Read Online Species II by Yvonne Navarro - Free Book Online

and they immediately slid down again. His voice was rising in desperation and he tried to control it—if the operator on the other end decided he was a loony, she’d pretend to take a message and Herman would never know he’d called. “He’s a patient there,” he said. “I believe he’s in Ward B. I realize it’s rather late, but if he could call me at his earliest opportunity, it would be most helpful.” He bit his lip at the woman’s reply but managed to hold his tongue—getting angry would only destroy any chance he had of getting through to Herman. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I realize it’s late. Tell him that Dr. Orinsky called. I’m a former colleague.”
    When the Garberville operator broke the connection, Dr. Orinsky allowed himself a full scowl as he clicked off the telephone and slammed it on the table. Foolish woman—could she not tell from the tone of his voice how important it was that he speak to Herman Cromwell? If it hadn’t been so far and so late, and if he didn’t have these samples on which he needed to run further tests, he’d drive there tonight, demand to see the administrator and generally raise hell until he made them let him meet with his old partner.
    The samples . . .
    Orinsky whirled and stared at the lab table, but of course everything was as it should be: sample bottles, beakers and burners, several clipboards of crumpled paper upon which he’d scribbled copious notes, and obviously, the rack holding the tubes of blood that had prompted his post-midnight call to the Garberville Psychiatric Institute in a vain attempt to connect with Herman. They’d all come from the half pint that made up beaker number three, and Orinsky picked up the wide-mouthed glass container and peered at it as if his naked eye could somehow explain what he’d seen only a few minutes earlier beneath the lens of the electron microscope. The thought almost made him smile, and he set the beaker back on the table and returned to his stool in front of the microscope. How he wished Herman would call, if only to hear an apology from Orinsky for scoffing . . . no, for condemning the findings that Herman had tried so hard to share. Foolish people, it seemed, came in all walks of life.
    Unable to resist, Dr. Orinsky bent his head to the microscope and peered into the eyepiece. He wanted to view these cellular changes again—
    Something rattled and Orinsky looked up in time to see the container he’d set down had inexplicably fallen on its side and rolled to the edge of the table. The contents had sloshed over the side and were now sending a slow, scarlet stream onto the floor. For a second, he just stared, trying to reconcile in his mind how this could have happened. “Damn it,” he finally muttered. “I knew I should have capped that.”
    Sliding off the stool, he grabbed a towel and yanked a pair of disposable rubber gloves from the box next to his microscope. But before he could pull on the gloves, the blood on the floor . . .
    Moved.
    Dr. Orinsky froze for a moment, then gave a hard, mind-clearing shake of his head. Too many damned late nights, too many hours, too much work —now he was seeing things that couldn’t be, hallucinating alone in his laboratory in the middle of the night. I’m getting too old for this, he thought as he shifted the towel and gloves to one hand and rubbed at his eyes with the other.
    But when he opened his eyes again, he watched with open-mouthed amazement as the crimson puddle of blood moved again, more rapidly this time, pushing itself across the room with a snakelike rippling motion until it reached the junction of the wall and the door to the medical-supply storage room.
    “Mother of Mercy,” Dr. Orinsky breathed.
    What was causing this? Some kind of unseen electromagnetic charge? He should stay away, call for an assistant—a witness, for God’s sake—but it was too fantastic to let out of his sight. And if it didn’t happen again, who would believe him