Relic (Preston and Child novel)

Relic
Author	Lincoln Child,; Douglas Preston
Language	English
Series	Aloysius Pendergast
Genre	Horror, science fiction, thriller
Publisher	Tor Books
Publication date	1995
Publication place	United States
Media type	Hardcover
Pages	480
ISBN	0-8125-4326-2
OCLC	34014907
Followed by	Reliquary

Relic is a 1995 novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and the first in the Special Agent Pendergast series. As a horror novel and techno-thriller, it comments on the possibilities inherent in genetic manipulation, and is critical of museums and their role both in society and in the scientific community. It is the basis of the film The Relic (1997).

Plot

In September 1987, Dr. Julian Whittlesey is leading an expedition through the Amazon Basin, in the Brazilian rainforest, in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. He hopes to prove that they still do exist and in the process learn more about their culture, including their lizard god Mbwun ("He Who Walks On All Fours"), supposedly the son of Satan. However, Whittlesey disappears after finding the mutilated body of his partner, Crocker, and realizes that a creature in the bush is stalking him. 12 months later, a dock worker in Belém named Ven is suddenly and brutally killed when a freighter arrives with a shipment of crates from Whittlesey's expedition.

Seven years later, in a fictionalized version of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, two young boys are found dead in a museum stairwell after getting lost after hours. NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta leads the subsequent investigation, keeping the museum under tight lockdown and its staff placed under curfew for fear the murderer is still hiding somewhere in the museum or the many catacombs that run beneath it. The three prominent leadership figures of the facility—curator Winston Wright, deputy head Ian Cuthbert, and public relations director Lavinia Rickman—attempt to keep the murders under wraps in the lead-up to the grand gala opening of the new "Superstition" exhibition, led by George Moriarty, which feature many wealthy benefactors. Rickman hires The New York Times reporter Bill Smithback, Jr. to cover the murder investigation, but repeatedly edits his reports so they will appear more palatable towards the museum and its leadership. Employees spread the rumor of the "Museum Beast", a legendary monster that has allegedly been roaming the tunnels under the museum for years. D'Agosta is shocked during the autopsy of the two boys when he discovers a claw buried in one of the boy's brains.

When a security guard suffers a similarly brutal death, FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast arrives to aid in the investigation, while the search spreads to the tunnels under the museum. Ethnopharmacology grad student Margo Green and her mentor, Dr. Whitney Frock, discover with Agent Pendergast that the claw from the autopsy matches the claws on a Mbwun figurine sent back to the museum in a crate from Whittlesey's expedition. Margo steals letters from a secure vault that Whittlesey had sent to a museum colleague named H.C. Montague who later disappeared, detailing the mysterious events from the 1987 expedition. Pendergast reveals that his interest in the case is due to the similarity of the museum murders to the murder of the Brazilian dock worker in 1988, as well as several other dock workers in Louisiana later that year, and that he traced the shipment of Whittlesey's crates as a connection between the incidents. However, other than the Mbwun figurine, the crates were empty but for a quantity of local plant material seemingly used as packaging. Pendergast hints at the possibility that the murders might not have been committed by a human, and that the Mbwun monster may somehow have been sent to the museum by Whittlesey's shipment.

Margo and Smithback discover a colleague of Whittlesey's, to whom one of the letters was addressed, still working at the museum, and learn from him that Whittlesey claimed to have located the lost Kothoga tribe alive on a tepui deep in the Brazilian jungle, as well as a unique plant at the base of the tepui that had protein-like qualities to it. Intending to mine the entire area, the government bombarded the tepui with napalm in 1988, killing all of the remaining Kothoga and destroying the plant. Green and Frock realize that the plant Whittlesey discovered was the same plant that had been sent back in the crates and run computerized analyses on them and the claw; the results reveal that the plants are rich in thalamoid hormones, which can also be found in small amounts in the human hypothalamus gland in the brain, and that the claw belonged to an unknown creature with simultaneous primate, reptile, and human genetics. Green and Frock deduce that the creature is a predator of formidable strength, speed, and intelligence, and is dependent on the plant fibers for nutrition; in its absence, it has been slaughtering humans and consuming their hypothalamus as a poor substitute.

Under pressure from the museum leadership, the gala is allowed to begin, with combined security presence from the NYPD and FBI. In the middle of the exhibition, gala attendees notice a body hidden in the ceiling above a display, causing a mass panic. At the same time, an NYPD officer panics at a noise and opens fire on the security control room, completely destroying the central switching box and shutting down the museum's power. This causes the museum to go into an automatic security lockdown, trapping a large group of people at the gala inside one section of the museum, including D'Agosta, Smithback, Cuthbert, Wright, and Rickman. Green, Frock, and Pendergast encounter the creature, and Pendergast shoots at it, only for the bullet to bounce off the creature's skull. Contacting the trapped group led by D'Agosta, Pendergast warns him of the creature, and advises them to escape down through the museum tunnels. As they attempt to do so, the creature attacks, killing several people, and forcing the rest down into the tunnels. The creature then enters the office where the three directors are hiding, and slaughters Rickman and Wright while leaving Cuthbert alone. Cuthbert is rescued by a SWAT team shortly before they move in to attack the creature, only for the entire team to be killed.

The group from the gala reaches the sewers through rising stormwater, losing another police officer to an attack by the creature, before arriving in the creature's lair, an underground chamber filled with corpses and trinkets. Finally, they are able to escape onto the street via a manhole. Pendergast and Margo make a final stand against the creature, with Pendergast attempting to shoot out the creature's legs to stop its charge; at the last second, Green shouts for Pendergast to shoot through the creature's eye, causing the bullet to pass into the brain, killing the creature.

Four weeks later, Green, Frock, Kawakita, Pendergast, D'Agosta, and Smithback convene, and Pendergast explains that the Kothoga created the Mbwun by feeding a human the strange plant that Whittlesey had discovered and shipped back to the museum, which results in the subject transforming into the creature known as Mbwun. When the tepui was destroyed, the Mbwun followed the last surviving samples of the plant in Whittlsey's crates all the way to New York. It lived off the plants for years, and killed Montague when he came down to investigate the crates. The museum directors covered up evidence of Montague's disappearance and moved the crates into the heavily fortified vault; unable to access them, the Mbwun turned to murdering people and animals in the sewers and underground tunnels for their hypothalamus, before the murders of the boys and the security guard. Pendergast also reveals that among the bodies that were found in the lair were the remains of George Moriarty, and a pendant that Whittlesey had always worn on him.

In his lab, assistant curator Gregory Kawakita realizes that the creature itself was in fact Whittlesey after being forced to consume the plant by the Kothoga. Using the surviving samples of the plant, Kawakita is developing a drug that would turn the users first into addicts, then into Mbwun itself, and begins selling it on the street. He reflects that the Kothoga had no control over the Mbwun because of unlimited access to the plant, whereas he is the only person alive capable of making the drug, and believes that he will now assert control over the creatures where the Kothoga failed.

Characters

Major characters

NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta, a police officer working to solve the murders
Margo Green, a graduate student working at the museum
Dr. Frock, Green's advisor and department head at the museum
William Smithback, Jr., an ambitious journalist who is writing a book about the exhibition for the museum
Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, a secretive and highly resourceful FBI special agent
George Moriarty, the curator of the Superstition exhibit.

Minor characters

Dr. Ian Cuthbert, deputy head of the museum.
Gregory Kawakita, he eventually discovers what/who Mbwun really is.
Julian Whittlesey, the principal antagonist.
Lavinia Rickman, the chief of public relations.
Ippolito, the director of security at the museum.
John Bailey, an NYPD officer.
Special Agent Spencer Coffey, an FBI agent.

Sequel novel

Relic was followed by the bestselling sequel, Reliquary (1997)
Aloysius Pendergast, who is introduced in Relic, also appears in several of Preston's and Child's following novels, along with Smithback, Green, and D'Agosta.

Film adaptation

A film based on the book was released in 1997, but changed several aspects of the story, omitting numerous characters and changing the setting to the Chicago Museum of Natural History rather than the New York Museum of Natural History (fictional but strongly based on the American Museum of Natural History). The film was directed by Peter Hyams and stars Penelope Ann Miller as Dr. Margo Green, Tom Sizemore as Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, and Linda Hunt as Dr. Ann Cuthbert.

Changes from the novel

The film gives away key plot points throughout its duration; in contrast, in the novel, the explanation is delivered in the last few pages, giving the book a twist ending. The movie has a similar twist during its climax. The following table details additional changes.

Name	Character description from the novel	Character description from the film
Margo Green	Is described as an introverted graduate student. Had an indirect role in the killing of the creature by assisting Pendergast.	Is a Doctor of evolutionary biology. Is brownish blonde, feisty, and assertive. In addition, she kills the creature. Played by Penelope Ann Miller
Lt. Vincent D’Agosta	Described as overweight, and approaching early middle age; disdainful of superstitions	Is younger and more athletic. Also extremely superstitious. Played by Tom Sizemore.
Dr. Frock	Survives by hiding in an office in his wheelchair while Margo and Pendergast run on ahead to get to a place where they are able to kill the creature.	Is slain by the creature; character is played by James Whitmore.
Dr. Ian Cuthbert	Survives a close encounter with the monster, at the expense of his sanity, his boss, and his public relations director.	Changed to a female character, Dr. Ann Cuthbert, played by actress Linda Hunt.
Gregory Kawakita	An intellectual loner, prefers to research on his own. Born in Japan, raised in Britain. It is shown in the epilogue that he figured out the origins of the creature.	Is renamed Greg Lee; he is a Chinese-American and is depicted as obsequious and underhanded. He is played by Chi Moui Lo. Is killed by the monster.
Agent Pendergast	Smooth-talking, urbane, and extremely clever FBI Agent from New Orleans	He is completely written out; his role is combined with Lt. Vincent D’Agosta.
William "Bill" Smithback	Entertaining but nosy journalist writing a book for the museum's "Superstition" exhibit; friend of Margo Green. Helps D'Agosta get a group of guests, including the Mayor of New York City, out of the Museum.	Completely cut from film, no replacement.
The Museum Monster	Named "Mbwun" (translation: "He Who Walks On All Fours"). It is worth noting that this translation matches the Navajo name for a Skinwalker (yee naaldlooshii) or, "With it, He goes on all fours." Description, at best, is a "scaly primate." Characterized by an unusual smell and glowing red eyes. The DNA of this creature includes gecko genes. Is described as being "as fast as a greyhound with the intelligence of a human." Was much stealthier than its movie counterpart. Received more sympathy in the novel; both Margo and Ian Cuthbert described it as "lonely" and "sad." Used to be archaeologist Julian Whittlesey. Transformation time may have been the same, but the time from arrival in New York to killing humans is measured in years rather than weeks, and begins with small animals. There is some evidence of the monster retained some sentimental feelings of his human life. The packing crate that contained the Mbwun plant the monster needed was stored for a time at the museum and allowed the monster to survive without killing. Only after the crate and dried plants were moved beyond its reach did it turn to violence. The creature's skull and hide were durable enough that bullets fired at its head were deflected. It is finally killed by Agent Pendergast, who shoots it through its eye socket with a large caliber handgun.	Named "Kothoga" (translation: "Satan is my Father"); the name had been used for the tribe worshipping/creating Mbwun in the novel. This Kothoga is more massive and somewhat feline in shape, it has large mandibles sprouting from the side of its face, similar to a stag beetle, resembles a reptilian tiger and walks and runs like a big cat. It had a hairy spine and a forked tongue, with long and curvy razor teeth, it also has a long and flexible reptilian tail. Instead of red, its eyes are green. There was also very little sympathy towards it. As in the book, it used to be anthropologist John Whitney, and it has subtle humanoid features as it has wide shoulders, and a human like forehead. Began killing humans almost immediately upon arrival in Chicago and actually killed the crew of the ship that brought it to the city. The crate containing the plant was destroyed almost immediately upon arrival in the museum in Chicago as a precaution against possible biohazard. It is eventually killed via immolation after its hesitation to attack Margo Green, perhaps showing some extent of human emotion, allowing her to hide inside a maceration tank which closes before the creature is blown apart from an explosive reaction. NOTE: There are in fact two museum monsters in the movie; the other is a bug which eats the Kothoga plant and, as a result, becomes a massive and hideous exaggeration of itself. Margo crushes it to death with a biochemistry textbook, making her the principal character who kills both the mutants.

References

External links