“Your countermeasures read to me like they have one hell of an offensive capability,” Jude said, conversationally. He didn't have any quarrel with the man and didn't want to anger him, but the anger in himself wasn't going to let this situation slip past without extracting every chance to square off. As he sat back in the comfortable leather of the chair the grazes on his back fired into life. He twitched his lip in a suppressed curse and hoped he hadn't started to leak blood on his shirt.
Mary smiled, flirting by flashing a glance of mutual Jude-tolerance in Sharrock's direction. “What my very direct partner means is that we're very anxious to understand the full implications of your technology.”
“I'm glad to be able to answer,” the colonel said, his eyes showing no signs of annoyance. He must have been well used to being worked over by all kinds of interrogation strategies, including the nice-and-nasty technique, and if he thought they were doing it deliberately he didn't seem to care. “But first, let's look at this.” He used a remote to cue one of the cameras.
“What are we looking at?” Mary asked.
The picture that appeared showed a strip of unremarkable desert. From the camera's high angle they could see the fence line of a small paddock. As the picture zoomed closer a selection of sick-looking animals came into sharper focus.
“This is a range of species.” Sharrock pointed out the individuals with a laser pointer. “They're in a pen about ten miles north of this spot. They've been infected with anthrax. These steers and the sheep are just about on their last day. These others—caged off in the shade there—monkeys and coyotes, are rabid with the racing variant of that disease and hydrophobia has taken hold.”
Jude's stomach clenched as the shots became close studies of suffering. A marmoset, flecks of foam around its mouth, was leaping and shrieking around its bars, tiny fingers bloody, eyes mad. Beneath it a coyote panted frantically and at its side another lay inert, flanks heaving. The larger animals stood or lay in laboured positions, struggling to breathe, shifting with their constant but futile efforts to obtain relief from ceaseless pain.
“They're beyond ordinary help now,” Sharrock said and sent the picture up to the top left of the projection area. The main view now showed a microscope slide, dyed and highlighted in glorious colours.
“This is a sample of the anthrax-infected sheep's blood. These here are the disease marked out in red.” His pointer skated over a set of bacilli that were rod-shaped and loosely linked together several at a time like chains of sausages, “And this is our product, Deliverance.”
Jude looked at the green spheres suspiciously. “They're huge.”
“About as big as you can get in the microscopic world, uh-huh,” Sharrock confirmed. “Still just able to cross the tissue barriers into the bloodstream and that's the main point. Now watch. This sample is set to show you what happens when the release of the payload is triggered.”
“How does that work?” Mary had her Pad out and was comparing what he said with her information.
“We set the shell to open when the immune response in the body has peaked in reaction to the initial infection.”
“So, after you've sneezed and coughed all over?” Jude said.
“Exactly. Ensuring maximum spread.” Sharrock darted his pointer at a green planet circling idly. They could see a shady coloration inside it, purplish. The histamine inrush was signalled by a surge of pink and, amid the flood, the cell wall of the planet suddenly thinned and separated, snapping back on itself like a broken elastic band. The purple and indigo colour of its payload spread out, revealing itself to be a pair of cells.
“That's the antigen—engineered T-cells that destroy the anthrax.”
The purple cell's long tendrils caught and wrapped around the red invader. Within a minute they had infiltrated and destroyed it. As its wrecked parts joined those of the ruined Deliverance spore the indigo shapes, like jellyfish, floated off, tasting their way towards another red bar.
“Is this time-lapse?”
“No, real-time,” Sharrock said and turned to grin at Jude.
Jude had to admit he was impressed.
“Now, let's see what that looks like in real life.” Sharrock switched back to the pitiful animals.
“But isn't this shock against Deliverance going to combine with their original symptoms and, you know, kill them before the cure can take any effect?” Mary peered at the cattle now on screen with her nose part-wrinkled in disgust. Like Jude, she was semisquinting in an effort not to really see what she had to see.
“These animals went through their histamine shock about thirty minutes ago.” Sharrock pointed to one steer that was coughing, a runny discharge splaying from its nostrils and mouth. Its eyes were watery and surrounded by clouds of flies. “The Deliverance should kick in any time now, as the levels start to decline.”
“This won't be so much use against chemical warfare unless it's a slow-acting attack,” Jude said. “But against biologicals it might do some good. Do you think the infection rate and transmission vectors would be strong enough?”
“We've predicted by modelling at the CDC that we could cover an area like downtown Washington within twenty-four hours, pretty much at saturation, working from just a few fixed-point releases.”
“And if you're not infected with the disease or toxin?” Mary asked.
“Then it won't do you any harm, except for the sneezing and coughing,” Sharrock said. “Although those can be pretty strenuous.” He flicked a switch and the picture changed cameras. They found themselves looking at a test room full of soldiers in fatigues, sitting around. All of them had streaming eyes, running noses, and a miserable look. Those who weren't involved in a fit of explosive sneezing were very still. They looked exhausted and pissed-off.
“Volunteers,” Sharrock said, grinning. “Testing an empty version. Only one man went in there with it two hours before this was shot. The rest were uninfected then. And we've done the same tests using water dispersal, food, and air contamination …”
“Prevailing wind tests?”
“Downwind testing, yeah. Right out here in front of this building.”
“And where were the furthest cases found?” Jude asked, trying to gauge how far it would carry before settling into the ground.
“A hundred miles away there was a flu outbreak,” Sharrock said. “We tested some samples of sputum swabs taken for the CDC and it was confirmed.” He nodded with satisfaction, “Harmless when empty, though. Everyone made a rapid and full recovery.”
“Nobody exploded,” Jude was amazed, looking at the rib-shaking, nose-bursting scale of the hacking going on among the soldiers.
“We had to make it a strong enough reaction to fully aerosolize,” Sharrock said mildly and flipped back to the animal screen. “And here what you've got are individually engineered packages. Not only is the payload an improved antigen but the spores are specific to each species, and they can get as specific as you like, right down to dominant genes for markings on the body, hair type and sex.”
Mary glanced at Jude and they shared a look of caution and discomfort.
“So, if for some reason you decided to put the anthrax inside Deliverance, instead of the antigen, then what?” Jude asked. “Doesn't the body start to produce cells to fight the Deliverance infection?”
“Oh, sure it does.” Sharrock nodded. “Sure enough. But the system is too virulent for that to take effect in time. Put anthrax in it and—” he shrugged. “No chance.”
“How about putting in anthrax and tailoring it to kill only wealthy white men older than forty?”
“We can do everything except the rich part, unless there's some study somewhere that shows that money has a chemical effect on the body.”
Jude nodded. “And your empty version, engineered for—what, generic humans?—is out there now, in the wild?”
Sharrock put his head on one side and adopted a patient expression. “I know what you're getting at, Agent. Isn't it going to mutate? Isn'
t it going to blend in with wild diseases? Isn't it going to start an immune reaction that will forestall using Deliverance in the future? No.”
“Well, how can you be so sure?” Even Mary, advocate of this stuff, didn't sound a hundred percent confident now.
“That test batch had a half-life built in. By now it's all dust. Two, three transmissions and it dies within half an hour. If it made one more—the cell wouldn't be viable.”
“I hate to get all Jurassic Park-y on you,” Jude sighed. “But that sounds better than it runs in my paranoia. If bacteria had a constant behavior that never allowed any of them to conjoin, then we wouldn't be here talking about this. And we know that mutations can occur at any time. All it takes is one change that allows your Delivery boy to live beyond the expected span, maybe one environmental factor, and that's it.”
“The empty test is contained,” Sharrock said, with a direct stare that Jude absorbed without flinching. “There have been no cases in two days. It's gone.”
“Okay.” Jude could see he wasn't going to get any further with that. “What about a real release—when you have your baby and all its engineered immune responses out there in the big microecology, then what?”
“Then we'll have populations with long-lasting resistance to whatever the plague was in the first place,” Sharrock said, going back to the PR.
“Jude.” Mary was nudging his elbow with hers. “Look.”
In the barren field one of the steers had moved across to the feed trough and was slowly eating something, its jaws stop-starting as they eased back into the long rhythm of feeding. As Jude looked it shook its head at the flies. But beneath the awning's dark shadow the marmoset lay dead in the bottom of the cage, its back arched in a rictus, its mouth open, and its eyes staring, spasmed stiff by its last fit.
“Why is it dead?” she asked.
“In the test, as I said, we used engineered versions of Deliverance. Some animals were given a match and some weren't. The monkey was a no-match. The payload was never released.”
“So it did its share of spreading it about, but that's it?” Jude watched Sharrock turning off the picture show.
“That's it.”
“And what was the use of putting that element into this?” he asked. “So you could let some die and not others?”
“So that animals could be carriers but not recipients,” the older man said, sitting back in his chair. “So that if we need to we can be specific—we can make the spores unreactive altogether, unless they're exposed to the right markers. Animals can carry the Deliverance without being in any way affected, and if it's a human-active version, then they can infect humans. It's part of the infection vector.”
“Okay.” Jude decided to drop it.
“What happens to the animals out there now? Aren't they an infection risk?” Mary was still filling out her checklist for Perez.
“The animals will be destroyed and autopsies performed as usual,” the lieutenant colonel said. “Speaking of which, we have some forensics for your inspection and some witness testimony and some medical experts waiting. I'm sure you'll be convinced by the end of the morning that this is the best system we've got for reacting to terrorism. The threat's very real, I can assure you.”
Jude had seen information passed down by the CIA and he was sure it was, too, with India, Pakistan, and the Middle East proud of their advanced-technology status and as riddled as any other nation with opportunist weapons-dealers. He had no doubt either that the US wasn't going to hesitate if it thought this could work as an effective deterrent in the same way that intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads did. If Deliverance could attack precise targets then it also had potential—massive potential. It was hard in the end to say which he liked the idea of less, Deliverance or Mappaware.
“Colonel,” he said as they were getting up to leave the room. “Does the list of these microbes and antigens that you've provided give the only payloads that have successfully been reproduced by the system?”
“Not long enough for you?” Sharrock asked, eyebrow cocked.
Mary was listening quietly at Jude's shoulder. It was her reaction he was tuned to, far more keenly than the colonel's, as he added, “I mean, is it large enough to carry Micromedica, for example, or other nanotechnology? Can it reproduce them in vivo?”
Sharrock looked at him for a long moment, the question clearly unexpected.
At his side Jude didn't detect any change in Mary. He'd liked to think he knew her moods and responses and this wasn't how she'd have reacted if he'd mentioned something she already knew about and thought he shouldn't know. He liked to think that. But then, maybe he didn't know her that well. He turned his head and glanced at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Good question,” she said and gave him a grin.
Maybe. He wasn't decided.
“It is a good question,” the colonel said, “and one to which I don't know the answer. Let's go see the team that worked on it. They'll get you an answer, I'm sure.”
Out in the proving fire of midday they crossed the compound and descended into the levels and protection of a new laboratory. Jude watched Mary all the way, but she was herself—calm, efficient, and flirtatious. That was all, until they were on the plane back to the hub at Salt Lake City.
Then she sat next to him when they were alone in the cabin and rested her head and its heavy load of bronze ringlets on his shoulder.
“Those animals,” she said, fear and loathing in her voice. She rubbed her cheek against his collarbone and settled down. On her lap she was flicking through the information. “So, defensive or disguise?”
“Disguise,” he said. “But a good try. Just think about it, with the weapon and the shield in your hand you can lord it over anyone with something as Doomsday as this. Protect your own population, nix the rest of the world. What a shame nobody's found a way of doing that without so much killing everywhere.”
Jude put his arm around Mary's shoulders. Her fingers on the Pad keys had paused, French manicure shining in the cabin lights as the plane taxied out to the runway. The smell of her shampoo, expensive, filled his nostrils instead of the stink of dust. Natalie's mind-reading ability would have been good. As it was, he felt Mary pause and seem to think. When she spoke she was casual.
“Yeah,” she said on an outbreath, musing. “It really is.” She leaned on his thigh and drew up the file of the battling bacteria again, watching the gates open and the invaders rush in and envelop the anthrax. “Trojan horse,” she said.
“Don't look it in the mouth.”
She sat up and looked into his face. “Jude?”
He let his arm slide down, empty, to his side. “Mmn?”
She was staring very intently into his eyes. Then, of a sudden, she shook her head, “Nothing. Never mind. You've got too much to think about.”
“What?”
“I never really said—about your sister, about White Horse. I'm so sorry. If there's anything I can do.”
He nodded. “There's nothing.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, thanks, it's okay. You didn't know her. I'll be back soon.”
“Yeah.” She leaned against him for a second and then sat back in her own seat, looking at him now and again with the sympathy he didn't want to see.
Jude watched their shadow rise and skate away from them, darting over the Proving Grounds' cursed earth and its programmed suffering. He closed his eyes.
He could feel her watching him until he fell asleep.
Natalie sat in the hot seat inside the test room and looked through the glass partitions to the control centre. It was set up much the same as at the Clinic and was where the rest of the research team were arrayed, working on her readouts. Around her head the huge arms of the supersensitive scan system were silent and dark. She was always disappointed in them. You would have expected them at least to hum or sizzle or have flashing lights but instead, like their handheld counterparts, they were silen
t to the last.
She hoped that Ian was going to turn up soon, but she didn't know if he would or how to contact him. In the meantime, the Selfware had been doing more to her than she thought. The way it had been altered before its use on Ian had radically changed its theatre of operations.
Way back in a dim past Natalie only knew was hers by the fact that it was all that was in her memory, she'd intended to create a tool for checking the activity states of the minds of people such as her yogis and martial-arts instructors—of anybody who claimed or had reason to think themselves capable of types of thinking and perception that were beyond the ordinary. She had hoped to find a significant difference between these samples and the general population that might be a clue towards a theory of paranormal abilities such as clairvoyance.
Her interest in this area had started the night she and Karen got home from the woods. Only two weeks later her mother was dead and, despite knowing that it couldn't possibly be true, a part of Natalie's mind had become convinced that her mother's life was the payment for that ill-made contract between herself and twilight. After all, she'd never specified a price for its control of the dark, so it was free to take whatever it could.
It was completely irrational, which made it all the more compelling. Her counsellor would say, “So, is it that you want it to be true?”
Natalie had always said, “No!”
Of course she did. Who wants to be responsible for killing her own mother in a stupid deal with the ancient gods of darkness? But deep down she did want it to exist, this kind of power that could be hers to wield, because if she had it then she wouldn't have to be weak and afraid. A thousand kids think the same thing. They grow out of it eventually. Natalie was prepared to see herself as a slow developer if that meant Charlotte's departure wasn't her fault.
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