S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  He nodded. “I got this. Go home. By the time you come in tomorrow morning, I’ll have this all sorted out and maybe even have some preliminary results on the spectrometry.”

  They had spent the majority of the afternoon inventorying the contents of the package. Much of the packing ice had sublimed away and the extra space had allowed the half dozen or so freezer boxes to open and the tubes to spill out in a confused mess. Apparently, Jim Pearce hadn’t bothered to try and figure out what Lyssa might need and had instead opted to just send it all, leaving it up to her to sort out.

  With the help of the documentation, they’d been able to match most of the tubes with their corresponding descriptions in the notes. They eliminated the irrelevant ones, leaving only a handful to further narrow down. Most of the tubes had had clear markings, all with Heather’s initials and a code which corresponded to a notation in her notebook, but several tubes — a couple dozen — lacked initials or a code, and the markings they did have weren’t informative. A half dozen tubes were missing any kind of label at all.

  “Don’t stay too late,” Lyssa said. She gave the doorframe a couple taps as she waited for Drew to assure her that he wouldn’t. It was part of their routine, she realized, something they’d grown comfortable with over the past year and half.

  “I won’t,” he dutifully promised. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Just going to find what I need and see if we can do the intrauterine puncture tonight.”

  They both knew the procedure could take a good six hours, and that was after combining the nanotubes and DNA and pulsing with microwaves to get them to assemble.

  “I’ll see you in the morning then.”

  He nodded, then watched her go. When he was sure he was finally alone, he leaned back in his chair and let out a breath, releasing some of the pressure he’d been holding inside of himself. As much as he liked his employers, there were days when it drained him, both physically and emotionally, to be around them. They brought a lot of their personal baggage into work, and it was affecting them all.

  The building seemed so much quieter than it did during the day, as if it knew the Stemples had finally gone home. He could almost feel it breathe a sigh of relief, as if a great weight had been lifted from its walls. At times like these, when he was alone, he sometimes imagined he could hear the ocean breaking on the rocks outside. The shore was a good hundred yards away and the exterior walls were too thick and the laboratory too centrally located within the building for it to be true.

  Or maybe what he was sensing was the ground vibrating beneath his feet from the breakers rather than the vibration of the air in his ears. Whatever it was, in such moments he felt most connected with the world. In such solitude, he felt his most serene.

  He lifted the sheaf of papers from the benchtop and rechecked the tubes they’d already verified against their descriptions. Out of the roughly six hundred plastic microfuge tubes sent in the shipment, the half dozen he figured they needed had been separated into a fresh rack. The rest needed to be put away for another day, if ever. Most likely, they’d just send them back.

  He lifted one of the unlabelled tubes from the dry ice and held it up to the light and peered into the frozen liquid inside. A layer of snowy ice crystals quickly formed on the outside, moisture condensing on the surface and instantly freezing. The tube crackled and hissed as it began to warm from its subarctic temperature of minus one hundred degrees. Its contents weren’t colorless, but instead had a slightly greenish tint.

  He wiped away the layer of frozen condensate, then flipped the tube in his fingers, intending to reseat it in the rack. The hinged lid popped with a tiny bang, a release of pressure from the warming air inside the tube expanding. He felt a needle of cold hit his cheek near his eye, a splatter from some of the ice which had formed between the lid and the tube. Absently, he wiped the sting away with the shoulder of his lab coat, pressed the lid back down until the tube was newly sealed, and placed it into a storage box.

  With a stack of boxes in his arms, he stepped over to the freezer. Carefully pushing aside a rack of tubes for another experiment he was conducting, he slid the unnecessary boxes in. Then he returned to the bench and began to outline his injection of the rabbits.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Goooood Thursday morning, Long Island! It’s your favorite shock jock, WDQR’s own Jay Bird coming straight atchoo from the top of our transmission tower on top of good old Jayne’s Hill, from our new recording studio smack dab in the center of New York State’s great big boner! Yep, we got a brand new antenna, folks. Now that’s whatemtalkingabout! They’ll be catching my spewage all the way down in Philly with this puppy cranking out some hefty duty wattage. Oh yeah! Hell, I bet if I sneezed, they’d catch cold clear up in Portland. It’s going to be a busy day, folks. I’ll be talking about the new tax propos—

  Lyssa turned down the radio and cocked her head around until she located the siren she thought she’d heard. The ambulance approached in the opposite lane, slowly weaving its way through the parking lot of cars stuck on the 495. Everyone was trying to get somewhere in a hurry, so naturally nobody was going anywhere.

  She growled in frustration. At least this time the jam wasn’t because of the construction. The towers were already up in this part of the island, poking their ugly heads up everywhere, tall gray poles topped by a trio of gray boxes and antennas. iTech had started the installations along the south shore and had migrated north to the opposite side. Now they were working their way west like a slow moving tide.

  God they’re ugly. Least they could’ve done is camouflage them, make them appear like they belong here.

  The ambulance passed right next to her, its siren warbling in a way that made her feel as if her heart was a sheet flapping in a stiff wind. She was glad to see the vehicle disappear around a corner.

  The cars in front of her pulled ahead. Soon she was moving again at a decent clip.

  Other than a slight delay at Medford, where rubberneckers were ogling another work crew loosely gathered along the side of the highway, the rest of the drive into work passed without incident. She arrived just after eight o’clock, but didn’t go right in. She needed to decompress. She was still tense from breakfast. It was their first together again, and it had been awkward. Hell, the whole morning had been awkward as they tried too hard to be civil.

  Lyssa had gotten up, eager to cook bacon and eggs for everyone, but Cassie didn’t come in from outside when Lyssa called her, and Ramon buried his head in the daily news on his tablet. Lyssa wanted to scream at him that they were supposed to be working on rebuilding the family. Instead, it was the same old routines already.

  He mumbled something about unrest in the Middle East or Russia between bites of toast, then washed it down with a swig of coffee. Lyssa sat and watched him, waiting for him to come out of his bubble. But his mood seemed to grow darker the more news he read. “Now North Carolina wants to vote on a secession measure.” He shook his head. “This country’s falling apart.”

  Who cares about the country, Rame? she wanted to say. We’re the ones falling apart.

  “We should start carpooling again,” he said, abruptly setting the tablet down and looking up at her. The proposition so startled her that she stammered out an excuse, something about stopping by Sudha’s place to make sure she was all right. Ramon had frowned at the obvious absurdity of it, the blatant pretext. But he didn’t push the issue. He’d probably already done the calculus: They could be stuck in the same car with nothing but each other for company for ninety minutes, or they could see how living together again was going to work out before trying something so fraught with peril.

  He finished his coffee and gathered his keys and tablet and left after shouting a goodbye to Cassie through the sliding door. He even gave Lyssa a tentative peck on the cheek.

  And she was faced with the awkwardness of having to work with him.

  With a sigh, she opened the car door and went insi
de.

  She found Drew asleep at his desk in his office, his clothes and hair rumpled and a stale smell in the air. She cleared her throat loud enough for him to stir.

  “How’d last night go?” she asked, settling into a chair.

  He groaned as he sat up and stretched, eliciting a series of small crackles from his joints. Lyssa smiled in amusement.

  “You think you’d learn,” she said.

  “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he conceded. He winced and tried to work the stiffness from his neck.

  “So?”

  “Need. Coffee. First.”

  “Yeah, in a to-go mug,” she told him, “because you’re not staying. Tell me what happened, then go home and get some sleep. You look horrible.”

  And he did. His eyes were bloodshot. The flesh around them was swollen and bruised, the conjunctivas pink. His face was blotchier than usual. He coughed experimentally, and seemed surprised at the alarming rattle in his chest.

  “I guess I picked up Sudha’s cold.”

  Sudha. Damn it.

  She hadn’t stopped by her place. She didn’t even know exactly where the woman lived.

  Drew pushed his notebook across the desk toward her, and when Lyssa reached for it, she could feel the heat coming off his skin.

  “Cold my ass,” she commented. “Feels more like the flu.”

  “I assembled the nanotubes around our genes according to Heather’s notes and ran a sample through the mass spec. The results should be printed out now.”

  “Did you run any through chromatography?”

  He nodded. “Better than ninety percent fully formed particles. No idea if they’re functional.”

  “We’ll know better in a day or two. No time for tissue culture anymore.”

  He nodded tiredly. “I injected all the rabbits, six with the complete assembly, the rest as controls. And I left instructions for the animal techs to collect samples.”

  “So, why are you still here?”

  Drew chuckled and stretched again. His joints didn’t pop this time, but he groaned louder. Concerned, Lyssa pushed herself from the chair, reached over the desk and placed her hand on his forearm.

  “Jesus, Drew, you’re burning up! Go home!”

  “I’m going. I’m going,” he said, already struggling to get out of his chair.

  Lyssa’s stomach lurched at the stink on his breath. She turned her face, trying not to show it. “I may want to analyze some of the samples myself,” she said.

  “Tubes are in the freezer, the rack on the top shelf, right-hand side.” He found his car keys and stepped toward the door. “By the way, Sudha was in briefly. But I think she went back home. She looked terrible.”

  “And so do you. Go home and get some rest.” She stood aside and let him pass. “And thanks, Drew. I won’t mark you off as sick today.”

  He chuckled and raised a hand. There was no formal sick leave policy for the senior staff. They took whatever time they needed, whenever they needed it, and nobody ever abused the privilege.

  Lyssa dropped her keys and phone off in her office, then headed for the lab. After checking over Drew’s meticulous notes, satisfied that he’d executed the experiment as well as could be hoped given the constraints they were working under, she checked on the rabbits. They all appeared to be fine, but that was only to be expected. The first symptoms, if any, usually didn’t manifest themselves until at least forty-eight hours post-infection. Even so, seeing absolutely no difference in the rabbits’ behavior between the control and test treatments, she experienced a moment of doubt. After the failings of the past year and a half, the likelihood of success now was practically nil. Which made her wonder even more why Drew had pushed so hard for this. Did he know something she didn’t?

  The unsettled feeling lingered inside of her for the rest of the morning, and nothing she did could shake it.

  * * *

  After their staff meeting, Lyssa pulled Ramon aside. Besides Sudha and Drew, she had to tell him that two of the animal technicians were also out sick, apparently with the same virus. “Whatever it is, it seems pretty contagious, and it’s working its way through our crew.”

  He frowned in displeasure.

  “We may have to push back starting the Ames work.”

  She secretly hoped he’d give her a little more time — another week would be ideal — though she knew it was unlikely.

  At first she thought he hadn’t even heard the comment, but then he shook it off and asked how she was feeling. He actually seemed genuinely concerned, even going so far as raising his hand and pressing the backs of his fingers to her cheek.

  She remembered the way they used to be and found she missed his touch. Other than the quick kiss that morning, no more than a brush of his lips on her skin, they hadn’t physically connected in almost a year. “No fever, anyway,” he said, looking relieved. “Good. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine, but Drew looked miserable.”

  “Your right hand man,” he said. “Summer colds are the worst.”

  “Yeah, my trusty sidekick.”

  Ramon moved closer to her, hesitated. After a moment, she leaned into him and placed her head against his shoulder. She closed her eyes and listened to him breathe.

  After a few seconds, he pulled away. “I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow. You know Drew. He’d have to be dying before he missed two days in a row.”

  She chuckled. “I often wonder how we got so lucky finding him.”

  “Me, too.”

  She could feel the wall between them slowly dissolving and was glad. But, god, it was such hard work sometimes.

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze and sighed. “Did you get what you needed? Did he inject the rabbits?”

  Lyssa nodded. “He did a quick-and-dirty with the new assemblies. I’ll have the techs run the first biochem assays this afternoon. It might be too soon, but Drew didn’t get a baseline anyway.” She turned away from him to gather her notebook and tablet.

  Ramon watched her uncertainly. It’s not right that I should feel so uncomfortable around my own wife, he thought. It wasn’t always this way. “I know we had these grand plans when we started the lab,” he started to say.

  “Don’t, Rame.”

  “No, I need to, honey. You haven’t been looking at the books, I have. Not even the stipend the cattle group was paying us would’ve kept us afloat for much longer.”

  The news startled her. She hadn’t realized they were treading such a fine line. She turned to the faded, blank wall beside the conference room door. Then to the tattered dry-erase board with its scribbles from the last meeting and the ghosts of other meetings which refused to be wiped away. To the scratched table and the stained carpet beneath their feet. And she saw, really for the first time, how rundown everything looked. “But if this last experiment works—”

  “We’d still be years away from realizing any tangible return on it. You know that. Patent filings cost money. Assuming we’d even get a chance to own the intellectual property outright.”

  She turned to him, frowning. “What are you saying?”

  “This little experiment you’re doing now, if it were to work, do you think this friend of yours would just give it to us? Or would we end up paying her royalties on it?”

  Lyssa remembered what Heather had said about going back to it someday. Had she been serious?

  “I thought you supported me doing it, Ramon.” She stopped and stared at him. “So, what? You’re humoring me? Is that it?”

  “Honey—”

  “Don’t tell me that. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? You actually hope I won’t succeed because you don’t think we’d profit from it. Damn you, Ramon.”

  “I just want you to see the whole picture.”

  “Well, for your information, I do think Heather would just give this to us, free and clear.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I hope it succeeds, honey. And I hope you’re right
about your friend.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s this new project. I didn’t want to let the others know when I announced it, but I have some misgivings about it, too.”

  “About it paying out?”

  “No . . . .” He hesitated. “Never mind.”

  “Then why did you agree to it?”

  “I told you, because we had no choice. I’ve run the numbers. We do this, we get another five-year runway. I think that’s a fair tradeoff for a few months of work.”

  “You make it sound like we’re selling our souls.”

  He chuckled uneasily, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By ten o’clock Friday morning Lyssa was having a difficult time restraining her excitement. Her preliminary observations of the rabbits seemed to indicate the injections had had the desired effect. The test animals were lethargic, their temperatures and heart rates elevated. Serum and urine protein levels were steadily rising. She was tempted to sample some of the amniotic fluid, but the protocol required at least seventy-two hours post-injection for definitive proof that they’d managed to get the genes into the developing embryos. And it wouldn’t be until the middle of the following week before they’d be able to tell anything by ultrasound.

  She waited for Drew to show up. But when nine o’clock rolled around and he didn’t, she tried calling his cell phone number. The call didn’t go through. All she managed to get was a strange, thrumming, staticky sound and an intermittent clicking. The new network, the so-called Stream, seemed to be having growing pains.

  He’s probably on his way in.

  By eleven, it was clear he wasn’t. Either that or he was seriously stuck in traffic without a way to call. On the off chance that he was still at home, Lyssa decided to try him there. When she got his answering machine, she left him a message.

  Five minutes later, she had Sudha on the line. The woman was clearly miserable with infection. Her voice was so raspy and nasally that Lyssa had a hard time understanding her. Between sneezes and coughs, which sounded more like angry snaps and growls, the woman managed to say, “I come in if you need me.”