by John Saul
Too busy to question the motives of the manufacturers, too busy to question the results of their own testing programs, too busy, even, to demand the documentation behind the products.
Instead, he had simply accepted the products and used them to treat the symptoms for which they had been created, grateful that the pharmaceutical companies kept developing new products to help his patients.
Except that this time the product had not helped.
This time the product had done something else, and the children were dying.
But not all of them. No, not all of them. Some of them lived.
Lived as what?
What were they, these altered beings that seemed so normal? Were they really the healthy little boys they seemed to be? Or were they something else, created for some specific purpose?
What could the purpose be?
Arthur Wiseman thought about it, and the puzzle was not too difficult for him to figure out.
Children who healed at an unnaturally rapid rate. On the way back to the hospital Malone had mentioned the Defense Department.
Perfect little soldiers, that’s what they were.
Children who could grow up to fight battles, and not be killed.
War, suddenly, could be waged at no cost. Send in the killers who can’t be killed.
Who would argue that war was wrong if only the other side died?
Arthur Wiseman, alone in his office, looked into the future and saw the new man, bred for a single purpose. To kill. But there would be others.
He could envision entire classes of people, each of them bred to serve a specific need, to perform a specific function which regular people could not, or would not, perform.
Regular people.
And that, Wiseman knew, was the attitude that soon would prevail Society, barely learning to function without racial segregation, would turn to genetic segregation. Each person would be assigned to his station in life according to his genetic structure, with the “regular people” at the top. But for how long?
Not long. A few generations, perhaps, before the mutants, human in all respects except for a tiny genetic change that gave them special abilities, rebelled. And then what?
Arthur Wiseman neither wanted to know, nor wanted to be a part of, whatever the future might hold. And yet he was already a part of it.
Nothing more than a pawn, perhaps, but it was enough. Never again would he be able to face a patient, let alone try to administer to a patient’s needs.
For Arthur Wiseman, his career, and his life, had just come to an end.
He went into his examining room, unlocked his drug cabinet, and removed a bottle. Then, taking the bottle and a hypodermic syringe, he returned to his office.
For a few minutes he worked with the computer, deleting all references to BCG from his records. His reputation, at least, would remain intact.
Moments later, he was dead.
Randy Corliss opened his eyes. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, but then, seeing the branches above his head, he began to remember.
He’d been in the back of Sergeant Bronski’s car, with his mother. And then something had happened. Sergeant Bronski had started yelling, and the car had skidded, and then—and then—
He sat bolt upright and looked around. Through the trees he could see the smoldering wreckage. All around it there were people.
People, and ambulances, and a fire truck, and—
He got to his feet and stared down at his body. His skin was all reddish, and he wasn’t wearing any clothes. And his head felt cold.
Curiously, he touched his head.
Where there should have been hair, he felt only bare skin.
Fire.
There had been a fire. But where were his parents?
He began stumbling out of the woods. “Mommy? Mommy, where are you? Daddy?” Suddenly, he stopped, as the memory of what had happened flooded back to him. Now he was screaming and running toward the blackened car. “Mommy! Daddy!”
The crowd gathered around the wreck turned to stare at the strange apparition that had appeared out of the woods.
“Where the hell did he come from?” one of the medics muttered. Grabbing a blanket, he moved toward the naked child, then tried to wrap the blanket around him. Randy struggled against him.
“Mommy!” he screamed again. “Where’s my mommy?”
“Easy, son, take it easy,” the medic told him. “Where’d you come from?”
But Randy was beyond hearing. Thrashing in the confines of the blanket, he could only keep shouting for his parents, tears streaming down his face. Finally, exhausted, he fell to the ground, where he lay sobbing helplessly.
“Get him into the truck,” a second medic said. “He must have been in the car with them. Let’s get him to a hospital. Fast.”
They carried Randy to one of the ambulances. A moment later, its siren wailing, the vehicle began racing toward Eastbury Community Hospital. The medic carefully unwrapped the blanket and stared at Randy’s skin.
“I don’t get it,” he said to his partner. “Look at him. His clothes are gone, and his hair is gone. He must have been right in the middle of that fire. He should be dead, just like the others.”
And yet, as they examined Randy, neither of the medics could find anything more than what appeared to be a few first-degree burns on what was otherwise baby-smooth skin.
Mark Malone stared somberly across his desk, trying to read Sally Montgomery’s eyes.
She had sat silently next to her husband while Malone recited what had happened in Wiseman’s office. Twice she had been about to interrupt him, but both times Steve had gently squeezed her hand. Now she was sitting still, her eyes thoughtful. Slowly, she rose from the sofa. “I’m going to see him,” she said, her voice coldly furious. “I want to hear it all from him.”
“I’m not sure hell see you,” Malone said softly. “When I left him, he said he was all through as a doctor—”
“All through as a doctor?” Sally exploded. “He’s a killer, Mark. He killed Julie. Whether he knew what he was doing or not—and if you ask me, he knew exactly what he was doing—he killed her. And God knows how many others. That’s why he wanted to commit me—I was finding out too much.” She started toward the office door just as the phone rang.
Malone picked up the receiver and listened for a moment When he hung up, his hands were trembling. “It’s too late, Sally,” he said softly. “That was Arthur’s nurse. She just found him in his office. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Sally repeated. “He’s dead?”
“There was a hypodermic on his desk. Apparently he killed himself.”
Her fury suddenly deserting her, Sally sank back onto the sofa. “Oh, God,” she mumbled. “What next?”
As if in direct response to her question, the phone rang once more. This time, as he listened, Malone closed his eyes and nodded, almost as if he’d been expecting more bad news. When he hung up, he seemed unable to speak.
“What is it?” Steve asked. “Mark, has something else happened?”
Malone nodded. “There—there was an accident Anyway, they think it was an accident.”
Sally lifted her head and her eyes widened. “Where—who—?”
“Carl Bronski,” Malone whispered. “He’s dead. And Lucy and Jim Corliss too.”
“No!” Sally screamed. She was on her feet again. Her eyes wild, she staggered toward Malone. “No! It’s a lie—they can’t be dead. They can’t be.” Suddenly her legs buckled beneath her, and she fell, sobbing, to the floor.
Malone rose from his desk and came around to help Steve move her back onto the sofa. “I’ll give her a sedative,” he said. He went to his drug locker, and a moment later Sally’s eyes closed, and her breathing evened out. Only then did the doctor speak again.
“Randy’s alive,” he said. “They’re bringing him here now.”
“But what happened?” Steve asked.
“I told you—they don’t know. The car went
off the road and exploded. If they know why, they didn’t tell me.”
Steve’s mind was reeling. He looked from his sedated wife to the doctor, then bade to Sally. “What—oh, Christ, Mark, what the hell’s happening?”
“I don’t know, Steve,” Mark Malone said quietly. “All I know is that right now we have to deal with one thing at a time. Let’s get Sally into a bed, and then I’d better get to the emergency room. I want to be there when they bring Randy Corliss in.”
Paul Randolph nervously paced his office, wishing he still smoked. But smoking was no longer part of the proper image for anyone even remotely connected with medicine, so no matter how badly he wanted a cigarette, he would not light one. He glanced at the other two men in his office and wondered how they could sit so calmly, as if nothing were happening.
They had been waiting all morning now, and still they had heard nothing from Carmody’s team, nothing past that first phone call, when they’d found out who had gathered at Lucy Corliss’s house.
Damn the woman. Damn her and her friend Mrs. Montgomery both. And that fool, Dr. Malone. How on earth had they gotten him involved in their snooping? And what had they found? Damn them all!
“It isn’t really so bad, you know,” George Hamlin said softly, breaking the silence that had hung over the room for the last half hour. “We deliberately formulated a base that would be used only on women who didn’t want children in the first place. It’s not as if our failures were children somebody wanted. Just the opposite is true. These women specifically did not want children! Frankly, I can’t see how we’ve damaged them.”
“Apparently, they don’t see it that way,” Paul Randolph replied, his voice oozing as much sarcasm as he was able to muster. “Apparently, they’re under the impression that we’ve murdered and kidnaped their children. And, damn it, we have done just that, haven’t we?”
Lieutenant General Scott Carmody shifted his weight uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to waiting, and sitting for any length of time made him stiff. “There’s always a price,” he said. “The army needs these boys, Randolph, and the sooner this project comes together, the better off this country will be.”
“No matter what the cost?”
Carmody’s voice grew hard. “We’ve lost men in every program we’ve ever started. Sacrifice is part of the price of progress, and we all know it.”
Randolph groaned. “Please,” he said. “Spare me the old saw about eggs and omelettes. We’re talking about children here.”
“That has yet to be determined,” Hamlin interrupted. He rose, and, stretching, ambled over to the window where, with his arms clasped behind his back, he gazed out at Logan Airport With the same pleasure he had taken from the sight since he was a boy, he watched a plane hurtle down the runway, then soar into the sky. “I wonder if my boys enjoy that?” he mused more to himself than to the others.
“Pardon?” Randolph asked, but before Hamlin could repeat his question, the phone on Randolph’s desk jangled to life. Randolph picked it up, then handed it to Carmody, who listened for a few moments, issued some instructions, then hung up. He turned to face the others, the tension of the long night and morning suddenly gone.
“I think we’ve got it contained,” he said. “Lucy and James Corliss are dead, along with Bronski. And Wiseman is dead too.”
“Wiseman?” Randolph asked. “What happened?”
“Killed himself.”
“What about Randy Corliss?” Hamlin demanded. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Carmody replied. “He’s not dead. He survived the explosion, and the fire, and got out of the wreckage. He’s at Eastbury Community Hospital.”
Randolph turned white. “Then how can you say it’s contained? If that boy talks—”
But George Hamlin had already grasped the point “It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s he going to talk about? We’ve washed the computers, and by tonight the Academy will be gone too. There’s no evidence of anything anymore.”
“Except that Randy Corliss knows the names of everyone on the project.”
Carmody shrugged. “Not one of whom will ever be traceable. If you were to go searching for them right now, Randolph, you would have trouble proving that anyone connected with the God Project ever lived. Up to, and including, Dr. Hamlin here. Computers not only allow us to keep track of people, Randolph. They also allow us to bury them.”
Randolph sank into his chair. “Then it’s over?”
“No,” Hamlin replied. “There are still the Montgomery to contend with. And that, Paul, is going to be your job.”
As he listened to George Hamlin outline what he had in mind, Paul Randolph once again wished he had a cigarette.
An hour later, though, as he drove to Eastbury and thought over Hamlin’s plan, it began to make sense to him.
Perhaps it was going to work out after all.
And if it didn’t?
Paul Randolph didn’t even want to think about that possibility.
Chapter 31
SALLY MONTGOMERY OPENED HER EYES, and the first thing she saw was the ceiling. Acoustical plaster, the kind she had always hated. And the color—that awful shade of pale green that was supposed to be restful but was faintly nauseating. So she was in a hospital bed. She had a moment of panic and struggled to sit up. Then she heard Steve’s voice.
“It’s all right, honey,” he was saying. “There’s nothing wrong. You just—well, you sort of came apart a couple of hours ago, so Mark gave you something to put you to sleep for a while.”
Sally sank back onto the pillow and gazed silently at her husband for a few moments. Was it a trick? Was it really Mark who had given her the shot, or Wiseman?
Wiseman.
Wiseman was dead. Wiseman, and … and the Corlisses, and Carl Bronski. Tears welled up in her eyes and brimmed over. Steve reached out and gently brushed them away.
“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” she asked, her voice hollow.
“All except Randy,” Steve replied.
“What happened?”
“Not now,” Steve protested. “Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“No. I want to know what happened, Steve. I have to know.”
“It was an accident. Apparently Bronski lost control of the car—a blowout, maybe. Anyway,: it skidded off the road, turned over, and the gas tank ruptured.”
“Oh, God,” Sally groaned. “It must have been horrible.” Her eyes met Steve’s. “They … burned?”
Steve nodded. “Jim and Lucy did. Carl was thrown out of the car. It rolled on him.”
“And Randy?”
“He got out. Somehow, he got out. His clothes burned completely off him, and all his hair …”
Sally closed her eyes, as if by the action she could erase the image that had come into her mind. “But how could he have survived? The burns—”
“He did survive. And he’s all right, Sally. It’s like what happened with Jason.”
The door opened and Mark Malone appeared. He closed the door behind him, then stepped to the foot of Sally’s bed, glanced at her chart, and forced a smile. “I wish I could say you looked better than you do.”
“Steve just told me about … about …” Her voice faded away as her tears once again began to flow. She groped around her bedside table and found a Kleenex. Wiping away the tears, she pushed herself a little higher up in the bed, then forced herself to meet Malone’s eyes. “What does it mean, Mark? What’s going on?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Malone replied. He hesitated, then spoke again. “You have a visitor. But you don’t have to see him.”
“A visitor? Who?”
“Paul Randolph.”
Sally’s eyes widened. “From CHILD? He’s here? But—but how? Why?”
“He telephoned about an hour ago. He wanted to know if we’d done something to our computer programs.”
Sally felt her heart skip a beat. “The programs?”
Malone nodded. “That’s what he said. His story was that
their computer tried to do a routine scan of the updates of our records and couldn’t.”
Steve frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means all the codes are gone,” Malone said. “It means that all our evidence has disappeared.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Sally said. “We’ve got the printouts—” Malone’s shaking head stopped the flow of her words.
“They’re gone, Sally. Before Arthur killed himself he destroyed everything. He altered records in the computer and burned all your printouts. It’s all gone, Sally. Everything.”
As the full meaning of his words sank in, Sally felt suddenly tired. Tired, and beaten. It was over. The information was gone, all of it. But where? And even as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer. “They did it themselves, didn’t they?” she asked. “The people at CHILD dumped the whole thing out of the computer.”
“Undoubtedly,” Malone agreed. “Although Randolph denies it. That’s why he came out here. I told him what’s been happening out here, and he wants to hear the whole story from you. He says he also wants to tell you what they know about Group Twenty-one. Except they call it the GT-active group.”
“What does that mean?” Steve asked.
“It refers to something called introns,” Malone said. “I think Randolph can explain it better than I can, but if you don’t want to talk to him,” he added, turning his attention back to Sally, “you don’t have to.”
Sally’s eyes grew cold. “I want to,” she said. “I want to know what they’ve been doing to the children, and I want to know why.”
Malone hesitated, then turned to Steve as if for confirmation. Steve nodded.
“If Sally wants to see him, bring him in. But don’t leave us alone with him.”
“I won’t,” Malone promised grimly. “I want to hear this as much as you do” He left the room, and a moment later returned, followed by Paul Randolph, who immediately moved to the side of the bed and took Sally’s hand in his own.
“Mrs. Montgomery,” he said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what’s happened. I’m Paul—”
