“Narro de eo, sis.”

Please, tell me of him.

“Father,” Rabbi Shotzen cut in. “We have time for this later.”

“Narro de eo,” Thrist implored.

“Father,” Shotzen sighed, “please let them get on with their work. This can wait.”

“Bullshit!” the priest spat at Shotzen. The rabbi recoiled in surprise. “You don't want to hear of it because you don't want to hear the truth! For two thousand years you've been waiting for a Messiah that already came! You missed Him! Now's your chance to atone for your mistake!”

Thrist turned to Bub and begged, “Tell me of Jesus! Tell me what you know!”

The demon stretched his mouth wide in a grin.

“Serius, Pater. Tempus sine arbitrus mox habebimus.”

Later, Father. We'll have time alone soon.

Bub was using the same soothing voice that he'd used with the sheep.

“Sciendus sum! Eratne Deus? Estne natus ex virgine? Cognitionem eius habebas... erasne qui in desertis eum temptabas? Heu, sciendus sum!”

I must know! Was he God? Was he born of a virgin? You knew him... were you the one that tempted him in the desert? I must know dammit!

“Soooooon,” soothed the demon. He gave his attention back to Andy and Sun.

Thrist banged on the glass, but Bub paid him no mind.

Thrist stepped back and looked at the others. Andy looked embarassed. Sun was frowning. He turned to Rabbi Shotzen, and was stunned to see the sadness on his friend’s chubby face.

“I... I'm...”

Shotzen gave him his back.

“For a man of faith you're showing surprisingly little,” the Rabbi said.

Thrist opened his mouth, closed it again. His face became very hot. He didn't trust his voice. He reached for the crucifix hanging from his neck.

Christ felt cold in his hand.

Thrist hurried out the door, hurried down the Red Arm, fumbling the code for the first gate several times, fumbling several more times at the second, racing to his room and falling on his knees next to his bed, his hands clasped in prayer but his mind unable to dismiss Shotzen’s words and the possibility that they might be true.

CHAPTER NINE

Frank Belgium watched from the sanctuary of his computer terminal. He’d returned to Red 14 after spending half an hour in the bathroom, feeling the urge to vomit but unable to.

Belgium knew it was a physical response to fear. When the demon awoke last week, that was frightening enough. But his voice—soft, low, almost seductive—was the voice of a thousand nightmares.

Though he sat far enough away from the speech lesson to be unable to hear Bub, watching proved disconcerting all by itself. There was something upsetting and grotesque about a demon watching a children’s television show. Bub’s blank stare made Belgium wonder if he was indeed learning how to conjugate verbs, or if he was wondering how the child actors tasted.

The doctor shivered, nibbling on his lower lip.

Get a grip, he told himself. The demon seemed to be cooperating so far. Maybe it wasn’t his fault he was so frightening.

Andy stood, stretched, and said something to Sun. She stood as well, answered him and nodded, and they walked out of the room.

Bub watched them leave. His stare lingered on the door for almost ten seconds, then his eyes locked on Belgium.

Belgium tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

“Fraaaaaank,” Bub said, loud enough to be heard from across the room. “Fraaaaaank Beeeeeelgium...”

Belgium turned away, wondering if the demon would leave him alone if he pretended to be working.

“Fraaaaaank...”

“I’m busy,” he said, trying to make his voice sound unafraid.

“Fraaaaaank...... what does Craaaaay computer dooooo?”

That seemed like an innocent enough question.

“Umm, The Cray? It stores and processes information.”

“In Englisssssssh?”

“In computer language.”

“Dooooooes it... taaaaaaalk?”

“Talk? No no no. Computers don't talk. But we can use them to talk to others who have computers with an Internet connection.”

“Internet coooooonnection?”

“The World Wide Web lets people with computers access all the information available in the world.”

“Would the Woooorld Wide Web help me learn Engliiiiiiish?”

Belgium hunched down lower and ruffled some papers on his desk.

“Sure. The Internet has everything on it.”

“I waaaaant Internet coooooonnection,” Bub said.

Dr. Belgium turned around and ratcheted up his spine. He didn’t quite stare at Bub so much as stare in his general direction.

“You’re too too too big. Sorry. You couldn’t use the keyboard.”

Bub didn’t answer, and Belgium hoped the conversation had ended. Being alone in the room with the creature was freaking him out. He got up to leave.

“Come heeeeere,” Bub said.

Belgium stopped, mid-stride, his mouth going dry.

“Coooooome heeeeeere, Fraaaaaank.”

Relax, Belgium though. He’s behind the Plexiglas. He can’t hurt me.

He changed direction and approached Bub.

“Yes? What is it?”

Bub extended a claw and touched it to the Plexiglas. Then there was a shrill screeching sound and his finger became a blur, moving faster than any human being possibly could.

It was over in an instant, and Dr. Belgium was amazed to see that Bub had etched the entire English alphabet, both upper case and lower case letters, onto the glass in a space less than the size of a credit card. So impressed was the doctor, that it didn't occur to him that Bub had written it as a mirror image, which allowed Frank to see it the normal way.

“Well, I guess typing wouldn't be too difficult for you then. Remarkable small muscle control. Yes yes yes.”

“I waaaaant Internet cooooonnection,” Bub said.

“I I I don’t see how. We'd have to rig something up. Maybe we could use, um,  a wireless router.”

Bub moved closer to the Plexiglas, the corners of his mouth turning up into a smile. He moved quite well for such a large creature, thought Belgium. Like a dancer, smooth and quick.

Or like a cobra.

“Let meeee ooooout,” Bub said, “I caaaan use your compuuuuuuter.”

Dr. Belgium blinked. “Uh, no Bub. It's safer for you in there.”

“Yoooou aaaare afraaaaaid.”

“No no no. Not at all. I'm a scientist, Bub. I study things.”

“You study meeeeee.”

“Yes.”

“With the Craaaaay compuuuuuuter.”

“Yes. That's part of it.”

“Hoooooow?”

“Well, Bub, I'm trying to sequence your DNA. Your karyotype shows you have 88 chromosomes. This is over 300,000 genes, about six billion base pairs. I want to figure out what your genes are, so I can see what you're related to. All life on earth is related to something, some things more than others.”

Bub stared, saying nothing. Belgium continued, fear making him ramble.

“What I'm doing is using the Sanger procedure, along with whole genome shotgun sequencing. First, I take some of your DNA—a blood sample—and make a template by subcloning into a YAC. I'm using restriction enzymes in gel electrophoresis to get a 1000 sequence base read that the computer can interpret as a chromatogram. It's all very simple, really. Simple simple simple.”

“Hoooow much of my DNA haaaaave you seeeequenced?”

“Only about forty percent. The problem comes from not knowing enough about DNA. Only ten percent of an organism's chromosomes contain exon genes—those are the ones that protein code, which account for an organism's physiology. Intron genes are responsible for growing, aging, things we don't know yet... so sequencing is only half the battle. The Cray is also trying to sort out what is exon and what is intron, and trying to find matches with other life forms.”