Mime, you know I don’t understand your acronyms.
“I should have thought that obvious even to one of your lame sensibilities.” You won’t be able to dawdle, professor. We’ll have to keep your visits short.
What about the Mount Dragon records? Levine typed. If I could get at those, it would speed things up considerably.
NFW. Locked up tighter than Queen Mary’s corset.
Levine took a deep breath. Mime was unreadable, immovable, infuriating. Levine wondered what he would be like in person: no doubt the typical computer hacker, a nerdy guy with thick glasses, bad at football, no social life, onanistic tendencies.
Why, Mime, that doesn’t sound like you, he typed.
Remember me? I’m the Monsieur Rick of cyberspace: I stick my neck out for no one. Scopes is too clever. You remember that pet project of his I was telling you about? Apparently, he’s been programming some kind of virtual world for use as a network navigator. He gave a lecture on it at the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics about three years ago. Naturally, I broke in and stole the transcripts and screen shots. Very girthy, very girthy indeed. Groundbreaking use of 3-D programming. Anyway, since then Scopes has clamped the lid down tight. Nobody knows exactly what his program is now, or what it can do. But even back then, he was showing off some heavy shit at that lecture. Believe me, this dude is no computer-illiterate CEO. I found his private server, and was tempted to take a peek inside. But my discretion bested my curiosity. And that’s unusual for me.
Mime, it’s vitally important that I gain access to Mount Dragon. You know my work. You can help me to ensure a safer world.
No mind trips, my man! If there’s one thing I’ve learned, only Mime matters. The rest of the world means no more to me than a dingleberry on a dog’s ass.
Then why are you helping me at all? Remember that it was you who approached me in the first place.
There was a pause in the on-line conversation.
My reasons are my own, Mime responded. But I can guess yours. It’s the GeneDyne lawsuit. Not just for money this time, is it? Scopes is trying to hit you where you live. If he succeeds, you’ll lose your charter, your magazine, your credibility. You were a little hasty there with your accusations, and now you need some dirt to prove them retroactively. Tut, tut, professor.
You’re only half right, Levine typed back.
Then I suggest you tell me the other half.
Levine hesitated at the keyboard.
Professor? Don’t force me to remind you of the two planks our deep and meaningful phriendship is built on. One: I never do anything that will expose myself. And two: my own hidden agenda must remain hidden.
There’s a new employee at Mount Dragon, Levine typed at last. A former student of mine. I think I can enlist his help.
There was another pause. I’ll need his name in order to set up the channel, Mime responded at last.
Guy Carson, Levine typed.
Professor-man, came the response, you’re a sentimentalist at heart. And that’s a major flaw in a warrior. I doubt you’ll succeed. But I shall enjoy watching you try; failure is always more interesting than success.
The screen went blank.
Carson stood impatiently in the hissing chemical shower, watching the poisonous cleansing agents run down his faceplate in yellow sheets. He tried to remind himself that the feeling of choking, of insufficient oxygen, was just his imagination. He stepped through into the next chamber and was buffeted by the chemical drying process. Another air-lock door popped open and he walked into the blinding white light of the Fever Tank. Pressing the global intercom button, he announced his arrival: “Carson in.” Few if any scientists were around to hear him, but the procedure was mandatory. It was all becoming routine—but a routine he felt he would never get used to.
He sat down at his desk and turned on his PowerBook with a gloved hand. His intercom was quiet; the facility was almost deserted. He wanted to get some work done and collect whatever messages might be waiting for him before de Vaca came.
When he had finished logging on, a line popped on the screen.
GOOD MORNING, GUY CARSON.
YOU HAVE 1 UNREAD MESSAGE.
He moused the e-mail icon, and the words came rushing onto the screen.
Guy—What’s the latest on the inoculations? There’s nothing new in the system. Please page me so we can discuss. Brent.
Carson paged Scopes through GeneDyne’s WAN service. The Gene Dyne CEO’s response was immediate, as if he had been waiting for the message.
Ciao Guy! What’s going on with your chimps?
So far so good. All six are healthy and active. John Singer suggested we cut the waiting period down to one week under the circumstances. I’ll discuss it with Rosalind today.
Good. Give me any updates immediately, please. Interrupt me no matter what I’m doing. If you can’t find me, contact Spencer Fairley.
I will.
Guy, have you had a chance to complete the white paper on your protocol? As soon as we’re sure of success, I’d like you to get it distributed internally, with an eye toward eventual publication.
I’m just waiting for some final confirmations, then I’ll e-mail a copy to you.
As they chatted, more people began to arrive in the lab, and the intercom became a busy party line, each person announcing his or her arrival. “De Vaca in,” he heard, and “Vanderwagon in”; then “Brandon-Smith!” loud and in-your-face, as usual; and then the murmur of other arrivals and other conversations.
De Vaca soon appeared in the hatchway, silently, and logged on to her machine. The bulky blüesuit hid the contours of her body, which was fine with Carson. He didn’t need any more distractions.
“Susana, I’d like to run a GEF purification on those proteins we discussed yesterday,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.
“Certainly,” said de Vaca crisply.
“They’re in the centrifuge, labeled M-one through M-three.”
There was one thing he was glad of: de Vaca was a damn good technical assistant, maybe the best in the entire lab. A true professional—as long as she didn’t lose her temper.
Carson made the final additions to the write-up that documented his procedure. It had taken him the better part of two days, and he was pleased with the result; though he thought Scopes might be a bit hasty in requesting it, he was secretly proud. Near noon, de Vaca returned with photographic strips of the gels. Carson took a look at the strips and felt another flush of pleasure: one more confirmation of imminent success.
Suddenly Brandon-Smith was in the door.
“Carson, you got a dead ape.”
There was a shocked silence.
“You mean, X-FLU?” Carson said, finding his voice. It wasn’t possible.
“You bet,” she announced with relish, unconsciously smoothing her generous thighs with thickly gloved hands. “A pretty sight, I assure you.”
“Which one?” Carson asked.
“The male, Z-nine.”
“It hasn’t even been a week,” Carson said.
“I know. You made pretty short work of him.”
“Where is he?”
“Still in the cage. Come on, I’ll show you. Besides the rapidity, there are some other unusual aspects you’d better see.”
Carson rose shakily and followed Brandon-Smith to the Zoo. It was impossible that the cause had been X-FLU. Something else must have happened. The thought of reporting this development to Scopes came into his head like a dull pain.
Brandon-Smith opened the hatchway to the Zoo and motioned Carson inside. They entered the room, the incessant drumming and screaming again penetrating the thick layers of Carson’s suit.
Fillson sat at the far end of the Zoo at a worktable, setting some instrument. He stood up and glanced over at them. Carson thought he could detect a flicker of amusement on the handler’s knobby face. He unsealed the door to the inoculation area and ushered them in, pointing upward.
Z-nine
was in the topmost row, in a cage marked with a yellow-and-red biohazard label. Carson was unable to see inside the animal’s cage. The other five inoculated chimps, in cages on the first and second tiers, seemed to be perfectly healthy.
“What was strange, exactly?” Carson asked, reluctant to see the damage firsthand.
“Look for yourself,” said Brandon-Smith, rubbing her gloves up and down her thighs again with a slow, deliberate motion. Unpleasant mannerism, Carson thought. It reminded him of the habitual movements of a severely retarded person.
A metal ladder, encased entirely in white rubber, was attached to the upper rack of cages. Carson mounted it gingerly while Fillson and Brandon-Smith waited below. He peered inside the cage. The chimp lay on its back, limbs splayed in obvious agony. The animal’s entire brain case had split open along the natural sutures, large folds of gray matter pushing out in several places. The bottom of the cage was awash in what Carson assumed was cerebrospinal fluid.
“Brain exploded,” said Brandon-Smith unnecessarily. “Must’ve been a particularly virulent strain you invented there, Carson.”
Carson began to descend. Brandon-Smith had her arms crossed and was looking up at him. Through her visor, he could see a faint sarcastic smile playing about her lips. He paused on the step. Something—he wasn’t sure what— seemed wrong. Then he realized: a cage door on the second tier had come ajar, and three hairy fingers were curling around its frame, pushing the faceplate away.
“Rosalind!” he cried, fumbling with his intercom button. “Get away from the cages!”
She looked at him, uncomprehending. Fillson, standing next to her, glanced around in alarm. Suddenly things began to happen very quickly: a hairy arm lashed out, and there was an odd tearing noise. Carson saw the chimp’s hand, strangely human, waving a swatch of rubber material. Looking toward Brandon-Smith, Carson could see, to his horror, a ragged hole in her suit, and through the hole a pair of scrubs riding over an exposed roll of fat. Across the scrubs were three parallel scratches. As he watched, blood began to well up in long crimson lines.
There was a brief, paralyzing silence.
The ape burst from its cage, shrieking with triumph at the top of its lungs, brandishing the piece of biohazard suit like a trophy. It bounded into the Zoo and out the open hatchway, disappearing down the corridor.
Brandon-Smith began to scream. With her intercom off, the sound was muffled and strange, like someone being strangled at a great distance. Fillson stood immobile, riveted in horror.
Then she found the intercom button and hysterical screams erupted into Carson’s suit, so loud they saturated the system and dissolved into a roar of static. Carson, at the top of the ladder, punched his intercom to global. “Stage-two alert,” he yelled over the noise. “Integrity breach, Brandon-Smith, animal-quarantine unit.”
A stage-two alert. Human contact with a deadly virus. It was the thing they most feared. Carson knew there was a very strict procedure for dealing with such emergencies: lockdown, followed by quarantine. He had been through the drill time and again.
Brandon-Smith, realizing what was in store for her, disconnected her air hose and began to run.
Carson jumped off the ladder after her, stopping briefly to disconnect his own air supply, and brushed past the frozen Fillson. He caught up with her outside the exit air lock, where she was screaming and pounding on the door, unable to force it open. Lockdown had already taken place.
De Vaca came up behind him. “What happened?” he heard her ask. A moment later, the corridor was filled with scientists.
“Open the door,” Brandon-Smith screamed on the global channel. “Oh God, please, open the door!” She sank to her knees, sobbing.
A siren began to wail, low and monotonous. There was a sudden movement down the hall, and Carson turned quickly, craning for a glimpse over the helmets of the other scientists. Suited forms Carson knew to be security guards were appearing out of the access tube from the lower levels, moving quickly toward the mass of scientists huddled by the air lock. There were four of them, wearing red suits that looked even more bulky than the normal gear, and Carson realized they must contain extended air supplies. Though he had known there was a security substation in the lower levels of the Fever Tank, the rapidity with which the guards arrived was astonishing. Two of them held short-barreled shotguns, while the others held strange curved devices equipped with rubber handles.
Brandon-Smith’s reflexes were lightning fast. She leapt up and, scattering the scientists against the sides of the corridor, plowed past the guards in an attempt to escape. One of the guards was knocked to the ground, grunting in pain. Another spun around and tackled Brandon-Smith as she was about to push past. They hit the floor heavily, Brandon-Smith screaming and clawing at the guard. As they wrestled, one of the other guards approached cautiously and pressed the end of the device he was holding to the metal ring of her visor. There was a blue flash, and Brandon-Smith jerked and lay still, her screams stopping instantly. As the intercom cleared, a welter of voices could be heard.
One of the security officers stood up, his hands fumbling over his suit in a panic. “The fat bitch ripped my suit!” Carson heard him shout. “I can’t believe it—”
“Shut up, Roger,” said one of the others, breathing heavily.
“No fucking way am I gonna go into quarantine. It wasn’t my fault—Jesus, what the hell are you doing?”
Carson watched the other security officer level his shotgun. “Both of you are going,” he said. “Now.”
“Wait, Frank, you’re not going to—”
The guard pumped a shell into the chamber.
“Son of a bitch, Frank, you can’t do this to me,” the guard named Roger wailed.
Carson saw three more security guards appear from the direction of the ready room. “Get them both to quarantine,” the guard named Frank said.
Suddenly, Carson heard de Vaca’s voice. “Look. She’s thrown up in her suit. She might be suffocating. Get her helmet off.”
“Not until we get her to quarantine,” the officer said.
“The hell with that,” de Vaca shouted back. “This woman is badly injured. She needs hospitalization. We’ve got to get her out.”
The guard looked around and spotted Carson at the front of the crowd. “You! Dr. Carson!” he called. “Get your ass over here and help!”
“Guy,” came de Vaca’s voice, suddenly calm. “Rosalind could die if she’s left in here, and you know it.”
By now the few scientists remaining in the far corners of the Fever Tank had arrived and were crowding the narrow corridor, watching the confrontation. Carson stood motionless, looking from the security guard to de Vaca.
With a sudden, swift movement, de Vaca shoved the security officer aside. She bent over Brandon-Smith and lifted her head, peering into her faceplate.
Vanderwagon suddenly spoke up. “I’m for getting them out of here,” he said. “We can’t put them in quarantine like apes. It’s inhuman.”
There was a tense silence. The security officer hesitated, uncertain how to handle the confrontation with the scientists. Vanderwagon moved forward and began unbuckling Brandon-Smith’s helmet.
“Sir, I order you to stand fast,” the officer finally said.
“Fuck you,” said de Vaca, helping Vanderwagon remove the visor, then clearing Brandon-Smith’s mouth and nose of vomit. The scientist gasped once, and her eyes fluttered and rolled.
“You see that? She would have suffocated. And you’d be in deep shit.” De Vaca looked at Carson. “Are you going to help us get her out?” she asked.
Carson spoke very quietly. “Susana, you know the drill. Think a moment. She may well have been exposed to the virus. She could already be contagious.”
“We don’t know that!” de Vaca blazed, turning to stare up at him. “It’s never been demonstrated in vivo.”
Another scientist stepped forward. “It could be any one of us lying there. I’ll help.”
Brandon-Sm
ith was reviving from the electrical stun, streaks of vomit clinging to her generous chin, her head almost comically small in the bulky suit. “Please,” Carson could hear her say. “Please. Get me out.” In the distance, Carson could see another guard approaching down the corridor, carrying a shotgun.
“Don’t worry, Rosalind,” de Vaca replied. “That’s where you’re going.” She looked at Carson. “You’re no better than a murderer. You’d leave her here in the hands of these pigs, to die. Hijo de puta.”
Singer’s voice broke over the intercom. “What’s going on in the Fever Tank? Why haven’t I been briefed? I want an immediate—”
His voice was abruptly cut off by a global override. The clipped English tones of a voice Carson knew must be Nye’s crackled over the intercom.
“In a stage-two alert the security director may, at his discretion, temporarily relieve the director of command. I hereby do so.”
“Mr. Nye, until I see the emergency for myself I’m not relinquishing authority to you or anyone else,” said Singer.
“Disconnect Dr. Singer’s intercom,” Nye ordered coolly.
“Nye, for Chrissakes—” came Singer’s voice, before it was abruptly cut off.
“Get the two individuals to quarantine immediately,” Nye said.
The command seemed to break the indecision of the guards. One stepped forward and prodded de Vaca aside with the butt of his shotgun. She shoved back with a curse. Suddenly, the newly arrived guard stepped forward, ramming her viciously in the gut with the butt of his shotgun. She writhed to the floor, her wind knocked out. The guard raised the butt of the shotgun, poised to strike again. Carson stepped forward, balling his fists, and the guard swiveled his barrel toward Carson’s midsection. Carson stared back, and was shocked to see the face of Mike Marr staring back at him. A slow smile broke across Marr’s features, and his hooded eyes narrowed.
Nye’s voice came on again. “Everyone will remain where they are while the security officers bring the two individuals to quarantine. Any further resistance will be met with lethal force. You will not be warned again.”
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