by Chris Angus
“Quite a large building,” Wokowski observed. “You’re using the entire hospital for the quarantine?”
Bingua nodded, but said nothing.
“I hope,” said Paula, nodding at the line of citizens, “relatives are not being permitted visits? That would hardly qualify as quarantine.”
“No, no. Visits are not allowed. These people merely await our daily information briefing during which we inform them how their loved ones are doing, but no one is allowed inside the main building. You understand, of course, that once you go inside, you cannot be allowed out again until the danger has passed. We’ve set up accommodations for the doctors and nurses in an adjoining wing of the building.”
“That is understood,” said Wokowski.
Inside, they passed down a long, empty hallway that held a police checkpoint at the end. Here, Bingua stopped.
“I am allowed no farther myself. In order to continue my duties with regard to the safety of Beijing as a whole, I cannot allow myself to be quarantined.” He held out a hand to Wokowski. “I wish to thank you, Doctor, personally, for the risks you and your staff are willing to take for the people of China. I do not believe your gesture will be forgotten.”
“We’re concerned for the people of China, but also for the people of the entire world, Mr. Wang. That is something we hope your country will begin to understand more as she continues to open herself up to the community of nations. We are all in this together, now. The world has grown small and we must cooperate.”
Bingua bowed deeply and then departed down the hallway.
Wokowski and his team could not have imagined the nightmare world they were about to enter. They were met by a Dr. Zhongfa and two of his assistants. All three men had bags under their eyes and appeared exhausted.
They proceeded to tour the wards. For the first time, Wokowski and his people realized just how serious and explosive a situation they’d walked into. There were hundreds of quarantined victims in the building. Indeed, all available beds had been taken, said Dr. Zhongfa, and several dining areas were being converted to accept the overflow they now saw in gurneys lining the hallways.
Wokowski’s first observation was that the patients didn’t appear to have the normal symptoms that might be expected from avian flu—sore throat, fever, cough, respiratory problems, atypical pneumonia. The symptoms were closer to those of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which could make diagnosis more difficult. Both avian flu and SARS originated from animals, but SARS was the more dangerous of the two. It lived more effectively in the droplets of spit passed back and forth between humans. The large number of patients made it immediately clear to Wokowski that whatever elements of SARS the disease may or may not have, one that was clearly shared was this mode of human-to-human transmission. There was no other way to explain the large number of cases.
Wokowski started to say something to Dr. Zhongfa, but the doctor merely met his eyes and said, “You are correct, Doctor. There is human-to-human transmission and, whatever we are dealing with, it is not avian flu or SARS. The symptoms are quite distinctly different.”
“You’ve known this all along?” Wokowski asked in astonishment.
Dr. Zhongfa spread his arms. “I don’t know what official line the Party has put out, for I’ve not been allowed out of the hospital in three weeks.”
Paula looked bewildered. “We’re not dealing with avian flu here at all.”
“So it would appear,” said Wokowski, feeling a cold fear in the pit of his stomach he hadn’t felt since his days working on Ebola in the Congo.
“There was an initial outbreak of avian flu,” Dr. Zhongfa explained, “In Hubei and Hunan provinces. The lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza first appeared two months ago. As you well know, the fear is that avian flu will mix with human flu and start a pandemic among people with no immunity. I worked on the early stages of that outbreak and we felt we had contained it. Then this happened. I don’t understand where this current disease comes from or, indeed, what it is at all.”
Wokowski put on a mask and gloves and went over to a young woman who lay on a bed in the hallway. He patted her arm and put his hand on her face, which was cool to the touch. “No fever,” he said. The woman was unresponsive. He stared into her eyes, which had an unusual, bluish cast to them.
“They have very high iron levels—toxic levels—and they cannot keep food down,” said Dr. Zhongfa. “We have to feed them intravenously, but even so, they waste away after an average of two weeks no matter what interventions we attempt. It’s as if nourishment simply bypasses their systems somehow. Their bodies literally consume themselves. They become covered in suppurating wounds and then pass through a vacant, passive stage until very near the end when a kind of madness overtakes them. Then, upon death, something quite extraordinary happens.”
Dr. Wokowski waited, eyebrows raised.
“The deterioration continues at an ever-increasing rate. The bones develop the consistency of chalk, the features disintegrate, and the entire body basically degenerates, as though the natural rate of decay and putrefaction was accelerated.”
Wokowski stared at him with his mouth open. “That’s impossible!”
“We thought so, too, until we saw it with our own eyes.”
“What’s the rate of mortality?” asked Wokowski.
Dr. Zhongfa looked at him with sad eyes. “One hundred percent, Doctor.”
“What! One hundred percent? That’s unheard of. Even Ebola never got that bad.” He glanced at the strained faces of his team. They were frightened, and rightly so, for they were now locked in a ward with hundreds of contagious individuals. They were cut off, unable to contact family, friends, or their own government. And they were suddenly painfully aware that their humanitarian calling might at last demand the ultimate sacrifice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEEANNE KNELT IN the dry earth beside one of the smallest figures of the family group. With a tiny, handheld pick the size of a dentist’s instrument, she scraped away particles of soft rock from the harder, fossilized bones of the child’s toes. Those small feet curled up beside their mother twenty thousand years ago evoked a sense of vulnerability, even of pathos.
Alan lay a few feet away on his side, working on another member of the group. Occasionally he glanced at Leeanne, whose concentration in her task was total. He found it simply enjoyable to look at the curve of her body. Every day, he marveled at how much he enjoyed being in close proximity to her.
“I wish I could understand what it was that killed them,” Leeanne said. “They seem so peacefully arranged, as though they just lay down for a nap before continuing on their way.”
He nodded, shifting his long legs uncomfortably on the hard ground in order to get the proper angle for his work. “It’s puzzling all right. If this were volcanic rock, I’d say they’d been suffocated somehow, like the people of Pompeii. I once worked on a similar-sized group that we postulated might have been killed by the expulsion of a carbon dioxide bubble from the bottom of a nearby lake. But there are no volcanoes or lakes around here. More likely, it was something mundane, disease or even food poisoning.”
Leeanne stood and stretched her legs stiffly. “It’s all so sad, somehow.” She stared at the barren place where the family had met its end.
“Oh, I don’t know. We all die. At least their final moments are going to be recorded. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will someday troop past this scene in a museum somewhere and think about them, about their lives, just as we are. That’s at least part of why I became an archaeologist, you know, to show the importance of every human life, how each and every prehistoric family has contributed to making us what we are today.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, provided you’re happy with what we are today.”
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “My God . . . you’re a cynic!”
“Actually, I think what I like about archaeology—what my late husband loved about it—is that it’s a way to es
cape some of the stupidities of the present, the complex, ambiguous, angst-ridden lives we lead, the endless wars and conflicts, and political stupidities. These poor people lived horrid, short lives, but they loved one another, relied upon each other, and went to their maker together.” She wiped a strand of hair from her eyes. “There’s an attraction to that kind of simplicity. It’s why many people today still aspire to it, the Mennonites, Amish, Quakers, and others.”
“A philosopher and a cynic. By gosh, I think I’m beginning to get a handle on you, Fitzhugh.”
She smiled at him. “I know we’re just here to get the dig started and to promote the idea to the Chinese that we’re all working together. Corkie and his crew will do the real work once we leave. Still, it feels good to be doing this again. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed being in the field. Between my mother’s illness and then Malcolm . . . it’s been too long.”
“I’d almost forgotten how recently Malcolm died,” said Alan soberly. “You must still feel terrible.”
“I miss him very much. But this is good therapy. For a few minutes working quietly here with you, I felt like I was alongside Malcolm again.” She grabbed her pick and stared at it absently. “So much has happened so fast. I haven’t had an opportunity to ask you what you really think about what we’re doing.”
“You mean do I put any serious credence in the strange sequence results?” He sat up and stretched his long legs out. “Yes, I do. I’ve done a lot of DNA work. When Gordon announced we’d all independently found the same thing . . . well . . . I just couldn’t believe it. Yet we saw the evidence. I mean, okay, maybe it’s some part of our evolution that this phenomenon somehow got programmed in for reasons we don’t understand. But the debris undergoing some sort of alteration upon sequencing is goddamned weird! It’s unique. And potentially dangerous.”
“How do you mean?”
“We don’t know what’s happening with these changes. Suppose they did code for something like a prion? Humans would have no resistance.” He was silent for a moment. “There are genes so important that if you change them in any way, the organism doesn’t survive. Now we’re not talking about actual changes in the genes themselves here, but rather in background debris between the genes. But who’s to say if that distinction is enough to protect us? What’s going on must be structurally important somehow. The whole thing is just bloody inexplicable.”
“So, what? It really is little green men?”
“That makes less sense than anything, if you ask me. Look, I’m a scientist—I have to lean toward a biological explanation. Hell, I don’t believe for a minute we’re alone in the universe. But I think the size of it makes the likelihood of our ever encountering another intelligence vanishingly small. Even if there are other life forms, their genetics, thought processes, environments would be so incredibly different from ours—down to the molecular level—we’d probably have no more interest in each other than we might in the life span of an ant or a piece of coal.”
“I don’t know. I think I’d be quite fascinated by an intelligent rock.”
They looked up as the familiar thwap, thwap of a helicopter intruded on the silence of their surroundings.
Alan looked at his watch. “It’s the regular 2:30 Horny Huang Shuttle.”
Leeanne grimaced. “You know, it was my idea for Diana to do this thing, but since she agreed, I’ve had second thoughts. I’m not at all sure I’d be willing to put myself under—and I use the term advisedly—Huang’s control for an entire week. She’ll be helpless in Urumqi with no one there she knows, without being able to speak the languages. I wouldn’t put it past the little prick to already have his honeymoon hideaway all picked out. It gives me the shivers just to think about it.”
Alan sighed. “I know. Me, too. But there really seems to be no other way to get rid of him long enough to pull this off. If Diana comes through it all right, she ought to get a medal or something. I hope to hell she at least makes a fortune and gets Katie Couric’s job.”
Diana and Logan sat on the Observation Deck and watched Huang’s helicopter circle and then settle to the ground just out of sight beyond the hill. This was Huang’s regular, daily visit—with one difference. Today they would tell him Diana was going to Urumqi with him to spend a week buying supplies and doing research for her documentary in the city library and at the museum, which also had a collection of Tarim mummies. Marcia had spent considerable time working up a list of arcane supplies that would keep her busy. In the event they managed to be found too quickly, they’d come up with the additional excuse for her city visit of doing background research. This pretty much put the decision of when she was ready to return completely in her own hands. She’d been told to allow them at least a full week.
Marcia and Logan briefly tossed around the idea of sending someone with her, ostensibly an assistant, but really to offer some protection. They finally agreed, however, that if someone else went, Huang might not see his opportunity for time alone with Diana as anything special. He’d be much more likely to take time to visit the site. It was essential they hand Diana to him on a platter or the entire thing could fall apart.
“How’re you doing?” Logan asked, feeling foolish at finally asking what had been on both their minds all day.
“I get these images of Huang, you know?” She shivered. “Really disgusting images of him doing things to me. Then I tell myself, shit, it’s just a sex act. Not the worst thing that ever happens to people—not by a long shot. I’ve had sex with guys and afterwards couldn’t believe I allowed myself to do it with such creeps. What’s the difference?”
“I rather suspect the matter of choice figures substantially in how one feels. If you make a really bad decision, at least you were the one who made it. That’s all the difference in the world, I’d say.”
She stared at him soberly. “Tell me again how important this is.”
He shook his head. “We can’t know what the body will tell us until scientists have a chance to study it. We might not learn anything. That’s what’s been bothering me. We could be making a monumentally bad decision and you might be taking an awful risk for nothing.”
“Do you think it was a bad decision for me to ask you to lie down with me last night?”
“I thought it might be . . . for about thirty seconds.”
She took his hand and squeezed it tightly. “The first time you told me about all this, you said it could be the most important thing I ever do in my life. Most people never get the chance to do something that big.”
She stood abruptly. “Here he comes. Let’s get it over with.”
As Huang came up the rise to the Observation Deck, Marcia, Duncan, Alan, and Leeanne also appeared and climbed up to join them. Everyone had been dreading the moment.
Huang looked down on the family group, the exposed portion of which had now increased substantially.
“You make progress, Dr. Kessler. That is good.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “But we’re short of a number of supplies. I’ve made up a list. Diana has agreed to fly to Urumqi with you to get them and to do some further research at the museum and library.”
Huang’s face lit up as though he’d won the lottery. “Oh, most wonderful. I hope you will allow me to show you our beautiful city,” he said to Diana as if Urumqi were the flower of Asia, instead of the drab, overpopulated, unplanned confabulation of ugly modern architecture it was.
To her credit, Diana had fallen into character. If she was going to pull this off, she had to appear not just willing, but actually excited to be spending a week in Huang’s company. She gave him her most dazzling smile.
“Why, thank you, Huang,” she said. “You are most charming to offer. I look forward to seeing the city through the eyes of a native.”
“This is most fine, most fine,” Huang enthused. “I must return at once to organize an itinerary for you. I shall come for you tomorrow morning then?”
Marcia attempted to put some parameters in place.
“Some sight-seeing would be fine, Huang, but please remember this is a working trip. Miss Shatraw must obtain supplies and do her research.”
“Of course, of course. We’ll make wise use of our time together.” Huang rubbed his hands together excitedly. Without so much as a second glance at the archaeological dig, he bowed and departed.
“Wow!” said Cooper. “I guess we’ve found one way to shorten his visits.”
“Yeah,” said Leeanne. “Throw him a piece of fucking meat.” She realized suddenly what she’d said and looked at Diana. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’m the one who came up with this stupid idea. You’re braver than I would be. I couldn’t do it.”
“Huang’s never shown a lot of interest in the digs,” said Marcia. “Other than from the standpoint of what they mean to his career. His quick departure is a good sign, I’d say, that Diana should be able to keep him in Urumqi for the duration of her stay.”
Diana looked physically ill. Her brief charade had taken a lot out of her.
They all stared at her sympathetically.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Really. I’ve got to get used to this feeling, is all.” To Marcia, she added shakily, “God, it must be time for some of those rotgut martinis, isn’t it?”
Paul Littlefield stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his penthouse atop One Trump Plaza and stared out across Central Park. He owned several buildings of his own around the park, but preferred the view from the Trump. He’d actually tried to buy it, but the building wasn’t for sale.
Most of the rich people he knew lived lives that were meaningless and directionless, the expansion of their portfolios the only real goal. They would never know the richness of having a higher calling, as he did. He despised President Klein, who surrounded himself with Jews and atheists. The only reason he’d supported the man’s run for office was because he was the only candidate who needed money so desperately that Littlefield saw the opportunity to buy his own president. If the truth were known, he’d given a substantial amount to the president’s opponent, whose election he would have preferred.