by Greg Bear
Dr. Jurie had shunted Dicken into the safest and least interesting position at Sandia Pathogenics. Putting him in safe, cold storage until needed.
An odd little dance of utility and security. Jurie was keeping Dicken under his thumb, as it were, just to know where he was and what he was up to, and possibly to pick his brain.
But also to confess? To be caught out?
Dicken would not rule out anything where Aram Jurie was concerned.
The man had passed along a list of rambling, long e-mail messages, cryptic, elusive, and a little too evocative for Dicken’s comfort. Jurie might be on to something, Dicken thought, a twisted and crazy but undeniably big insight.
Jurie held the belief—not exactly new—that viruses played a substantial but crude role in nearly every stage of embryonic development. But he had some interesting notions about how they did so:
“Genomic viruses want to play in the big game, but as genetic players go, they’re simple, constrained, fallen from grace. They can’t do the big stuff, so they engage in cryptic little elaborations, and the big game tolerates and then becomes addicted to their subtle plays…
“Weak in themselves, endogenous viruses may rely on a very different form of apoptosis, programmed cell suicide. ERVs express at certain times and present antigen on the cell surface. The cell is inspected by the agents of the immune system and killed. By coordinating how and which cells present antigen, genomic viruses can participate crudely in sculpting the embryo, or even the growing body after birth. Of course, they work to increase their numbers and their position in the species, in the extended genome. They work by maintaining a feeble but persistent control in the face of a constant and powerful assault by the immune system.
“And in mammals, they’ve won. We have surrendered some of the most crucial aspects of our lives to the viruses, just to give our babies time to develop in the womb, rather than in the constraining egg; time to develop more sophisticated nervous systems. A calculated gamble. All our generations are held ransom because of our indebtedness to the viral genes.
“Like getting a loan from the Mafia…”
Maggie Flynn knocked on the open door to Dicken’s office. “Got a moment?” she asked.
“Not really. Why?” Dicken asked, turning in his rolling chair. Flynn looked flushed and upset.
“Something’s come up. Jurie’s off the campus. He tells us to sit tight. I don’t think we can. We just aren’t prepared.”
“What is it?”
“We need expert advice,” Flynn said. “And you could be the expert.”
Dicken stood and stuck his hands in his pants pockets, alert and wary. “What sort of advice?”
“We have a new guest,” Flynn said. “Not a monkey.” She did not appear at all happy with the prospect.
If Maggie Flynn believed Dicken had Jurie’s confidence, who was he to correct her? Flynn’s pass could clear them both if his own pass was blocked—he had learned that much yesterday, visiting Presky’s monotreme study lab.
Flynn took him outside the building to a small cart and drove him around the five linked warehouses that contained the zoo. Out in the open, away from listening devices, she expressed herself more clearly.
“You’ve worked with SHEVA kids,” Flynn began. “I haven’t. We have a tough situation, medically speaking, ethically speaking, and I don’t know how to approach it. As the only married female in this block, Turner picked me to provide some moral support, establish a rapport… but frankly, I haven’t a clue.”
“What are you talking about?” Dicken asked.
Flynn stopped the cart, even more nervous. “You don’t know?” she asked, her voice rising a notch.
Dicken’s mind started to race and he saw he was on the edge of screwing up a golden opportunity. You’ve worked with… As the only married female…
They’re doing it. They’ve done it. He felt his pulse going up and hoped it did not show.
“Oh,” he said, with a fair imitation of casualness. “Virus children.”
Flynn bit her lip. “I don’t like that phrase.” She pushed the cart forward again with the little control stick. “Jurie never worked directly with them. Only with specimens. Neither has Turner, and of course Presky is an animal guy, no bedside manner whatsoever. We thought of you. Turner said that must be why you’re here, and why you’re being given shit theoretical work—so you can be pulled loose for something like this when the time comes.”
“Okay,” Dicken said, putting on a mask of professional caution. He pressed his lips together to keep from saying anything revealing or stupid.
“Something’s gone wrong at the border, I don’t know what. I’m not in that particular loop. Jurie’s in Arizona. Turner told me to bring you in before he gets back.” Her smile was fleeting and desperate. “The cat’s away.”
It was an in-house conspiracy after all, and not a very convincing one. Flynn seemed to expect him to say something reassuring and glib. The whole damned lab functioned on a morphine high of glibness, as if to hide the gnawing awareness that what they were doing might someday attract the attention of The Hague.
“God bless the beasts and children,” Dicken said. “Let’s go.”
On the north side of the array of Pathogenics warehouses, a segmented, inflatable silver enclosure perched on a black expanse of parking lot like some huge alien larva. An access tube led from the enclosure into Warehouse Number 5, which contained most of the primate study labs. Dicken noticed two outside compressors and a complicated, freshly assembled sterilization unit on the south end of the sausage.
He didn’t realize how big the enclosure was until they were almost upon it. The whole complex was as big as one of the warehouses and covered at least an acre.
They parked the cart and entered Warehouse 5 through the delivery door. Turner met them in a small clinic inside the warehouse—a hospital clinic, obviously equipped for humans and not just for primates. “Glad you could make it, Christopher,” he said. “Jurie’s dealing with some mess at the border. A bunch of protesters blocked a lab bus, refused to let it enter Arizona. They had help from the local police, apparently. Jurie had to order up another bus at the last minute and route it around the roadblocks.”
“No surprise,” Flynn said. Dicken glanced between them both. What he saw chilled him. The glibness had completely evaporated. They knew their careers were on the line.
“The preparations have been obvious, but Jurie only told us yesterday,” Turner said. Their statements piled together.
“She’s a very unhappy girl,” Flynn said.
“I’m not sure we should even have her here,” Turner said.
“She’s pregnant,” Flynn said.
“A rape, we’re told. Her foster father,” Turner said.
“Oh, God, I didn’t know it was rape,” Flynn said, and pressed her knuckles to her cheek. “She’s only fourteen.”
“They brought her from a school in Arizona,” Flynn said. “Jurie calls it our school. That’s where we’ve been getting most of our specimens.”
“She’s pregnant?” Dicken asked, dumbfounded, and then wondered if he had blown his cover.
“That’s not generally known even in the clinic,” Turner said. “I’d appreciate some discretion.”
Dicken let his astonishment come forward. “That’s major.” His voice cracked. “But she’s 52 xx. What about polyploidy?”
“I only know what I see,” Turner said grimly. “She’s pregnant by her foster father.”
“That’s absolutely huge,” Dicken said.
“She arrived at the school a month ago,” Turner said. “We discovered her pregnancy when we processed a set of her blood tests. Jurie almost had a heart attack when he got the results from the lab. He seemed elated. He got her transferred to Pathogenics last week without telling the rest of us.”
“I was so mad,” Flynn said. “I could have clobbered him.”
“What else could we do? The school couldn’t take care of her, an
d it’s for damn sure no hospital would touch her.”
Dicken held up his hand. “Who’s working the clinic?” he asked.
“Maggie, Tommy Wrigley—you met Tommy at the party, and Thomas Powers. Some people brought in from California; we don’t know them. And, of course, Jurie, on the research side. But he’s never even visited the girl.”
“What’s her condition?”
“She’s about three months along. Not doing too well. We think she may have self-induced Shiver,” Flynn said.
“That is not confirmed,” Turner said angrily. “She’s acting as if she has the flu, and that’s all it may be. But we’re being extra cautious. And this information goes nowhere… don’t even tell anyone else at Pathogenics.”
“But Dr. Dicken would know if it’s Shiver, wouldn’t he?” Flynn said defensively. “Isn’t that why Jurie brought you here?”
“Let’s look at the girl,” Dicken said.
“Her name is Fremont, Helen Fremont,” Flynn said. “She’s originally from Nevada. Las Vegas, I think.”
“Reno,” Turner corrected. Then, his face collapsing in utter misery, his shoulders slumping, he added, “I don’t think I can take this much longer. I really don’t.”
34
BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON
Kaye and Marge Cross sat in the back of the taxi in silence. Kaye looked at the passive neck of the driver below his turban, caught a glimpse of his small grin in the rearview mirror. He was whistling to himself, happy. For him, having a SHEVA granddaughter was no great burden, obviously.
Kaye did not know much about conditions for SHEVA children in Pakistan. Generally, traditional cultures—Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists—had been more accepting of the new children. That was both surprising and humbling.
Cross drummed her fingers on her knee and looked out the window at the highway, passing cars. A long semi rolled past with TRANS-NATIONAL BIRMINGHAM PORK emblazoned in huge red letters on the sides of its two trailers.
“Spent lots of money on that one,” Cross murmured.
Kaye assumed she was referring to pig tissue transplants. “Where are we going, Marge?” she asked.
“Just driving,” Cross said. Her chin bounced up and down, and Kaye could not be sure whether she was nodding or just moving her jaw in time to the truck ruts in the roadway.
“That address is in a residential neighborhood. I know Baltimore and Maryland pretty well,” Kaye said. “I assume you aren’t kidnapping me.”
Cross gave her a weak smile. “Hell, you’re paying,” she said. “There’s some people I think you’ll want to meet.”
“All right,” Kaye said.
“Lars came down pretty hard on Robert.”
“Robert’s a sanctimonious prick.”
Cross shrugged. “Nevertheless, I’m not going to take Lars’s advice.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Kaye said. She hated to lose her labs and her researchers, even now. Doing science was her last comfort, her lab the last place she could take refuge and lose herself in work.
“I’m letting you go,” Cross said.
To her surprise, the blow did not feel so heavy after all. It was Kaye’s turn to nod in time to the cab’s rubbery suspension.
“Your work with me is over,” Cross said.
“Fine,” Kaye said tightly.
“Isn’t it?” Cross asked.
“Of course,” Kaye said, her heart thumping. What I have been putting off doing. What I cannot do alone.
“What more would you do at Americol?”
“Pure research on hormonal activation of retroviral elements in humans,” Kaye said, still grasping at the past. “Focus on stress-related signaling systems. Transfer of transcription factors and regulating genes by ERV to somatic cells. Study the viruses as common genetic transport and regulatory systems for the body. Prove that the all-disease model is wrong.”
“It’s a good area,” Cross said. “A little too wild for Americol, but I can make some calls and get you a position elsewhere. Frankly, I don’t think you’re going to have time.”
Kaye lifted her eyebrows and thinned her lips. “If I’m no longer employed by you, how can you know how much time I’ll have?”
Cross smiled, but the smile vanished quickly and she frowned out the window. “Robert picked the wrong hammer to hit you with,” she said. “Or at least he did it in front of the wrong woman.”
“How’s that?”
“Twenty-three years ago come August, I was beginning to drum up venture capital for my first company. I was packing my schedule with meetings and heavy-duty lunches.” Her expression turned wistful, as if she were recalling an old, wonderful romance. “God dropped in. Bad timing, to say the least. He hit me so hard I had to drive to the Hamptons and hide out in a hotel room for a week. Basically I swooned.”
She was avoiding direct eye contact, like a little girl confessing. Kaye leaned forward to see her face more clearly. Kaye had never seen Cross look so vulnerable.
“I can’t tell you how scared I was that He was a sign of madness, epilepsy, or worse.”
“You thought it was a he?”
Cross nodded. “Doesn’t make sense for a couple of strong women, does it? It bothered me a lot, then. But no matter how bothered I was, how scared I was, I never thought about visiting a radiology center. That was brilliant, Kaye. Not cheap, but brilliant.”
Kaye glanced at the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. He was obviously trying to ignore the words being spoken in the backseat, trying to give them privacy—and not succeeding.
“Love isn’t the word, but it’s all we have. Love without desire.” Cross reached up to wipe her perfectly manicured fingers beneath her eyes. “I’ve never told anybody. Someone like Robert would have used it against me.”
“But it’s the truth,” Kaye said.
“No, it isn’t,” Cross said peevishly. “It’s a personal experience. It was real to you and to me, but that doesn’t get us anywhere in this old, cruel world. That same vision might have compelled someone else to burn old women as witches or kill Englishmen, like Joan of Arc. Cranking up the old Inquisition.”
“I don’t think so,” Kaye said.
“How do you know the butchers and murderers didn’t get a message?”
Kaye had to admit that she did not.
Cross said, “I’ve spent so much of my time trying to forget, just so I could do the work I had to do to get where I wanted to be. Sometimes it was cruel work, stepping on other folks’s dreams. And whenever I remembered, it just crushed me again. Because I knew this thing, it, He, would never punish me, no matter what I did or how I misbehaved. Not just forgiveness—no judgment. Only love. He can’t be real,” Cross said. “What He said and what He did doesn’t make any sense.”
“He felt real to me,” Kaye said.
“Did you ever hear what happened to Thomas Aquinas?” Cross asked.
Kaye shook her head.
“The most admired theologian of all. Furiously adept thinker, logical beyond all measure—and pretty hard to read nowadays. But smart, no doubt about it, and a young fellow when he made his mark. Student of Albertus Magnus. Defender of Aristotle in the Church. He wrote big thick tracts. Admired throughout Christendom, and still revered as a thinker to this day. On the morning of December 6, 1273, he was saying Mass in Naples. He was older, about my age. Right in the middle of the sermon, he just stopped speaking, and stared at nothing. Or stared at everything. I imagine he must have gawped like a fish.” Cross’s expression was quizzical, distant.
“He stopped writing, dictating, stopped contributing to the Summa, his life’s work. And when he was pressed to explain why he had stopped, he said, ‘I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and I now await the end of my life.’ He died a few months later.” Cross snorted. “No wonder Aquinas was brought up short, the poor bastard. I know a hierarchy when I see one. I’m little better than a wriggly worm in a pond compared to wh
at touched me. I wouldn’t dare try to tell God how to behave.” She smiled. “Yes, dear, I can be humble.” Cross patted Kaye’s hand. “And that’s that. You’re fired. You’ve done all you need to do, for now, at my company.”
“What about Jackson?” Kaye asked.
“He’s limited, but he’s still useful, and there’s still important work for him to do. I’ll have Lars watch over him.”
“Jackson doesn’t understand,” Kaye said.
“If you mean he’s narrowly focused, that’s just what I need right now. He’ll cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s, trying to prove he’s right. Good for him.”
“But he’ll get it wrong.”
“Then he’ll do it thoroughly.” Cross was adamant. “Robert’s problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance.”
“God should touch him,” Kaye said bitterly, and then flushed in embarrassment, as if that were any kind of punishment.
Cross considered this seriously for a moment. “I’m surprised God touched me,” she said. “I’d be shocked if He wanted to have anything to do with Robert.”
35
NEW MEXICO
Inside the silver tent were eight single wide mobile home trailers, sitting up on blocks on a wrinkled and patched gray plastic floor and surrounded, at a distance of thirty feet, by a circle of transparent plastic panels topped with razor wire. The trailers did not look in the least comfortable or friendly.
Dicken tried to orient himself in the general gloomy light that seeped through the silver tent. They had entered on the western side. North, then, was where a small Emergency Action van was parked, the same van that had presumably brought Helen Fremont from Arizona. South of the mobile homes and the wall of plastic and razor wire, a small maze of tables and lab benches had been set up and stocked with standard medical and lab diagnostic equipment.
A few klieg lights mounted on long steel poles supplemented the dim sunlight.
