Streetlethal

by Steven Barnes

  "Wouldn't that be less of a turn-on?" Promise asked.

  Cecil grinned lasciviously. "Naw. Adrenalectomy often gives ladies the hots. Hmm. Here's a curious error. Seems it was given to a patient on MAO inhibiters—"

  "It keeps them from mewing?"

  "Just shut up, Promise. Monoamine oxidase. It's a cellular enzyme, found in most tissues. It catalyzes oxidation of adrenaline."

  "That's clear as custard."

  "Back to school, sweetheart. Anyway, the lady stayed high. Just didn't come down. They had to give her a shot of chlor-promazine to cut her trip short." He scratched at his chin uncomfortably. "Strange mistake to make."

  His fingers flew again.

  PSYCHOLOGICAL?

  "Feels good. Nothing spectacular, though."

  TOXICITY?

  "Low. As low as psilocybin."

  ABSORPTION MODEL?

  "I want to see this on the Stage." He switched the display over to the holographic projector next to the flat screen and sat back as it lit up, a disembodied human brain bobbing in midair.

  START SEQUENCE.

  At first there was no change, then a swirl of red climbed up the pinkish stem of the floating sponge, migrating directly to the center.

  "I'll be damned. Straight for the hypothalamus. Specifically, the areas above the anterior and medial hypothalamus. A high concentration in the lateral geniculate suggests that it's connected to the catecholinergic tracts." There was a conspicuous silence in the room. Promise and Aubry were staring, openly dumbfounded. "This is just a guess, but I'd bet that someone under the influence of this drug would have massively exaggerated response to all stimuli."

  "Maxine said that it was like nothing in the world."

  "Strange. All of the patients state that the drug is very pleasant. That's about as far as it goes." The corners of Cecil's mouth fought to keep from curling into a frustrated grimace. "Well, damn. Are you sure she didn't say anything about dosage? Maybe you were supposed to take all four of die tablets?"

  Promise stood, eyes closed, trying to remember the scene. Maxine's gauze-swathed face, the broken whisper of her voice, and her injunction, "'Take it with someone you could love. 9 That's what she said, Cecil."

  "So this was supposed to be enough for two people. Maxine, who has been around enough to know, said that it was totally beyond anything she had ever experienced. And this gang—"

  "The Ortegas," Aubry snapped.

  Cecil's brows drew together. "I've heard that name somewhere " He shook his head. "Anyway, all right, the Ortegas. They're willing to kill to get hold of it." He kicked his feet up on the desk and thought. "I have to try to come up with something that makes sense—a conceivable event sequence. Let's say that the drug is synergistic in nature. Maybe when it's taken in combination with another drug, or within a specialized situational framework, it goes crazy in your head. Somehow the Ortegas got wind of it—"

  "Patricks," Promise said grimly.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "The questions at the hospital, the thugs that followed me home. He's tied up in this."

  "I really don't like to think about that, but let's imagine that it's true. Patricks develops the drug, (hen discovers that in some set of circumstances yet unknown it becomes exponentially more powerful than these reports indicate."

  "Those reports could be faked," Aubry said sullenly.

  "Eh? Why fake reports and then put them under security?"

  "You got into them, didn't you? It's a big mistake to think that you're the only one smart enough to do a trick." There was a calm matter-of-factness in Aubry's words that cut through any irritation that Cecil felt.

  "Point well taken. All right, Patricks knew he had something worth protecting... stealing for, killing for " His voice broke a little when he said that, then strengthened again. "So, he made contact with this Ortega, someone who knew how to handle drugs, and made a deal. And part of the deal ..." He steepled his fingers meditatively and closed his eyes, thinking, that slight smile curling his lips. He looked for all the world like a dark-stained stone Buddha.

  "Part of the deal," Aubry finished for him, "was to clean up the tracks. No one gets to know where the shit came from."

  Promise looked at him with curiosity and respect warring in her face. "So, Ornstein dies, and Maxine gets chewed up. And the reports in the computer are faked?"

  "Maybe not faked/ 9 Cecil said softly. "You forget, several of those tests took place at my clinic. I knew some of those people—Maxine, for instance. I submitted some of the reports on the drug's action. So, let's say that something has been omitted from the report. Something that Patricks learned later. That Ornstein and Maxine discovered "

  Promise's memory rolled back over the previous weeks. "Maxine had been seeing this Ornstein pretty steadily. Could... ? No." She shook her head. "That's pretty ridiculous. Drugs don't act like that."

  Cecil sighed in irritation. "This isn't an ordinary drug. Go ahead and say it."

  "Well, it..." she glanced at Aubry, who was sitting on the edge of a counter, his arms folded, the tendons in his forearms crawling slowly. "Maxine seemed really gone over this Ornstein. I mean, no holds barred. First blush of springtime, you know? I saw them together a couple of times, and she just couldn't keep her hands off him. It was kind of strange, really."

  "Maxine was pretty far gone when you brought her in," Cecil said. "It's not uncommon for emotional attachments to form between patients and nurses, doctors, therapists " He shrugged his broad shoulders. "That's one of the reasons it's considered a violation of trust for any such liaison to develop. Ornstein was breaking strict clinic rules with Maxine."

  "She had her ways," Aubry hissed. "She got what she wanted— "He started to say more, but suddenly that sick expression came back to his face and he wobbled on the edge of the desk. His head sank and he swallowed hard. Promise jumped into the conversational breech.

  "And she wanted Ornstein. So maybe, just maybe, the drug worked differently if you took it with someone you loved."

  Cecil tore his gaze away from Aubry's struggle. "Maybe if you take it with your sexual hormones pumping full tilt...?"

  Cecil's gaze was distant, and he seemed frustrated. "I'm sorry, Promise. I'm not going to try to draw any conclusions from data as scanty as this. I'm out of my depth."

  "It's OK, Cecil. You did what you could."

  "What now?" the doctor asked, glancing from Promise to Aubry.

  "We're going to get out of here," she said. "We've involved you enough. But I can't go back to the hospital, not until this mess is cleared up. Is there any way we can use your hospital link to peek in on Maxine? I'd just like to make sure she's all right."

  Aubry jumped off of the desk as though it had bit him and staggered out of the room.

  "When did he get out of prison?" Cecil asked softly.

  "How did you—?"

  "Come on, now, Promise. The way he keeps looking over his shoulder, the way he responds to invasion of his personal space—he's a time bomb, darling. We talked about reprogramming earlier. Well, somebody did a little of that to our friend Aubry. Aversive conditioning. Pretty strong job, to look at it. Complicated, delicate, and expensive. He must be very dangerous, and very valuable, to somebody."

  "He's all I've got right now." Promise smiled weakly. "I'm out of my depth too."

  Cecil's fingers clicked out a pattern on the terminal. The display cleared and clouded again. "Did you say she's in the security ward?" He spelled out MAXINE BLACK and waited for her chart to rise to the screen. "I can't get you visual, but I can tap into the diagnostic bank. Then—aha—here it is."

  A multicolored diagram of sliding bars appeared. Under the diagram was the legend: MAXINE BLACK 0800 HOURS.

  "This doesn't look to have been updated since this morning," Cecil said, frowning. The greens and reds of the graph reflected from his face, painting it grotesquely, a Halloween mask of concern.

  "I don't understand what any of that means," Promise sai
d carefully. "Is everything all right?"

  "I don't know." There was a shadowy question hidden in Cecil's voice. "I've seen thousands of addicts in various stages of withdrawal, addiction, active high, and everything in between. This stinks of grubs. How long would you say she's been without them?"

  "Since she left your clinic."

  "She's had them more recently than that. Hours, maybe. I want an update on this woman."

  Promise paced from one side of the room to the other as Cecil quizzed the diagnostic computer for the information they needed. "Got it!" he cried triumphantly. "I don't like being on this line, though. They can trace me back—" His face went slack, and his eyes widened in horror. "Shit-fire. Will you look at this?" There was a slightly different set of bars on the screen now. Even as Promise watched, some of them crept slowly upwards while others fell.

  "Look at it. Blood pressure—up. Heartbeat—up. Respiration—up, Temperature— way up. Liver and kidney function breaking down—this woman is going into some kind of toxic shock, and the monitor alarm isn't triggering!" He gulped for air, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead like jewels. "She's dying!"

  "Well, what is it?" Aubry came back in from the hall, curiosity easing his dizziness.

  "I don't know—wait, yes I do. It's similar to a grub overdose, only ... no. It's grubs plus another drug. Some kind of stimulant."

  "Well, what?"

  "I don't know. It could be any one of a dozen drugs that they might be prescribing for her. It's not the drug that's killing her, it's the combined action of the drug and the grubs."

  "But where could she have gotten the grubs?" Promise stopped in the middle of her thought, and she whispered the next word. "Patricks. He's murdering her. He'll say that I brought her the drug during my visit." She was beginning to lose control, and the reflected lights of the lethal sliding bars of the video display mixed with the awakening light and color of the plastic that covered the left side of her body.

  "You're right. Oh, God..."

  "Why can't you stop it? The damned computer is pumping that crap into her veins now. Can't you?"

  Cecil was sweating. "Stop it? No—drug's already been administered. Counteract? Not without knowing exactly what they gave her." He was talking rapidly, just voicing thoughts aloud, lost in a world of frantic speculation. "Could just as easily kill her "

  "Why doesn't someone in the hospital stop it? Do they all want her dead? Doesn't anyone care?"

  "Of course they do. But it's three in the morning. They've got a skeleton staff monitoring hundreds of patients. They have to trust the computer to alert them to something like this, and it's not triggering the alarm."

  "Patricks," she said, her face radiating light with an intensity almost too bright to watch. Her fingers knotted in the fabric of Cecil's shirt until, with a cracking sound, two of her perfect fingernails broke right down to the quick. Blood seeped out the tips and into the fabric. She looked up at Aubry.

  An expression close to sick alarm was creeping into his broad features, and his mouth framed foul words without speaking them.

  Maxine's blood pressure reading had begun to flash red.

  "I can try treating the symptoms. I can try to trigger the alarm from here " He looked up at them. "I'm telling you, though. I've been on this line too long already. If Patricks is in on this, he's sure as hell got the smarts to put a tracer on his files. He'll know."

  "He'll know you broke into his files?"

  He nodded. "And he'll know what it means."

  "Cecil, they killed Ornstein. They were going to kill me. You can't risk yourself like this—"

  "What do you want me to do?" He was working feverishly at the console, his fingers a blur. His head snapped up. "What if it were you, Promise? I can't stand back and watch her die." His eyes were wide, moist. His voice broke to a whisper. "I just can't."

  Promise looked at Aubry. The big man was stunned to silence, uncertain of what to feel. "Aubry, his mind is made up. We've got to know now whether Patricks is in this."

  "And if he is?"

  She met his eyes squarely. "Then, we get whatever information we need out of him. And then—"

  He nodded tightly. "I know how to find him. Let's move. Kato—" Cecil looked up, his face locked with strain. "I don't think much of your target, but I like your aim."

  Promise squeezed Cecil's shoulder and ran after Aubry, whose footsteps were already disappearing down the hall.

  Kato glanced after them, then bent back to the monitor, trying with all of his skill to save a woman who was dying, alone, ten kilometers away.

  "You drive," Aubry said. "I may have to duck back. It's harder getting out of the Maze than into it." Promise nodded silently and slid into the car.

  "How do we find Patricks?" she said. "I could hardly ask Cecil to set up his boss."

  Aubry snorted. "No problem. If he has dealings with Luis, then all of Luis's car-guidance systems will have his address encoded. Punch him up and let's get on the way."

  The sedan responded positively to her inquiry and began to nose its way out of the parking lot into the street. Promise looked back at the clinic, its solitary light glowing, and shuddered. "Poor Cecil."

  Aubry watched the streets. "He made his choice," he said simply.

  Their vehicle was intimidatingly expensive, so they had no trouble getting through the checkpoint. In fact, they received no challenge until they reached the outskirts of Griffith Acres, the exclusive residence community their autopilot guided them to. It still maintained some of the spaciousness of the city park it had been before auction and subdivision. Even from die wrong side of the gate they could see that Patricks lived the good life.

  At the gate a tiny video camera snaked out to peer through their window. "Your vehicle has conditional clearance. Your business?"

  Promise put on her softest smile, hoping that she was talking to a man and not a computer-synthesized voice. "A little company, dear. A gift for Dr. Patricks from his friends."

  "Having a regular party up there tonight," the disembodied voice said wistfully. "All right. Have a good time." The gate swung open, and as Promise slipped the car into gear and let it drive through, Aubry sat up from the back seat and frowned. "A 'regular party'?"

  The car picked its way through curving streets, past fenced and secluded estates. Aubry checked the car clock. The guidance blinker armed as they pulled up to the gate of a cubical red brick house with sunscreened windows. "Will you look at this? This guy's been calling both sides of the coin for a long time."

  "Light's on up there." Aubry jerked a hard thumb over to the side of the lane. "Let's pull over and wait a while—see if his guests are gonna stay all night." She nodded and put the car on manual, pulling it over to the side of the road.

  They watched, sharing the dark and the quiet. Promise dug into her purse. "Mind if I smoke?" she asked reflexively, striking the cigarette against the dashboard.

  Aubry plucked it out of her hand. "Not if you do it outside, no.

  She glared at him. "I didn't know you were a boy scout."

  "I've just got this agreement with my lungs—wait," he said suddenly, peering up at the house. "One of the lights went out."

  "So somebody finished using the can." Promise shut up as the sound of an opening door floated across the dead night air. "I think you're right."

  "In that case, I'm worried." His breathing had stilled, eyes fixed on shapes moving beyond the grilled fence, beyond the strip of lawn, on the crescent drive serving the front door. Three men exited the house, closing the door behind them. They crossed to a wheelless sedan. "Is one of them Patricks?"

  "Can't be sure from here, but I don't think so." The low purr of the sedan lifting itself and turning 180 degrees on a six-inch cushion of air grew louder as it coasted toward the gate.

  "Pull up," Aubry said urgently. "We don't want them to recognize this car." She nodded and eased their coupe forward just as Patricks's gate opened and the aircar slid out.

  Aub
ry was out of the car and moving before Promise had killed the motor. Cursing under her breath, she followed him. He disappeared around die corner, and she heard the whine of gears grinding. She caught up in time to see him holding the gate open, the closing arm groaning in protest. "Hurry up," he whispered. He released the gate as she slipped past, and with a whimper of relief it closed. He pulled her over to the side of the drive.

  "All right," he said. "I don't have any idea what kind of defense set-up he has, so we'll play it like I laid it out."

  His grip on her arm was too tight. She shook it off. "I can handle it, all right? Have a little faith."

  She walked up the middle of the drive while Aubry traced her in the shadows, trying to keep bushes between him and the house.

  When Promise rang the front doorbell, there was no answer. She shivered, pulling her arms close around her chest, and looked around nervously. She tried it again, heard the chimes echoing in the house, stepped back to look up at the brooding two-story structure, its windows dark and curtained. Where was Aubry? She looked around trying to find him, but couldn't.

  The reception screen blinked on, and a plain flat-image of Patricks came on the line. "I'm sorry," it said, "But I am busy for a few moments. The autobutler is paging me now, and I should be with you shortly. If you would state your business, please?" He was seated at a desk, a polite bland-faced man with nothing of force or intrigue in his manner.

  "Uhh..." Promise looked around again. Where was Aubry? She felt as if crosshairs were stenciled on her back. "Dr. Patricks," she said finally, repeating the words that she had decided on, "when I talked to you in the hospital, you said to get in touch with you if there were any developments. There have been—urgent ones—and I didn't dare speak over a public-access line. It's an emergency. Please."

  She waited for almost a full minute, then pressed the doorbell again. The reception image cycled back. "I'm sorry, but I am busy for a few moments...."

  Aubry emerged from the bushes next to her so suddenly that she almost screamed. "It's no good. I've checked all around the edge of the house—doesn't seem to be anyone here."