Caroline watched him, morbidly fascinated by the way his bloated lips and tongue moved as he spoke, and when he was finished, she said, “Okay, Fat Man. Smart Man. What’s the story with this disease?”
The Fat Man looked at Rashida, who shrugged, then nodded. “Tell her,” she said. “Tell her everything.”
“Everything? That would take my entire life, and I still would not be finished.”
Rashida looked at Caroline and shook her head. “He’s smart, but he’s also one huge smart-ass.” She turned back to the Fat Man. “Everything about the disease.”
“I know, my darling one, I know.” He sucked a few more swallows from the tube, knocked the tube away, then shifted his position in the web chair, farting several times as he grunted and moved about. Finally he seemed to be comfortable, and he turned his gaze and smile on Caroline.
“This disease started inside the Core,” the Fat Man began. “Not inside Cancer Cell, but out here in the Core. Now, how the agent of the disease got inside the Core is a mystery even to me, but considering the nature of this place, not so surprising that something like this happened. A number of the Core residents came down with it, became quite ill, and after two or three had died, the others started going to Cancer Cell.”
Caroline looked at Rashida for an explanation.
“We provide medical care to people in here. Compensation, if you will, for our expansion throughout the Core. We started out quite small, and we’ve added labs and production facilities over the years, snaking all through the buildings here as well as below ground, closing off quite a bit of the Core in the process. In return, to keep down the hassles and attacks from the crazier ones, we give them medical care. When sick people started showing up, we took them in and tried to help.”
“We exchange information constantly,” the Fat Man said, “and as the seriousness of this disease became apparent, we’ve been working together to try to learn as much as we can about it. They give me the hard data, and I do interpretation and analysis. I look at the trends, and the changes in the trends.” His disconcerting smile was gone, and his expression had become quite serious and grave. “It started quite a while ago, months ago. And although it began here, not only has it made it out into the Tenderloin, it’s gone out into the main city, though no one out there seems to know it yet. And it has changed. So much of this is guesswork, because reporting standards aren’t exactly very high here in the Core.” The Fat Man smiled and scratched at his crotch. Caroline tried to ignore it, and suppressed a touch of nausea. “But my best analysis indicates that initially the incubation period was rather long, perhaps as long as two or three weeks. Which is probably why, despite its high mortality rate, it has managed to spread out into the city.”
“How high is the mortality rate?” Caroline asked.
“Close to one hundred percent.”
Caroline’s heart sank for Nikki, for Cage. “How close to one hundred percent?”
The Fat Man shook his head. “No known survivors. But I would never claim a full one hundred percent. There will be survivors somewhere, sometime. There will be people who are exposed to it who don’t contract it. There always are. But those are going to be exceptions, rare exceptions.” He paused, seemed to think for a few moments, then went on. “The incubation period, however, seems to be declining. From the reports I’ve been getting, from Cancer Cell as well as from my other sources in the Core, and my sources outside, in the Tenderloin and in the city, I would say the incubation period is down under a week. It might go down to just a few days. I would guess that over the next several weeks, there will be a small explosion of cases appearing. More inside the Tenderloin, but many outside as well. At this point, I would be very surprised if it hasn’t been carried outside the city, into other states, perhaps even other countries.” The Fat Man paused, then gave Caroline a tight, disturbing smile. “There’s a plague in the making.”
After leaving the Fat Man, Rashida brought Caroline to a small, roofless room at the top of the tallest building in the Core with an incredible view of the surrounding buildings of the Tenderloin.
It took them half an hour to make their way along a maze of passages, up and down staircases, encountering several clumps of odd people who let them pass with hardly a word, through two floors of rubble, and up one final rickety ladder to a locked hatchway. Rashida used a magnetic key to unlock the hatch, then they climbed through and into the room. She locked the hatch after them.
They sat together on a makeshift bench of boxes and cracked wooden planks, looking out through windows that had almost no glass remaining in their frames, and large holes that had been punched or blown into the walls. It was late afternoon, the brown-orange sun hanging low in the sky, but it was still hot. From here, the Core did not seem quite so awful, though it was still just four square blocks of rubble and ruins, and Caroline said as much to Rashida.
Rashida laughed. “You’ve had a very atypical tour through the Core, though. We avoided all the trouble spots, the places the real crazies tend to haunt, and we got lucky besides. So don’t get romantic about this place. It’s a hellhole, believe me.” She laughed again. “But it’s home.”
“You trust the Fat Man’s assessment of this thing, this disease, whatever it is?”
“He’s a monster, but I’ve never known him to be wrong about anything of importance.”
“And a human lie detector.”
Rashida shrugged. “If you can call him human. He’s been a great help to us over the years. Not just for the information, but acting as a kind of emissary for us with various groups in the Core. We probably couldn’t have made it in here without him.”
Caroline finally decided to just ask the question she most wanted to ask. “What is the purpose of Cancer Cell?”
Rashida didn’t answer at first. She gazed out the window and down at one of the street barriers blocking off the Core from the rest of the Tenderloin. “That’s hard to say. There is no single purpose for everyone, and things have changed over the years. But if there’s been anything like an overriding philosophy, I’d say it would be to increase access to the best drugs and medical treatments available. Entities like New Hong Kong, governments, and corporations have essentially complete control over health care in this country, and it’s not even close to being fairly distributed.” She turned to Caroline. “But I don’t need to give you a lecture about that, do I?”
“No, you don’t. I know what it’s like. I’ve been lucky, because my father is a policeman. But people like Tito don’t have anything.”
“We try to manufacture high-grade pharmaceuticals and make them available on the street, at a much lower cost than the drug companies allow. And we try to do cutting-edge medical research that places like New Hong Kong or the major drug companies can’t be bothered with because there might not be a profit in it. And we want people on the street to have access to new treatments and procedures at something like an affordable price.” She paused. “I guess we’re just trying to equalize things a little. Bring a little fairness.” She smiled and shook her head.
“But you experiment on people, sometimes without their consent.”
“We always get their consent to begin with,” Rashida said. “Sometimes they change their minds.”
“Like Tito?”
“Like Tito.”
“And then you abduct them and experiment on them by force.”
“We enforce the contracts they willingly signed. We always fulfill our part of the contract, and we expect them to fulfill theirs.” Her expression hardened, and she waved at the view they had. “This is the real world we’re living in, and working in. Your friend Tito did quite well by us. You thought he suffered a great deal in the last months of his life, and he did. But his suffering would have been much greater without the drugs we provided for pain, to fight infections, to battle his depressions. In return, we wanted to be able to try experimental procedures, treatments, and drugs on him, so that if nothing else we might be able to help ot
hers in the future.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to apologize for what we do, or how we do it. We’ve made some decisions, and we’ve provided tremendous benefits to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the kind of drugs and health care we give them.” She looked away from Caroline. “And that’s the purpose of Cancer Cell. You can do what you like with it.”
Caroline didn’t say anything. They remained in the room for a long time, not speaking, and watching the sun set on the city, and the light begin to fail.
26
CAGE WAS HALF drunk when the call came through from Eric Ralston. He had been half drunk pretty much all of his waking hours the past couple of days. It was a compromise. He stayed away from Hanna’s, and he wouldn’t let himself get completely smashed, in case something came up at the clinic, but he had also given up on getting through the days completely sober. Nikki was going to die any day now. She had become comatose, unresponsive, kept alive by artificial lungs and heart and blood. It was amazing that she had hung on this long, but it wasn’t going to continue. She was going to die.
He wanted to be with her, sitting at her side, but the doctors wouldn’t let him, not when they didn’t know what was killing her. Standing outside her door and looking at her through a rectangle of glass was just impossible. So he’d given up, went by twice a day to stare at her for half an hour, and spent the rest of his time wandering around in a trance.
He was in his apartment, sitting at the window, dazed by the heat of the day and the alcohol, drinking one more beer and watching the street below him, hardly registering a thing. His skin was slick with sweat. He wasn’t even sure what time it was—sometime in the afternoon, he thought, judging by the heat, but it could have been noon, or four. The shadows should have given him an idea, but he couldn’t concentrate on them enough to work it out. He didn’t give a shit.
The phone rang. He looked at it, thought about not answering. He would be useless at the clinic right now. But the phone kept on ringing, and finally he answered, just to stop it.
“Yeah?”
“Cage? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, who else would it be? Who are you?” He didn’t recognize the voice.
“Eric.”
“Eric.” Then it dawned on him who it was, and he sat up straighter in the chair, blinking crazily, as if it would help drive away the alcohol haze. “Eric, for Christ’s sake.”
“Cage, you son of a bitch. I just talked to Mandy, back in Atlanta, and she gave me your number. She said you’ve been calling for three or four days.”
“Yeah, where the hell are you?”
There was a long hesitation, then Eric finally said, “Right here, pal. San Francisco.”
Fear jumped inside his chest, and Cage got to his feet. He began pacing around the apartment, still trying to clear his head. “How long have you been here?”
Another slight hesitation. “Five days.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
This time there was the longest silence of all, and Cage knew he wasn’t going to like where this conversation went. He picked up his beer from the windowsill, took it over to the sink, and poured the rest of it down the drain.
“I couldn’t,” Eric finally said.
“But you are now.”
“Against my better judgment. I’d been wavering, and when Mandy called, hell, I just decided I’d better.”
“Why are you here in San Francisco?”
“Cage, you’ve got to promise me everything I tell you is confidential. And I don’t mean half-assed. This is the real goddamn thing, my man, and I’m hanging my ass out over the fire by talking to you.”
“I promise,” Cage said, the fear jerking up a notch. He had stopped his pacing, and stood at the window. There was no breeze, and the heat and stink of the street drifted in to him. “I’ve got a terrible feeling that the reason I was calling you is the reason you’re here.”
Eric didn’t reply, and Cage didn’t know what else to say. He sat down again in the chair and leaned his head against the window frame, closing his eyes. He wanted another beer. He wanted ten, one right after another, sinking him into oblivion.
“Okay,” Eric said. “Let me run this by you. Something superficially a little like some of the hemorrhagic fevers. But different, really. Unique. Severe, red oozing skin rashes. Severe organ deterioration. Vomiting blood. Seizures. Death.”
Cage didn’t answer right away, wishing somehow that none of this was real. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he feared. He opened his eyes. “That’s it,” he said. “How come you guys know about it, but no one around here does?”
“Hell, Cage, it’s what we’re supposed to do. Be on top of this shit when it happens.”
“How the hell do you guys know anything?”
“We’re getting some help. We’ve got sources, the people who picked this up and first notified us.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Have you got ideas for treatment? From your sources or whoever.”
“No,” Eric said. “Not a damn thing. Our sources are pretty sure it’s a virus, but that’s it. And near as we can tell, it’s pretty close to a hundred percent fatal.”
Cage nodded to himself. His flicker of hope was gone, just like that.
“Why?” Eric asked. “Have you got someone in your clinic with it?”
“No.” He paused. “Do you remember Nikki?”
“With the cheeks of gold?”
“Yes.”
“Beautiful woman. Of course I remember her.” Then, “Not her.”
“Yes.”
“How long has she had it?”
“Four weeks, maybe longer.”
“And she’s still alive?”
“Barely.”
“Where is she, Cage? Not in your damn clinic, I hope. No offense, but—”
“No, she’s in St. Anthony’s.”
“Then maybe there’s hope. We’ve been hearing two weeks maximum.”
“No,” Cage said. “She’s dying. Another day or two at most.”
“Don’t give up yet. You’re a doctor, you know as well as I do that strange things happen.”
“Yeah, I’m a doctor. And I’ve seen her going steadily downhill, no matter what they’ve done. Her internal organs are shot. There’s no recovering from where she is, Eric. None.”
“I’m sorry,” Eric said.
There was a long silence. Cage wanted to hang up, return to his grieving, his waiting. His drinking. But there was too much more to come, he knew that.
“Okay, Cage, now listen to me.” Eric’s tone had changed, become stronger. “You’ve got to get out of there. Now. Today, tonight, whatever. The sooner the better.”
“Get out of where?”
“The Tenderloin.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Remember what I said earlier. You can’t breathe a word of any of this, or I’ll lose my job. In fact, they’ll throw my sorry ass in jail.”
“I promised you once, for Christ’s sake. I promise again. What the hell is going on?”
“As of dawn tomorrow, we’re putting the Tenderloin in quarantine.”
Cage started to laugh, then choked it off. “You fucking can’t be serious, Eric.”
“I’m serious, Cage. This is bad shit, and that’s the only way we’re going to stop it from breaking out.”
“That’s a crock of shit. It’s not confined to the Tenderloin, if it ever was.”
“It started in there, we know that.”
“Maybe. I’ll grant that. But if it did, it’s already broken out. I know of half a dozen probables outside the Tenderloin, which means there are probably a hell of a lot more than that.”
“No,” Eric insisted. “We’re certain that as of right now it is completely confined to the Tenderloin. Any cases outside are just coincidentally similar.”
“Jesus Christ, Eric, that’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Th
at’s the official position, Cage. The decision’s been made.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”
“Cage, do you know where this thing started?”
“How the hell would I know that?”
“You’re an intelligent man. You’re there on the streets. I figure you have a pretty good idea.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, yeah. The goddamn Core, that’s where.” He paused, probably for effect. “Cancer Cell.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“No, it’s a certainty. And we’re going to take care of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the same time we establish the quarantine around the Tenderloin, we’ll establish an interior quarantine around the Core. We’ll bring everyone in the Core out, transfer them to an isolation clinic we’re setting up out on Treasure Island, and then we’ll go in and sterilize.”
Cage started pacing again, all the effects of the alcohol apparently banished. “You people are all out of your fucking minds,” he told Eric. “You can’t quarantine the Tenderloin. You won’t even be able to quarantine the Core. You have any idea what that place is like? How many ways there are into the Core? The kinds of passages and routes in and out?”
“The military is getting prime intelligence. They’ll be able to set up the quarantine.”
“They’re kidding themselves, Eric. They’ll never find all the ways into that place.”
“They will.” Eric was adamant.
“They won’t. But even if they could, you know who’s in there? You know what’s in there?”
“Cancer Cell.”
“Yeah, but they’re only a small part. The Core is the weirdest fucking collection of social misfits and freaks in this hemisphere. They won’t all come out and go into your nice isolation clinic. They’ll fight you every step of the way.”
“The military will be prepared for that.”
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