Mutant

by Peter Clement

  Morgan immediately launched into a desperate attempt at damage control. “If Dr. Sullivan hadn’t been so determined to give us such a grandstand performance with her preformed point of view, she might have learned just what safeguards a state-of-the-art facility such as this can and does offer to redress groundless fears. . . .”

  But all the time he thought, I’ll kill her. I’ll fucking kill her!

  Outside in the corridor, Kathleen Sullivan exhaled long and hard as she scurried toward the front door. She winced with embarrassment at how she’d played to the press and staged her exit. What a prima donna performance, she thought, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, but it had been necessary. Throwing Morgan on the defensive and keeping him off guard long enough so that she could leave on her own had been crucial to her plan.

  Striding up to the guards at the main door, she hoped they weren’t expecting anyone to finish the visit so early. Briskly signing off her name from the visitors list and walking out, she clearly took them by surprise—they never even thought to escort her to the front gate. This she’d also counted on.

  The grounds outside were spacious, covered with landscaped lawns, massive evergreen shrubs, and occasional tall pines. A flagstone walk wound its way through these various living ornaments and gave the place the overall effect of a well-tended park, inviting one of the reporters to comment as they’d been going in, “Biotechnology corporations always spend a fortune on looking green.” Her own eyes had been peeled for a spot where she could step into the bushes undetected under the cover of darkness.

  She found the place and made her move. In seconds she lay facedown in the dirt deep within the branches of an eight-foot-high, twenty-foot-wide sprawl of ornamental spruce.

  She stayed motionless, wanting to make sure there were no approaching footsteps from the guards at the front gate who might have seen her duck out of sight. As she waited, her excitement mounted at finally being in a position to obtain solid evidence to back up her assertions that naked DNA vectors were dangerous.

  Because as sensational as she’d made it all sound, she’d given the press nothing about current practices in genetically modifying organisms they couldn’t already find on the Internet, if they knew where to look and could decipher scientific papers. And while her evidence suggested possible ways the vectors could do environmental harm or be hazardous to human health, Morgan had been right about one thing—his insistence that no one had yet implicated them with direct proof. She knew all too well that for people like the Mr. Bob Morgans of the world—“Gurus in finance, willing zeros in science,” she muttered through chattering teeth—nothing short of a smoking gun would stop them. And that’s what she’d come to get.

  Neither the layer of thermal underwear she wore under her pantsuit nor her black ensemble of a full-length coat, ski hat, and gloves—chosen for warmth as well as camouflage—were keeping out the cold. But the prospect of what lay ahead—taking cuttings from plants immediately around the Agrenomics lab, the DNA of which she could subsequently check for evidence of man-made genetic vectors—had her mind on fire. If she succeeded and the vectors were there, she’d have demonstrated that once they escaped from the lab they were as “infectious” as she and other scientists feared. Such a finding would blow the lid off the whole issue, force a recognition of accidental contamination for the hazard it is, and make mandatory the kind of safety regulations that she’d always argued for. Though many in her profession had discussed doing this kind of analysis, official requests for such testing had always been turned down. And as far as she knew, no one had succeeded in doing it surreptitiously. She’d be the first.

  When boots failed to sound on the stone path, she figured it was safe, and immediately went to work. Rolling on her back and pulling a pair of manicure scissors out of her purse, she snipped sprigs of blue needles from the branches over her head. She then took tiny cuttings from the stems and roots near the ground. The latter might provide evidence that vectors were taken up from contaminated soil. On the other hand, if she found traces of foreign DNA only in the needles, the implication would suggest a mechanism of airborne infection through the vector’s direct contact with foliage. She put the two types of specimens in separate stoppered tubes already labeled MID-RANGE. She’d smuggled a dozen of the small sterile containers past the guard who had inspected her purse on the way into the building by hiding them in a box of tampons and then making sure she got into the line where a man did the checking.

  Her overall objective included getting similar foliage and root samples from shrubs and grasses at different distances from the building. Since conventional wisdom in the industry held that naked DNA vectors were harmless, most places took none of the special isolation precautions with them that they routinely used with viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Instead technicians handled and prepared the vectors without the benefit of venting hoods and allowed their release into the regular heat and air-conditioning ducts. The most likely reservoirs of contamination on the grounds would therefore be nearest the outlets that expelled this. Knowing all this, she determined especially to get foliage and root samples from around the base of the building.

  Though the shadows kept her invisible where she hid, she’d spotted security cameras at the gate and above the front door. Enough ambient light from the sodium lamps in the parking lot spilled out onto the lawns in her immediate vicinity that anyone would easily see her on the open grass. She decided to wait until there were fewer people around before moving on to the rest of the grounds.

  “That damn Sullivan woman—she’s going to be a problem, I can tell,” exclaimed Morgan, pacing behind his desk as he talked into his phone. “We held this session in order to disarm the media and hopefully avoid too close a scrutiny from yahoo environmentalists, but what we get is her putting us under a fucking microscope. Next she’ll have picketers dressed as giant corncobs at the front gate.”

  “Relax,” said the voice at the other end. “From what you told me, she merely recycled the usual old charges. She’s got no idea what we’re really up to. When are you expecting the new vectors to arrive so you can start production?”

  “Not until after New Year’s.”

  “And the work with the first batch?”

  “It’s going well. We resumed right after the dog and pony show with the reporters finished. Seed from our first crop should be ready for shipment next week, and testing with the liquid format is on schedule.”

  “When will you start delivering the liquid?”

  “If the results are good, mid-January. By end of February, a tank car of the stuff will be parked near every target in the half dozen southern states where we intend to start. By early April, we’ll have done the same for the more temperate regions.”

  “Apart from the group conducting the animal trials, none of your regular technicians suspect what they’re doing?”

  “Nope. They think they’re making the usual modifications under stricter controls is all. ‘As part of our bowing to the tree huggers,’ I tell them. By the way, I got ordered to inform you that our client is getting impatient.”

  “He called you at the plant?”

  “No. His messenger told me when she brought the samples we’re working with now. Man, she’s a looker. Ever seen her?”

  “No! And I don’t intend to see her or any of them— they could blow my cover.”

  “What’s your reply to our client, then? I’m due to travel back to that accursed sanctuary of his again. Christ, I hate going there.”

  From the very beginning both men had agreed they would always assume their conversations were monitored. They’d gotten into the habit of never mentioning names, places, and many other specifics, particularly when referring to the man who employed them, for the sake of their own safety as well as his.

  “Tell him nothing. Better yet, tell him everything is going fine, but that for security’s sake, the less he knows of the details, the better.”

  Morgan frowned. “You can tell him that
if you like. Every time we meet, it’s the details that he demands. Plus he’s perpetually reminding me about all the money he’s paying us and who works for whom. Believe me, he doesn’t have to add that it’s exceedingly unhealthy to deny him what he wants. I swear, he probably pays off those bandits he surrounds himself with in human flesh.”

  A heavy sigh came from the receiver, followed by, “He’s an asshole. Perhaps you should remind him of his many previous failed attempts to ‘strike at the heart of America,’ as he puts it. Point out that his fucking bombing campaign against U.S. embassies led to his own labs and personnel being blown up, leaving us nowhere to work and barely enough vector to finish the first clinical trials. And that rigmarole we’re going through in France to get the second vector is insane!” His voice kept rising as his tone grew angrier.

  Morgan remained silent, barely controlling his own fury at once more being stuck with having to mollify the madman he’d be meeting in a few days halfway around the world.

  “Have a nice trip,” said the voice before leaving Morgan listening to a dead line.

  In New York City the man who’d been talking with Bob Morgan reclined in his high-backed chair and stretched the tension out of his neck and legs. As he stared at the Manhattan skyline, the nearby World Trade Towers reflected so many of the surrounding lights that they resembled a pair of obelisks made of stars. “Another of your bungled schemes,” he muttered, eyeing the twin structures.

  He absently pressed his hands together in front of his mouth and tapped his lower lip with his index finger. Anyone who saw him might have thought he was about to pray. Instead he murmured a parting thought to the client—one which he would never dare say to his face. “Thanks to me, asshole, by this time next year, you will have brought the United States to its knees.”

  The time crawled by. She hadn’t even dared lift her head for a peek through the spruce branches when she heard the chatter of her group leaving. Someone might glimpse the whiteness of her face in the shadows. Minutes later, the growl of the chartered bus that had brought them filled the night as it drove away. Morgan must have assumed I called a cab, she thought idly.

  She listened as the remaining staff departed in smaller groups. More noises came from the vicinity of the parking lot—doors slamming, car motors roaring to life, and tires crunching on gravel. Soon those sounds also faded into the night.

  Only the soothing rush of the wind through the branches around her remained. From time to time a few cars passed on the road in front. A train rumbled by in the distance. She once made out the faint cries of a distant owl. Otherwise, the countryside surrounding the isolated facility had fallen quiet.

  Time to move, she told herself, stretching her legs and rolling the kinks out of her neck. Groaning as her limbs protested, she crawled out from cover and, crouching low, headed for the shadows along the perimeter of the spacious grounds. Once there she began collecting the specimens she wanted, getting on her hands and knees and using a penlight she’d brought. She first checked for an area of grass that hadn’t gone dormant yet. Luckily for her, it had been mild through most of November, and a lot of the lawn remained green.

  In the midst of cutting the roots out of a tiny divot with her scissors, she heard several vehicles approaching in the distance. Thinking they’d simply drive on by as had the previous bits of traffic, she paid them no heed.

  Suddenly the beams of their headlights cut a swath through the darkness where she’d been working, and, glancing up, she saw two minivans swing into the parking area under the yellow glare of the lot’s sodium lamps. “What the hell!” she muttered, snapping off her penlight and throwing herself once more on the ground.

  Not daring to lift her head—again for fear someone might see the white of her face—she listened intently as the two motors cut off, doors clicked or slid open, and the sound of men’s voices accompanied by the crunch of their shoes carried across the crisp night air. Oh, God, she thought, there’s a lot of them.

  She desperately wanted to risk a look. But could she get away with it? Though it was darker here than near the front, she lay on open ground. If any of these new arrivals took a glance in her direction and came close enough, they’d see her easily. Even her breath, rising like a white plume in the frosty temperature, might give her away.

  Covering her face with her gloved hands, she peeked through her fingers and saw about a dozen figures walking across the lot toward the front gate. Six were dressed in civilian clothes, while the others wore peaked caps and the gray uniforms often adopted by private security firms. These men, she saw with alarm, carried sidearms in holsters. “Jesus Christ,” she exclaimed softly, having expected to encounter nothing more out here than the pair of aging watchmen she’d seen when she first entered the front gate.

  She had to find better cover. Jamming the sample she’d just cut into one of her tubes and securing it in her purse, she got to her hands and knees. Damned if she’d forgo her samples from near the base of the walls, she thought, and, crouched low as before, sprinted toward the rear of the building, where it seemed darkest. She took a bead on the vents she could see silhouetted against the night sky as she ran. Grabbing at branches and shrubs on the way, she resigned herself to the fact that whatever vegetation she broke off on the run would have to serve as the remainder of her midrange specimens.

  Rounding the corner and huddling against the back wall, she peered out again toward the gate. Two of the uniformed men had taken up position there. Two more seemed to be starting on a tour around the inside of the fence. The final pair were accompanying the men in casual dress as they walked toward the front entrance.

  Sullivan ducked down amid the shrubbery lining the foundation of the building. Hunched over her penlight, she hurriedly stuffed the vegetation she’d picked up on the fly into appropriately labeled tubes and then hastily turned her attention to the greenery around her, grasping boughs of cedar between her fingers and sliding the fronds into containers marked SHORT-RANGE. As she worked, she kept taking hasty glances over her shoulder to where the two guards patrolling the perimeter would appear once they got this far. Seeing nothing, she listened for their voices, but only the steady sigh of the wind through a grove of pine trees off to her right filled her ears.

  Where have they gone? she wondered, turning her attention to the roots and storing the last of her samples back in her purse. Still on her hands and knees, she crept to the corner of the building and again looked around it.

  The darkness here made it easy to see the front and side of the property where the ambient light penetrated even farther in from the parking lot than she’d initially realized. Apart from where shrubs and trees obscured her view, she could readily make out most of the fence in that section, and the guards were nowhere to be seen. Had they doubled back? It became vital that she learn where they were before she made a run for it. She’d already decided it best to try and get over the fence to the rear of the building where the shadows were deepest.

  The distant sound of men laughing behind her sent Sullivan diving for cover again, this time pressed against the building’s foundation, between it and the low row of evergreens where she’d just been taking cuttings. Once more, she covered her face with gloved hands and peeked out between her fingers. They had doubled back, following the fence around in the other direction. To her horror, she saw the two guards make a ninety-degree left turn and start directly toward where she lay.

  Christ! Have they seen me? she thought in panic. Instantly she imagined the headlines if she were caught. CELEBRITY GENETICIST BUSTED FOR TRESPASSING!

  Then she remembered that these men were armed. They wouldn’t kill her in cold blood, she reassured herself. But guards with guns might pull them if they were startled by someone in the shadows. “Oh, boy,” she whispered under her breath, wondering for a second if it wouldn’t be better to call out and surrender before anything disastrous happened by accident. A second later, she changed her mind. No, goddamn it. That would let Agrenomics and
Morgan, the smug bastard, off the hook. Let his guards find her if they could. She was staying put! Besides, they’d not likely shoot if they tripped over her first.

  Besides, she’d arranged for a diversionary action in the parking lot to kick in at eight P.M., in case she hadn’t made it back by then to the car waiting for her at a rendezvous point. She took a quick glance at the luminous dial on her watch. It read 7:57. Just hold tight, she told herself, hoping that with a little luck she could still get out of there undetected with her samples intact.

  She began to make out snippets of the men’s conversation as they drew closer.

  “. . . when do the weekly pickups start? . . .”

  “. . . apparently early in the new year . . .”

  “. . . always the same day? . . .”

  They were already walking along the rear wall, still about twenty yards from where she lay. Silhouetted by the ambient light behind them, they were otherwise in complete darkness. She figured that in twenty seconds they’d be stepping on her head. She’d barely started to slither backwards when suddenly they stopped and began inspecting something on the building. By now they were close enough that she could hear every word.

  “. . . they’re going to show us how to work these hoses. Morgan doesn’t want the train guys handling the stuff.”

  “Are you sure it’ll be safe?”

  “With what we’ll be wearing it will be.”

  One of them struck a match, and a gold portrait of his face flared out of the darkness. His skin was deeply pockmarked, its tiny craters cast in flickering round shadows. Like a moonscape, she thought, transfixed by the sight of him. The space between his dark eyes furrowed as he cupped his hands around the flame and drew two quick puffs on the cigarette jutting at an angle from his lips. Then the apparition vanished.

  They’d barely resumed their inspection of whatever they were looking at when a burst of static sounded. The one with the cigarette grabbed a walkie-talkie from his belt. “What’s up?” he asked.