Mutant

by Peter Clement

  “How do I get in?”

  “The same way you did before.”

  Steele showed his surprise.

  “The watchman can’t override the cameras at the main entrance,” explained Patton. “But he can shut down the ones that cover the back of the property. Apparently it’s a low-light digital system with really delicate sensors, and they’re constantly having to turn it off during lightning storms or they risk blowing the electronics. Once you’re in the corridor, there’s no problem. The video cameras along it aren’t hooked to any alarms, and he’ll provide us with the codes to open the hatch doors for the labs. When you’re finished, exit the way you came in. He’ll simply record over any tapes that captured your visit. They routinely reuse them anyway, as long as there are no incidents.”

  “Sounds simple enough.”

  “There are conditions, Richard. For the protection of the watchman, the Blue Planet Society, and everyone else involved, including yourselves, security must be absolute. You don’t tell anyone, not even your family, about what you’re doing. We all agree the timing of the attack on Kathleen’s lab suggests a leak somewhere, either intentionally or by carelessness. If you get caught, Richard, we already know what their hired help is capable of, and we could all pay the price. Even if they only played hardball through the legal route this time, it would be handcuffs and court, plus ruined careers, for every one of us. So secrecy is paramount.”

  “Of course.”

  “That includes your making up a cover story to account for being away on that day.”

  “No problem.”

  “And one final order. Don’t, either of you, under any circumstances do anything to put Agrenomics back on the defensive over the next thirteen days. They probably think they’ve lucked out, since none of the Rodez stuff has touched them, and we want them unguarded, at least until we get into that lab.”

  “How long will I have inside? It may take some time to go through all those records I saw.”

  “Maximum, about six hours. You’ll go in around five P.M. and must get out by eleven. That’s well within his shift. Of course, you may not require anywhere near that long.”

  Steele, having no more questions, settled back in his chair. The prospect of getting a look at those documents excited him. In fact the whole mission had him energized and feeling the way he did whenever he walked through the doors of ER. That instant of coming on duty never failed to transform him, charge up his sense of purpose, and make him a match for the life-and-death struggles he knew lay ahead. The work would then become a state of grace for him, as, God forgive him, he found amidst other people’s suffering the only place where he could know his worth with complete certainty.

  But he hadn’t savored that heady elixir for over six months. His sense of being useful badly battered, the July fourth rendezvous suited him just fine.

  Patton started to beam, obviously delighted with Steele’s response. The environmentalist then turned his gaze on Kathleen. “Just think, by the Fourth, we could all know what those sons of bitches are up to. You’re not tempted?”

  She gave a sigh so rich in high-octane exasperation that Steele flinched, though he wasn’t its intended recipient. Wow, he thought, she may think I’m a jerk, but Patton’s even more in her bad books. I wonder what his crime was?

  “I’ll go with Dr. Steele,” she replied. “If we find anything, he’ll need me to sort out the genetics of it, but next time you want to set up a plan, Steven, if it includes me, I’m the first person you contact before you start, understood?”

  “Hey, sorry. It’s just you were so busy with the cops and the Rodez tests, yet getting nowhere with Agrenomics, I figured you’d be thrilled if I helped out on that front. If you want, we can call the whole thing off.”

  Steele jerked forward in his chair, ready to protest, when Kathleen said, “No. Although it’s against my better judgment, we might as well go ahead. If your man is playing it straight, it may be the quickest way to wrap this up, one way or the other, and that appeals to me. But I also have conditions. I want no hesitation about your calling in the cops if we holler for help or are as much as a minute overdue in getting out of there, you hear me, Steven? Better us all in cuffs, including you, than Richard and I dead.”

  The owl got very sincere-looking. “Of course, Kathleen. You know your safety goes above anything with me.”

  Steele just liked the fact that she seemed to be calling him Richard again.

  She studied Patton a few seconds, as if looking for flaws in his veneer. “Okay then,” she said, seeming satisfied. “If we’re finished now, I’ve got to get back to my lab. We’ll have to work out the details at another time.”

  Patton started to stride again. “Don’t you love her, Steele? All business, and yet so beautiful. Plus I knew I could count on her. It’s always the sign of a thorough-bred. Show her the race, and she can’t resist to run with all her heart.”

  She visibly stiffened.

  Good, thought Steele. Not that he had any hope Patton’s missteps with her would improve his own chances any. Apart from her resuming the use of his first name, her manner toward him remained pretty much as cool as ever, mainly infuriatingly polite to the point of indifference. It just helped him to know that he wasn’t the only man in the room with an emotional IQ in single digits.

  “What a great day for the environmentalists,” Patton said, continuing to crow.

  A look of distaste began to spread across Kathleen’s face.

  Keep it up, thought Steele, smiling encouragement to Patton.

  “Hey, I just had an idea,” the man went on. “If by any chance you do finish early on the Fourth, why don’t you join me back here to see the fireworks? I mean, look at the view.” He turned his back to them and made another of his grand arm gestures, this time as if he were personally unveiling the most famous cityscape in the world for the first time. “We can discuss what you’ve learned, plot strategy, and drink champagne while watching the spectacle. It’ll be a great sight from up this high. They’re doing a special production for the millennium, you know. Imagine all that red, white, and blue going off, and us able to see it illuminate practically every important landmark in New York!”

  Steele had to agree it would be spectacular. Normally he, Chet, Martha, and Luana before she died, watched from the hospital roof. “Sorry,” he said, “but if we do get back in time for the show, I’ll be joining my family. It’s a tradition we keep.”

  “How about you, Kathleen? I’ll invite a bunch of government muckety-mucks to join us. You’ll be able to tell them the dirt you’ve dug up firsthand. The party will go on for a while, so you could come as late as you like.”

  “I’ve got family plans, too,” echoed Kathleen, and quietly headed for the door.

  Steele mumbled his good-byes and followed her out.

  III

  Summer

  Chapter 19

  Tuesday, July 4, 2000, 5:05 P.M.

  In total darkness they stood at the edge of the long corridor, listening.

  The air felt cool and clammy on Steele’s face compared to the hot mugginess they’d left outside, and the absolute lack of sound in the place pressed in on him like a weight. He reached out in the blackness to reassure himself that the walls were keeping their distance.

  “Which way?” whispered Kathleen from slightly behind him.

  He took a step forward and snapped on the headlamp that she’d insisted he use, directing the beam toward the lab. The distant doorway seemed like a miniature suspended in the pale blue circle of light. “Why do I feel like a white rabbit?” he heard her mutter.

  In minutes they were punching in the four-digit code supplied to Patton by the watchman. A soft buzz sounded from the interior of the room. He grabbed the central wheel, rotated it counterclockwise until the lock released, and pulled. The hatch opened with a sucking sound.

  Steele remembered from his Atlanta tour that they kept the lab at a negative pressure relative to the outside, to prevent
the escape of contaminated air. They stepped through the opening, pulled the door shut behind them, and heard a loud click as the locking mechanism automatically reset itself, sealing them in. Glancing out the window into the blackness of the corridor they’d just left, he imagined unseen figures creeping up on them as they worked. We’re sitting ducks in here, he thought with a shudder. Trying to smother his fear, he turned and, using his light, probed the darkness around him. The room seemed unchanged, until he pointed the beam over to where he’d seen the bookcases bearing stacks of documents.

  They were empty.

  “Shit!” he said, not any louder than a normal speaking voice, but in that absolute quiet, he might as well have screamed.

  Sullivan jumped at the sound and issued a startled shriek.

  “All their papers are gone,” he added, paying her no attention. Sweeping the light a few feet to the right, he revealed an empty table. “And the videotapes as well. Even the VCR.”

  “Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Sorry, but without those records, what the hell can we learn here?”

  “First of all, let’s make it easier to see.” Snapping on her own headlamp, she located a row of switches on the wall, flipped them up, and flooded the area with a harsh white glare. Eyeing the air lock and the row of moon suits, she issued an appreciative whistle. “Quite the place.”

  “We better put these on,” said Steele, indicating the surgical gloves and OR outfits on the cart parked by the door.

  “Over our clothes?”

  “ ’Fraid not. The saying in Atlanta was ‘scrubs only, and everything else that God didn’t give you stays out here, except for socks.’ ”

  Stripping beside her, his nerves on edge about being in the building, Steele also felt flustered by her nakedness. It reminded him of how stupid he’d been and the chance he’d blown with her. Not just for sex—though that figured prominently in his list of missed opportunities. But his seeing her in the flesh made her seem especially vulnerable to whatever lay ahead, yet here she was, gamely gearing up to face it with him. The sight forced him to admit what he otherwise might have denied forever. This magnificent, spirited woman could be his match—friend and soul mate as well as lover. And that’s why he’d backed off. He found the thought of anyone ever again mattering that much to him terrifying.

  She seemed completely unaware of his emotional tumult, making the change of clothing so quickly and clinically he might as well not even have been in the room. Probably she’s already written me off, he thought, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. Closed the chapter and moved on, saying good riddance to an emotional coward.

  They finished tucking in their sleeves and cuffs in silence, then walked over to the far windows, where they stood peering into the still-darkened lab on the other side. Under a big control panel of what seemed to be pressure gauges, Steele found a second set of light switches. Snapping them on, he watched as dozens of ceiling panels flickered to life and illuminated an area the size of an airplane hangar.

  Kathleen let out another whistle.

  “Holy shit!” he said. “I had no idea it was so big!”

  In the foreground were the workbenches and isolation hoods he’d managed to see the other evening. Behind them were rows and rows of large cages, most empty, but some contained large animals curled up in them. One raised a sleepy head.

  “They’re monkeys,” said Kathleen.

  Occupying the back half of the room were over a dozen huge vats with pipes and wires attached to them. Steele estimated each to be about twelve feet across. “What the hell are those?” he asked. “They look like something from a brewery.”

  “You’re not far wrong, except instead of beer, they’re mass-producing genes, or a product from them,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Do you know the way they manufacture human insulin?”

  Steele felt embarrassed. “Actually, I never thought of it. I just draw it up out of a vial and inject it into patients.”

  The corners of her eyes wrinkled as she smiled. “I never yet met a doctor who did, so don’t feel bad. It’s in vats like that.”

  “How?”

  “They first isolate the gene responsible for the production of insulin from human islets of Langerhans cells in the pancreas—” She stopped herself with a laugh.

  God, I could get to like that sound, he thought as feelings he’d kept locked up for over two years tentatively crawled out of hiding.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I obviously don’t have to tell you that part. Anyway, they use PCR technology to replicate massive amounts of that gene. In the past they added it all to a soup of E. coli bacteria, not the pathogenic strains that make people ill, but pampered lab bugs that couldn’t survive sixty seconds in the outside world on their own. These days they use yeast cells to do the work. In either case, the insulin genes are made to infect these organisms, the microbe’s own genetic machinery then reads the genes, and their mitochondria start producing human insulin—everything happening, as I said, in exactly those sorts of containers.”

  “So they could be making massive amounts of DNA, RNA, entire genes, or whatever the genes themselves are meant to produce. In other words, virtually anything. Except I don’t think it’s insulin.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Damn! Without those records, we’ll never figure out what they’re up to—”

  She cut him off with a nudge in the ribs, and pointed to a counter far off to one side in the sealed lab. There he saw stacks of binders, a VCR, and rows of videotapes.

  Yes! he thought, suddenly elated. They were going to get somewhere after all.

  “But why would they put all that stuff in there?” she said. “That’s a contaminated room. They’ll never be able to take them out again.”

  “They must have moved them in for safer keeping. What better way to keep it under wraps? Nobody’s likely to casually stroll inside and have a look at it. In any case, I’m going in for a peek.” He walked over and lifted down one of the silvery outfits, surprised at how light and flimsy the material felt.

  “Whoa! You told me you took a tour at the CDC, not a course in how to work one of those suits, or an air lock.”

  “But I watched them do it. See one, do one, teach one, as we say to the residents. Besides, the watchman gave Patton the codes for all the doors in here. He obviously meant for us to have access if we needed it. How hard can it be?” He sat down on one of the benches and began to pull on the outfit like a one-piece ski suit.

  She wandered over to the three made of red material. “What are these ones for?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen the likes of them. They don’t seem to be made for any attachments.” He finished pulling on the leg part of the outfit and hiking the waist into place. “But I know the principle of these. Not only do they provide a separate breathing system for the wearer through those hoses hanging from the ceiling, but the incoming air keeps the interior of the suit at a positive pressure relative to the lab itself. This assures that any molecular exchange, bugs included, flows out from me into the lab.” Slipping his arms in the sleeves and his head in the helmet, he immediately felt claustrophobic, an acrid odor of rubber, plastic, and stale sweat filling his nostrils. Fighting the impulse to gag, with her help he joined a zipper from the right shoulder to his left hip. Then they closed an overlying zip lock to complete the process. Sealed in, his breathing sounding in his ears and fogging the face plate, he felt far too warm. It’s like being in a goddamn sandwich bag, he thought.

  Turning to the counters behind him, he started pulling out drawers. “Do you see what looks like duct tape anywhere?” he yelled, to make himself heard through the Plexiglas. “Back in Atlanta they reinforced the joins between the gloves and boots with it.”

  “Duct tape?”

  “Well, that’s what it looked like. I presume it was some special stuff.”

  “Richard, this is nuts. God knows what they’ve been playing with in th
ere, and you’re using duct tape?”

  “Here it is,” he said, pulling out several wide rolls of the gray adhesive. He tore off a strip and wrapped it around one of his ankles. “Want to help me with the wrists?”

  “Damn it, Richard, listen to me!”

  “Kathleen, I’m not stopping when we’re this close.”

  “But—”

  A loud tearing noise cut her short as he peeled off another two-foot strip. Handing it to her, he winked and said, “Hey! And if you did persuade me not to go, don’t pretend you wouldn’t be heading inside yourself and having a peek at whatever’s in those vats as soon as my back’s turned.”

  She glared at him a few seconds, then began to wrap his wrists without comment. But the little crinkles reappeared at the corners of her eyes again, indicating that not only was she on the verge of giving him another of her wonderful smiles, but that he’d nailed her intentions cold.

  He reached up and grabbed one of the dangling air hoses by its nozzle. “Do you see an insert for this on the belt somewhere?” His raised voice sounded deafening to his own ears.

  “Let me check. Yeah, I think it’s here. No, that’s for this big tube from the helmet.”

  He could barely hear her. The suit must have a two-way radio hookup somewhere, he thought. As he felt her probing around his waistband and attempting to connect the various attachments, he glanced around inside his helmet and saw a small black disc on a thin wire at the lower margin of the visor. A microphone?