize that sounds odd, considering my onetime marriage, but there's the matter of rapport.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I exaggerate.”

“I don't think so.” She considered a moment. “I was mostly satisfied, until—” She shrugged, deciding on candor. “Until Garth and Kalinda showed me how marriage could be. I was coming to understand what I had missed. Then I met you.” She nerved herself again. “I have been considerably more forward with you than I ever thought I could be. If you wish to go now, please do it quickly.” She glanced at the motorcycle. “Figuratively speaking. I'd rather not be stranded here physically.”

Nathan laughed. “I don't think I could leave you now, literally or figuratively. I spoke too much, the other night, because somehow I just wanted you to know me. I think you wanted me to know you, similarly.” He looked down, then met her gaze. “Are you repulsed by fish or invertebrates?”

“Not any more, I think. As long as they don't drink whiskey. Though some of those exhibits in Martha's Fish Store—”

“
I
was repulsed by some of that.” He looked around. “Let's continue our explorations, of whatever nature.”

She glanced at the sky. “That may not be wise. I see a cloud on the horizon.”

“No bigger than a man's hand,” he agreed. “We had better start back after all.”

“Yes,” she said with regret, picking up her rock. It would have to do. They walked toward the motorcycle.

CHAPTER 19

Monster

I
T HAD BEEN
several years ago that Martha Samules began experiments with pycnogonids in her modest lab in back of her fish store. So little was known about any species living near Newfoundland, as well as deep-sea species in general, that Martha thought she could make an interesting contribution to science, at the same time satisfying her own curiosity. She also considered the possibility that one day she might use them for her own personal purposes, the nature of which became clearer as she performed various biochemical experiments over the years.

Initially, she was simply curious about their life cycles and how they traveled so elegantly with their long, gangly legs. Subliminally she felt a connection with them on an emotional and physical level: both Martha and the sea spiders were fairly ugly and misunderstood, they both had long appendages, they both possessed a stout body and will—a will stronger than a casual observer might ever discern. Only later did she begin to formulate a plan for using the pycnogonids for her own terrible purposes: to control world population.

Each day during the cool summer, she went to Trinity and Bonavista Bay with her scuba gear, and roamed the sea floor in search of specimens. For some reason, sea spiders were more common in the cold waters of the Arctic and Antarctic seas than
they were elsewhere, although they were found in all seas. This fact made the cold waters of Newfoundland a particularly nice place in which to search for the creatures. Once she spotted a sea spider, Martha slowly crept up behind it and then grabbed it with her gloved right hand. Then she tossed the writhing creature into a metallic cage. She usually came home with two or three pycnos a day for her experiments.

Back in her van, Martha submerged the cages in a large plastic vat of salt water she kept by the van's back doors. The ride from the coast to her fish store took around five minutes. The pyncos usually tried to escape by climbing the cage walls, but the cages were perfect prisons of hard metal wire. Once back at the lab she dropped them into salt-water aquaria with larger filters to keep the water clean.

Martha began to operate on the pycnos while they were still alive, after pinning them upside down on a dissecting pan. She did have reservations about cutting and probing them while they made terrible mewing sounds and waved their long proboscises, because she really didn't enjoy inflicting any pain on innocent creatures. However her need to learn more about the pycnos was greater than her hesitancy regarding any discomfort they might feel, or the ghastly sight of their writhing legs as she removed some of their shell-like exoskeletons and peeked inside.

After discovering a small air cavity at the base of the creature's abdomen, she began to probe at the muscles and nerves that lined the cavity, through the internal hatch door she had cut in the exoskeleton.

“Ooh,” she squealed, as the creature's legs responded when she pressed certain pressure points inside the abdomen. What worked for lobsters worked for sea spiders too. Through the next few weeks she found that by pressing particular muscles and nerves in the abdomen, she could trigger certain specific leg motions. Through the next month a plan began to form in her mind. If she could obtain and train some specimens of the
Colossendeis
species of sea spiders, which normally could attain the size of an adult human, and somehow get them to grow to
elephantine proportions, she could actually use the creatures as submarines. She could make an artificial hatch in one of the creatures’ abdomens, crawl inside, and guide it under water. A crazy idea, she thought. But it might just be possible.

Although specimens of
Colossendeis
could attain sizes close to that of an adult human, Martha continued to be interested in creating even bigger versions of the animal. After reading articles by University of Maryland researchers on the use of human growth hormone in salmon to produce fish that were two to three times their normal size, she attempted to do the same with the pycnos. The process was called genetic engineering.

For starters, Martha knew of researchers who had isolated growth hormones from tiny fruit flies called
Drosophila.
When the level of the hormone was increased it had made the flies grow to three times their normal size. Since pycnogonids and fruit flies were both members of the same phylum, the arthropods, Martha hoped that the fruit fly hormones would be similar enough to have a noticeable effect on pycnos.

Starting with tiny pycno eggs, each a little larger than a grain of sand, she microinjected little pieces of microscopic bacterial DNA known as plasmids, which contained a copy of the growth hormone gene. The plasmid DNA would be acting like little drug factories, producing small amounts of the hormone in the pycno on a daily basis. Usually, hormones were naturally occurring trace substances produced by glands—they served as chemical messengers carried by the blood to various target organs. In the genetically engineered organism, the tiny plasmid DNA took the place of the glands. The plasmid DNA would integrate itself into the host animal's normal genetic sequence, and the growth hormone levels would rise.

To obtain the proper plasmids, Martha wrote to the University of Maryland and asked for a small sample of the bacteria containing the growth hormone genes. She told the researchers she wished to sequence and study the entire plasmid but not to use it in any test organism. She of course was lying.

Within a week she received a package marked

NON-HAZARDOUS BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS

in bright red letters. A few years ago, packages of this type were marked “BIOHAZARD,” but this tended to make the mail departments dangerously excited and, as a result, packages were often never shipped. In any case, the bacterial strains Martha had requested were not really considered hazardous because they did not contain any agent infectious to humans. The brown box she received contained a small plastic vial of soft agar along with the bacterium
E. coli
containing growth hormone plasmids. The box also contained a note which reminded her it was illegal and potentially dangerous to use the plasmids in a host organism without governmental approval. The Maryland researchers also asked that their names be on any scientific papers Martha might publish as a result of her sequencing work.

“Sure.” Martha chuckled when she read the last part of their letter. It read:

Of course should any patent arise from your use of our plasmids, or any commercial use of the plasmid be discovered, your legal department and ours would be expected to sign a contractual agreement.

Martha's idea to transform the sea spiders into bigger specimens depended on the theory that the growth hormones from flies should have an effect on the pycnos. Not a crazy idea, she told herself. After all, Auburn University scientists recently had shown that genetically engineered catfish containing extra copies of the human growth hormone gene grew at abnormally fast rates. And the Department of Agriculture had been experimenting with transgenic carp and succeeded in breeding fish that were twice the normal size. If it worked for catfish and carp, why not for the pycnos?

Martha scraped the contents of the vial into a glass petri dish which contained a nutrient gel on the bottom. Inside the dish, the bacteria containing the growth hormone plasmid genes
would reproduce. Interestingly, the petri dish contained an agar gel that was laced with an antibiotic called ampicillin. Not only did the plasmids carry the growth hormone gene but they also contained antibiotic resistance genes, so any bacteria that grew in the disk were guaranteed to have the plasmid with the growth hormone gene. Any other bacteria that would try to grow in the dish would simply die. Martha also created huge stocks of
E. coli.
with the plasmid by growing giant bacterial colonies in gallon size flasks of liquid growth media.

After she had a significant stock, she microinjected purified DNA from the plasmids directly into fertilized pycnogonid eggs, some of which integrated the fly growth hormone genes of the plasmid into their own cellular genetic code. She carefully worked under a microscope, slowly manipulating a microneedle as it punctured an egg and allowed the new DNA to flow into the egg. If the method worked, Martha could mate the genetically engineered pycnogonids. Some of their offspring would contain the extra DNA coding for growth hormone and also grow to colossal proportions.

Normally when pycnogonids reproduced, the male fertilized the eggs as they passed out of the female. Then the male collected the eggs into masses on his smaller ovigerous legs. Glands on the femurs of these appendages formed a secretion for attaching the egg masses. It was at this point that Martha removed eggs, microinjected them, and then placed them back on the father pycno. Unfortunately, this was much easier to plan than to accomplish; the pycnos did not understand what she was doing, and were decidedly uncooperative. She could tie the spider down, and collect the eggs, and she could replace them. But when she released the creatures, they sensed the foreign nature of the eggs, and scraped them off. She got so angry once that she squashed one flat—then spent days in remorse. These were not human beings, after all; they didn't deserve to be destroyed out of hand. She had to find a way to anesthetize the rebellious spiders for long enough to let the modified eggs settle in, as it were, so that they no longer seemed foreign.

After a few months of trial and error, Martha found that genetically engineered fly growth hormone did produce pycnogonids that grew at rates much faster than normal. She estimated that if the current rates of growth continued, they would mature to elephant size in just two years. Sometimes she found it remarkable that hormones from a fly could have any effect at all on a pycno. It seemed a little like substituting water for gasoline in a car and expecting it to have a beneficial effect. However, the growth hormone molecules apparently were similar enough so that the fly molecules would have a noticeable effect on a member of this related, but different, species.

This was not to say that Martha's goal of producing huge pycnos was a simple or straightforward one. She soon found that when the pycno got very large, it had difficulty breathing, because the amount of surface area available for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide became smaller in proportion to the huge volume the creature now had. Not all the cells inside its body could satisfy their need for life-giving oxygen.

To solve this problem, Martha selectively bred species which contained, as infants, an unusually high level of hemocyanin, the compound which carried oxygen in the blood of pycnos. Just by chance, about 1 out of every 100 infant spiders had a slightly elevated level of hemocyanin in its blood. She bred these creatures to one another, and their offspring also had a slightly higher level of hemocyanin. The process was repeated for several generations of pycnos until the final specimens had very high levels of hemocyanin and blood corpuscles. Of course, all of this selective breathing was done with normal sized specimens to make the process quick and easy. It was with these better breathers that Martha again began her growth hormone experiments. The process of selecting these better breathers was not unlike the methods used by agriculturists to select disease-resistant plants or plants that could tolerate drought.

Martha also found it necessary to strengthen the hard outer material which served both as skin and skeleton for the creature. Unlike mammals and other higher organisms which had an internal
skeleton, many creatures such as insects, lobsters and pycnogonids wore their skeleton on the outside. This outer skeleton, or exoskeleton, served several functions. It gave animals their external shape—particularly important for larger arthropods which needed rigid skeletons to retain their shape out of water. Secondly, the exoskeleton provided support for the muscles. Finally, it provided protection against predators and various forces of impact, buckling, and bending.

As a student of biochemistry in college, Martha learned that the hard bony exoskelton of arthropods was made of chitin—a long polymer, or chain, of N-acetylglucosamine molecules. Martha knew that although chitin was pretty incredible stuff, the heavy load that would be placed on the exoskeleton for an elephant-sized creature made it impossible to simply grow the pycnos to elephant size and expect them to function normally, particularly out of water. Their buoyancy in water would normally help support the weight of the creatures. The exoskeleton would simply not be able to bear the stress unless she could make it stronger or thicker.

Martha found, however, that she could produce a super-hard armorlike exoskelton by accelerating the rate at which the enzyme chitin synthase built the final chitin polymer. She also added chemical variants of the small molecule, N-acetylglucosamine, which were linked together to form the final molecular chain. This helped to further strengthen the pycnogonid's external coverings.

“Eureka,” she screamed when she first hit a fist-sized pycno with a hammer and found she could not crack its exoskelton. The hammer bounced off the body as if it had struck a creature made of metal.

That had led to mischief. Her hireling Lisa, then somewhat bony and awkward, in contrast to what two years were to do for her, heard her cry and thought there had been an accident. She dashed back to the lab section, and it was all Martha could do to persuade her that there was no emergency. Fortunately the adolescent was not unduly inquisitive, and had no interest in
spiders of any kind, so the secret of Martha's researches was preserved.

Unfortunately for Martha, the stronger exoskeltons were so rigid that they sometimes confined the body tissues in a vise-like prison that did not permit proper growth. Normally, during the pycno's growth, the hard exoskeleton allowed little room for expansion and so, like with other arthropods, pycnos had to shed their coverings periodically by molting to permit additional growth. A new skeleton then had to be secreted to replace the one discarded. This molting process was under hormonal control.