The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  “Certainly has all the comforts of home,” Blaine commented, and he started the jeep downward.

  As they drew closer they could see that virtually all the structures were one-story in design, and all were equipped with wheelchair ramps as well as steps for easy entry. Everything had been built in consideration of the O.K. Corral’s residents, many of them old or infirm.

  He slowed the jeep briefly at a sign posted off the road where it turned to pavement, a sign painted far less professionally than the previous ones and bearing a wholly different message:

  WELCOME

  TO THE O.K. CORRAL!

  “Guess we should take them up on the offer, Indian.”

  “Why not?” Wareagle shrugged.

  And McCracken headed the jeep on into the makeshift town. They kept their goggles on, ready now to abandon the jeep at the first opportunity. Everywhere they looked were indications of time gone wrong. The place was laid out like an old-style western town. Each of the small shops had its own hand-carved or painted sign above its doorway, which furthered the illusion still more. There was an ice cream shop and even a small movie house featuring posters of coming attractions and a marquee boldly advertising the latest bill. They drove the jeep past a parklike setting lined with canopied tables around the pond. Many of the tables were occupied by figures snoozing, staring, or reading a book or newspaper.

  “Think they got their own printing press, too?” Blaine wondered.

  “Why not?” Johnny Wareagle responded. “They’ve fabricated their own reality here. They want time to seem frozen, unchanged. The residents will have no means of noting the passage of days that way. They lose touch with what they were before coming here, who they were.”

  “Turned docile and quiet, behavior modification taken to a new level. Jesus Christ, Indian, when you think of all the secrets stowed within the minds in residence here… .” He slid the jeep on, taking in the sights passed on the way. “Think the library has a preferred reading list?” Blaine asked as they edged past it.

  “Of more concern to us now, Blainey, is whether or not the sheriff’s office over there has cells.”

  “Whoops.”

  Blaine swung the jeep beyond the sheriff’s office and made a left turn, coming to a halt before a bakery featuring the smell of fresh-baked breads and cookies floating through its open doors.

  “All the comforts of home, eh, Indian?” Blaine repeated.

  “A lie, Blainey, meant to disguise the truths of the past, to bury these truths from the world they were perpetrated on.”

  “A graveyard for secrets, in other words.”

  “And a resting place for the souls of men before they are ready to join the spirits.”

  They climbed from the jeep and headed for cover. Suddenly an old man with a shock of gray hair stormed out the door of the bakery waving his arms and yelling at them.

  “How do you expect my customers to get in with your damn machine blocking the door?”

  “Huh?”

  The man wiped his hands on his stained apron. Blaine thought he looked vaguely familiar.

  “Rush starts soon. Get your machine out of the way. Scat now! Scat! Damn law-and-order people never cared a damn for the needs of anyone else. Always taking, always taking. Jesus …”

  The old man disappeared back inside the bakery shaking his head.

  “We’d do best to move the jeep, Blainey.”

  But Blaine’s mind was elsewhere. “I know that man,” he said slowly. “I know I’ve seen him before… . Shit, his name’s Kirkland. He was Allen Dulles’s number one operations man with the old CIA under Kennedy and Johnson. What the hell is this place?”

  “Just what we expected it to be.”

  They had returned to the jeep now and were backing it into another slot before the bookstore, since it looked closed today.

  “They must have given the residents jobs,” McCracken surmised.

  “And thus a purpose, aimed at making them forget what their purpose was before they arrived. Their very existences have been redefined.”

  “Drugs?”

  “For a time, probably. But these men have outlived their eras. With nothing to go back to, they would welcome the new way of looking at themselves.”

  “Like us, Indian?”

  “I don’t think they have beds ready for us yet.”

  “But think about it. In a manner of speaking, we’ve outlived our eras too. Yet instead of coming to a place like this to play checkers and fish, we redefined our lives on our own terms. Not much different than these folks when you look at it that way.”

  They were only a few steps away from the jeep when a loud voice rang out from just behind them.

  “’Bout time you boys got back. The Doc was startin’ to worry up a storm, I tell ya.”

  McCracken, closer than Johnny was to the speaker, turned slowly to find a tobacco-chomping icy-eyed man dressed like a western gunman, albeit without the six-gun. Blaine shrugged and cut the distance between them routinely. The man’s eyes fell on Wareagle.

  “Hey, wait a minute, you’re not—”

  He had started to go for his walkie-talkie when Blaine was upon him, his grasp harsh and painful. The man looked at him and spat tobacco on the neatly paved road.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

  “Ike Clanton, and that there’s my little brother Billy. And unless you’re Wyatt Earp, I’d say you’re in a heap of trouble.”

  The man spat again. “This some kind of joke?”

  “Oh, yeah. The joke’s called the O.K. Corral, and the punch line’s got to do with some half-assed cowboys running herd on a bunch of old men.”

  Blaine started to ease himself and his captive down the road with Wareagle on the deputy’s other side.

  “This is a U.S. government installation, mister. I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re in a heap more trouble than you know and it’s getting worse by the second.”

  They reached the bookstore, and a quick shoulder from Wareagle had the locked door swinging open. The trio passed inside and Blaine immediately passed the guard to the huge Indian. Wareagle responded in turn by grasping the man around the neck in a death lock that shut off virtually all his air.

  “I haven’t had a good day,” Blaine told the man who was straining up on the tips of his toes to lessen the pressure being applied to his throat. “In fact, I’ve had a pretty lousy week, lousy enough to not care much at all if the Indian has to break your neck. ’Less, of course, you tell us what we’ve come to find out.”

  The icy-eyed man struggled for air and a stream of chalky brown tobacco juice dropped onto his white cowboy shirt.

  “You’ll never get away with this.”

  “Interesting cliche. Shame to waste it. We’re looking for a man named Hans Bechman. Used to be a German scientist until he signed up with this nuthouse.”

  Wareagle allowed the guard some welcome breath. “No names, not real ones anyway. They never tell us any real names.”

  “This one would be in a wheelchair,” Blaine explained further, recalling Bart Joyce’s description of the man he had seen directing the loading of cannisters onto the Indianapolis.

  “Lots of people here in wheelchairs, mister.”

  “This one would have come in one. Heavy German accent, too. Know the man?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying. I can tell by your eyes. Look, friend, there’s a new sheriff in town and he’s about to snap your neck. Last chance. Know him or not?”

  Wareagle increased the pressure and lifted the guard off the floor.

  “Yes! Yes!”

  Again Johnny let up on the pressure and eased him part of the way back down.

  “Lives in number forty-nine,” the captive deputy said. “Almost never comes out. Keeps all to himself.”

  “Very good.”

  “Not really. You’re wasting your time if you expect to get something out of him. Man’s lost more marbles than a ten-year-old can sink
in a hole. Doesn’t even know who he is most of the time.”

  “Guess we’ll have to jog his memory,” McCracken said.

  He nodded to Wareagle, who increased his pressure on the deputy’s neck enough to put him to sleep.

  “Think we should tie him up, Indian?”

  “Not unless we plan on being here past the coming of the moon, Blainey.”

  The residence numbered forty-nine was located in the northern sector of the O.K. Corral, set off the path of stores and shops and away from the clutter of old folks loitering the day away in the shade. This and the others clustered around it had the look of hand-built cabins or cottages, the old-west motif still dominant. McCracken noted that although there seemed to be no rules to that effect, most of the residents kept to themselves. He and Wareagle saw scarcely any socializing as they circled about. It seemed the residents still stubbornly clung to the secrets that had brought them there for the last of their days. It was as if holding firm at all costs to those secrets was the only way to maintain even a limited grasp of the past, which fluttered like dust in the wind of their memory. There was hardly a sound in the air, other than the occasional jeep patrolling or the church bells clanging every quarter hour.

  Blaine made sure no one was about before he and Wareagle approached the door marked with a forty-nine. They had no idea what to expect inside and could only hope Hans Bechman had enough command of his faculties to provide the final piece of the puzzle that began in 1945 on board the Indianapolis. Wareagle remained in the shadows while McCracken eased up to the door and knocked. When no sound or response came from within, he knocked again louder.

  At last he heard the squealing of wheels over wood, then a hand fumbling with a knob inside. The door parted halfway to reveal a skeletal shape tucked into a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap.

  “Do you have my towels?” Hans Bechman asked.

  “Yes,” Blaine replied without hesitation.

  “That’s good. I ran out. I called yesterday. You didn’t come.” Puzzlement crossed his face. “I think it was yesterday… .”

  The old scientist’s words emerged still laced with a German accent. What little hair he still had hung in unkempt clumps. Blaine heard him muttering to himself in German as he slid back far enough for McCracken to enter with Wareagle just behind.

  “Where do you want them?” Blaine asked. “The towels, I mean?”

  “Kitchen … no—bathroom … no—kitchen.”

  Blaine turned back to Johnny. “Put Dr. Bechman’s towels in the kitchen.”

  The old man’s eyes flared to life at that. “My name. You used my name.”

  “Of course, Dr. Bechman.”

  “I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t hear it at all. Maybe my ears are going. I like hearing it.” His eyes turned quizzical. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” McCracken replied flatly. “I’m new.”

  “Good. I don’t like the ones I know. They don’t talk to me. They don’t call me by my name.” His eyes glistened hopefully. “Will you talk to me?”

  “I’d like that,” Blaine told him.

  Chapter 23

  THE OLD MAN’S FACE suddenly took on an agitated expression.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost two o’clock.”

  “What day?”

  “Thursday.”

  “What year?”

  “199—”

  “Did you say ninety? It can’t be. Surely it can’t be. Tell me the truth now. Don’t be like the others.”

  McCracken gazed at Wareagle, who had taken up a position by the window to watch for the possible approach of Holliday and his men.

  “What if it were 1945?” Blaine asked the old man.

  The creases of Bechman’s face relaxed. “Then I’d have my work.”

  “What was your work, doctor?”

  “I was a traitor to my country, you know. I could have given my discovery to them. We would have won the war. But, but … Wait, I know you now. You’re the gestapo! You’ve come to take me away. I won’t go, I tell you, I won’t!”

  Bechman’s last words emerged in a shrill scream, and Blaine had to grasp the side of his wheelchair to keep him from rolling it away.

  “I’m not the gestapo,” McCracken told him calmly. “Listen to my voice. I’m American. The Americans saved you from the gestapo. We brought you to the United States and gave you a new life.”

  Bechman’s face turned quizzical again. “What year did you say it was?”

  “1990.”

  He shook his head. “What happened to the years? Where did they all go? There is a hole in my mind and the years keep slipping out. What can I do to plug the hole?” he uttered pleadingly. “Tell me what I can do!”

  “You can remember.”

  “But where to start?”

  “In 1945 when the Americans gave you a new life.”

  “Not a new life. No, just an extension of the old one. It was my own fault. I was scared. I wanted them to accept me. So I told them the secret I had hidden from the Nazis.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “About my experiments. Hitler’s people never realized what I had happened upon. They wouldn’t have understood it even if they had. Years ahead of its time, generations! It was brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you! But I didn’t give it to them.”

  “You gave it to the Americans.”

  “Because I wanted no more wars, no more innocent people to die. The Americans could wield the weapon with judgment, with prudence. Yes, I gave it to them. All my research was completed. It was a simple matter of production, just a few additional tests from that point.”

  Blaine posed his next question calmly. “What exactly was produced?”

  “When?”

  “In 1945, Dr. Bechman. By the Americans.”

  The old man’s features turned mad again. “How do you know my name? I don’t know you. I’m sure I don’t know you.”

  “I’m here to help you.”

  “Did you bring my towels?”

  “Already put them away.”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “To listen to you. You like to talk, don’t you, doctor? You like to speak of your past.”

  Bechman’s expression grew dreamlike. “Yes, I suppose.”

  “What was the weapon you gave the Americans, Dr. Bechman?”

  The old man’s eyes focused suddenly again. “They didn’t believe me at first you know. Thought I was crazy to insist such a thing could exist. But I knew it existed because I created it.”

  “In Germany. During those last months of the war.”

  “Yes! Yes! Hitler was obsessed with the United States, had been from the beginning. He hoped to delay their entry into the war long enough for the team I was part of to finish a weapon that could destroy them, wipe out their entire nation suddenly and swiftly.”

  “And your research was on the genetic level.”

  Bechman gazed at him condescendingly from his wheelchair. “Of course it was. Before anyone else even knew the terms, we were splitting cells, working with the DNA itself.”

  “You found something.”

  “Yes, but purely by accident, believe it or not. A chance coincidence arrived at from all our tinkering. We were working with viruses in pursuit of the ideal form of germ warfare. We wanted to alter the DNA of the virus so it would behave in a different way. But the altered DNA produced an enzyme which had properties that were terrifying, awesome in their implications.”

  “An enzyme?” Blaine asked, embarrassed for his lack of scientific knowledge.

  “An enzyme is the biological catalyst for a reaction. We were working at the cellular level. All human life is based on cells dividing, reproducing, splitting. How? How?”

  “I—”

  “Glucose!” Bechman blared, a scientist again. “Sugar metabolism is the basis of life at the cellular level and thus life in general. Cells digest glucose at metabolic level to supply the most basic function of li
fe. The process is called phosphorylation. Picture this now. Once introduced into the system through the virus, our enzyme penetrates and alters the DNA of the stem cells from which all other cells originate. The enzyme produces a more efficient pathway to metabolize sugar and produce life, the DNA of the stem cells altered to the point where they can no longer utilize their usual pathway. The cells immediately become dependent on this new pathway and can no longer metabolize without it. All because of our enzyme. My enzyme!”

  McCracken found himself going cold, his limited scientific knowledge no longer insulating him from the impact of what he was hearing. “You’re saying whoever became exposed to your virus would become dependent on it to survive, wouldn’t be able to live without being exposed further to it.”

  “Precisely! One exposure was all it would take to produce total dependence. The process becomes irreversible after that. If exposure to more of the virus containing my enzyme is not maintained, life degenerates at its most basic level. All bodily functions cease because phosphorylation cannot occur within the stem cells.”

  “The ultimate form of biological warfare,” Blaine muttered, looking at Wareagle, starting to grasp what the gamma cannisters Bart Joyce had seen loaded onto the Indianapolis had contained. “The virus invades the body and the host dies if he doesn’t get more of the enzyme it contains.”

  “A disease that breaks the spirit as well as the body, Blainey. Worse than death. The ultimate form of control as well.”

  “You can see why I couldn’t let Hitler have it,” Bechman broke in. “Imagine him able to destroy the military capacity of the United States while retaining its vast production capabilities and resources for his own use! Slavery is what it would have come down to.”

  “But how would you contain it, doctor? Stop it from spreading beyond the borders of your enemy?”

  “Many means were discussed. Aerosol release into the air was ruled out as too uncontrollable, as was the ethnic factor of infecting a specific food or finding a virus that attacks a single ethnicity. We settled on infecting a nation’s water supply. The virus containing the enzyme would live in water for two or three days, programmed to survive for only that many generations. By then the cells of the victim would be dependent at the DNA level, and more of the enzyme would have to be introduced to avoid certain death. The effects would show up after only a few days. My estimates indicated that five hundred German agents could accomplish the entire task quite adequately. Germany or another attacking country could then issue its ultimatum: surrender or die.”