by Darrell Bain
“It's on the house. Anything special?”
“Jack Daniels Black Label and ice if you have it.”
“We have. Come on, I'll show you the fax.”
Lisa disappeared while he was wording his resignation. He understood thoroughly that this wasn't the regular way to do it. Ordinarily there would be forms to be signed concerning National Security matters, payroll and other personnel items, but in light of the fact that he had decided the agency itself was behind the attempts on his life, he wasn't worried about it. In fact, he intended to ask Lisa where a good place in the area he could disappear to was.
Just as he was finishing, she brought in a large squat glass filled almost to the brim with bourbon and ice. He took it and sipped gratefully. The sour mash went down as smoothly as oiled Teflon and settled happily in his stomach, spreading warmth over his body. He sipped again and set down the glass. His career with the NSA was now over, even if not done in quite the official way. He looked up from the terminal and nodded at Lisa.
“It's done.”
“Wonderful.”
“What's wonderful?” Marybeth asked, walking into the office.
“Daniel just resigned from the NSA. And Shirley went back to Washington!”
“And now I need to move out of here to somewhere the agency won't find me. My resignation was sort of unorthodox. And I need to get away from both of you; someone tried to kill me again today.”
Lisa looked as stricken as a High School senior who had just been stood up for a prom. “Oh, my! I can't believe what's happening around here. Marybeth, can TV-can we do something about Dan?”
“You two sit tight and let me try-”
The phone rang. Marybeth picked it up, spoke for a moment, then handed the receiver to Daniel. “It's for you.”
Puzzled, Daniel took it. “Hello,” he said.
“Dan, this is Mark Terrell. I was arrested yesterday. Marybeth will tell you the story. This is just a heads-up. The big boss thinks you're one of the Masterville Mutants. He's put out a termination contract on you.”
“I already knew, Mark. And they're not mutants, not the way we think of mutants. But how in hell have you managed to call if you've been arrested?”
“They were transferring me to Splendora Hill and got careless. And it doesn't matter if they're mutants or not, so long as the chief thinks they are. Get me? Look, gotta go; they're on my trail. Good luck.”
The phone went dead. Daniel turned to Marybeth, questions burning in his mind. She spoke up before he could even ask.
“Mark was one of us, Dan. He was already with the NSA, just vacationing up here when Tyrone discovered him. He had decided to quit the agency and was applying for a job with Beamer Research. Tyrone talked him into staying with the NSA, just in case a situation like this came up.
Daniel's mind was whirling with all kinds of thoughts. “Beamer? That would be Beamer Research? Are they involved with this stuff?” The name of the company had been in their briefing data.
“Tyrone discovered that we seem to be a bit different several years ago. He hasn't publicized the information and hardly any of the folks here suspect that they vary from the norm. There's just a few of us who know.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“Marybeth shrugged. “Lisa trusts you. That's good enough for me. In fact, I'm going to call Tyrone and see if we can get you on the council, as well as getting you out of sight.”
“Council?” Events were moving so fast that Daniel was having trouble keeping up. Only Lisa's firm hold on his arm kept him seated.
Marybeth explained, then said, “I'll call Tyrone now.”
“Wait!” Daniel held up his hand. “I need to tell you right now that this place is bugged. I think it's safe here in the office, but anything you've said out in the parlor or in our bedroom has gone straight to Washington.” He managed to look embarrassed at his revelation.
Marybeth and Lisa exchanged pensive glances. Marybeth answered. “I don't think we've said anything incriminating, but thanks for letting us know. The bug doesn't matter now; we'll close this place down tomorrow anyway. It was just a front for you and Shirley while we tried to find out what you were after.”
Daniel laughed. “While we were trying to find out what made you different. That's funny.”
“Maybe not so funny. If the government is that interested in us, I see trouble ahead. I think we need you on the council. Let me call Tyrone.”
“Give me a sec to program it and then you can use mine. It's fixed so that anyone trying to eavesdrop only gets gibberish.” Daniel quickly programmed his phone and handed it to Marybeth. She retreated to the outside of the B&B, just in case there was a bug in the office, though too much had probably already been said if that were the case. It did leave him and Lisa alone and they took advantage of it, embracing and enjoying a long, lingering kiss. They broke the last kiss but stayed close together as Marybeth returned.
“We'll close tomorrow,” She announced. “Do you think we'll be safe tonight?”
“I'll stay awake and make sure. What then?”
“We'll go see Tyrone. He said he could hide you, but also wants to co-opt you as a member of the council. He thinks all hell is going to break loose before long.”
“Can I come with him?” Lisa gripped Daniel's hand as if she would never turn it loose.
“Hmm. Do you know, that's one of the first things I asked, just in case you had ideas along that line?” She chuckled. “Tyrone is pretty sure you're one of us, Dan. Before Mark got caught, he told him that your boss ran a deep search on you and found that you're so typical of us untypical types that even if you're not one of the elite, it doesn't matter because no one could tell the difference. Not yet, anyway. Tyrone says he may have something to announce about what we are pretty soon.”
“You said elite?”
“Joke. Anyway, it's getting late and I have somewhere to go. Lisa, why don't you get Daniel to help you pack enough things to last a week or two? It's the least he could do.” She smiled sweetly at them and left the room.
“That was an invitation, by the way, just in case you didn't catch the drift,” Lisa said. “I was going to ask, but she beat me to it. Bring up whatever you need to stay with me tonight.”
Daniel decided that if Lisa and Marybeth's directness in sexual attitudes was a standard in the valley, it was no wonder that there weren't very many marriages.
* * * *
Helping with the packing didn't take long. Evidently, Lisa had already been thinking about it, or perhaps hadn't really unpacked. At any rate, he spent very little effort on that job. He brought his own suitcase when he followed her upstairs and sat it on a table by the window. He left the little automatic in the pocket of his jacket and removed the heavier automatic and two extra clips and placed them on top of what clothes were in the suitcase. He started to close it.
“May I see?”
Startled, Daniel turned around. Lisa had just returned from the bathroom. She was wearing a thin silk robe of pale green which not only made her reddish hair seem to glisten, it molded her figure in a way that left little to the imagination—and also revealed that she had little or nothing on underneath it.
“You mean this?” He asked, pointing to his weapon.
“Uh huh.” She came over next to him, picked it up, ejected the clip and round in the chamber, held it to check the balance then put it back as it had been. “A little heavier than mine, but nice. I use a .38 revolver. I keep it by the bed. Want to look at it?”
“I think I'd rather look at you.”
“That can be arranged.” She slid her robe off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
As Daniel had suspected, she was wearing nothing underneath, and if he had thought she was stunning in the robe, she was nothing short of spectacular out of it. In very short order, he was out of his own clothes and they were stretched out together on the bed. “You're lovely,” he told her, and meant it. It wasn't that she had such
lush curves; it was that every part of her body was perfectly proportioned for the rest. Her breasts were firm and resilient in his hands, filling them nicely. Her waist was narrow and her hips slim but curved as if molded by an artist. Her legs were long and tapered, drawing attention to the triangle of red curls at the junction of her thighs. He couldn't remember ever seeing anyone or anything more beautiful. He told her that, too, but by then Lisa was more interested in performance than admiration.
Daniel did his best and it was easy to do so, with Lisa helping and guiding and participating as if they had been lovers for years. It was fortunate that no one attempted them harm during their first few hours together or they would never have left the room alive. As it was, they barely did.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the same time that Daniel and Lisa were exploring each other's bodies and minds as if they had just invented sex, Tyrone Beamer and Harry Sildon, his Chief of Research, were having a very late nightcap, sitting across from each other in his office in the visitors’ chairs, with a bottle of single malt scotch and an ice bucket on the low table between them. The owner of Beamer Research was feeling both a great sense of relief, and a great weight of responsibility descending on him, as an answer to just what made Masterville different was finally coming to light-or beginning to.
“Go over it one more time now that we're here by ourselves, Harry. Your team is great, but they were so excited they sort of ran things together.”
Harry Sildon was a tall, gangly-looking man with an untidy shock of brown hair which was badly in need of a trim. It covered the earpieces of his black framed glasses. Sitting down, with his legs crossed and holding his glass with both hands, he looked like nothing so much as a caricature of the unkempt scientist who was too busy to pay much attention to how he looked or what he wore. He sipped appreciatively at his scotch before answering.
“Well, you heard them talking about prions, I'm sure.”
Beamer nodded.
“I wish I could take credit for it, but it was Tarkington who came up with the idea. It's been known for a number of years that prions have an affinity for nervous tissue, particularly in the brain and spinal cord, and most particularly where synapses occur. Unfortunately, they are usually lethal under most conditions, like SBE, what they're calling the “Stumbles” in Africa, and several other diseases. However, there also exists what, for lack of a better term, we'll call normal prions which most of us possess. Normal or lethal, they are very tiny and have the propensity for folding themselves in odd ways, and inducing like proteins to do the same under the right conditions. You know all that, I'm sure.”
“So far I'm with you.”
“Good. Now after Tarkington suggested we see if our prions might differ from the general population, we went looking. Personally, I thought it was a wild idea until he showed me some of his results, indicating that we do have a different sort of prion.”
“So we are mutants, huh? Or have we just been infected?”
“That was a real puzzle to try figuring out. If we were infected, what was causing it? I lost count long ago of all the substances indigenous to the area that we tested, trying to find one that was infecting us. I decided that wasn't the answer and here I'll blow my own horn a bit.
“I've always been interested in the so-called ‘nonsense’ DNA, the Introns, that make up better than 90% of our DNA but doesn't appear to have a function. I went looking there, and don't ask me why; just a hunch, especially since introns aren't supposed to code for proteins. Anyway, it paid off, after a lot of time and effort that you paid for. I believe now that I've isolated a section of intron which does code for a protein, contrary to popular opinion. And that protein happens to be the little prion we suspect is the culprit making us different.”
“Be damned.”
“Yeah. Now take this theory here as not completely proven; we're still working on it. What we think is going on is that the section of the intron which codes for this prion is very innocuous and the code is for a very tiny prion, even smaller than those discovered so far. Given those two factors, if true, we doubt that anyone else has caught on to it.”
“So what do these little prions of yours do?” Beamer was excited. He kept up as much as possible with biological science but running the company kept him out of the labs and away from journals too much these days. He had begun relying more and more on Harry Sildon.
“Well, again, don't take this as a proven, but here's what we think happens. The prions are present at birth and they play a role in forming synapses as we mature, or perhaps I should say a particular type of synapse. Or to put it in laymen's terms, they help wire the brain in a particular fashion. As we grow up, these little fellers are always present and gradually increase in number as synapses grow in number. This in turn plays a subtle role in how our attitudes and beliefs form, ameliorated by environment, of course, particularly the way we're brought up by our parents. The primary result appears to be an enhanced ability to reason rationally, and that, of course, affects many other of our attitudes and the way our personalities develop.”
“So it's an inheritable factor after all.”
“Yep, it seems to be, but that's not all. Remember, prions are infectious.” Sildon paused, waiting for Tyrone to get it. In a moment he did.
“They're also passed down from mother to child, simply by the infectious route? Be damned again!” He picked up his glass and drank enough of the scotch to warm him all the way through.
“Right. They're small enough to pass the placental barrier. So in essence, many of us get a double shot of our little helpers. It doesn't seem to hurt and may even help.”
“In what way?”
“Hell, Tyrone, I just told you, and you should know that facet better than I do. You've been studying attitudes and beliefs while I've been down at the molecular level. We're gentler, more intelligent, less territorial and somehow have better reasoning powers than the normal population. We tend not to accept unproven stuff like religion, astrology, racial inferiority and so forth without proof. We're self-reliant. Oh hell, we're just a better breed of human. Isn't that what you've been saying all along?”
“Yeah, but it's nice to see it confirmed, at least theoretically. Now let me ask you something else: can you duplicate our prions in the lab?”
“Of course; we couldn't have done all the research lately if we hadn't been able to do that. Now, mind you, Tyrone, all this is based on damned few samples, not nearly enough in my opinion. We need more data to firm it all up.”
“I'll see what I can do. You might have a lot of volunteers before long if all this becomes public.”
“Oh? When do you think?”
Beamer was suddenly lost in thought and didn't answer. An idea was forming in his mind, one he didn't want anyone to know about yet. It was horrendous and yet ... it might become necessary to preserve their existence. If it didn't turn the whole world against them. In either case, it would be a last resort, something he would consider only if everything else failed. And he would still have to get the council to go along with it. Or perhaps not. Maybe ...
“Tyrone?”
Beamer blinked and came back to reality. “Oh. Sorry, Harry, my mind was wandering. What else do you have for me?”
“Well, unless we publish our results, I think it's unlikely anyone else will duplicate them any time soon—unless they have some of our people to experiment with, and go at it really big time.”
“It could come to that, Harry. The government is on to us now, even if they don't know what we're made of. I wouldn't put anything past Bobby Lee if he gets the idea that we're harbingers of the Anti-Christ, or some such crap.”
Seldin shivered theatrically. “Brrrr. I don't even like to think about it.” He did think about it, though, and suddenly made a connection. “Oh, shit, Tyrone, I just thought of something.”
“By the look on your face, it ain't good.”
“No, it's not. Or might not be. Did you know that once the structural an
d molecular formula of a prion is discovered, an enzyme can be created fairly easily to destroy it. Suppose the government declared us a threat, but couldn't just execute us for fear of public opinion? They could just inject us with an enzyme and destroy our prions. Now wouldn't that be a hell of a note! Something else I don't want to think about.”
“I don't either, but I must. And that's just more grist for the mill. By the way, I've got a couple of the docs giving me access to some brain scans to look at. They should be on the computer by now if that will help.”
“Depends on what kind of scans. What I really need is some more well-preserved neural autopsy tissue, and if you can swing it, samples of brain tissues from operations for tumors, stuff like that. Could you help us out there?”
“I'll see what I can do. The tissue from accident victims wasn't enough?”
“It was fine, just not enough to make a good statistical universe, which you have to have to prove anything for certain. Oh, by the way, here's all the data in case you want to review it.” Seldin handed him a tiny plug-in data cube.
“All right, thanks. In the meantime, make damn certain your computer network and files are secure. Check with Miles if you're not certain. That's what I'm going to do right now before I download this. Another drink?”
“Nah. It's way past bed time for me already.”
“Okay. Thanks for stopping by. At least we sort of know where we stand now.”
Seldin smiled sardonically. “Uh huh. If we're able to stand after we're officially discovered.” He departed, mind already on how further research should be directed and how much more money to ask for. Would it be possible to develop a drug to counter a prion-destroying enzyme? He decided that had better be taken off the back burner and given top priority.
Behind him, Tyrone Beamer turned off the lights in his office and sat near his window, looking down over the lighted homes and businesses in the valley. Would they still be there this time next year? He shook his head in the darkness, admitting that he didn't know. There were so many ways this whole thing could play out. He felt obligated to try to think of every possible scenario and develop counter-measures against them. An impossible task, but one he would attempt, nevertheless.