Phantoms

it.”
    Now their lives were at risk because it knew they had tricked it.
    Flyte shook his head. “But the ancient enemy’s so utterly alien, so different from man and animals… diseases dangerous to other species would have no effect whatsoever on it.”
    “Right,” Sara said. “But this microbe isn’t an ordinary disease. In fact, it isn’t a disease-causing organism at all.”
    Snowfield shelved down the mountain, still as a postcard painting.
    Looking around uneasily, alert for movement in and around the buildings, Sara told them about Ananda Chakrabarty and his discovery.
    In 1972, on behalf of Dr. Chakrabarty, his employer—the General Electric Corporation—applied for the first-ever patent on a man-made bacterium. Using sophisticated cell fusion techniques, Chakrabarty had created a microorganism that could feed upon, digest, and thereby transform the hydrocarbon compounds of crude oil.
    Chakrabarty’s bug had at least one obvious commercial application: It could be used to clean up oil spills at sea. The bacteria literally ate an oil slick, rendering it harmless to the environment.
    After a series of vigorous legal challenges from many sources, General Electric won the right to patent Chakrabarty’s discovery. In June, 1980, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, ruling that Chakrabarty’s discovery was “not nature’s handiwork, but his own; accordingly, it’s patentable subject matter.”
    “Of course,” Jenny said, “I read about the case. It was a big story that June—man competing with God and all that.”
    Sara said, “Originally, GE didn’t intend to market the bug. It was a fragile organism that couldn’t survive outside of strictly controlled lab conditions. They applied for a patent to test the legal question, to settle the matter before other experiments in genetic engineering produced more usable and more valuable discoveries. But after the court’s decision, other scientists spent a few years working with the organism, and now they have a hardier strain that’ll stand up outside the lab for twelve to eighteen hours. In fact it’s been on the market under the trade name Biosan-4, and it’s been used successfully to clean up oil slicks all over the world.”
    “And that’s what’s in these tanks?” Bryce asked.
    “Yes. Biosan-4. In a sprayable solution.”
    The town was funereal. The sun beat down from an azure sky, but the air remained chilly. In spite of the uncanny silence, Sara had the unshakable feeling that it was coming, that it had heard and was coming and was very, very near, indeed.
    The others felt it, too. They looked around uneasily.
    Sara said, “Do you remember what we discovered when we studied the shape-changer’s tissue?”
    “You mean the high hydrocarbon values,” Jenny said.
    “Yes. But not just hydrocarbons. All forms of carbon. Very high values all across the board.”
    Tal said, “You told us something about it being like petrolatum.”
    “Not the same. But reminiscent of petrolatum in some respects,” Sara said. “What we have here is living tissue, very alien but complex and alive. And with such extraordinarily high carbon content… Well, what I mean is, this thing’s tissue seems like an organic, metabolically active cousin of petrolatum. So I’m hoping Chakrabarty’s bug will…”
    Something is coming.
    Jenny said, “You’re hoping it’ll eat into the shape-changer the same way it would eat into an oil slick.”
    Something… something …
    “Yes,” Sara said nervously. “I’m hoping it’ll attack the carbon and break down the tissue. Or at least interfere with the delicate chemical balance enough to—”
    Coming, coming …
    “… uh, enough to destabilize the entire organism,” Sara finished, weighed down by a sense of impending doom.
    Flyte said, “Is that the best chance we have? Is it really?”
    “I think it is.”
    Where is it? Where’s it coming from? Sara wondered, looking at the deserted buildings, the empty street, the motionless trees.
    “Sounds awfully thin to me,” Flyte said doubtfully.
    “It is awfully thin,” Sara said. “It’s not much of a chance, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”
    A noise. A chittering, hissing, hair-raising sound.
    They froze. Waited.
    But, again, the town pulled a cloak of silence around itself.
    The morning sun cast its fiery reflection in some windows and glinted off the curved glass of the streetlamps. The black slate roofs looked as if they had