“I’m not trying to draw this out, I promise,” Niamh said. “I’m just still trying to figure out the logistics of this in my brain. But no matter what, it stands to reason that if no conditions on this side of the dimensional barrier have changed enough to get Bella and her eggs through, then something on the other side did. I just have no idea what it would have been.”
“A nuclear explosion could do it,” Kahurangi said.
“Mate, if we have nuclear bombs going off in rural Canada right now, we are all mightily fucked.”
“If not a nuclear bomb, then what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Niamh repeated. “Getting through the dimensional barrier requires a huge amount of nuclear power, either applied all at once, or built up over a sustained length of time.” They pointed to the map that was still up on the wall monitor. “Where Bella is, or was, there is nothing on the other side. It’s forest. There are no cities or roads. No people. And definitely nothing with the nuclear oomph to suck Bella and her eggs over to the other side.”
“So it doesn’t make any sense that she’s over in our world,” MacDonald said.
“It does not,” Niamh agreed. “But it’s also the only thing that makes sense for what we’re seeing.”
“Unless we’re missing something,” Kahurangi said. He pointed to Aparna’s computer. “May I?”
Aparna nodded. Kahurangi took it and accessed the restricted folder for the meeting we were in, into which Satie had placed our flight video. Kahurangi scrubbed through the video, to a part where the helicopter camera had an unobstructed view of the ground, and the creatures swarming around on it.
“What are we supposed to be seeing here, Dr. Lautagata?” Danso asked.
“I was looking at this video earlier and something about it was bothering me, and I couldn’t quite place it,” Kahurangi said. “It just now came to me. All of these creatures are swarming around, and none of them are attacking each other.”
“Okay, so?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but at least some of these creatures are prey for some of these other creatures.” He looked at Aparna. “Right?”
Aparna squinted at the screen, trying to make out the various species. “That looks right.”
Kahurangi nodded and pointed at the screen again. “This would be our equivalent of alligators ignoring helpless baby gazelles at the edge of the water. This doesn’t happen unless the alligators think there’s something much better around.” He looked over to me. “You’ve shot a canister gun. You know how creatures react to a canister once it bursts open. They ignore everything else to go after it.”
“More or less,” I said. “Although don’t discount ‘less’ here.”
“It’s not an exact science,” Kahurangi agreed. “But the principle stands.”
“Are you saying there’s something pheromonal going on here?” MacDonald said. “And if there is, what does that have to do with what Dr. Healy was saying?”
“Not pheromonal,” Kahurangi said. “Pheromones are part of what we put into the canisters. The other part is actinides. The local fauna go wild for them. And of course uranium is the one they like the most.” He paused the screen. “That’s what they do when there’s a lot of the stuff around, or at least they think there is.”
“Is there a significant amount of uranium at this spot on the other side?” Niamh asked.
“I don’t know, I would have to check a map,” Kahurangi said.
“And you call yourself a geologist.”
Kahurangi smiled at this, and it was, I think, the first genuine smile in the whole meeting. “This was the site of a nuclear explosion just a few weeks ago,” he said. “So it’s still going to be highly attractive to the local creatures. That’s one reason why we think Bella brooded here, so that her parasites would find enough food for them and her. But this activity suggests something else happened that either directly brought more actinides into the area, or gave an at least temporary impression that there were.”
“What would that be?” MacDonald asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kahurangi said. “But whatever it was, I’m willing to bet it wasn’t natural. It’s something we did. Humans. Maybe not a nuclear exchange.” He nodded over to Niamh. “But still involving humans for sure.”
“Curious timing,” Satie said.