The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  I may have winked. I meant, of course, that the National Epidemiology Center would become part of the Department of Creative Science, and I would be ruling him. But the whole bit was lost on him. A very dull em.

  “My God,” Paul said. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could compute this botulism thing? What a leg up for the DCS!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  We were driving back to Chevy Chase from the Georgetown White House. Paul was in an ebullient mood.

  “It would solidify us with the Chief Director,” he said. Almost laughed. “He’d get behind us all the way.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How the hell are they getting botulism, Nick? Got any ideas?” “Ideas?” I said. “Not a one.”

  “That question you asked the CD about Bigelow being there— you think it’s a programmed operation? Terrorist?”

  “Could be.”

  “But how?'

  “Don’t know, Paul.”

  “But the motive? No letters, no threats. Even if it was an outfit like the Society of Nothing, they’d make phone calls to the media, and so forth. You know how high the ego factor is with terrorists. Why would anyone do it without taking credit?”

  “What?” I said. “Oh,” I said. And grimaced. “I don’t know, Paul. Maybe just to destabilize the government. As basic as that. ” Paul was silent. I thought he was shaken. Then he made one of those increasingly frequent jinks that vaguely disturbed me.

  “Nick, we need a security officer,” he said.

  “What?”

  “At the DCS office. We’re adding objects. Expanding. And I dealing with a lot of classified bumf. We need a security officer. For i starters. And eventually, a security staff.”

  “So? Get one.”

  “How about Art Roach?”

  "Roach? Why him?”

  “Nick, he’s down to a black zipsuit. He’d be grateful for the chance. And we own him, Nick. I’ve still got his tape with Seymour I Dove. He’ll behave. And he knows his service. Doesn’t he, Nick?”

  “I suppose so. All right. Maybe we owe him something. Bring him over from DOB. Serve through Penelope Mapes; she’ll arrange it.”

  “Right, Nick. Now we’re beginning to move. Don’t you feel that, Nick? That things are coming our way?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I took a hot shower. As hot as I could endure. I slipped naked into bed. Knowing I would be long awake. I wanted to be.

  When I had been shopping for a Christmas present for Grace Wingate, I had seen—in a unisex boutique in Manhattan’s Olympic Tower—a tooty blouse of a gauzy, see-through fabric. Artfully imprinted on the front, in color, were female breasts. When the blouse was worn, you could not be certain what you saw was real. That was the jerk.

  Lying immobile, awake in bed, my jerk was in not knowing if the ef was real, existed or created. My own illusion. Why? Her neck was too long. Chin too pointed. Nose too thin. That flame of ashen hair. Undoubtedly tinted. Undoubtedly. The voice too fruity. And was there not an absence of fine intelligence? She did pick up on things. But not immediately. Certainly not Angela Berri's sharp wit. And certainly not Millie Jean Grunwald’s young, tender innocence. And certainly not Maya Leighton’s skilled and enthusiastic sensuality. But still . . . Still. . . .

  What? What? Why was I willing to risk all, everything, for a convoluted ear?

  Z-3

  I served tough on institutionalizing the speeches I was to deliver to establishment groups all over the mainland US. And, if time allowed, in overseas suburbs.

  I was jotting additional notes in my office in the GPA-1 compound when Ellen Dawes buzzed to tell me a courier had arrived with a delivery for me. Personally signed receipt requested. It was a steel box from the National Epidemiology Center, sealed with metal straps and plastiwax marks.

  I signed for it, shoved it under my desk. I flashed Bob Spivey, leader of the Neuropharmacology Team. This wasn’t his discipline—it wasn’t anyone’s, actually; we had no special chem-an team—but Spivey ruled an em named Claude Burlinghouse. The Sherlock Holmes of chemical analysis.

  When Spivey came on screen, I explained what I wanted.

  “Extreme priority and security,” I told him.

  “You want Claude, I suppose?” he asked.

  “Who else? Robert, this stuff is mucho toxic.”

  “The fishbowl?” “I’d say so, yes. How soon?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Bits and pieces of a corpus long stopped. Botulism indicated."

  “Oh-ho,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But not necessarily inert.”

  “Three days?” he asked.

  “One,” I said.

  “Settle for two?” he asked.

  Laughing, we agreed on two. He said he’d send a messenger to pick up the specimens.

  Then fat Leo Bernstein banged my door open. Without knocking. As usual. I watched Leo lower his bulk slowly into a chair, drape his bulging thighs over one of the arms.

  “How long since you’ve seen your piccolo?” I asked him. Cruelly. “Without a mirror?”

  “Who wants to see my piccolo?” He shrugged. “Not me. Nick I’m out of a job.”

  I stared at him a long moment. I knew the brain that hummed away in that lardy carcass. But if he didn’t chisel off some of the blubber, that brain would be smothered to a stop in another ten years. I didn’t want that.

  “What do you mean out of a job?” I asked him.

  "Fred is stabilized. No weight loss. The EEG is firmed. That hound’s brain is immortal. Until someone pulls the plug. Doesn’t that make you feel glad all over?”

  “Congratulations, Leo.”

  I knew how many long hours he had served on the project. There wasn’t another biochemist in the US—in the world!—who could have done it. The fat slob was a genius.

  “Want to see the bumf?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “So I’m out of a job.”

  “Don’t say ‘job,’ ” I told him. “Say ‘service.’ ”

  “Say shit!” he said. Disgustedly. “Anyway, I’m finished. Got nothing to do.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Well, there is. . . . No, forget it.”

  He looked up.

  “What?”

  “No, nothing. Sorry I mentioned it. Just forget it, Leo.”

  “Goddamn it, what is it?”

  “Leo, I’ll flat with you. It’s a top priority service. Hot security. Right up your plump kazoo. But I don’t think you’re the em for it. ”

  “Why the hell not?” he demanded angrily.

  “Leo, I told you,” I said patiently. “It’s top priority. I need the answers yesterday. That means I need an object with energy. Active. Someone who can get around. Look at you; you’re a blob. Too bad. You’d have gotten a lot of profit from it.”

  “Nick, what the hell is it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Can’t tell you. Uh sec. You have no need to know. But you talk about the head of Fred III being immortal. The object who comes up with the answers to this tickler will be immortal. And no one will ever pull the plug on that.' ’

  He groaned. I had him then. And knew it.

  “Look, Leo,” I told him. “I’ll put you on this if you’ll do something for me.”

  “What?” he said. “Anything!” he said.

  “Lose three pounds a week. Promise, and I’ll assign you. Then I’ll weigh you. Down in the gym. We’ll check every week. The first j week you lose less than three pounds, you’re off the project. How | about it?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “I’ll drop three pounds a week. Really I will, Nick. Easy.”

  “At first,” I said. “Not after a month or so. But you stick to the three-pounds-a-week loss until I get you deflated. I’ll tell you when I to stop. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Sure, agreed! What is it, Nick? What’s the i project?”

  “Just what you’ve done on Fred III,
” I said. “But for a human object.”

  We stared at each other. But really only I was staring at him. His j eyes were on me, but his stare was inward. He was immediately J computing, calculating, analyzing, figuring, determining the parameters of the problem, how to define it, how to encompass it. “I’ll need more staff,” he said.

  “As many as you want.”

  “Big budget for Tinkertoys.”

  “You’ll get all the equipment needed.”

  “I can go so far in vitro,” he said. “But sooner or later I’ll need ; human volunteers.”

  “You’ll get them,” I said. “And I get three pounds a week.”

  “Goyische Shylock,” he said.

  I gave Bob Spivey and his Neuropharmacology Team—particularly Claude Burlinghouse—the two days he had requested for heavy analysis of the specimens forwarded from the National Epidemiology Center. I was certain, almost, what they would finalize. But I needed confirmation.

  The fishbowl was in K Lab. Similar installations were frequently shown on TV and movie screens. A sealed, glass-enclosed room. No one within. Objects stood outside, manipulating specimens with long, jointed, remote-controlled grabbers. Stuff was brought into the fishbowl via a sterile lock. Chemanalysis computers were inside. Readouts or printouts were outside.

  It was a slow, careful process. Especially when dealing with toxic and/or radioactive matter. The human factor was still important. In the handling, choice of technology, selection of equipment, presentation of evidence. Experts ruled our world. And not only attorneys and CPA’s.

  Standing outside the fishbowl with Bob Spivey and others‘on his team—all of us in white paper gowns and caps, like so many eager butchers—I watched with fascination while Claude Burlinghouse manipulated his stainless steel arms, hands, and fingers inside the glass. With deliberate, beautiful delicacy, he slid amounted, microshaved specimen into the slot of a chemanalysis computer. A steel hand reached up slowly. A shiny forefinger pushed a button.

  Burlinghouse turned to us.

  “That’s it,” he said. “The last. Lousy specimens.”

  It took less than a minute for the final analysis. It was but one of a dozen that had been completed during the previous two days. An ef operator, sitting at the console of the master pharmaceutical file computer, added the information to what she had already stored. She faced both a cathode readout screen and an electric printout typewriter. She could have her choice or could combine the two. For instance, if she punched the readout button and then typed on the input board: CH3COOC6H4COOH, the screen would immediately read ASPIRIN. Impressed?

  But of course the master file computer was capable of infinitely more complex tasks than that. In its memory bank it had stored more than a million recipes consisting of elements and compounds. Fed input by the physiocoanalytic and chemanalysis computers, it would ponder a millisecond or two, then tell you what the stuff was you had submitted. Or, if it was an original mixture, unstored, the computer would laconically remark, on screen or typed, unknown.

  I knew what was coming—and it did. The operator pushed buttons, and almost immediately the screen showed: restricted. 416HBL-CW3.

  Bob Spivey, Claude Burlinghouse, the others—all looked at me. Disappointed.

  I stared at the screen. Then said, “Erase. Everything.”

  Horrified, she looked to Spivey for confirmation. He nodded. Obediently she pushed a button to wipe the screen. Then she got busy blanking the input from the satellite analytic computers.

  “Thanks, Robert,” I said to Spivey. Stroking his palm. “Flame the specimens. Thank you, Claude. ” Stroking his palm. “Just what I wanted. Good service.”

  I strode away. Leaving them all floating. But they had no need to know.

  Next stop: the office of Ass DepDir Rad. Edward Nolan, the em who had taken over from Paul Bumford when Paul moved to Washington. Ed was absent on a threeday. But I got no hassle from his Executive Assistant: She readily allowed me access to his safe. The combination had not been changed since it had been my safe, or since it had been Paul’s safe. So much for security. And the drug code book was still on the upper shelf, left-hand corner. I was certain I remembered, but I felt it wise to check. I flipped pages, scanned, and there it was: 416HBL-CW3. Just as I recalled it.

  It had started almost fifty years previously with the US Army’s Office of Research & Development, as it was then called. Clostridium botulinum was but one of hundreds of protozoa, fungi, and bacteria they tinkered with in developing positive approaches to chemwar: poisons, pollutants, nerve gases, incapacitators, hypnotics, etc. At that point in time, it was believed C. botulinum toxin was the most virulent. Since then, of course, improved products had been developed.

  We now skip to 1988. Interest in Clostrium botulinum had waned. There were simpler and more efficient means available.

  But in 1988, a US intelligence sleeper in the Soviet Union reported a laboratory in Vitebsk had suddenly organized a restricted research project on botulism. The report was confirmed by other sources, and the flap was on.

  Several US scientific agencies were put on a crash basis to develop: (1) Botulism as a viable chemwar agent; and (2) A defense against botulism used as a viable chemwar agent. One of the agencies assigned to this service was the Division of Research & Development, SATSEC, DOB. Which was how I became intimately acquainted with Clostridium botulinum. I was eighteen at the time.

  Approximately six months after the Phase II alert, it was learned that the Vitebsk lab was doing exactly what had been reported: It was researching the causes and prevention of botulism. Because there had been an outbreak of food poisoning in the Pinsk area, caused by spoiled canned blintzes. The Vitebsk research led to | improved commercial food processing in the Soviet Union.

  But before our Phase II alert was rescinded, civilian scientists under contract to the US Army had succeeded in developing a fully aerobic strain of Clostridium botulinum, easily cultivated in vitro. i Suspended in glycerol, it could be sprayed on standing crops or dumped into water supplies. Quite lethal. To my knowledge it was only used once, in a field test. An obscure Marxist revolutionary in , Guatemala had been manipulated into accepting a good Havana cigar. The tip of the cigar had been painted with the new compound. He lighted up, puffed, rolled the cigar around his lips. “Too i sweet,” he remarked. His last words.

  That was 416HBL-CW3—the aerobic strain of Clostridium botulinum. It was in the specimens forwarded from the National | Epidemiology Center. It was what was stopping all those objects in GPA-11. I had no doubt that the epidemic was programmed. But j how, and by whom, and for what reason, I hadn’t the slightest idea.

  I intended to fly to Washington the following day to bring my ' discovery to the attention of the Chief Director. But late that same afternoon I received a note, via commercial mail, from Grace j Wingate. Pleasant but cool. She and her aide would be in New York I the following day on a shopping trip. She was writing to take advantage of my kind invitation to lunch. If that was possible, I could make arrangements through her aide. Number given.

  416HBL-CW3 could wait. There was no rush, since there was no antidote. I immediately flashed the social secretary. A very imposing dragoon of an ef came on screen.

  “Louise Rawlins Tucker speaking,” she said crisply. “Ah, may I be of service?”

  I identified myself.

  “Ah yes, Dr. Flair,” she said. Consulting a list on her desk.

  ‘ ‘We have you down for luncheon tomorrow in New York. Will that be satisfactory?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “What time will—”

  “Ah, we have you down for 1300,” she said. “We prefer the Cafe Massenet, since the premises are familiar to our security staff. Ah, will that be convenient?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “Ah, splendid. The party will consist of Mrs. Wingate and myself. And security staff, of course. But they will not be dining with us. The head waiter, Henri, will have a secluded table for us in your name.” />
  “Thank you. And I—”

  “Ah, please be prompt, Dr. Flair,” she said. “We do have a very tight schedule. Looking forward to meeting you in person.”

  I was about to return the compliment, but she clicked off. Ah.

  It didn’t give me much time. But I had computed how Grace Wingate and I might be alone together. Briefly. And not in my apartment, a motel room, or a lavish suite in one of the maisons d’assignation that had become the Park Avenue equivalent of hot-pillow joints. It was too early in our relationship to plan such a maneuver. And with her aide and security guards in attendance. . . .

  I flashed a rental agency that specialized in elegant antique and classic cars. I knew exactly the vehicle I wanted; my father had had } one in his collection: a 1972 Jaguar1 XKE. The agency had two available, one black and one fire-engine-red. I chose the red. In January, 1999, it would be impossible to be inconspicuous in a car 1 like that, regardless of the color. I slid my BIN card into the flasher slot. While they were verifying my credit rating, I made arrangements for the car to be delivered to the compound gate at 1200 the following day.

  It was, I knew, not a car that accommodated more than two comfortably.

  The next morning I flashed Ellen Dawes and told her I would not be in the office until late that afternoon. If any insuperable crisis arose, I could be contacted at the Cafe Massenet after 1300.

  "Nothing less than the end of the world, ” I told her. “On second thought, not even for that.”

  “I.understand,” she laughed.

  “And I left you the coffee ration in the top file drawer. Under C. I For coffee.”

  She giggled delightedly.

  I had decided on civilian clothes. A suit of Oxford gray flannel with a Norfolk jacket. Shirt of white natural linen with a Lord Byron collar. Plastisilk scarf of sky blue. Black plastipat moccasins with tooty tassels. I wore a plaid cloak thrown casually over my shoulders. I smelled of elegance.

  When I checked out at the compound gate at 1210, there was a gang of security guards around my red Jaguar, admiring the lines and listening to the chauffeur’s lecture on the car’s performance potential.