by Greg Bear
“We’ll worry about all that later,” Harrison said sharply. “What we are responsible for is reporting to the CDC. This isn’t a vat spill or breach of lab containment, but—”
“None of us, not one of us, thought Ulam’s cells could be viable outside the body,” Yng said, twisting his hand into a jumble of fingers.
“It’s very possible they weren’t, at first,” Bernard said drawn into the discussion despite himself. “It’s obvious there’s been a lot of development since the original lymphocytes. Self-directed development.”
“I still refuse to believe Ulam created intelligent cells,” Harrison said. “Our own research in the cube has shown how difficult that would be. How did he determine their intelligence? How did he train them? No—something—”
Yng laughed. “Ulam’s body was being transformed, redesigned…how can we doubt there was an intelligence behind the transformation?”
“Gentlemen,” Bernard said softly. “That’s all academic. Are we, or are we not going to alert Atlanta and Bethesda?”
“What in hell do we tell them?”
“That we are all in the early stages of a very dangerous infection,” Bernard said, “generated in our laboratories by a researcher, now dead—”
“Murdered,” Yng said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“And spreading at an alarming rate.”
“Yes,” Yng said, “but what can the CDC do about it? The contamination has spread, perhaps across the continent by now.”
“No,” Harrison said, “not quite that far. Vergil hasn’t made contact with that many people. It could still be confined to Southern California.”
“He made contact with us,” Yng said ruefully. “It is your opinion we are contaminated?”
“Yes,” Bernard said.
“Is there anything we can do, personally?”
He pretended to consider, then shook his head. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s work to do before we announce.” He left the conference room and walked down the outside corridor to the stairs. Near the front of the west wing was a pay phone. Removing his credit card from his wallet, he inserted it into the slot and punched in the number of his Los Angeles office.
“This is Bernard,” he said. “I’m going to take my I’m to the San Diego airport shortly. Is George available?” The receptionist made several calls and placed George Dilman, his mechanic and sometimes-pilot, on the other end of the line. “George, sorry for such short notice, but it’s something of an emergency. The jet should be ready in an hour and a half, fully fueled.”
“Where this time?” Dilman asked, used to long flights on short notice.
“Europe. I’ll let you know precisely in about half an hour, so you can file a flight plan.”
“Not your usual, Doctor.”
“Hour and a half, George.”
“We’ll be ready.”
“I’m flying alone.”
“Doctor, I’d rather—”
“Alone, George.”
George sighed reluctantly. “All right”
He held down the receiver switch and then punched in a twenty-seven-digit number, beginning with his satellite code and ending with a secret scramble string. A woman answered in German.
“Doktor Heinz Paulsen-Fuchs, bitte.”
She asked no questions. Whoever could get through on this line, the doctor would speak to. Paulsen-Fuchs answered several minutes later. Bernard glanced around uneasily, realizing he was taking some risk being observed in the open.
“Paul, this is Michael Bernard. I have a rather extreme favor to ask of you.”
“Herr Doktor Bernard, always welcome, always welcome! What can I do for you?”
“Do you have a total isolation lab at the Wiesbaden facility you can clear within the day?”
“For what purpose? Excuse me, Michael, is it not a good time to ask?”
“No, not really.”
“If there is a grave emergency, well, yes, I suppose.”
“Good. I’ll need that lab, and I’ll need to use B.K. Pharmek’s private strip. When I leave my plane, I must be placed in an isolation suit and a sealed biologicals transport truck immediately. Then my aircraft will be destroyed on the runway and the entire area sprayed with disinfectant foam. I will be your guest…if you can call it that…indefinitely. The lab should be equipped so that I can live there and do my work. I will require a computer terminal with full services.”
“You are seldom a drunkard, Michael. And you have never been unstable, not in our time together. This sounds quite serious. Are we talking about a fire, Michael? A vat spill, perhaps?”
Bernard wondered how Paulsen-Fuchs had found out he was working with gene engineering. Or did he know? Was he just guessing? “A very extreme emergency, Herr Doktor. Can you oblige me?”
“Will all be explained?”
“Yes. And it will be to your advantage—and your nation’s advantage—to know ahead of time.”
“It does not sound trivial, Michael.”
He felt an irrational stage of anger. “Compared to this everything else is trivial, Paul.”
“Then it will be done. We can expect you—?”
“Within twenty-four hours. Thank you, Paul.”
He hung up and glanced at his watch. He doubted if anyone at Genetron understood the magnitude of what was about to happen. It was difficult for him to imagine. But one thing was clear. Within forty-eight hours of Harrison informing the CDC, the North American continent would be placed under virtual isolation—whether officials believed what was said, or not. The key words would be “plague” and “genetic engineering firm.” The action would be completely justifiable, but he doubted if it would be sufficient. Then more drastic measures would be taken.
He did not want to be on the continent when that happened, but on the other hand, he did not want to be responsible for transmitting the contagion. So he would offer himself up as a specimen, to be kept at the finest pharmaceutical research firm in Europe.
Bernard’s mind worked in such a way that he was never bothered by second guesses or extreme doubts—not in his work, at any rate. When in an emergency or tight situation, he always came up with one solution at a time—usually the correct one. The reserve solutions waited in the background of his thoughts, unconscious and unobtrusive, while he acted. So it had always been in the operating room, and so it was now. He did not regard this faculty without some chagrin. It made him seem like a bloody robot at times, self-confident beyond all reason. But it had been responsible for his success, his stature in neurophysiological research, and the respect he had been accorded by fellow professionals and public alike.
He returned to the conference room and picked up his briefcase. His limo, as always, would be waiting for him in the Genetron parking lot, the driver reading or playing chess on a pocket computer. “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” Bernard said to Harrison. Yng stood facing the blank white marker board, hands clasped behind his back.
“I’ve just called CDC,” Harrison said. They’ll be getting back to us with instructions.”
The word would soon go out to every hospital in the area. How soon before they closed the airports? How efficient were they? “Let me know, then,” Bernard said. He walked out the door and wondered for a moment whether he needed to take anything else with him. He thought not. He had copies of Ulam’s floppy diskettes in his briefcase. He had Ulam’s organisms within his blood.
Surely that would be enough to keep him busy for a while.
People? Anyone he should warn?
Any of his three ex-wives? He didn’t even know where they lived now. His accountant sent them their alimony checks. There was really no practical way—
Anybody he truly cared for, who truly cared for him?
He had last seen Paulette in March. The parting had been amicable. Everything had been amicable. They had orbited around each other like moon and planet, never really touching. Paulette had objected to being the moon, and quite rightly. She had do
ne very well in her own career, chief cytotechnologist at Cetus Corporation in Palo Alto.
Now that he thought of it, she had probably been the one who had initially suggested his name to Harrison at Genetron. After they broke up. No doubt she had thought she was being very fair-minded and objective, helping all concerned.
He couldn’t fault her for that. But there was nothing in him that urged a call to her, a warning.
It just wasn’t practical.
His son he hadn’t heard from in five years. He was in China someplace on a research grant.
He put the notion out of his head.
Perhaps I won’t even need an isolation chamber, he thought. I’m pretty damned isolated already.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They nearly died. Within minutes, Edward was too weak to move. He watched as she called his parents, different hospitals, her school. She was frantic with fear that she might have infected her students. He imagined a ripple of news going out, being picked up. The panic. But Gail slowed, became dizzy, and lay down on the bed next to him.
She struggled and cursed, like a horse trying to right itself after breaking a leg, but the effort was useless.
With her last strength she came to him and they lay in each other’s arms, drenched in sweat. Gail’s eyes were closed, her face the color of talcum. She looked like a corpse in an embalming parlor. For a time Edward thought she was dead and sick as he was, he raged, hated, felt tremendous guilt for his weakness, his slowness to understand all the possibilities. Then he no longer cared. He was too weak to blink, so he closed his eyes and waited.
There was a rhythm in his arms, in his legs. With each pulse of blood, a kind of sound welled up within him as if an orchestra were performing thousands strong, but not in unison; playing whole seasons of symphonies at once. Music in the blood. The sensation become more coordinated; the wave-trains finally canceled into silence, then separated into harmonic beats.
The beats melted into the sound of his own heart.
Neither of them had any feel for the passage of time. It could have been days before he regained enough strength to go to the faucet in the bathroom. He drank until his stomach could hold no more and returned with a glass of water. Lifting her head with his arm, he brought the edge of the glass to Gail’s mouth. She sipped at it. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with yellowish crumbs, but there was some color in her skin. “When are we going to die?” she asked, her voice a feeble croak. “I want to hold you when we die.”
Minutes later, he was strong enough to help her into the kitchen. He peeled an orange and shared it with her, feeling the pulse of the sugar and juice and acid down his throat. “Where is everybody?” she asked. “I called hospitals, friends. Where are they?”
The harmonic orchestral sensation returned, beats coordinating into recognizable fragments, the fragments coalescing, coming into a focus of meaning, and suddenly—
Is there DISCOMFORT?
—Yes.
He answered automatically and in kind, as if he had expected the exchange and was ready for a long conversation.
PATIENCE. There are difficulties.
—What? I don’t understand—
*Immune response* *Conflict*. Difficulties.
—Leave us, then! Go away!
Not possible. Too INTEGRATED.
They weren’t recovering, not to the extent they were free of the infection. Any feeling of returning freedom was illusory. Very briefly, saying what his strength would allow, he tried to explain to Gail what he thought they were experiencing.
She propped herself up out of the chair and went to the window, where she stood on shaking legs, looking out at green commons, other rows of apartments. “What about other people?” she asked. “Have they got it, too? That’s why they’re not here?”
“I don’t know. Probably soon.”
“Are they…the disease. Is it talking to you?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m not crazy.” She walked slowly across the living room. “I’m not going to be able to move much longer,” she said. “How about you? Maybe we should try to escape.”
He held her hand and shook his head. “They’re inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?”
“Then I’d like to be in bed with you, when we can’t move any more. And I want your arms around me.”
They lay back on the bed and held each other.
“Eddie…”
That was the last sound he heard. He tried to resist, but waves of peace rolled over him and he could only experience. He floated on a wide blue-violet sea. Above the sea, his body was mapped onto a seemingly limitless plane. The noocyte endeavors were charted there, and he had no problem understanding their progress. It was obvious that his body was more noocyte than Milligan now.
—What’s going to happen to us?
No more MOTION.
—Are we dying?
Changing.
—And if we don’t want to change?
No PAIN.
—And fear? You won’t even allow us to be afraid?
The blue-violet sea and the chart faded into warm darkness.
He had plenty of time to think things through, but not nearly enough information. Was this what Vergil had experienced? No wonder he had seemed to be going crazy. Buried in some inner perspective, neither one place nor another. He felt an increase in warmth, a closeness and compelling presence.
•Edward…
—Gail? I can hear you-no, not hear you—
•Edward, I should be terrified. I want to be angry but I can’t.
Not essential.
—Go away! Edward, I want to fight back
—Leave us, please, leave us!
PATIENCE. Difficulties.
They fell quiet and simply reveled in each other’s company. What Edward sensed nearby was not the physical form of Gail; not even his own picture of her personality, but something more convincing, with all the grit and detail of reality, but not as he had ever experienced her before.
—How much time is passing?
•I don’t know. Ask them.
No answer.
—Did they tell you?
—No. I don’t think they know how to talk to us, really…not yet. Maybe this is all hallucination. Vergil hallucinated, and maybe I’m just imitating his fever dreams…
•Tell me who’s hallucinating whom. Wait. Something’s coming. Can you see it?
—I can’t see anything…but I feel it.
•Describe it to me.
—I can’t.
•Look-it’s doing something.
Reluctantly, •It’s beautiful.
—It’s very…I don’t think it’s frightening. It’s closer now.
No HARM. No PAIN. *Learn* here, *adapt*.
It was not a hallucination, but it could not be put into words. Edward did not struggle as it came upon him.
•What is it?
—It’s where we’ll be for some time, I think.
•Stay with me!
—Of course…
There was suddenly a great deal to do and prepare for.
Edward and Gail grew together on the bed, substance passing through clothes, skin joining where they embraced and lips where they touched.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bernard was very proud of his Falcon 10. He had purchased it in Paris from a computer company president whose firm had gone bankrupt. He had cherished the sleek executive jet for three years, learning how to fly and getting his pilot’s license within three months from “a sitting start,” as his instructor had put it. He lovingly touched the edge of the black control panel with one finger, then smoothed his thumb across the panel’s wood inlay facing. Peculiar, that out of so much left behind-and so much lost-an inert aircraft could mean something important to him. Freedom, accomplishment, prestige…Clearly, in the next few weeks, if he had that long, there would be many changes beyond the physical. He would have to come to grips with his fragil
ity, his transience.
The plane had been refueled at La Guardia without his leaving the cockpit. He had radioed instructions, taxied up to the executive aircraft service bay, and shut the jets down. The attendants had performed their work quickly and he had filed a continuation flight plan with the tower. Not once did he have to touch human flesh or even breathe the same air as the ground crew.
In Reykjavik he had to leave the plane and attend to the fueling himself, but he wore a tightly wrapped muffler and made sure he touched nothing with his ungloved hands.
On his way to Germany, his mind seemed to clear-to become uncomfortably acute in his own self-analysis. He did not like any of the conclusions. He tried to blank them out, but there was little in the cockpit to completely absorb his attention, and the observations, the accusations, returned every few minutes until he put the plane on autopilot and gave them their due.
He would be dead very soon. It was, to be sure, a noble kind of self-sacrifice to donate himself to Pharmek, to the world that might not yet be contaminated. But it was far from making up for what he had allowed to happen.
How could he have known?
“Milligan knew,” he said between clenched teeth. “Damn all of them.” Damn Vergil I. Ulam; but wasn’t he similar to Vergil? No, he refused to admit that Vergil had been brilliant (he saw the reddened, blistered body in the bathtub, had been had been) but irresponsible, blind to the precautions which should have been taken almost instinctively. Still, if Vergil had taken those precautions, he never would have been able to complete his work.
Nobody would have allowed it.
And Michael Bernard knew all too well the frustrations of being stopped dead in his tracks while following a promising path of research. He could have cured thousands of people of Parkinson’s disease…if he had simply been allowed to collect brain tissue from aborted embryos. Instead, in their moral fervor, the people with and without faces who had contrived to stop him had also contrived to let thousands of people suffer and be degraded. How often had he wished that young Mary Shelley had never written her book, or at least had never chosen a German name for her scientist All the concatenations of the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, coming together in people’s minds.