It is anticipated that the first clinical trials will begin in October, 1978, with our new Hepatitis B vaccine. Shortly thereafter, trials using our new diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis combination will start. We are particularly interested in establishing the safety of our live virus pneumococcal vaccine.
“Live virus . . .” Carl said into the screen. “Oh that really sounds safe.” Beth and The Worm were so occupied with reading the document themselves, neither responded. Carl, too, read on.
There will come a time when the constructs become too old to reasonably remain in custodial care. At this point, they will be dispersed to one of the many third world organizations that deal in such commodities.
“Commodities,” The Worm said. “They’re talking about selling them on some slave market. A lot of people think what I do is wrong, but selling human beings . . . Go directly to hell, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.” He printed that document without waiting to be asked.
The sentence describing conveyance of the constructs to a slave market when they were no longer useful was not what Carl had expected to see. Nor was he convinced that’s what actually happened.
“You want to keep going?” The Worm said, referring to the need now to open the last document if they wished to proceed. Without waiting for an answer, he then said, “Actually, I’m too interested now to stop, so I’m taking a look anyway. You can read it or not.”
The Worm’s suggestion that Carl and Beth might have lost interest in learning more was ridiculous, so they each stared at the screen in front of them ready to begin reading the instant the English translation was ready.
As he waited, Carl felt he already knew much of what they were about to see. But he needed to have it verified. There were also a few major details he hadn’t yet figured out.
Beth’s conscious understanding of what was about to be revealed still lagged behind Carl’s. But her subconscious knew something big was coming, so while she waited, her breathing was rapid and shallow, and instead of air, she felt she was inhaling the gloom around them.
Retraining and Relocation
Feb 12, 1989
Recent events in our R and D units have caused a change in plans for disposition of the constructs from Project Creation. While working on several modified forms of our most promising blood-pressure-regulating substance, one of our teams inadvertently created one of the best free radical scavengers ever discovered. Since such substances are known to prevent the tissue damage that accumulates as a byproduct of normal metabolism, the active molecule, hereafter designated FRS, was tested to see if it had any effect on longevity in three different strains of short-lived mice. In all three strains, FRS was found to more than double the normal life span. This has such a huge commercial potential it has been decided that the best use of the constructs, which are now nearing the age of dispersal, should instead, be used to study the efficacy and safety of this molecule.
To that end, the constructs will be relocated to a self-contained community established in an area so geographically remote, isolation may be easily established and maintained. The most likely location for this community is in the mountains about fifty miles from the US town of Little Rock in the State of Arkansas.
Beth had a little trouble understanding everything in the first paragraph, but she got the gist of it. The second was a lot clearer, and as she finished reading it, her mouth went dry. Whoever had written this thing had to be describing Artisan. But how could that be? She knew everyone in town. Where were the constructs the document said were to be sent there? Everyone in Artisan had parents and a different background.
Then she remembered . . . Her parents’ remains were not in the urns where they were supposed to be. Why not? There was one explanation that would put everything that had happened into a logical framework, but she wouldn’t let her mind go there. Instead, she grabbed onto the gaps in what she knew, holding onto them with all her strength to keep from sliding toward the truth.
Carl had the same cracks in his understanding, but not being a resident of Artisan, he didn’t need to seek safety in them. His mind was free to accept what he’d just read and take it to the only conclusion possible.
Worried about how Beth would handle it, he glanced to his right, where she was sitting rigidly in her chair. He watched her for a moment to see if she was about to break. Seeing no sign of that and not wanting to offend her by offering support and comfort if it wasn’t needed, he turned back to the monitor to read more, but shifting in his seat so he could keep her in his peripheral vision.
The created community will be centered around a furniture plant that will be staffed by constructs trained in the necessary skills. Proceeds from the plant will make the community self-supporting. Within two months from this writing, social security numbers will be in hand for all constructs, and government records will make it appear the numbers were assigned at birth in the usual manner.
To foster the seclusion necessary for keeping the real purpose of the community hidden from the outside, the entire life of the occupants will be centered around their church, which will teach isolationism. The FRS to be tested will be incorporated into the communion wine used in the twice weekly religious services. To ensure there will be no children produced to compromise security of the operation, the wine will also contain an ovulation suppressor. Absence of mature individuals and children in the society will be explained by a collective awareness that years earlier, a severe flu epidemic killed all the older people and all the existing children. This flu will also be blamed for the females to achieve any subsequent pregnancies.
Beth felt as though she was being pulled into the mouth of a beast so horrible she didn’t want to be in this place any longer. But she couldn’t move her eyes from the screen. And she couldn’t stop reading.
After relocation, there will be a period of neurotropic drug-facilitated retraining in which all constructs will be given new personal histories and an appropriate collective consciousness.
With this last sentence, there was no longer a way for Beth to believe any of the futile alternate explanations she had been trying so hard to find as she read. There was only one reality.
She pushed her chair back and stood up, her eyes those of a cornered animal. She wrapped her arms around herself and lifted her face to heaven.
Seeing what was happening, Carl jumped to his feet and headed toward her.
Before he reached her, she cried out. “God . . . no . . . I’m one of them. I’m a construct.”
Chapter 47
NOT BOTHERING TO fumble around for his crutch, Carl got out of his chair and limped over to Beth as quickly as he could. Her obvious anguish at discovering who she was made him forget his own pain as the muscles around his gunshot wound squeezed and flexed.
Arriving at her side, he wrapped her in his arms. “It’s all right. I’m here. Everything’s all right.”
“How is it all right?” she moaned, pulling back. “I’m a monster. My mother was a corpse and my father an anonymous sperm donor. My entire life has been a huge deception. I’m nothing but a lab animal.”
Carl found Beth’s view of herself so wrong headed, he grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “You’re not a lab animal. You’re a human being. The circumstances of your conception are meaningless.”
She yanked herself free. “You can say that because you had a mother and father. You’ve always known who you are and where you came from. I was just born a minute ago. How stupid I’ve been. I actually believed that despite my having lived so long in Artisan, we were fundamentally alike and I had a right to want you.” She turned and wandered away from him. Finding a sofa on the periphery of the gloom, she dropped into it and toppled over onto her side, hiding her face with her arm.
Carl didn’t know what to do next. As he stood there trying to devise some effective way to comfort her, his cell phone ra
ng. Of course—when you’re in the middle of a crisis—a damn phone call is just what you need. Then he remembered that the only person who had the number was Frank Irby. So he took the call.
“This is Carl.”
“It’s Frank. I just got some disturbing information about Jan Echols. It came in by fax a few minutes ago. You need to see this.”
Beth got up from the sofa. “I can’t breathe in here. I have to go.” She headed for the ramp and presumably, the front door.
“It’s locked,” The Worm said. “I’ll get it.”
“Where are you?” Carl asked Irby.
“Home.”
“I don’t know if I . . . Okay, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Carl closed the lid on the phone and dumped the thing back in his pocket. He hobbled to his chair and got his crutch. With Beth and The Worm nowhere in sight, he cycled past The Worm’s workstation and grabbed the pages off the printer. He folded the sheets, jammed them into his back pocket, and headed for the ramp.
Carl quickly discovered that descending the incline using a crutch had been much easier than going up. So by the time he reached the top, he met The Worm coming the other way.
“I let her out,” The Worm said. “It’s still open. Is she really a construct?”
“Don’t call her that,” Carl said, hobbling past him.
“I didn’t mean it in a disparaging way,” The Worm said, following. “You ought to know better. I was just . . . What you told her is right. It doesn’t matter. To my thinking, it makes her special. Help her see that.”
“Believe me, I want to.” Carl stopped and pivoted on his crutch. “I really appreciate the help you’ve given us. But there’s something else I need to know about this creation project. I’ll bet that somewhere on that site, there’s a medical section describing the effects the drug they mentioned has on the participants in the study. I must have that file.”
“If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
Carl paused and thought about telling him he might be in danger. But why worry him? He was a pro at computer intrusion. That was obvious. There was no way Jaeger Medicamente could find him. So all Carl said in response was, “If you find the file, call me on my cell.”
“What kind of phone is it?”
“Prepaid . . . no account information exists.”
“What’s the number?”
“Got something to write it down?”
“For just seven digits? Please . . .”
Carl gave him the number and headed for the door.
Outside, he found Beth with her back to him, standing several yards from the car, staring at the sidewalk, her warm breath climbing over her head into the cold night. She looked so small and lonely it tore at his heart.
He crutch-walked his way over to her. “Feeling any better?”
She turned and looked at him, reflections from the street lamp blurring in her tearing eyes. “I don’t understand why this happened to me. I’m not a bad person.”
Carl let his crutch clatter to the sidewalk and reached out to her with both arms. But she stepped back. Then she maneuvered to the side, picked up his crutch, and handed it to him.
“What happened to you is not some penalty you brought on yourself,” Carl said. “It was the act of men who have no regard for human life, people who believe they can do anything they want simply because they have the power. What they did was wrong by any standards, but in a way, I have to thank them. I despise them for what they did to you and the others, but if Hollenbeck hadn’t taken their money and they had all been good men, you would never have existed. And I’d still be alone.”
His speech had sounded a lot better when it played in his head just before he said it. Hearing it, it just made him sound self-serving.
“Shit . . . That didn’t come out like I planned. Beth, I want to say the right words here, but I’m lousy at this sort of thing. All we just learned in there . . . about your life up to this point . . . it doesn’t matter to me. You exist. You’re here. As far as I’m concerned, nothing else counts.”
“We’re too different. I can’t burden you with that.”
“What burden? Aren’t you listening? I’m convinced there’s some medical information on the site we hacked that will at least tell me what the basic problem is causing people to die after going off the drug. Our pale friend is inside right now, looking for the file. We’ll find the medical data and I’ll figure out how to stop the deterioration process. Then we’ll have all the time in the world together. Where there are gaps in your understanding of things because of your isolation at Artisan, we’ll fill them in together. Look how quickly you learned to drive.”
“You’re missing the point. I had no parents. I’m nothing but somebody’s science project.”
“There are people walking around all over the earth who were conceived in a dish. You’re not that unusual.”
“They were created out of love. I was meant to be a utensil. And have been one all my life.”
“The intent behind your creation is irrelevant.”
“Not to me.”
Carl suddenly saw a disturbing corollary to her state of mind. “Back in the motel in Puerto Rico, you said when you left Artisan you didn’t want to live anymore. But meeting me changed all that.”
“It did.”
“And now?”
In response, she merely shrugged.
Carl was so upset at her he exploded. “That’s just insane bullshit.”
She flinched and blinked at his outburst.
Realizing he’d frightened her, he calmed down. “I’m sorry. I’m upset . . . because . . . I don’t want to lose you.” All he’d said had accomplished nothing. And he was at a loss for a more persuasive argument. He needed time to find a line of reasoning that would convince her of her own worth. In the meantime, they had a decision to make. “We need to talk about something else,” he said. “But I’m getting cold out here. Let’s do it in the car.”
A minute later, when they were settled in their seats and the engine was warming up so they could turn on the heater, Carl said, “What are we going to do about all we’ve learned?”
“That’s a huge problem,” Beth replied. “We go to the authorities, it will almost certainly lead to a disruption of life in Artisan. If that happens and the people there miss a communion . . .”
“Do we have any choice? We know that the criminals involved killed at least three of your friends by testing unsafe vaccines or drugs on them when you were all growing up in those supposed orphanages. I also think it’s likely some of the people who died in Artisan were killed the same way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The substance you were all being given has the potential to make Jaeger more money than they’ve ever seen. Some people might be willing to take it even knowing that once they started on it, a missed dose would kill them. But it’d be a lot more valuable without that problem. I’m betting Jaeger’s been working on it . . . changing the basic molecule to see if they can maintain the primary result and get rid of the side effect. Any modified form that turned out to be totally ineffective would lead to the quick death of whoever they gave it to. And of course, if a modified version didn’t kill the test subject right away, eventually they’d have to withdraw it to see if they could do so safely.”
“And that might lead to death as well. Is that what happened to my husband, William?”
“I think it’s likely.”
She looked out the windshield into the night. “William killed . . . And I’m sure Meggs and Hanson knew exactly what was happening.” She turned back to Carl. By now her eyes were dry and her posture had changed from listless to energized. “I know that seeking revenge isn’t biblical, but right now, I don’t care. I’m not turning the other cheek. But what can I do? Because of th
e withdrawal problem, Meggs and the rest of them have all the power.” She reached across and squeezed his arm. “You have to figure out how to keep my friends from dying. Then we can act.”
Oh, this just kept getting better and better. Not only was it up to him to save Beth’s life by figuring out something Jaeger’s best scientists couldn’t, he now had several hundred more lives piled on him.
He forced himself to stop looking down range. One step at a time. Don’t panic. He needed to be as optimistic as he’d implied he was when he told Beth a minute ago that he’d save her. There was no point in thinking about the problem until he saw the medical data Jaeger had accumulated. Worrying now would accomplish nothing, but make him sweat. Thus chastened, he was able to think about the fax Irby had received.
“While The Worm looks for the Artisan medical file, I’d like to take a ride,” Carl said.
“Where?”
“Just as you left to come out here, I got a phone call from Frank Irby, the CEO where I work. He’s got some information on the man I think killed my father. And I’m betting we’ll find Jaeger at the bottom of that, too.”
“Then let’s go see what he has.”
Chapter 48
FRANK IRBY LIVED in a replica of an English manor house in one of Little Rock’s more affluent neighborhoods. Irby, too, had recently gone through a divorce and had managed to keep his home by buying his wife’s half from her in the settlement. He was now several million dollars poorer, but almost none of his employees felt sorry for him. Had they known, as Carl did, how his wife’s decision to leave him had nearly wrecked his health, they might have been more sympathetic. But probably not.
Carl followed the circular drive around to the entry’s focal point, a huge bronze of some mythical figure on foot holding the reins of a rearing horse, and parked by the front steps.
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