The Wave by Walter Mosley

cell and came out with a small cage that contained a gray dove. He went to the other side of the glass wall and opened a hatch in the stone. Placing the fluttering bird in the small space, he closed the tiny door and then pushed a button that opened a panel inside the cage, allowing the bird to enter. The dove took wing, crossed half the width of the room, and then fell dead before the naked man.
    The prisoner picked up the little corpse and stared at it a moment. Then he looked up at me. He shook his head, dropped the dove, and returned his attention to the space between his bare feet.
    “Carbon monoxide,” a black man with a French accent said. “How is that possible?”
    “These creatures are almost invulnerable to harm,” Wheeler replied. “They bleed but don’t die. They choke but don’t expire. They are extraordinarily strong, and for all intents and purposes, they don’t age.”
    “What are they?” the man asked.
    “Demons from hell.”
    We visited forty-seven cages in all. There were male and female prisoners. Some in subzero environments, others in temperatures above anything a human could survive. One man was completely submerged in water, while others were in various forms of poisonous atmospheres. All of them were alive and conscious, but none spoke, unlike the child who had been slaughtered by the soldier.
    The tour took over four hours. No one complained or asked to leave. I don’t even remember anyone asking for a toilet, though someone must have.
    I was sickened by the display. So far Wheeler hadn’t proved the threat of these creatures. All he had shown was that they were superior and helpless. It was as if a bunch of apes had captured a heavenly host of angels and were torturing them for their beauty.
    When we returned to the auditorium, the crowd was nearly silent.
    “There you have it,” David Wheeler announced from the dais. “You men and women represent nations and consortiums from around the globe. But more important, you are the last hope for humankind. If these creatures are allowed a foothold in our world, they will devour us.”
    “Where are they from?” a woman asked in a tremulous voice.
    As if her question had been planned, the lights went down and the screen behind Wheeler lit up. An image appeared, containing a few dozen small amoeba-like creatures, each of which had triangular trunks surrounded by myriad waving tentacles. The organisms were swimming around in a clear liquid.
    “These are the microorganisms that have been found in of all the prisoners,” Wheeler said. “They are DNA-based, so we are sure that they are of earthly origin. But they are unlike any life-form now extant on the face of the planet. They are small but extraordinarily complex.”
    The image changed to a greater magnification, showing only a few of the organisms swimming together. They were beautiful. Scarlet and turquoise and sky blue flecked with silver and ebony and a deep forest green. One of the amoebas swam into another; they combined for a moment, creating a long abacus-like life-form that glimmered for a brief time. Then the amoebas flowed out of each other. This process was repeated six or seven times among the three beings, and then they flowed away from one another.
    “They have all the appearance of the basis of animal life,” Wheeler continued, “but the makeup of their basic DNA is much closer to that of bacteria.”
    “Impossible!” a man shouted.
    “We thought so, too,” Dr. Wheeler agreed. “But the evidence is irrefutable. You are welcome, Dr. Hingis, to evaluate our studies for yourself.”
    “And where do you suppose such an impossible life-form emerged?” Dr. Hingis asked.
    The image on the screen was replaced by a three-dimensional image of a planet, a huge globe that might have been the earth at one time. A small object was depicted moving toward the planet, and when it collided, a great cloud rose in the northern hemisphere of the gray and blue world. The image