Dragon Virus

by Gilman, Laura Anne

No answer, and he shrugs. Never very lively down here anyway, but he knows what to do without some tight-assed tech three months on the job ordering him around.

  The gurney rattles to a stop, and he pushes the brake into place, locking it into position in the middle of the room.

  The far wall is more sterile steel, rows of blank doors with latch handles. The other three walls are filled with the latest tech, arcane and expensive ways to categorize, decipher, and catalog death in all its manifestations.

  “Up you go, darling, gently, gently.” His gloved hands are delicate with the damaged flesh, lifting it off the flat surface as though motion might wake the infant, cradling the tiny head in the palm of one hand.

  You were supposed to use gear to move bodies down here, not be hands-on. Too many scares these days to touch anything you didn’t have to, not with the origin of the Lóng mutation still unknown, the cause and vectors equally mysterious. Like the old AIDS scare, only you didn’t have sexual righteousness to hide behind, not when the sins were visited upon innocent children, not caring who their dams or sires were. Righteous and damned alike felt the Dragon’s tail lashing them, these days, even the Church said so.

  Little bodies, twisted and alone. The Union and the hospital regs could be damned.

  He was an old man, not about to drop his seed into some fertile womb. There wasn’t any risk here, not any more, and it was the one last, only thing he could do, to apologize for their harsh treatment, hello and goodbye.

  “It’s not such a bad world.” He places her on the table, face-up, limbs arranged by her side like she might have slept, warm in a bassinet, or swaddled in an incubator, waiting for momma’s touch. “A little screwed up right now, maybe, a lot noisy what with everyone yelling, and maybe people aren’t what they might be, but not bad, overall. Don’t judge from what little you saw.”

  Little enough, womb to stainless white womb, stainless and plastic now where loving arms should have surrounded it. No way to tour the world, in and out.

  He looks down, witnessing, in his own way, a life that never happened.

  Translucent-pale skin so delicate even silk is too heavy a blanket. So pale, veins shimmered green, the bruises almost three-dimensional. Pale brown fuzz covers the scalp, a matching thin line over closed eyes and snub of a nose, mouth barely a pink button. The neck is too long, two dark blotches at the collarbone. Forceps, he identifies the marks after a moment. No surprise —the only surprise that it hadn’t been a C-section.

  “Didn’t want the scars to remind them,” he guesses, although it is an unfair assumption. Not every parent is so cold. Not every parent escapes without tears and doubts.

  He would have buried his daughter. He would have done that little, at least. He hopes he would have, anyway.

  He fusses a little with the hands, so impossibly tiny, doll-fingers curled into doll-palms, but no doll ever had texture that felt like this. Cool and unmistakable, the touch of dead skin even through latex. The normal position is palms up, elbows in. Impossible for this wee one, the way the virus bent the bones and muscle, and not his concern, but he fusses nonetheless, arranging and rearranging until all four limbs lay palms-up, asking for something only God could give, now.

  Explanations, maybe, or a second chance. A better world.

  For all his long discussions with that mysterious figure, he long ago gave up on God.

  Not to disbelieve; simply neither to ask nor to wait for a response. God had done His job in the Creation; now it was their turn.

  “And a fair mess of it we’re making.” Let the Bible-thumpers and Jesusfreaks scream about Wrath and Judgment, let the scientists mutter about climate changes and environmental poisons. He didn’t know enough to say anything either way. Facts were facts, things were changing. Only a fool sits and whines when the flood’s at his door.

  “All right then, wee one. This is where I leave you. Don’t be scared, if you’re still hanging around. Flesh is only flesh and you didn’t have much of it for very long anyway.”

  News calls ’em dragons, news and newsies and the media at large, after the thing that kills them. Bible-thumpers, though, they call ’em devils, these poor misbegotten infants.

  Sin-spawn, Lucifer’s get. The only dragon those folk know is the one Saint George whacked. No wonder God-fearing parents want nothing to do with them, not even to bury them. But it feels wrong, to him, to leave her here, alone.

  “I suppose I could sit with you for a bit.” There are chores waiting on him, other bodies to be wheeled about, living people in need. Things he could do, upstairs, among the noise and stench of the world.

  Instead, he leans against the gurney, and considers the small body. “They offered me a lot of money for you,” he tells it. “Oh, not you specifically, but one like you. The ghouls. The ones who like to shock, and the ones who like to poke and prod. If you hadn’t been handed off to us so fast, they’d probably have gone after your...” He stops. “Parents” doesn’t seem like the right word to use. “They offer a lot of money. I’m always afraid someday they’ll catch me at a weak moment, when one of you is down here, unwanted, unclaimed, and I’ll think ‘who will it hurt?’ And those are the days, wee one, I hate this world, and everything in it.”

  “Everything?”

  He jumps, heart thudding into his throat even as he turns to see a lab-coated tech come in through the sterile doors. The newcomer is slender, dark-skinned, with a shaved head and bright eyes. Young, healthy, and as arrogant as all his kind: wearing the dark red scrubs and booties of the so-called dead brigade, the morgue technicians.

  “Talking to yourself, old man?” he asks now, mocking.

  “Me and the wee one were having a philosophical discussion,” he replies, stung; even if it is true, he is old. Ancient, by this cub’s standards. “Nothing you’d understand.”

  The lab tech moves forward, economical motion, rubber-soled booties quiet on the floor. “A dragon spawn. Interesting. Haven’t had one of those down here in a while, but I’ve been reading about them.” He picks up an instrument from the side table, uses it to poke at the soft flesh. The old man starts to protest, then subsides. It wasn’t as though it would do any good.

  This is what the wee one is down here for, after all.

  “Quad-limbed, doesn’t look like any of them would have been functional. Pity. Can you imagine how useful having subset arms could be?”

  He finds the tech’s enthusiasm offensive, somehow.

  “Wee one probably would have traded them for lungs that worked.”

  “Ah. Yeah.” Give the tech credit, he looks abashed for about three seconds. “Still, the mutation is fascinating. Have you noticed that all of the changes are evolutionarily sound? Even the false starts and dead ends are potentially not only viable, but progressive.”

  The old man is curious. “So you don’t think this is God’s punishment upon us sinners, do you?”

  This is a Catholic hospital; for twenty years the Papal Line has been that the deformed children were born without souls; that was why the flesh was so abused. God’s Will, to mark the fouled, the unclean. Better than a triple 6 on the forehead, for ease of discovery. The tech could have been fired, or worse, for what the old man thought he was saying.

  “God created science,” the tech sidesteps the question. “He gave me a brain and the ability to observe, and to do anything less would be to disrespect his gifts.”

  Also Papal Line, if from an older, long-gone pope. These days, science and religion were uneasy bedmates, and oft as not religion was prone to cry rape.

  The tech was still poking at the limbs, disturbing all the work the old man had done to arrange them. “Lungs, huh? Like all the work went into reforming the outside, and it forgot about the inside.”

  ‘It?” The Lóng sequence, of course. The Chinese researchers had named it, but the Wheelers, a messianic sect popular when he was a kid, had given it a personality: the Dragon, tearing apart humanity one strand at a time. History now, and he had no
interest in history.

  “Everyone wants to be the one to find the cure,” the tech says, running his mouth while he prods the unresponsive flesh. “Me, I just want to find the pattern. There are so many variables in the mutating lines, it seems almost random, but there’s nothing random in biology, not really. It all follows a pattern, if we can only just see it.”

  The old man suspects that the tech is talking to himself; forgetting there was another living soul in the morgue with him. It happens to them all.

  “The ones I’ve seen, I’ve been wondering if there is a correlation between the external changes and the internal failures.” The tech has definitely forgotten he has an audience.

  “If there is, then there should be some way to monitor them, perhaps correct for the failures before they become fatal...”

  He draws the sheet all the way down off the tiny body and studies it clinically.

  “Shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, if I start right away.”

  “Right then,” the old man says. It is one thing to keep the wee one company a while.

  The old man wasn’t so keen on staying around to watch the dissection. There are other bodies to move, gurneys to repair, floors to mop. “I’ll just be gone, then.”

  “What? Oh, yes, of course, goodbye.” The tech goes to the far wall and presses a button that starts the recording system, lifting the dark red breath mask over his face and holding it there it until it clicks, indicating that his lungs are protected against anything that might float, or spew, or otherwise spray into the air during the examination.

  Without such protections, the old man reclaims the gurney, and exits out the way he came in, the stainless steel doors swinging shut behind him.

  The tech seems oblivious, adjusting the cameras so that they cover every inch of the operating area, but the moment the doors still, so does he.

  “Idiot,” he says, his voice muffled. “No, worse, self-righteous.” He has no such expectations of himself; he is no better than the rest of his class, overly fascinated with what he cannot control, ever desiring to be better than God, and so damned for his presumption. Once damned, he has determined, there is an amazing amount of freedom in what you may or may not do.

  He reaches up and puts the camera on pause, then removes his mask. “You can come in now.”

  A door slides open, narrow enough for only one person to walk through at a time.

  Behind the figure, ruddy sunlight streaks through, glinting off the steel and reflecting back into the tech’s eyes. He squints, and in that time the door closes again, the glimpse of outside gone.

  “Rain stopped?”

  The figure stops: shaven head, smooth features, a mix of genetics that could come from anywhere, or nowhere. “For the moment.” Unlike most visitors, the newcomer is not wearing rain gear or the usual breath mask, but is draped instead in a simple robe, the dark yellow of the fabric clashing with the steel and red of the morgue. And yet, he does not seem out of place.

  “You have to hurry. I can only pause the tape so long without it being noted.”

  Even as the tech says the words, he knows that they are useless. This will not be hurried.

  It takes as long as it takes, and the risk is one he knew when he agreed to it.

  “You won’t... harm it?” He isn’t sure why he cares, why he even asks, except that damages will injure his findings.

  “The body will remain as it was when it came in,” the figure assures him, and he got the sense that it laughed at him, although the words were even and unemotional. “We have no interest in what is left behind.”

  “Yeah, right, whatever. Get on with it.”

  He turns away, intentionally blocking out whatever the saffron-cloaked figure intends to do. Plausible deniability. Instead, he thinks of the money deposited — not to his account, but the one not in his name, the one set up to fund an on-going research program. The one he has been promised access to, as a fellow, if they reach a certain goal.

  A goal this act will make possible.

  Dragons were not meant for this world, he thinks. That does not mean they can’t be useful. And some day, they will understand what the mutations are, where they came from, and how to stop them — and how to make use of that knowledge in ways that can only benefit humanity. That is the dream he chases.

  There is a scent of something pungent but not unpleasant, out of place in this sterile environment, and he feels the first flutter of panic. He has never done this before, only has the words of others that it will be simple. “Are you —”

  A gentle clash, like soft wood hitting metal, a ringing of chimes, and the panic subsides. He has been promised there will be no trace left behind, no damage done to his research subject. All will be well. He does not question that certainty.

  He wasn’t sure, but the figure moving behind him was not one of those who approached him; the voice was different, the shoulders less rounded and hunched. There had been two of them, robed and solemn, a mobile oasis in the middle of a particularly hectic day in the middle of shift. Normally he would have shoved them off, maybe even called the cop patrolling down that corridor, but something in their eyes made him stop and listen.

  The dragons weren’t protected, particularly. There was a law against selling bodies, same as there was for any corpse. You had to keep track of those. And selling pictures, or the right to take pictures, could get you censured for tackiness, if nothing else, and the hospital hated bad press. But there was no law against letting someone in to say a few prayers and wave some juju over the body.

  The Church won’t be much pleased about his letting the monk in, and he knows that they will find out, no matter how he tries to hide the visit. Other techs have been discovered, turned out of their jobs, before these monks approached him in turn, but the tech had told the old man true; his only concern was finding the cause, finding a reason.

  He was not going to buck the Church, not when it was the only ride in town toward his cause, no. If they say that the body on his table has no soul to be damned or saved, then it has no soul. But if someone is willing to pay to make sure that a non-existent soul didn’t wander lost for all eternity, or whatever these monks were doing... Discovery of any kind, but especially scientific, requires risk and a certain level of brutal practicality True Believers lack. The Church may not approve, but once he has his research, and his funding, he will be beyond the Church’s reach. He hopes.

  As with any pathogen, there are risks. The Church might decide to eradicate him as well. He does not underestimate the virulence of Faith, especially coupled with fear.

  The monk finishes whatever he is doing, and the smell of incense fades away, as though the tech had merely imagined it.

  “The forty-nine days of bardo lead us to the final truth,” the monk says. “Even one such as she, brief flame of life, must find the first stage, and choose. The clear white light will receive her, and the self may find release from this suffering to enter Nirvana. Or if it is to be so, she will find her way back into the world, and complete her cycle. ‘One in all things: all things in one. If only this is realized, no more worry about the illusion of not being perfect!’”

  The monk sounds wistful, almost envious of the dead dragon. The tech merely waits, his arms crossed over his chest, trying to remain as impassive as the robed man. He doesn’t care. He can’t afford to care.

  The monk seems less than impressed by his lack of interest, making the tech wonder why he bothered to say anything at all. The thought touches him that perhaps the announcement was not meant for his ears, and a shiver shimmies along his spine before he is able to dismiss it.

  Religion has no place in his life, not the Church and not some fringe Asian mystic. Let them argue with each other; he has work to do. What’s important is the here and now, the quality of life, not a mystical maybe.

  A twist of the robe, and the monk’s arms are covered, the chimes that appeared out of seeming nowhere back to nowhere again. He holds up his hands, palm
s together, in a graceful motion, like saints praying, and bends his head toward the corpse, and then once again toward the tech before he leaves through the same side door he entered through.

  The tech ignores the closing door, already reaching up to restart the recording and re-pressurizing his mask. A console drops down, and he touches the controls with ease of familiarity, bringing the table up and a multi-pronged metallic arm down until they meet with the delicate whir of motor and saw.

  “Subject is female dragon, approximately three hours old at time of death.” He checks his notes to confirm that, then continues. “Cause of death is suffocation, most likely during the birthing process. Dissection began at 3:25 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 3rd.” He clicks the sound off, watching the machine work for a moment, and then leaves the room to let it delve for him, its internal circuits recording what is found in more precise and minute detail than any human eye. Once it has recorded everything, then the human mind can extrapolate the cause —and the cure.

  o0o

  As the metal whirrs, readying to cut into flesh and bone, the sound is overlaid for half an instant by the echo of metal chimes, the swinging of a distant wooden door, and the rustle of leathery wings, spread for the first time for flight.

  This is no world for dragons, fierce angels seem to whisper. Yet.

  o0o

  And the machine makes its first cut into flesh.

  o0o

  LegalWire Update —June 7th 2042 10:12 a.m.

  The “Clean Gene” movement was dealt a blow today when Iowa courts ruled that the so-called “Dragon children,” born with the genetic mutation Lóng , were covered under the Genetic Discrimination Protection Act of 2013. Members of the movement have petitioned the courts to restrict Dragons from claiming minority status, since they do not meet the standard expectations of a community as specified in the Act, considering the diversity of mutations and the range of social and economic settings the children are born into. Spokespeople for both groups expect the decision to head all the way to the Federal level.

  [click here to see the full ruling]