Guinea Pig

by Curtis, Greg

  But suddenly he had no time. The evacuation would be beginning in less than a day. He had to find the bungling doctor now or never. So taking his courage in both hands he'd jumped on his bike and started riding.

  This particular house looked to be in reasonable condition. From the front at least. There were a few broken windows, a good sized crater in the driveway, but the walls looked more or less intact. On the other hand he had no idea what the back was like. Its neighbours on both sides had not been particularly fortunate, and one of them was now no more than a pile of broken timbers and scattered bricks. It had probably been a nice home once. They both had been.

  This was an exclusive gated suburb – or what remained of one. Gates and walls to keep the riff raff out. Big houses and large sections. Expensive cars in driveways and here and there tennis courts and big swimming pools. No one was swimming in them though. The tennis courts were empty. And what remained of the gates wasn't going to stop anyone, even if there had been someone left to guard them. He'd thought when he began his search for Doctor Millen that he should begin in the more upmarket areas of the city. Doctors after all earned good money. They could afford good houses. And he was a senior doctor. But even that hadn't narrowed down the search enough. He had another twenty to go before the end of the day. Even considering that it was an unusual name there were still a lot of Millens in the phone book.

  He soon heard the sound of footsteps inside and knew that at least someone was home. That was good. Though it probably wasn't the doctor at least he'd be able to cross this house off his list and scramble for the next one.

  “Yes?”

  The door opened and a woman appeared in the doorway, and he instantly knew she wasn't his missing doctor. She probably wasn't related to him at all. She might be standing in a darkened hallway but he could see enough. In her thirties she was too young to be his wife and too old to be his daughter. And even though he hadn't expected it to be the doctor's home, he was still disappointed for a second.

  “I'm sorry to disturb you. I was looking for Doctor Millen the genetic medicine researcher. I don't suppose you know him?” It was a question he'd asked at every other house. There was after always a chance that they could be related.

  “Doctor Millen? This is his house but he's not here. He doesn't live here any more. He just lets us rent it.”

  In a split second Will's heart started pounding furiously in his chest and hope surged as he realised he'd found his target. Or at least a lead.

  “Oh thank God! Do you know where I can find him?” Despite the fact that he was trying to remain calm he couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice.

  “Actually no. I would have said the clinic but for obvious reasons that's not possible any more.” A man had appeared at the door to stand behind her – the husband perhaps – and he looked strangely familiar. “Anyway Doctor Millen hasn't been here in months. He just collects some mail from time to time and has a phone line here for tax reasons.”

  “I know you, don't I?” The husband asked the question out of the blue, and confirmed Will's thoughts. The man did know him. And Will knew him in turn. But he still couldn't place him. He didn't know either his voice or his face. But he still knew him from somewhere.

  “I'm not sure, but you look familiar. Do you remember me from somewhere?”

  The man stared at him, hunting for something that would place him. But obviously he couldn't find it. “I’m not sure. What's your name?”

  “Will Simons.” That provoked a response. He could see it in the man's eyes as they widened in surprise.

  “From the trials! I remember.”

  “You do?” Will still couldn't place him as he stood in the darkened doorway. But in the end that didn't matter. He still needed to find the doctor and these people could hopefully help him do that. After all, they knew about the trials as well as the doctor.

  “Yes. I'm Brad. I ran the lab.”

  In that moment Will finally placed him. The technician. He was standing in a dark hallway behind his wife, but still he could see the way his hair was pulled back in front, and he knew it would be tied into a pony tail at the back. It was the technician. The only thing he'd seen of him during the trial was his back, while the technician in turn hadn't been looking at him either. He'd been staring at his computer screen. But thinking about it maybe the doctor had introduced him – while he'd been planning how to spend his ten thousand dollars.

  “Thank God! Then you know why I'm here.”

  “I do?” Of course he didn't Will suddenly realised. All the other trials had gone perfectly. He was just lucky patient number seven.

  “Sorry, my mistake, you probably don't. But I need to find out what's gone wrong with the trial.”

  “There's something wrong?”

  The technician sounded surprised and he probably had reason to be. From everything Doctor Millen had said there should have been no chance of a side effect. “There shouldn't be. We've done it before and it worked perfectly every time. I'm sure the doctor told you that.”

  “Repeatedly. But did any of those others lose all their body hair? And I do mean all!” And though it probably meant nothing to them since they'd never seen his skin close up Will showed them his hairless forearm. Brad and his wife stared at him for a bit, their mouths open. But then they'd probably never expected to hear something like that. Ever. It probably wasn't the sort of thing that strangers arriving on their doorstep said.

  “No,” Brad eventually answered him. “No one's ever had any side effects at all. Not one of the other six. And I do the follow ups with them all. The protocol either worked or it didn't, but no one had any sort of problem. And that's a weird one. Not one we'd ever be looking for. The genes that were being inserted have nothing to do with follicular growth. They're not even on the same chromosomes.”

  “Honey did you say 'the other six'?”

  Before Will could even think what to say Brad's wife jumped in, and it sounded as though she knew something too. Maybe she was somehow also connected with the research programme.

  “Yes, William here is the seventh subject of the trial.”

  “He can't be. There weren't supposed to be seven. The trial was approved for six and only six. Everything was set up for six. Clinic time, staffing, hospital stays and drugs. In fact the last subject was put through it two months ago and there should only be follow ups left.” She stared at her husband almost as if challenging him in some way. Telling him he was wrong. But he wasn't wrong. Will knew that. Brad knew it too.

  “Lisa I was there. I helped set up the clinic for the procedure, and then monitored it, exactly as I did for all the others. I watched Doctor Millen administer the dose. This is Patient Seven.”

  “But there wasn't even a seventh dose to administer.” His wife sounded confused, as if she didn't understand what her husband was talking about. And that sent shivers running down Will's spine. No seventh dose? Then what had he been given? Suddenly he felt very ill.

  “There must have been. I watched him administer it.”

  “There wasn't. I know. I did the paperwork for them. Each dose cost us fifty thousand dollars, and then had to be transported across state lines. There were endless forms about bio-security, dangerous goods and maintaining the cold chain to fill out even after the bills were paid. I didn't fill out a seventh set of forms. And anyway the entire drug budget was used up on those six doses. Three hundred thousand dollars. That's it.”

  No seventh dose and yet he was the seventh patient? That didn't sound good. And when he put it together with the fact that his body hair had fallen out, that he was having side effects where none of the others had, that could mean only one thing. He'd been given something else. Something not so safe. Will suddenly felt weak at the knees. But somehow he kept from falling down.

  “So what did he give me?”

  Will was amazed at how calmly the words seemed to slip off his tongue. As if it was nothing. But in the end he needed to be calm. He needed to ask the
question. It was the only question that mattered.

  Brad stared helplessly at him, and Will knew what he was going to say even before the words left his mouth. He didn't know. He'd assumed that everything was as it had been before. And in truth how was he to know? He just monitored the computers and set up the clinic. And one syringe full of clear coloured liquid looked much the same as another. His wife couldn't tell him either. She hadn't been there. And with the nurse still unaccounted for that left him back at the beginning with only one person who could tell him anything. Doctor Millen.

  “Any idea where I can find Doctor Millen?”

  Of course they didn't know that either. He saw the look of helplessness in their faces even before they started giving him the sorry details. They hadn't seen him since the clinic had collapsed into the sink hole. And since he had apparently been living in an apartment at the back of the clinic they didn't know where he was staying any more. They didn't even know if he was alive. If he was dead Will knew, he would never get his answers. But he might not get them anyway. Not if he couldn't find him.

  “You could try his church.” Lisa spoke up unexpectedly and suddenly Will had hope again. Not much, but a little.

  “Church?” He hadn't considered that the doctor was a religious sort – though it did perhaps explain some of the moral type questions he'd been asked. Maybe the doctor was religious enough that he had gone to pray. And maybe while there he'd spoken to some of the others. The priest perhaps. Maybe he'd even left an address where he could be found. It was something to hope for.

  “The Church of The Ascendance over on Sunset. He's very devout.”

  Devout? There was something about that word that struck a worrying chord in Will. Maybe it was just that he remembered all those strange questions the doctor had asked him about his faith. At the time it had seemed as though he was just checking on what sort of priest should come and visit him in the hospital if he needed a visit. Or if he had any religious objections to particular medical procedures. But when Lisa said the word something in the back of his mind clicked. He didn't know what. But he knew it was important. And he feared it. Occasionally people did terrible things in the name of religion.

  “Thank you.”

  Will knew he had to go. That he couldn't waste any time. He had to find the doctor urgently. He had to find out what had been done to him and these two could tell him nothing more. But as he hurried back to his bike he couldn't help but think he was wasting his time. That it was already far too late.

  Over and over again Doctor Millen had asked him if he was certain he wanted to go through with the trial. He had repeatedly explained that he could back out. And now he knew why. The man had been feeling guilty for what he was about to do. He'd been wanting reassurance that what he was doing was consensual. Even if he'd lied to get that consensus.

  He'd also told him repeatedly that it wasn't reversible. He'd supposedly been speaking about the gene therapy drug that the others had been given, but Will had a horrible feeling he'd also been speaking about whatever he'd been planning on giving him. Even if he found him Will knew there might be nothing he could do.

  But what choice did he have?

  Chapter Eight.

  The church was empty when Will walked in, something that surprised him. In the midst of this crisis he would have expected a lot of people to be there praying. But maybe it didn't have a large congregation. After all he'd never heard of the church before. Not that that necessarily meant a lot. He hadn't been to a church since he'd arrived in America nearly seven years before. He felt uncomfortable in the strange houses of worship they had over here.

  It was an odd place of worship he thought, for America. At least for Los Angeles. From what little he knew their churches were big flashy places with lots of star power. Especially in the cities. This church was more a traditional country church for a small community. In fact it reminded him very much of the churches he'd attended as a child in England. It had white wooden weather boards and a dark slate roof. It was a simple box like shape with a modest cross on the apex of the roof and half a dozen stained glass windows. And it was sited right in the middle of a small half acre of grass.

  Inside it had a nicely polished wooden floor, a dozen simple wooden pews that would at most have sat forty, a lectern up the front where the vicar could stand and give his sermon, and a simple altar table covered with a cloth. And save for the electric organ and the lights there didn't seem to be a single concession to the twentieth century let alone the twenty first. Even the board where the hymn numbers for the service were displayed was just a plain wooden board on which the numbers would be slotted in place.

  It seemed completely out of place in the city. Too humble for Los Angeles. In fact all it needed was a small graveyard outside with lots of small stone headstones slowly decaying in a field of long grass and he would have been back in his childhood.

  His immediate reaction was that he liked it. It was for him what a church should be. A place of quiet reflection and prayer. A place where the harsh realities of the outside world had not intruded. And where a message could be spoken without it being packaged into sound bites, massaged for the media, commercialised and sold.

  He was happy that it seemed to have survived the ice storm more or less unscathed. This part of town seemed to have been hit more lightly than elsewhere, so maybe it was that rather than the hand of God that had saved it. But either way he was glad it had survived.

  He wasn't so happy that it was empty though. Three days after the ice storm when people were finally beginning to come out of hiding, he would have expected it to be full. There should be people seeking counsel and maybe solace. There should be people organising aid for the parishioners in need. It shouldn't be empty.

  Still, there was nothing to do but see if he could find someone to talk to. Maybe after he'd said a prayer.

  And he was beginning to suspect that the only hope he had was in prayer. Even if he found the doctor. So he walked down the aisle between the pews, found himself a seat in the front row and bent his head as he hadn't done in far too many years.

  It felt good to pray. To clear his thoughts as best he could and simply let the moment wash over him. And it was important to remember that for all his worries and fears he was actually lucky compared to so many. No one he knew was dead or gravely injured, and the radio was reporting that the death toll from the ice storm was expected to cross three thousand by the end of the day. He wasn't injured either, and those numbers were already reported as being well into the tens of thousands. His car might be destroyed but no one had been in it at the time, and he still had a more or less habitable home to live in even if it did make some alarming noises whenever the wind blew. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions weren't so lucky. In fact against the terrible suffering out there the loss of a little body hair and a few bad dreams were nothing. In fact it was almost something he should be embarrassed to complain about. It was only that he didn't know what if anything else was coming, or what he'd been injected with that gave him any real reason at all to complain. That and maybe the fact that his stomach had been playing up for days. But that could simply be nerves.

  Besides, if the doctor came here to worship, that surely meant he couldn't be completely wicked. Whatever he'd done, it had to be for some not completely terrible reason. It might even be for a good one. It might not be a scientific theory, but it held weight for him as he sat there with his head bowed. It had to.

  On the other hand it had been a long time since he'd sat on a hard wooden pew, and his backside was telling him that a cushion or two would be very welcome.

  “Welcome to the House of God.”

  Surprised, Will looked up to see the priest standing in front of him, dressed in his cassock and hat despite the fact that there was no service on. It wasn't Sunday – was it? The hat though was what really surprised him. He'd thought that this was a simple country church like the ones he had grown up with as a child. Essentially an Anglican c
hurch. Maybe even a simple Catholic church though without the requisite artwork portraying the virgin mother and the saints. But the hat, that was Eastern Orthodox. And he wouldn't have expected to find an Eastern Orthodox church in Los Angeles. Nor would he have expected to find a black man as a priest in one of them. But maybe that was just his ignorance and prejudice at work.

  The priest was a big man, African American by his accent, perhaps from one of the islands judging by his huge grin and big white teeth. He looked Caribbean to him. Instinctively Will liked him, just as he liked the church. Not because of his position as a priest or his words. Because of his easy smile. There was simply something about the priest that put him at ease.

  “Father?”

  “Pastor Elijah Franks. Now that the church has come to this fine land I find I prefer the title of pastor. It seems more fitting. Besides, it can be difficult being confused with our Catholic brothers.”

  His grin grew broader and Will knew he was having a little fun. The rift between the Catholic faith and the orthodox offshoots was a thousand years old and it had been strained in the past. But these days the church was coming together. They needed to when their faith was being tested daily as the world turned in new and ever more difficult directions. And in the end for a Christian faith, whether you offered leavened or unleavened bread at the Eucharist or accepted the Pope as the head of the church was a relatively minor thing.