Sylvia came and stood by the side of the bed looking down at him with more direct compassion than he had seen in a human face since his mother’s death. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to—” He hoped she would not think less of him for the weakness he had betrayed, though he thought less of himself.
“You’re right; we’re going to need help and you know more than anyone else I’ve come in contact with. I’m . . . grateful.”
“Thanks,” Plaiting said, falling back on his pillow.
“I can’t promise that—”
“I know. Thanks anyway.” Plaiting wanted to smile and achieved nothing more than a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “You’re a good sport, Sylvia.”
“Takes one to know one, Gerry,” she countered.
A month ago, he would have had half a dozen quick responses. But, he reminded himself as he closed his eyes, a month ago he was not in the hospital dying of a pernicious, unidentified disease, and the conversation would not be taking place. He was half asleep by the time Sylvia Kostermeyer let herself out of his quarantine room.
—Jeff Taji—
Atlanta was chilly and there had been an incredulous warning on the news that temperatures might drop below freezing during the night. Now, at a few minutes before seven A.M., the thermometer hovered around forty degrees. People on the street bustled toward their destinations in the heaviest clothing they owned and most of the drivers became so uncharacteristically cautious that there were more accidents than usual. Pedestrians rushed into buildings and hesitated when leaving them. As Jeff Taji drove his new black Honda Sturgeon —license plate CAVIAR—into the parking lot, he narrowly avoided colliding with the neon-red Pontiac Sunbird driven by Susannah no-relation-to-the-Vice-President Ling. Earlier in the morning he might have cursed, but now he shook his head and laughed, and waved her on.
“Sorry about that,” Susannah said as she joined him at the elevator. “There was a heavy frost out by my house; I skidded twice backing out of the driveway. Made me twitchy. You’d think I was a kid with a learner’s permit.”
“I know how it is,” said Jeff, whose accent was so faint he was often mistaken for Italian or Greek instead of Persian. He had lived in America for sixteen years and only his aunt called him Jamshid instead of Jeff.
“You know, it’s times like this that I really miss being married. That does not mean that I miss Daryl; I miss having someone around who wants to help me out of sticky situations, and that would not have described Daryl at the best of times.” She entered the elevator ahead of him and pushed buttons for both of them. “How’re you doing these days? The environment keeping you busy?”
“So far. We’re about to have the two-week report collation.” No one in the Environmental Division of the National Center for Disease Control liked the collation.
“It’s a good idea, Jeff,” said Susannah. “I know you agree; it’s realistic and you’re a realist.” She was about his age, from a family that traced its line back to French Huguenots who came to Georgia in the seventeenth century. She was bright, well educated, articulate, ambitious and divorced. “It’s what comes of being a stepchild.”
“A stepchild?” Jeff repeated, not understanding what she meant. “How am I a stepchild?”
“You qua you are not; the Environmental Disease Division is. The whole area of environmental health is somewhere between medicine and witchcraft in the view of the more conservative members of our profession, the ones who still can’t believe that fluorescent lights can cause hyperactivity in some children.” Most of her work was concerned with environmental health hazards in schools and she took her responsibilities very seriously.
Jeff laughed. “Let’s face it, the rest of the Center would be happy if we were on the other side of the country instead of the other side of town from them.” They reached his floor and the doors opened. “Nice to see you.”
“Same here,” said Susannah as the doors closed on her.
Jeff’s office was at the end of the hall, overlooking a small park that was a part of the NCDC Annex. At the far side of the park, squatting at the base of a small grove of half-grown Italian stone pines, was another building, this one as formidable as a World War II bunker, where the laboratory facilities were located. As he usually did in the early morning, Jeff started out by making himself a cup of very strong coffee, which he drank while gazing out at the sky. He had done this for more than twenty years and he insisted that it cleared his mind. This morning the stack of printouts waiting on his desk intruded on his reverie, and finally he reached out and picked up the top file about an outbreak of what appeared to be toxic reactions of some sort in the Pacific Northwest. The information covered several cases, more than he might have expected, and claimed that the symptoms were present in patients in three states. He pursed his lips as he read, noting the high fatality rate and the disproportionate incidence of the disease in teenagers. From what he could surmise, the blood and brain were the most affected by the disease, while the bronchial complications were minimal unless the patient developed pneumonia. “That’s a bit redundant,” Jeff said to the air. “Either blood or brain going would do it.”
There was a noise in the hall and Jeff looked up to see the first arrival of the morning, Dr. Weyman Muggridge, a rangy fellow from South Carolina in his mid-thirties. “Morning,” he called out.
“Morning, Jeff,” Weyman answered, poking his head in the door. “Found anything juicy?” Like the other doctors working in the Environmental Disease Division, Weyman Muggridge was trying to find an area of expertise.
“I found something puzzling,” Jeff said, continuing to read the report from Oregon. “It’s three hours earlier on the West Coast, isn’t it?”
“I think so—if it isn’t three hours later,” said Weyman. He was pulling off his overcoat all anyhow, having trouble freeing its sleeves from the sleeves of his tweed jacket.
“The sun still goes east to west, I believe,” Jeff said, faintly amused.
“If you say so,” Weyman agreed, tossing his overcoat aside as if he had won a battle with it. “Has Drucker got here yet?”
“I haven’t seen him,” said Jeff carefully, not wanting his poor opinion of his colleague at the other end of the hall to be too apparent.
“Then he isn’t here.” Weyman stepped back into his office and pulled the door closed.
Jeff went on reading, half-listening for the arrival of the rest of the staff. What he found especially perplexing about the report from Seattle was the constant reference to unusual levels of Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone and Corticotrophin Releasing Factor. He had not encountered environmental toxins in the past that produced those patterns of abnormalities. There was also an indication that several of the patients who had died from the disease had elevated endogenous triglycerides, as evidenced by the presence of xanthomata tuberosum. Jeff shook his head and stared out the window again, letting the last of his coffee go cold.
A little before nine, most of the staff had arrived and the noise level had gone up. Noise from the street carried up the side of the building and occasionally penetrated the sealed, double-thickness windows, signaling the beginning of the working day. Jeff took his place at his desk and pulled the stack of reports toward him, thumbing through them so that he would not be wholly unprepared for any questions that might arise during collation. That was, he added to himself, assuming he got onto the agenda and was permitted to speak.
Weyman stuck his touseled head in Jeff’s door. “Ten minutes to go. Want some coffee?”
“I think I’ll make another cup for myself,” said Jeff, knowing that Weyman hated the very strong coffee he brewed. “But come in. Sit down. What’s on your mind?”
“The usual. It looks like we’ve got another minor outbreak of good old Tunis Flu in St. Louis. I know it’s supposed to be all gone, thanks to th
e vaccines and drug Smithson and Faber came up with, but there are some questions about what’s causing it, so we’re authorizing the Clinic for Environmental Medicine there to take a hand. Just in case.” He selected the most comfortable chair and dropped into it, raising his crossed legs so that he could rest his heels on the edge of Jeff’s desk.
“Tunis Flu isn’t our concern,” said Jeff as he measured out his coffee. “That’s a standard medical problem, according to the central office.”
“It is our concern if there’s an environmental factor.”
“There’s an environmental factor to every disease, if you ask me. A body is an environment.” He said this without force because he had said it so many times before.
“You know what the definitions are,” Weyman reminded him. “Say,” he went on, changing the subject a bit, “did you hear that Sally Martin’s dad died?”
“No; when?” He started his coffee machine and came back to look directly at Weyman. “He’s in Dallas, isn’t he?”
“That’s right, just retired from teaching, I forget where. Sally flew out last night.” He cocked his head to the side. “I wonder if good old Drucker will make a motion to send flowers to the funeral? He did when Baxter’s mother died. Of course, she had Great Lakes Dysentery, so that might make a difference. I haven’t heard what Sally’s dad died of.” He sniffed the air lavishly. “Too bad coffee never tastes the way it smells. I tell you, if I had a machine like that, I’d just brew the stuff and inhale all day.”
“Keep your door open,” suggested Jeff as he came back to his desk with a little cup and saucer in his hand. “Have you come across anything you want to bring up this afternoon? We both have to tell Claire for the agenda, in”—he consulted his watch—“six minutes.”
“Stupid way to run things,” groused Weyman. “It only mucks up the works. It’s like making an appointment to make an appointment.”
“The trouble with you, Weyman, is that you are not a bureaucrat,” Jeff said.
“Neither are you,” Weyman said with a grin.
“True.” He took a sip of his coffee, then set it aside.
“So tell me, how do all those reports look? I didn’t have as many as you do this time, but so far nothing grabs me.” He motioned toward the printouts. “The joy of being the head of this section.”
“I’d just as soon have nothing to do because there were no more toxic dumps or hazardous wastes or dangerous chemicals in the work place or any of the rest of it,” said Jeff slowly. “It’s appalling how many risks a person runs in this world.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Weyman.
“That assumes we know a risk when we see one, that we can recognize a legitimate environmental disease when it happens.” He reached out and put his hand on the stack of reports. “In this.”
“But is there something you think might deserve our attention?”
He answered with care. “Possibly. Something on the West Coast.”
“Like AIDS, or all the other loony things that come from there? What was that stuff called that you found before I got here? What did they call it?”
“Silicon Measles,” said Jeff with distaste. “It wasn’t measles and it wasn’t caused by silicon, but electronic workers were its main victims and it did cause a severe rash, high fever and a certain percentage of optic damage.” He shook his head. “And Drucker has never forgotten that he overlooked it.”
“Well, it does show something about his judgment,” said Weym.an with a broad wink.
“One could look at it that way,” said Jeff.
“One does,” Weyman told him. “All right, you put your find on the agenda and I will take one last futile look through my stack.” He lowered his feet and stood up. “I’ll wish you luck and you can take it any way you wish.”
“Thanks,” said Jeff, and picked up the report from Oregon. “And excuse me while I go try to find a slot in the schedule.” He convinced the secretary to place the Oregon file on the agenda by threatening to call Portland and requesting a full, formal application for investigation. This worked better than Jeff had hoped, and he hurried back to his office, determined to look through the other files before outlining his position for the collation.
He was on the eighth report, this one from Southern California, when he recognized the same pattern he had noticed in the Portland file, the same abnormal readings in ACTH and CRF that were present in the patients who had died. He sat back, reading the figures with care. The woman who authorized the report was a Sylvia Kostermeyer working out of the San Diego Office of the California State Department of Public Health and Environmental Services, and her list of cases included ones from the Mexican border to the northern flank of Los Angeles. Jeff laid the two reports side by side and began to read, his brow darkening.
When the collation meeting began, Jeff was annoyed to learn he had been put fifth on the list. It was Drucker’s way of minimizing the time Jeff would have to speak. So while the possibility of toxic chemicals in wrapping papers was debated, Jeff excused himself long enough to arrange for copies of the Portland and San Diego files to be made and full sets of printouts to be ready in the next hour. Then he returned to the conference room and waited for his chance.
“I see you have something you want to bring to our attention, Doctor Taji,” Drucker said shortly after four-thirty. “Considering the hour, do you think it might be better to postpone your presentation?”
“No,” said Jeff baldly. “And in the interests of brevity, I have already arranged for each of you to be given copies of the two reports that have caught my attention,” he said, getting up and signaling one of the two secretaries in the room to get the printouts.
“Why did you authorize making these copies before we had a chance to discuss the cases?” Drucker demanded, his jaw muscles standing out.
“Because I know how little time we have, and in this instance, I fear that we have no time to spare.” He smiled as the printouts were distributed. “As you see,” he went on, not allowing Drucker to shift the subject, “the reports come from two different parts of the West Coast. Apparently the two physicians in question— Doctor Kostermeyer and a Doctor Klausen—are unaware of what each is doing, which gives me more grounds for worry than if they had been in contact.” He paused as the fourteen other men and women in the room shuffled and rustled the pages. “The age curves are very similar, the course of the disease from first reported symptoms to death follow a very similar course, the ACTH and CRF readings are abnormal in the same way. Whatever is wrong, it is wrong in more than one part of the country.”
“Either that, or the disease spread quickly,” pointed out the oldest person in the room.
“I might agree, but reports of the disease are recorded at roughly the same time. This does not rule out Ii rapid spread, but since we do not know if this is the result of toxicity, and we have no idea if there is an incubation period and if so, how long, we cannot rule out the possibility that there is more than one infection area.” He held up the Portland data. “Doctor Klausen has cases not only from Oregon, but from Washington and Idaho. He suggests that there may be some leakage from military storage or illegal stockpiles that are involved here. His report has asked us to find out from the Pentagon if there are any more cannisters like the ones that killed the sheep in Idaho. I haven’t had a chance to look up the specifics, but I think that at the least we ought to attempt to get that information for them.”
“There may be illegal dumping by foreign powers in the Pacific,” said Drucker.
“And the influence is felt as far away as Idaho?” Weyman protested. “Hell, Pat, if that were the case, we’d have reports from San Francisco and Honolulu. Probably even from Canada, or Alaska. The Pacific’s a big dumping ground. And there are no reports,” he added as an afterthought, “of dying whales spotted off the West Coast. Let’s keep it sim
ple if we can.”
“Even if it is something in the ocean,” Jeff said, doing his best to be as reasonable as he could, “that comes under our purview. We have an obligation to check it out.”
There were several nods of assent around the table; Drucker’s face hardened still more.
“How long have the cases been showing up?” asked Amy Wilde, who specialized in agricultural chemicals and health hazards.
“Apparently since last November,” said Jeff. “If there were others, we can’t find anything specific about them. And so far as I know, there has been no victim under the age of fourteen nor over the age of sixty-eight, for whatever good that information may do us.” He looked around the room. “And it may indicate that we have a disease of long incubation, something that is cumulative and required prolonged exposure in order to become active. In which case, we could have a very serious problem on our hands.”
There were more nods now, and Robert diCerni pulled his calculator out of his breast pocket and set to work with it. “I don’t suppose we have any idea about the total number of cases that have occurred since November? No, I thought not. Still, assuming that we have a cumulative disease that requires prolonged exposure to become active, there could be several thousand people running around the West Coast who stand to develop the disease in the next year.” He punched a few more keys. “That’s a conservative estimate, and it assumes we have all the pertinent information about every case diagnosed so far. And that isn’t very likely, even if it is the result of toxic wastes.”
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