Shadow Creatures by Andrew Lane Read Free Book Online

offered.
    ‘Correct.’ Calum leaned back into the comfort of the sofa. ‘They’re rodents – hence the rat bit – but they live underground – hence the mole bit –
and they don’t have any hair – hence the naked bit.’
    ‘Biologists are like that, I have noticed,’ Gecko said. ‘They are very literal-minded.’
    Ignoring the bantering interruptions, Calum continued: ‘They’re about ten centimetres long and they live in Africa. There’s a whole raft of interesting things about naked mole
rats. For instance, they have a social structure that’s more like that of insects than mammals – each colony has a queen, a small number of fertile males and a whole load of sterile
“workers” who don’t get to breed. Also they’ve only got a crude heat-regulation system in their bodies, more like that of lizards than mammals. They can run backwards or
forwards through their burrows at the same speed and they don’t seem to have any nerves on their skin. They can stand levels of carbon dioxide that would kill any other creature, they live
for a lot longer than any other species their size and they’ve got these four incisor teeth that project from their mouths and which they can wiggle around independently . . .’ He put
his hand in front of his mouth and wiggled his fingers to demonstrate.
    ‘OK, so far, so comedic,’ Natalie said. She was trying to imagine an elderly, hairless, pink rat running backwards in its burrow and waggling its teeth, and she wasn’t sure
whether the resulting image was funny or horrific. ‘I think we can all agree that there’re some strange creatures in the world. What’s the thing about naked mole rats that’s
attracted your attention?’
    ‘They don’t get cancer,’ Calum said simply. ‘They have this chemical in their bodies – it’s a kind of complicated sugary polymer thing – that kills
tumour cells. All tumour cells. They’re the only creature that’s known to have this.’
    ‘What’s it for?’ Gecko asked, obviously intrigued. ‘Is it actually there to stop cancer, or to do something else?’
    ‘It looks,’ Calum answered, ‘as if they evolved this chemical in their bodies to make them more supple and flexible, to help them move around their burrows, but it has this
great and completely unexpected side effect. There’s a lot of research going on around the world to try to find out how exactly this chemical works, and replicate its results.’ He
glanced around the group. ‘The point is that rats may seem boring, but that’s only because they’re everywhere. There’s a reason why they are everywhere, and it’s
because they are survivors. What they can’t do by adapting their behaviour they do by adapting their genetic structure and biology.’
    ‘They can’t fly,’ Natalie pointed out.
    ‘That’s not true,’ Gecko said. ‘Have you ever looked at a pigeon? They are rats with wings.’
    Calum was looking away from them, towards the wall. Natalie could tell that he was uncomfortable. ‘You just want there to be a giant rat out there because of that stupid Sherlock Holmes
story,’ she said.
    ‘It’s not a –’
He caught himself. ‘Yes,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘I want there to be a giant rat out there because of that Sherlock Holmes
story.’
    He gestured to Tara to hand her tablet across. She did – reluctantly, Natalie thought – and Calum touched it a couple of times. The nine LCD screens that were clustered around his
workstation suddenly swivelled on their articulated arms and came together to form a larger screen facing the sofa. The picture of the man holding the turtle appeared in high definition on it.
Calum used his fingers to identify the corners of a box on the image, marking out the creature in the background. That section of image suddenly expanded to fill the screen. Calum made some more
gestures and imaging-processing software improved the quality, getting rid of some of the graininess and