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As was so often the case, Vincent’s timing was bad. His father was a career diplomat on a mission to Hanoi. His mother was chief engineer on the Okeanos and had been told the ship would be setting out immediately on a secret mission. No one thought Vincent’s only surviving grandmother could handle him.
The Okeanos had been in such a hurry that its chief engineer, Vincent’s mother, had to join the ship by helicopter when it was already twenty miles out to sea. Janet Vu, having no other choice, had brought Vincent along, thinking that maybe a sea voyage would do him good, clear his mind. It wasn’t exactly normal to br
ing family members, but still, the unexpected arrival of the slight young man with the overly focused gaze and the odd habit of laughing at jokes no one else heard would have excited no great concern had this been an ordinary scientific mission. But Vincent—and only Vincent—had not been screened by security.
Still, what could be done? The ship needed Janet Vu and she came with Vincent. Anyway, in his more normal periods Vincent was a smart, curious, pleasant kid. He was a little guy, so thin you could hardly see him in profile. And within a couple of days at sea no one really noticed him rushing around with his cameras, clicking away at coils of rope and masts and the big radar “golf ball” above and behind the bridge. He was especially fascinated by the deep-sea submersibles, and the mantis-like crane and the very large lead-lined shipping container, the mysterious box, that had been chained to the deck just behind the mainmast. The box was interesting to Vincent only in that no one aboard was supposed to know its purpose.
Naturally within hours of sailing, everyone knew the box’s purpose, or at least its purported purpose. Vincent knew from the schizophrenic voices in his head that it was all a lie and that the box was there to contain mermaids who were to be captured and taken to SeaWorld.
ASO-5 came down in the Pacific hundreds miles from shore. It created a terrific splash and rocked the Okeanos on the ripples. The ROVs—Remotely Operated Vehicles—aided by powerful underwater search radars on a Navy antisubmarine ship, tracked its long, long tumble to the ocean floor. And even as the dust cloud was settling, they located the Mother Rock.
Getting it aboard was a whole different problem involving both of the ROVs, a steel mesh net, and, as it rose to tolerable depths, divers with underwater drills and cables.
The rock was carefully, slowly, painstakingly brought aboard, straining the crane, smashing one man’s foot, and finally shut into the box. The hinged top was locked down with six high-strength padlocks, and the access door was secured by a combination lock known to no one but the captain and the chief of the security detail.
And Vincent Vu, who had unobtrusively shot video of the captain tapping in the combination.
Meanwhile, in Scotland
SEAN MACBETH, FOUR years old, was hungry, and he was teething.
Sean had a method of dealing with the teething—he sucked on a chip of ASO-2. It was not soft and gummy like his binky—which in any event he’d dropped behind the sofa—or his favorite board book, which he chewed more often than he read—but it was still strangely satisfying. When your gums ached and itched, it was nice to have something hard to bite down on.
Sean’s hunger was a consequence of his big sister, Delia, having been caught up in some texting drama involving Mary and Dougal and Iain. (Mary liked Dougal but Dougal liked Fiona, even though everyone knew Fiona was only toying with him. Iain was such a nice boy, but maybe too immature for Mary.)
Anyway, Delia had forgotten her mother’s careful instructions about feeding Sean, and now Sean was hungry, teething and . . . oops, he had just pooped himself, which was satisfying at first, but began to irritate Sean after a while.
Sean got angry.
He got very angry.
His face turned red. Tears started from his eyes. He drew a deep breath and let loose with a screech that could wake the dead, but that did not distract his sister from her texting.
Having literally no idea where food came from—except that the kitchen was involved—Sean got angrier and angrier.
And then, Sean began to change.
His pudgy pink body grew larger, as large as the family’s retired sheepdog, Gromit, who watched, puzzled, barked once, and ran for the door.
Sean grew larger and longer, especially longer. Twenty feet long. Twenty feet long and consisting of a series of translucent green segments. Tiny triangular feet sprouted from beneath the segments, half a dozen at first, then more as he needed to bear the weight of the middle of his long, green body.
And Sean’s face was no longer at all what it had been. His head looked like a misshapen red apple. His eyes were blank green pupils in yellow ovals. And from the top of his head grew two fuzzy purple antennae.
Sean, four years old, was a very hungry caterpillar.
A twenty-foot-long, green and red, very hungry caterpillar . . . with no mouth.
But then a mouth appeared, a terrifying hole rimmed with needle-sharp teeth. Sean tried to move, but his legs were not very useful, so his legs changed, becoming more insect-like, propagating in pairs the length of his brightly colored caterpillar body. Now he could move. Now he could slither into the kitchen.
It was a homey, pleasant, rustic kitchen with a small stove and ancient refrigerator. Food, Sean had observed, came from the refrigerator, but, lacking hands, he couldn’t open the door.
So Sean bit into the refrigerator, his needle teeth chewing right through the aluminum to reach the tasty goodies within, though it seemed the aluminum was also perfectly edible, despite making an awful noise as it was chewed.
As he ate the refrigerator and the cabinets, Sean the caterpillar grew larger still. Twenty-two feet. Twenty-five. He was so long that part of him extended into the hallway, where Delia saw it, tore the earbuds from her ears, and screamed.
She screamed and, having no other way out, climbed out her first-floor window and went running down the road toward the village of Portnahaven. Portnahaven was a fishing village built around a tiny inlet where fishing boats lay in the mud at low tide. Delia ran screaming past whitewashed stone and stucco homes, past the modest church, and burst through the door of An Tigh Seinnse, a tiny pub where her mother worked the afternoon shift, and to the amusement of a handful of afternoon drinkers shouted, “There’s a monster caterpillar eating our house!”
Sean, for his part, found that no amount of eating seemed to quell his hunger. In fact, his hunger was now out of control; it filled his entire toddler’s brain. Something dark and far, far away was watching him and, Sean was sure, smiled, though the dark thing had no mouth.
