CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Herpetologist
For the next two weeks, I ran Wong’s design through the simulator code over and over. The amount of effort he’d put into engineering it astonished me. They were sensible changes, too. Wong knew his stuff, and he’d given his design a great foundation. Between that and my so-called trifecta, the reward-survival-fear feedback loop, it might be enough to tame the wildest of reptiles.
I saw little of Evelyn during the gestation period. She met with the board almost daily, and never came out of those meetings looking pleased. The executive team had lined up a second series of funding that could keep the company going, but the investors made it contingent on the successful hatching of a domesticated prototype.
By “successful,” they pretty much meant no maulings.
Our director’s trepidation was not lost on the design team. The fact that we had little to do until the prototypes hatched didn’t help either. Engineers like to be busy, and I was no exception. We were all jumpy as desert hares. Even the permanently chipper Korrapati grew quiet and spent most of her time in her cubicle with headphones on.
Finally, the day of the hatching came. I’d come in early to run the design through my simulator one last time. Every benchmark looked solid, as far as I could tell. Maybe that’s why I felt the pressure more than most: this hatching would probably seal the fate of my design simulator, at least at Reptilian. And if it couldn’t work here, I wouldn’t have a good excuse to run a certain other simulation I’d been dying to try.
It was around 9:30, and I began pondering a coffee break to kill some time. Just as I got up, Evelyn click-clacked into the design lab. “Everyone? It’s time.”
We all stood and followed her out. Korrapati, Wong, and O’Connell led the way. I trailed after them, with The Frogman lumbering along beside me. He kept his headphones on and made no attempts at conversation, which was probably for the best. I was too nervous to talk.
Please, God, let this work.
We had the observation room to ourselves. Someone had moved our six eggs into the larger hatching room on the other side, where each of them nestled in a thick bed of foam and synthetic nesting material atop a steel table. Heat waves radiated up from the steel surface, which kept the eggs right at 95.2 degrees. A great temperature for hatching dragons, but it had to feel like an oven for the white-clad staffers.
Two pairs of them were hard at work rotating the eggs one final time. Then they lined them up against the Plexiglas, like newborns at a hospital nursery. The door opened to admit a middle-aged man was dressed like Indiana Jones, right down to the broad-brimmed hat. He’d grown out the beard, but I still recognized him from his show on Animal Planet.
“Is that-?” I began.
“Tom Johnson,” Evelyn said.
No one in the United States knew more about herpetology than Tom Johnson. He’d advised the Dragon Genome Project, and personally captured most of the reptiles that were sequenced for it. Sure, they could have gone to zoos and collectors to get samples, but the minds behind the DGP wanted as much wild variation as possible. That meant getting some dangerous snakes and lizards from not-so-nice parts of the world. The video of Johnson wrestling a Komodo monitor in Indonesia had gone viral and drawn considerable public interest in the project.
“Sweet Jesus,” I breathed. “Not taking any chances, are you?”
Evelyn laughed. “No, we’re not.”
“Why didn’t we bring him in before?”
“He’s been on an expedition in South America.”
Seeing him right there through the glass had me starstruck. “What’s he like?” I found myself asking.
“Oh, Tom?” Evelyn seemed surprised by my interest. “He’s fascinating. Not hard to spot across a room, either.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged and looked away.
I nudged her with my elbow. “Got a little crush on him, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Hell, maybe I’ve got a man-crush myself.
Johnson made a quick pass and then went back to stand beside egg number four. He waited almost expectantly, like a professor expecting an answer from one of his students. It wasn’t even a minute later that the egg trembled and a vertical fracture split the top in half. A gray, toothy snout appeared. Then a clawed foot. My chest hurt—I had to remind myself to breathe.
The hatchers started to edge forward, like they were going to help. Johnson wasn’t having it. He ushered them to the door and followed them out.
“Wait, is he leaving?” I asked. “Are we sure we want it hatching unsupervised?”
“Be patient, Noah,” Evelyn said.
I clamped my mouth shut. Easy for you to say.
We watched in fascination as the dragonet fought its way out of the shell. The egg-pieces clung to one another, thanks to the sticky goo underneath, so it was a bit like watching an ant stuck in honey. The goo itself coated the dragon and dripped in slow motion to the hatching room floor.
Johnson reappeared with a huge tray of meat. The hatchers tried to follow him, but he shut the door with them on the outside.
The first dragonet had wriggled free of its shell by then. It was gray-brown in color. Slender and lizardlike. Its tongue flicked in and out. It looked over as Johnson approached.
Here we go. If the dragonet shied away, even from the offer of food, that would be a really bad sign. Wild animals put survival even before nourishment.
The dragonet held still, watching him. Johnson tossed it a piece of meat. The dragonet hesitated, then leaned close and snapped it up.
Evelyn gasped. “Look at that.”
“It’s good. Very good,” Wong said.
Johnson had another piece of meat ready, but he held it out a few feet away. This was the real test, to see if the dragonet would come to him. The meat swung idly back and forth like a pendulum. The dragonet’s little head followed the motion.
“Come on, come on,” I whispered.
Evelyn said nothing, but clenched her hands together so hard, they turned pale at the knuckles.
The dragonet shrank back for a moment, and I felt sure we’d failed. Too much fear. What was I thinking? Had we really gambled the future of Reptilian Corporation on the cats of ancient Egypt?
The Frogman muttered something that sounded a lot like some trifecta. O’Connell snorted. I could already sense who was going to take the fall for this latest failure. Not Wong—his design was undoubtedly similar to all the others before I’d helped him. No, they’d pin this on the guy whose simulator scored all the designs. Whose last-minute patch had effectively chosen the winning prototype.
I’m such a moron, I thought.
Then the dragonet stalked forward to snatch the meat from Johnson’s hand. Gulped it right down. Paused, then actually nuzzled the man’s leg. Evelyn and I laughed out loud. Even the stalwart Johnson looked surprised. He glanced up, saw Evelyn, and gave her the thumbs-up.
Evelyn blushed, and I couldn’t blame her. This is ten times better than Animal Planet.
One by one, the dragon eggs hatched in the pod. One by one, Johnson enticed them with strips of raw meat. He took his time, offering the dragonet tiny morsels and retreating while it ate. He retreated less each time, until he stood over the dragonet while it chewed. He held the last piece out between two fingertips, just close enough that the reptile had to come to him to get it.
Every time, the dragonet took the bait.
And every time, Johnson would rest his hand on the little scaly head for a couple of seconds. Just long enough to establish physical contact, to imprint that vital physical link between survival and the human master. I might know my way around the genome, but Johnson could charm a snake out of its skin.
It took an hour and a half to get through all six hatchings, but I hardly noticed. My mind spun with the implications of a domesticated dragon. The market potential and the customization opportunities. There should be no way for the company to fail now. The others encircled Wong and offered congratulations. Korrapati sounded earnest, O’Connell grudging. But a win was a win, and we needed one.
The next morning when I got to work, the design lab was empty. The God Machine sat still and silent, except for the ever-present hum of the servers. Their LED lights blinked in enticing patterns, awaiting the next design. Or the next run of my simulator code. Here I was, probably close to winning full-time designer status at a company that might not exist in a month. I tore my eyes from the servers and went to look for Evelyn.
Her office was empty, but I found her in the conference room with Korrapati, Wong, and O’Connell, watching something on the screen.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Robert’s holding a press conference.”
This ought to be interesting. I slid into a chair just as Greaves took the stage. As always, he wore khakis and a black turtleneck, a desert version of Steve Jobs. I’d have been nervous as hell in front of all those microphones, but Greaves leaned in and made eye contact with the front row of reporters. He smiled with perfect teeth and dropped the bombshell. “We’ve developed a domesticated reptile that’s safe to keep in the home.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then a flurry of reporter inquiries hit him all at once.
“How much will they cost, Mr. Greaves?”
“Aren’t they dangerous to humans?”
“Robert! When can we see one?”
“Soon,” Greaves promised. “As you know, our company has struggled to develop a foothold in the marketplace, despite having a creature unlike any in the world.”
“Does a tame dragon change that?” asked a reporter.
“It’s hard to say. We successfully hatched six dragons this morning. They’ll be auctioned off at this time tomorrow.” Greaves looked right at me, or at the camera, I mean. “I don’t want to frighten anyone, but . . . there’s a chance these will be the only tame dragons ever produced.”
I don’t think I heard anything after that. The sound of the blood in my ears drowned everything out. I looked at Evelyn. “What did he mean by that?”
She shrugged and looked down at the table.
O’Connell stood. “What the hell do you think he meant?” He stalked out.
Korrapati looked frightened, and even Wong seemed a little shell-shocked. I thought about him going back to Shenzen and felt a wave of sympathy.
“Maybe it’s just marketing talk,” I said. “You know, to drive up the prices.” I pointed at Evelyn. “You said he knows what he’s doing, right?”
“I did say that.”
“Well, I hope you’re right.”
She sighed. “Me, too.”
I don’t remember the rest of the afternoon, only the next day. The day of the auction. There was no point in trying to get any work done before it started. Evelyn recognized that and hosted a little bagels-and-juice party in the conference room. It was a nice gesture, but hardly enough to break the tension over the design team.
She perched on the chair at the head of the table, not touching her bagel. Korrapati sat on her right, with the posture of a queen. She looked stiff as a board, though. Wong lounged on across from her, but I detected a hunch in his shoulders, too. O’Connell and the Frogman had the day off. Hell, they were probably out interviewing for other jobs. If I’d been smarter, I would have been too.
The logical part of my brain tried to argue that Greaves knew what he was doing; that the ominous statements about the company’s future were meant to drive up the prices. But no matter how they spun it, this was the first market test for domesticated dragons. If it went poorly, we’d all be out of a job.
“What do you think will happen?” I asked Evelyn.
“I can’t say, but the first auction will be a bellwether for the others.”
“They’re going up one at a time?”
“It was Robert’s idea.”
Evelyn had used her director’s clearance to get us a live feed of the auction on a massive projection monitor at the front of the room. The screen showed digital map of the world and a numeric countdown. Five minutes to showtime, the bidder registrations began to flash on screen. We couldn’t see the names, only the geographic region and a buyer’s ID number. Which was kind of a shame. I’d have loved to know who was bidding, and whether or not they had deep pockets. Still, they were all major urban centers. All over the world, too. That seemed promising.
The timer crept down to zero, and then the screen showed a minimum bid of five thousand dollars. Zero bids. Hell, I could have swung that much, and maybe I should have. I didn’t much care for dragons, but it would be a consolation prize if my whole plan fell apart.
I held that morose thought for the few seconds. Then madness erupted on the live feed. Bids rolled in right on top of one another, from all over the world. London, Jerusalem, Oslo, Buenos Aires. Three bidders in Tokyo, four in Los Angeles. The price quickly hit double, triple my salary. Even if I’d squeezed every asset and favor and loan possible, I’d never have been a player.
The minimum price rocketed past five million, at which point most of the bidders dropped out. Three remained: Beijing, Abu Dhabi, and Silicon Valley. I began quietly rooting for the Valley, in hopes that we might get to make a personal delivery. Hell, it might even boost morale, to think that one of our first dragons lived close by.
The three finalists kept bidding the minimum increment until about 5.5 million. I guess at that point, Beijing had finally had enough.
“Oh my goodness!” Evelyn said.
I glanced up at the screen, and thought I was hallucinating.
Beijing: 7.7 million.
Silicon Valley and the UAE got the message. They made no more bids. Thirty seconds later, Beijing officially won the world’s first domesticated dragon. I had to admit, it seemed fitting somehow.
I shook my head. “Someone in China sure wanted one of these.”
Evelyn kept her eyes on her table, and suddenly appeared quite interested in her fingernails.
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
“Do you assume I know everyone in China?”
“Not everyone, no,” I said. “But I’ll bet you know who was bidding.”
She shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. “I have some suspicions.”
That’s as good a confession as I’m going to get.
The Chinese government, then. I couldn’t say I was very surprised.
None of the other auctions reached 7.7 million, but they all got pretty close. Hell, there were goddamn sultans jumping in toward the end. Wong, Korrapati and I cheered with each one. All told, the six dragons brought in close to forty million dollars. Cash.
“Jesus, that’s a lot of money,” I said. And it wasn’t even counting the next round of investor financing. “So, what happens now?”
Evelyn had fallen silent over the last ten minutes or so. Now, her eyes looked off at something unseen in the distance, and glittered. “Now, Noah Parker, we get to build dragons.”