Containment

by Kirkland, Kyle

  "What evidence?" said Gordon weakly.

  "The disease radiates away from there. It's a focal point. And I discovered a little while ago that the two victims were both seen near that creek shortly before they died. They were homeless—one more or less permanently, the other temporarily. That's what got me thinking: homeless people often use creek water. They bathe in it and they drink it. More than likely the two victims had taken a dip or a sip recently."

  Gordon frowned. "If it was the other way around, and the mice were the source—if they were getting some kind of disease or chemical agent from the creek," he said slowly, "then you would think they would be dying all up and down the creek. But they aren't, are they?"

  "Nope," said Cecily, shaking her head. "You're right. They're not. The source of the trouble seems to be one economically distressed section of Medburg—which just happens to have a significant homeless population."

  "Okay." Gordon's voice firmed up as he thought over the problem. "Maybe the homeless people caught the agent from the creek, and the mice caught it from the people, as you say. Or maybe the victims and the mice caught it from the creek."

  "But only the mice that lived near the victims are dying."

  "Okay, so maybe the people got infected first. Let's say this thing, the virus or whatever it is, replicated in the infected people, and the mice were contaminated with human urine, spit, or perhaps the bodies as well, if they were lying around for a while. Then they spread it around to other mice by close contact or something. I can see why you're interested in Vision Cell. Something may have gotten into the creek one day and then floated down to Medburg."

  "We know nothing for sure. Nothing's definite. What I need to do is sit down and talk it over with my partner. He's ten times smarter than I am, so what he says carries more weight."

  Gordon doubted that, but he let it pass. "If the humans were the first to be infected...."

  Cecily finished his thought. "Then we may be in a lot of trouble, if the mice spread it around and the disease gets transmitted back to humans. Both man and mouse are obviously hosts. And probably other mammals, especially rats, squirrels, and other rodents. But we haven't seen any problem in pets such as cats and dogs."

  "Domesticated animals often have a funny sort of genetics. I've been told that not very many diseases get transmitted between people and their pets."

  "Right. So let's not panic. We've only got two bodies so far. Human ones, that is."

  "All I can tell you is that our technicians are carefully trained to follow all standard laboratory procedures. And they're well paid, we don't skimp on salaries. All the techs in this company are good, careful, well-trained people. They kill all the cells in any culture before dumping them down the drain—we've got tons of chlorine, like all biological labs, and our autoclave machines are always inspected and in good working order."

  Cecily rose. "You don't mind if I look around, talk to people, gather samples?"

  "Do anything you want. I'll show you around the labs, then you can have the run of the place."

  Gordon first took her to his own lab, then the others. He introduced her to the rest of the researchers—except Jennifer, who was still at home.

  Wrestling with his conscience, Gordon kept glancing at Cecily as he ushered her through the Vision Cell Bioceuticals building. Should he say anything about the gnawing suspicion that had been haunting his thoughts?

  In the end, Gordon saw in his mind's eye images of Burnett, Pradeep, Jennifer, and the rest of the scientists who had devoted so much time and energy into the company. He didn't relay any of his fears to the Micro investigator, convincing himself, somehow, that those fears were all unfounded anyway.

  Jenkintown, Pennsylvania / 4:05 p.m.

  Cecily hung her black sweater across the chair and closed the hotel room's drapes. The sun had broken through the clouds and southeastern Pennsylvania was getting some rare April sunshine.

  Someone knocked. She opened the door quickly and saw a short, dark-haired man standing outside.

  "The team's all here, Rocko?" she asked.

  Rocko nodded.

  "Great," said Cecily. "Let's call it a night, then." She started to close the door.

  "Ma'am?"

  Cecily paused. "Rocko, what did I tell you about that?"

  "About what?"

  "About calling me ma'am."

  Rocko thought it over. "You told me not to do it, ma'am."

  "Right." Cecily looked at him. "Well, what did you want?"

  "Some of the guys want to know, uhm...."

  "How long we're going to be here?"

  Rocko nodded, grateful that Cecily had read his mind, as usual.

  "Beats me. That's up to the bosses at Bethesda."

  Rocko nodded, but hesitated before he walked away.

  "Yes?" prompted Cecily.

  Rocko's gaze went up to the ceiling.

  "Some of the guys are wondering," offered Cecily, "why we moved out of that hotel near Medburg?"

  Rocko nodded, embarrassed.

  "Some of the guys," continued Cecily, "liked it there, didn't they? Close to the action, so to speak."

  Another embarrassed nod.

  Cecily smiled. "Tell the guys that they might want to stay away from Medburg for a while. How many dead mice did we pull out of there, Rocko? Remind the guys about that as they make their entertainment plans for the evening."

  Rocko shrugged. The shrug said, who cares about mice?

  Cecily closed the door. For forty bucks an hour, she thought, you might expect to get people with a little more upstairs. But finding people to do the dirty work wasn't easy. Come to think of it, they didn't pay her all that much either. And they wouldn't even consider hiring her full-time, even if she decided to apply. Too weird, they would say. They, meaning Chet Vernolt and his cronies. As for Kraig, he'd hire her because he didn't care who she was or what she did, but Kraig didn't call the shots—at least not yet.

  Cecily Sunday knew she was weird. She'd been weird, and known she was weird, all her life. As a girl growing up in North Carolina, Cecily loved vampires and anything gothic; whereas some little girls played with dolls, and other little girls played softball, Cecily embraced the dark side of life. She learned much later that psychiatrists have a term for it, though it's not in widespread usage: dysphoria addiction. How weird do you have to be, Cecily often wondered, to be addicted to bad vibes?

  Yet she didn't try to fight it. Why should she? Her personality had stinted her career, but that was a price that had been paid by nearly all social misfits, no matter what their oddities. She'd never hurt anyone, and had even cultivated a connection with others, a concern for their well being. Plenty of bad vibes existed in the world without having to generate them yourself—too many of them. And you didn't have to be normal to be nice. All in all, she regarded herself as one of the nicest people she knew.

  A minute later her cell phone squawked. Lisa Murdoch's voice came over the line. "I'm at Emersen Memorial Hospital," announced Lisa. "It's the last one in the area, the last one on my list."

  "You sound tired."

  There was a moment of silence. Finally Lisa said, "I'm buried in so much data." She seemed close to tears.

  "Buck up, kid. Investigations are like that—three yards and a cloud of dust, but eventually you get to the end zone."

  "What?"

  "We keep working and we hit pay dirt or we find out, more often than not, that there isn't any pay dirt and we've wasted our time."

  A deep sigh came from the speaker, as if the microphone had been dipped in a wind tunnel. "How do you deal with wasting so much time?"

  "Damn, girl, that's what you're hoping for. That's the best case scenario." Cecily paused. "If it'll make you feel any better, I don't think we're wasting our time on this one."

  * * *

  A half hour after Cecily finished talking to Lisa, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a white, coarse towel around her thin body. She combed her wet hair and slipped on
a bathrobe.

  She went to the telephone, swiped her credit card—the "company" card—and a moment later Roderick Halkin answered. "Hey, Sherlock," said Cecily. "How's it hanging?"

  "Greetings, Cecily. The situation here at Bethesda is under control. Any news from your end?"

  "They moved us away from Medburg. Kraig's doing? Or did the decision come from higher up?"

  "Kraig is the worrier at Micro," said Roderick. "Who else?"

  "If he's worried about this case he's got company." Cecily summarized her visit to Vision Cell Bioceuticals. Roderick listened intently.

  "Man, I've got a bad feeling in my gut." Cecily shook her head, and some of her wet bangs fell over her face. She pushed them gently out of the way. "Really bad."

  Roderick seemed unmoved. "But no smoking gun, I gather."

  "No, but I was trembling when I got out of that place. It was that bad. Listen. There was one lab—I mean, a pair of labs—that really got under my skin. A combinatorial chemist and a retina researcher. There was this weird energy and I don't know what to make of it."

  "There's always some competition in biotechnology companies. Sometimes it's hidden, especially to visitors, but it's there, just underneath the surface. Perhaps that was what you were picking up."

  "I don't know, man. Maybe. But it wasn't the people that were so good—I mean, so bad. It was the whole picture, the whole set-up."

  "The CEO, maybe? The person in charge? Was that what bothered you?"

  "I just don't know." Suddenly Cecily laughed. "You're taking me seriously, aren't you? Or are you just putting me on?"

  "You know me better than that, Cecily."

  "Yeah, I guess I do." Cecily's smile disappeared. "It was that lab, I think. That pair of labs."

  "The combinatorial chemist and retina biologist, you said." Roderick paused. "Human retina, I'm sure."

  "Yeah. She's working on growing retinas in the lab, for transplants. The problem is getting the retinal ganglion cells to generate the optic nerve. That's why they've got the combinatorial chemist. He's mixing up batches of related organic chemicals, trying to come up with some molecule that will coax the ganglion cells to do what they want. I don't know how it all works."

  "Combinatorial chemistry is common these days," said Roderick. "You simply take a basic compound and then perform wholesale reactions to adjust the molecular groups. Which gives me a thought. Perhaps one of those compounds is our culprit. It's not likely that a poisonous compound capable of spreading far and wide would be created in those reactions, because they usually only use fairly safe molecules for the basic compounds. Molecules that are common in the body, for example. However, combinatorial reactions produce thousands of different chemicals, so even if there is only a small chance one of them is harmful, it's possible that over time a dangerous product would get created."

  "The problem with that, Sherlock, is that I think this agent, whatever it is, replicates. Which an inert chemical can't do."

  "What makes you think it replicates?"

  Cecily told him her ideas about the creek and the mice.

  "You're speculating," said Roderick.

  "Yeah, I know. Awful of me, isn't it?"

  "Have you told Kraig about this?"

  "No." Cecily grinned. "That's what I've got you for, sweetie. You're the brains of our team. You think it's worth telling, you tell him."

  Bethesda, Maryland / 5:00 p.m.

  A moment later Roderick Halkin stared at his phone. His conversation with Cecily finished, he sat still in his chair—which had organic body-contouring, microadjustable padding that adapted to the user's shape. Roderick's shape was mostly flat and so was the contour.

  He sat back in his expensive chair, courtesy of Chet's budget, and thought about Cecily.

  She was, to all outward appearances, a nearly incomprehensible mystery. She marched to the beat of a different drummer, a drummer that few other people heard; possibly nobody else in the world but her. She was also one of the most eerily perceptive people Roderick Halkin had ever encountered. He even considered her his equal in a number of categories. His superior, in one or two.

  Cecily suspected, albeit on flimsy evidence, that whatever was rampaging through Medburg was capable of reproducing itself. And if it were as infectious as the mice epidemic suggested, the consequence could be disastrous. People might begin dying in similar numbers. The optimism that Roderick had earlier tried to convey to Kraig Drennan had evaporated. A crisis was brewing.

  Roderick debated calling Kraig and alerting him. But what could Kraig do? There was no concrete evidence supporting any assertion Roderick could make. And any critical decision would have to be made by politicians, who would consult not with Roderick Halkin or the assistant director but with the director himself. Who would have to be convinced—and convincing—in order to persuade any major decision concerning a whole city and its thousands of residents.

  Kraig Drennan was reliable but emotional, which could lead to weakness in a crucial moment. Kraig was a worrier and an ambitious perfectionist who mercilessly burdened himself with work. The director, on the other hand...Roderick smiled without humor.

  The population of Medburg, Pennsylvania, was 83,449 persons. A few minutes ago Roderick had looked up the latest census figure.

  It would take too long to go into musician mode, alas. There was no way to speed up the meditative and neurofeedback processes necessary for Roderick to convert his personality into the violin specialist whose music he presently craved to hear—and make. It required an intensely focused state of mind that could only be achieved after hours of concentration, even with the help of all of those feedback devices. Besides, he'd promised he wouldn't, not in the middle of a case. He would have to keep his word.

  Instead he settled for playing music over his enveloping, all-point speakers. But the only pieces of music he selected were funeral dirges.

  Bethesda, Maryland / 6:50 p.m.

  "Get your taxes done?"

  Kraig Drennan frowned at the screen. The communication system displayed Chet's face and prominent mustache; in the background was the room Chet called his study, one of many finely furnished rooms in his home along the Chesapeake. It was no surprise that Chet had called Kraig at the office to check up on him, using the expensive communication equipment that Chet had convinced the budget office he required at home as well as the office. And it was no surprise that Chet would think of something stupid to ask so that it didn't seem like he was checking up on him. When Kraig stayed late and Chet went home early, the director of the Micro-Investigation Unit looked bad. People gossiped, saying that the assistant director was doing all the work. Which, Kraig thought, was true.

  The white mustache twitched, waiting for a response. "You know it isn't too late to get a postmark, the Post Office stays open until midnight—"

  "I finished my taxes in February," said Kraig.

  "Oh." The white mustache drooped. "Well, you're on the ball, then. So, how's everything at the fort?"

  We're under siege and I'm laundering all our white flags. "Pretty good."

  "Good. Fine."

  There was a silence that stretched beyond a comfortable length.

  "Well, then," said the white mustache, "any word about the Medburg situation?"

  Kraig was tempted to say, "What Medburg situation?" Oh so tempted! "The mouse carcasses have arrived. I've got every available technician working on the analysis. Data will start coming in tomorrow, I expect. We still don't know what killed the two homeless victims."

  "I see, I see. Well, it sounds like everything is in order, and proceeding at a sufficient pace. So, Kraig, why don't you call it a night? We'll have a meeting tomorrow morning with the lab boys and girls. Say 10 o'clock?"

  "Fine. I'll be going home in a while."

  Another period of silence. The white mustache bristled ever so slightly. "You worry too much. We have to wait and see what happens."

  "Waiting may not be such a great idea."

  The
director snorted. "A calm and reasonable wait is never a bad idea. Quick and careless responses only serve to frighten people, and inconvenience them."

  "A quick response might save more people than it inconveniences."

  "You're too pessimistic. You're positively grim, Kraig."

  "That's my job."

  "No it isn't. That's where you're wrong. Do you know how long you'll last in this business if you keep up this kind of attitude?"

  Kraig briefly wondered if that was a subtle threat.

  The director went on, "Now, look at me. I've lasted thirty years. I won't say they've all been great years but most of them were tolerable. I've shown stamina and endurance, qualities which, I fear, you will not prove to have."

  Cyan light flooded Kraig's office. Kraig thought about killing the video feed of his communication system, even started to reach for the key to do so, but then let his hand fall limply to his side. Hell with it.

  The director continued, apparently oblivious, for the moment, to Kraig's physio alarm. "You'll worry yourself into an ulcer. You'll worry yourself into becoming a frightened, hunted animal. Listen to me, Kraig! I know what I'm talking about. And I know what I'm doing."

  Kraig paused, staring at the proud white mustache, puffed out in its fullest splendor. "I understand what you're saying." Kraig's tone sounded conciliatory. The cyan light faded. "There's such a thing as hitting the panic button too soon. But listen. We've got two fatalities, so we know this agent kills. We know it's something, some kind of agent of disease, because of the mice. What we don't know is how dangerous it is to humans. We don't know how infectious it is. We don't even have a good idea what it is because it doesn't show up on any of our radar screens."

  "Well, then, it certainly bears watching, I agree. But is there a trend in the hospital statistics? Is there a cluster of symptoms making the rounds in the city or in any of the neighboring vicinities? Anywhere in the county?"

  Kraig shook his head.