College in Oman—and met the twenty-seven-year-old Esherida Rahal.
“I’m sorry,” she said while coming around a lab table covered with equipment, “but the Professor is not in.”
To Key’s ears, it sounded as if she had been saying that a lot—so much, in fact, that it was beginning to become automatic.
“That’s all right,” he answered, the weariness in his voice matching her own verbal knee jerk. “My friend here”—he motioned toward Gonzales—“thinks you might be able to help us just as well.”
Key watched a variety of reactions flit across her face like a wheel of fortune: it’s too late in the day, I’m really too busy, you’ll have to make an appointment, and some unformed others. But then her oval head and deep eyes lowered, and he saw a resigned, empathetic smile touch her soft, smooth, dark rose lips.
“Please,” she said politely. “Come sit down.” She led them into what was obviously Professor Davi’s office, which reminded Key of many a professor’s office he had seen over the years. Amid piles and piles of papers and books crammed everywhere in the small rectangular room, two simple, inexpensive school chairs flanked a small desk.
“What is the problem?” she asked, her voice the same modulated, lightly accented English it had always been, as she rested against the edge of the desk. Gonzales stood by the door, naturally, and seemingly automatically, assuming the role of a lookout. Key, however, tiredly and gratefully thudded into the chair nearest her.
As Key and Gonzales had come through the halls, they had seen students, both male and female, wearing black pants, white lab coats, and running shoes. There were even coeds without headdresses. But Rahal wore Omaniya, the national dress of the country, only hers was a deep red, and her waqaya headscarf was dark and beautifully embroidered with what looked like representations of constellations. Despite it covering her from her forehead to the ankle of her five-foot-four-inch frame, he could tell she was a fit, very poised young lady.
“The problem”—Key sighed—“is that something is making people explode.” Despite his tiredness, Key carefully noted her reaction of shock. Key’s admission was so blunt that the normally reticent Gonzales stepped forward.
“It’s true,” Gonzales informed her. “I witnessed it. First in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait.”
Rahal’s mouth opened and closed several times as she blinked. To her added credit in Key’s mind, she didn’t even suggest the two were joking. “Explode—exactly how, if I might ask?”
Key nodded in satisfaction. “Good question,” he answered appreciatively, then plunged ahead without reservation. “It wasn’t as if there were a bomb in their chest or anything like that. It didn’t explode outward in that pattern. Their entire bodies seemed to be afflicted. Every limb and every joint.”
“The eyes bulged, tearing just before the detonation,” Gonzales said. “Hot, dark, lumpy liquid came out of every orifice we could see.”
“Hot?” she echoed.
“It was smoking,” Key added.
“Light or dark smoke?” she asked.
The soldier and mechanic looked to each other for corroboration.
“Not sure,” said Gonzales.
“Neither light nor dark,” Key decided. “Somewhere in the middle.”
That didn’t faze her. “Tell me about the detonation,” she urged. “How long did they convulse before it happened?”
Key and Gonzales shared another collaborative look.
“Less than a minute,” Gonzales offered, and Key didn’t dispute him.
“Go on,” she advised. “Every detail you can remember.”
For the first time since entering the room, Key lowered his gaze from hers. He looked at nothing in particular to see into his memory.
“The first explosion happened in my peripheral vision,” he said. “A piece of the skull hit my forehead and knocked me out for a few seconds.”
Rahal’s luxurious, well-shaped eyebrows rose.
“I had to take cover from the second,” Key continued, raising his gaze back to hers. “But I’ll never forget the sound.”
Her eyes held an equal mix of curiosity and concern. Key went on because she said nothing.
“It was as if every internal part of their body was erupting,” he told her.
“Every part?” she asked. “Bones, fingernails, body hair?”
“No,” Key said while Gonzales nodded in agreement. “I heard the bones shattering into shards, but I’m certain they weren’t exploding. If they were, the skull piece that hit my forehead would’ve behaved differently.”
Rahal nodded, her lips tightening, then she spun off the desk and grabbed a scroll that was wedged atop two piles of files. She spread it on the desk, motioning with her head for the two to join her. Key approached her from the right, and Gonzales from the left, though he kept his eyes mostly on the door.
She was holding open a biological chart of a male anthropoid body. “The human circulatory system consists of three parts,” she said intently, her eyes darting around the complex map. “The cardiovascular, pulmonary, and the systemic.”
Key remembered it from his mother’s teachings. “The heart, lungs, arteries, and veins,” he said, following her eyes.
She glanced at him, her look of impressed approval reminding him of his mother. “You missed the coronary and portal vessels,” she said, “but yes. The system controls the flow of blood, gasses, hormones, nutrients, oxygen, and other vapors to and from the cells.”
“Other vapors?” Key echoed, looking directly at her.
She returned his gaze. “Yes. This system stretches for about ninety-six thousand kilometers.”
Gonzales automatically translated it for Key. “Sixty thousand miles.”
“So if one of those other vapors turned poisonous—” Key asked.
“Not poisonous,” she corrected. “Not even venomous.”
“There’s a difference?” Gonzales interjected, his mind reeling from all the new information.
“A big difference,” she stressed, looking up at him.
“Yes, the unnatural element would have to be volatile,” Key said. “As if the blood had been replaced with nitroglycerine.”
When he looked back to her, she met his gaze with an expression that mixed concern with growing certainty. “And you want to know how that could have happened?” she asked him directly.
“Yes,” he answered just as directly. “But maybe more importantly, whether it’s contagious, and if so, how it travels. Because we’ve been in Shabhut, and then in Thumrait. Now we’re here.”
The
