Route 666 Anthology

by David Pringle

  “I don’t need to tell you how important it is that you should keep silent about what you saw,” the scientist went on, “and I hope that you can impress that upon your brother, too. I’m afraid that it will have to be regarded as a test of his fitness for this kind of work, and if he lets me down, after the assurances which you gave me, I’ll have to let you both go back to ordinary duties.”

  “I’ll make sure that Bro keeps his mouth shut,” said Carl, tautly, “if you can assure me that what happened out there isn’t the beginning of some epidemic that will wipe out half the population—beginning with us.”

  Zarathustra didn’t take offence. He leaned back in his chair and met Carl’s dark eyes with his own frosty blue ones. “There isn’t any danger,” he said. “You have my word.”

  “That’s not enough,” said Carl, though he had to swallow after he said it, because it wasn’t the way he was accustomed to speaking to his employers, especially when they had Doc Zarathustra’s status.

  Zarathustra raised his blond eyebrows, and said: “You want an explanation? I’m afraid the information is classified, and I don’t think you’d understand it anyway.”

  “If you can trust me to keep my mouth shut about what happened,” Carl replied, “then you can trust me to keep my mouth shut about why it happened, and I’d be happier about keeping it quiet if I understood—within my limited capacity—just what it is about girl which makes her so deadly, if she isn’t carrying some kind of engineered plague.”

  Still the Doc didn’t seem angry. If anything, the expression in his eyes was one of amused respect.

  “All right, Carl,” he said. “You had a fright back there, and I suppose you’re entitled to have your mind set at rest. Those bodies weren’t being affected by any kind of virus or bacterium—they were experiencing a massive reaction which I can best liken to an allergy. While they were still alive and healthy they had absorbed through their skin proteins which were in the girl’s natural excretions—sweat, saliva…whatever. Those proteins had already been distributed throughout the bodies by the blood, before its flow was unceremoniously interrupted by your brother’s bullets. That’s why the bodies were affected all at once.”

  “So they would have died anyway—even if Bro hadn’t shot them?”

  “I believe so. I can’t be absolutely certain.”

  Carl studied the scientist’s face, carefully. “You believe so,” he echoed. Then, having put two and two together, he said: “She did the same thing here, didn’t she? That’s how she escaped—zapped one of your techs with all-over gangrene while he thought she was just giving him a kiss. You’ve already done the autopsy on him.”

  Zarathustra looked mildly surprised, and Carl took that as a compliment to his arithmetic. “That’s right,” confirmed the Doc. “I had figured out what had happened before I sent you out, you know. I told you not to touch her, and I had every reason to believe that you’d be safe if you didn’t. Though I hadn’t anticipated that you’d find her in quite such dreadful circumstances, it had occurred to me that others might die—but I knew that anyone she killed that way wouldn’t be a menace to others, so I didn’t warn you about it. Perhaps I should have.”

  “Quite the little weapon, isn’t she?” said Carl, by no means satisfied by what the scientist had so far told him.

  “I don’t work on weapons,” replied the Doc, flatly. “I don’t work on cosmetic genetics, and I don’t work on fancy drugs so that hoodlums and whores can space themselves out far enough to forget how disgusting they are. I work in the cause of progress, not the cause of oblivion, and what you saw was a side-effect—an undesirable side effect.”

  At last Carl felt that he had hit a nerve.

  “Is that why you don’t want us to talk about it?” asked Carl. “You think the guys from over the way will take her over, and try to do whatever you did to her to a whole company of death-merchants? Some progress, Doc. Really what today’s world needs, hey?”

  “Don’t taunt me, Carl,” said Dr Zarathustra. “I’ll tell you what it is that I’m trying to do, if you really think you’ll be able to understand it. Maybe you can, at that—it’s your brother who’s terminally stupid, after all.”

  Carl figured that was just the Doc getting his own back, so he tried radiating a little amused respect of his own. He didn’t like to hear people saying things like that about Bro, though there was no use in trying to deny them, but the Doc had to be handled very differently from the retards who had to be trained not to say such things by violent means.

  “Try me,” said Carl.

  “Do you know what somatic engineering is?” asked Zarathustra.

  “Sure,” said Carl. “It’s where you try to transplant new genes into specialized cells in a mature body, instead of shooting the stuff into eggs. Like the cosmetic transformations GenTech does with skin, or the way they stoke up the cells of diabetics to restore their ability to produce insulin.” He was proud of that answer, because he figured that it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that one of the Preston brothers was no intellectual pigmy.

  “That’s right,” said the Doc. “And do you know which kind of specialized cells in the human body is most hospitable to alien genes—which kind of cells virtually begs to be transformed?”

  “No,” said Carl, shortly.

  “No,” echoed the scientist, but not contemptuously. “Well, it happens that there’s some disagreement about it. Some people reckon it’s the skin, because the skin is on the outside of the body, easy to get at—and not so vital that any little mistake is lethal. But the trouble with skin-cells—and virtually all the other kinds of cells in the body—is that they have lots of genes in them already: whole vast complexes of genes going about their routine business. When you start shooting new bits of DNA into them, that routine business is easily disrupted, and even if it isn’t, it’s not easy for the new genes to fit themselves in and get down to what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  The Doc paused, and Carl nodded, sagely.

  “So the best kind of cell to transform,” Zarathustra went on, “is one which has no nucleus of its own. A wide-open cell, just waiting to be colonized by alien DNA. And there is, as it happens, one kind of cell in the human body which is like that. Do you know which?”

  “Surprise me,” said Carl, unrepentantly.

  “Erythrocytes,” said the scientist. “Red blood cells. Their function, you see, is purely mechanical. They mop up oxygen in the lungs, and carry it through the arteries to the tissues, where they give it up. Then the veins carry them back to the lungs again, blue with oxygen-starvation, so that they can soak up more oxygen and become red again. Did you know that we have blue blood in our veins, Carl—not just the fat cats who live in the PZs, but all of us? But we never see it, because the moment we cut ourselves and expose our blue blood to the air, it soaks up oxygen just like that, and turns red again.”

  When he said that, the Doc snapped his fingers. Carl thought of the blood all over the floor and walls of that roadhouse.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that.” But he looked at the veins criss-crossing the back of his hands, and saw that they were indeed blue. They had always been blue, but somehow he had never paid any attention to the fact before.

  “People often speak of ‘life’s blood’,” the Doc went on, “but in fact the most vital part of the blood isn’t alive, in the sense that the cells can reproduce themselves. The red cells are just a product. But blood can be brought to life, if the red cells can be persuaded to take up packets of genes, and be transformed. That’s what I do, Carl. I bring blood to life. I transplant genes—not single genes but whole gene-complexes—into human red blood cells.”

  “Why?” asked Carl—then promptly rephrased the question: “I mean, what are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to make human beings better than nature makes them,” replied Zarathustra, as though it ought to be obvious. “I’m trying to get one step ahead of the clumsy process of mutation and
natural selection. I’m trying to create the next stage in our evolution—Homo superior, as the old science-fiction writers used to call it. Do you read science fiction, Carl?”

  “Sure,” said Carl. Even Bro read science fiction—but Bro preferred the comic books; he wasn’t too good with words, but he had a vivid visual imagination.

  “Then maybe you can understand what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make us better—better able to repair ourselves… resistant to disease… immortal.”

  “Immortal,” Carl repeated, dully. “That girl—Mary. Is she immortal?”

  Doc Zarathustra shook his head. “I hope that she may have an extended lifespan, but it’s not as easy as that,” he said. “I can’t just conjure up a gene for immortality. What I’ve been trying to do is put together a whole series of genes which code for proteins whose effect is to counteract the various processes of aging. It will take a great many experiments to find the best ingredients, and get the balance right. Most of my experiments use animals, but there are unique features of the human organism—genes which even our closest relatives among the animals don’t share—and among those genes are the ones which allow us to live three times as long as the other great apes. I’ve had to use human subjects to test calculated mutations of those genes; they get the benefit of a chance to be the first humans ever to drink at the fountain of youth—but there are risks, and there will be casualties.”

  Carl had already met some of the casualties. In fact, he and Bro had been the ones who made them casualties. He wasn’t squeamish about that—he couldn’t afford to be, in his line of work. Nor could he afford to care about how the Doc went about locating his experimental subjects , or whether he bothered with the niceties of informed consent.

  “So what went wrong?” he asked.

  “When I transplant a package of genes into a blood cell,” said Zarathustra, “the new cells become capable of reproducing themselves. But I can only transform a few hundred cells in a sample removed from the subject’s arm. In order that they will totally replace the other kind of cells, which are produced in the bone marrow, I have to give the new cells a way of killing off the old cells by selective poisoning. The process is only supposed to work internally, so that the new blood just takes over from the old—but in Mary’s case, the poison is being produced far too abundantly, and is appearing in all her bodily secretions. Her own blood is immune to it, of course, but when it gets into someone else’s bloodstream, even in very tiny quantities, it triggers a bad reaction. The red blood cells begin disintegrating and decaying, and the process just keeps on going, because the body has no new cells whose reproduction can replace the ones which are dying, and no way to break down the protein trigger.”

  We thought they were just high, thought Carl, remembering the way the ’troopers had looked before Bro burst in on them, but it wasn’t just the drugs. They were sick… dying.

  “Did she know that she was poisonous when she ran?” he asked.

  Zarathustra shook his head. “I didn’t get a chance to explain things to her. When the tech died, she panicked. I have to tell her everything I’ve just told you, so that she’ll understand why it is that she might have to live the rest of her life in isolation. It won’t be easy.”

  Carl could see that it wouldn’t. For a moment, the horror of it rendered him speechless, but then he chided himself for looking on the black side. After all, there were millions living in the NoGos who’d gladly trade their freedom for a chance to live in a GenTech facility, and never be hungry again. Even so, when he did speak, it was with sympathy. “Poor supergirl,” he said. “It won’t be easy, will it? And you can’t even tell how long she’ll have to live that way, can you?”

  “No,” replied Doc Zarathustra, “we can’t. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Later, in the bunk-hole which they shared, Carl tried to explain to Bro what the Doc had told him. It wasn’t easy, but in the end, he thought there was a glimmer of understanding there. Unfortunately, Bro’s reaction was all too predictable.

  “It’s too freakin’ weird for me, Carly,” he said. “I don’t like this creepy job at all. I wanna go back on the wrappers. The drivers are good joes, not like these starchy techs… and y’can sure as hell breathe easier on the open road.”

  “Bro,” said Carl, softly, “there’s got to be more to life than playing nursemaid to GenTech cargoes, fighting off the highwaymen and the crazies. BioDiv is where it’s at, Bro—haven’t I just been trying to explain that to you? Doc Zarathustra is trying to find a way to let us live forever—and the only way people like you and me can ever hope to get a share of something like that is to get on an inside track.

  “Hell, Bro, the whole world is just like one of those guys you shot up in that roadhouse. It’s already dying, and it’s getting all shot up to boot… the whole damn thing is turning to junk, and the only choice most people have is whether to die now or later. The people who live out there in the NoGos are just waiting their turn to get popped. You may not like living in a place like this, all corridors and no windows, and I have to admit that compared to the place we were raised, it’s like another world…. but these are the places which are going to exist when everything else is dead.

  “The techs are the people who are going to inherit the world, Bro—they’re the people who are going to make the next world, which will only begin when the one out there has finished its messy dying. You and I can be part of that new world, Bro, but only if we can make ourselves useful to the techs. Come the day when the Doc’s new blood really does what it’s supposed to do, you and I can be queueing for our transfusions like all the rest, if we play our cards right. Hell, Bro, just think about it, will you?”

  “I’m thinkin’ about it,” retorted Bro, bitterly. “I know you think I’m some kind of moron, but I ain’t. I’m thinkin’ about it—but what I’m thinkin’ is that there ain’t no way that the likes of you and me are goin’ to be in the queue when the day comes that GenTech start selling immortality. Because you an’ me, Carly, we can’t afford the price that they’ll be askin’.

  “You think they’re goin’ to give it away, Carly? You think Doc Zarathustra is some kinda saint? Well I’m tellin’ you, Carly, you better think again about how he’s goin’ to choose the people get into his nice new world, because I know that I ain’t goin’ to be included, an’ I know that just because you’re a freakin’ smartass don’t mean that you got a ticket either. See?”

  “Yeah,” said Carly, resignedly. “I see. Sometimes, Bro, you make me very tired. Neither of us got much sleep last night, so maybe we both need an early night. We’ll talk again in the morning, okay?”

  “I had enough of talkin‘, Carly,“ said Bro. ”I been talked at all my freakin’ life. I don’t need you, Carly. I know you think I do, but I don’t. I can look after myself, an’ that’s what I’m goin’ to do. An’ I don’t need no freakin’ early night, so willya just let me run my own life, hey?”

  He slammed the door behind him, just for emphasis.

  Carl sighed, and sat down on the bunk.

  He had not the slightest doubt that Bro would come back—he would go away and get high, then he’d come back down with a sickening thud, and then he’d come back to Carl. He always had. He always would.

  “Stay out of trouble, Bro,” he murmured, just for luck. “Keep your mouth shut, and stay out of trouble. Please.”

  Then he began unbuttoning his shirt, getting ready for his early night.

  Carl was awakened by the phone. As he reached out to take the handset from the wall he squinted at the luminous figures on the digital clock. It was 03.25.

  “Carl Preston,” he said, thickly. He had to suck his tongue to get it moist, because he had been sleeping with his mouth open.

  “Carl, this is Joe Stenner at Control. We just got a mayday from a convoy about eighty miles out—it was heading north to Kansas, ran into mines. One of the wrappers went off the road, turned over. We’re sending a bird to look for survivors�
��thought you might want to go.”

  “I’m on special duty now,” said Carl, tiredly. “It isn’t my job any more.” But he realized even as he was saying it that Joe wouldn’t make a mistake like that. He must have called for a reason—and there was only one reason it could possibly be.

  “Your brother’s on board,” Stenner told him. “Guess he hitched a lift to K.C., trading duties with one of the boys.”

  Hell and damnation! thought Carl. Why did he have to go and do something stupid? Aloud, he said: “Thanks, Joe. I owe you one. Hold the copter until I get dressed.”

  “You got five minutes,” said Stenner. “No more.”

  Carl made it to the copter pad in four. Three more of GenTech’s private policemen were waiting in the bird, already suited up in body armour, carrying light MGs. He knew them all: Jackson, Bronski, Coleman.

  The bird had lasers and missile-launchers, but they weren’t going out hunting. They were going to look for survivors, and bring them back home. GenTech always put on a show of looking after its employees; that way they stayed loyal.

  The three mercy boys grinned when Carl scrambled aboard.

  He couldn’t tell whether it was because they were pleased to see him or whether they were taking satisfaction from the fact that the Preston brothers’ step up into the higher echelons had come unstuck so soon. He just greeted them politely and began to strap on the armour they had waiting for him. The copter lifted into the darkness and sped away beneath the desert stars, heading north.

  “Probably crazies from the Memphis NoGo,” said Coleman. “Hell of a long way out, but that’s supposed to be a clean patch of sand—guess they figured they might catch somebody with his pants down.”