Vespers (9 page)

But…

There was always a but. While Joyce felt at home with the unknown, she hated not knowing things. And the past fifteen or so hours had severely tested her patience. When she was a graduate student at New York University, doing fieldwork with Professor Lowery-who also became her first lover, deep in a bat cave in the Pyrenees-the older man worried about her low threshold for frustration. He advised his pupil to look at puzzles with a relaxed mind, to view them as an opportunity to add something to the annals of science. Unfortunately, Joyce just couldn’t think like that.

“You doing okay?” Gentry asked.

His voice startled her. For a moment, Joyce felt as if she’d been alone. “I’m fine. Why?”

“Just making sure. A lot of things can get to you down here. Sore feet. Thirst. Nerves.”

“No, I’m good.”

Gentry put his hands on her shoulders and moved around her. He sidled up to Arvids. “How well does your radio work down here?”

“Depends on how far down you go or how many walls get between you and the operator. So far I’ve never had a problem. Why?”

“Just curious. We’ve had trouble with our radios with all the new construction in midtown. The layers of electronics going into offices and residential buildings are acting like walls. Say,” Gentry turned to Joyce, “you said on TV that bats aren’t bothered by microwaves.”

“That’s right.”

“What about electronic noise? Could a city full of it draw them to a place or disorient them?”

“Draw them, no. Most bats ignore any sound beyond an average radius of fifty yards. And within that radius they pay attention only to sounds made by fellow bats or potential prey or predators.”

“Do they listen the same way humans do,” Gentry asked, “or do they use those echos?”

“Mechanically, bat hearing is the same as human hearing, albeit much more sensitive. When they echolocate, they ignore other sounds, pretty much the way people do when they’re talking in a subway or at a bar. The rest of the time bats listen the way other animals do.”

Arvids asked, “If there are still any bats down here, will they hear us coming?”

“They can hear an insect walking on sand six feet away.”

“I guess that would make us sound like a brass band.”

“Fife and drum corps would be more accurate,” Joyce said. “If there are bats within a mile of here, they heard our breathing and heartbeats about the time we entered the tunnel. To answer your other question, Detec-Robert,” Joyce went on, “electronics can disorient bats. Certain kinds of tiger moth emit high-frequency clicks that turn the normal flow of echo information into gibberish. We’ve been able to duplicate those signals in a lab.”

“Stealth moths,” Arvids said. “Nature is amazing.”

“Totally,” Joyce agreed. “Electronics can also confuse bats, but only if they happen to replicate a known sound-for example, a baby bat calling to its mother or a female to a male. And once the bat got a look or whiff of the computer or fax machine or whatever it happened to be, and saw that it wasn’t a fellow bat or prey, it would break off at once.”

“Pretty clever creatures.”

“They’re one of a kind,” she said proudly. “Did you ever hear of Operation X-Ray?”

Gentry said he hadn’t.

“During the Second World War, the Allies came up with a plan to drop thousands of bats from high-altitude bombers over Japanese cities. Each bat was going to be equipped with a large wax capsule strapped to its back. As the bats flew down, their body temperature would slowly melt the wax. Inside the capsule was a highly flammable liquid that would ignite when exposed to air. The bats were trained to fly toward certain sounds-air raid sirens, railroad whistles, maritime bells. They were also conditioned to fly toward searchlights. The idea was that they’d roost in strategic buildings in Japanese cities, self-immolate, and burn the buildings to the ground.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. And there was no way to stop the bats. At night, even the best sharpshooters would have had an impossible time trying to gun them down. And even then there was always the risk that a bullet would penetrate the wax, set the bat on fire, and accomplish the mission.”

Gentry said, “I can just imagine what you think of the plan.”

“Why? Because bats were dying?”

“Well, yes.”

Joyce shook her head. “I’m not an animal rights activist. I hate cats, I enjoy hunting and eating deer and boar, and I’m all for using mice as medical test subjects.I lost a father to brain cancer and a grandfather to pancreatic cancer. I’d rather lose mice.”

“Hear, hear,” Arvids said.

“Besides, the bats were bred especially for Operation X-Ray. I think the plan was inspired. By targeting specific buildings the military could save human lives on the ground and in the air.”

“So what happened?” Gentry asked.

“During test runs in the desert, several dozen bats proved to be smarter than the scientists who’d conditioned them. They flew off and returned to where they were trained-bats have an incredible homing sense-and burned down the barracks.”

“Stealth moths and commando bats,” Arvids said. “Man, even zoologists see more action than I do.”

It took nearly half an hour of moving slowly through the darkness before they came to where the maintenance worker had fainted. The mound of guano was lying beneath a girder, between two sets of tracks. Joyce took the flashlight from Arvids. She circled the mound slowly. Arvids put his hand in front of his mouth. Gentry winced.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Joyce said.

“Jesus,” Gentry said. “The size alone probably put the maintenance man out, once he realized what it was.”

“The size is incredible, but so is the singular consistency,” Joyce said. “This is not a typical bat mound. This is like something you’d find in the elephant cage at the zoo.”

“That’d be a new one for the Transit Authority,” Arvids said from behind his splayed fingers. “An elephant infestation.”

“No, this was definitely left here by bats.” Joyce moved in closer. “The smell alone tells you that. The point is, when bats cluster in a small area like this, the guano falls in different ways, at different times. You can usually see the separate segments, different color and texture.”

“Like horse apples,” Gentry said.

“Exactly.”

“Excuse me, but this is more than I wanted to know,” Arvids said. He turned away.

Joyce shined the flashlight almost directly overhead. There were two horizontal concrete columns built perpendicular to the track. A naked metal girder, rusted from seeping water, was stuck between them. There were traces of guano from one side of the girder to the other. “What I don’t understand is why the bats would have come here, done this, and then left.”

“Like you said before,” Gentry pointed out, “this could be a migration rest area.”

“No. In that case the guano would have been spread across the tunnel, not centralized here.”

“Then how many bats do you think did this?” Gentry asked.

“I don’t know that either.” The scientist turned the flashlight back on the mound and walked around the base. “There’s a lot of spread at the bottom of the pile. See that?” She shined the flashlight on a wide, murky pool of liquid surrounding the mound.

“New York’s an extremely leaky island. River water and rain are constantly seeping in and dissolving soft biodegradable matter. Groundwater like that along with vibration from passing trains caused the waste to settle. And the weight of the mound caused the fluid content to sink and separate, compacting the mass above. So it’s impossible to say how many animals contributed to this or when it was started. It could have been a hundred bats over a few days or several thousand bats over a few hours.”

“Severalthousand bats?” Gentry asked. “There could really be that many bats down here?”

“If this tunnel goes on for as long as Arvids says it does, a thousand bats could easily have gotten in. Even though cockroaches scatter when attacked, there would be enough insect life down here to sustain them. Silverfish, bugs of that type. Possibly bats from the park moved in here, not migratory ones.”

“Why?” Gentry asked. “It’s still warm.”

“All of the human activity during that rat sweep might have scared them away,” Joyce suggested. “The question is, why would bats have come to this one spot?”

“Would it help if you had samples of guano to study?” Gentry asked.

“No,” Joyce said. “But I do want some pictures. I can scan them into a computer and run some simulations.”

She tucked the flashlight under her arm and pulled a digital camera from her shoulder bag. She snapped photographs from several different heights and angles. Then she put the camera away and shined the light around. Across the tracks to the left was a tunnel.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a service tunnel,” Arvids said.

“Meaning?”

“The train crews do repairs there, store equipment.”

“Does it lead anywhere?”

“I don’t think so,” Arvids said. “Service tunnels are usually closed. They’re like caves.”

Joyce and Gentry both looked at Arvids.

Arvids grinned boyishly. “I knew it even as I said it. You want to go in there.”

“Bats are at home in tunnels,” Joyce explained, “but they really like caves.”

They swung around a rusty iron column, then ducked low under a concrete overhang. They approached the service tunnel in the pale glow of a single, dusty, sixty-watt lightbulb hanging over the track. They moved ahead slowly. Joyce had informed them that if the bats were there, each next step could bring them into what the animals considered “their territory.” The instant a bat moved toward them, they would retreat.

No bats appeared.

Arvids found the light switch and turned it on.

Joyce stopped nearly halfway into the tunnel and looked around. The far end of the long room was dark. There was a crane to the right, ladders, lockers, and toolboxes to the left. There were also what looked like pneumatic platforms in the ground just outside the tracks. From the oil stains, it looked like railroad cars were probably put on these and raised. She didn’t see guano anywhere. She looked up. The ceiling was about twenty feet high and made of smooth concrete. She was surprised and disappointed.

“Heavy-duty tools, grease stains, and dusty coffee cups,” Arvids said. “No bats.”

Joyce walked ahead while Gentry looked inside the lockers and Arvids checked behind them. Water was dripping down the walls in thin streams. Bats would probably try to follow that to a source; she wondered if there might be another way to get to it.

“Maybe the bats stayed the night in the tunnel outside and then left,” Gentry suggested.

“Like I said before,” Joyce replied. “Not with all that train traffic moving through. No, this is their kind of resting place. Arvids?”

“Ma’am?”

“Are you absolutely sure this is a dead end? No vents, no stairs leading to other levels?”

“I’m positive. There probably are other levels, but they aren’t accessible from this tunnel.”

“When was the last time anyone was in here?”

“I don’t know,” Arvids said. “I could call the stationmaster-”

“Approximately. Hours? Days?”

He looked down at the concrete floor. “The oil stains look pretty dry. I’d say it’s probably been about two or three weeks.”

“No human habitation,” she said. “That would be a definite plus as far as the bats were concerned. So where are they?”

While Arvids and Gentry made their way toward the back of the tunnel, Joyce went to the wall on the left. She walked along, peeking behind the toolboxes and ladders. Then she went to the wall on the right. The crane sat on a platform that resembled the undercarriage of a train car. It rested on a short spur of track connected to the rails in the center of the room.

She squeezed behind the crane. She couldn’t squat there, but she sniffed. There was a smell like ammonia. She smiled. “Bingo!”

“What’ve you got?” Gentry asked as he and Arvids hurried over.

“A bat cave,” she replied.

The men squeezed in behind the crane, and Arvids pointed the flashlight down. There was an oval hole just above the base of the concrete wall. It resembled the hole in the main tunnel except that it was close to the ground and was only about two feet tall by two feet wide.

“It’s another entrance for the tunnel people,” Arvids said.

“Yes,” Joyce said, “but smell.”

“More guano,” Gentry said.

Joyce reached up. “Arvids, can I have the flashlight?”

Arvids went to hand it to her. Gentry stopped him.

“What are you planning to do?” Gentry asked.

“Go inside.”

“That’s what I thought. I can’t let you do that.”

“What are you talking about? I have to see if the bats are still here. If they are, we’ll have to come back with bat suits, get specimens. See if there’s something wrong with them.”

“I’ll go in,” Gentry said. “You’re going back to the station.”

“No way!”

“Did you take a close look at the wall?” He pointed to the corner.

She looked back down. “I don’t see anything.”

“The lower left corner. See that jagged piece like anM?”

Arvids turned his flashlight in that direction. Joyce looked closer. There was blood on the sharp edges.

“That could be from anything,” Joyce said. “A homeless person could have cut himself when he went in. Or it could be blood from a wounded rat or bat. Anything.”

“You’re right. But until we know for sure, I want you out of here.”

“Robert, that’s crazy! This is a scientific puzzle. Let me do my job!”

“You did the job you came out here for,” Gentry replied. “You saw the guano on the tracks. You took pictures. That’s enough.”

“No! My job isn’t finished until we’vefound the bats. Can you feel the air coming from behind the wall?”