Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain (1969)
Michael Crichton é o autor de Jurassic Park, a novela que esteve na origem do famoso filme de Steven Spielberg, e, curiosamente, foi através de outro filme, de Robert Wise, A Ameaça de Andromeda (The Andromeda Strain, 1971), baseado nesta novela com o mesmo nome, que, há muitos anos, entrevi pela primeira vez o seu universo literário. Foi há demasiado tempo para me recordar com pormenor e, apesar de ter ficado com boa impressão do filme, verifiquei agora que a adaptação teve algumas modificações profundas, nas personagens principais, embora a linha da história seja basicamente a mesma.
The Andromeda Strain foi a primeiro livro que assinou com o nome próprio, após cinco novelas publicadas sob o pseudónimo John Lange. É um livro de ficção científica, onde a parte "científica" é levada a sério, e trata de um tema algo inquietante: como o número de espécies de seres vivos é tanto maior quanto aumenta a sua simplicidade, é de esperar que o primeiro contacto com vida extraterrestre seja com microorganismos alienígenas. Nesta novela, um satélite militar contaminado, caído numa área remota do Arizona, espalha um organismo que provoca a coagulação instantânea do sangue, levando à morte todos os habitantes de uma aldeia, à excepção de um velho e de um bebé. Um projecto governamental secreto, Wildfire, criado para esta eventualidade, vai tentar perceber o funcionamento do organismo, e a razão que levou à sobrevivência daquelas duas pessoas. Os métodos e os pormenores da investigação são bastante plausíveis, as explicações elaboradas e convincentes (Michael Crichton era doutorado em medicina por Harvard, embora nunca tenha exercido), mas a questão acaba por se resolver por uma mutação benigna que, se não ameaça a vida humana, tem implicações gravosas sobre outros materiais.
They turned their attention to Benedict. Stone went over to him and shook him. The man fell rigidly from his chair onto the floor.
Burton noticed the elbows, and suddenly became excited. He leaned over the body. “Come on,” he said to Stone. “Help me.”
“Do what?”
“Strip him down.”
“Why?”
“I want to check the lividity.”
“But why?”
“Just wait,” Burton said. He began unbuttoning Benedict’s shirt and loosening his trousers. The two men worked silently for some moments, until the doctor’s body was naked on the floor.
“There,” Burton said, standing back.
“I’ll be damned,” Stone said.
There was no dependent lividity. Normally, after a person died, blood seeped to the lowest points, drawn down by gravity. A person who died in bed had a purple back from accumulated blood. But Benedict, who had died sitting up, had no blood in the tissue of his buttocks or thighs.
Or in his elbows, which had rested on the arms of the chair.
“Quite a peculiar finding,” Burton said. He glanced around the room and found a small autoclave for sterilizing instruments. Opening it, he removed a scalpel. He fitted it with a blade—carefully, so as not to puncture his airtight suit—and then turned back to the body.
“We’ll take the most superficial major artery and vein,” he said.
“Which is?”
“The radial. At the wrist.”
Holding the scalpel carefully, Burton drew the blade along the skin of the inner wrist, just behind the thumb. The skin pulled back from the wound, which was completely bloodless. He exposed fat and subcutaneous tissue. There was no bleeding.
“Amazing.”
He cut deeper. There was still no bleeding from the incision. Suddenly, abruptly, he struck a vessel. Crumbling red-black material fell out onto the floor.
“I’ll be damned,” Stone said again.
“Clotted solid,” Burton said.
“No wonder the people didn’t bleed.”
Burton said, ”Help me turn him over.” Together, they got the corpse onto its back, and Burton made a deep incision into the medial thigh, cutting down to the femoral artery and vein. Again there was no bleeding, and when they reached the artery, as thick as a man’s finger, it was clotted into a firm, reddish mass.
“Incredible.”
He began another incision, this time into the chest. He exposed the ribs, then searched Dr. Benedict’s office for a very sharp knife. He wanted an osteotome, but could find none. He settled for the chisel that had been used to open the capsule. Using this he broke away several ribs to expose the lungs and the heart. Again there was no bleeding.
Burton took a deep breath, then cut open the heart, slicing into the left ventricle.
The interior was filled with red, spongy material. There was no liquid blood at all.
“Clotted solid,” he said. “No question.”
“Any idea what can clot people this way?”
“The whole vascular system? Five quarts of blood? No.” Burton sat heavily in the doctor’s chair and stared at the body he had just cut open. “I’ve never heard of anything like it. There’s a thing called disseminated intravascular coagulation, but it’s rare and requires all sorts of special circumstances to initiate it.”
“Could a single toxin initiate it?”
“In theory, I suppose. But in fact, there isn’t a toxin in the world—”
He stopped.
“Yes,” Stone said. “I suppose that’s right.”
