Darwin's Radio d-1

by Greg Bear

  He opened his office door and stood for a moment in the small room, savoring the cool and quiet. He wished he could be in Lagos or Tegucigalpa. He was much more at home working under rugged conditions in remote places; even the Republic of Georgia had been a bit too civilized, and therefore a bit too dangerous, for his tastes.

  He much preferred viruses to out-of-control humans.

  Dicken dropped the packet on his desk. For a moment, he could not remember why he was here. He had come to pick up something for Augustine. Then he recalled: the Northside Hospital autopsy reports on first-stage pregnancies. Augustine was working on a plan so top-secret Dicken knew nothing about it, but all the files pertaining to HERV and SHEVA in the building were being copied for his benefit.

  He found the reports, then stood pensively, remembering the conversation with Jane Salter months ago, about the screaming of the monkeys in these old subbasement rooms.

  He tapped his toe on the floor to the rhythm of an old and morbid child’s song and murmured, “The bugs go in and the bugs go out, the monkeys will scream and the apes will shout…”

  No doubt about it anymore. Christopher Dicken was a team player, hoping just to survive with his wits and his emotions in a few well-ordered pieces.

  He picked up the vinyl packet and the folders and left the office.

  65

  Baltimore

  APRIL 28

  Kaye swung the garment bag to her shoulder. Mitch grabbed two suitcases and stood in the door, held open by a rubber chock. They had already loaded three boxes into the car in the condo garage.

  “They tell me to keep in touch,” Kaye said, and held up a black cell phone for Mitch’s inspection. “Marge pays for this. And Augustine tells me not to give any interviews. That I can live with. What about you?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “With kisses?” Kaye bumped him with her hip.

  Benson followed them down to the garage. He watched them load Mitch’s car with a plain expression of disapproval.

  “You don’t like my idea of freedom?” Kaye asked the agent with a piquant expression as she slammed the trunk. The car’s rear springs groaned.

  “You’re taking everything with you, ma’am,” Benson responded stonily.

  “He doesn’t approve of the company you keep,” Mitch said.

  “Well,” Kaye said, standing beside Benson, brushing back her hair. “That’s because he’s a man of taste.”

  Benson smiled. “You’re a fool to leave without protection.”

  “Maybe,” Kaye said. “Thanks for your vigilance. Pass along my gratitude.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Benson said. “Good luck.”

  Kaye hugged him. Benson blushed.

  “Let’s go,” Kaye said.

  Kaye fingered the door frame of the Buick, its dusty blue finish powdery and matte with wear. She asked Mitch how old the car was.

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Ten, fifteen years.”

  “Find a dealership,” Kaye said. “I’m going to buy you a brand-new Land Rover.”

  “That’s roughing it, all right,” Mitch said, lifting an eyebrow. “I’d prefer we be less obvious.”

  “I love the way you do that,” Kaye said, lifting her much less impressive eyebrow dramatically. Mitch laughed.

  “Screw it, then,” she said. “Drive the Buick. We’ll camp out under the stars.”

  66

  Approaching Washington, D.C.

  The Air Force Falcon passenger jet rolled gently to the east. Augustine sipped a Coke and glanced frequently through the window, clearly nervous about flying. Dicken had not known this about Augustine until now; they had never flown together before.

  “We can make a strong case that even should second-stage SHEVA fetuses survive birth, they’ll be carriers of a wide variety of infectious HERVs,” Augustine said.

  “Whose evidence?” Jane Salter asked. Her face was a little flushed from the heat in the airplane before takeoff; she was at best mildly unimpressed by these military trappings.

  “I’ve hadTaskforce researchers putting together biopsy results for the last two weeks, just on a hunch. We know HERVs express under all sorts of conditions, but the particles have never been infectious until now.”

  “We still don’t know what the hell purpose the noninfec-tious particles serve, if any,” Salter said. The other staffers, younger and less experienced, sat quietly in their seats, content to listen.

  “No good purpose,” Augustine said, tapping the seat arm. He swallowed hard and looked out the window again. “The HERV continue to produce viral particles that aren’t infectious…Until SHEVA codes for a complete tool kit, everything necessary for a virus to assemble and escape a cell. I have six expert opinions, including Jackson’s, that SHEVA may ‘teach’ other HERV how to be infectious again. They’ll be most active in individuals with rapidly dividing cells, and that means SHEVA fetuses. We could have to deal with diseases we haven’t seen in millions of years.”

  “Diseases that may no longer be pathogenic in humans,” Dicken said.

  “Can we take that chance?” Augustine asked. Dicken shrugged.

  “So what are you going to recommend?” Salter asked.

  “Washington is already under curfew, and they’ll have it under martial law the instant someone decides to break a plate glass window or roll a car. No demonstrations, no inflammatory comments…Politicians hate to be lynched. It won’t be long. The common folk are like cows in a herd, and there’s been more than enough lightning to make even the cowboys nervous.”

  “Infelicitous comparison, Dr. Augustine,” Salter said dryly.

  “Well, I’ll refine it,” Augustine said. “I’m not at my best when I’m at twenty thousand feet.”

  “You think we’re going to be under martial law,” Dicken said, “and we can sequester all pregnant women and take their babies away from them…for testing?”

  “It’s horrible,” Augustine admitted. “Most if not all of the fetuses will probably die. But if they do survive, I think we can make a case that we’ll have to sequester them.”

  “Talk about throwing gas on a fire,” Dicken said.

  Augustine thoughtfully agreed. “I’ve been racking my brains trying to find a different solution. I will entertain alternatives.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t muddy the waters right now,” Salter said.

  “I have no intention of saying or doing anything now. The work goes on.”

  “We’d better be on firm ground,” Dicken said.

  “Damned right,” Augustine said with a grimace. “Terra firma, and the sooner the better.”

  66

  Leaving Baltimore

  Everyone has a bitch,” Mitch observed as he steered them along state route 26 out of the city, staying away from the main highways. Too many demonstrations — by truckers, motorists, even bicyclists, all claiming a shot at civil disobedience — had shut down the main routes. As it was, they had to wait twenty minutes in the middle of downtown as police cleared tons of garbage dumped by protesting sanitation workers.

  “We failed them,” Kaye said.

  “You didn’t fail them,” Mitch said as he tried to find an alley to turn into.

  “I screwed up and didn’t make my case.” Kaye hummed nervously to herself.

  “Something wrong?” Mitch asked.

  “Nothing,” she said briskly. “Just the whole damned planet.”

  In West Virginia, they pulled into a KOA campground and paid thirty dollars for a tent site. Mitch set up the lightweight dome tent he had bought in Austria before he met Tilde, and a small camp stove, under a young oak tree looking out over a low valley where two tractors sat idle in a carefully furrowed field.

  The sun had gone down twenty minutes before and the sky was mottled with light clouds. The air was just beginning to cool. Kaye’s hair was sticky, the elastic of her panties chafed.

  One other family had set up two tents about a hundred yards away, otherwise the campground w
as empty.

  Kaye climbed through the rainflap into the tent. “Come in here,” she told Mitch. She pulled off her dress and lay back on the sleeping bag Mitch had unrolled. Mitch set the campstove down and poked his head into the tent.

  “My God, woman,” he said admiringly.

  “Do you smell me?” she asked.

  “I surely do, ma’am,” he said in agent Benson’s fine North Carolina accent. He slipped in beside her. “It’s still a little warm.”

  “I smell you,” Kaye said. She had a needful and serious look on her face. She helped him out of his shirt, and he kicked aside his pants before reaching for the shaving kit where he was keeping the condoms. As he started to rip open the foil package, she bent over and kissed his erect penis. “Not this time,” she said. She licked him swiftly, looked up. “I want you now, nothing in between.”

  Mitch took hold of her head and lifted her mouth away from him. “No,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “You’re fertile,” he said.

  “How the hell do you know?” Kaye asked.

  “I can see it in your skin. I can smell it.”

  “I bet you can,” she said admiringly. “Can you smell anything else?” She pushed closer to him, lifted over his head, swung her knee to the other side.

  “Spring,” Mitch said, returning the favor.

  She arched her back, half-twisted, and deftly fondled him, as he nuzzled between her legs.

  “Ballet dancer,” Mitch said, his voice muffled.

  “You’re fertile, too,” she said. “You didn’t say otherwise.”

  “Mm.”

  She lifted her torso again, rolled off him, and swung around to face him. “You’re shedding,” she said.

  Mitch screwed up his face in puzzlement. “What?”

  “You’re shedding SHEVA. I test positive.”

  “Good Christ, Kaye. You sure know how to trash a mood.” Mitch pushed back and sat with his legs pulled up in the corner of the tent. “I didn’t think it could happen so fast.”

  “Something thinks I’m your woman,” Kaye said. “Nature says we’re going to be together a long time. I want that to be true.”

  Mitch was at a complete loss. “I do, too, but we don’t need to act like idiots.”

  “Every man wants to make love to a fertile woman. It’s in their genes.”

  “That is complete bullshit,” Mitch said, and pushed back from her. “What in hell are you doing?”

  Kaye hunkered across from him and rested on her knees. She made his head throb. The entire tent smelled of both of them and he could not think straight. “We can prove them wrong, Mitch.”

  “About what?”

  “I once worried that work and family wouldn’t fit together. Now, there’s no conflict. I am my own laboratory.”

  Mitch shook his head vehemently. “No.”

  Kaye lay down beside him, pillowing her head on her arms. “Pretty forward and up front, no?” she asked softly.

  “We haven’t the slightest idea what’s going to happen,” Mitch said. His eyes were brimming, warm, half from fear, half from another emotion he could not define — something close to pure physical joy. His body wanted her so intensely, wanted her now. If he gave in, he knew it would be the supreme sexual act of his entire life. And if he gave in now, he worried he would never forgive himself.

  “I know you believe we’re right, and I know you’d be a good father,” Kaye said, eyes narrowed to slits. She slowly lifted one leg. “If we don’t do something now, maybe it will never happen, and we’ll never know. Be my man. Please.”

  The tears came in a rush and Mitch hid his face. She rose beside him and held him and apologized, feeling his shaking. He mumbled a confused and jerking series of words about how women simply did not understand, never could understand.

  Kaye soothed him and lay down beside him and for a while the breeze blew the rain flap gently over their silence.

  “It’s nothing wrong,” she said. She wiped his face and looked down on him, frightened at what she had provoked. “It’s the only right thing there is, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kaye said stiffly as they loaded the car. A cool current of morning air slopped up from the flat farmland below the campsite. The leaves on the oak trees whispered. The tractors stood motionless on their perfect and empty furrows.

  “No reason to be sorry,”Mitch said, shaking out the tent. He folded it and rolled it into its long fabric sheath, then, with Kaye’s help, unsocketed the tent poles and clapped them together into a fasces connected top to bottom by their stretching cords.

  They had not made love during the night, and Mitch had slept very little.

  “Any dreams?” Kaye asked as they sipped hot coffee from the pot on the camp stove. Mitch shook his head. “You?”

  “I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours,” Kaye said. “I dreamed of working at EcoBacter. All these people were coming in and out. You were there.” Kaye did not want to tell Mitch that in the dream she did not recognize him.

  “Not very exciting,” Mitch said.

  As they traveled, they saw little out of the ordinary, out of place. They drove west on the two-lane road through small towns, coal towns, old towns, tired towns, towns repainted and repaired, gussied up, with their grand old homes in the rich old neighborhoods made into bed-and-breakfasts for well-to-do young people from Philadelphia and Washington and even New York.

  Mitch switched on the radio and they heard about candlelight vigils in the Capitol, ceremonies honoring the dead senators, funerals for others killed in the riot. There were stories on the vaccine effort, how scientists now believed the torch had been passed to James Mondavi or perhaps a team at Princeton. Jackson seemed on the descent, and despite all that had happened, Kaye felt sorry for him.

  They ate at the High Street Grill in Morgantown, a new restaurant designed to look old and established, with Colonial decor and thick wood tables coated with clear plastic resin. The sign out front declared the restaurant to be “Just a bit older than the Millennium, and a hell of a lot less significant.”

  Kaye watched Mitch closely as she picked at her club sandwich.

  Mitch avoided her gaze and looked around at the customers, all stolidly involved in fueling their bodies. Older couples sat in silence; a lone man dropped his wool cap on the table next to a foam cup of coffee; three teenage girls in a booth picked at sundaes with long steel spoons. The staff was young and friendly and none of the women wore masks.

  “Makes me believe I’m just an ordinary guy,” Mitch said quietly, looking down at the bowl of chili before him. “I never thought I’d make a good father.”

  “Why?” Kaye asked, equally quiet, as if they were sharing a secret.

  “I’ve always focused on my work, on wandering around and going places where there was interesting stuff. I’m pretty self-centered. I never thought any intelligent woman would want me to be a father, or a husband, for that matter. Some made it perfectly clear that wasn’t why they were with me.”

  “Yeah,” Kaye said, completely tuned in on him, as if every word might contain an answer essential to solving something that puzzled her.

  The waitress asked if they needed more tea or dessert. They declined.

  “This is so ordinary,” Mitch said, lifting his spoon and swinging it through a small arc to measure the restaurant. “I feel like a big bug in the middle of a Norman Rockwell living room.”

  Kaye laughed. “There,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘there’?”

  “That was you, saying that. And I just felt my insides quiver.”

  “It’s the food,” Mitch said.

  “It’s you.”

  “I need to be a husband before I can be a father.”

  “It certainly isn’t the food. I’m shaking, Mitch.” She held out her hand and he let go of the spoon to grasp it. Her fingers were cold and her teeth were chattering though the interior was warm.

  “I think we shou
ld get married,” Mitch said.

  “That’s a lovely idea,” Kaye said.

  Mitch held out his hand. “Will you marry me?”

  Kaye held her breath for a moment. “Oh, God, yes,” she said with a short puff of resolve.

  “We’re crazy and we don’t know what we’re in for.”

  “We don’t,” Kaye agreed.

  “We’re on the edge of trying to make someone new, different from us,” Mitch said. “Don’t you find that terrifying?”

  “Utterly,” Kaye said.

  “And if we’re wrong, it’s just going to be disaster after disaster. Pain. Grief.”

  “We are not wrong,” Kaye said. “Be my man.”

  “I am your man.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “I love you in ways I’ve never felt before.”

  “So fast. That’s incredible.”

  Mitch nodded emphatically. “But I love you too much not to be a little critical.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m troubled by you calling yourself a laboratory. That sounds cold and maybe a little out of it, Kaye.”

  “I hope you see through the words. See what I hope to say and do.”

  “I might,” Mitch said. “Just barely. The air feels very thin where we are, right now.”

  “Like being on a mountain,” Kaye said.

  “I don’t like mountains much,” Mitch said.

  “Oh, I do,” Kaye said, thinking of the slopes and white peaks of Mount Kazbeg. “They give you freedom.”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said. “You jump off, and you get ten thousand feet of pure freedom.”

  As Mitch was paying their bill, Kaye walked toward the rest rooms. On impulse, she pulled her phone card and a piece of paper from her wallet and lifted the receiver on a pay phone.

  She was calling Mrs. Luella Hamilton at her home in Richmond, Virginia. She had persuaded the number out of the hospital switchboard at the clinic.

  A deep, smooth male voice answered.

  “Excuse me, is Mrs. Hamilton in?”