Whoa! How did they get here? In the dim light I made out two uniformed
Army privates down at the end near the slatted windows, dozing in
folding metal chairs, their AK-47's propped against the plaster wall.
Why were they here? Just a cool, breezy place to hang out? Or were they
in place to guard me?
The breeze was causing the candle's flame to cast flickering shadows
across the hall, so I quickly re-closed the door.
Now what? I was trembling as I returned the candle bowl to the table
and sat down on the bed. Soldiers with guns were outside my room at
five in the morning. In the farthest end of Guatemala. What was I going
to do?
I gazed around at the "stone" walls and tried to think. My mind still
felt clouded from whatever drug he'd given me, but it was beginning to
. . .
Wait. I saw Alex Goddard come into this very room with embryos from the
lab, which is connected by the steel door to his office. . . .
Where there was a phone.
Time to call the embassy, get some help to get the hell out of here.
I sat there thinking. All right. I'd need to wait an hour or so--now
I'd get some low-level flunkie stuck with the graveyard shift--but
there was something I was damned well going to do immediately. With the
lab right next door, I could try to find out why Goddard had just
performed medical rape on me. There had to be some connection.
According to him, the lab was for "plant research." But if that was all
he was doing, why was the Army here? Right outside my door? I felt a
pump of adrenaline that made me forget all about my pain. Before I got
the hell out of _Baalum_, I was going to know what he was really up to
here.
God, I feel miserable. I really hurt. All the more reason . . .
I took the candle, stood up, and moved to the opposite wall to begin
looking for an opening in the fiberglass "stone." It appeared to have
been made from impressions from the room atop the pyramid, rows and
rows of those little cartoon-face glyphs, mixed in with bas-reliefs,
but there had to be a door somewhere. I'd seen him walk right through
it. As I ran my hand along the surface, I was struck by how their
hardness felt like stone. But it couldn't be.
What was I looking for? There certainly were no doorknobs. I came
across a hard crack, next to the bas-relief of a feather-festooned
warrior, but as I slid my hand down, it ended and again there was more
rough "stone." Solid.
Damn. I stood back and studied the wall with my candle. He'd come in
from the left, which would be about . . .
I moved over and started again. This time my fingernail caught in a
crevice that ran directly down to the floor. Then I discovered another,
about two and a half feet farther along. It had to be the door.
I felt along the side, wondering how to open it, till I noticed that
one of the little "stone" glyphs gave way when I pressed it. When I put
my hand against it harder and rotated it, the panel clicked backward,
then swung inward. Yes!
And there it was: the lab, CRT screens above the incubators, gas
chromatograph in the corner. This, according to him, was where he
tested the rainforest plants the shamans and midwives brought in. But
what about what he'd just done to _me_?
I was still worried about the Army guys outside, but I walked in,
trying to be as quiet as I could. The first thing I did was head for
the row of black boxes above the bench. Those, I assumed, were being
used to maintain a micro-environment for incubating plant specimens.
And sure enough, the dimly lit windows revealed rows and rows of petri
dishes. They were clear, with circular indentations in the center. . . .
But wait a minute. Those weren't just any old lab dishes. And no plant
extracts were in them either, just clear liquid. That was odd, very
fishy.
I stood there puzzling, and then I remembered seeing pictures of lab
dishes like these being used for artificially fertilized embryos. At
the beginning, freshly extracted human ova are placed in an incubator
for several hours, afloat in a medium that replicates the inside of a
female Fallopian tube, to mature them in preparation for fertilization.
Goddard had said something about tests on the blastocyst, the first
cellular material created after fertilization. So was he using actual
fetuses? My God. I felt like I was starting to know, or guess, a lot
more than he wanted me to.
My thoughts were churning as I looked up and studied the video screens
above the boxes. It took a moment, but then I figured out the petri
dishes and their chemicals had been placed in the incubators between
4:00 P.M. and 7:30 P.M. Last evening. What--?