Heiser-The-Facade - Sparkling Eyes

despondent voice."So glad you asked, Mr. Undersecretary." Mark opened a leather satchel he'dbrought to the meeting and pulled out a stack of papers. "During the past week I've beenconducting research on our virus." The Colonel scowled in the direction of Dr. Marcus,who man-aged only a quizzical expression."My distrust was initially kindled by the Colonel's unconvincing explanation forcattle mutilations," Mark continued. "What threw me for a loop was the way the Coloneltook credit for all the mutilations that couldn't be explained via predation. Hisdescription of how mutilations were performed is simply infeasible for a small but, inmy mind, significant number of mutilation cases. It just baffled me that he could makesuch a statement when I know that he knows better.""Just what's so implausible about his description?" Melissa probed. "I thought hisexplanation covered all the pertinent features.""No offense, Doctor, really," Mark replied, "but you're not an expert onmutilations. I can see you're well acquainted with the secondary literature, scientific orotherwise, but I've personally inspected hundreds of corpses and performed dozens ofnecropsies on victims. There are distinctive features of mutilations that the Colonel'sexplanation does not—and cannot account for. Granted, these cases are few in number,and are the most bizarre, but they did nevertheless occur.""I hardly gave an exhaustive survey of our techniques," the Colonel retortedirritably. "You'd better be able to do better than this.""Perhaps the Colonel would like to explain these cases," Dr. Chadwickchallenged, distributing a handout. "What I'm about to describe is for real," he continued."All three of these cases are ones I personally investigated, and are, to date, the mostinexplicable I know of. I've included photographs and pathology reports where appropriate.""How on earth could this be!" Father Benedict moaned with dismay, looking upfrom his copy."Frankly, Father, I have no explanation. In case you're just getting there, theFather is no doubt referring to the pathology report of the first case. The victim inquestion bore the marks of non-predatory mutilation common to virtually all cases—those features which the Colonel's explanation covers—with one exception. In this case,when I opened the chest cavity during the necropsy, I discovered that the heifer's entireheart had been removed but there were no external incisions on the body.""This is incredible," Melissa marveled, shaking her head. "More like spooky,"Malcolm followed."That's not all," Father Benedict interrupted, "keep reading. Look two thirds of theway down, `the victim's heart had been removed without any puncture of thepericardium.' That's just impossible!""I know," acknowledged Mark, "but it's true. I eventually removed thepericardium and filled it with water. It was tight as a drum; not even a pinprick. Care toexplain how you did that, colonel?"Colonel Ferguson sat grim-faced and silent. He had conspicuously not evenopened Dr. Chadwick's handout. Dr. Bandstra held his peace."I didn't think so.""Look at the next case," Kevin Garvey urged the team. "The one where the93