Minutes to Burn

"If you come into contact with any secretions, rinse off and apply the gel. Handle the larva with care, but there's no need to be paranoid. Touching it won't spread the virus." Her sneeze echoed through the transmitters. " 'xcuse me. I do have some good news for you. As Rex pointed out, the confluence of conditions that allowed the Darwin virus to find its way into a single viable animal host is quite extraordinary. If it operates like viruses that are similarly transmitted, the rate of infection we would anticipate in the type of contact between a virus-bearing microorganism and an insect embryo is only one in eight. Taking into account the wasp and mantid populations of the island, and the odds of infected dinos going to spore state, UV weakening an ootheca so it could be compromised by parasitic wasps, and the virus hitting the unhatched nymphs at precisely the right timing-we're looking at an estimated one in one hundred twenty-one shot that another mantid ootheca was infected. The odds that the infected ootheca would produce offspring that pulled the right combination of organs and structures from the resultant DNA soup to be viable are even lower, probably infinitesimal. It looks like the assumption you've been operating on-that there's only one mantid line-age-stands an extremely good chance of being accurate."

"So the larvae are infected," Diego said despondently. "All of them."

There was a pause before Samantha answered. "Yes, I would imagine so."

"If this virus does indeed increase mutation and speed generational turnover," Donald said, "that would explain a number of the things you've described about the animals."

"Like what?" Cameron asked.

"Well, the switch from incomplete to complete metamorphosis, for one."

"A two-stage metamorphosis allows an organism to take advantage of variant food sources," Rex murmured. "It opens up the range of food available to it through its life cycle. The larvae seem primarily herbivorous-"

"While the adults seem to prefer people food," Szabla said. No one laughed.

"It would also explain the mantids' accelerated rate of development," Donald said. "Early reproduction is one of the keys to rapid increase. A ten percent decrease in age at first reproduction is roughly equivalent to a one hundred percent increase in fecundity. The rapid cycling of gener-ations entails, of course, extremely short intergenerational gaps. Think of the Aphis fabae."

"I often do," Szabla said.

"It's an aphid. Embryonic development for the next three generations actually begins in the mother's body before her own birth. If all her off-spring survived, a single female could produce five hundred twenty-four billion progeny in a year. Not to mention cecidomyian gall midges, who eat their mother alive from the inside, only to crawl from her shell and be devoured by their own offspring two days later." There was a silence as Donald paused. "If this virus indeed hastens the infected species' radiation, don't expect your larvae to hold in instar stages too long. After another molting or two, you're due for a metamorphosis."

Derek gazed at the larva in his lap, clearly upset. "But how does the virus know to do all this?" he asked.

"It doesn't know anything," Donald answered. "It has adapted to act certain ways because it's been shaped over thousands, maybe millions, of generations by random mutation and natural selection. Its actions merely give the appearance of motive."

"Do you think the adults will actively hunt us?" Justin asked.

"As Rex pointed out, aside from the occasional dog, no other sizable and appropriate food source on the island comes to mind," Donald said slowly. "Livestock would be too large, iguanas too small, and they'd be unable to crack a tortoise."

"I know we're all in a bit of a creature feature mindset," Rex said. "But let's bear in mind that the mantids are not malevolent. They're ani-mals that act on need and instinct-no more, no less."

Savage covered one nostril with a thumb and blew snot on the ground. He wiped his hand off on his cammies.

"None of the other wildlife seems to be affected," Diego said. "Why would the virus merely affect one species of animal like this?"

"Viruses tend to be most prevalent in one species," Samantha said. "The 'virus reservoir.' Like deer mice to hantavirus, monkeys to simian hemorrhagic fever, Calomys callosus to Machupo. But the Darwin virus has been present in a fairly wide range-microbes, dinos, mantids, and rabbits. The fact that it affects animals in the embryonic stage is trouble-some, because that's the time when cells from different species most resemble one another. If it could infect a rabbit embryo, it's not unrea-sonable that it could infect a canine embryo, for instance. The long shot is that any of these infected embryos would actually be viable. As it stands, we only have one accountable virus reservoir-the mantid line-age."