Dr. Kowalski fished in the back and pulled out a fat clump of grass clippings. He stuffed it greedily in between cheek and gums. He was in heaven the instant he started chewing. Moaning in ecstasy, he sat back in his chair. Eyes closed, he savored the sweet sensation.
Over the past two years he had become a grass connoisseur.
He liked the simple heft of orchard or meadow grasses, the body of Bengal grass, the tang of Kentucky bluegrass and the insouciance of the haughtier millets. He reveled in the seductive danger of sword grass.
It hadn't always been this way. For most of his fifty-two years on the planet, he had seen grass as a forgettable part of the scenery. Nothing important. A nuisance, really. Something that he hated to mow since childhood and for which a few years earlier he'd finally hired a professional service to care for when the dandelions and crabgrass in his own yard eventually got too wild.
Not anymore. Two years ago he had fired his service. He was back to caring for his own lawn.
No one else was allowed near it. Emil obsessed over it. He was out there every night and all weekend long. He had put up a fence to keep out unwanted animals and neighborhood children. He mowed it personally, working for hours with an old-fashioned push mower, lest a single poisonous drop of gas or oil touch soil or grass. And once it was mowed, he saved every little clipping in dated bags in freezer and refrigerator. He had even had a brief, unfortunate flirtation with canning. Grass had become his life.
He had brought in a fresh bag today. Emil had earned fresh. After all, now was a very stressful time. Although he no longer felt stress quite the same way as normal people.
Chewing on a wad of grass always gave him a feeling of wonderful isolation. As if he were the only creature in all of creation. He never used to get that. Life was always a crush of people and daily stresses. But now he could stare into space for hours, his mind completely blank, with no thought of the intruding world.
And he owed it all to one amazing, wonderful woman.
At a genetics conference in Atlanta two years ago, he had met the woman who would change his life. She had kept to herself mostly. Talked to a few geneticists here and there. It almost seemed that she was interviewing potential employees. When Emil Kowalski met the raven-haired, beauty he didn't know what to make of her.
She was undeniably brilliant. She could discuss genetic theory and practice better than any mind he'd ever met. The men she spoke to weren't able to keep up. No slouch in his field, Emil Kowalski was made to feel like a freshman high-school biology student by this unknown female scientist.
She called herself Dr. Judy Fishbaum. No one at the conference had ever heard of her.
Despite the Atlanta heat, the woman kept a coat draped over one shoulder. That struck Emil as very odd.
She stood differently. Not like other people. It was as if she were keeping her one visible arm free to lash out. It was a stance for a prison, where one expected attack at any moment from any direction.
And the way she held the hidden arm. Shoulder down. So protective, For a little while Emil thought that she might be a recent amputee, embarrassed by a missing limb. But he dismissed that theory when he saw something move beneath the jacket. Whatever might be wrong, there was something there.
When she got Emil alone in the lounge of the hotel where the conference was being held, the woman who called herself Judy Fishbaum finally took off her coat.
He knew at once where she'd gotten her fascination with genetics. Her right arm was not fully formed. Undoubtedly a congenital defect had guided her into her current field.
Dr. Kowalski hadn't been prepared. He couldn't help but look. When she caught him staring, he was surprised by her reaction. He had assumed most people who had lived all their lives with a deformity would react to insensitive stares either with some level of embarrassment or anger. There wasn't a flicker of either on her pale face.
She didn't even look away. She continued to stare Emil straight in the eye.
"You're interested in this?" she asked, with not a flicker of emotion in her voice. The arm was raised. It was half the size of an adult arm. "It's not finished growing yet," she confided.
Emil Kowalski got a good look at the limb. There was a purr of pleasure from his companion when she saw the look of surprised understanding that crossed his face.
The arm didn't match. For one thing the skin was far too young for a woman somewhere in her late thirties. It was a child's skin. It was smooth and unmuscled with soft baby fat. The limb wasn't deformed in the least. Just small. As if the aging had been arrested years before.
"Oh," he said, his own embarrassment changing over to fascination. "It's not yours."
"Of course it is," she replied. "It's just not part of the original equipment." She flexed five pudgy fingers.
"Is it a graft?" Dr. Kowalski asked.
Doctors were doing that now. Grafting limbs. The success rate wasn't great, due to rejection by the body's immune system, but the work held promise. However, in the cases Emil had heard about, great care was taken to match the donor limb to the host. He had never heard of anyone grafting a child's arm on an adult's body.
"No," she replied. "Do you ever wonder-" she read his name tag "-Emil, why one strand of hair will fall out, only to be replaced by another? Or why one set of teeth is replaced by another in childhood, but a lost tooth in adulthood doesn't grow back?"
"Simple," Emil said. "Encoding. The body does what it's programmed to do."
"Yes, simple," she said. "It seems so odd to me. Hair is nothing. A throwback to another evolutionary stage. Human beings no longer need hair to survive. Yet why does nature still give priority to replacing worthless hair and not to vital organs? Or limbs?"
It was the way she said it. The stress she put on the last word, accompanied by another flex of that child's hand.
The truth hit Dr. Emil Kowalski like a hard fist to the stomach.
"That isn't a graft," he whispered, awed. Winking, she offered another contented purr. The coat came back on, covering the limb that Dr. Kowalski knew should not be, but was.
This was big. Research was heading in this direction, but results were still decades away. He needed to hear more.
Later, in a dark corner of the hotel bar, he heard her theories on transgenic organisms. Science was becoming involved more in the creation of new species. It was easier to mix genetic material and start from scratch. She explained that inherited genetic traits from one organism could be spliced into an existing organism without rejection by the host.
By this point it was very late. The bar had cleared out. She had ordered a martini at one point during the evening, but had taken not a single sip.
From the start she insisted that Emil drink only springwater. She told him she wouldn't waste time sharing thoughts with him if he wasn't stone sober. Dr. Kowalski agreed. He wasn't about to refuse an order from the most beautiful, brilliant companion he had ever gone out with.
They were whispering. Dr. Kowalski felt like a spy. It was all so exciting, so dangerous.
"There was research going on in this field before," he said. "You must have heard about it. In Boston? But it didn't work out. Both times there were deaths. After the last time, Congress passed a law against human testing."
"Human laws don't apply to us," she said.
Dr. Kowalski wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that. And at that moment he didn't really care. He put down his glass of water.
He was dizzy. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. By the time he realized she had slipped something in his drink, it no longer mattered.
He soon learned that his companion was the notorious Dr. Judith White, the infamous madwoman of BostonBio. She had used her own formulas to alter her features slightly just enough so that none at the conference recognized her. And that wasn't all.
The change came over Emil Kowalski rapidly. In the first terrible moments, the last vestiges of his humanity conjured images of bloody, half-eaten corpses like he'd heard a
bout on the news. But when it was done, he had no desire to eat human flesh.
"I feel different," he said, puzzled. "Am I like you?" His voice was slower now than before. A low, contented moan rose from deep in his throat.
She shook her head. "I need someone with your brains, Emil, but with no ambition and total loyalty," Judith White explained. "If I'd made you like me, you'd be like all my young. Thinking with your belly. I couldn't have bodies piling up around your lab. That would draw the authorities. I've made you a totally new hybrid. I drew on a few different species. You're now as indolent as a cow. No Nobel ambitions from you. I'll tell you what to do and you'll do it. The rest of the time you'll do pretty much nothing. And you're as loyal as a dog. You won't dream of turning on me. Feel proud, Emil. You're a totally new creature, unlike any other on the planet."
Emil liked the idea of that. Almost as much as he liked the woman who sat across from him in the bar. He would die before he betrayed her. Knew it on an instinctive level. He wondered what his new wonderful friend wanted from him.
"I need a lab," Judith White said. "A good, permanent one. I can't keep moving from place to place, plundering equipment here and there, afraid of being caught. I need a base of operations, sweetcakes, and Genetic Futures is it."
And so began Emil Kowalski's relationship with Dr. Judith White.
Emil was satisfied just to do what he was told to do. For the past two years he did his work, and when he wasn't doing his work he spent his time either caring for his lawn or-better yet-staring blankly into space.
Dr. Emil Kowalski was staring at the wall of his San Diego office when there came a sudden knock at his door.
Emil wiped some lawn drool from his chin. "Come in," he called.
A young Genetic Futures scientist stuck his head in the room. The man seemed hesitant when he saw the dull-eyed look on Dr. Kowalski's face. He tried not to stare at the drying green dribble stain on his boss's white lab coat.
"We're all set to go," the young man said. "Whenever you get the specimen in, we'll be ready."
Kowalski nodded. "It might be days. Keep shifts on around the clock. Time will be vital when it arrives."
"Yes, sir. I'll let everyone know."
"Is there something else?"
The young man hadn't realized he was loitering in the doorway. He just couldn't believe it. There was a piece of grass sticking out of the mouth of Genetic Futures's senior geneticist. He had never believed the stories, always assuming "The Cow" nickname was just a play on Dr. Kowalski's name.
"Um, no, sir. Sorry, sir."
The young face disappeared and the door closed. Emil sat behind his desk for a short time longer, munching grass from his bag. When he finally looked at his wail clock, two hours had gone by.
That happened a lot these days. No track of time. "Oh, well," he said. "Things will get busy soon enough. Better make sure we're ready."
Adam's apple bulging, he swallowed the big lump of grass that was still in his mouth. It would be even better once it had settled in one of his stomachs for a few hours. He'd bring it up as cud that afternoon.
Mooing contentedly, Emil Kowalski plodded lazily from his office.
Chapter 17
By the eleven-o'clock news cycle, reports of new cases of feral behavior among humans had begun to die down. News reports were focusing mainly on New York, with mention of a handful of other cases in the Northeast.
In the family quarters of the White House, the President of the United States watched the late news with deep concern.
It was an hour past his normal bedtime. This President preferred to go to bed early and to rise early. He trusted in the old "healthy, wealthy and wise" adage. It seemed to work for him. Although the wealth didn't matter so much-he was from a well-off family and had taken a substantial pay cut to become President-his health was fine.
As for wisdom ...well, if the late-night shows were to be believed, he had none. According to the media, the folks from the other side were always the brilliant statesmen, the towering intellects. It was accepted as gospel that those on the President's side of the aisle were busy frantically rubbing their two brain cells together trying to make fire.
The thought always gave him a chuckle. This President was confident enough to not let such nonsense rattle him. It didn't matter to him what a handful of comedy writers in Los Angeles or anchormen in New York thought of him. Besides, he avoided network news and was normally in bed long before the latenight comics were on.
Not this night. This night there was a crisis and the President of the United States was staying up past his bedtime watching the late news.
The scenes shown were gruesome, the eyewitness accounts frightening, if true. The President had poured himself a drink, but it sat sweating in his hand. He watched the news recap with pursed lips and furrowed brow.
When it was over, the President get up from the sofa.
Walking briskly from the living room, he headed down the long hallway to his private bedroom.
His wife was away visiting family in Texas. There was no one to bother him as the President sat down on the edge of the bed and removed the cherry-red phone from his bottom bureau drawer.
He hated to make this call. He had been using this phone far too much in the past year. But the weight of the world had been dropped on his shoulders only eight months into his fledgling presidency.
With a deep appreciation for what it meant, he lifted the red receiver.
There was no need to dial. As usual, the phone was answered on the first ring.
"Yes, Mr. President?" said the familiar lemony voice.
"Hello, Smith," the President said. "The situation in New York and New England."
"Yes, sir," Smith said. "We are already working on it."
"Oh." The President was always impressed by the older man's efficiency. In a way, the lemon-voiced man reminded the President of his own secretary of defense.
"It is a complicated situation, but we believe we know who is behind the product tampering. My people left here an hour ago to put an end to the source. With any luck, the worst part of the crisis should be over by morning."
"They're now saying on the news that it resembles the case with that White woman in Boston a few years back."
"We believe she is the source," Smith said. "Either that or someone following in her footsteps. We have confirmed that it is a formula similar to hers."
"Great," the President muttered. "Another fine mess I've inherited. I'll add it to the pile." Sighing, the President took a sip from the glass he'd carried in from the living room. The ice was all but melted.
"Hopefully, we will end this by tomorrow," Smith said. "I have issued orders that all shipments of Lubec Springs water are to be intercepted. Once store back stock has been destroyed, there should be no more new cases."
The President stopped drinking. "Water?" he said. "That's what they're dumping this stuff in?"
"Yes, sir."
The President looked at the water in his glass.
"You might have given a guy a little warning, Smith."
"The problem has not spread farther down the East Coast than northern New Jersey. Washington is not a focus."
"My lucky day," the President said. Even so, he put his half-empty glass on the bureau. With his fingertips, he pushed it to a safe distance. "So why the Northeast? Lubec Springs is national. They could have shipped from coast to coast. There aren't any cases anywhere else, are there?"
"Not so far."
"Then what's so special about there?"
"We have not yet determined that," Smith replied. "If you'll excuse me now, Mr. President, my assistant has just returned."
"Smith?" the President called before the CURE director could break the connection.
"Yes, sir?"
"The FBI director mentioned something in my morning briefing about al-Khobar terrorists at an airport in Arkansas. Was that you?"
"My special person was involved, yes, sir," Smith said, obviousl
y impatient to end the call.
"Good work, Smith. We've got them on the run. I'm sure you'll do the same with this new problem." With a tight-lipped smile, he replaced the phone and slid the drawer shut.
There was no doubt that there were messes in America these days. This was just another tossed on the heap. But messes could be cleaned up. And despite the perilous times he lived in, the President remained an eternal optimist.
Standing, he carefully picked up his water glass and brought it into the presidential bathroom. A moment later came the sound of a flushing toilet.
UP THE EAST COAST in Smith's dimly lit office, Mark Howard had shut the door quietly and slid into his plain wooden chair. He waited for the CURE director to hang up the special phone in his bottom desk drawer before speaking.
"Is there some new catastrophe?" Mark asked warily.
"No," Smith replied, rolling the drawer shut. "And I wish I shared the President's confidence that we will prevail. I have had no luck since your second call."
He had been searching for potential research facilities with a Judith White connection ever since Mark had called from his cell phone in the GenPlus parking lot an hour ago.
Smith removed his glasses, touching them to his desktop with a soft click. "The President raised a question that has puzzled me," he said, massaging his tired eyes. "Why the Northeast alone? Aside from a single case in New Jersey late this morning, it hasn't extended beyond New York. There has not been one case in any other part of the country."
"Maybe it's just where the stuff happens to have been shipped so far," Mark suggested. "Maybe she's planning on expanding. Or maybe she ran out of formula."
"Perhaps. Although if it is as you suggested in your phone call and she has a facility for producing her formula, she would not have started without first having all she needed on hand."
"The guy I spoke to was certain there were alterations to the old formula, Dr. Smith."
"Then it is a certainty she has a lab." Smith replaced his glasses. "She had to know Lubec Springs would eventually be identified as the source. If simply increasing the numbers of her species was her goal, it would have made sense to blanket as wide an area as possible. She would have wanted to infect the greatest number of people before she was found out. Yet she seemed to concentrate in only one part of the country."
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