(Back Cover)

“MOUNT DRAGON IS AS MARVELOUSLY COMPLEX

AS ANY THRILLER I’VE EVER READ. ...

IT IS NOTHING LESS THAN A TOUR DE FORCE!”

—Stuart Woods, author of Choke

“A delightfully gruesome yarn and an apt mirror of our love-hate relationship with science.”

—Business Week

Mount Dragon: an enigmatic research complex hidden in the vast desert of New Mexico. Guy Carson and Susana Cabeza de Vaca have come toMount Dragon to work shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest scientific minds on the planet. Led by visionary genius Brent Scopes, their secret goal is a medical breakthrough that promises to bring incalculable benefits to the human race. But while Scopes believes he is leading the way to a new world order, he may in fact be opening the door to mass human extinction. And when Guy and Susana attempt to stop him they find themselves locked in a frightening battle with Scopes, his henchmen, and the apocalyptic nightmare that science has unleashed. ...

“The writing team that scared the willies out of readers with The Relic returns with a second, equally gripping novel of techno-terror. ... It’s a grand and scary story, with just enough grisly detail to stimulate real-life fears and characters full enough to engage the attention.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Dynamic duo Preston and Child once again demonstrate their mastery of the genre. ... The thrillfest runs full force to the very last page.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Read this and you’ll be panting for Preston and Child’s next yarn.”

—Booklist

(Inside Flap)

The most dangerous place on Earth. ... “A slam-hang medical thriller, swift, gruesome, and wickedly clever.”

—Richard Preston. New York Times

best-selling author of The Hot Zone

“The Hot Zone meets The Stand. ... Explosive.”

Jack Anderson. Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist

“When you finish this book you’ll want to storm a genetic engineering firm and destroy their projects. ... Mount Dragon is a powerful, fast-paced story, with a cast of interesting characters. ... It will probably be made into a motion picture in no time.”

—San Francisco Examiner

“Like a fictionalized rock-’em, sock-’em version of Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone.”

—Library Journal

“A chilling, fabulous trip through cyberspace, flight and survival on the searing desert, high-tech wonders that defy belief—all these elements and more combine for an evening’s worth of heart-stopping excitement. A year ago, it seemed difficult, if not impossible, for these two guys to top their first novel. After I finished flipping the pages of this one and my near cardiac arrest had been averted, one clear impression lingered. Brother, was I mistaken.”

—The Tampa Tribune-Times

(Reviews)

“First rate entertainment. ... Imagine a Michael Crichton-style thriller with immensely more detail paid to the level of writing. ... And yes, Preston and Child weave in plenty of soberly provocative discussion of the ethics of screwing around with human genetics. ... First class storytellers and stimulating entertainers.”

—Locus

“The Relic is a straight thriller. That’s like saying, however, that Die Hard was just another action adventure flick or that Gone With the Wind was just another Civil War film. Each stands as a superlative example of its type.”

—Orlando Sentinel on The Relic

“Better than anything the theoretically recombinant team of Michael Crichton and Peter Benchley could ever hope to achieve.”

—Albuquerque Journal on The Relic

“The Relic satisfies the primal desire to be scared out of one’s wits. ... The ending is a real bone-chilling shocker.”

—Express Books on The Relic

Forge Books by

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Relic

Mount Dragon

Reliquary

Douglas Preston

& Lincoln Child

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and de­stroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used ficti­tiously.

MOUNT DRAGON

Copyright © 1996 by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Shelley Eshkar

Maps by Mark Stein Studios

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

Send author mail to [email protected] or [email protected]

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-56437-5

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 95-41323

First edition: February 1996

First mass market edition: February 1997

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Mount Dragon is a work of fiction. The GeneDyne corpo­ration, the Foundation for Genetic Policy, the Holocaust Memorial Fund, the Holocaust Research Foundation, Hemocyl, PurBlood, X-FLU—and, of course, Mount Dragon itself—are all products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance of these or other entities in the novel to exist­ing entities is purely coincidental. All the characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious. Nothing should be interpreted as expressing the policies or depicting the pro­cedures of any corporation, institution, university, or gov­ernmental department or agency.

To Jerome Preston, Senior

—D. P.

To Luchie; my parents; and Nina Soller

—L C.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 10

INTRODUCTION.. 13

PART ONE. 18

PART TWO.. 87

PART THREE. 177

EPILOGUE. 272

About the e-Book. 274

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, we want to thank our agents, Harvey Klinger and CAA’s Matthew Snyder. Gentlemen, we lift our tumblers of single-malt Highland scotch in your honors: this project would never have been started were it not for the help and encouragement you’ve given us.

We’d also like to thank the following people at Tor/Forge: Tom Doherty, whose vision and support have remained equally unflagging; Bob Gleason, for believing in us from the beginning; Linda Quinton, for her refreshingly candid mar­keting advice; and Natalia Aponte, Karen Lovell, and Ste­phen de las Heras, for their sundry acts of authorial succor.

From a technical aspect, we wish to thank Lee Suckno, M.D.; Bry Benjamin, M.D.; Frank Calabrese, Ph.D.; and Tom Benjamin, M.D.

Lincoln Child would like to thank Denis Kelly: pal, erst­while boss, long-suffering sounding board. Thanks to Juliette, soul of patience and understanding. Thanks also to Chris En­gland for his explication of certain arcane slang. Wotcher, Chris!

A pre-war Gibson Granada, along with a generous fistful of chocolate-chip cookies, to Tony Trischka: banjo deity, confidante, and all-around “good hang.”

Douglas Preston would like to thank his wife, Christine, who crossed the Jornada del Muerto desert with him no less than four times, as well as Selene, who was helpful in so many ways. Aletheia was a great sport, camping in the Jornada with us when she was only three weeks old. Thanks to my brother Dick, author of The Hot Zone, for his help. Thanks also to Smithsonian and New Mexico magazines, who helped finance our exploration of the ancient Spanish trail across the Jornada known as the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.

Walter Nelson, Roeliff Annon, and Silvio Mazzarese ac­companied us on horseback around the Jornada and were de­lightful riding companions. We also acknowledge with thanks the following people, who kindly allowed us to ride across their ranches: Ben and Jane Cain of the Bar Cross Ranch; Evelyn Fite of the Fite Ranch; Shane Shannon, former man­ager of the Armandaris Ranch; Tom Waddell, current fore­man of the Armandaris; Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, owners of the Armandaris; and Harry F. Thompson Jr. of the Thomp­son Ranches. Gabrielle Palmer was very helpful, as always, with historical information.

Special thanks go to Jim Eckles of the White Sands Missile Range for a memorable tour of the 3,200-square-mile range. We would like to apologize for the liberties we have taken in describing White Sands, which is without a doubt one of the best run (and environmentally aware) Army testing facilities in the country. Obviously, no such place as Mount Dragon exists on WSMR property.

Finally, our thanks to all the rest who have helped us with Mount Dragon in particular and our novels in general: Jim Cush, Larry Bern, Mark Gallagher, Chris Yango, David Thomson, Bay and Ann Rabinowitz, Bruce Swanson, Ed Semple, Alain Montour, Bob Wincott; the sysops of CompuServe’s Literary Forum; and others too numerous to mention. Your enthusiasm helped make this book possible.

Our symbols shout at the universe,

They fly off, like hunters’ arrows

Into the night sky.

Or knapped spearpoints into flesh.

They race like fires across plains,

Driving buffalo.

—Franklin Butt

One window upon Apocalypse is more than enough.

—Susan Wright/Robert L. Sinsheimer,

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

INTRODUCTION

The sounds drifted over the long green lawn, so faint they could have been the crying of ravens in the nearby wood, or the distant braying of a mule on the farm across the brown river. The peace of the spring morning was almost undis­turbed. One had to listen carefully to the sounds to make certain they were screams.

The massive bulk of Featherwood Park’s administrative building lay half-hidden beneath ancient cottonwood trees. At the front entrance, a private ambulance pulled away slowly from the porte cochere, pebbles scurrying on the gravel drive. Somewhere a pneumatic door hissed shut.

A small, unmarked white door was sunk into the side of the building for use by the professional staff. As Lloyd Fossey approached, his hand came forward automatically, reaching for the combination pad. He had been struggling to keep the sounds of Dvorak’s E-minor piano trio alive in his head, but now he frowned and gave up. Here in the shadow of the building, the screams were much louder.

The nurse’s station was all ringing phones and scattered paper. “Morning, Dr. Fossey,” said the nurse.

“Good morning,” he replied, pleased when she managed to give him a bright smile amid the confusion. “Grand Central here today.”

“Two came in early, bang, one after the other,” she said, working forms with one hand and passing him charts with the other. “Now there’s this one. Guess you already know about him.”

“Couldn’t help overhearing.” Fossey flipped open a chart, searched his lapel pocket for a pen, hesitated. “Is our noisy friend mine?”

“Dr. Garriot’s got him,” the nurse replied. She looked up. “The first one was yours.”

A door opened somewhere, and suddenly there was the screaming again, much louder now, various urgent voices act­ing as counterpoint. Then the door shut again and only office noises remained.

“I’d like to see the admit,” Fossey said, returning the charts and reaching for the metal binder. He scanned the vitals quickly, noting sex, age, at the same time trying to mentally reconstruct the strains of the Dvorak andante. His eye stopped when it reached the words Involuntary Unit.

“Did you see the first one come in?” he asked quietly.

The nurse shook her head. “You should talk to Will. He took the patient downstairs about an hour ago.”

There was only one window in the Involuntary Unit at Featherwood Park. This window looked out from the guard’s station onto the stairway leading down from the Ward Two base­ment. As he pressed the buzzer, Dr. Fossey saw Will Hartung’s pale, shaggy head appear on the far side of the Plexiglas pane. Will disappeared, and the door mechanically unlocked itself with a sound like a gunshot.

“How ya doing, Doc,” he said, sliding behind his desk and setting aside a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

“Mr. W.H., all happiness,” Fossey replied, glancing at the book.

“Very funny, Dr. Fossey. Your talents are wasted on the medical profession.” Will handed him the log, sniffing loudly. At the far end of the counter, the new orderly was filling out med sheets.

“Tell me about the early arrival,” Fossey said, signing the log and passing it back, tucking the metal binder under his arm as he did so.

Will shrugged. “Retiring type. Not much for conversation.” He shrugged again. “Not surprising, given his recent diet of Haldol.”

Fossey frowned and opened the binder again, this time scanning the admitting history. “My God. A hundred milligrams in a twelve-hour period.”

“Guess they love their meds at Albuquerque General,” Will said.

“Well, I’ll write orders after the initial evaluation,” Fossey said. “Meanwhile, no Haldol. I can’t do an eval on an egg­plant.”

“He’s in six,” Will said. “I’ll take you down.”

A sign over the inner door read WARNING: ELOPEMENT RISK in large red letters. The new orderly let them through, sucking air between his big front teeth.

“You know my feelings about placing arrivals in Involun­tary before an admitting diagnosis is made,” Fossey said as they started down the bleak hallway. “It can color a patient’s entire perspective on the facility, set us back before we’ve even started.”

“Not my policy, Doc, sorry,” Will replied, stopping beside a scarred black door. “Albuquerque was pretty specific on that point.” He unlocked the door, pulled the heavy bolt back. “Want me inside?” he asked, hesitating.

Fossey shook his head. “I’ll call if he gets agitated.”

The patient lay faceup on the oversized transport stretcher, arms at his sides, legs straight to the ankles. From his doorway perspective, Fossey was unable to make out any facial features save a prominent nose and the knobbed arch of a chin, stubbled from a couple of days’ growth. The doctor closed the door quietly and stepped forward, never quite used to the way the floor padding rose obligingly around his shoes. He kept his eyes on the prone figure. Beneath the thick canvas straps that crossed the stretcher, bandolier-like, the chest rose slowly, rhythmically. At the end, another strap stretched tightly across the leather ankle cuffs.

Fossey braced himself, cleared his throat, waited for a re­action.

He took a step forward, then another, mentally calculating. Fourteen hours since the release from Albuquerque General. Couldn’t be the Haldol keeping him quiet.

He cleared his throat again. “Good morning, Mister—” he began, then looked down at his binder, searching for the name.

“Dr. Franklin Burt,” came the quiet voice from the stretcher. “Forgive me for not rising to shake your hand, but as you can see ...” The sentence was left incomplete.

Fossey, startled, moved up to look at the patient’s face. Dr. Franklin Burt. He knew that name.

He glanced down at the chart again, flipping the top page. There it was: Dr. Franklin Burt, molecular biologist, M.D./Ph.D. Johns Hopkins Medical School. Senior Scientist, GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility. Somebody had placed marginal question marks next to the occupation.

“Dr. Burt?” Fossey said incredulously, looking again at the man’s face.

The gray eyes focused in surprise. “Do I know you?”

The face was the same—a bit older, of course, more tanned than he remembered it, but still remarkably free of the gradual accretion of cares and worries that gravitate to the fronts of foreheads, the corners of eyes. There was a gauze bandage on one temple and the eyes were badly bloodshot.

Fossey was shaken. He’d heard this man lecture. In a way, the course of his own career had been shaped by admiration for this charismatic, witty professor. How could he possibly be here, in four-point leather restraint, surrounded by mattressed walls?

“It’s Lloyd Fossey, Doctor,” Fossey said. “I heard you speak at Yale med school. We spoke for a while afterwards. About synthetic hormones ...?”

Fossey found his mind reaching out to the man on the stretcher, willing Burt to remember.

A moment passed. Burt sighed, nodded his head slightly. “Yes. Forgive me. I do remember. You challenged me on the link between synthetic erythropoietin and metastization.”

Something inside Fossey relaxed. “I’m flattered you remem­ber,” he said.

Burt seemed to hesitate, as if considering. “I’m glad to see you practicing,” he said at last, his lips twitching as if faintly amused by the awkward situation.

Now more than anything Fossey wanted to look at the binder in his hand. He wanted to read and reread the medical clearance and the consults, to find some explanation. But he felt Burt’s eyes on him and knew the older man was following the course of his thoughts.

Of their own accord his eyes glanced down, scanning the typed columns on the chart. He looked up instantly, but not before he’d made out the words fulminant psychosis ... extremely delusional ... rapid neuroleptization.

Dr. Burt was looking at him mildly. Feeling a strange em­barrassment, Fossey reached out a hand and found a pulse under the wrist straps.

Burt blinked, moistened dry lips. He drew in a long breath of basement air. “I was driving north from Albuquerque,” he said. “You know where I’m affiliated now.”

Fossey nodded. When Burt had gone into private industry and stopped publishing, there had been the usual talk about “brain-drain” into the corporate sector.

“We’re doing experiments with influencing chimp behavior patterns. It’s a small setup, you know, we do a lot of our own running and fetching. I’d picked up lab equipment and some proprietary compounds from the GeneDyne site in Albuquerque. Including a test agent we’d developed, a syn­thetic derivative of phencyclidine, suspended in a gaseous medium.”

Fossey nodded again. PCP in a gaseous state. Angel dust you could breathe like laughing gas. Strange use of research money.

Burt watched Fossey’s eyes, smiled a little, or maybe winced, Fossey wasn’t sure. “We were measuring inspiration rate through lung tissue versus capillary absorption. In any case, I was driving back. I was tired and not paying attention. I ran off the road into a stony wash just past Los Lunas. Noth­ing serious. Except the beaker broke in the accident.”

Fossey grunted. That would do it, all right. He knew what even garden-variety angel dust could do to an otherwise nor­mal person. In high doses, it simulated aggressive lunatic be­havior. He’d seen it firsthand. It would also explain the bloodshot eyes.

There was a silence. Pupils normal, no dilation, Fossey noted. Good color. Some resting tachycardia, but Fossey knew that if he was strapped to a stretcher in a rubber room his heart might beat a little fast, too. There were absolutely no presentations of psychosis, mania, anything.

“I don’t remember a lot of details afterwards,” Burt said, a look of deep exhaustion passing across his face for the first time. “I had no credentials, of course, just a driver’s license. Amiko, my wife, is in Venice with her sister. I have no other family. They kept me heavily medicated. I guess I wasn’t too coherent.”

Fossey wasn’t surprised. An unknown man, battered from the accident, wigged out, perhaps violent, raving about being an important molecular biologist. What overworked emer­gency room would believe it? Easier to just arrange a psych transfer. Fossey pursed his lips, shook his head. Idiots.

“Thank God I ran into you, Lloyd,” Burt said. “It’s been a nightmare, I can’t begin to tell you. Where am I, anyway?”

“Featherwood Park, Dr. Burt,” he replied.

“I thought as much.” Burt nodded. “I’m sure you’ll straighten all this out. You can call GeneDyne now, if you like. I’m overdue and they’re no doubt worrying about me.”

“We’ll do that shortly, Dr. Burt, I promise,” Fossey said.

“Thank you, Lloyd,” Burt said, with a slight wince. No mistaking it this time.

“Anything wrong?” Fossey asked immediately.

“It’s my shoulders,” Burt said. “Nothing, really. They’re a bit sore from being pinioned against this stretcher.”

Fossey hesitated only an instant. The PCP had worn off, as had most of the Haldol. More importantly, Burt’s gray eyes continued to regard him calmly. There was none of that inner jitteriness you saw with faked sanity. “Let me get those chest restraints off you, get you sitting up,” he said.

Burt smiled with relief. “Many thanks. I didn’t want to ask myself, you understand. I know how the protocol works.”

“Sorry I couldn’t do it immediately, Dr. Burt,” Fossey said, bending over the chest strap and tugging at the cinch. He’d clear up this travesty with a few phone calls. Then he’d have a couple of choice words with the ER doc at Albuquerque General. The strap was tight, and he considered calling in Will to help, but decided against it. Will was a stickler for the rules.

“That’s much better,” Burt said, sitting up gingerly and hugging himself, working his shoulder muscles free of kinks. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, lying for hours, immobi­lized. I had to do it once before, for ten hours, after angioplasty a couple of years back. True hell.” He moved his legs in their restraints.

“We’ll need to run a few tests before we can release you, Doctor,” Fossey said. “I’ll get the admitting psychiatrist down here right away. Unless you’d like to rest first.”

“No thanks,” Burt said, raising one hand from the stretcher to rub the back of his neck. “Now is fine. Sometime when we’re all back East, you’ll have to come to dinner, meet Amiko.” His hand moved forward, crept up his cheek.

Standing by the stretcher, making a notation on the chart, Fossey heard a sharp little intake of breath, like the rasp of a match on sandpaper. He turned to see Burt plucking the gauze bandage from his temple.

“You must have cut your head in the accident,” Fossey said, closing the binder briskly. “We’ll get a fresh dressing for you in minute.”

“Poor alpha,” Burt murmured, staring intently at the bloody bandage.

“I’m sorry?” Fossey asked. He moved forward to examine the wound.

Franklin Burt shot upward with an explosive movement, ramming his head into Fossey’s chin before falling back heav­ily to the stretcher. Fossey’s front teeth met in his tongue and he staggered backward, mouth flooding with liquid warmth.

“Poor alpha!” Burt screamed, tearing at his ankle restraints. “POOR ALPHA!”

Fossey fell to the floor and scrambled backward calling for Will, his bubbling cry redundant beneath the pressure wave of screams. Will burst in as Burt lunged again, sending himself and the stretcher crashing to the floor. He thrashed about, teeth snapping, trying to kick free of the restraints on the tumbled stretcher.

Everything was happening so quickly around him, but Fossey was slowing down. He saw Will and the orderly fighting with Burt, trying to right the stretcher, Burt gnawing at his own wrists now, a tug of the head like a dog worrying a rabbit and a sudden jet of blood spattering the orderly’s glasses like tobacco spit. Now they were pinning Burt’s arms to the stretcher, leaning hard on the writhing form, struggling to lash the thick straps, Will fumbling for his panic beeper. But the screaming continued unabated, as Fossey knew it would.

PART ONE

Guy Carson, stuck at yet another traffic light, glanced at the clock on his dashboard. He was already late for work, second time this week. Ahead, U.S. Route 1 ran like a bad dream through Edison, New Jersey. The light turned green, but by the time he had edged up it was red again.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, slamming the dashboard with the fat part of his palm. He watched as the rain splattered across the windshield, listened to the slap and whine of the wipers. The serried ranks of brake lights rippled back toward him as the traffic slowed yet again. He knew he’d never get used to this congestion any more than he’d get used to all the damn rain.

Creeping painfully over a rise, Carson could see, a mere half mile down the highway, the crisp white facade of the GeneDyne Edison complex, a postmodern masterpiece rising above green lawns and artificial ponds. Somewhere inside, Fred Peck lay in wait.

Carson turned on the radio, and the throbbing sound of the Gangsta Muthas filled the air. As he fiddled with the dial, Michael Jackson’s shrill voice separated itself from the static. Carson punched it off in disgust. Some things were even worse than the thought of Peck. Why couldn’t they have a decent country station in this hole?

The lab was bustling when he arrived, Peck nowhere in sight. Carson drew the lab coat over his lanky frame and sat down at his terminal, knowing his log-on time would automatically go into his personnel file. If by some miracle Peck was out sick, he’d be sure to notice when he came in. Unless he had died, of course. Now, that was something to think about. The man did look like a walking heart attack.

“Ah, Mr. Carson,” came the mocking voice behind him. “How kind of you to grace us with your presence this morn­ing.” Carson closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then turned around.

The soft form of his supervisor was haloed by the fluores­cent light. Peck’s brown tie still bore testament to that morn­ing’s scrambled eggs, and his generous jowls were mottled with razor burn. Carson exhaled through his nose, fighting a losing battle with the heavy aroma of Old Spice.

It had been a shock on Carson’s first day at GeneDyne, one of the world’s premier biotechnology companies, to find a man like Fred Peck there waiting for him. In the eighteen months since, Peck had gone out of his way to keep Carson busy with menial lab work. Carson guessed it had something to do with Peck’s lowly M.S. from Syracuse University and his own Ph.D. from MIT. Or maybe Peck just didn’t like Southwestern hicks.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said with what he hoped would pass for sincerity. “Got caught in traffic.”

“Traffic,” said Peck, as if the word was new to him.

“Yes,” said Carson, “they’ve been rerouting—”

“Reroutin’,” Peck repeated, imitating Carson’s Western twang.

“—detouring, I mean, the traffic from the Jersey Turn­pike—”

“Ah, the Turnpike,”Peck said.

Carson fell silent.

Peck cleared his throat. “Traffic in New Jersey at rush hour. What an unexpected shock it must have been for you, Carson.” He crossed his arms. “You almost missed your meeting.”

“Meeting?” Carson said. “What meeting? I didn’t know—”

“Of course you didn’t know. I just heard about it myself. That’s one of the many reasons you have to be here on time, Carson.”

“Yes, Mr. Peck,” Carson said, getting up and following Peck past a maze of identical cubicles. Mr. Fred Peckerwood. Sir Frederick Peckerfat. He was itching to deck the oily bas­tard. But that wasn’t the way they did business around here. If Peck had been a ranch boss, the man would’ve been on his ass in the dirt long ago.

Peck opened a door marked VIDEOCONFERENCING ROOM II and waved Carson inside. It was only as Carson looked around the large, empty table within that he realized he was still wearing his filthy lab coat.

“Take a seat,” Peck said.

“Where is everybody?” Carson asked.

“It’s just you,” Peck replied. He started to back out the door.

“You’re not staying?” Carson felt a rising uncertainty, won­dering if he’d missed an important piece of e-mail, if he should have prepared something. “What’s this about, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Peck replied. “Carson, when you’re fin­ished here, come straight down to my office. We need to talk about your attitude.”

The door shut with the solid click of oak engaging steel. Carson gingerly took a seat at the cherrywood table and looked around. It was a beautiful room, finished in hand-rubbed blond wood. A wall of windows looked out over the meadows and ponds of the GeneDyne complex. Beyond lay endless urban waste. Carson tried to compose himself for whatever ordeal was coming. Probably Peck had sent in enough negative ratings on him to merit a stern lecture from personnel, or worse.

In a way, he supposed, Peck was right: his attitude could certainly be improved. He had to rid himself of the stubborn bad-ass outlook that did in his father. Carson would never forget that day on the ranch when his father sucker-punched a banker. That incident had been the start of the foreclosure proceedings. His father had been his own worst enemy, and Carson was determined not to repeat his mistakes. There were a lot of Pecks in the world.

But it was a goddamn shame, the way the last year and a half of his life had been flushed virtually down the toilet. When he was first offered the job at GeneDyne, it had seemed the pivotal moment of his life, the one thing he’d left home and worked so hard for. And still, more than anything, GeneDyne stood out as one place where he could really make a difference, maybe do something important. But each day that he woke up in hateful Jersey—to the cramped, unfamiliar apartment, the gray industrial sky, and Peck—it seemed less and less likely.

The lights of the conference room dimmed and went out. Window shades were automatically drawn, and a large panel slid back from the wall, revealing a bank of keyboards and a large video-projection screen.

The screen flickered on, and a face swam into focus. Carson froze. There they were: the jug ears, the sandy hair, the un­repentant cowlick, the thick glasses, the trademark black T-shirt, the sleepy, cynical expression. All the features that together made up the face of Brentwood Scopes, founder of GeneDyne. The Time issue with the cover article on Scopes still lay next to Carson’s living-room couch. The CEO who ruled his company from cyberspace. Lionized on Wall Street, worshipped by his employees, feared by his rivals. What was this, some kind of motivational film for hard cases?

“Hi,” said the image of Scopes. “How’re you doing, Guy?”

For a moment Carson was speechless. Jesus, he thought, this isn’t a film at all. “Uh, hello, Mr. Scopes. Sir. Fine. Sorry, I’m not really dressed—”

“Please call me Brent. And face the screen when you talk. I can see you better that way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not sir. Brent.”

“Right. Thanks, Brent.” Just calling the supreme leader of GeneDyne by his first name was painfully difficult.

“I like to think of my employees as colleagues,” Scopes said. “After all, when you joined the company, you became a prin­cipal in the business, like everyone else. You own stock in this company, which means we all rise and fall together.”

“Yes, Brent.” In the background, behind the image of Scopes, Carson could make out the dim outlines of what looked like a massive, many-sided vault.

Scopes smiled, as if unashamedly pleased at the sound of his name, and as he smiled it seemed to Carson that he looked almost like a teenager, despite being thirty-nine. He watched Scopes’s image with a growing sense of unreality. Why would Scopes, the boy genius, the man who built a four-billion-dollar company out of a few kernels of ancient corn, want to talk to him? Shit, I must have screwed up worse than I thought.

Scopes glanced down for a moment, and Carson could hear the tapping of keys. “I’ve been looking into your background, Guy,” he said. “Very impressive. I can see why we hired you.” More tapping. “Although I can’t quite understand why you’re working as, let’s see, a Lab Technician Three.”

Scopes looked up again. “Guy, you’ll forgive me if I get right to the point. There’s an important post in this company that’s currently vacant. I think you’re the person for it.”

“What is it?” Carson blurted, instantly regretting his own excitement.

Scopes smiled again. “I wish I could give you specifics, but it’s a highly confidential project. I’m sure you’ll understand if I only describe the assignment in general terms.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I look like a ‘sir’ to you, Guy? It wasn’t so long ago that I was just the nerdy kid being picked on in the school­yard. What I can tell you is that this assignment involves the most important product GeneDyne has ever produced. One that will be of incalculable value to the human race.”

Scopes saw the look on Carson’s face and grinned. “It’s great,” he said, “when you can help people and get rich at the same time.” He brought his face closer to the camera. “What we’re offering you is a six-month reassignment to the GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility. The Mount Dragon laboratory. You’ll be working with a small, dedicated team, the best microbiologists in the company.”

Carson felt a surge of excitement. Just the words Mount Dragon were like a magic talisman throughout all of GeneDyne: a scientific Shangri-la.

A pizza box was laid at Scopes’s elbow by someone offscreen. He glanced at it, opened it up, shut the lid. “Ah! Anchovies. You know what Churchill said about anchovies: ‘A delicacy favored by English lords and Italian whores.’ ”

There was a short silence. “So I’d be going to New Mex­ico?” Carson asked.

“That’s correct. Your part of the country, right?”

“I grew up in the Bootheel. At a place called Cottonwood Tanks.”

“I knew it had a picturesque name. You probably won’t find Mount Dragon as harsh as some of our other people have. The isolation and the desert setting can make it a difficult place to work. But you might actually enjoy it. There are horse stables there. I suppose you must be a fairly good rider, having grown up on a ranch.”

“I know a bit about horses,” Carson said. Scopes had sure as hell done his research.

“Not that you’ll have much time for riding, of course. They’ll run you ragged, no point in saying otherwise. But you’ll be well compensated for it. A year’s salary for the six-month tour, plus a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus upon success­ful completion. And, of course, you’ll have my personal gratitude.”

Carson struggled with what he was hearing. The bonus alone equaled his current salary.

“You probably know my management methods are a little unorthodox,” Scopes continued. “I’ll be straight with you, Guy. There’s a downside to this. If you fail to complete your part of the project in the necessary time frame, you’ll be excessed.” He grinned, displaying oversized front teeth. “But I have every confidence in you. I wouldn’t put you in this po­sition if I didn’t think you could do it.”

Carson had to ask. “I can’t help wondering why you chose me out of such a vast pool of talent.”

“Even that I can’t tell you. When you get briefed at Mount Dragon, everything will become clear, I promise.”

“When would I begin?”

“Today. The company needs this product, Guy, and there’s simply no time left. You can be on our plane before lunch. I’ll have someone take care of your apartment, car, all the annoying details. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” said Carson.

“That makes things easier.” Scopes smoothed down his cowlick, without success.

“What about my supervisor, Fred Peck? I was supposed to—”

“There’s no time. Just grab your PowerBook and go. The driver will take you home to pack a few things and call who­ever. I’ll send what’s-his-name—Peck?—a note explaining things.”

“Brent, I want you to know—”

Scopes held up a hand. “Please. Expressions of gratitude make me uncomfortable. ‘Hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one.’ Give my offer ten minutes’ serious thought, Guy, and don’t go anywhere.”

The screen winked out on Scopes opening the pizza box again.

As the lights came on, Carson’s feeling of unreality was replaced by a surge of elation. He had no idea why Scopes had reached down among the five thousand GeneDyne Ph.D.s and picked him, busy with his repetitive titrations and quality-control checks. But for the moment he didn’t care. He thought of Peck hearing thirdhand that Scopes had per­sonally assigned him to Mount Dragon. He thought of the look on the fat face, the wattles quivering in consternation.

There was a low rumbling noise as the curtains drew back from the windows, exposing the dreary vista beyond, cloaked in curtains of rain. In the gray distance, Carson could make out the power lines and smokestacks and chemical effluvia that were central New Jersey. Somewhere farther west lay a desert, with eternal sky and distant blue mountains and the pungent smell of greasewood, where you could ride all day and night and never see another human being. Somewhere in that desert stood Mount Dragon, and within it, his own secret chance to do something important.

Ten minutes later, when the curtains closed and the video screen came once again to life, Carson had his answer ready.

Carson stepped onto the slanting porch, dropped his bags by the door, and sat down in a weather-beaten rocker. The chair creaked as the old wood absorbed his weight unwillingly. He leaned back, stretching out the kinks, and looked out over the vast Jornada del Muerto desert.

The sun was rising in front of him, a boiling furnace of hydrogen erupting over the faint blue outline of the San An­dres Mountains. He could feel the pressure of solar radiation on his cheek as the morning light invaded the porch. It was still cool—sixty, sixty-five—but in less than an hour, Carson knew, the temperature would be over one hundred degrees. The deep ultraviolet sky was gradually turning blue; soon it would be white with heat.

He gazed down the dirt road that ran in front of the house. Engle was a typical New Mexico desert town, no longer dying but already dead. There were a scattering of adobe buildings with pitched tin roofs; an abandoned school and post office; a row of dead poplars long stripped of leaves by the wind. The only traffic past the house was dust devils. In one sense, Engle was atypical: the entire town had been bought by GeneDyne, and it was now used solely as the jumping-off place for Mount Dragon.

Carson turned his head toward the horizon. Far to the northeast, across ninety miles of dusty sun-baked sand and rock only a native could call a road, lay the complex officially labeled the GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility, but known to all by the name of the ancient volcanic hill that rose above it: Mount Dragon. It was GeneDyne’s state-of-the-art laboratory for genetic engineering and the manipulation of dangerous microbial life.

He breathed deeply. It was the smell he’d missed most, the fragrance of dust and witch mesquite, the sharp clean odor of aridity. Already, New Jersey seemed unreal, something from the distant past. He felt as if he’d been released from prison, a green, crowded, sodden prison. Though the banks had taken the last of his father’s land, this still felt like his country. Yet it was a strange homecoming: returning not to work cattle, but to work on an unspecified project at the outer reaches of science.

A spot appeared at the hazy limits where the horizon met the sky. Within sixty seconds, the spot had resolved itself into a distant plume of dust. Carson watched the spot for several minutes before standing up. Then he went back into the ram­shackle house, dumped out the remains of his cold coffee, and rinsed the cup.

As he looked around for any unpacked items, he heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside. Stepping onto the porch, he saw the squat white outlines of a Hummer, the civilian version of the Humvee. A wash of dust passed over him as the vehicle ground to a halt. The smoked windows remained closed as the powerful diesel idled.

A figure stepped out: plump, black-haired and balding, dressed in a polo shirt and white shorts. His mild, open face was deeply tanned by the sun, but the stubby legs looked white against the incongruously heavy boots. The man bus­tled over, busy and cheerful, and held out a plump hand.

“You’re my driver?” Carson asked, surprised by the softness of the handshake. He shouldered his duffel bag.

“In a manner of speaking, Guy,” the man replied. “The name’s Singer.”

“Dr. Singer!” Carson said. “I didn’t expect to get a ride from the director himself.”

“Call me John, please,” Singer said brightly, taking the duffel from Carson and opening the Hummer’s storage bay. “Everybody’s on a first-name basis here at Mount Dragon. Except for Nye, of course. Sleep all right?”

“Best night’s rest in eighteen months,” Carson grinned.

“Sorry we couldn’t have come out to get you sooner,” Singer replied, slinging the duffel, “but it’s against the rules to travel outside the compound after dark. And no aircraft inside the Range, except for emergencies.” He eyed a case lying at Carson’s feet. “Is that a five-string?”

“It is.” Carson hefted it, came down the steps.

“What’s your style: three-finger? Clawhammer? Melodic?”

Carson stopped in the act of stowing the banjo and looked at Singer, who laughed delightedly in response. “This is going to be more fun than I thought,” he said. “Hop in.”

A wave of frigid air greeted Carson as he settled himself in the Hummer, surprised at the depth of the seats. Singer was almost an arm’s length away. “I feel like I’m riding in a tank,” Carson said.

“Best thing we’ve found for desert terrain. Takes a vertical cliff face to stop it. You see this indicator? It’s a tire gauge. The vehicle has a central tire-inflation system, powered by a compressor. Pressing a button inflates or deflates the tires, depending on terrain. And all the Mount Dragon Hummers are equipped with ‘run flat’ tires. They can travel for thirty miles even after being punctured.”

They pulled away from the cluster of houses and bumped across a cattleguard. Carson could see barbed wire stretching endlessly in both directions from the cattleguard, signs placed at hundred-foot intervals, reading: WARNING: THERE IS A U.S. GOVERNMENT MILITARY INSTALLATION TO THE EAST. ENTRY STRICTLY PROHIBITED. WSMR-WEA.

“We’re entering the White Sands Missile Range,” Singer said. “We lease the land Mount Dragon’s on from the De­partment of Defense, you know. A holdover from our military contract days.”

Singer aimed the vehicle for the horizon and accelerated over the rocky trail, a great rocket plume of dust corkscrewing behind the rear tires.

“I’m honored you came to get me personally,” Carson said.

“Don’t be. I like to get out of the place when I can. I’m just the director, remember. Everybody else is doing the im­portant work.” He looked over at Carson. “Besides, I’m glad of this chance to talk with you. I’m probably one of five people in the world who read and understood your dissertation. ‘De­signer Coats: Tertiary and Quaternary Protein Structure Transformations of a Viral Shell.’ Brilliant.”

“Thank you,” Carson said. This was no small praise coming from the former Morton Professor of Biology at CalTech.

“Of course I only read it yesterday,” Singer said with a wink. “Scopes sent it, along with the rest of your file.” He leaned back, right hand draped over the wheel. The ride grew increasingly jarring as the Hummer accelerated to sixty, slew­ing through a stretch of sand. Carson felt his own right foot pressing an imaginary brake pedal to the floorboards. The man drove like Carson’s father.

“What can you tell me about the project?” Carson said.

“What exactly do you want to know?” Singer said, turning toward Carson, eyes straying from the road.

“Well, I dropped everything and came out here on an hour’s notice,” Carson said. “I guess you could say I’m curi­ous.”

Singer smiled. “There’ll be plenty of time when we reach Mount Dragon.” His eyes drifted back to the road just as they whipped past a yucca, close enough to whack the driver’s mirror. Singer jerked the Hummer back on course.

“This must be like a homecoming for you,” he said.

Carson nodded, taking the hint. “My family’s been here a long time.”

“Longer than most, I understand.”

“That’s right. Kit Carson was my ancestor. He’d been a drover along the Spanish Trail as a teenager. My great­-grandfather acquired an old land grant in Hidalgo County.”

“And you grew tired of the ranching life?” Singer asked.

Carson shook his head. “My father was a terrible business­man. If he’d just stuck to straight ranching he would have been all right, but he was full of grand schemes. One of them involved crossbreeding cattle. That’s how I got interested in genetics. It failed, like all the rest, and the bank took the ranch.”

He fell silent, watching the endless desert unfold around him. The sun climbed higher in the sky, the light turning from yellow to white. In the distance, a pair of pronghorn antelope were running just below the horizon. They were barely visible, a streak of gray against gray. Singer, oblivious, hummed “Soldier’s Joy” cheerfully to himself.

In time, the dark summit of a hill began to creep over the horizon in front of them, a volcanic cinder cone topped by a smooth crater. Along the rim of the crater stood a cluster of radio towers and microwave horns. As they approached, Carson could see a complex of angular buildings spread out below the hill, white and spare, gleaming in the morning sun like a cluster of salt crystals.

“There it is,” Singer said proudly, slowing. “Mount Dragon. Your home for the next six months.”

Soon a distant chain-link fence came into view, topped by thick rolls of concertina wire. A guard tower rose above the complex, motionless against the sky, wavering slightly in the heat.

“There’s nobody in it at the moment,” Singer said with a chuckle. “Oh, there’s a security staff, all right. You’ll meet them soon enough. And they’re very efficient when they want to be. But our real security’s the desert.”

As they approached, the buildings slowly took form. Carson had expected an ugly set of cement buildings and Quonset huts; instead, the complex seemed almost beautiful, white and cool and clean against the sky.

Singer slowed further, drove around a concrete crash bar­rier and stopped at an enclosed guardhouse. A man—civilian clothes, no uniform of any kind—opened the door and came strolling over. Carson noticed that he walked with a stiff leg.

Singer lowered the window, and the man placed two mus­cled forearms on the doorframe and poked his crew-cut head inside. He grinned, his jaw muscles working on a piece of gum. Two brilliant green eyes were set deeply into a tanned, almost leathery face.

“Howdy, John,” he said, his eyes slowly moving around the interior and finally coming to rest on Carson. “Who’ve we got here?”

“It’s our new scientist. Guy Carson. Guy, this is Mike Marr, security.”

The man nodded, eyes sliding around the car again. He handed Singer back his ID.

“Documents?” he spoke in Carson’s direction, almost dreamily. Carson passed over the documents he had been told to bring: his passport, birth certificate, and GeneDyne ID.

Marr flicked through them nonchalantly. “Wallet, please?”

“You want my driver’s license?” Carson frowned.

“The whole wallet, if you don’t mind.” Marr grinned very briefly, and Carson saw that the man wasn’t chewing gum after all, but a large red rubber band. He handed over his wallet with irritation.

“They’ll be taking your bags, as well,” Singer said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get everything back before dinner. Except your passport, of course. That will be returned at the end of your six-month tour.”

Marr heaved himself off the window and walked back into his air-conditioned blockhouse with Carson’s belongings. He had a strange walk, hitching his right leg along as if it were in danger of becoming dislocated. A few moments later, he raised the bar and waved them through. Carson could see him through the thick blue-tinted glass, fanning out the contents of his wallet.

“There are no secrets here, I’m afraid, except the ones you keep inside your head,” Singer said with a smile, easing the Hummer forward. “And watch out for those, as well.”

“Why is all this necessary?” asked Carson.

Singer shrugged. “The price of working in a high-security environment. Industrial espionage, scurrilous publicity, and so forth. It’s what you’ve been used to at GeneDyne Edison, really, just magnified tenfold.”

Singer pulled into the motor pool and killed the engine. As Carson stepped out, a blast of desert air rolled over him and he inhaled deeply. It felt wonderful. Looking up, he could see the bulk of Mount Dragon rising a quarter mile beyond the compound. A newly graded gravel road switchbacked up its side, ending at the microwave towers.

“First,” said Singer, “the grand tour. Then we’ll head back to my office for a cold drink and a chat.” He moved forward.

“This project ...?” Carson began.

Singer stopped, turned.

“Scopes wasn’t exaggerating?” Carson asked. “It’s really that important?”

Singer squinted, looked off into the empty desert. “Beyond your wildest dreams,” he said.

Percival Lecture Hall at Harvard University was filled to capacity. Two hundred students sat in the descending rows of chairs, some bent over notebooks, others looking atten­tively forward. Dr. Charles Levine paced before the class, a small wiry figure with a fringe of hair surrounding his pre­maturely balding dome. There were chalk marks on his sleeves and his brogues still had salt stains from the previous winter. Nothing in his appearance, however, reduced the in­tensity that radiated from his quick movements and expres­sion. As he lectured, he gestured with a stub of chalk at complex biochemical formulae and nucleotide sequences scattered across the huge sliding chalkboards, indecipherable as cuneiform.

In the rear of the hall sat a small group of people armed with microcassette recorders and handheld video cameras. They were not dressed like students, and press cards were prominently displayed on lapels and belts. But media presence was routine; lectures by Levine, professor of genetics and head of the Foundation for Genetic Policy, often became contro­versial without notice. And Genetic Policy, the foundation’s journal, had made sure this lecture was given plenty of ad­vance notice.

Levine stopped his pacing and moved to the podium. “That wraps up our discussion on Tuitt’s constant, as it applies to disease mortality in western Europe,” he said. “But I have more to discuss with you today.” He cleared this throat.

“May I have the screen, please?” The lights dimmed and a white rectangle descended from the ceiling, obscuring the chalkboards.

“In sixty seconds, I am going to display a photograph on this screen,” Levine said. “I am not authorized to show you this photograph. In fact, by doing so, I’ll be technically guilty of breaking several laws under the Official Secrets Act. By staying, you’ll be doing the same. I’m used to this kind of thing. If you’ve ever read Genetic Policy, you’ll know what I mean. This is information that must be made public, no mat­ter what the cost. But it goes beyond the scope of today’s lecture, and I can’t ask you to stay. Anyone who wishes to go may do so now.”

In the dimly lit room, there were whispers, the turning of notebook pages. But nobody stood up.

Levine looked around, pleased. Then he nodded to the projectionist. A black-and-white image filled the screen.

Levine looked up at the image, the top of his head shining in the light of the projector like a monk’s tonsure. Then he turned to face his audience.

“This is a picture taken on July 1, 1985, by the image-gathering satellite TB-17 from a sun-synchronous orbit of about one hundred and seventy miles,” he began. “Techni­cally, it has not yet been declassified. But it deserves to be.” He smiled. Nervous laughter briefly filled the hall.

“You’re looking at the town of Novo-Druzhina, in western Siberia. As you can see by the length of the shadows, this was taken in the early morning, the preferred time for image anal­ysis. Note the position of the two parked cars, here, and the ripening fields of wheat.”

A new slide appeared.

“Thanks to the surveillance technique of comparative cov­erage, this slide shows the exact same location three months later. Notice anything strange?”

There was a silence.

“The cars are parked in exactly the same spot. And the field of grain is apparently very ripe, ready to be harvested.”

Another slide appeared.

“Here’s the same place in April of the following year. Note the two cars are still there. The field has obviously gone fal­low, the grain unharvested. It was images like these that suddenly made this area very interesting to certain photo-grammetrists in the CIA.”

He paused, looking out over the classroom.

“The United States military learned that all of Restricted Area Fourteen—a half-dozen towns, in an eighty-square-mile area surrounding Novo-Druzhina—were affected in a similar way. All human activity had ceased. So they took a closer look.”

Another slide appeared.

“This is a magnification of the first slide, digitally en­hanced, glint-suppressed, and compensated for spectral drift. If you look closely along the dirt street in front of the church, you will see a blurry image resembling a log. That is a human corpse, as any Pentagon photo-jock could tell you. Now here is the same scene, six months later.”

Everything appeared to be the same, except that the log now looked white.

“The corpse is now skeletonized. When the military ex­amined large numbers of these enhanced images, they found countless such skeletons lying unburied in the streets and the fields. At first, they were mystified. Theories of mass insanity, another Jonestown, were advanced. Because—”

A new slide appeared.

“—as you can see, everything else is still alive. Horses are still grazing in the fields. And there in the upper left-hand corner is a pack of dogs, apparently feral. This next slide shows cattle. The only dead things are human beings. Yet whatever it was that killed them was so dangerous, so instan­taneous, or so widespread, that they remain where they fell, unburied.”

He paused.

“The question is, what was it?”

The hall was silent.

“Lowell Cafeteria cooking?” someone ventured.

Levine joined in the general laughter. Then he nodded, and another aerial slide appeared, showing an extensive com­plex, gutted and ruined.

“Would that it were, my friend. In time, the CIA learned that the cause was a pathogen of some sort, created in the laboratory pictured here. You can see from the craters that the site has been bombed.

“Exact details were not known outside Russia until earlier this week, when a disenchanted Russian colonel defected to Switzerland, bringing with him a fat parcel of Soviet Army files. The same contact who provided me with these images alerted me to this colonel’s presence in Switzerland. I was the first to examine his files. The events I am about to relate to you have never before been made public.

“What you must understand first is that this was a primitive experiment. There was little thought to political, economic, even military use. Remember, ten years ago the Russians were lagging behind in genetic research and struggling to catch up. In the secret facility outside Novo-Druzhina, they were ex­perimenting with viral engineering. They were using a com­mon virus, herpes simplex Ia+, the virus that produces cold sores. It’s a relatively simple virus, well understood, easy to work with. They began meddling with its genetic makeup, inserting human genes into its viral DNA.

“We still don’t know quite how they did it. But suddenly they had a horrific new pathogen on their hands, a scourge they were ill equipped to deal with. All they knew at the time was that it seemed unusually long-lived, and that it infected through aerosol contact.

“On May 23, 1985, there was a small safety breach at the Soviet laboratory. Apparently, a worker inside the transfection lab fell, damaging his biocontainment suit. As you know from Chernobyl, Soviet safety standards can be execrable. The worker told nobody about the incident, and later went home to his family in the worker’s complex.

“For three weeks the virus incubated in his peritoneum, duplicating and spreading. On June 14, this worker felt ill and went to bed with a high fever. Within a few hours, he was complaining of a strange pressure in his gut. He passed a large amount of foul-smelling gas. Growing nervous, his wife sent for the doctor.

“Before the doctor could arrive, however, the man had—you will excuse the graphic description—voided most of his intestines out through his anus. They had suppurated inside his body, becoming pastelike. He had literally defecated his insides out. Needless to say, by the time the doctor arrived, the man was dead.”

Levine paused again, looking around the room as if for raised hands. There were none.

“Since this incident has remained a secret from the sci­entific community, the virus has no official name, it is known only as Strain 232. We now know that a person exposed to it becomes contagious four days after exposure, although it takes several weeks for symptoms to appear. The mortality rate of Strain 232 is close to a hundred percent. By the time the worker had died, he had exposed dozens, if not hundreds, of people. We could call him vector zero. Within seventy-two hours of his death, dozens of people were complaining of the same gastrointestinal pressure, and soon suffered the same gruesome fate.

“The only thing that prevented a worldwide pandemic was the location of the outbreak. In 1985, movement in and out of Restricted Area Fourteen was highly controlled. Never­theless, as word spread, a general panic ensued. People in the area began loading their belongings into cars, trucks, even horsecarts. Many tried fleeing on bicycle, or even on foot, abandoning everything in their desperation to get away.

“From the papers the colonel brought with him out of Rus­sia, we can piece together the response of the Soviet Army. A special team in biohazard suits set up a series of roadblocks, preventing anyone from leaving the affected area. This was relatively easy, since Area Fourteen was already fenced and checkpointed. As the epidemic roared through the neighbor­ing villages, whole families died in the streets, in the fields, in the market squares. By the time a person felt the first alarming symptoms, a painful death was only three hours away. The panic was so great that at the checkpoints, the soldiers were ordered to shoot and kill anyone—anyone—as soon as they came within range. Old men, children, pregnant women were gunned down. Air-dropped antipersonnel mines were scattered in wide swaths across woods and fields. What these measures didn’t catch, the razor wire and tank traps did.

“Then the laboratory was carpet-bombed. Not, of course, to destroy the virus—bombs would have no effect on it. But rather to obliterate the traces, to hide what really happened from the West.

“Within eight weeks, every human being within the quar­antined area was dead. The villages were deserted, the pigs and dogs gorging on corpses, the cows wandering unmilked, a horrible stench hanging over the deserted buildings.”

Levine took a sip of water, then resumed.

“This is a shocking story, the biological equivalent of a nuclear holocaust. But I’m afraid the last chapter has yet to be written. Towns that have been irradiated with atomic bombs can be shunned. But the legacy of Novo-Druzhina is harder to avoid. Viruses are opportunistic, and they don’t like to stay put. Although all the human hosts are dead, there is a possibility that Strain 232 lives on somewhere in this dev­astated area. Viruses sometimes find secondary reservoirs where they wait, patiently, for the next opportunity to infect. Strain 232 might be extinct. Or a viable pocket of it may still be there. Tomorrow, some hapless rabbit with muddy paws might wriggle through a hole in the perimeter fence. A farmer might shoot that rabbit and take it to market. And then the world as we know it could very well end.”

He paused.

“And that,” he shouted suddenly, “is the promise of genetic engineering!”

He stopped, letting the silence grow in the hall. Finally he dabbed his brow and spoke again, more quietly. “We won’t be needing the projector anymore.”

The projector image disappeared, leaving the hall in dark­ness.

“My friends,” Levine continued, “we have reached a crit­ical turning point in our stewardship of this planet, and we’re so blind we can’t even see it. We’ve walked the earth for five thousand centuries. But in the last fifty years, we’ve learned enough to really hurt ourselves. First with nuclear weapons, and now—infinitely more dangerously—with the reengineering of nature.”

He shook his head. “There is an old proverb: ‘Nature is a hanging judge.’ The Novo-Druzhina incident nearly hanged the human race. And yet, as I speak, other companies across the globe are tinkering with viruses, exchanging genetic material between viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals in­discriminately, without any thought to the ultimate conse­quences.

“Of course, today’s cutting-edge labs in Europe and Amer­ica are a far cry from 1985 Siberia. Should that reassure us? Quite the opposite.

“The scientists in Novo-Druzhina were doing simple ma­nipulations of a simple virus. They accidentally created a ca­tastrophe. Today—barely a stone’s throw from this hall— much more complicated experiments are being done with in­finitely more exotic, infinitely more dangerous viruses.

“Edwin Kilbourne, the virologist, once postulated a path­ogen he called the Maximally Malignant Virus. The MMV would have, he theorized, the environmental stability of po­lio, the antigenic mutability of influenza, the unrestricted host range of rabies, the latency of herpes.

“Such an idea, almost laughable then, is deadly serious now. Such a pathogen could be, and maybe is being, created in a laboratory somewhere on this planet. It would be far more devastating than a nuclear war. Why? A nuclear war is self-limiting. But with the spread of an MMV, every infected person becomes a brand new walking bomb. And today’s transmission routes are so widespread, so quickly achieved by international travelers, it only takes a few carriers for a virus to go global.”

Levine stepped around the podium to face the audience. “Regimes come and go. Political boundaries change. Empires grow and fall. But these agents of destruction, once unleashed, last forever. I ask you: should we allow unregulated and un­controlled experiments in genetic engineering to continue in laboratories around the world? That is the real question raised by Strain 232.”

He nodded, and the lights came back up. “There will be a full report of the Novo-Druzhina incident in the next issue of Genetic Policy,”he said, turning to gather his papers.

The spell broken, the students stood up and began col­lecting their things, moving in a rustling tide toward the exits. The reporters at the back of the hall had already left to file their stories.

A young man appeared at the top of the hall, pushing his way through the milling crowd. Slowly, he made his way down the central steps toward the podium.

Levine glanced up, then looked carefully left and right. “I thought you were told never to approach me in public,” he said.

The youth came forward, held Levine’s elbow, and whis­pered urgently in his ear. Levine stopped loading papers into his briefcase.

“Carson?” he asked. “You mean that bright cowboy fellow who was always interrupting my lectures to argue?”

The man nodded his head.

Levine fell silent, his hand on the briefcase. Then he snapped it shut.

“My God,” he said simply.

Carson looked out across the motor pool toward a sweeping cluster of white buildings which rose abruptly from the desert sands: curves, planes and domes thrusting from the ground. The stark placement of the buildings in the desert terrain, along with a total absence of landscaping, gave the laboratory a Zen-like feeling of purity and emptiness. Glassed-in walk­ways connected many of the buildings, forming crisscrossing patterns.

Singer led Carson along one of the covered walkways. “Brent is a great believer in architecture as a means of in­spiring the human spirit,” he said. “I’ll never forget when that architect, what’s-his-name—Guareschi—came from New York to ‘experience’ the site.”

Singer chuckled softly.

“He arrived in tasseled loafers and a suit, with this silly straw hat. But the guy was game, I’ll give him that. He ac­tually camped out for four days before he got heatstroke and hightailed it back to Manhattan.”

“It’s beautiful,” Carson said.

“It is. Despite his bad experience, the man did manage to capture the spareness of the desert. He insisted there be no landscaping. For one thing, we didn’t have the water. But he also wanted the complex to look as if it was part of the desert, and not imposed on it. Obviously, he never forgot the heat. I think that’s why everything’s white: the machine shop, the storage barracks—even the power plant.” He nodded toward a long building with gracefully curving rooflines.

“That’s the power plant?” Carson asked in disbelief. “It looks more like an art museum. This place must have cost a fortune.”

“Several fortunes,” Singer said. “But back in ’85, when construction began, money wasn’t much of an issue.” He ush­ered Carson toward the residency compound, a series of low curvilinear structures gathered together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “We’d obtained a nine-hundred-million-dollar con­tract through DATRADA.”

“Who?”

“Defense Advanced Technology, Research and Develop­ment Administration.”

“Never heard of it,” said Carson.

“It was a secret Defense Department agency. Disbanded af­ter the Reagan years. We all had to sign a lot of formal loyalty documents and the like. Secret clearance, top-secret clear­ance, you name it. Then they investigated us—boy, did they investigate. I got calls from ex-girlfriends twenty years re­moved: ‘A bunch of suits were just here asking a lot of ques­tions about you. What the hell did you do now, Singer?’ ” He laughed.

“So you’ve been here from the beginning,” Carson said.

“That’s right. Only the scientists have six-month tours. I guess they figure I don’t do enough real work to get burnt out.” He laughed. “I’m the old-timer here, me and Nye. And a few others, old Pavel and the fellow you just met, Mike Marr. Anyway, it’s been much nicer since we went civilian. The military boys were a pain in the posterior.”

“How did the changeover happen?” Carson asked.

Singer steered him through the smoked-glass door of a structure on the far side of the residency compound. A river of air-conditioning washed over them as the door hissed shut. Carson found himself in a vestibule, with slate floors, white walls, and taupe furniture. Singer led him toward another door.

“At first, we did strictly defense research. That’s how we got these land parcels in the Missile Range. Our job was to look for vaccines, countermeasures and antitoxins to pre­sumed Soviet biological weapons. When the Soviet Union fell apart, so did our brief. We lost the contract in 1990. We almost lost the lab, too, but Scopes did some quick lobbying behind closed doors. God knows how he did it, but we were able to get a thirty-year lease under the Defense Industry Con­version Act.”

Singer opened a door into a long laboratory. A series of black tables gleamed under fluorescent lights. Bunsen burners, Erlenmeyer flasks, glass tubing, Stereozoom microscopes and various other low-tech equipment sat in neat, spotless rows.

Carson had never seen a lab look so clean. “Is this the low-level facility?” he asked incredulously.

“Nope,” Singer said. “Most of the real work is done on the inside, our next stop. This is just eye candy for congressmen and military brass. They expect to see an upscale version of their old university chem lab, and we give it to them.”

They passed into another, much smaller room. A large, gleaming instrument sat in its center. Carson recognized it instantly.

“The world’s best microtome: the Scientific Precision ‘Ultra-Shave,’ ” Singer said. “That’s what we call it, anyway. It’s all computer controlled. A diamond blade that cuts a human hair into twenty-five hundred sections. Widthwise. This one’s just for show, of course. We’ve got two identical units operating on the inside.”

They walked back into the baking heat. Singer licked a finger and held it up. “Wind’s from the southeast,” he said. “As always. That’s why they picked this place—always blowing from the southeast. The first town downwind of us is Claunch, New Mexico, population twenty-two. One hun­dred forty miles away. The Trinity Site, where they blew up the first A-bomb, is only thirty miles northwest of here. Good place to hide an atomic explosion. You couldn’t find a more isolated place in the lower forty-eight.”

“We called that wind the Mexican Zephyr,” Carson said. “When I was a kid, I hated to go out in that wind more than anything. My dad used to say it caused more trouble than a rat-tailed horse tied short in fly time.”

Singer turned. “Guy, I have no idea what you just said.”

“A rat-tailed horse is a horse with a short tail. If you tie him short and the flies start tormenting him, he’ll go crazy, tear down your fence and take off.”

“I see,” Singer said without conviction. He pointed over Carson’s shoulder. “Over there are the recreational facilities—gymnasium, tennis courts, horse corral. I have a strong aversion to physical activity, so I’ll let you explore those on your own.” He patted his paunch affectionately and laughed. “And that awful-looking building is the air incinerator for the Fever Tank.”

“Fever Tank?”

“Sorry,” Singer said. “I mean the Biosafety Level-5 labo­ratory, where the really high-risk organisms are worked on. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Biosafety classification system. Level-1 is the safety standard for working with the least in­fectious, least dangerous microbes. Level-4 is for the most dangerous. There are two Level-4 laboratories in the country: the CDChas one in Atlanta, and the Army’s got one at Fort Detrick. These Level-4 laboratories are designed to handle the most dangerous viruses and bacteria that exist in nature.”

“But what’s this Level-5? I’ve never heard of it.”

Singer grinned. “Brent’s pride and joy. Mount Dragon has the only Level-5 laboratory in the world. It was designed for handling viruses and bacteria more dangerous than anything naturally existing in nature. In other words, microbes that have been genetically engineered. Somebody christened it the Fever Tank years ago, and the name stuck. Anyway, all the air from the Level-5 facility is circulated through the in­cinerator and heated to one thousand degrees Celsius before being cooled and returned. Sterilized completely.”

The alien-looking air incinerator was the only structure Carson had seen at Mount Dragon that was not pure white. “So you’re working with an airborne pathogen?”

“Clever. Yes we are, and a very nasty one at that. I enjoyed it much more when we were working on PurBlood. That’s our artificial blood product.”

Carson glanced over in the direction of the corrals. He could see a barn, stalls, several turnouts, and a large fenced pasture beyond the perimeter fence.

“Can you ride outside the facility?” he asked.

“Of course. You just have to log out and log in.” Singer glanced around and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Christ, it’s hot. I just never get used to it. Let’s go inside.”

“Inside” meant the inner perimeter, a large chain-linked area at the heart of Mount Dragon. Carson could see only one break in the inner fence, a small gatehouse directly in front of them. Singer led the way through the gate and into a large building on the far side. The doors opened to a cool foyer. Through an open door, Carson could see a row of com­puter terminals on long white tables. Two workers, ID cards hung around their necks, wearing jeans under white lab coats, were busily typing at terminals. Carson realized with surprise that, except for guards, these were the first workers he’d seen on the site.

“This is the operations building,” Singer said, gesturing into the mostly empty room. “Administration, data process­ing, you name it. Our staff isn’t large. There were never more than thirty scientists here at one time, even in our military days. Now the number is half that, all focused on the project.”

“That’s pretty small,” Carson said.

Singer shrugged. “The human-wave approach just doesn’t work in genetic engineering.”

He gestured Carson out of the foyer into a large atrium paved in black granite and roofed with heavily tinted glass. The strong desert sun, attenuated to a pale light, fell on a small grouping of palm trees in the center. Three corridors branched out from the atrium. “Those lead to the transfection labs and the DNA-sequencing facility,” he said. “You won’t be spending much time there, but you can get somebody to take you through at your leisure, if you like. Our next stop’s out there.” He pointed at a window. Through it, Carson could make out a low, rhombus-like structure poking up from the desert.

“Level-5,” Singer said unenthusiastically. “The Fever Tank.”

“Looks pretty small,” Carson said.

“Believe me, it feels small. But what you see is just the housing for the HEPA filters. The real lab’s beneath that, underground. Added protection in case of an earthquake, fire, explosion.” He hesitated. “Guess we might as well go in.”

A slow descent in a cramped elevator deposited them in a long, white-tiled corridor lit by orange lights. Video cameras hung from the ceiling, tracking their progress. At the end of the corridor, Singer stopped at a gray metal door, its edges curved to fit the doorframe and sealed with thick black rubber.

To the right was a small mechanical box. Bending over, Singer spoke his name into the device. A green light came on above the door, and a tone sounded.

“Voice recognition,” said Singer, opening the door. “It’s not as good as hand-geometry readers or retinal scanners, but those don’t work through biosuits. And this one, at least, can’t be fooled by a tape recorder. You’ll be coded this after­noon, as part of your entrance interview.”

They moved into a large room, sparsely decorated with modern furniture. Along one wall was a series of metal lock­ers. On the far side stood another steel door, polished to a high gloss, marked with a bright yellow-and-red symbol. EX­TREME BIOHAZARD, read a legend above the frame.

“This is the ready room,” Singer said. “The bluesuits are in those lockers.”

He moved toward one of the lockers, then paused. Sud­denly he turned toward Carson. “Tell you what. Why don’t I get someone who really knows the place to show you around?”

He pressed a button on the locker. There was a hiss as the metal door slid up, revealing a bulky blue rubber suit, carefully packed into a molded container that resembled a small coffin.

“You’ve never entered a BSL-4 facility, right?” Singer asked. “Then listen closely. Level-5 is a lot like Level-4, only more so. Most people wear scrub under the full-body suits for comfort, but it’s not a requirement. If you wear your street clothes, all pens, pencils, watches, knives must come out of the pockets. Anything that could puncture the suit.” Carson quickly turned his pockets inside out.

“No long fingernails?” Singer asked.

Carson looked at his hands. “Nope.”

“That’s good. I’m always worrying mine down to the quick, so I don’t have a problem.” He laughed. “You’ll find a pair of rubber gloves in that lower left compartment. No rings, right? Good. You’ll have to take off your boots and put on those slippers. And no long toenails. You’ll find toenail clippers in one of the locker compartments, if you need them.”

Carson removed his boots.

“Now step into the suit, right leg first, then left leg, and draw it up. But not all the way. Leave the visor open for now so we can talk more easily.”

Carson fumbled with the bulky suit, drawing it over his clothes with difficulty.

“This thing weighs a ton,” he said.

“It’s fully pressurized. See that metal valve at your waist? You’ll be on oxygen the entire time you’re inside. You’ll be shown how to move from station to station. But the suit itself contains ten minutes’ worth of air, in case of emergencies.” He walked toward an intercom unit, pressed a series of but­tons. “Rosalind?” he asked.

There was a short pause. “What?” came the buzzing re­sponse.

“Could I trouble you to give our new scientist, Guy Carson, a tour of BSL-5?”

There was a longer silence.

“I’m in the middle of something,” the voice came back.

“It’ll just take a few minutes.”

“Aw, for Chrissakes.” The voice cut off immediately.

Singer turned to Carson. “That’s Rosalind Brandon-Smith. She’s a little eccentric, I guess you could say.” He leaned toward Carson’s open visor conspiratorially. “Actually, she’s extremely rude, but don’t pay any attention. She was instru­mental in developing our artificial blood. Now she’s wrapping up her part of the new project. She did a lot of work with Frank Burt, and they were pretty close, so she may not be too friendly to his replacement. You’ll be meeting her inside, no reason for her to go through decontam twice.”

“Who’s Frank Burt?” Carson asked.

“He was a true scientist. And a fine human being. But he found conditions here a little too stressful. Had something of a breakdown recently. It’s not uncommon, you know. About a quarter of the people who come to Mount Dragon can’t finish their tour.”

“I didn’t know I was replacing anyone,” Carson frowned.

“You are. I’ll tell you about it later. You’ll be filling some large shoes.” He stepped back. “OK, finish up the zippers. Make sure you close and secure all three. We’ve got a buddy system here. After you suit up, someone else has to check over everything.”

He did a careful inspection of the bluesuit, then showed Carson how to use the visor intercom. “Unless you’re stand­ing next to somebody, it’s very hard to hear anything. Press this button on your forearm to speak over the intercom.”

He waved toward the door marked EXTREME BIOHAZARD. “On the far side of the air lock is a chemical shower. Once you’re inside, it starts automatically. Get used to it, there’ll be a much longer one coming out. When the inner door opens, go on through. Be especially careful until you’re used to the suit. Rosalind will be waiting for you on the far side. I hope.”

“Thanks,” said Carson, raising his voice to make sure it carried through the thick rubber of the suit.

“No problem,” came the muffled response. “Sorry I won’t be going in with you. It’s just ...” He hesitated. “Nobody goes into the Fever Tank unless they have to. You’ll see why.”

As the door hissed shut behind him, Carson walked for­ward onto a metal grating. There was a sudden rumble, and a yellow chemical solution spurted from shower heads in the ceiling, walls, and floor. Carson could feel the solution drum­ming loudly on his suit. In a minute it was over; the next door opened, and he stepped into a small antechamber. A motor began to rumble, and he could feel the pressure of a powerful air machine blowing at him from all directions. In­side his suit, the drying mechanism felt like a strange, distant wind: He was unable to tell whether the air was hot or cold. Then the inner door hissed open, and Carson found himself facing a short woman who was staring at him impatiently through the clear faceplate of her visor. Even compensating for the bulkiness of the suit, Carson estimated her weight at 250 pounds.

“Follow me,” a voice inside his helmet said brusquely, and the woman turned away, moving down a tiled corridor so narrow that her shoulders brushed against both walls. The walls were smooth and slick, with no corners or projecting apparatus that might tear a protective suit. Everything—floors, wall tiles, ceiling—was painted a brilliant white.

Carson pressed the left button on his forearm, activating the intercom. “I’m Guy Carson,” he said.

“Glad to hear it,” came the reply. “Now, pay attention. See those air hoses overhead?”

Carson looked up. A number of blue hoses dangled from the ceiling, metal valves affixed to their ends.

“Grab one and plug it into your suit valve. Careful. Turn it to the left to lock it in. When you move from one station to the next, you’ll have to detach it and plug into another hose. Your suit has a limited supply of air, so don’t dawdle between hookups.”

Carson followed her instructions, felt the snap as the valve seated itself, and heard the reassuring hiss of airflow. Inside the suit, he felt a strange sense of detachment from the world. His movements seemed slow, clumsy. Because of the multiple pairs of gloves, he could barely feel the air hose as he guided it into the attachment.

“Keep in mind that this place is like a submarine,” came the voice of Brandon-Smith. “Small, cramped, and danger­ous. Everything and everyone has its place.”

“I see,” said Carson.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because sloppiness is death down here in the Fever Tank. And not just for you. Got that?”

“Yes,” Carson repeated. Bitch.

They continued down the narrow hall. As he followed Brandon-Smith, trying to acclimate himself to the pressure suit, Carson thought he could hear a strange noise in the background: a faint drumming, almost more sensation than sound. He decided it must be the Fever Tank’s generator.

Brandon-Smith’s great bulk eased sideways through a nar­row hatch. In the lab beyond, suited figures were working in front of large Plexiglas-enclosed tables, their hands stretched through rubber holes bored into the cases. They were swab­bing petri dishes. The light was painfully bright, throwing every object in the lab into sharp relief. Small waste recep­tacles with biohazard labels and flash-incineration attach­ments stood beside each worktable. More ceiling-mounted video cameras-swiveled, monitoring the scientists.

“Everybody,” Brandon-Smith’s voice sounded in the inter­com. “This is Guy Carson. Burt’s replacement.”

Visors angled upward as people turned to get a look at him, and a chorus of greetings crackled in Carson’s helmet.

“This is production,” she said flatly. It wasn’t a statement that invited questions, and Carson didn’t ask any.

Brandon-Smith led Carson through a warren of other labs, narrow corridors, and air locks, all starkly bathed in the same brilliant light. She’s right, Carson thought, looking around. The place is like a submarine. All available floor space was packed with fabulously expensive equipment: transmission and scanning electron microscopes, autoclaves, incubators, mass spectrometers, even a small cyclotron, all reengineered to allow the scientists to operate them through the bulky bluesuits. The ceilings were low, heavily veined with piping, and painted white like everything else in the Fever Tank. Every ten yards Brandon-Smith halted to hook up to a new air hose, then waited for Carson to do the same. The going was excruciatingly slow.

“My God,” Carson said. “These safety measures are unbe­lievable. What have you got in here, anyway?”

“You name it,” came the response. “Bubonic plague, pneu­monic plague, Marburg virus, Hantavirus, Dengue, Ebola, an­thrax. Not to mention a few Soviet biological agents. All currently on ice, of course.”

The cramped spaces, the bulky suit, the stuffy air, all had a disorienting effect on Carson. He found himself gulping in oxygen, fighting down an urge to unzip the suit, give himself breathing room.

At last they stopped in a small circular hub from which several narrow corridors branched out like the spokes of a wheel. “What’s that?” Carson pointed to a huge manifold over their heads.

“The air uptake,” Brandon-Smith said, attaching another new hose to her suit. “This is the center of the Fever Tank. The entire facility has negative airflow controls. The air pres­sure decreases the further in you go. Everything flows to this point, then it’s taken up to the incinerator and recirculated.” She gestured at one of the corridors. “Your lab’s down there. You’ll see it soon enough. I don’t have time to show you everything.”

“And down there?” Carson pointed to a narrow tube at their feet containing a shiny metal ladder.

“There are three levels beneath us. Backup labs, security substation, CRYLOX freezers, generators, the control center.”

She stepped a few feet down one of the hallways, stopping in front of another door.

“Carson?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Last stop. The Zoo. Keep the hell away from the cages. Don’t let them grab you. If they rip a piece off your suit, you’ll never see the light of day. You’ll be locked up in here and left to die.”

“The Zoo—?” Carson began, but Brandon-Smith was al­ready opening the door. Suddenly the drumming was louder, and Carson realized it was not a generator, after all. Muffled screams and hoots filtered through his pressure suit. Turning a corner, Carson saw that one wall of the room’s interior was lined floor to ceiling with cages. Black beady eyes peered out from between wire mesh. The new arrivals in the room caused the noise level to increase dramatically. Many of the prisoners were now pounding on the floors of the cages with their feet and hands,

“Chimpanzees?” asked Carson.

“Good for you.”

A small bluesuited figure at the far end of the row of cages turned toward them.

“Carson, this is Bob Fillson. He takes care of the animals.”

Fillson nodded curtly. Carson could see a heavy brow, bul­bous nose, and- wet pendulous lip behind the faceplate. The rest was in shadow. The man turned and went back to work.

“Why so many?” Carson asked.

She stopped and looked at him. “They’re the only animal with the same immunological system as a human being. You should know that, Carson.”

“Of course, but why exactly—”

But Brandon-Smith was peering intently into one of the cages.

“Aw, for Chrissakes,” she said.

Carson came over, keeping a respectful distance from the countless fingers poking through the mesh. A chimpanzee was lying on its side, trembling, oblivious of the commotion sur­rounding it. There seemed to be something wrong with its facial features. Then Carson realized that the creature’s eye­balls seemed abnormally enlarged. Looking closer, he could see that they were actually bulging from its head, the blood vessels rupturing and hemorrhaging in the sclera. The animal suddenly jerked, opened its hairy jaws, and screamed.

“Bob,” Carson could hear Brandon-Smith saying through the intercom, “the last of Burt’s chimps is about to go.”

With a notable lack of haste, Fillson came shuffling over. He was a very small man, barely five feet, and he moved with a slow deliberation that reminded Carson of a diver under water.

He turned to Carson, and spoke with a hoarse voice. “You’ll have to go. You too, Rosalind. Can’t open a cage when others are in the room.”

Carson watched in horror as one of the eyeballs suddenly erupted from its socket, followed by a gush of bloody fluid. The chimp thrashed about silently, teeth snapping, arms flail­ing.

“What the hell?” Carson began, frozen in horror.

“Good-bye,”Fillson said firmly, as he reached into a cabi­net behind him.

“Bye, Bob,” said Brandon-Smith. Carson noticed a distinct change of tone in her voice when she spoke to the animal handler.

The last thing Carson saw as they sealed the door was the chimp, rigid with pain, pawing desperately at its ruined face, as Fillson sprayed something from an aerosol can into the cage.

Brandon-Smith made her ponderous way down another corridor, not speaking.

“Are you going to tell me what was wrong with that chim­panzee?” Carson said at last.

“I thought it was obvious,” she snapped. “Cerebral edema.”

“Caused by what?”

The woman turned to look at him. She seemed surprised. “You really don’t know, Carson?”

“No, I don’t. And from now on, the name is Guy. Or Dr. Carson, if you prefer. I don’t appreciate being called by my last name.”

There was a silence. “Fine, Guy,”she replied. “Those chimps are all X-FLU positive. The one you saw is in the tertiary stage of the disease. The virus stimulates massive overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid. In time, the pressure herniates the brain down through the foramen magnum. That’s when the lucky ones die. A few hang on until the eyeballs are forced from their sockets.”

“X-FLU?” Carson asked. He could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead and under his arms, dampening the inside of his suit.

This time Brandon-Smith stopped dead. There was a buzz of static and he heard her voice: “Singer, can you enlighten me as to why this joker doesn’t know about X-FLU?”

Singer’s voice came back. “I haven’t briefed him yet on the project. That comes next.”

“Mr. Ass-backwards, as usual,” she said, then turned to Carson. “Let’s go, Guy, the tour’s over.”

She left Carson at the exit air lock. He stepped through the access chamber into another chemical shower, waiting the required seven minutes as the high-pressure solution doused his suit. A few minutes later he was back in the ready room. He was vaguely annoyed to see Singer, cool and re­laxed, doing the crossword of the local newspaper.

“Enjoy your tour?” Singer asked, looking up from the paper.

“No,” said Carson, breathing deeply, trying to shake the oppressive feeling of the Fever Tank. “That Brandon-Smith is meaner than a sidewinder in a hot skillet.”

Singer burst out laughing and shook his bald head. “A col­orful way of putting it. She’s the most brilliant scientist we’ve got at present. If we pull this project off, you know, we’re all going to become rich. Yourself included. That’s worth putting up with a Rosalind Brandon-Smith, don’t you think? She’s really just a frightened, insecure little girl underneath that mountain of adipose tissue.”

He helped Carson out of his suit and showed him how to pack it back inside the locker.

“I think the time has come for me to hear about this mys­terious project,” Carson said, closing the locker.

“Absolutely. Shall we head back to my office for a cold drink?”

Carson nodded. “You know, there was a chimpanzee back there with its—”

Singer held up a hand. “I know what you saw.”

“So what the hell was it?”

Singer paused. “Influenza.”

“What?” Carson said. “The flu?”

Singer nodded.

“I don’t know of any flu that pops your eyeballs out of your skull.”

“Well,” Singer said, “this is a very special kind of flu.” Gripping Carson’s elbow, he led him through the outer cor­ridors of the maximum-security lab and back up into the wel­coming desert sunlight.

At precisely two minutes to three in the afternoon, Charles Levine opened his door and ushered a young woman, clad in jeans and sweatshirt, back into his outer office.

“Thank you, Ms. Fields,” he said, smiling. “We’ll let you know if anything opens up for next term.”

As the student turned to leave, Levine checked his watch. “That’s it, right, Ray?” he said, turning to his secretary.

With an effort, Ray shifted his eyes from Ms. Fields’s de­parting ass to the open appointment book on his desk. He smoothed his hand over his immaculate Buddy Holly haircut, his fingers dropping to scratch the heavily muscled chest be­neath the sleeveless red T-shirt. “That’s it, Dr. Levine,” he said.

“Any messages? Sheriff’s deputies bearing summonses? Of­fers of marriage?”

Ray grinned and waited until the outer door closed before answering. “Borucki called twice. Apparently that pharma­ceutical company in Little Rock was unimpressed with last month’s article. They’re suing for libel.”

“How much?”

Ray shrugged. “A million.”

“Tell our legal friends to take the usual steps.” Levine turned away. “No interruptions, Ray.”

“Right.”

Levine closed the door.

With his notoriety as Foundation for Genetic Policy spokes­man growing, Levine found it increasingly difficult to main­tain a routine existence as professor of theoretical genetics. The nature of the foundation made it a lightning rod for a certain kind of student: lonely, idealistic, in need of a burning cause. It also made him and his office the target of a great deal of anger from business concerns.

When his former secretary quit after receiving a number of threatening phone calls, Levine took two precautionary steps. He had a new lock installed on his office door, and he hired Ray. Ray’s office skills left a lot to be desired. But as an ex-Navy SEAL discharged because of a heart murmur, he was very good at keeping things peaceful. Ray seemed to spend most of his non working hours chasing women, but at the office he was serenely indifferent to all forms of intimidation, and for that alone Levine found him indispensable.

The heavy bolt of the lock slid home with reassuring fi­nality. Levine tugged at the doorknob, then, satisfied, moved quickly between piles of term papers, scientific journals, and back issues of Genetic Policy to his desk. The affable, easygoing air he had maintained during his consultation hours quickly dissipated. Clearing the center of the desk with a sweep of his hand, he tugged his computer keyboard into typing range. Then he dug into a pocket of his briefcase and pulled out a black object the size of a cigarette box. A slender length of gray cable dangled from one end. Leaning forward in his chair, Levine disconnected his telephone, plugged the phone line into one end of the Black box, and inserted the slender gray cable into the back panel of his laptop computer.

Even before his single-minded crusade to regulate genetic engineering made his name a foul word in a dozen top labs around the world, Levine had learned hard lessons about se­curity. The black box was a dedicated cryptographic device for scrambling computer transmissions over telephone lines. Using proprietary public-key algorithms far more sophisti­cated than the DES standard, it was supposedly uncrackable even by government supercomputers. Mere possession of such devices was of questionable legality. But Levine had been an active member of the student antiwar underground before graduating from U.C. Irvine in 1971. He was no stranger to using unorthodox or even illegal methods to achieve his ends.

Levine switched on his PC, drumming his fingers on the desktop while the machine booted itself into consciousness. Typing rapidly, he brought up the communications program that would dial out over the phone lines to another computer, and another user. A very special user.

He waited while the call was rerouted, then rerouted again across the telephone long lines, threading a complex, untraceable path. At last, the call was answered by the hiss of another modem. There was a shrill squealing noise as the two computers negotiated; then Levine’s screen dissolved into a now-familiar image: a figure, dressed in mime’s costume, bal­ancing the earth on one fingertip. Almost immediately the log-in device disappeared, and words appeared on Levine’s screen: disembodied, as if typed by a ghost.

Professor! What up?

I need a line into GeneDyne’s net, Levine typed.

The response was immediate. Simple enough. What are we looking for today? Employee phone numbers? P&L sheets? The latest scores of the mailroom deathmatchers?

I need a private channel into the Mount Dragon facility, Levine typed.

The next response was a little slower in coming. Whoa! _Whoa!_ Whose pair of balls have you strapped on today, monsieur le professor?

Can’t do it? Levine prodded.

Did I say I couldn’t do it? Remember to whom you’re speaking, varlet! You won’t find the word ‘can’t’ in my spell-checker. I’m not worried about me: I’m worried about _you_, my man. I hear that this guy Scopes is bad juju. He’d love to catch you copping a feel beneath his skirts. Are you sure you’re ready to jack into prime time, professor?

You’re worried about me? Levine typed. That’s hard to believe.

Why, professor. Your callousness wounds me.

Do you want money this time? Is that it?

Money? Now I’m insulted. I demand satisfaction. Meet me at high noon in front of the Cyberspace Sa­loon.

Mime, this is serious.

I’m always serious. Of course I can handle your little problem. Besides, I’ve heard rumors of some truly girthy program Scopes has been working on. Something very hip, very interesting. But he’s a jeal­ous guy, supposedly, keeps a chastity belt around it. Perhaps while I’m taking care of business, I can pay a little visit to his private server. That’s just the kind of deflowering I enjoy most.

What you do on your off time is your own affair, Levine typed irritably. Just make sure the channel is absolutely secure. Let me know when it’s in place, please.

CID.

Mime, I don’t understand. CID?

Bless me, I keep forgetting what a newbie you are. Out here in the electronic ether, we use acronyms to help keep our epistolary exchanges short and sweet. CID: ‘Consider it done.’ You long-winded academic types could take a page from our virtual book. Here’s another: TTFN. Viz, ‘ta-ta for now.’ So TTFN, Herr Professor.

The screen went blank.

John Singer’s office, which occupied the southwest corner of the administration building, was more living room than di­rector’s suite. A kiva fireplace was built into one corner, sur­rounded by a sofa and two leather wing chairs. Against one wall was an antique Mexican trastero, on which sat a battered Martin guitar and an untidy stack of sheet music. A Two Gray Hills Navajo rug lay on the floor, and the walls were lined with nineteenth-century prints of the American frontier, in­cluding six Bodmer images of Mandan and Hidatsa Indians on the Upper Missouri. There was no desk—only a computer workstation and telephone.

The windows looked over the Jornada desert, where the dirt road wandered off toward infinity. Sun streamed in the tinted window and across the room, filling it with light.

Carson seated himself in one of the leather chairs while Singer moved to a small bar on the far side of the room.

“Anything to drink?” he asked. “Beer, wine, martini, juice?”

Carson glanced at his watch. It was 11:45 A.M. His stomach still felt a little queasy. “I’ll have some juice.”

Singer returned with a glass of Cranapple in one hand and a martini in the other. He settled back on the sofa and propped his feet up on the table. “I know,” he said, “drinking before noon. Very bad. But this is a special occasion.” He raised his glass. “To X-FLU.”

“X-FLU,” Carson muttered. “That’s what Brandon-Smith said killed the chimp.”

“Correct,” Singer took a sip, exhaling contentedly.

“Forgive my bluntness,” said Carson, “but I’d really like to know what this project is all about. I still can’t understand why Mr. Scopes chose me out of—what—five thousand sci­entists? And why did I have to drop everything, get my ass out here on five minutes’ notice?”

Singer settled back. “Let me start at the beginning. Are you familiar with an animal called a bonobo?”

“No.”

“We used to call them pygmy chimpanzees until we realized they were a completely different species. Bonobos are even closer to human beings than the more common lowland chimps. They are more intelligent, form monogamous rela­tionships, and share ninety-nine-point-two percent of our DNA. Most importantly, they get all our diseases. Except one.”

He paused, sipped his drink.

“They don’t get the flu. All other chimps, as well as gorillas and orangs, get the flu. But not the bonobo. This fact came to Brent’s attention about ten months ago. He sent us several bonobos, and we did some genetic sequencing. Let me show you what we discovered.”

Singer opened a notebook lying on the coffee table, mov­ing aside a malachite egg to make room. Inside, the sheets of paper were covered with strings of letters in complex ladder-like arrangements.

“The bonobo has a gene that makes it immune to influenza. Not just one or two strains, but all sixty known varieties. We’ve named it the X-FLU gene.”

Carson examined the printout. It was a short gene, going only to several hundred base pairs.

“How does the gene work?” Carson asked.

Singer smiled. “We don’t really know. It would take years to figure it out. But Brent hypothesized that if we could insert this gene into human DNA, it would render humans immune to flu, as well. The initial in vitro tests we performed bore this out.”

“Interesting,” Carson replied.

“I’ll say. Take the gene out of the bonobo, and insert it into yourself. Presto, you never get the flu again.” Singer leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Guy, how much do you know about the flu?”

Carson hesitated. He actually knew quite a bit. But Singer didn’t seem the type who’d appreciate a braggart. “Not as much as I should. People are too complacent about it, for one thing.”

Singer nodded. “That’s right. People tend to think of it as a nuisance. But it’s not a nuisance. It’s one of the worst viral diseases in the world. Even today, a million people die an­nually from the flu. It remains one of the top ten causes of death in the United States. During flu season, one quarter of the population falls ill. And that’s in a good year. People forget that the swine flu epidemic of 1918 killed one person out of fifty worldwide. That was the worst pandemic in re­corded history, worse than the Black Death. And it happened in this century. If it happened again today, we’d be almost as helpless now as we were then.”

“Truly virulent flu mutations can kill in hours,” Carson said. “But—”

“Just one moment, Guy. That word, mutation, is key. The serious pandemics occur when the flu virus undergoes signif­icant mutation. It’s already happened three times this century, most recently with the Hong Kong flu in 1968. We’re overdue—we’re ripe—for another pandemic right now.”

“And because the coating of the viral particle keeps mu­tating,” Carson said, “there’s no permanent vaccine. A flu shot is just a cocktail of three or four strains, a guess on the part of epidemiologists as to what strain might be coming along in the next six months. Correct? They could guess wrong and you’d be just as sick.”

Singer smiled. “Very good, Guy. We’re well aware of the work you did with flu viruses at MIT. That’s part of the reason we chose you.”

He finished his drink with a short hard gulp. “One thing you may not have been aware of was that the world economy loses almost one trillion dollars a year in unrealized productiv­ity to the flu.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Here’s something else you may not know: the flu causes an estimated two hundred thousand birth defects annually. When a pregnant woman gets a fever above a hundred and four degrees, all kinds of developmental hell can break loose in the womb.”

He inhaled slowly. “Guy, we’re working on the last great medical advancement of the twentieth century. And now you’re a part of it. You see, with the X-FLU gene inserted into his body, a human being will be immune to all strains of the flu. Forever. What’s more, his children will inherit the immunity.”

Carson slowly put down his drink and looked at Singer.

“Jesus,” he said. “You mean, a gene therapy aimed at re­productive cells?”

“That’s right. We’re going to alter the germ cell line of the human race permanently. And you, Guy, are central to this effort.”

“But my work with influenza was just preliminary,” Carson said. “My main focus was elsewhere.”

“I know,” Singer replied. “Bear with me a moment longer. Our major obstacle has been getting the X-FLU gene into human DNA. It has to be done, of course, using a virus.”

Carson nodded. He knew that viruses worked by inserting their own DNA into a host’s DNA. That made viruses the ideal vector to exchange genes between distantly related spe­cies. As a result, most genetic engineering used viruses in this way.

“Here’s how it will work,” Singer continued. “We insert the X-FLU gene into a flu virus itself. Use the virus as a Trojan horse, if you will. Then we infect a person with that virus. As with any flu vaccine, the person will develop a mild case of influenza. Meanwhile, the virus has inserted the bonobo DNA into the person’s DNA. When he recovers, he’s got the X-FLU gene. And he’ll never get the flu again.”

“Gene therapy,” Carson said.

“Absolutely,” Singer replied. “It’s one of the hottest things around today. Gene therapies are promising to cure all kinds of genetic diseases. Like Tay-Sachs disease, PKU syndrome, hemophilia, you name it. Someday, anyone born with a ge­netic defect will be able to get the right gene and live a nor­mal life. Only in this case, the ‘defect’ is susceptibility to the flu. And the change is inheritable.”

Singer mopped his brow. “I get pretty excited, talking about this stuff,” he said, grinning. “I never dreamed I could change the world when I was teaching at CalTech. X-FLU made me believe in God again, it really did.” He cleared his throat.

“We’re very close, Guy. But there’s one small problem. When we insert the X-FLU gene into the ordinary flu virus, it turns the ordinary virus virulent. Infinitely more virulent. And brutally contagious. Instead of being an innocuous mes­senger, the protein coat of the virus seems to mimic a hor­mone that stimulates the overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid. What you saw in the Fever Tank was the virus’s effect on a chimpanzee. We don’t quite know what it will do to a human being, but we know it won’t be pleasant.” He stood up and moved to a nearby window.

“Your job is to redesign the viral coat of the X-FLU ‘mes­senger’ virus. To render it harmless. To allow it to infect its human host without killing it, so that it can transport the X-FLU gene into human DNA.”

Carson opened his mouth to speak, then shut it abruptly. He suddenly understood why Scopes had plucked him out of the mass of GeneDyne talent. Until Fred Peck had set him to doing make-work, his specialty had been altering the pro­tein shells that surround a virus. He knew that the protein coat of a virus could be changed or attenuated using heat, various enzymes, radiation, even through the growing of dif­ferent strains. He’d done it all himself. There were many ways to neutralize a virus.

“It sounds like a straightforward problem,” he said.

“It should be. But it isn’t. For some reason, no matter what you do, the virus always mutates back to its deadly form. When Burt was working on it, he must have inoculated an entire colony of chimps with supposedly safe strains of the X-FLU virus. Each time, the virus reverted, and, well, you’ve seen the grim result. Sudden cerebral edema. Burt was a bril­liant scientist. If it wasn’t for him, we’d have never been able to get PurBlood, our artificial blood product, stabilized and out the door. But the X-FLU problem drove him—” Singer paused. “He couldn’t take the pressure.”

“I can see why people avoid the Fever Tank,” Carson said.

“It’s horrible. And I have grave misgivings about using the chimps. But when you consider the benefits to humanity ...” Singer fell silent, looking out over the landscape.

“Why the secrecy?” Carson finally asked.

“Two reasons. We believe that at least one other drug com­pany is working along similar lines of research, and we don’t want to tip our hand prematurely. But more importantly, there are a lot of people out there afraid of technology. I don’t really blame them. With nuclear weapons, radiation, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—they’re suspicious. And they don’t like the idea of genetic engineering.” He turned toward Carson. “Let’s face it, what we’re talking about is a permanent alteration in the human genome. That could be very contro­versial. And if people object to genetically altered veggies, what are they going to make of this? We face the same prob­lem with PurBlood. So we want to have X-FLU ready to go when it’s announced to the world. That way, opposition won’t have time to develop. People will see that the benefits far outweigh any irrational outcry of fear from a small segment of the public.”

“That segment can be pretty vocal.” Carson had sometimes passed groups of demonstrators outside the GeneDyne gates on his way to and from work.

“Yes. You have people out there like Charles Levine. You know his Foundation for Genetic Policy? Very radical orga­nization, out to destroy genetic engineering in general and Brent Scopes in particular.”

Carson nodded.

“They were friends in college, Levine and Scopes. God, that’s quite a story. Remind me to tell you what I know of it someday. Anyway, Levine is a bit unbalanced, a real Don Quixote. Rolling back scientific progress has become his goal in life. It’s gotten worse since the death of his wife, I’m told. And he’s carried out a twenty-year vendetta against Brent Scopes. Unfortunately, there are many in the media who ac­tually listen to him and print his garbage.” He stepped away from the window. “It’s much easier to tear something down than build it up, Guy. Mount Dragon is the safest genetic-engineering lab in the world. No one, and I mean no one, is more interested in the safety of his employees and his products than Brent Scopes.”

Carson almost mentioned that Charles Levine had been one of his undergraduate professors, but thought better of it. Maybe Singer already knew. “So you want to present the X-FLU therapy as a fait accompli. And that’s the reason for the rush?”

“That’s partly the reason.” Singer hesitated, then contin­ued. “Actually, the truth is that X-FLU is very important to GeneDyne. In fact, it’s critical. Scopes’s corn royalty patent—GeneDyne’s financial bedrock—expires in a matter of weeks.”

“But Scopes only turns forty this year,” Carson said. “The patent can’t be that old. Why doesn’t he just renew it?”

Singer shrugged. “I don’t know all the details. I just know it’s expiring, and it can’t be renewed. When that happens, all those royalties will cease. PurBlood won’t see distribution for a couple of months, and it will take years to amortize the cost of R and D anyway. Our other new products are still stuck undergoing the approval process. If X-FLU doesn’t come through soon, GeneDyne will have to cut its generous divi­dend. That would have a catastrophic effect on the stock price. Your nest egg and mine.”

He turned, beckoned. “Come over here, Guy,” he said.

Carson walked to where Singer was standing. The window offered a sweeping view of the Jornada del Muerto desert, which stretched toward the horizon, dissolving in a firestorm of light where the sky met the earth. To the south Carson could barely make out the rubble of what looked like an an­cient Indian ruin, several ragged walls poking above the drifted sand.

Singer placed a hand on Carson’s shoulder. “These matters shouldn’t be of any concern to you right now. Think about the potential that lies just beneath our fingertips. The average doctor, if he’s lucky, may save hundreds of lives. A medical researcher may save thousands. But you, me, GeneDyne— we’re going to save millions. Billions.”

He pointed toward a low range of mountains to the north­east, rising above the bright desert like a series of dark teeth. “Fifty years ago, mankind exploded the first atomic device at the foot of those mountains. The Trinity Site is a mere thirty miles from here. That was the dark side of science. Now, half a century later, in this same desert, we have the chance to redeem science. It’s really as simple and as profound as that.”

His grip tightened. “Guy, this is going to be the greatest adventure of your lifetime. I think I can guarantee that.”

They stood looking out over the desert, and as he stared, Carson could feel its vast intensity, a feeling almost religious in its force. And he knew Singer was right.

Carson rose at five-thirty. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and looked out the open window toward the San Andres Mountains. The cool night air flowed in, bringing with it the intense stillness of the predawn morning. He breathed deeply. In New Jersey, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed at eight o’clock. Now, on his second morn­ing in the desert, he was already back on his old schedule.

He watched as the stars disappeared, leaving only Venus in the cloudless eastern sky. The peculiar green color of the desert sunrise crept into the sky, then faded to yellow. Slowly, the outlines of plants emerged from the indistinct blueness of the desert floor. The wiry tangles of witch mesquite and the tall clumps of tobosa grass were widely scattered; life in the desert, Carson thought, was a solitary, uncrowded affair.

His room was sparsely but comfortably furnished: bed, matching sofa and chair, oversized desk, bookshelves. He showered, shaved, and dressed in white scrubs, feeling alternately excited and apprehensive about the day ahead.

He’d spent the previous afternoon being processed into the Mount Dragon workforce: filling out forms, getting voice-printed and photographed, and undergoing the most exten­sive physical he’d ever experienced. The site doctor, Lyle Grady, was a thin, small man with a reedy voice. He’d barely smiled as he typed notes into his terminal. After a brief dinner with Singer, Carson had turned in early. He wanted to be well rested.

The workday at GeneDyne began at eight o’clock. Carson did not eat breakfast—a holdover from the days when his father roused him early and made him saddle his horse in the dark—but he found his way to the cafeteria, where he grabbed a quick cup of coffee before heading toward his new lab. The cafeteria was deserted, and Carson remembered a remark Singer had made at dinner the night before. “We eat big dinners around here,” he’d said. “Breakfast and lunch aren’t too popular. Something about working in the Fever Tank that really curbs your appetite.”

People were suiting up quickly and silently when Carson arrived at the Fever Tank. Everyone turned to look at the new arrival, some friendly, some frankly curious, some non­committal. Then Singer appeared in the ready room, his round face smiling broadly.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, giving Carson a friendly pat on the back.

“Not bad,” Carson said. “I’m anxious to get started.”

“Good. I want to introduce you to your assistant.” He looked around. “Where’s Susana?”

“She’s already inside,” said one of the technicians. “She had to go in early to check some cultures.”

“You’re in Lab C,” Singer said. “Rosalind showed you the way, right?”

“More or less,” Carson said, pulling the bluesuit out of his locker.

“Good. You’ll probably want to start by going over Frank Burt’s lab notes. Susana will see that you have everything you need.”

Completing the dressing procedure with Singer’s help, Carson followed the others into the chemical showers, then again entered the warren of narrow corridors and hatches of the Biosafety Level-5 lab. Once again, he found it difficult to get used to the constricting suit, the reliance on air tubes. After a few wrong turns he found himself in front of a metal door marked LABORATORY C.

Inside, a bulky, suited figure was bent over a bioprophylaxis table, sorting through a stack of petri dishes. Carson pressed one of the intercom buttons on his suit.

“Hi. Are you Susana?”

The figure straightened up.

“I’m Guy Carson,” he continued.

A small sharp voice crackled over the intercom. “Susana Cabeza de Vaca.”

They clumsily shook hands.

“These suits are a pain in the butt,” de Vaca said irritably. “So you’re Burt’s replacement.”

“That’s right,” said Carson.

She peered into his visor. “Hispano?” she asked.

“No, I’m an Anglo,” Carson replied, a little more hastily than he’d intended.

There was a pause. “Hmm,” de Vaca said, looking at him intently. “Well, you sure sound like you could be from around here, anyway.”

“I grew up in the Bootheel.”

“I knew it! Well, Guy, you and I are the only natives here.”

“You’re a New Mexican? When did you come?” Carson asked.

“I got here about two weeks ago, transferred from the Al­buquerque plant. I was originally assigned to Medical, but now I’ll be replacing Dr. Burt’s assistant. She left a few days after he did.”

“Where’re you from?” Carson asked.

“A little mountain town called Truchas. About thirty miles north of Santa Fe.”

“Originally, I mean.”

There was another pause. “I was born in Truchas,” she said.

“Okay,” Carson said, surprised by her sharp tone.

“You meant, when did we swim the Rio Grande?”

“Well, no, of course not. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Mexicans—”

“Mexicans?”

“Yes. Some of the best hands on our ranch were Mexican, and growing up I had a lot of Mexican friends—”

“My family,” de Vaca interrupted frostily, “came to Amer­ica with Don Juan de Oсate. In fact, Don Alonso Cabeza de Vaca and his wife almost died of thirst crossing this very de­sert. That was in 1598, which I’m sure was a lot earlier than when your redneck dustbowl family settled in the Bootheel. But I’m deeply touched you had Mexican friends growing up.”

She turned away and began sorting through petri dishes again, typing the numbers into a PowerBook computer.

Jesus, thought Carson, Singer wasn’t kidding when he said everyone here was stressed. “Ms. de Vaca,” he said, “I hope you understand I was just trying to be friendly.”

Carson waited. De Vaca continued to sort and type.

“Not that it matters, but I don’t come from some dustbowl family. My ancestor was Kit Carson, and my great-grandfather homesteaded the ranch I grew up on. The Carsons have been in New Mexico for almost two hundred years.”

“Colonel Christopher Carson? Well, whaddya know,” she said, not looking up. “I once wrote a college paper on Carson. Tell me, are you descended from his Spanish wife or his In­dian wife?”

There was a silence.

“It’s got to be one or the other,” she continued, “because you sure don’t look like a white man to me.” She stacked the petri dishes and squared them away, sliding them into a stain­less-steel slot in the wall.

“I don’t define myself by my racial makeup, Ms. de Vaca,” Carson said, trying to keep an even tone.

“It’s Cabeza de Vaca, not ‘de Vaca,’ ” she responded, beginning to sort another stack.

Carson jabbed angrily at his intercom switch. “I don’t care if it’s Cabeza or Kowalski. I’m not going to take this kind of rude shit from you or that walking chuck wagon Rosalind or anyone else.”

There was a momentary silence. Then de Vaca began to laugh. “Carson? Look at the two buttons on your intercom panel. One is for private conversation over a local channel, and one is for global broadcast. Don’t get them mixed up again, or everyone in the Fever Tank will hear what you’re saying.”

There came a hiss on the intercom. “Carson?” Brandon-Smith’s voice sounded. “I just want you to know I heard that, you bowlegged asswipe.”

De Vaca smirked.

“Ms. Cabeza de Vaca,” said Carson, fumbling with the in­tercom buttons. “I just want to get my job done. Got that? I’m not interested in petty squabbling or in sorting out your identity problem. So start acting like an assistant and show me how I can access Dr. Burt’s lab notes.”

There was an icy pause.

“Right,” de Vaca said at last, pointing to a gray laptop stored in a cubbyhole near the entry hatch. “That PowerBook was Burt’s. Now it’s yours. If you want to see his entries, the network jacks are in that receptacle by your left elbow. You know the rules about notes, don’t you?”

“You mean the pencil-and-paper directive?” Back in New Jersey, GeneDyne had a policy of discouraging the recording of any information except into company computers.

“They take it a step further here,” de Vaca said. “No hard copy of any kind. No pens, pencils, paper. All test results, all lab work, everything you do and think, has to be recorded in your PowerBook and uploaded to the mainframe at least once a day. Just leaving a note on someone’s desk is enough to get you fired.”

“What’s the big deal?”

De Vaca shrugged inside the confines of her suit. “Scopes likes to browse through our notes, see what we’re up to, offer suggestions. He roams company cyberspace all night long from Boston, poking and prying into everyone’s business; The guy never sleeps.”

Carson sensed a note of disrespect in her voice. Turning on the laptop and plugging the network cable into the wall jack, he logged on, then let de Vaca show him where Burt’s files were kept. He typed a few brief commands—annoyed at the pudgy clumsiness of his gloved fingers—and waited while the files were copied to the laptop’s hard disk. Then he loaded Burt’s notes into the laptop’s word processor.

February 18. First day at lab. Briefed by Singer on PurBlood with other new arrival, P. Brandon-Smith. Spent afternoon in library, studying precedents for encapsulating naked hemoglobin. The problem, as I see it, is essentially one of ...

“You don’t want that stuff,” de Vaca said. “That’s the last project, before I came. Page ahead until you get to X-FLU.”

Carson scrolled through three months’ worth of notes, at last locating where Burt had completed work on GeneDyne’s artificial blood and begun laying the groundwork for X-FLU. The story unfolded in terse, businesslike entries: a brilliant scientist, fresh from the triumph of one project, launching immediately into the next. Burt had used his own filtration process—a process that had made him a famous name within GeneDyne—to synthesize PurBlood, and his optimism and enthusiasm shone through clearly. After all, it had seemed a fairly simple task to neutralize the X-FLU virus and get on with human testing.

Day after day Burt worked on various angles of the problem: computer-modeling the protein coat; employing various en­zymes, heat treatments, and chemicals; moving from one angle of attack to another with rapidity. Scattered liberally throughout the notes were comments from Scopes, who seemed to peruse Burt’s work several times a week. The com­puter had also captured many on-line typed “conversations” between Scopes and Burt. As he read these exchanges, Carson found himself admiring Scopes’s understanding of the technical aspects of his business, and envying Burt’s easy fa­miliarity with the GeneDyne CEO.

Despite Burt’s ceaseless energy and brilliant attack, how­ever, nothing seemed to work. Altering the protein capsule around the flu virus itself was an almost trivial matter. Each time, the coat remained stable in vitro, and Burt would then move toward an in vivo test—injecting the altered virus into chimpanzees. Each time, the animals lived for a while without obvious symptoms, then suddenly died hideous deaths.

Carson scrolled through page after page in which an in­creasingly exasperated Burt recorded continual, inexplicable failures. Over time, the entries seemed to lose their clipped, dispassionate tone, and become more rambling and personal. Barbed comments about the scientists Burt worked with— especially Rosalind Brandon-Smith, whom he detested—began to appear.

About three weeks before Burt left Mount Dragon, the po­ems began. Usually ten lines or less, they focused on the hid­den, obscure beauty of science: the quaternary structure of a globulin protein, the blue glow of Cerenkov radiation. They were lyrical and evocative, yet Carson found them chilling, appearing suddenly between columns of test results, unbid­den, like alien guests.

Carbon, one of the poems began,

Most beautiful of elements.

Such infinite variety,

Chains, rings, branches, buckyballs, side groups, aromatics.

Your index of refraction kills shahs and speculators.

Carbon.

You who were with us in the streets of Saigon,

You were everywhere, floating in the air

Invisible in the fear and sweat,

The napalm.

Without you we are nothing.

Carbon we were and carbon we shall become.

The entries quickly grew more sporadic and disjointed as the end drew near. Carson had increasing difficulty following Burt’s logic from one thought to another. Throughout, Scopes had been a constant background presence; now his comments and suggestions became more critical and sarcastic. Their ex­changes developed a distinct confrontational edge: Scopes aggressive, Burt evasive, almost penitent.

Burt, where were you yesterday?

I took the day off and walked outside the perimeter.

For every day this problem isn’t solved, it’s costing GeneDyne one million dollars. So Dr. Burt decides to take the day off for a one-million-dollar hike. Charming. Everybody’s waiting on you, Frank, remember? The entire project’s waiting on you.

Brent, Ijust can’t go on day after day. I’ve got to have some time to think and be alone.

So what did you think about?

I thought about my first wife.

Jesus Christ, he thought about his first wife. One million bucks, Frank, to think about your fucking first wife. I could kill you, Ireally could.

I just couldn’t work yesterday. I’ve tried everything, includ­ing recombinant viral vectors. The problem isn’t solvable.

Frank, I really hate you for even thinking that. No problem is insoluble. That’s what you said about the blood, remember? And then you solved it. You did it, Frank, think about it! And I love you for it, Frank, I do. And I know you can do it again. There’s a Nobel Prize in this for you, I swear.

Tempting me with glory won’t help, Brent. Money won’t, either. Nothing is going to make an impossible problem possible.

Don’t say that, Frank. Please. It hurts me to hear you say that word, because it’s always a lie. “Impossible” is a lie. The universe is strange and vast, and anything is possible. You re­mind me of Alice in Wonderland. You remember that exchange between Alice and the Queen about this very subject?

No, I don’t. And I don’t think Alice in Wonderland is going to help me believe in the impossible.

You son of a bitch, if I hear that word again I’ll come out there and kill you with my bare hands. Look, I’ve given you everything you need. Please, Frank, just get back in there and do it. I have faith that you can do it. Look, why don’t you just start over. Start with some other host, something really improbable, like a new virus, a macrophage. Or a reovirus. Some­thing that will let you approach things from an entirely new direction. Okay?

All right, Brent.

Several days passed with no entries at all. Then, on June 29—just a fortnight past—came a rush of writing, full of apocalyptic imagery and ominous ramblings. Several times Burt mentioned a “key factor,” never explaining what it was. Carson shook his head. His predecessor had obviously gone delusional, imagining solutions his rational mind had been unable to discover.

Carson sat back, feeling the trapped sweat collecting be­tween his shoulder blades and around his elbows. For the first time, he felt a momentary thrust of fear. How could he suc­ceed, when a man like Burt had failed—not only failed, but lost his mind in the process? He glanced up and found de Vaca looking at him.

“Have you read this?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How ... I mean, how do they expect me to take this over?”

“That’s your problem,” she responded evenly. “I’m not the one with the degrees from Harvard and MIT.”

Carson spent the rest of the day rereading the early experi­ments, staying away from the distracting convolutions of Burt’s lab notes. Toward the end of the day he began to feel more upbeat. There was a new recombinant DNA technique he had worked with at MIT that Burt hadn’t been aware of. Carson diagrammed the problem, breaking it down into its parts, then further breaking down those parts until it had been separated into irreducibles.

As the day drew to a close, Carson began to sketch out an experimental protocol of his own. There was, he realized, still a lot to work with. He stood up, stretched, and watched as de Vaca plugged her notebook into the network jack.

“Don’t forget to upload,” she said. “I’m sure Big Brother will want to check over your work tonight.”

“Thanks,” said Carson, scoffing inwardly at the thought that Scopes would waste time looking over his notes. Scopes and Burt had clearly been friends, but Carson was still just a grade-three technician from the Edison office. He uploaded the day’s data, stored the computer in its cubbyhole for the night, then followed de Vaca as she made the long slow trip out of the Fever Tank.

Back in the ready room, Carson had unbuckled his visor and was unzipping the lower part of his biohazard suit when he glanced over at his assistant. She had already stowed her suit and was shaking out her hair, and Carson was surprised to see not the chunky seсorita he had imagined underneath the bluesuit, but a slender, extremely beautiful young woman with long black hair, brown skin, and a regal face with two deep purple eyes.

She turned and caught his look.

“Keep your eyes to yourself, cabrуn,”she said, “if you don’t want them to end up like one of those chimps in there.”

She slung her handbag over her shoulder and strode out while the others in the ready room erupted into laughter.

The room was octagonal. Each of its eight walls rose ponder­ously toward a groined ceiling that hung fifty feet above, softly illuminated by invisible cove lighting. Seven walls were cov­ered with enormous flat-panel computer screens, currently dark. The eighth wall contained a door, flush with the wall, small but extremely thick to accommodate the room’s exter­nal soundproofing. Although the room stood sixty stories above the Boston harbor, there were no windows and no views. The floor was laid in rare Tanzanian mbanga slate. The colors were a spectrum of muted grays, ashes, and taupes.

The exterior of the door was made of a thick, banded metal alloy. Instead of a handle, there was an EyeDentify retinal scanner and a FingerMatrix hand geometry reader. Next to the door, beneath a sterilizing ultraviolet light, sat a row of foam slippers, their sizes imprinted in large numbers on the toes. Below an overhead camera that swiveled ceaselessly to and fro, a large sign read, SPEAK SOFTLY AT ALL TIMES PLEASE.

Beyond lay a long, dimly lit corridor leading to a security station and an elevator bank. On either side of the corridor, a series of closed doors led to the security offices, kitchens, infirmary, air-purifying electrostatic precipitators, and ser­vants’ quarters necessary to fill the various requirements of the octagonal room’s occupant.

The door closest to the octagon was open. The room inside was paneled in cherry, with a marble fireplace, a parquet floor covered with a Persian rug, and several large Hudson River School paintings on the wall. A magnificent mahogany desk stood in the center of the room, its only electronic device an old dial telephone. A suited figure sat behind the desk, writing on a piece of paper.

Inside the huge octagonal room itself, a spotlight was re­cessed into the very point of the vaulted ceiling, and it dropped a pencil beam of pure white light down to the mid­point of the room. Centered in the pool of light was a battered sofa of 1970s styling. Its arms were dark with use and wifts of stuffing protruded from the threadbare nap. Silver duct tape sealed the front edge. As ugly and frayed as it was, the sofa had one essential quality: it was extremely comfortable.

Two cheap faux-antique end tables stood guard at either side of the sofa. A large telephone and several electronic de­vices in black brushed metal boxes stood on one of the end tables, and a video camera, affixed to one end, was pointed toward the sofa. The other end table was bare, but it bore the legacy of innumerable greasy pizza boxes and sticky Coke cans.

In front of the sofa sat a large worktable. In contrast to the other furniture, it was breathtakingly beautiful. The top was carved from bird’s-eye maple, polished and oiled to bring out its fractal perfection. The maple was surrounded by a border of lignum vitae, black and heavy, in which was inlaid a strip of oyster walnut in a complex geometric pattern. This pattern showed the naadaa, the sacred corn plant, which was at the heart of the religion of the ancient Anasazi Indians. The ker­nels of this corn had made the room’s occupant a very wealthy man. A single computer keyboard lay on the table, a short remote antenna jutting from its flank.

The rest of the vast room was clinically sterile and empty, the only exception being a large musical instrument that stood perched at the periphery of the circle of light. It was a six-octave, quadruple-string pianoforte, supposedly built for Beethoven in 1820 by the Hamburg firm of Otto Schachter. The shoulders and lyre of the piano’s rosewood sound box were ornately carved in a rococo scene of nymphs and water gods.

A figure in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and beaded Sioux Indian slippers sat hunched at the piano, head drooping, mo­tionless fingers dead on the ivory keys. For several minutes, all was still. Then the profound silence was shattered with a massive diminished-seventh chord, sforzando, resolving to a melancholy C minor: the opening bars of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Opus 111. The maestoso introduction echoed upward into the great vaulted space. The introduction evolved into the allegro con brio ed appassionato, the first motive notes filling the room with sound, drowning out the beep of an incoming video call. The movement continued, the slight figure hunched over the keyboard, his untidy hair shaking with the effort. The beep sounded again, unnoticed, and finally one massive wall screen sprang to life, revealing a mud-streaked, rain-spattered face.

The notes suddenly stopped, the sound of the piano dying away quickly. The figure rose with a curse, slamming the key­board cover shut.

“Brent,” the face called. “Are you there?”

Scopes walked over to the battered couch, flounced down on it cross-legged, and dragged the computer keyboard into his lap. He typed some commands, then looked up at the vast image on the screen.

The mud-spattered face belonged to a man currently seated inside a Range Rover. Beyond the vehicle’s rain-streaked win­dows lay a green clearing, a fresh gash in the flank of the surrounding Cameroon jungle. The clearing was a sea of mud, churned into lunar shapes by boots and tires. Scarred tree trunks were pulled up along the edges of the clearing. A few feet from the Range Rover, several dozen cages made of pipe and hog wire were stacked into rickety piles. Furry hands and toes poked from the hog wire, and miserable childlike eyes peered out at the world.

“How you doing, Rod?” Scopes said wearily, turning to face the camera on the end table.

“The weather sucks.”

“Raining here too,” Scopes said.

“Yeah, but you haven’t seen rain until you’ve—”

“I’ve been waiting three days to hear from you, Falfa,” Scopes interrupted. “What the hell’s been going on?”

The face broke into an ingratiating smile. “We had prob­lems getting gas for the trucks. I’ve had a whole village out in the jungle, at a dollar a day per person, for the last two weeks. They’re all rich now, and we’ve got fifty-six baby chimps.” He grinned and wiped his nose, which only served to smear more mud across his face. Or maybe it wasn’t mud.

Scopes looked away. “I want them in New Mexico in six weeks. With no more than a fifty-percent mortality rate.”

“Fifty percent! That’ll be tough,” Falfa said. “Usu­ally—”

“Yo, Falfa!”

“Excuse me?”

“You think that’s tough? See what happens to Rod­ney P. Falfa if more corpses than live bodies arrive in New Mexico. Look at them, sitting out there in the goddamn rain.”

There was a silence. Falfa honked and an African face ap­peared in the window. Falfa cracked the window a half inch, and Scopes could hear the miserable screams of the animals beyond. “Hunter mans!” Falfa was saying in pidgin. “You cover up dat beef, you hear? For every beef dat ee go die, hunter mans get dashed out one shilling.”

“Na whatee?” came the response from outside the Range Rover. “Masa promise de dash of—”

“Do it.” Falfa snugged the window shut, locking out the man’s complaints, and turned to Scopes with another grin. “How’s that for prompt action?”

Scopes looked at him coldly. “Piss-poor. Don’t you think those chimps need to be fed, too?”

“Right!” Falfa honked the horn again. Scopes pressed a button, cutting off the video communication, and sat back on the sofa. He typed a few more commands, then stopped. Suddenly, with another curse, he winged the keyboard angrily across the room. The keyboard hit the wall with a sharp cracking sound. A single key, jarred loose, rattled across the polished floor. Scopes flopped back onto the sofa, motionless.

A moment later the door hissed open and a tall man of perhaps sixty appeared. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, with a starched white shirt, wing-tip shoes, and a blue silk tie. Between graying temples, two fine gray eyes framed a small, chiseled nose.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Scopes?” the figure asked.

Scopes gestured toward the keyboard. “The keyboard is broken.”

The figure smiled ironically. “I take it Mr. Falfa finally checked in.”

Scopes laughed, rubbing his unruly hair. “Correct. These animal collectors are the lowest form of human being I’ve encountered. It’s a shame the Mount Dragon appetite for chimps seems insatiable.”

Spencer Fairley inclined his head. “I wish you would let somebody else handle these details, sir. You seem to find them so upsetting.”

Scopes shook his head. “This project is too important.”

“If you say so, sir. Can I get you anything else besides a new keyboard?”

Scopes waved his hand absently. As Fairley turned to go, Scopes suddenly spoke again. “Wait. There were two things, after all. Did you see the Channel Seven news last night?”

“As you know, sir, I don’t care for television or computers.”

“You crusty Beacon Hill fossil,” Scopes said affectionately. Fairley was the only man in the company Scopes would allow to call him sir. “What would I do without you to show me how the electronically illiterate half live? Anyway, last night on Channel Seven they discussed a twelve-year-old girl who has leukemia. She wanted to go to Disneyland before she died. It’s the usual exploitative crap we’re fed on the evening news. I forget her name. Anyway, will you arrange for her and her family to go to Disneyland, private jet, all expenses paid, best hotels, limos, the works? And please, keep it strictly anonymous. I don’t want that bastard Levine mocking me again, twisting it into something it isn’t. Give them some money to help with the medical bills, say, fifty thousand. They seemed like nice people. It must be hell to have a kid die of leukemia. I can’t even imagine it.”

“Yes, sir. That’s very kind of you sir.”

“Remember what Samuel Johnson said: ‘It is better to live rich, than die rich.’ And remember: it’s to be anonymous. I don’t even want them to know who did it. All right?”

“Understood.”

“And another thing. When I was in New York yesterday, this fucking cab nearly ran me over in a crosswalk. Park Av­enue and Fiftieth.”

Fairley’s expression was inscrutable. “That would have been unfortunate.”

“Spencer, you know what I like about you? You’re so droll that I can never tell whether I’m being insulted or compli­mented. Anyway, the hack number on top of the cab was four-A-five-six. Get his medallion pulled, will you? I don’t want the son of a bitch running over some grandmother.”

“Yes, sir.” As the small door hissed shut with a muffled click, Scopes stood up and made his way thoughtfully back toward the piano.

A loud tone sounded in his helmet, and Carson jerked up from his terminal screen with a start. Then he relaxed again. It was only his third day on-site; he assumed that eventually he’d get used to the 6 P.M. reminder. He stretched, looked round the lab. De Vaca was in pathology; he might as well wrap up for the day. He laboriously typed a few paragraphs into his laptop, detailing the day’s events. As he connected the laptop to the network link and uploaded his files, he found himself unable to suppress a sense of pride. Two days of lab-work, and he knew exactly what had to be done. Familiarity with the latest lab techniques was the advantage he’d needed. Now, all that remained was to carry it out.

Then he hesitated. A message was flashing at the bottom of the screen.

John [email protected] is paging.

Press the command key to chat.

Hurriedly, Carson went into chat mode and paged Singer. He hadn’t been plugged into the network all day; there was no telling when Singer had originally requested to speak with him.

John [email protected] ready to chat.

Press the command key to continue.

How are you, Guy? came the words on Carson’s screen.

Good, Carson typed. Just got your page now.

You should get in the habit of leaving your laptop connected to the network the entire time you’re in the lab. You might mention that to Susana, too. Could you spare me a few moments after dinner? There’s something we need to discuss.

Name the time and place, Carson typed.

How about nine o’clock in the canteen? I’ll see you then.

Wondering what Singer wanted, Carson issued the net­work logoff. The computer responded:

One new message remains unread.

Do you want to read it now (Y/N)?

Carson switched to GeneDyne’s electronic messaging sys­tem and brought up the message. Probably an earlier message from Singer, wondering where I am, he thought.

Hello, Guy. Glad to see you in place and at work.

I like what you’ve done with the protocol. It has the feel of a winner. But remember something: Frank Burt was the best scientist I’ve ever known, and this problem bested him. So don’t get cocky on me, okay?

I know you’re going to come through for GeneDyne, Guy.

Brent.

A few minutes after nine, Carson helped himself to a Jim Beam from the canteen bar and stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the observation deck beyond. Early in the evening, the canteen—with its cozy coffehouse atmosphere and its backgammon and chess boards—was a favorite hang­out for lab people. But now it was almost deserted. The wind had died down, and the heat of the day had abated. The deck was empty, and he chose a seat away from the white expanse of the building. He savored the smoky flavor of the bourbon— drunk without ice, a taste he developed when he drank his dinner cocktail from a hip flask in front of a fire out on the ranch—and watched the last of the sun set over the distant Fra Cristуbal Mountains. To the northeast and the east the sky still held traces of a rich shade of pearly rose.

He tilted his head backward and closed his eyes a moment, inhaling the pungent smell of the desert air, chilled by sunset: a mixture of creosote bush, dust, and salt. Before he’d gone East, he had only noticed the odor after a rain. But now it was like new to him. He opened his eyes again and stared at the vast dome of night sky, smoking with the brilliance of stars already in place above his head: Scorpio clear and bright in the south, Cygnus overhead, the Milky Way arching over all.

The bewitching fragrance of the night desert combined with the familiar stars brought a hundred memories crowding back. He sipped his drink meditatively.

He brushed the thoughts away at the sound of footsteps. They came from one of the walkways beyond the canteen, and Carson assumed it was Singer, approaching from the residency compound. But the figure that came silently out of the dusk was not short and squat, but well over six feet, and im­peccably dressed in a tailored suit. A safari hat sat incongru­ously atop hair that looked iron gray in the cold beam of the sodium walkway lights. A ponytail descended between his shoulder blades. If the man saw Carson he gave no sign, con­tinuing past the balcony toward the limestone central plaza.

There was a thump behind him, then Carson heard Singer’s voice. “Beautiful sunset, isn’t it?” the director said. “Much as I hate the days here, the nights make up for it. Almost.” He stepped forward, a mug of coffee steaming in one hand.

“Who’s that?” Carson nodded toward the retreating figure.

Singer looked out into the night and scowled. “That’s Nye, the security director.”

“So that’s Nye,” Carson said. “What’s his story? I mean, he looks a little strange out here, with that suit-and-pith-helmet getup.”

“Strange isn’t the word. I think he looks ridiculous. But I advise you not to tangle with him.” Singer drew up a seat next to Carson and sat down. “He used to work at the Windermere Nuclear Complex, in the UK. Remember that ac­cident? There was talk of employee sabotage, and somehow Nye, as security director, became the scapegoat. Nobody wanted to touch him after that, and he had to find work in the Middle East somewhere. But Brent has peculiar ideas about people. He figured that the man, always a stickler, would be extra careful after what happened, so he hired him for GeneDyne UK. He proved to be such a fanatic about security that Scopes brought him over here at start-up. Been here ever since. Never leaves. Well, that’s not true, exactly. On the weekends, he often disappears for long rides into the desert. Sometimes he even stays out overnight, a real no-no around here. Scopes knows, of course, but he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Maybe he likes the scenery,” said Carson.

“Frankly, he gives me the willies. During the week, all the security personnel live in fear of him. Except Mike Marr, his assistant. They seem to be friends. But I suppose a facility such as ours needs a Captain Bligh for a security director.”

He looked at Carson for a moment. “I guess you riled up Rosalind Brandon-Smith pretty good.”

Carson glanced at Singer. The director was smiling again and there was a gleam of good humor in his eye.

“I pushed the wrong button on my intercom,” said Carson.

“So I gather. She filed a complaint.”

Carson sat up. “A complaint?”

“Don’t worry,” Singer said, lowering his voice, “you’ve just joined a club that includes me and practically everyone else here. But formality requires that we discuss it. This is my version of calling you on the carpet. Another drink?” He winked. “I should mention, though, that Brent places a high value on team harmony. You might want to apologize.”

“Me?” Carson felt his temper rising. “I’m the one that should be filing a complaint.”

Singer laughed and held up a hand. “Prove yourself first, then you can file all the complaints you want.” He got up and walked to the balcony railing. “I suppose you’ve looked through Burt’s lab journal by now.”

“Yesterday morning,” said Carson. “It was quite a read.”

“Yes, it was,” said Singer. “A read with a tragic end. But I hope it gave you a sense of what kind of man he was. We were close. I read through those notes after he left, trying to figure out what happened.” Carson could hear a real sadness in his voice.

Singer sipped his coffee, looked out over the expanse of desert. “This is not a normal place, we’re not normal people, and this is not a normal project. You’ve got world-class ge­neticists, working on a project of incalculable scientific value. You’d think people would only be concerned with lofty things. Not so. You wouldn’t believe the kind of sheer pet­tiness that can go on here. Burt was able to rise above it. I hope you will, too.”

“I’ll do my best.” Carson thought about his temper; he’d have to control it if he was going to survive at Mount Dragon. Already he’d made two enemies without even trying.

“Have you heard from Brent?” Singer asked, almost casu­ally.

Carson hesitated, wondering if Singer had seen the e-mail message sent to him.

“Yes,” he said.

“What did he say?”

“He gave me a few encouraging words, warned me against being cocky.”

“Sounds like Brent. He’s a hands-on CEO, and X-FLU is his pet project. I hope you like working in a glass house.” He took another sip of coffee. “And the problem with the protein coat?”

“I think I’m just about there.”

Singer turned, gave him a searching glance. “What do you mean?”

Carson stood up and joined the director at the railing. “Well, I spent yesterday afternoon making my own extrapo­lations from Dr. Burt’s notes. It was much easier to see the patterns of success and failure once I’d separated them from the rest of his writings. Before he lost hope and began simply going through the motions, Dr. Burt was very close. He found the active receptors on the X-FLU virus that make it deadly, and he also found the gene combination that codes for the polypeptides causing the overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid. All the hard work was done. There’s a recombinant-DNA technique I developed for my dissertation that uses a certain wavelength of far-ultraviolet light. All we have to do is clip off the deadly gene sequences with a special enzyme that’s activated by the ultraviolet light, recombine the DNA and it’s done. All succeeding generations of the virus will be harmless.”

“But it’s not done yet,” said Singer.

“I’ve done it a hundred times at least. Not on this virus, of course, but on others. Dr. Burt didn’t have access to this tech­nique. He was using an earlier gene-splicing method that was a little crude by comparison.”

“Who knows about this?” Singer asked.

“Nobody. I’ve only roughed out the protocol, I haven’t actually tested it yet. But I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work.”

The director was staring at him, motionless. Then he sud­denly came forward, taking Carson’s right hand in both of his own and crushing it in an enthusiastic handshake. “This is fantastic!” he said excitedly. “Congratulations.”

Carson took a step backward and leaned against the railing, a little embarrassed. “It’s still too early for that,” he said. He was beginning to wonder whether he should have mentioned his optimism to Singer quite so soon.

But Singer wasn’t listening. “I’ll have to e-mail Brent right away, give him the news,” he said.

Carson opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again, just that afternoon, Scopes had warned him against being cocky. But he knew instinctively that his procedure would work. His dissertation research had proved it countless times. And Singer’s enthusiasm was a welcome change from Brandon-Smith’s sarcasm and de Vaca’s brusque professionalism. Carson found himself liking Singer, this balding, fat, good-humored professor from California. He was so unbureaucratic, so refreshingly frank. He took another swig of the bourbon and glanced around the balcony, his eye lighting on Singer’s old Martin guitar. “You play?” he asked.

“I try,” said Singer. “Bluegrass, mostly.”

“So that’s why you asked about my banjo,” Carson said. “I got hooked listening to performances in Cambridge coffee­houses. I’m pretty awful, but I enjoy mangling the sacred works of Scruggs, Reno, Keith, the other banjo gods.”

“I’ll be damned!” said Singer, breaking into a smile. “I’m working through the early Flatt and Scruggs stuff myself. You know, ‘Shuckin’ the Corn,’ ‘Foggy Mountain Special,’ that kind of thing. We’ll have to massacre a few of them together. Sometimes I sit out here while the sun sets and just pick away. Much to everyone’s dismay, of course. That’s one reason the canteen is so deserted this time of the evening.”

The two men stood up. The night had deepened and a chill had crept into the air. Beyond the balcony railing, Carson could hear sounds from the direction of the residency com­pound: footsteps, scattered snatches of conversation, an oc­casional laugh.

They stepped into the canteen, a cocoon of light and warmth in the vast desert night.

Charles Levine pulled up in front of the Ritz Carlton, his 1980 Ford Festiva backfiring as he downshifted beside the wide hotel steps. The doorman approached with insolent slowness, making no secret of the fact that he found the car— and whoever was inside it—distasteful.

Unheeding, Charles Levine stepped out, pausing on the red-carpeted steps to pick a generous coating of dog hairs off his tuxedo jacket. The dog had died two months ago, but his hairs were still everywhere in the car.

Levine ascended the steps. Another doorman opened the gilt glass doors, and the sounds of a string quartet came float­ing graciously out to meet him. Entering, Levine stood for a moment in the bright lights of the hotel lobby, blinking. Then, suddenly, a group of reporters was crowding around him, a barrage of flashbulbs exploding from all sides.

“What’s this?” Levine asked.

Spotting him, Toni Wheeler, the media consultant for Levine’s foundation, bustled over. Elbowing a reporter aside, she took Levine’s arm. Wheeler had severely coiffed brown hair and a sharply tailored suit, and she looked every inch the public-relations professional: poised, gracious, ruthless.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said quickly, “I wanted to tell you but we couldn’t find you anywhere. There’s some extremely important news. GeneDyne—”

Levine spotted a reporter he recognized, and his face broke into a big smile. “Evening, Artie!” he cried, shrugging away from Wheeler and holding up his hands. “Glad to see the Fourth Estate so active. One at a time, please! And Toni, tell them to cut the music for a moment.”

“Charles,” Wheeler said urgently, “please listen. I’ve just learned that—”

She was drowned out by the reporters’ questions.

“Professor Levine!” one person began. “Is it true—”

“I will choose the questioners,” Levine broke in. “Now, all of you be quiet. You,” he said, pointing to a woman in front. “You start.”

“Professor Levine,” the reporter called out, “could you elaborate on the accusations about GeneDyne made in the last issue of Genetic Policy? It’s being said that you have a personal vendetta against Brentwood Scopes—”

Wheeler suddenly spoke up, her voice cutting through the air like ice. “One moment,” she said crisply. “This press conference is about the Holocaust Memorial award Professor Levine is about to receive, not about the GeneDyne contro­versy.”

“Professor, please!” cried a reporter, unheeding.

Levine pointed at someone else. “You, Stephen, you shaved off that magnificent mustache. An aesthetic miscal­culation on your part.”

A ripple of laughter went through the crowd.

“Wife didn’t like it, Professor. It tickled the—”

“I’ve heard enough, thank you.” There was more laughter. Levine held up his hand.

“Your question?”

“Scopes has called you—and I quote—‘a dangerous fa­natic, a one-man inquisition against the medical miracle of genetic engineering.’ Do you have any comment?”

Levine smiled. “Yes. Mr. Scopes has always had a way with words. But that’s all it is. Words, full of sound and fury ... You all know how that line ends.”

“He also said that you are trying to deprive countless people of the medical benefits of this new science. Like a cure for Tay-Sachs disease, for example.”

Levine held up his hand again. “That is a more serious charge. I’m not necessarily against genetic engineering. What I am against is germ-cell therapy. You know the body has two kinds of cells, somatic cells and germ cells. Somatic cells die with the body. Germ cells—the reproductive cells—live for­ever.”

“I’m not sure I understand—”

“Let me finish. With genetic engineering, if you alter the DNA of a person’s somatic cells, the change dies with the body. But if you alter the DNA of someone’s germ cells—in other words, the egg or sperm cells—the change will be in­herited by that person’s children. You’ve altered the DNA of the human race forever. Do you understand what that means? Germ-cell changes are passed along to future generations. This is an attempt to alter what it is that makes us human. And there are reports that this is what GeneDyne is doing at their Mount Dragon facility.”

“Professor, I’m still not sure I understand why that would be so bad—”

Levine threw up his hands, throwing his bow tie seriously askew. “It’s Hitler’s eugenics all over again! Tonight, I’m go­ing to receive an award for the work I’ve done to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. I was born in a concentration camp. My father died a victim to the cruel experiments of Mengele. I know firsthand the evils of bad science. I’m trying to prevent all of you from learning it firsthand, as well. Look, it’s one thing to find a cure for Tay-Sachs or hemophilia. But GeneDyne is going further. They’re out to ‘improve’ the hu­man race. They’re going to find ways to make us smarter, taller, better-looking. Can’t you see the evil in this? This is treading where mankind was never meant to tread. It is pro­foundly wrong.”

“But Professor!”

Levine chuckled and pointed. “Fred, I’d better let you ask a question before you pull a muscle in your armpit.”

“Dr. Levine, you keep saying there is insufficient govern­ment regulation of the genetic-engineering field. But what about the FDA?”

Levine scowled impatiently, shook his head. “The FDA doesn’t even require approval of most genetically engineered products. On your grocery-store shelves, there are tomatoes, milk, strawberries and, of course, X-RUST corn—all geneti­cally engineered. Just how carefully do you suppose they’ve been tested? It’s not much better in medical research. Com­panies like GeneDyne can practically do as they please. These genetic-engineering firms are putting human genes into pigs and rats and even bacteria! They’re mixing DNA from plants and animals, creating monstrous new forms of life. At any moment they could accidentally—or deliberately—create a new pathogen capable of eradicating the human race. Genetic engineering is far and away the most dangerous thing man­kind has ever done. This is infinitely more dangerous than nuclear weapons. And nobody is paying attention.”

The shouts began again, and Levine pointed at a reporter near the front of the crowd. “One more question. You, Mur­ray, I loved your article on NASA in last week’s Globe.”

“I have a question that I’m sure we’re all waiting to hear the answer to. How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?”

“To have GeneDyne suing you and Harvard for two hun­dred million dollars and demanding the revocation of your foundation’s charter.”

There was a short, sudden silence. Levine blinked twice, and it dawned on everyone that Levine had not known about this development. “Two hundred million?” he asked, a little weakly.

Toni Wheeler came forward. “Dr. Levine,” she whispered, “that’s what I was—”

Levine looked at her briefly and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps it’s time that everything came out, after all,” he said quietly. Then he turned back to the crowd. “Let me tell you a few things you don’t know about Brent Scopes and GeneDyne. You probably all know the story about how Mr. Scopes built his pharmaceutical empire. He and I were undergraduates together at U.C. Irvine. We were ...” He paused. “Close friends. One spring break he took a solo hike through Canyonlands National Monument. He returned to school with a handful of corn kernels he’d found in an Anasazi ruin. He succeeded in germinating them. Then he made the discovery that these prehistoric kernels were im­mune to the devastating disease known as corn rust. He suc­ceeded in isolating the immunity gene and splicing it into the modern corn he labeled X-RUST. It’s a legendary story; I’m sure you can read all about it in Forbes.

“But that story isn’t quite accurate. You see, Brent Scopes didn’t do it alone. We did it together. I helped him isolate the gene, splice it into a modern hybrid. It was our joint accom­plishment, and we submitted the patent together.

“But then we had a falling-out. Brent Scopes wanted to exploit the patent, make money from it. I, on the other hand, wanted to give it to the world for free. We—well, let’s just say that Scopes prevailed.”

“How?” a voice urged.

“That’s not important,” Levine said very brusquely. “The point is that Scopes dropped out of college, and used the royalty income to found GeneDyne. I refused to have any­thing to do with it—with the money, the company, anything. To me, it’s always seemed like the worst kind of exploitation.

“But in less than three months, the X-RUST hybrid patent will expire. In order for GeneDyne to renew it, the patent renewal must be signed by two people: myself, and Mr. Scopes. I will not sign that patent renewal. No amount of bribes or threats will change my mind. When it expires, the rust-resistant corn will fall into the public domain. It will become the property of the world. The massive royalties GeneDyne receives every year will cease. Mr. Scopes knows this, but I am not sure the financial markets know it. Perhaps it is time analysts took another look at the high P/E ratio of GeneDyne stock. In any case, I believe this lawsuit isn’t really about my recent article on GeneDyne in Genetic Policy. It’s Brent’s way of trying to pressure me to sign that patent renewal.”

There was a brief silence, and a sudden hubbub of voices.

“But Dr. Levine!” one voice sounded over the crowd. “You still haven’t said what you plan to do about the suit.”

For a moment, Levine said nothing. Then he opened his mouth and began to laugh; a rich, full laugh that reached to the back of the lobby. Finally, he shook his head in disbelief, took out a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

“Your response, Professor?” the reporter urged.

“I just gave you my response,” said Levine, stowing the handkerchief. “And now I believe I have an award to re­ceive.” He waved to the reporters with a final smile, took Toni Wheeler’s arm, and headed across the lobby toward the open doors of the banquet hall.

Carson stood before a bioprophylaxis table in Lab C. The lab was narrow and cluttered, the lighting almost painfully bright. He was rapidly learning the countless nuisances, minor and major, of working in a biohazard environment: the rashes that developed where the inside of the suit rubbed against bare skin; the inability to sit down comfortably; the muscular ten­sion that came with hours of slow, careful movement.

Worst of all was Carson’s growing feeling of claustrophobia. He had always had a touch of it—he assumed it was growing up in the open desert spaces that made him susceptible—and this was just the kind of constricted environment he couldn’t stand. As he worked, the memory of his first terrified elevator ride in a Sacramento hospital kept surfacing, along with the three hours he had once spent in a subway train disabled beneath Boylston Street. The Fever Tank emergency-procedure drills were a regular reminder of the dangerous sur­roundings, as were the frequent mutterings about a “terminal fumble”: the dreaded accident that might someday contami­nate the lab and all who worked in it. At least, Carson thought, he wouldn’t be confined to the Fever Tank much longer. Provided, of course, that the gene splicing worked.

And it had worked perfectly. He had done it many times before, at MIT, but this had been different. This was no dis­sertation experiment; he was involved with a project that could save countless lives and, perhaps, win them a Nobel Prize. And he had access to finer equipment than even the best-equipped laboratory at MIT.

It had been easy. In fact, it had been a breeze.

He murmured a few words to de Vaca, and she placed a single test tube into the bioprophylaxis chamber. At the bot­tom of the tube, the crystallized X-FLU virus formed a white crust. Despite the elaborate safety measures that constrained his every movement, Carson still had trouble comprehending that this thin film of white substance was terrifyingly lethal. Sliding his hands into the chamber through the rubberized armholes, he took a syringe, filled it with viral transport me­dium, and gently swirled the tube. The crystallized mass gen­tly broke up and dissolved, forming a cloudy solution of live virus particles.

“Take a look,” he said to de Vaca. “This is going to make us all famous.”

“Yeah, right,” said de Vaca. “If it doesn’t kill us first.”

“That’s ridiculous. This is the safest lab in the world.”

De Vaca shook her head. “I have a bad feeling, working with a virus this deadly. Accidents can happen anywhere.”

“Like what?”

“Like what if Burt had become homicidal instead of just stressed out? He could have stolen a beaker of this shit and— well, we wouldn’t be here today, I can tell you that.”

Carson looked at her for a moment, thought of a reply, then shelved it. He was rapidly learning that arguments with de Vaca were always a waste of time. He uncoupled his air hose. “Let’s get this to the Zoo.”

Carson alerted the medical technician and Fillson, the an­imal handler, through the global intercom, and they started the slow journey down the narrow corridor.

Fillson met them outside the holding area, glaring at Carson morosely through his visor as if annoyed to be put to work. As the door swung open, the animals began their pit­eous screaming and drumming, brown hairy fingers curling from the wire mesh of the cages.

Fillson walked down the line of cages with a stick, rapping on the exposed fingers. The screaming increased, but the banging of the stick had the desired effect and all the fingers vanished back into the cages.

“Ouch,” said de Vaca.

Fillson stopped and looked toward her. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“I said ‘ouch.’ You were hitting their fingers pretty hard.”

Uh-oh, thought Carson, here we go.

Fillson gazed at her for a few moments, his wet bottom lip moving slightly behind his visor. Then he turned away. He reached into the cabinet and removed the same pump can­ister Carson had seen him use before, shuffled over to a cage, and directed its spray inside. He waited a few minutes for the sedative to take effect, then unlocked the cage door and care­fully removed the groggy occupant.

Carson came forward for a look. It was a young female. She squeaked and looked up at Carson, her terrified eyes barely open, half-paralyzed by the drug. Fillson strapped her to a small stretcher and wheeled it to an adjoining chamber. Carson nodded to de Vaca, who handed the test tube, encased in a shockproof Mylar housing, to the technician.

“The usual ten cc’s?” the technician asked.

“Yes,” said Carson. This was his first time directing an in­oculation, and he felt a strange mixture of anticipation, re­gret, and guilt. Moving into the next chamber, he watched as the technician shaved a small round area on the animal’s forearm and swabbed it vigorously with betadine. The chim­panzee drowsily watched the process, then turned and blinked at Carson. Carson looked away.

They were joined, silently, by Rosalind Brandon-Smith, who gave Fillson a broad smile before turning, stony-faced, toward Carson. One of her responsibilities was tracking the inoculated chimps and autopsying those who died of edema. So far, Carson knew, the ratio of inoculations to deaths had been 1:1.

The chimp didn’t flinch as the needle slid home.

“You realize you need to inoculate two chimps,” Brandon-Smith’s voice sounded in Carson’s headset. “Male and fe­male.”

Carson nodded without looking at her. The female chimp was wheeled back into the Zoo, and Fillson soon returned with a male. He was even smaller, still juvenile, with an owl­ish, curious face.

“Jesus,” said de Vaca, “it’s enough to break your heart, isn’t it?”

Fillson glanced at her sharply. “Don’t anthropomorphize. They’re just animals.”

“Just animals,” de Vaca murmured. “So are we, Mr. Fillson.”

“These two are going to live,” said Carson. “I’m sure of it.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Carson,” said Brandon-Smith, with a snort. “Even if your neutralized virus works, they’ll be killed and autopsied anyway.” She crossed her arms and looked at Fillson, receiving a smile in return.

Carson glanced at de Vaca. He could see an angry blush collecting on her face—a look that was becoming all too familiar to him. But she remained silent.

The technician slid the needle into the male chimp’s arm and smoothly injected ten cc’s of the X-FLU virus. He slipped the needle out, pressed a piece of cotton on the spot, then taped the cotton to the arm.

“When will we know?” Carson asked.

“It can take up to two weeks for the chimps to develop symptoms,” said Brandon-Smith, “although it often happens more quickly. We take blood every twelve hours, and anti­bodies usually show up within one week. The infected chimps go straight into the animal-quarantine area behind the Zoo.”

Carson nodded. “Will you keep me posted?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said Brandon-Smith. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t wait around for the results. I’d assume it was a failure and proceed accordingly. Otherwise, you’re going to waste a lot of time.”

She left the room. Carson and de Vaca unhooked their air hoses and followed her out the hatch and back to their work area.

“God, what an asshole,” said de Vaca as they entered Lab C.

“Which one?” Carson asked. Watching the inoculations, listening to Brandon-Smith’s sarcasm, had left him feeling short-tempered.

“I’m not sure we have a right to treat animals like that,” de Vaca said. “I wonder if those tiny cages meet federal reg­ulations.”

“It may not be pleasant,” Carson said, “but it’s going to save millions of lives. It’s a necessary evil.”

“I wonder if Scopes is really interested in saving lives. It seems to me he’s more into the dinero. Mucho dinero.” She rubbed her gloved fingers together.

Carson ignored her. If she wanted to talk this way on a monitored intercom channel and get herself fired, that was her business. Maybe his next assistant would be a little more friendly.

He brought up an image of an X-FLU polypeptide and ro­tated it on his computer screen, trying to think of other ways it might be neutralized. But it was hard to concentrate when he believed that he had already solved the problem.

De Vaca opened an autoclave and started removing glass beakers and test tubes, racking them at the far end of the lab. Carson peered deep into the tertiary structure of the poly­peptide, made up of thousands of amino acids. If I could cut those sulfur bonds, there, he thought, we might just uncurl the active side group, make the virus harmless. But then Burt would have thought of that, too. He cleared the screen and brought up the data from his X-ray diffraction tests of the protein coat. There was nothing else left to be done. He allowed himself to think, just briefly, of the accolades; the promotion; the admiration of Scopes.

“Scopes is smart,” de Vaca continued, “giving all of us stock in the company. It stifles dissent. Plays to people’s greed. Everyone wants to get rich. Whenever you get a big multi­national corporation like this—”

His daydream rudely punctured, Carson turned on her. “If you’re so set against it,” he snapped into his intercom, “why the hell are you here?”

“For one thing, I didn’t know what I’d be working on. I was supposed to be assigned to Medical, but they transferred me when Burt’s assistant left. For another, I’m putting my money into a mental health clinic I want to start in Albu­querque. In the barrio.”

She emphasized the word barrio, rolling the rs off her tongue in rich Mexican Spanish, which Carson found even more irritating, as if she were showing off her bilingual ability. He could speak reasonable pocho Spanish, but he wasn’t about to try it and give her an opportunity for ridicule.

“What do you know about mental health?” he asked.

“I spent two years in medical school,” said de Vaca. “I was studying to be a psychiatrist.”

“What happened?”

“Had to drop out. Couldn’t swing it financially.”

Carson thought about that for a moment. It was time to call this bitch on something. “Bullshit,” he said.

There was an electric silence.

“Bullshit, cabrуn?”She moved closer to him.

“Yes, bullshit. With a name like Cabeza de Vaca, you could’ve gotten a full scholarship. Ever heard of affirmative action?”

There was a long silence.

“I put my husband through medical school,” de Vaca said fiercely. “And when it was my turn he divorced me, the ca­nalla. I lost more than a semester, and when you’re in medical school—” She stopped. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to defend myself to you.”

Carson was silent, already sorry that he’d once again al­lowed himself to be drawn into an argument.

“Yeah, I could’ve gotten a scholarship, but not because of my name. Because I got fifteens on all three sections of my MCATs. Asshole.”

Carson didn’t believe the perfect score, but fought to keep his mouth shut.

“So you think I’m just some poor dumb chola who needs a Spanish surname to get into medical school?”

Shit, Carson thought, why the hell did I start this?He turned back to his terminal, hoping that by ignoring her she would go away.

Suddenly he felt a hand tighten on his suit, screwing a fistful of the rubber material into a ball.

“Answer me, cabrуn.”

Carson raised a protesting arm as the pressure on his blue-suit increased.

The enormous figure of Brandon-Smith bulked in the hatchway, and a harsh laugh barked over the intercom.

“Forgive me for interrupting you two lovebirds, but I just wanted to let you know that chimps A-twenty-two and Z-nine are back in their cages, revived and looking healthy. For now, anyway.” She turned abruptly and waddled out.

De Vaca opened her mouth as if to respond. But then she relaxed her hold on his suit, stepped away, and grinned.

“Carson, you looked a little nervous there for a moment.”

He looked back at her, struggling to keep in mind that the tension and nastiness that overcame people down in the Fe­ver Tank was just a part of the job. He was beginning to see what had driven Burt crazy. If he could just keep his mind on the ultimate goal ... in six months, one way or another, it would be over.

He turned back to the molecule, rotating it another 120 degrees, looking for vulnerabilities. De Vaca went back to racking equipment out of the autoclave. Quiet once again settled on the lab. Carson wondered, briefly, what had hap­pened to de Vaca’s husband.

Carson awoke just before dawn. He glanced blearily at the electronic calendar set into the wall beside his bed: Saturday, the day of the annual Bomb Picnic. As Singer had explained it, the Bomb Picnic tradition dated back to the days when the lab did military research. Once a year, a pilgrimage was organized to the old Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb had been exploded in 1945.

Carson got up and prepared to brew a cup of coffee. He liked the quiet desert mornings, and the last thing he felt like doing was making small talk in the dining hall. He’d stopped drinking the insipid cafeteria coffee after three days.

He opened a cupboard and took out an enameled coffeepot, battered by years of use. Along with his old set of spurs, the tin pot was one of the few things he had brought with him to Cambridge, and one of the only possessions that remained after the bank auctioned the ranch. It was his companion of many morning campfires on the range, and he had become almost superstitiously fond of it. He turned it over in his hands. The outside was dead black, covered with a crust of fire-hardened soot a bowie knife couldn’t remove. The inside was still a cheerful dark blue enamel flecked with white, with the fat dent on the side where his old horse, Weaver, had kicked it off the fire one morning. The handle was mashed, again Weaver’s doing, and Carson remembered the unbear­ably hot day when the horse had rolled in Hueco Wash with both saddlebags on. He shook his head. Weaver had gone with the ranch, just a goose-rumped Mexican grade horse worth a couple hundred bucks, tops. Probably got his ass sent straight to the knacker’s.

Carson filled the pot with water from his bathroom sink, dumped in two fistfuls of coffee grounds, and placed it on a hot plate built into a nearby console. He watched it carefully. Just before it boiled over he plucked it from the heat, poured in a little cold water to settle the grounds, and put it back on to finish. It was the very best way to make coffee—far better than the ridiculous filters, plungers, and five-hundred-dollar espresso machines everyone had used in Cambridge. And this coffee had a kick. He remembered his dad saying that the coffee wasn’t done until you could float a horseshoe in it.

As he was pouring the coffee he stopped, catching his re­flection in the mirror above his desk. He frowned, remem­bering how dubious de Vaca had looked when he’d insisted he was Anglo. In Cambridge, women had often found something exotic in his black eyes and aquiline nose. Occa­sionally, he’d told them about his ancestor, Kit Carson. But he never mentioned that his maternal ancestor was a Southern Ute. The fact that he still felt secretive about it, so many years removed from the schoolyard taunts of “half-breed,” annoyed him.

He remembered his great-uncle Charley. Even though he was half white, he looked like a full-blood and even spoke Ute. Charley had died when Carson was nine, and Carson’s memories of him were of a skinny man sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, chuckling to himself, smoking cigars and spitting bits of tobacco off his tongue into the flames. He told a lot of Indian stories, mostly about tracking lost horses and stealing livestock from the reviled Navajos. Carson could only listen to his stories when his parents weren’t around; otherwise they hustled him away and scolded the old man for filling the boy’s head with lies and nonsense. Carson’s father did not like Uncle Charley, and often made comments about his long hair, which the old man refused to cut, saying it would reduce rainfall. Carson also remembered overhearing his father tell his mother that God had given their son “more than his share of Ute blood.”

He sipped his coffee and looked out the open window, rubbing his back absently. His room was on the second floor of the residency quarters, and it commanded a view of the stables, machine shop, and perimeter fence. Beyond the fence the endless desert began.

He grimaced as his fingers hit a sore spot at the base of his back where the spinal tap had been inserted the evening be­fore. Another nuisance of working in a Level-5 facility, he’d discovered, were the mandated weekly physical exams. Just one more reminder of the constant worry over contamination that plagued workers at Mount Dragon.

The Bomb Picnic was his first day off since arriving at the lab. He’d discovered that the inoculation of the chimps with his neutralized virus was just the beginning of his assignment. Although Carson had explained that his new protocol was the only possible solution, Scopes had insisted on two addi­tional sets of inoculations, to minimize any chance of erro­neous results. Six chimpanzees were now inoculated with X-FLU. If they survived the inoculations, the next test would be to see if they had been, given immunity to the flu.

Carson watched from his window as two workmen rolled a large galvanized stock tank over to a Ford 350 pickup and began wrestling it onto the bed. The water truck had arrived early and the driver was idling in the motor pool, too lazy to shut off his engine, sending up clouds of diesel smoke. The sky was clear—the late-summer rains wouldn’t begin for an­other few weeks—and the distant mountains glowed ame­thyst in the morning light.

Finishing his coffee and going downstairs, he found Singer standing by the pickup, shouting directions at the workmen. He was wearing beach sandals and Bermuda shorts. A flam­boyant pastel shirt covered his generous midriff.

“I see you’re ready to go,” Carson said.

Singer glanced at him through an old pair of Ray-Bans. “I look forward to this all year,” he said. “Where’s your bathing suit?”

“Under my jeans.”

“Get in the spirit, Guy! You look like you’re about to round up some cattle, not spend a day at the beach.” He turned back to the workmen: “We leave at eight o’clock sharp, so let’s get moving. Bring up the Hummers and get them loaded.”

Other scientists, technicians, and workers were drifting down to the motor pool, burdened with beach bags, towels, and folding chairs. “How did this thing ever start?” Carson asked, looking at them.

“I can’t remember whose idea it was,” Singer said. “The government opens the Trinity Site once a year to the public. At some point we asked if we could visit the site ourselves, and they said yes. Then someone suggested a picnic, and someone else suggested volleyball and cold beer. Then someone pointed out what a shame it was we couldn’t bring the ocean along. And that’s when the idea of the cattle tank came up. It was a stroke of genius.”

“Aren’t people worried about radiation?” Carson asked.

Singer chuckled. “There’s no radiation left. But we bring along Geiger counters anyway, to reassure the nervous.” He looked up at the sound of approaching motors. “Come on, you can ride with me.”

Soon a dozen Hummers, their tops down, were jostling over a faint dirt track that led like an arrow toward the horizon. The water truck followed last, trailing a firestorm of dust.

After an hour of steady driving, Singer pulled the lead Hummer to a halt. “Ground zero,” he said to Carson.

“How can you tell?” Carson asked, looking around at the desert. The Sierra Oscura rose to the west: dry, barren desert mountains, run through with jagged sedimentary outcrops. It was a desolate place, but no more desolate than the rest of the Jornada.

Singer pointed to a rusted girder, twisting a few feet out of the ground. “That’s what was left of the tower that held the original bomb. If you look carefully, you’ll see that we’re in a shallow depression scooped out by the blast. Over there”—Singer pointed to a mound and some ruined bunkers—“was one of the instrument observation posts.”

“Is this where we picnic?” Carson asked a little uncertainly.

“No,” said Singer. “We continue another half mile. The scenery’s nicer there. A little nicer, anyway.”

The Hummers halted at a sandy flat devoid of brush or cactus. A single dune, anchored by a cluster of soapweed yucca, rose above the flat expanse of desert. While the work­men wrestled the stock tank off the pickup, the scientists began staking out positions in the sand, setting up chairs and umbrellas and laying out coolers. Off to one side, a volleyball net was erected. A wooden staircase was shoved up against the tank; then the water truck maneuvered up to its rim and began filling it with fresh water. Beach Boys harmonies blared from a portable stereo.

Carson stood to one side, watching the proceedings. He’d spent most of his waking hours in Lab C, and he still did not know many of the people by name. Most of the scientists were well into their tours and had been working together for close to six months. Looking around, he noticed with relief that Brandon-Smith had apparently stayed behind in the air-conditioned compound. The previous afternoon, he’d stopped by her office for an update on the chimps, and she’d practically taken his head off when he accidentally disturbed the little knickknacks she’d obsessively arranged along the edge of her desk. Just as well, he thought, as the unwelcome image of the scientist in her bathing suit intruded into his imagination.

Singer caught sight of him and waved him over. Two senior scientists that Carson barely knew were sitting nearby.

“Have you met George Harper?” Singer asked Carson.

Harper grinned and held out his hand. “We bumped into each other in the Fever Tank,” he said. “Literally. Two bio-suits passing in the night. And, of course, I heard your fetch­ing description of Dr. Brandon-Smith.” Harper was lanky, with thinning brown hair and a prominent hooked nose. He slouched in his deck chair.

Carson winced. “I was just testing the global function of my intercom.”

Harper laughed. “All work stopped for five minutes while everyone shut off their own intercoms to, ah ...” He glanced at Singer. “Cough.”

“Now, George,” Singer smiled. He indicated the other sci­entist. “This is Andrew Vanderwagon.”

Vanderwagon wore a conservative bathing suit, his sallow, sunken chest looking dangerously exposed to the sunlight. He scrambled to his feet, removing his sunglasses. “How do you do,” he said, standing and shaking Carson’s hand. He was short, thin, straight, and fastidious, with blue eyes bleached to faded denim by the desert light. Carson had noticed him around Mount Dragon, wearing a coat and tie and black wing tips.

“I’m from Texas,” Harper said, putting on a thick accent, “so I don’t have to get up. We don’t got no manners. Andrew here is from Connecticut.”

Vanderwagon nodded in return. “Harper only gets up when a bull deposits a load at his feet.”

“Hell, no,” Harper said. “We just nudge it out of the way with a boot.”

Carson settled in a deck chair provided by Singer. The sun was brutal. He heard several shouts, then a splash; people were climbing up the stairs and jumping into the water. As he looked around he saw Nye, the security director, sitting well off to one side and reading the New York Times under a golf umbrella.

“He’s as odd as a gelded heifer,” Harper said, following Carson’s gaze. “Look at him out there in his damn Savile Row suit, and it must be a hundred degrees already.”

“Why did he come?” Carson asked.

“To watch us,” said Vanderwagon.

“What exactly might we do that’s dangerous?” Carson asked.

Harper laughed. “Why, Guy, didn’t you know? At any mo­ment one of us might steal a Hummer, drive to Radium Springs, and sprinkle a little X-FLU into the Rio Grande. Just to hell around a bit.”

Singer frowned. “That kind of talk’s not funny, George.”

“He’s like a KGB man, always hovering,” said Vanderwagon. “He hasn’t left the place since ’86, and I guess it’s queered him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bugged our rooms.”

“Doesn’t he have any friends here?” Carson asked.

“Friends?” Vanderwagon said, eyebrows raising. “Not that I’m aware of. Unless you count Mike Marr. No family, either.”

“What does he do all day long?”

“He struts around in that pith helmet and ponytail,” said Harper. “You should see the security staff when Nye is around, bowing and bending like a pig over a nut.”

Vanderwagon and Singer laughed. Carson was a little star­tled to see the Mount Dragon director joining in the mockery of his own security director.

Harper settled back, throwing his hands behind his head, and sighed. “So you’re from these here parts,” he said, nod­ding at Guy with his eyes half closed. “Maybe you can tell us more about the Mondragуn gold.”

Vanderwagon groaned.

“The what?” Carson asked.

All three turned to look at him in surprise.

“You don’t know the story?” Singer asked. “And you a New Mexican!” He dove into the cooler with both hands and pulled out a fistful of beers. “This calls for a drink.” He passed them around.

“Oh, no. We’re not going to hear the legend again,” Van­derwagon said.

“Carson here has never heard it,” Harper protested.

“As legend has it,” Singer began with a humorous glance at Vanderwagon, “a wealthy trader named Mondragуn lived outside old Santa Fe in the late sixteen hundreds. He was accused of witchcraft by the Inquisition and imprisoned. Mondragуn knew the punishment would be death, and he managed to escape with the help of his servant, Estevбnico. This Mondragуn had owned some mines in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, worked by Indian slave labor. Rich mines, they say, probably gold. So when he escaped from the Inqui­sition, he snuck back to his hacienda, dug up the gold, packed a mule, and fled with his servant along the Camino Real. Two hundred pounds of gold, all he could safely carry on one mule. A few days into the Jornada desert the two men ran short of water. So Mondragуn sent Estevбnico ahead with the gourd canteen to replenish their supply, while he stayed behind with one horse and the mule. The servant found water at a spring a day’s ride ahead, then galloped back. But by the time he returned to the spot where he’d left Mondragуn, the man was gone.”

Harper took over the story. “When the Inquisition learned what had happened, they began searching the trail. About five weeks later, right at the base of Mount Dragon, they found a horse, tied to a stake, dead. It was Mondragуn’s.”

“At Mount Dragon?” Carson asked.

Singer nodded. “The Camino Real, the Spanish Trail, ran right through the lab grounds and around the base of Mount Dragon.”

“Anyway,” Harper continued, “they looked everywhere for signs of Mondragуn. About fifty yards from the dead cayuse, they found his expensive doublet lying on the ground. But no matter how hard they looked, they never found Mondra­gуn’s body or the mule laden with gold. A priest sprinkled the base of Mount Dragon with holy water, to cleanse the spot of Mondragуn’s evil, and they erected a cross at the top of the hill. The place became known as La Cruz de Mondragуn, the Cross of Mondragуn. Later, when American traders came down the Spanish Trail, they simplified the place-name to Mount Dragon.” He finished his beer and exhaled con­tentedly.

“I heard a lot of buried-treasure stories growing up,” Carson said. “They were as common as blue ticks on a red heeler. And all equally false.”

Harper laughed. “Blue ticks on a red heeler! Someone else with a sense of humor around here.”

“What’s a red heeler?” Vanderwagon asked.

Harper laughed louder. “Why, Andrew, you poor damned ignorant Yankee, it’s a kind of dog used to herd cattle. Chases their heels, so they call it a heeler. Like when you heel a calf with a rope.” He pantomimed the whirling of a lasso; then he looked at Carson. “I’m glad there’s someone around here who isn’t just another greenhorn.”

Carson grinned. “When I was a kid, we used to go out looking for the Lost Adams Diggings. This state’s supposedly got more buried gold than Fort Knox. That is, if you believe the stories.”

Vanderwagon snorted. “That’s the key: if you believe the stories. Harper’s from Texas, where the leading industry is the manufacture and distribution of bull shit. And now, I think it’s time for a swim.” He twisted his beer bottle into the sand and stood up.

“Me too,” said Harper.

“Come on, Guy!” Singer called out as he followed the sci­entists to the tank, pulling off his shirt as he trotted.

“In a minute,” Carson said, watching them crowd up the wooden stairs and jump in, jostling each other as they did so. He finished his beer and set it aside. It seemed surreal to be sitting in the middle of the Jornada del Muerto desert, a mile from ground zero, watching several of the most brilliant bi­ologists in the world splashing about in a cattle tank like children. But the very unreality of the place was like a drug. This was, truly, how it must have felt working on the Man­hattan Project. He pulled off his jeans and shirt and lay back in his swimming trunks, closing his eyes, feeling relaxed for the first time in days.

After several minutes, the merciless heat roused him and he sat up, digging in the cooler for another beer. As he cracked it, he heard de Vaca’s laugh rise above the scattered conversations. She was standing on the far side of the tank, pulling her long hair back from her face and talking to some of the technicians, her white bikini in stark contrast to her tawny skin. If she saw Carson, she gave no sign.

As he watched, Carson saw another person join de Vaca’s group. The odd hitch in the walk was familiar, and Carson realized it was Mike Marr, second-in-command of security. Marr began talking to de Vaca, his head thrown back, the wide languorous grin clearly visible. Suddenly he drew closer, whispered something in de Vaca’s ear. All at once, de Vaca’s expression grew dark, and she pulled away roughly. Marr spoke again, and in an instant de Vaca had slapped him hard across the face. The sharp sound reached across the desert sands to Carson. Marr jerked backward, his black cowboy hat falling in the dust. As he stooped to retrieve it, de Vaca spoke quickly, a scornful curl to her lip. Though Carson could not make out exactly what she was saying to Marr, the group of technicians burst into laughter.

The look that came over Marr, however, was alarming. His eyes narrowed, and the easy, amiable expression fled his fea­tures in an instant. With great deliberation, he placed the cowboy hat back on his head, his eyes on de Vaca. Then he turned quickly on his heels and strode away from the group.

“She’s a firecracker, isn’t she?” Singer chuckled as he re­turned with the others and noticed the direction of Carson’s gaze. Carson realized Singer hadn’t really witnessed the little scene that had just played out. “You know, she originally came out here to work in the medical department the week before you arrived. But then Myra Resnick, Burt’s assistant, left. With Susana’s strong background, I thought she’d make you a perfect assistant. Hope I wasn’t wrong.” He tossed a small pebble into Carson’s lap.

“What’s this?” The pebble was green and slightly trans­parent.

“Atomic glass,” said Singer. “The Trinity bomb fused the sand near ground zero, leaving a crust of this stuff. Most of it’s gone, but once in a while you can still find a piece.”

“Is it radioactive?” Carson asked, holding it gingerly.

“Not really.”

Harper guffawed. “Not really,”he repeated, clearing a wa­ter-clogged ear with the tip of his little finger. “If you plan to have children, Carson, I’d get that thing away from your gonads.”

Vanderwagon shook his head. “You’re a vulgar sod, Harper.”

Singer turned to Carson. “They’re best friends, although you’d never know it.”

“How did you get started at GeneDyne, anyway?” Carson asked, tossing the pebble back to Singer.

“I was the Morton Professor of Biology at CalTech. I thought I was at the top of the profession. And then Brent Scopes came along and made me an offer.” Singer shook his head at the memory. “Mount Dragon was going civilian, and Brent wanted me to take over.”

“Quite a change from academia,” said Carson.

“It took me a while to adjust,” Singer said. “I’d always looked down on private industry. But I soon came to realize the power of the marketplace. We’re doing extraordinary work here, not because we’re smarter, but because we have so much more money. No university could afford to run Mount Dragon. And the potential returns are so much greater. When I was at CalTech, I was doing obscure research on bacterial conjugation. Now I’m doing cutting-edge stuff that has the potential to save millions of lives.” He drained his beer. “I’ve been converted.”

“I was converted,” Harper said, “when I saw the kind of dough an assistant professor makes.”

“Thirty thousand,” said Vanderwagon, “after six or eight years of graduate education. Can you believe it?”

“I remember when I was at Berkeley,” said Harper. “All my research proposals had to go through this decrepit bu­reaucrat, the chairman of the department. The fossilized SOB was always grousing about cost.”

“Working for Brent,” Vanderwagon said, “is like night and day. He understands how science operates. And how scien­tists work. I don’t have to explain or justify anything. If I need something, I e-mail him and it happens. We’re lucky to be working for him.”

Harper nodded. “Damn lucky.”

At least they agree on something, thought Carson.

“We’re happy to have you aboard, Guy,” Singer said at last, nodding and raising his beer in salute. The others followed.

“Thanks,” Carson smiled broadly, thinking about the quirk of fate that had suddenly landed him amongst the pride of GeneDyne.

Levine sat in his office, the door open, listening in silent fascination to a telephone conversation, his secretary Ray was having in the outer office.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Ray was saying, “I swear I thought you said the Boylston Street Theater, not the Brattle—”

There was a silence.

“I swear, I heard you say Boylston. No, I was there, at the front door, waiting for you. At the Boylston Theater, of course! No wait, hold on. Baby, no—”

Ray cursed and hung up the phone.

“Ray?” Levine said.

“Yes?” Ray appeared in the door, smoothing his hair.

“There is no Boylston Street Theater.”

Comprehension dawned on Ray’s face. “Guess that’s why she hung up.”

Levine smiled, shaking his head. “Remember the call I got from that woman at the Sammy Sanchez show? I want you to call her back, tell her they can book me after all. I’ll appear at their earliest convenience.”

“Me? What about Toni Wheeler? She won’t like—”

“Toni wouldn’t approve. She’s a stick-in-the-mud about those kinds of television shows.”

Ray shrugged. “Okay, you got it. Anything else?”

Levine shook his head. “Not for now. Just work on your excuses. And shut the door, please.”

Ray returned to the outer office. Levine checked his watch, picked up the telephone for the tenth time that day, and listened. This time, he heard what he had been waiting for: the dial tone had changed from the usual steady tone to a series of rapid pulses. Quickly he hung up the phone, locked the office door, and connected his computer to the wall jack. Within thirty seconds, the familiar log-in device was on his screen once again.

Well, dust my broom, if it ain’t the good professor-man, came the words on his screen. How’s my mean mistreatin’ papa?

Mime, what are you talking about? Levine typed.

Aren’t you a fan of Elmore James?

Never heard of him. I got your signal. What news?

Good and bad. I’ve spent several hours poking around the GeneDyne net. It’s quite a place. Sixty K worth of terminal IDs, connected above and below. You know, satellites and dedicated land lines, fiber-­optic networks for asynchronous transfer videocon­ferencing. The architecture is impressive. I’m something of an expert in it now, of course. I could give tours.

That’s good.

Yes. The bad news is that it’s built like a bank vault. Isolated-ring design, with Brent Scopes at the center. Nobody except Scopes can, see beyond their own profile, and he can see everything. He’s Big Brother, he can walk the system at will. To para­phrase Muddy Waters, he’s got his mojo working, but it just won’t work for you.

Surely that isn’t a problem for the Mime, Levine typed.

Have mercy! What a thought. I can stay cloaked without much effort, sipping a few milliseconds of CPU time here, a few there. But it’s a problem for YOU, professor. Setting up a secure channel into Mount Dragon is a non-trivial undertaking. It means duplicating part of Scopes’s own access. And that way danger lies, professor.

Explain.

Must I spell it out? If he happens to contact Mount Dragon while you’re in the channel, his own access may be blocked. Then he’ll probably run a bloodhound program back over the wire, and it’ll bay up the good professor, not Mime. ISHTTOETOOYLS.

Mime, you know I don’t understand your acronyms.

“I should have thought that obvious even to one of your lame sensibilities.” You won’t be able to dawdle, professor. We’ll have to keep your visits short.

What about the Mount Dragon records? Levine typed. If I could get at those, it would speed things up considerably.

NFW. Locked up tighter than Queen Mary’s corset.

Levine took a deep breath. Mime was unreadable, immov­able, infuriating. Levine wondered what he would be like in person: no doubt the typical computer hacker, a nerdy guy with thick glasses, bad at football, no social life, onanistic tendencies.

Why, Mime, that doesn’t sound like you, he typed.

Remember me? I’m the Monsieur Rick of cyber­space: I stick my neck out for no one. Scopes is too clever. You remember that pet project of his I was telling you about? Apparently, he’s been program­ming some kind of virtual world for use as a network navigator. He gave a lecture on it at the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics about three years ago. Naturally, I broke in and stole the transcripts and screen shots. Very girthy, very girthy indeed. Ground­breaking use of 3-D programming. Anyway, since then Scopes has clamped the lid down tight. Nobody knows exactly what his program is now, or what it can do. But even back then, he was showing off some heavy shit at that lecture. Believe me, this dude is no computer-illiterate CEO. I found his private server, and was tempted to take a peek inside. But my discretion bested my curiosity. And that’s unusual for me.

Mime, it’s vitally important that I gain access to Mount Dragon. You know my work. You can help me to ensure a safer world.

No mind trips, my man! If there’s one thing I’ve learned, only Mime matters. The rest of the world means no more to me than a dingleberry on a dog’s ass.

Then why are you helping me at all? Remember that it was you who approached me in the first place.

There was a pause in the on-line conversation.

My reasons are my own, Mime responded. But I can guess yours. It’s the GeneDyne lawsuit. Not just for money this time, is it? Scopes is trying to hit you where you live. If he succeeds, you’ll lose your char­ter, your magazine, your credibility. You were a little hasty there with your accusations, and now you need some dirt to prove them retroactively. Tut, tut, pro­fessor.

You’re only half right, Levine typed back.

Then I suggest you tell me the other half.

Levine hesitated at the keyboard.

Professor? Don’t force me to remind you of the two planks our deep and meaningful phriendship is built on. One: I never do anything that will expose myself. And two: my own hidden agenda must remain hid­den.

There’s a new employee at Mount Dragon, Levine typed at last. A former student of mine. I think I can enlist his help.

There was another pause. I’ll need his name in order to set up the channel, Mime responded at last.

Guy Carson, Levine typed.

Professor-man, came the response, you’re a senti­mentalist at heart. And that’s a major flaw in a war­rior. I doubt you’ll succeed. But I shall enjoy watching you try; failure is always more interesting than suc­cess.

The screen went blank.

Carson stood impatiently in the hissing chemical shower, watching the poisonous cleansing agents run down his face­plate in yellow sheets. He tried to remind himself that the feeling of choking, of insufficient oxygen, was just his imag­ination. He stepped through into the next chamber and was buffeted by the chemical drying process. Another air-lock door popped open and he walked into the blinding white light of the Fever Tank. Pressing the global intercom button, he announced his arrival: “Carson in.” Few if any scientists were around to hear him, but the procedure was mandatory. It was all becoming routine—but a routine he felt he would never get used to.

He sat down at his desk and turned on his PowerBook with a gloved hand. His intercom was quiet; the facility was almost deserted. He wanted to get some work done and collect what­ever messages might be waiting for him before de Vaca came.

When he had finished logging on, a line popped on the screen.

GOOD MORNING, GUY CARSON.

YOU HAVE 1 UNREAD MESSAGE.

He moused the e-mail icon, and the words came rushing onto the screen.

Guy—What’s the latest on the inoculations? There’s nothing new in the system. Please page me so we can discuss. Brent.

Carson paged Scopes through GeneDyne’s WAN service. The Gene Dyne CEO’s response was immediate, as if he had been waiting for the message.

Ciao Guy! What’s going on with your chimps?

So far so good. All six are healthy and active. John Singer suggested we cut the waiting period down to one week under the circumstances. I’ll discuss it with Rosalind today.

Good. Give me any updates immediately, please. Interrupt me no matter what I’m doing. If you can’t find me, contact Spencer Fairley.

I will.

Guy, have you had a chance to complete the white paper on your protocol? As soon as we’re sure of success, I’d like you to get it distributed internally, with an eye toward eventual publication.

I’m just waiting for some final confirmations, then I’ll e-mail a copy to you.

As they chatted, more people began to arrive in the lab, and the intercom became a busy party line, each person an­nouncing his or her arrival. “De Vaca in,” he heard, and “Vanderwagon in”; then “Brandon-Smith!” loud and in-your-face, as usual; and then the murmur of other arrivals and other conversations.

De Vaca soon appeared in the hatchway, silently, and logged on to her machine. The bulky blьesuit hid the con­tours of her body, which was fine with Carson. He didn’t need any more distractions.

“Susana, I’d like to run a GEF purification on those pro­teins we discussed yesterday,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

“Certainly,” said de Vaca crisply.

“They’re in the centrifuge, labeled M-one through M-three.”

There was one thing he was glad of: de Vaca was a damn good technical assistant, maybe the best in the entire lab. A true professional—as long as she didn’t lose her temper.

Carson made the final additions to the write-up that doc­umented his procedure. It had taken him the better part of two days, and he was pleased with the result; though he thought Scopes might be a bit hasty in requesting it, he was secretly proud. Near noon, de Vaca returned with photo­graphic strips of the gels. Carson took a look at the strips and felt another flush of pleasure: one more confirmation of im­minent success.

Suddenly Brandon-Smith was in the door.

“Carson, you got a dead ape.”

There was a shocked silence.

“You mean, X-FLU?” Carson said, finding his voice. It wasn’t possible.

“You bet,” she announced with relish, unconsciously smoothing her generous thighs with thickly gloved hands. “A pretty sight, I assure you.”

“Which one?” Carson asked.

“The male, Z-nine.”

“It hasn’t even been a week,” Carson said.

“I know. You made pretty short work of him.”

“Where is he?”

“Still in the cage. Come on, I’ll show you. Besides the rapidity, there are some other unusual aspects you’d better see.”

Carson rose shakily and followed Brandon-Smith to the Zoo. It was impossible that the cause had been X-FLU. Something else must have happened. The thought of reporting this development to Scopes came into his head like a dull pain.

Brandon-Smith opened the hatchway to the Zoo and mo­tioned Carson inside. They entered the room, the incessant drumming and screaming again penetrating the thick layers of Carson’s suit.

Fillson sat at the far end of the Zoo at a worktable, setting some instrument. He stood up and glanced over at them. Carson thought he could detect a flicker of amusement on the handler’s knobby face. He unsealed the door to the inoculation area and ushered them in, pointing upward.

Z-nine was in the topmost row, in a cage marked with a yellow-and-red biohazard label. Carson was unable to see in­side the animal’s cage. The other five inoculated chimps, in cages on the first and second tiers, seemed to be perfectly healthy.

“What was strange, exactly?” Carson asked, reluctant to see the damage firsthand.

“Look for yourself,” said Brandon-Smith, rubbing her gloves up and down her thighs again with a slow, deliberate motion. Unpleasant mannerism, Carson thought. It reminded him of the habitual movements of a severely retarded person.

A metal ladder, encased entirely in white rubber, was at­tached to the upper rack of cages. Carson mounted it gingerly while Fillson and Brandon-Smith waited below. He peered inside the cage. The chimp lay on its back, limbs splayed in obvious agony. The animal’s entire brain case had split open along the natural sutures, large folds of gray matter pushing out in several places. The bottom of the cage was awash in what Carson assumed was cerebrospinal fluid.

“Brain exploded,” said Brandon-Smith unnecessarily. “Must’ve been a particularly virulent strain you invented there, Carson.”

Carson began to descend. Brandon-Smith had her arms crossed and was looking up at him. Through her visor, he could see a faint sarcastic smile playing about her lips. He paused on the step. Something—he wasn’t sure what— seemed wrong. Then he realized: a cage door on the second tier had come ajar, and three hairy fingers were curling around its frame, pushing the faceplate away.

“Rosalind!” he cried, fumbling with his intercom button. “Get away from the cages!”

She looked at him, uncomprehending. Fillson, standing next to her, glanced around in alarm. Suddenly things began to happen very quickly: a hairy arm lashed out, and there was an odd tearing noise. Carson saw the chimp’s hand, strangely human, waving a swatch of rubber material. Looking toward Brandon-Smith, Carson could see, to his horror, a ragged hole in her suit, and through the hole a pair of scrubs riding over an exposed roll of fat. Across the scrubs were three parallel scratches. As he watched, blood began to well up in long crimson lines.

There was a brief, paralyzing silence.

The ape burst from its cage, shrieking with triumph at the top of its lungs, brandishing the piece of biohazard suit like a trophy. It bounded into the Zoo and out the open hatchway, disappearing down the corridor.

Brandon-Smith began to scream. With her intercom off, the sound was muffled and strange, like someone being stran­gled at a great distance. Fillson stood immobile, riveted in horror.

Then she found the intercom button and hysterical screams erupted into Carson’s suit, so loud they saturated the system and dissolved into a roar of static. Carson, at the top of the ladder, punched his intercom to global. “Stage-two alert,” he yelled over the noise. “Integrity breach, Brandon-Smith, animal-quarantine unit.”

A stage-two alert. Human contact with a deadly virus. It was the thing they most feared. Carson knew there was a very strict procedure for dealing with such emergencies: lockdown, followed by quarantine. He had been through the drill time and again.

Brandon-Smith, realizing what was in store for her, discon­nected her air hose and began to run.

Carson jumped off the ladder after her, stopping briefly to disconnect his own air supply, and brushed past the frozen Fillson. He caught up with her outside the exit air lock, where she was screaming and pounding on the door, unable to force it open. Lockdown had already taken place.

De Vaca came up behind him. “What happened?” he heard her ask. A moment later, the corridor was filled with scien­tists.

“Open the door,” Brandon-Smith screamed on the global channel. “Oh God, please, open the door!”She sank to her knees, sobbing.

A siren began to wail, low and monotonous. There was a sudden movement down the hall, and Carson turned quickly, craning for a glimpse over the helmets of the other scientists. Suited forms Carson knew to be security guards were appear­ing out of the access tube from the lower levels, moving quickly toward the mass of scientists huddled by the air lock. There were four of them, wearing red suits that looked even more bulky than the normal gear, and Carson realized they must contain extended air supplies. Though he had known there was a security substation in the lower levels of the Fever Tank, the rapidity with which the guards arrived was aston­ishing. Two of them held short-barreled shotguns, while the others held strange curved devices equipped with rubber han­dles.

Brandon-Smith’s reflexes were lightning fast. She leapt up and, scattering the scientists against the sides of the corridor, plowed past the guards in an attempt to escape. One of the guards was knocked to the ground, grunting in pain. Another spun around and tackled Brandon-Smith as she was about to push past. They hit the floor heavily, Brandon-Smith scream­ing and clawing at the guard. As they wrestled, one of the other guards approached cautiously and pressed the end of the device he was holding to the metal ring of her visor. There was a blue flash, and Brandon-Smith jerked and lay still, her screams stopping instantly. As the intercom cleared, a welter of voices could be heard.

One of the security officers stood up, his hands fumbling over his suit in a panic. “The fat bitch ripped my suit!” Carson heard him shout. “I can’t believe it—”

“Shut up, Roger,” said one of the others, breathing heavily.

“No fucking way am I gonna go into quarantine. It wasn’t my fault—Jesus, what the hell are you doing?”

Carson watched the other security officer level his shotgun. “Both of you are going,” he said. “Now.”

“Wait, Frank, you’re not going to—”

The guard pumped a shell into the chamber.

“Son of a bitch, Frank, you can’t do this to me,” the guard named Roger wailed.

Carson saw three more security guards appear from the di­rection of the ready room. “Get them both to quarantine,” the guard named Frank said.

Suddenly, Carson heard de Vaca’s voice. “Look. She’s thrown up in her suit. She might be suffocating. Get her helmet off.”

“Not until we get her to quarantine,” the officer said.

“The hell with that,” de Vaca shouted back. “This woman is badly injured. She needs hospitalization. We’ve got to get her out.”

The guard looked around and spotted Carson at the front of the crowd. “You! Dr. Carson!” he called. “Get your ass over here and help!”

“Guy,” came de Vaca’s voice, suddenly calm. “Rosalind could die if she’s left in here, and you know it.”

By now the few scientists remaining in the far corners of the Fever Tank had arrived and were crowding the narrow corridor, watching the confrontation. Carson stood motion­less, looking from the security guard to de Vaca.

With a sudden, swift movement, de Vaca shoved the se­curity officer aside. She bent over Brandon-Smith and lifted her head, peering into her faceplate.

Vanderwagon suddenly spoke up. “I’m for getting them out of here,” he said. “We can’t put them in quarantine like apes. It’s inhuman.”

There was a tense silence. The security officer hesitated, uncertain how to handle the confrontation with the scientists. Vanderwagon moved forward and began unbuckling Brandon-Smith’s helmet.

“Sir, I order you to stand fast,” the officer finally said.

“Fuck you,” said de Vaca, helping Vanderwagon remove the visor, then clearing Brandon-Smith’s mouth and nose of vomit. The scientist gasped once, and her eyes fluttered and rolled.

“You see that? She would have suffocated. And you’d be in deep shit.” De Vaca looked at Carson. “Are you going to help us get her out?” she asked.

Carson spoke very quietly. “Susana, you know the drill. Think a moment. She may well have been exposed to the virus. She could already be contagious.”

“We don’t know that!” de Vaca blazed, turning to stare up at him. “It’s never been demonstrated in vivo.”

Another scientist stepped forward. “It could be any one of us lying there. I’ll help.”

Brandon-Smith was reviving from the electrical stun, streaks of vomit clinging to her generous chin, her head al­most comically small in the bulky suit. “Please,” Carson could hear her say. “Please. Get me out.” In the distance, Carson could see another guard approaching down the corridor, carrying a shotgun.

“Don’t worry, Rosalind,” de Vaca replied. “That’s where you’re going.” She looked at Carson. “You’re no better than a murderer. You’d leave her here in the hands of these pigs, to die. Hijo de puta.”

Singer’s voice broke over the intercom. “What’s going on in the Fever Tank? Why haven’t I been briefed? I want an immediate—”

His voice was abruptly cut off by a global override. The clipped English tones of a voice Carson knew must be Nye’s crackled over the intercom.

“In a stage-two alert the security director may, at his discretion, temporarily relieve the director of command. I hereby do so.”

“Mr. Nye, until I see the emergency for myself I’m not relinquishing authority to you or anyone else,” said Singer.

“Disconnect Dr. Singer’s intercom,” Nye ordered coolly.

“Nye, for Chrissakes—” came Singer’s voice, before it was abruptly cut off.

“Get the two individuals to quarantine immediately,” Nye said.

The command seemed to break the indecision of the guards. One stepped forward and prodded de Vaca aside with the butt of his shotgun. She shoved back with a curse. Sud­denly, the newly arrived guard stepped forward, ramming her viciously in the gut with the butt of his shotgun. She writhed to the floor, her wind knocked out. The guard raised the butt of the shotgun, poised to strike again. Carson stepped forward, balling his fists, and the guard swiveled his barrel toward Carson’s midsection. Carson stared back, and was shocked to see the face of Mike Marr staring back at him. A slow smile broke across Marr’s features, and his hooded eyes narrowed.

Nye’s voice came on again. “Everyone will remain where they are while the security officers bring the two individuals to quarantine. Any further resistance will be met with lethal force. You will not be warned again.”

Two guards helped Brandon-Smith to her feet and began leading her down the hall, while another took charge of the guard with the torn suit. The remaining guards, including Marr, positioned themselves along the corridor, watching the crowd of scientists and technicians carefully.

Soon the two detainees and their party had disappeared down the tube leading to the lower levels. Carson knew their destination: a cramped series of rooms two decks below the animal-quarantine unit. There they would spend the next ninety-six hours, having their blood constantly tested for X-FLU antibodies. If they were clear, they would be released to the infirmary for a week of observation; if not—if antibod­ies showed up, indicating infection—they would be required to spend the rest of their short lives in the quarantine area as the first human casualties of the rogue flu.

Nye’s brisk voice broke through again. “Mendel, get down to quarantine with a new helmet and reseal the suits. Dr. Grady will administer first aid and draw the blood samples. We will not evacuate Level-5 until everyone—I repeat, every­one—has had his suit pressure-checked for breach.”

“Fascist asshole,” said de Vaca on global.

“Anyone disobeying the orders of the security officers will be imprisoned in quarantine for the duration of the emer­gency,” came the cool answer. “Hertz, find the renegade an­imal and kill it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The site physician, Dr. Grady, appeared at the far end of the hall, wearing a red emergency suit and carrying a large metal suitcase. He disappeared down the access tube toward quarantine.

“We will now check everyone in alphabetical order,” came Nye’s voice. “As soon as you are cleared to leave the facility, please go directly to the main conference room for debriefing. Barkley, step into the exit air lock.”

The scientist named Barkley glanced around at the assem­bled people, then stepped quickly through the hatch.

“Carson next,” said Nye sixty seconds later.

“No,” said Carson. “This isn’t right. Our suits will run out of air in a few minutes. The women should go first.”

“Carson is next,” the voice repeated, calm but with a threatening undertone.

“Don’t be a sexist idiot,” said de Vaca, who was sitting up and cradling her stomach. “Get your ass in there.”

Carson hesitated a moment, then stepped into the air lock. A suited figure waiting in the access chamber visually in­spected his suit, then attached a small hose to his air valve.

“I’m going to test your suit for leaks,” the man said. There was a hiss of stale air and Carson felt the air pressure within the suit rise, causing his ears to pop.

“Clean,” said the man, and Carson moved to the chemical shower beyond. As he emerged into the ready room, he noted that Barkley had soiled his suit, and he turned his back while grappling with his own.

As he was stowing his gear, de Vaca emerged from the Fever Tank. She pulled off her helmet.

“Wait, Guy,” she said. “I just want to say—”

Carson shut the door on her sentence and headed for the conference room.

Within an hour, everyone had assembled. Nye stood near a large videoconferencing screen, Singer at his side. Mike Marr slouched against one wall, booted legs crossed, chewing the ever-present rubber band as he lazily surveyed the group. Fear and resentment hung like a pall of smoke. Without a word, the room darkened, and the face of Scopes appeared on the screen.

“I don’t need a debriefing,” he said. “Everything was cap­tured on videotape. Everything.”

There was a silence while Scopes’s eyes moved back and forth behind his thick glasses as if looking around the room.

“I am very disappointed in some of you,” he said at last. “You know the procedures. You’ve rehearsed them dozens of times.”

He turned to Singer. “John, you know the rules better than anyone. Mr. Nye was on top of the situation and you were not. He was perfectly correct to assume responsibility during the emergency. In a situation like this, there’s no room for confusion in the chain of command.”

“I understand,” Singer said, his face expressionless.

“I know you do. Susana Cabeza de Vaca?”

“What,” said de Vaca defiantly.

“Why did you ignore protocol and try to release Brandon-Smith from Level-5 ?”

“So she could receive medical attention in a hospital,” de Vaca said, “instead of being locked in a cage.”

There was a long silence while Scopes gazed at her. “And if she by chance had been infected with X-FLU?” he asked at last. “What then? Would medical attention save her life?”

There was a long silence. Scopes sighed heavily. “Susana, you’re a microbiologist. I don’t need to give you a lesson in epidemiology. If you had succeeded in springing Rosalind from Level-5, and if she were infected, you might have started an epidemic unprecedented in the history of mankind.”

She remained stubbornly silent.

“Andrew?” Scopes said, turning his eyes on Vanderwagon. “In such an epidemic, little children, teenagers, mothers, working men and women, rich and poor, doctors and nurses, farmers and priests, all would have died. Thousands of people, maybe millions, and maybe”—He paused—“even billions.” Scopes’s voice had grown very soft. He allowed another long silence to pass.

“Somebody tell me if I’m wrong.”

There was another excruciating silence.

“Damn it!” he barked. “There are reasons why we have safety rules in Level-5. You all are working with the most dangerous pathogen in existence. The whole world depends on you not fucking up. And you almost fucked up.”

“I’m sorry,” Vanderwagon blurted out. “I acted without thinking. All I could think of was that it could be me—”

“Fillson!” Scopes said abruptly.

The animal handler approached the screen, his hands twitching nervously, his pendulous lower lip moist.

“By failing to latch the cage properly, you caused incalcu­lable harm. And you also failed to keep the quarantined animals’ nails trimmed, as per explicit instructions. You are, of course, fired. Furthermore, I have instructed our lawyers to initiate a civil lawsuit against you. If Brandon-Smith should die, her blood will be on your hands. In short, your unforgiv­able carelessness will haunt you legally, financially, and mor­ally for the rest of your life. Mr. Marr, please see that Fillson is immediately escorted out of the premises and dropped off at Engle, to make his own way home.”

Mike Marr pushed himself away from the wall, a smile play­ing about his lips, and sauntered over.

“Mr. Scopes—Brent—please,”Fillson began as Marr grasped him roughly by the arm and pulled him through the door.

“Susana?” Scopes said.

De Vaca remained silent.

Scopes shook his head. “I don’t want to fire you, but if you can’t see the mistake you made, I’ll have to. It’s too dangerous. More than one life was at stake back there. Do you under­stand?”

De Vaca dropped her head. “Yes. I understand,” she said finally.

Scopes turned to Vanderwagon. “I know that you and Su­sana both were motivated by decent human emotions. But you must have more discipline when dealing with a danger as great as this virus. Remember the phrase: ‘If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ You can’t let such emotions, no matter how well intended, get the better of your reason. You are scientists. We will examine the consequences, if any, of this incident on your bonus package at a later time.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vanderwagon.

“And you too, Susana. You’re both on probation for the next six weeks.”

She nodded.

“Guy Carson?”

“Yes,” Carson said.

“I’m more sorry than I can say that your experiment failed.”

Carson said nothing.

“But I am proud of the way you acted this morning. You could have joined the rush to free Brandon-Smith, but you didn’t. You stayed cool and used your head.”

Carson remained silent. He had done what he thought was right. But de Vaca’s withering insult, her branding him a mur­derer, had struck home. Somehow, hearing himself praised by Scopes like this, in front of everyone, made him uncomfort­able.

Scopes sighed. Then he addressed the entire group. “Ros­alind Brandon-Smith and Roger Czerny are receiving the best medical treatment possible, their suits have been resealed, and they are resting comfortably. They must remain in the quarantine unit for ninety-six hours. You all know the pro­cedure and the reasons behind it. Level-5 will remain closed except to security and medical personnel until the crisis pe­riod is over. Any questions?”

There was a silence. “If they test X-FLU-positive—?” someone began.

A look of pain crossed Scopes’s face. “I don’t want to con­sider that possibility,” he said, and the screen went black with a pop of static.

“Get some sleep, Guy. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

Singer, looking drawn and haggard, sat at one of the rolling chairs in the Monitoring Station, his eyes glancing over a bank of black-and-white video screens. Over the last thirty-six hours Carson had returned time and again to the station, gazing at the images on the video screens, as if the sheer force of his will could bring the two scientists out of quarantine. Now he picked up his laptop, said a reluctant good-bye to Singer, and left the subdued blue glow of the station for the empty halls of the operations building. Sleep was impossible, and he allowed his feet to take him to one of the aboveground labs beyond the inner perimeter.

Sitting at a long table in the deserted lab, he went over the failed experiment again and again in his head. He’d re­cently been told that the escaped chimp had tested positive for X-FLU. He could hot forget, even for a moment, that if he had been successful this would not have been the case. To make things worse, the paternal, encouraging messages from Scopes had ceased. He had let everyone down.

And yet the inoculation should have worked. There was no flaw that he could find. All the preliminary tests had shown the virus altered in precisely the way he intended.

He powered up his computer and began listing the possible scenarios:

Possibility 1: An unknown mistake was made.

Answer: Repeat experiment.

Possibility 2: Dr. Burt got the gene locus wrong.

Answer: Find new locus, repeat experiment.

Possibility 3: Chimps already had dormant X-FLU when inoculated.

Answer: Monitor successive inoculatees for results.

Possibility 4: Viral product exposed to heat or some other mutagen.

Answer: Repeat experiment, taking paramount care with viral culture between gene splicing and in vivo trial.

It all boiled down to the same thing: repeat the damned experiment. But he knew he’d get the same results, because there was nothing that could be done any differently. Wear­ily, he called up Burt’s notes and began going through the sections that dealt with the mapping of the viral gene. It was superb work, and Carson could hardly see where Burt had gone wrong, but it was worth going over again anyway. Maybe he should remap the entire viral plasmid from scratch himself, a process that he knew would take at least two months. He thought of spending two more months locked up in the Fever Tank. He thought of Brandon-Smith, somewhere in quar­antine at this very moment, deep in the Tank. He remem­bered the blood welling from her raked side, the expression of fear and disbelief on her face. He remembered standing there, watching, while the guards dragged her away.

He worked in front of a large picture window that looked out over the desert. It was his only consolation. From time to time he stared out, watching the afternoon sun grow golden on the yellow sands.

“Guy?” he heard a voice say behind him. It was de Vaca. He turned and found her standing in the door, in jeans and T-shirt, her lab coat slung over her arm.

“Need any help?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry about my comment in the Fe­ver Tank.”

He turned away silently. Talking with this woman only ended in grief.

He heard a rustle as she moved closer.

“I came to apologize,” she said.

He sighed. “Apology accepted.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You still sound mad.”

Guy turned toward her. “It’s not just the comment in the Fever Tank. You bitch about everything I say.”

“You say a lot of stupid things,” de Vaca said, flaring up.

“That’s just what I mean. You didn’t come to apologize. You came to argue.”

There was a silence in the empty lab.

De Vaca stood up. “We can at least maintain a professional relationship. We’ve got to. I need that bonus for my clinic. So the experiment failed. We’ll try again.”

Carson looked at her, standing illuminated in the picture window, her violet eyes darting at him, her long black hair flowing wild down her back and shoulders. He found himself holding his breath, she was so beautiful. It took all the steam out of his anger.

“What’s going on with you and Mike Marr?” he asked.

She looked at him quickly. “That son of a bitch? He’d been coming on to me since day one. I guess he thought no woman could resist big black boots and a ten-gallon hat.”

“You seemed to be resisting pretty well at the Bomb Pic­nic.”

A rueful expression crossed de Vaca’s face. “Yes, and he’s not a man who likes to be crossed. He comes across all smiles and aw-shucks, but that’s not how he really is, at all. You saw how he planted the butt of his shotgun in my gut, back there in the Fever Tank. There’s something about him that scares the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth.” She pulled her hair back brusquely with one finger. “Come on, let’s get to it.”

Carson exhaled deeply. “Okay. Take a look at my ideas, see if you can think of any other reasons for the failure.” He pushed the PowerBook over, and she took the next stool at the lab table, reading the information on the screen.

“I have another idea,” she said after a moment.

“What’s that?”

She typed:

Possibility 5: Viral product contaminated with other strains of X-FLU or plasmid fragments.

Answer: Repurify and test results.

“What makes you think it was contaminated?” Carson asked.

“It’s a possibility.”

“But those samples were run with GEF. They’re all cleaner than a Vatican joke.”

“I just said it’s a possibility,”de Vaca repeated. “You can’t always believe a machine. These X-FLU strains are very sim­ilar.”

“OK, OK,” Carson sighed. “But first, I want to double-check Burt’s notes on the mapping of the X-FLU plasmid. I know it all by heart, but I want to go through it once more, just to be certain.”

“Let me help you,” said de Vaca. “Maybe between us, we can find something.”

They began to read in silence.

Roger Czerny lay on his bed in the quarantine room, looking at Brandon-Smith sitting, against the far wall. Pouting, as usual. He loathed the sight of her more deeply, more thor­oughly, than he ever had any other person in his life. He loathed the fat dough-boy biohazard suit she wore, loathed the whining sarcastic voice, loathed the very sound of her breathing and whimpering through the intercom. Because of her, he might die. He was furious that he had to share the quarantine room with her. With all the money GeneDyne had, why hadn’t they built two quarantine rooms? Why stick him in with this fat, ugly woman who bitched and moaned all day long? He was forced to watch her every bodily func­tion, her eating, her sleeping, her emptying her shit bag, everything. It was intolerable. And everything was so complicated, just taking a piss or trying to eat dinner while main­taining the sterile environment. When he got out of here, he thought, unless they did something really nice for him—a hundred-grand bonus at least—he was going to sue their asses. They should have given him a rip-proof suit. It should have been part of the procedure. It didn’t matter that they’d given them both fresh bluesuits. They had locked him in with his own would-be murderer. They were liable as hell, and they were going to pay.

On top of everything else, they wouldn’t tell him the results of the frequent blood tests. The only way he’d know anything was when the ninety-six hour waiting period was up. If they let him out, he was clean. If not ...

Shit, he thought, it was going to take two hundred to make up for this. Two-fifty. He’d get himself a good lawyer.

It was ten o’clock. The lighting was dim, so he knew it had to be evening, not morning. That was the only way he could tell in this prison. He thought, once again, of his one visit to a hospital, ten years earlier. Emergency appendectomy. This was like a hospital, only worse. Much worse. Here he was, a hundred feet below the ground, sealed in a small room, no way out, with a roommate that—He opened and closed his mouth several times, hyperventilating, trying to ease the panic that came bubbling toward the surface.

Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. He shifted on his bed and pointed a remote at the television that hung from the ceiling. “Three Stooges” reruns. Anything to get his mind out of there.

A soft beep sounded and a blue light began blinking high on the wall. There was a hiss of compressed air escaping; then the doctor, Grady, squeezed through the hatchway, the bulky red emergency suit hindering his movements. “That time again,” he said cheerfully into the intercom. He took Brandon-Smith’s blood first, inserting the needle through a special rubber-sealed grommet in the upper arm of her suit.

“I don’t feel good,” Brandon-Smith whined. It was what she said every time the doctor came. “I think I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

The doctor checked her temperature, using the thermom­eter inserted in her suit.

“Ninety-eight point six!” he piped. “It’s the stress of the situation. Try to relax.”

“But I have a headache,”she said again, for the twentieth time.

“It’s not time yet for another shot of Tylenol,” the doctor said. “Another two hours.”

“But I have a headache now.”

“Perhaps a half dose,” said the doctor, fumbling in his suit­case with gloved hands and administering the injection.

“Just tell me, please, please, if I have it,” she pleaded.

“Twenty-four more hours,” the doctor said. “Just one more day. You’re doing fine, Rosalind, you’re doing beautifully. As I told you, I’m not being given any more information than you are.”

“You’re a liar,” Brandon-Smith snapped. “I want to talk to Brent.”

“Relax. Nobody’s a liar. That’s just the stress speaking.”

The doctor came over to Czerny, who presented the side of his suit in resigned anticipation of having his blood drawn.

“Anything I can do for you, Roger?” the doctor asked.

“No,” said Czerny. Even if he pushed past the doctor, he knew there were two of his fellow guards stationed directly outside the quarantine area.

The doctor drew the blood and left. The blue light stopped blinking as the hatchway was sealed. Czerny went back to the Three Stooges, while Brandon-Smith lay down, falling at last into a fitful sleep. At eleven, Czerny turned off the lights.

He awoke suddenly at two. Even though it was pitch black, he felt, with a shiver of horror, a presence hovering above his bed.

“Who is it?” he cried, sitting up. He fumbled for the light, then dropped his arm again when he realized the form at the end of his bed was Brandon-Smith.

“What do you want?” he said.

She did not answer. Her large frame was trembling slightly.

“Leave me alone!”

“My right arm,” said Brandon-Smith.

“What about it?”

“It’s gone,” she said. “I woke up and it was gone.”

In the dark, Czerny pawed at his sleeve, found the global emergency button and punched it savagely.

Brandon-Smith took a small step forward, bumping his bedframe.

“Get away from me!” Czerny shouted. He felt the bed vi­brate.

“Now my left arm’s going,” she whispered, her voice strangely slurred. Her whole body began to shake. “This is strange. There’s something crawling inside my head, like tapeworms.” She fell silent. The trembling continued.

Czerny backed up against the wall. “Help me!” he cried into his intercom. “Somebody get the hell in here!”

Two recessed bulbs in the ceiling snapped on, soaking the chamber in a dim crimson light.

Suddenly Brandon-Smith screamed. “Where are you? I can’t see you! Please don’t leave me!”

Over his intercom, Czerny heard a peculiar wet sound that was almost instantly smothered by the dying buzz of a short circuit. Looking up in sudden horror, he saw wrinkled gray brain matter thrusting against the inside glass of Brandon-Smith’s faceplate. And yet she remained standing for the longest time, still twitching, before she slowly began to topple forward onto his bed.

PART TWO

The horse barn stood at the edge of the perimeter fence, a modest metal building with six stalls. Four of the stalls held horses. It was an hour before dawn, and Venus, the morning star, shone brightly on the eastern horizon.

Inside the barn, Carson watched the horses drowsing in their stalls, heads drooping. He whistled softly and the heads jerked upward, ears perked.

“Which one of you ugly old cayuses wants to go for a ride?” he whispered. One horse nickered in return.

He looked them over. They were a motley lot, obviously locally purchased, ranch rejects. A goose-rumped Appaloosa, two old quarterhorses, and one grade horse of indeterminate breeding. Muerto, Nye’s magnificent Medicine Hat paint gelding, was gone, apparently taken out by the Englishman on one of his mysterious rides even earlier that morning. Guess he’s had enough of the place, too, Carson thought. Though it seemed a strange time for the security director to be leaving the grounds. Carson, at least, had an excuse: the Level-5 facility was still closed, and would remain so until an OSHA inspector arrived the following day. Carson couldn’t work if he wanted to.

But even if the Fever Tank had been open for business, there was no way Carson was working this day. He grimaced in the dark, overripe air of the stable. Just when he’d decided it was irrational to blame himself for Brandon-Smith’s acci­dent, she’d died of exposure to X-FLU. Then Czerny had been removed in an ambulance, virus-free but incoherent. The en­tire Fever Tank had been decontaminated, then sealed. Now there was nothing to do but wait, and Carson had grown tired of waiting in the hushed, funereal atmosphere of the residency compound. He needed time to think about the X-FLU prob­lem, to figure out what went wrong, and—perhaps most im­portant—to recover his equilibrium. He knew no better tonic than a long ride on horseback.

The grade horse caught Carson’s eye. He was a liver-colored bay with a head the size of a coffin. But he was young and tough-looking. He eyed Carson through a straggly lock of mane.

Carson stepped inside the stall and ran his hand along the horse’s flank. The fur was tight and coarse, the skin tough as tripe. The horse didn’t jerk or tremble; he merely turned his head and smelled Carson’s shoulder. He had a calm, alert gleam in his eye that Carson liked.

He picked up the front leg. The hooves were good although the shoeing job was abysmal. The horse stood calmly while Carson cleaned the hoof with a penknife. He dropped the leg and patted the horse on the neck.

“You’re a damn fine horse,” Carson said, “but you sure are one ugly son of a bitch.”

The horse nickered his appreciation.

Carson eased a halter over the animal’s head and led him to a hitching post outside. It had been two years since he’d ridden, but already the old instincts were coming back. He went into the tack room and looked over Mount Dragon’s saddle collection. It was obvious that most of the other resi­dents were uninterested in riding. One of the saddles had a broken tree; another was just a screwed-together affair that would probably disintegrate the moment the horse broke into a trot. There was one old Abiquiu saddle with a high cantle that might do. Carson picked it up, grabbed a blanket and pad, and carried everything out to the hitching post. He buck­led on his old spurs, noting that during the years of disuse one of the rowels had broken.

“What’s your name?” he murmured softly while brushing out the horse’s coat.

The horse stood there in the gathering light, saying noth­ing.

“Well then, I’m going to call you Roscoe.” He folded the blanket, placed it on the horse’s back, then added the pad and saddle. He looped the latigo through the rigging and tightened it, feeling the horse swell his belly with air in an attempt to trick Carson into leaving the cinch too loose.

“You’re a rascal,” said Carson. He hitched the breast collar and loosely buckled the flank cinch. When the horse wasn’t paying attention he jabbed his knee in its belly and jerked the latigo tight. The horse flattened his ears.

“Gotcha,” said Carson.

The light was now brighter in the east, and Venus had grown pale, almost invisible. Carson tied on the saddlebags containing his lunch, looped a gallon canteen over the horn, and swung up into the saddle.

No guard was on duty at the rear gate in the perimeter fence. Approaching the keypad, Carson leaned over and punched in the code, and the gate swung open.

He trotted out into the desert and took a deep breath. After almost three weeks of incarceration inside the lab, he was finally free. Free of the claustrophobic Fever Tank, free of the horror of the last few days. Tomorrow, the OSHA inspector would arrive and the grind would begin again. Carson was determined to make this day count.

Roscoe had a rough, fast trot. Carson turned the horse southward and rode toward the old Indian ruin that poked above the horizon, a few wrecked walls amid piles of rubble. He’d been a little curious since he’d first seen it from Singer’s window.

He rode past at a distance. Most of the ruin was covered with windblown sand, but here and there he could make out the low outlines of collapsed walls and small room blocks. It looked like many of the old ruins that had dotted the land­scape of his youth. Soon, it was nothing but a diminishing point behind him.

When he was several miles from the lab, Carson dropped the horse into a walk and looked around. Mount Dragon had shrunk to a white cluster to the north. The vegetation of the Jornada desert had changed subtly, and he found himself sur­rounded by creosotebush that marched toward the horizon with almost mathematical precision.

He continued south again, enjoying the familiar rocking of the horse. A pronghorn antelope paused on a rise and looked in his direction. It was joined by another. Suddenly, as if on cue, they wheeled about and fled; they had caught his scent. He rode through a curious stand of soapweed yucca, looking uncannily like a crowd of bowing people, and he remembered a story passed down in his family about how Kit Carson and a wagon train had circled and fired at a group of hostiles for fifteen minutes before realizing they were shooting at just such a yucca grove.

By noon, Carson reckoned he was about fifteen miles from Mount Dragon. He could just make out the cinder cone itself, a dark triangle on the northern horizon, but the laboratory had long sunk out of view. A low range of hills had appeared in the west, and he turned his horse toward them, eager to explore.

He came to the edge of a vast lava flow, black jagged rubble piled on the desert floor, covered with blooming ocotillo. This, Carson knew, was part of the vast lava formation known as El Malpaнs, the Bad Country, which covered hundreds of square miles of the Jornada desert. The western hills were closer now, and Carson could see that, much like Mount Dragon, they were a chain of dead cinder cones.

Carson rode along the edge of the lava, winding in and out, following the irregular pattern of the flow. The lava had spread amoebalike across the desert, leaving a complicated maze of coves, islands, and lava caves.

As Carson rode, he watched a summer thunderstorm rap­idly build over the hills. A great thunderhead began to rear against the tropopause, its bottom as flat and dark as an anvil. He smelled a change in the air, a freshening of the breeze, bringing with it the smell of ozone. The spreading cloud cov­ered the sun, and a cathedral-like hush fell on the landscape. In a few minutes the cloud was dropping a column of rain the color of blued steel. Carson urged Roscoe into a trot, scanning the edge of the lava, figuring he could weather the coming storm in one of the caves that were usually found at the edges of the flows.

The column of rain thickened, and the wind began to push skeins of dust along the ground. Lightning flickered inside the cloud, the rumbling of thunder rolling across the desert like the sound of a distant battle. As the storm approached, a low moaning filled the air and the smell of wet sand and electricity became stronger.

Carson rounded a point of lava and saw a promising-looking cave among the mounds of twisted basalt. He dis­mounted, removed his saddlebags, and tied Roscoe to a rock by his lead rope. He climbed over the lava to the cave en­trance.

The mouth was dark and cool, with a soft floor of wind­blown sand. He stepped inside just as the first heavy drops of rain slapped the ground. He could see Roscoe, on the long lead rope, turn his butt to the wind and hunker down. The saddle would get soaked. He should have brought it into the cave with him, but such a saddle didn’t deserve special treat­ment. He would oil it when he got back.

The desert was suddenly engulfed in sheets of rain. The hills disappeared and the line of black lava faded into the gray torrent. Carson lay on his back in the dimness of the cave. His thoughts turned inevitably to Mount Dragon. Even here, he could not escape it. It still seemed unreal to him, this laboratory lost in the desert. And yet the death of Brandon-Smith was real enough. Once again, he tortured himself with the thought that if his genetic splicing had succeeded, she would be alive. In one sense, his overconfidence had killed her. Part of him realized this train of thought was irrational, and yet it kept returning to haunt him, again and again. He had done his best, he knew; Fillson’s and Brandon-Smith’s own inattention were responsible. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to listen to the rain and wind. Finally, he sat up and stared out the cave opening. Roscoe stood silently, unafraid. He had seen it all before. Although Carson felt sorry for him, he knew it had been the lot of horses since time immemorial to stand in the rain while their masters took refuge in caves.

He eased back and absentmindedly ran his hands through the sand on the cave floor, waiting for the storm to pass. His fingers closed over something cool and hard, and he pulled it from the sand. It was a spearpoint, made from gray chert, as light and balanced as a leaf. He remembered finding a similar arrowhead once, out riding the range. When he brought it home his great-uncle Charley had become very excited by the find, saying that it was a powerful sign of protection and that he should carry it always. His great-uncle had made him a buckskin medicine bag for the spearpoint; then he had chanted and sprinkled pollen over it. His father had been disgusted by the whole proceeding. Later, Carson had thrown away the bag and told his great-uncle he had lost it.

He slid the spearpoint into his pocket, stood up, and walked to the cave entrance. Somehow, the find made him feel better. He would get through this; he would succeed in neutralizing X-FLU, if only to ensure that Brandon-Smith’s death had not been in vain.

The storm eased, and Carson stepped out of the lava tube. Looking around, he saw a great double rainbow arching over the hills to the south. The sun began to break through the clouds. He collected Roscoe’s lead rope, patted him and apol­ogized, then wiped the seat dry and remounted.

Roscoe’s hooves sank into the wet sand as Carson nosed the horse once again in the direction of the hills. In minutes the heat returned, the desert began steaming, and he felt thirsty. Not wanting to exhaust his water supply, he dug into his pocket for a stick of gum.

Topping a rise, he froze, the gum halfway to his mouth. Tracks crossed the sand directly before him: a mounted horse, showing evidence of the same poor shoeing job as Roscoe. The tracks were fresh, made after the rain.

Popping the gum into his mouth, Carson followed. At the top of a second rise he saw, in the distance, the horse and rider posting between two cinder cones. He immediately rec­ognized the absurd safari hat and dark suit. There was nothing absurd, however, about the way the man handled his horse. Pulling Roscoe below the rise, Carson dismounted and peered over the top.

Nye was trotting at right angles to Carson, riding English. Suddenly he reined his horse to a stop and fished a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He flattened it on the pommel and took out a sighting compass, orienting it on the paper and taking a bearing directly at the sun. He turned his horse ninety degrees, nudged him back into a trot, and soon dis­appeared behind the hills.

Carson remounted, curious. Confident in his own tracking skills, he let Nye gain some distance before easing his horse forward.

Nye was leaving a very peculiar trail. He rode in a straight line for a half mile, made another abrupt ninety-degree turn, rode another half mile, then continued the process, zigzagging across the desert in a checkerboard pattern. At each turn Carson could see, from the hoofprints in the sand, that Nye halted for a moment before continuing.

Carson continued tracking, fascinated by the puzzle. What the hell was Nye doing? This was no pleasure ride. It was getting late; clearly, the man was planning to spend the night out here, in these godforsaken volcanic hills twenty miles from Mount Dragon.

He dismounted again to examine the track. Nye was mov­ing faster now, riding at a slow lope. He was riding a good horse, in better physical condition than Roscoe, and Carson realized he would not be able to follow indefinitely without exhausting his own horse. With a little exercise, Roscoe might be the equal of Nye’s mount, but he was “barn sour” and they were still many miles from the lab. Even if Carson turned back, he would not get back before midnight. It was time to give up the chase.

He was preparing to mount when he heard a sharp voice behind him. Turning, he saw Nye approaching.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” the Englishman said.

“Out for a ride, same as you,” Carson replied, hoping his voice didn’t betray his surprise. Nye had obviously noticed he was being followed and doubled back in a classic move, track­ing the tracker.

“You lying git, you were stalking me.”

“I was curious—” Carson began.

Nye moved his horse closer and with invisible knee pres­sure turned him expertly on the forehand, at the same time laying his right hand on the butt of a rifle sheathed beside the saddle.

“A lie,” he hissed. “I know what you’re up to, Carson, don’t play stupid with me. If I ever catch you following me again I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll bury you out here, and no one will ever know what happened to your stinking pishogue of a carcass.”

Carson quickly swung up on his horse. “Nobody talks to me that way,” he said.

“I’ll talk to you any bloody way I like.” Nye began to slide the rifle out of its scabbard.

Carson jabbed his horse in the flank and surged forward. Nye, taken off guard, jerked the rifle free and tried to swing it around. Roscoe slammed into Muerto and threw the se­curity director sideways in the saddle; at the same instant, Carson dropped his reins and grabbed the barrel of the rifle with both hands, yanking it out of Nye’s grasp with a sharp downward tug.

Keeping an eye on Nye, Carson opened the breech and removed the magazine, tossing it into the sand. Then he ex­tracted the wad of gum from his mouth and jammed it deep into the chamber. He snapped the breech shut and winged the gun far down the hill.

“Don’t ever unship a rifle in front of me again,” he said quietly.

Nye sat on his horse, breathing hard, his face red. He moved toward the rifle but Carson spun his horse, blocking him.

“For an Englishman, you’re a rude son of a bitch,” Carson said.

“That’s a three-thousand-dollar rifle,” Nye replied.

“All the more reason not to wave it in people’s faces.” Carson nodded down the hill, “If you try to use that gun now, it’ll misfire and blow off your little ponytail. By the time you’ve cleaned it, I’ll be gone.”

There was a long silence. The late-afternoon sun refracted through Nye’s eyes, giving them a strange dark gold color. Looking into those eyes, Carson saw that the fiery tints were not completely a trick of the sun; the man’s eyes had a reddish cast, like the inward flames of a secret obsession.

Without another word Carson turned his horse and headed north at a brisk trot. After several minutes he stopped, look­ing back. Nye remained motionless on his mount, silhouetted against the rise, gazing after him.

“Watch your back, Carson!” came the distant voice. And Carson thought he heard a strange laugh drift toward him across the desert, before being whisked away by the wind.

The portable CD player sat on an outspread Wall Street Journal on a white table in the control room, exploded into twenty or thirty pieces. A figure wearing a dirty T-shirt was bent over it, the picture of concentration. The T-shirt’s legend, VISIT BEAUTIFUL SOVIET GEORGIA, was proudly emblazoned over a picture of a grim, fortresslike government structure, the epit­ome of Stalinesque architecture.

De Vaca stood to one side of the immaculate control room, wondering if the T-shirt was a joke. “You said you’ve never fixed a CD player before,” she said nervously.

“Da,” the figure muttered without looking up.

“Well, then how do you ...?” She let the sentence hang.

The figure muttered again, then popped a chip out of a circuit board, holding it up with a pair of plastic-coated tweezers. “Hmmmph,” he said, and tossed it carelessly on the news­paper. Working the tweezers again, he popped out a second chip.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” said de Vaca.

The figure eyed her over a pair of reading glasses fallen halfway down his nose. “But is not fixed yet,” he protested.

De Vaca shrugged, sorry she had ever brought the CD player to Pavel Vladimirovic. Though she’d been told he was some kind of mechanical genius, she’d seen no evidence of it so far. And the man had even admitted he had never even seen a CD player before, let alone fixed one.

Vladimirovic sighed heavily, dropped the second chip, and sat down heavily, pushing the glasses back up his nose.

“Is broke” he announced.

“I know,” said de Vaca. “That’s why I brought it to you.”

He nodded and indicated with his palm for her to sit in a chair.

“Can you fix it or not?” de Vaca said, still standing.

He nodded. “Da, don’t worry! I can fix. Is problem with chip that controls laser diode.”

De Vaca took a seat. “Do you have a replacement?” she asked.

Vladimirovic nodded and rubbed his sweaty neck. Then he stood up, moved to a cabinet, and returned with a small box, green circuit boards peeping from its open top. “I put back together now,” he nodded

De Vaca watched while, in a burst of activity, he canni­balized parts from the box full of circuit boards. In less than five minutes he had assembled the player. He plugged it in, inserted the CD that de Vaca had brought, and waited. The sound of the B-52s came roaring out of the speakers.

“Aiee!” he cried, turning it off. “Nekulturny. What is that noise! Must still be broke.” He roared with laughter at his own joke.

“Thank you,” de Vaca said, real delight in her voice. “I use this just about every evening. I was afraid I’d have to spend the rest of my time here without music. How’d you do it?”

“Here, many extra pieces from the fail-safe mechanism,” Vladimirovic said. “I use one of those. Is nothing, very simple little machine. Not like this!” he gestured proudly at the rows of control panels, CRT screens and consoles.

“What do they all do?” de Vaca asked.

“Many things!” he cried, lumbering over to a wall of elec­tronics. “Here, is control for laminar airflow. Air intake here, furnace is controlled by all these.” He waved his hand vaguely. “And then all these control cooldown.”

“Cooldown?”

“Da. You wouldn’t want one-thousand-degree air going back in! Has to be cooled, the air.”

“Why not just suck in fresh air?”

“If suck in fresh air, must vent old air. No good. This is closed system. We are only laboratory in world with such sys­tem. Goes back to fail-safe mechanism of military days, shunt hot air to Level-5.”

“You mentioned that fail-safe system before,” de Vaca asked. “I don’t remember hearing about it.”

“For stage-zero alert.”

“There is no stage-zero alert. Stage one is the worst-case-scenario.”

“Back then, was stage-zero alert.” He shrugged. “Maybe terrorists in Level-5, maybe accident with total contamina­tion. Inject one-thousand-degree air into Level-5, make com­plete sterilization. Not only sterilization. Blow place up real kharasho!Boom!”

“I see,” said de Vaca, a little uncertainly. “It can’t go off by accident, this state-zero alert, can it?”

Pavel chuckled. “Impossible. When civilians took over, system was deactivated.” He waved his hand at a nearby com­puter terminal. “Only work if put back on line.”

“Good,” said de Vaca, relieved. “I wouldn’t want to be fried alive because someone tripped over the wrong switch up here.”

“True,” Pavel rumbled. “It’s hot enough outside without making more heat, nyet? Zharka!” He shook his head, eyes staring absently at the newspaper. Then he stiffened. He picked up the rump end of the Journal and stabbed his finger at it.

“You see this?” he asked.

“No,” said de Vaca. She glanced over at the columns of tiny numbers, thinking that he must have stolen the paper from the Mount Dragon library, which had subscriptions to a dozen or so newspapers and periodicals that were not avail­able on-line. They were the only printed materials allowed on the site.

“GeneDyne stock down half point again! You know what this mean?”

De Vaca shook her head.

“We losing money!”

“Losing money?” de Vaca asked.

“Da! You own stock, I own stock, and this stock go down half point! I lose three hundred fifty dollars! What I could have done with that money!”

He buried his head in his hands.

“But isn’t that to be expected?” de Vaca asked.

“Shto?”

“Doesn’t the stock go up and down every day?”

“Da, every day! Last Monday I made six hundred dollars.”

“So what does it matter?”

“Makes even worse! Last Monday, six hundred dollars richer I was. Now it’s all gone! Poof!” He spread his hands in despair.

De Vaca tried to keep from laughing. The man must watch the movement of the stock every day, feeling elated on the days it went up—thinking how he was going to spend the money—and horrified on the days it went down. It was the price of employee ownership: giving stock to people who had never invested before. And yet, she was sure overall he must have made a large profit on his employee plan. She hadn’t checked since arriving at Mount Dragon, but she knew the GeneDyne stock had been soaring in recent months, and that they all were getting richer.

Vladimirovic shook his head again. “And in last few days, worse, much worse. Down many points!”

De Vaca frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

“You not heard talk in canteen! It’s that Boston professor, Levine. Always, he talking bad about GeneDyne, about Brent Scopes. Now he say something worse, I don’t know what, and stock go down.” He muttered under his breath. “KGB would know what to do with such a man.”

He sighed deeply, then handed her the CD player.

“After hearing decadent counterrevolutionary music, I’m sorry I fixed it,” he said.

De Vaca laughed and said good-bye. She decided the T-shirt had to be a joke. After all, the man must have had top secret clearance to work at Mount Dragon in the old days. She’d have to search him out in the canteen some evening and get the whole story, she decided.

The first heat of summer lay like a sodden blanket over Har­vard Yard. The leaves hung limply on the great oaks and chestnut trees, and cicadas droned in the shadows. As he walked, Levine slipped out of his threadbare jacket and slung it over his shoulder, inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass, the thick humidity in the air.

In the outer office, Ray was at his desk, idly picking at his teeth with a paper clip. He grunted at Le vine’s approach.

“You got visitors,” he said.

Levine stopped, frowned. “You mean, inside?” He nodded toward his closed office door.

“Didn’t like the company out here,” Ray explained.

As Levine opened the door, Erwin Landsberg, the president of the university,’ turned toward him with a smile. He held out his hand.

“Charles, it’s been a long time,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Much too long.” He indicated a second man in a gray suit. “This is Leonard Stafford, our new dean of faculty.”

Levine shook the limp hand that was offered, stealing a furtive glance around the office. He wondered how long the two had been there. His eyes landed on the laptop, open on one corner of the desk, telephone cord dangling from its side. Stupid, leaving it out like that. The call was due in just five minutes.

“It’s warm in here,” said the president. “Charles, you should order an air conditioner from Central Services.”

“Air conditioners give me head colds. I like the heat.” Lev­ine took a seat at his desk. “Now, what’s this about?”

The two visitors sat down, the dean glancing around at the disorderly piles with distaste. “Well, Charles,” the president began. “We’ve come about the lawsuit.”

“Which one?”

The president looked pained. “We take these matters very seriously.” When Levine said nothing, he continued. “The GeneDyne suit, of course.”

“It’s pure harassment,” Levine said. “It’ll be dismissed.”

The dean of faculty leaned forward. “Dr. Levine, I’m afraid we don’t share that view. This is not a frivolous suit. GeneDyne is alleging theft of trade secrets, electronic tres­pass, defamation and libel, and quite a bit else.”

The president nodded. “GeneDyne has made some serious accusations. Not so much about the foundation, but about your methods. That’s what concerns me most.”

“What about my methods?”

“There’s no need to get excited.” The president adjusted his cuffs. “You’ve been in hot water before, and we’ve always stuck by you. It hasn’t always been easy, Charles. There are several trustees—very powerful trustees—who would much prefer if we’d left you outside for the vigilantes. But now, with the ethics of your methods being called into question ... well, we have to protect the university. You know what’s legal, and what isn’t. Stay within those bounds. I know you under­stand.” The smile faded slightly. “And that’s why I’m not going to warn you again.”

“Dr. Landsberg, I don’t think you even begin to appreciate the situation. This is not some academic tiff. We’re talking about the future of the human race.” Levine glanced at his watch. Two minutes. Shit.

Landsberg raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The future of the human race?”

“We’re at war here. GeneDyne is altering the germ cells of human beings, committing a sacrilege against human life it­self. ‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.’ Remem­ber? When they came to clear the ghettos, it was no time for worrying about ethics and the law. Now they’re messing with the human genome itself. I have the proof.”

“Your comparison is offensive,” Landsberg said. “This is not Nazi Germany, and GeneDyne, whatever you think of it, is not the SS. You undermine the good work you’ve done in the name of the Holocaust by making such trivial compari­sons.”

“No? Tell me the difference, then, between Hitler’s eugen­ics and what GeneDyne is doing at Mount Dragon.”

Landsberg sat back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. “If you can’t see the difference, Charles, you’ve got a warped moral view. I suspect this has more to do with your personal feud against Brent Scopes than with some high-flown worry about the human race. I don’t know what happened between you two twenty years ago to start this thing, and I don’t care. We’re here to tell you to leave GeneDyne alone.”

“This has nothing to do with a feud—”

The dean waved his hand impatiently. “Dr. Levine, you’ve got to understand the university’s position. We can’t have you running around like a loose cannon, involved in shady activities, while we’re litigating a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit.”

“I consider this to be interference with the autonomy of the foundation,” Levine said. “Scopes is putting pressure on you, isn’t he?”

Landsberg frowned. “If you call a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit ‘pressure,’ then, hell, yes!”

A telephone rang, then a hiss sounded as a remote com­puter connected to Levine’s laptop. His screen winked on, and an image came into view: a figure, balancing the world on its fingertip.

Levine leaned back casually in his chair, obscuring their view of his computer screen. “I’ve got work to do,” he said.

“Charles, I get the feeling that this isn’t sinking in,” the president said. “We can pull the foundation’s charter any time we like. And we will, Charles, if you press us.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Levine said. “The press would ham­mer you like a nail. Besides, I have tenure.”

President Landsberg abruptly stood up and turned to leave, his face livid. The dean rose more slowly, smoothing a hand over his suit front. He leaned toward Levine. “Ever heard the phrase ‘moral turpitude’? It’s in your tenure contract.” He moved toward the door, then stopped, looking back speculatively.

The miniature globe on the screen began to rotate faster, and the figure balancing the earth began to scowl impatiently.

“It’s been nice chatting with you,” Levine said. “Please shut the door on your way out.”

When Carson entered the Mount Dragon conference room, the cool white space was already packed with people. The nervous buzz of whispered conversations filled the air. Today, the banks of electronics were hidden behind panels, and the teleconferencing screen was dark. Urns of coffee and pastries were arrayed along one wall, knots of scientists gathered around them.

Carson spotted Andrew Vanderwagon and George Harper standing in one corner. Harper waved him over. “Town meet­ing’s about to start,” he said. “You ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“Hell if I know,” Harper said, ruffling a hand through his thinning brown hair. “Ready for the third degree, I suppose. They say if he doesn’t like what he finds here he might just shut the place down.”

Carson shook his head. “They’d never do that over a freak accident.”

Harper grunted. “I also heard that this guy has subpoena power and can even bring criminal charges.”

“I doubt it,” said Carson. “Where’d you hear these things?”

“The Mount Dragon rumor mill, of course: the canteen. Didn’t see you there yesterday. Until they reopen Level-5 there’s nothing else to do, unless you want to sit in the library or play tennis in the hundred-degree heat.”

“I went for a ride,” Carson said.

“A ride? You mean, on that hot young assistant of yours?” Harper cackled.

Carson rolled his eyes. Harper could be irritating. He had already decided not to mention meeting Nye to anyone. It would just create more problems.

Harper turned to Vanderwagon, who was chewing his lip and staring expressionlessly into the crowd. “Come to think of it, I didn’t see you in the canteen, either. Spend the day in your room again, Andrew?”

Carson frowned. It was obvious that Vanderwagon was still upset about what had happened in the Fever Tank, and about his dressing down by Scopes. By the look of his bloodshot eyes, he hadn’t had much sleep. Sometimes Harper had the tact of a hand grenade.

Vanderwagon turned and eyed Harper as a sudden hush fell over the crowd. Four people had entered the room: Singer, Nye, Mike Marr, and a slight, stooped man in a brown suit. The stranger carried an oversized briefcase that bumped against his legs as he walked. His sandy hair was graying at the temples, and he wore black-rimmed glasses that made his pale skin look sallow. He radiated ill health.

“That must be the OSHA man,“ whispered Harper. “He doesn’t look like much of a terror to me.”

“More like a junior accountant,” Carson replied. “He’s go­ing to get a nasty burn with that skin.”

Singer went to the lectern, tapped the microphone, and held up his hand. His normally pleasant, ruddy face looked bone-tired. “As you all know,” he said, “tragic accidents such as the one that occurred last week must be reported to the proper authorities. Mr. Teece here is a senior investigator from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He’ll be spending a little time with us at Mount Dragon, looking into the cause of the accident and reviewing our safety procedures.”

Nye stood next to Singer, silent, his eyes traveling over the assembled scientists. A knot in his jaw was working away, his powerful frame rigid in the tailored suit. Marr stood next to him, nodding his closely cropped head and smiling broadly beneath a hat brim so low it hid his eyes. Carson knew that in some ways, as director of security, Nye was ultimately re­sponsible for the accident. He was obviously all too aware of it. The security director’s gaze met Carson’s for a moment before it moved on. Perhaps that explains his paranoia out in the desert, Carson thought. But what the hell was he up to? Whatever it was must have been damn important, keeping him out overnight before a meeting like this.

“Because industrial secrets of GeneDyne are involved, the specifics of our research will remain secret regardless of the outcome of the investigation. None of this will be reported to the press.” Singer shifted at the podium. “I want to em­phasize one thing: everyone at Mount Dragon will be ex­pected to cooperate fully with Mr. Teece. This is an order that comes directly from Brent Scopes. I assume that’s suffi­ciently clear.”

There was a silence in the room. Singer nodded.

“Good. I think Mr. Teece would like to say a few words.”

The frail-looking man walked up to the microphone, still carrying his briefcase.

“Hello,” he said, his thin lips forming a fleeting smile. “I’m Gilbert Teece—please call me Gil. I expect to be here for the next week or so, poking and prying about.” He laughed; a brief, dry chuckle. “This is standard procedure in a case such as this. I will be speaking to most of you individually, and of course I’ll need your help understanding exactly what hap­pened. I know this is very painful for all concerned.”

There was a silence, and it seemed that Teece had already run out of things to say. “Any questions?” he finally asked.

There were none. Teece shuffled back.

Singer stepped back up to the lectern. “Now that Mr. Teece has arrived and decontamination is complete, we’ve agreed to reopen Level-5 without delay. As difficult as it will be, I expect to see everyone back at work tomorrow morning. We’ve lost a lot of time, and we need to make it up.” He drew a hand across his forehead. “That’s all. Thank you.”

Teece suddenly stood up, his finger in the air. “Dr. Singer? May I have another word—?”

Singer nodded, and Teece stepped up to the podium again. “The reopening of Level-5 was not my idea,” he said, “but perhaps it will aid the investigation, after all. I must say I’m a little surprised that we were not joined today by Mr. Scopes. It was my understanding he likes to be present—in an elec­tronic sense, at least—at meetings of this sort.” He paused expectantly, but neither Singer or Nye said a word.

“That being the case,” Teece continued, “there’s one ques­tion I’ll offer up generally. Perhaps you’ll offer me your thoughts on it when we do meet individually.”

He paused.

“I’m curious to know why Brandon-Smith’s autopsy was conducted in secrecy and her remains cremated with such unseemly haste.”

There was another silence. Teece, still gripping his brief­case, gave another quick, thin-lipped smile and followed Singer out the door.

Although Carson took his time arriving at the ready room the following morning, he was not surprised to find most of the bluesuits still on their racks. Nobody was anxious to go back into the Fever Tank.

As he dressed, he felt a knot tighten slowly in his stomach. It had been almost a week since the accident. As much as he’d been haunted by it—those gashes in Brandon-Smith’s suit, the red blood welling up through the rents in her scrubs—he’d blocked the Fever Tank itself from his mind.

Now it came back to him in a rush: the cramped spaces, the stale air of the suit, the constant sense of danger. He closed his eyes a moment, forcing fear and panic from his mind.

As he was about to duck his head into his helmet, the outer door hissed open and de Vaca entered through the air lock. She looked at Carson.

“You’re not looking particularly chipper,” she said.

Carson shrugged.

“Me neither, I suppose,” she said.

There was an awkward silence. They had not spoken much since Brandon-Smith’s death. Carson suspected that de Vaca, sensing his guilt and frustration, had given him a wide berth.

“At least the guard survived,” said de Vaca.

Carson nodded. The last thing he wanted to do now was discuss the accident. The stainless-steel door with its over­sized biohazard label loomed at the far end of the room. It reminded Carson of what he imagined a gas chamber to look like.

De Vaca began suiting up. Carson hung back, waiting for her, eager to get past the initial ordeal but somehow unable to go through the door.

“I went riding the other day,” he said. “Once you get out of sight of Mount Dragon, it’s actually very nice out there.”

De Vaca nodded. “I’ve always loved the desert,” she said. “People say it’s ugly, but I think it can be the most beautiful place in the world. Which horse did you take?”

“The liver-colored gelding. He turned out to be a pretty good horse. One of my spurs was broken, but it turned out I didn’t even need to use them. Good luck getting a spur rowel fixed around here.”

De Vaca laughed, slinging her hair. “You know that old Russian-guy, Pavel Vladimiro-something? He’s the mechani­cal engineer, runs the sterilizing furnace and laminar-flow sys­tem. He can fix anything. I had a broken CD player that he opened up and fixed, just like that. He claimed he’d never seen one before.”

“Hell,” said Carson, “if he can fix a CD player, he could fix a rowel. Maybe I should go see him.”

“Any idea when that investigator’s going to get around to us?” de Vaca asked.

“Nope,” said Carson. “Probably won’t take him long, con­sidering ...” He stopped. Considering I was instrumental to the cause of death.

“Yamashito, the video technician, said the investigator was planning to spend the day watching security tapes,” she said, twisting into the arms of her suit.

They donned their helmets, checked each other’s suits, and went through the air lock. Inside decontam, Carson took a big swallow of air and fought down the nausea that inevitably rose as the poisonous yellow liquid cascaded down his face­plate.

Carson had hoped the elaborate decontamination proce­dures after the accident would have rearranged the interior spaces of the Fever Tank, made them look somehow differ­ent. But the lab seemed just as Carson had left it the minute Brandon-Smith walked in to announce the chimp’s death. His seat was pulled away from the desk at the same angle, and his PowerBook was still open, plugged into the WAN socket and ready for use. He moved toward it mechanically and logged on to the GeneDyne network. The log-in mes­sages scrolled past; then the word processor came up, display­ing the procedure write-up he’d been finishing. The cursor came into focus at the end of an unfinished line, blinking, waiting with cruel detachment for him to continue. Carson slumped in his chair.

Suddenly, the screen went blank. Carson waited a moment, then hit a few keys. Getting no response, he swore under his breath. Maybe the battery had gone dead. He glanced over to the wall plug and noticed that the laptop was plugged in. Strange.

Something began to materialize on the screen. Must be Scopes, Carson thought. The GeneDyne CEO was known to play with other people’s computers. Probably a prepared pep talk, some way to ease the transition back into the Fever Tank.

A small picture came into focus: the image of a mime, balancing the Earth on his finger. The Earth was slowly re­volving. Mystified, Carson punched the Escape key without success.

The small figure suddenly dissolved into typed words.

Guy Carson?

Here, Carson typed back.

Am I speaking with Guy Carson?

This is Guy Carson, who else?

Well, looky here, Guy! It’s about time you logged in. I’ve been waiting for you, partner. But first, I need you to identify yourself. Please enter your mother’s birthday.

June 2, 1936. Who is this?

Thank you. This is Mime speaking. I have an im­portant message from an old homeboy of yours.

Mime? Is that you, Harper?

No, it is not Harper. I would suggest that you clear your immediate area so that no one inadvertently sees the message I am about to transmit. Let me know when you’re ready.

Carson glanced over at de Vaca, who was busy on the other side of the lab.

Who the hell is this? he typed angrily.

My, my! You had best not dis the Mime, or I might dis you back. And you wouldn’t like that. Not one bit.

Listen, I don’t like—

Do you want the message or not?

No.

I didn’t think so. Before I send it, I want you to know that this is an absolutely secure channel, and that I, Mime, and none other, have hacked into the GeneDyne net. No one at GeneDyne knows about this or could possibly intercept our conversation. I have done this to protect you, cowboy. If anyone should happen by while you are reading the following message, press the command key and a fake screen of genetic code will pop up, hiding the message. Ac­tually, it won’t be genetic code, it will be the lyrics to Professor Longhair’s “Ball the Wall,” but the patterns will be correct. Press the command key again to re­turn to the message. Whoopie-ki-yi-yo, and all that sort of thing. Now sit tight.

Carson again glanced in de Vaca’s direction. Perhaps this was one of Scopes’s jokes. The man had an odd sense of hu­mor. On the other hand, Scopes hadn’t sent a single message to the laptop in Carson’s quarters since the accident. Perhaps Scopes was pissed off at him, and was testing his loyalty with some kind of game. Carson looked uneasily back at the lap­top.

The screen went black for a moment, then a message ap­peared:

Dear Guy,

This is Charles Levine, your old professor. Biochem 162, remember? I’ll get right to the point, because I know you must feel compromised at the moment.

Jesus, thought Carson. Understatement of the year. Dr. Lev­ine, penetrating the GeneDyne network? It didn’t seem pos­sible. But if it was Levine, and if Scopes found out ... Carson’s finger moved quickly to the Escape key again, punching it several times without result.

Guy, I’ve heard rumors from a source in the regulatory agency. Rumors of an accident at Mount Dragon. The lid’s been shut down tight, though, and all I’ve been able to learn is that someone was ac­cidentally infected with a virus. Apparently it’s quite a deadly virus, one that people are scared to death of.

Guy, listen to me. I need your help. I need to know what’s going on out there at Mount Dragon. What is this virus? What are you trying to do with it? Is it really as dangerous as the rumors imply? The people of this country have a right to know. If it’s true—if you really are out in the middle of nowhere, messing with something far more dangerous than an atomic bomb—then none of us are safe.

I remember you well from your days here, Guy. You were a truly independent thinker. A skeptic. You never accepted what I told you as given; you had to prove it for yourself. That is a rare quality, and I pray you haven’t lost it. I would beg you now to turn that natural skepticism on your work at Mount Dragon. Don’t accept everything they tell you. Deep inside, you know that nothing is infallible, that no safety pro­cedure can ensure one hundred percent protection. If the rumors are true, you’ve learned this firsthand. Please ask yourself: Is it worth it?

I will be in contact with you again through Mime, who is an expert in matters of network security. Next time, perhaps we can talk on line: Mime wasn’t willing to risk a live conversation initially.

Think about what I’ve said, Guy. Please.

Best regards,

Charles Levine

The screen went blank. Carson felt his heart pounding as he fumbled with the power switch. He should have turned the thing off immediately. Could it really have been Levine? His instincts told him that it was. The man must be insane to contact him like this, endangering his career. As Carson thought about it, anger began to take the place of shock. How the hell could Levine be so sure the channel was secure?

Carson remembered Levine well: stomping across the lec­tern, speaking impassionedly, suit lapels flapping, chalk screeching on the blackboard. Once he had been so engrossed in writing a long chemical formula that he shuffled off the edge of the lectern and fell to the floor. In many ways, he had been an outstanding professor: iconoclastic, visionary; but, Carson remembered, also excitable, angry, and full of hyper­bole. And this was going too far. The man had obviously become a zealot.

He switched the PowerBook back on and logged in a second time. If he heard from Levine again, he’d tell him exactly what he thought of his methods. Then he’d turn the machine off before Levine had a chance to reply.

He turned back to the screen and his heart stopped.

Brent Scopes is paging.

Press the command key to chat.

Fighting back dread, Carson began typing. Had Scopes picked up the message?

Ciao, Guy.

Hello, Brent.

I just wanted to welcome you back. You know what T.H. Huxley said: ‘The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’ That is what has happened here. It was a beautiful idea, Guy. Too bad it didn’t work out. Now, you’ve got to move on. Every day we go without results costs GeneDyne almost a million dollars. Everyone is wait­ing for the neutralization of the virus. We cannot con­tinue until that step has been accomplished. Everyone’s depending on you.

I know, Carson wrote. I promise I’ll do my best.

That’s a start, Guy. Doing you best is a start. But we need results. We’ve had one failure, but failure is an integral part of silence, and I know you can come through. I’m counting on you to come through. You’ve had almost a week to think about it. I hope you have some new ideas.

We’re going to repeat the test, see if by chance we overlooked something. We’re also going to remap the gene, just in case.

Very well, but do it quickly. I also want you to try something else. You see, we learned something cru­cial from this failure. I’ve got the autopsy results on Brandon-Smith in front of me. Dr. Grady did an excellent job. For some reason the strain you de­signed was even more virulent than the usual X-FLU strain. And more contagious, if our pathology tests are correct. It killed her so fast that antibodies to the virus had only been in her bloodstream a few hours when she died. I want to know why. We had the strain cultured from Brandon-Smith’s brain matter prior to cremation, and I’m having it sent down to you. We’re calling this new strain X-FLU II. I want you to dissect that virus. I want to know how it ticks. In trying to neutralize the virus, you fortuitously stumbled on a way to enhance its deadliness instead.

Fortuitously? I’m not sure I understand—

Jesus Christ, Guy, if you figure out what made it more deadly, maybe you can figure out how to make it LESS deadly. I’m a little surprised you didn’t think of this yourself. Now get to work.

The communications window on the screen winked shut. Carson sat back, exhaling slowly. Clinically, it made sense, but the thought of working with a virus cultured from Bran­don-Smith’s brain chilled his blood.

As if on cue, a lab assistant stepped through the entranceway, carrying a stainless-steel tray loaded with clear plastic bioboxes. Each biobox was marked with a biohazard symbol and a simple label: X-FLU II.

“Present for Guy Carson,” he said with a macabre chuckle.

The late-afternoon sun, streaming in the west-facing win­dows, covered Singer’s office in a mantle of golden light. Nye sat on the sofa, staring silently into the kiva fireplace, while the director stood behind his workstation, back turned, look­ing out at the vast desert.

A slight figure with an oversized briefcase appeared in the doorway and coughed politely.

“Come in,” Singer said. Gilbert Teece stepped forward, nodding to them both. His thinning wheat-colored hair im­perfectly covered a scalp that gleamed a painful red, and his burnt nose was already peeling. He smiled bashfully, as if aware of his own inadequacy to the hostile environment.

“Sit down anywhere.” Singer waved his hand vaguely over the office furniture.

Despite the empty wing chairs, Teece moved immediately toward Nye’s sofa and sat down with a sigh of contentment. The security director stiffened and shifted, moving himself away.

“Shall we get started?” said Singer, sitting down. “I hate to be late for my evening cocktail.” Teece, busy with his brief­case latch, looked up and flashed a quick smile. Then he slipped his hand inside the case and removed a microcassette player, which he laid carefully on the table in front of him.

“I’ll keep this as short as possible,” he said.

At the same time, Nye brandished his own recorder, laying it next to Teece’s.

“Very good,” said Teece. “Always a good idea to get things down on tape, don’t you think, Mr. Nye?”

“Yes,” came the clipped reply.

“Ah!” said Teece, as surprised as if he had not heard Nye speak before. “English?”

Nye slowly turned to look at him. “Originally.”

“Myself as well,” said Teece. “My father was Sir Wilberforce Teece, Baronet, of Teecewood Hall in the Pennines. My older brother got the title and the money and I got a ticket to America. Do you know it? Teecewood Hall, I mean.”

“No,” Nye said.

“Indeed?” Teece arched his eyebrows. “Beautiful part of the country. The Hall’s in Hamsterley Forest, but Cumbria’s so near by, you know. Lovely, especially this time of year. Grasmere, Troutbeck ... Windermere Lake.”

The atmosphere in the office grew suddenly electric. Nye turned toward Teece and focused his eyes on the man’s smiling face. “I suggest, Mr. Teece, that we cut out the civilities and proceed with the interview.”

“But, Mr. Nye,” Teece cried, “the interview has started! As I understand it, you were once chief of safety operations at the Windermere Nuclear Complex. Late seventies, I be­lieve. Then there was that dreadful accident.” He shook his head at the memory. “I keep forgetting whether there were sixteen or sixty casualties. Anyway, before joining GeneDyne UK, you couldn’t find work in your chosen field for nearly ten years. Am I right? Instead, you were employed by an oil company in a remote portion of the Middle East. The details of your job description there are, unfortunately, rather vague.” He scratched the tip of his peeling nose.

“This has nothing whatsoever to do with your assignment,” said Nye slowly.

“But it has a lot to do with the strength of your loyalty to Brent Scopes,” Teece said. “And that loyalty, in turn, may have a bearing on this investigation.”

“This is a farce,” Nye snapped. “I intend to report your conduct to your superiors.”

“What conduct?” Teece said with a faint smile. And then without waiting for an answer, he added, “And what superi­ors?”

Nye leaned toward him and spoke very softly. “Stop playing coy. You know perfectly well what happened at Windermere. You don’t need to ask these questions, and you’ll learn bugger-all from me about it.”

“Now, wait a moment,” Singer said with false heartiness. “Mr. Nye, we shouldn’t—”

Teece held up his hand. “I’m sorry. Mr. Nye is right. I do know everything about Windermere. I just like to verify my facts. These reports”—he patted his massive briefcase—“are so often inaccurate. Government workers write them, and you never know what some witless bureaucrat might say about you, now do you, Mr. Nye? I thought you might appreciate the chance to set the record straight, erase any existing cal­umnies, that kind of thing.”

Nye sat in rigid silence.

Teece shrugged, pulled a manila envelope out of his brief­case. “Very well, Mr. Nye. Let’s proceed. Could you tell me, in your words, what happened on the morning of the acci­dent?”

Nye cleared his throat. “At nine-fifty, I received word of a stage-two alert from the Level-5 facility.”

“Lots of numbers. What do they all mean?”

“That an integrity breach had occurred. Someone’s bio-hazard suit had been compromised.”

“And who made this report?”

“Carson. Dr. Guy Carson. He reported it over the global emergency channel.”

“I see,” Teece nodded. “Proceed.”

“I went immediately to the security station, assessed the situation, then assumed command of the facility for the du­ration of the stage-two alert.”

“Did you, now? Before informing Dr. Singer?” Teece looked toward the director.

“That is the protocol,” said Nye flatly.

“And Dr. Singer, when you heard that Mr. Nye had put himself in charge you cheerfully agreed, naturally?”

“Naturally.”

“Dr. Singer,” said Teece a little more sharply. “I spent this afternoon reviewing videotapes of the accident. I’ve listened to most of the communications that took place. Now, would you care to answer the question again?”

There was a silence. “Well,” Singer said at last, “the truth is, I wasn’t too happy about it, no. But I went along.”

“And Mr. Nye,” Teece continued, “you say that assuming temporary command was company protocol. But according to my information, you’re only supposed to do so if, in your judgment, the director is unable to appropriately discharge his duties.”

“That is correct,” said Nye.

“Therefore, I can only conclude that you had prior reason to think the director was not discharging his duties properly.”

There was another long pause. “That is correct,” Nye re­peated.

“That’s absurd!” Singer cried out. “There was no need for it. I had complete control of the situation.”

Nye sat rigidly, his face a stone mask.

“So what was it,” Teece continued placidly, “that led you to think Dr. Singer here wouldn’t have been able to handle the emergency?”

This time, Nye didn’t hesitate. “I felt Dr. Singer had al­lowed himself to become too close to the people he was sup­posed to be supervising. He is a scientist, but he is overly emotional and poor at handling stress. If the emergency had been left in his hands, the outcome might have been quite different.”

Singer jumped to his feet. “What’s wrong with being a little friendly?” he snapped. “Mr. Teece, it should be obvious even on such short acquaintance what kind of man you’re talking to here. He’s a megalomaniac. Nobody likes him. He disappears into the desert practically every weekend. Why Scopes keeps him on is a mystery to everyone.”

“Ah! I see.” Teece cheerfully consulted his folder, letting the uncomfortable silence lengthen. Singer returned to his original position at the window, his back to Nye. Teece took a pen from his pocket and made a few notations. Then he waggled it in front of Nye. “I understand these things are streng verboten around here. Good thing I’m exempt. I hate computers.” He replaced the pen carefully.

“Now, Dr. Singer,” he continued, “let’s proceed to this virus you’re working on, X-FLU. The documents I’ve been given are rather uninformative. What, exactly, makes it so deadly?”

“Once we’re learned that,” Singer said, “we’ll be able to do something about it.”

“Do something about it?”

“Make it safe, of course.”

“Why are you working with such a terrifying pathogen to begin with?”

Singer turned to face him. “It wasn’t our intention, believe me. The virulence of X-FLU is an unexpected side effect of our gene-therapy technique. The virus is in transition. Once the product is stabilized, this will no longer be a concern.” He paused. “The tragedy is that Rosalind was exposed to the virus at this early stage.”

“Rosalind Brandon-Smith.” Teece repeated the name slowly. “We’re not entirely happy with the way her autopsy was conducted, as you know.”

“We followed all the standard guidelines,” Nye interjected. “The autopsy was conducted within the Level-5 facility, in security suits, and was followed by incineration of the corpse and decontamination of all laboratories within the secure pe­rimeter.”

“It’s the brevity of the pathologist’s report that concerns me, Mr. Nye,” Teece said. “And brief as it is, there are several things that puzzle me. For example, as best as I can fathom, Brandon-Smith’s brain essentially exploded. And yet at the time of death she was locked in the quarantine chamber, far from any medical help.”

“We didn’t know that she had contracted the disease,” said Singer.

“How can that be? She was scratched by an infected chim­panzee. Surely she would have shown antibodies in her blood­stream.”

“No. From the time the antibodies appear until time of death—well, it can obviously be very short.”

Teece frowned. “Disturbingly short, it appears.”

“You’ve got to remember, this is the first time a human being has been exposed to the X-FLU virus. And hopefully the last. We didn’t know what to expect. And the X-FLU strain was particularly virulent. By the time the blood tests came back positive, she was dead.”

“The blood. That’s another strange thing in this report. Apparently, there was significant internal bleeding before death.” Teece looked in his folder, and caressed the paragraph with his finger. “Look here. Her organs were practically awash in blood. Leakage from the blood vessels, it says.”

“No doubt a symptom of the X-FLU infection,” said Singer. “Not unheard of. The Ebola virus does the same thing.”

“But the pathology reports I have on the X-FLU chimpan­zees don’t show any such symptom.”

“Obviously the disease affects humans differently from chimps. Nothing remarkable about that.”

“Perhaps not.” Teece flipped pages. “But there are other curious things about this report. For example, her brain shows high levels of certain neurotransmitters. Dopamine and se­rotonin, to be exact.”

Singer spread his hands. “Another symptom of X-FLU, I’d expect.”

Teece closed the folder. “Again, the infected chimps show no such elevated levels.”

Singer sighed. “Mr. Teece, what’s your point? We’ve all too aware of the dangerousness of this virus. Our efforts have been directed toward neutralizing it. We have a scientist, Guy Carson, devoted to nothing else.”

“Carson. Yes. The one who replaced Franklin Burt. Poor Dr. Burt, currently residing in Featherwood Park sanatorium.” Teece leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Now, that’s another really odd thing, Doctor. I talked to a David Fossey, Franklin Burt’s attending physician. Burt also has leaky blood vessels. And his levels of dopamine and serotonin are wildly elevated.”

There was a shocked silence in the room.

“Jesus,” said Singer. His eyes had taken on a faraway look, as if he was calculating something.

Teece held up a finger. “But! Burt exhibits no X-FLU an­tibodies, and it’s been weeks since he was at Mount Dragon. So he can’t have the disease.”

There was a noticeable decrease of tension. “A coinci­dence, then,” Nye said, sitting back in the sofa.

“Unlikely. Are you working on any other deadly pathogens here?”

Singer shook his head. “We have the usual stuff on ice—Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Lassa—but none of those would cause insanity.”

“Quite right,” said Teece. “Nothing else?”

“Absolutely not.”

Teece turned toward the security director. “What exactly did happen to Dr. Burt?”

“Dr. Singer recommended his removal,” Nye said simply.

“Dr. Singer?” Teece prompted.

“He was becoming confused, agitated.” Singer hesitated. “We were friends. He was an unusually sensitive person, very kind and concerned. Though he didn’t talk about it much, I think he missed his wife a great deal. The stress here is re­markable. ... You need a certain kind of toughness, which he didn’t have. It did him in. When I began to notice signs of incipient paranoia, I recommended he be taken to Albu­querque General for observation.”

“The stress did him in,” Teece murmured. “Forgive my saying so, Doctor, but what you describe doesn’t sound like a garden-variety nervous breakdown to me.” He glanced down at his open briefcase. “I believe Dr. Burt got his M.D./Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins in five years—half the time it normally takes.”

“Yes,” said Singer. “He was ... is ... a brilliant man.”

“Then, according to the background sheet I was given, Dr. Burt did one of his medical rotations in the emergency room at the Harlem Meer Hospital, 944 East 155th Street. Ever seen that neighborhood?”

“No,” said Singer.

“The police call people who live around there Dixie Cups. A macabre reference to the disposability of life in that neck of the woods. Dr. Burt’s rotation was what interns call a thirty-six special. He was on call in the emergency room thirty-six hours straight, off for twelve, then back on for another thirty-six. Day after day, for three months.”

“I didn’t know that,” Singer said. “He never talked much about his past.”

“Then, during his first two years of residency, Dr. Burt man­aged to write a four-hundred-page monograph, Metastization. A superb piece of work. At the time he was also involved in a bitter divorce with his first wife.”

Teece paused again, then spoke loudly. “And you’re telling me this man couldn’t handle stress?” He barked a laugh, but his face had lost its expression of mirth even before the sound of his laughter died.

Nobody spoke. After a moment, the inspector stood. “Well, gentlemen, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time for the present.” He stuffed the cassette recorder and folder into his briefcase. “No doubt we’ll have more to talk about once I’ve met with your staff.” He scratched his peeling nose and grinned sheepishly.

“Some people tan, some burn,” he said. “I guess I’m a burner myself.”

Night had fallen on the white clapboard house that stood at the corner of Church Street and Sycamore Terrace in the Cleveland suburb of River Pointe. A soft May breeze rustled the leaves, and the distant barking of a dog and a lonely train whistle added a sense of mystery to the quiet neighborhood.

The light emanating from the gabled second-story window was not the warm yellow light found in the windows of other houses along the street. It was a subdued blue, similar to the glow of a television but unwavering in color or intensity. A passerby, stopping beneath the open window, could have heard a soft beeping sound, along with the faint slow clicking of computer keys. But no pedestrians were strolling along the quiet lane.

Inside the room sat a small figure. Behind the figure was a bare wall, into which a plain wooden door was set; the other walls were crowded with metal racks. Within the racks, rows of electronic circuit boards rose toward the ceiling with ach­ing regularity. Among the circuit boards could be seen mon­itors, RAID fixed-disk systems, and equipment that numerous small governments would have liked to acquire: network sniffers, fax interception devices, units for the remote seizure of computer screen images, dedicated password breakers, cel­lular telephone scanner-interceptors. The room smelled faintly of hot metal and ozone. Thick bundles of cables hung drooping between the racks like jungle snakes.

The figure shifted, causing the wheelchair in which it sat to creak in protest. A withered limb rose toward the custom-made keyboard set along one arm of the wheelchair. A single crooked finger flexed itself in the blue light, then began press­ing the soft-touch pads of the keyboard. There was the faint rapid tone of high-speed dialing. In one of the metal racks, a CRT sprang to life. A burst of computer code scrolled across the screen, followed by a small corporate logo.

The finger moved up to a row of oversized, color-coded keys and selected one.

Silent seconds stretched into minutes. The figure in the wheelchair did not believe in breaking into computer sys­tems by methods as crude as brute-force attacks or algo­rithm reversals. Instead, his program inserted itself at the point where the external Internet traffic entered the cor­poration’s private network, piggybacking onto the header packets entering at the gate machine and circumventing the password routines completely. Suddenly the screen flashed and a torrent of code began scrolling by. The with­ered arm raised itself again and began typing first slowly, and then somewhat more rapidly, tapping out chunks of hexadecimal computer code, pausing every so often to wait for a response. The screen turned red, and the words “GeneDyne Online Systems—Maintenance Subsection” appeared, followed by a short list of options.

Once again, he had penetrated the GeneDyne firewall.

The undeveloped arm raised a third time, initiating two programs that would work symbiotically. The first would place a temporary patch on one of the operating system files, mask­ing the movements of the second by making it look like a harmless network maintenance agent. The second, mean­while, would create a secure channel through the network backbone to the Mount Dragon facility.

The figure in the wheelchair waited patiently as the pro­grams bypassed the network bridges and pipelines. At last came a low beep, then a series of routing messages scrolled across the screen.

The arm reached out to the keyboard again, and the hissing shriek of a modem filled the room. A second screen popped to life and a sentence, rapidly typed by an unseen hand, ap­peared on it.

You said you’d call an hour ago! It’s not easy, keeping my schedule clear while I wait to hear from you.

The shriveled finger pressed out a response on the padded keyboard: I love it when you get all righteous on me, professor-man. Testify! Write that funky for­mula for me one time!

It’s too late, he must have left the lab by now.

The finger tapped another message.

O ye of little faith! No doubt Dr. Carson has another computer in his room. We should be able to gain his undivided attention there. Now remember the ground rules.

Right. Let’s go.

The finger pressed a button, and another waiting subrou­tine began executing, sending an anonymous page across the Mount Dragon WAN to Guy Carson. Based on the previous encounter, Mime decided-to dispense with his standard greet­ing card; Carson might turn off his-computer if he saw Mime’s introductory logo again. A moment passed; then a response appeared, out of the New Mexico desert:

Guy here. Who’s this?

The finger pressed a single color-coded key, sending a pre-typed message across the network.

What it is! Let me introduce myself again: I am Mime, bearer of tidings. I give you Professor Levine. With the push of another key, the finger patched Lev­ine into the secure channel.

Forget it, came Carson’s response. Get off the sys­tem now.

Guy, please, this is Charles Levine. Wait a minute. Let me talk.

No way. I’m rebooting.

Mime pressed another button, and another message flashed on the screen.

Just a dern minute, pardner! This is Mime you’re dealing with. We control the vertical, we control the horizontal. I’ve put a little snare on your network node, and if you cut our connection now you’ll trigger the internal alarms. Then you’d have some fast talk­ing to do to your dear Mr. Scopes. I’m afraid the only way to get rid of the Mime is to hear the good pro­fessor out. Now listen, cowboy. At the professor-man’s request, I have set up a means by which you can call him. Should you ever wish to reach him, sim­ply send a chat request to yourself. That’s correct: to yourself. This will initiate a communications daemon I’ve hidden inside the net. The daemon will dial out and connect you with the good professor, as long as his trusty laptop is on-line. I now yield the floor to Professor Levine.

If you think this is the way to persuade me, Levine, you’re mistaken. You’re jeopardizing my whole ca­reer. I don’t want anything to do with you and your crusade, whatever it is.

I have no choice, Guy. The virus is a killer.

We have the best safety precautions of any lab in the world—

Apparently not good enough,

That was a freak accident.

Most accidents are.

We’re working on a medical product that will produce incalculable good, that will save millions of lives every year. Don’t tell me what we’re doing is wrong.

Guy, I believe you. Then why mess around with a deadly virus like this?

Look, that’s the whole problem, we’re trying to neu­tralize the virus, make it harmless. Now get off the net.

Not yet. What’s this medical miracle you men­tioned?

I can’t talk about it.

Answer this: does this virus alter the DNA in hu­man germ cells, or just in somatic cells?

Germ cells.

I knew it. Guy, do you really think you have the moral right to alter the human genome?

For a beneficial alteration, why not? If we can rid the human race of a terrible disease forever, Where’s the immorality?

What disease?

None of your business.

I get it. You’re using the virus to make the genetic alteration. This virus, is it a doomsday virus? Could it destroy the human race? Answer that question and I’ll get off.

I don’t know. Its epidemiology in humans is mostly unknown, but it’s been 100% lethal in chimpanzees. We’re taking all precautions. Especially now.

Is it an airborne contagion?

Yes.

Incubation period?

One day to two weeks, depending on the strain.

Time between first symptoms and mortality?

Impossible to predict with any certainty. Several minutes to several hours.

Several minutes? Dear God. Mode of lethality?

I’ve answered enough questions. Get off. Mode of lethality?

Massive increase in CSF, causing edema and hemorrhaging of the brain tissue.

That sure sounds like a doomsday virus to me. What’s its name?

That’s it, Levine. No more questions. Get the hell off the system and don’t call again.

Back at the little house on the corner of Church and Syc­amore, the arm gently pressed a few keys. One CRT screen showed the daemon program cutting communications and sneaking back out of the GeneDyne net. The other screen showed Levine’s frantic message:

Damn! We were cut off. Mime, I need more time!

The finger pressed out a response:

Chill, professor. Your zeal will do you in. Now, on to other business. Ready your computer, I’m going to be sending you an interesting little file. As you’ll see, I was able to obtain the information you requested. Naturally. It posed a rather unique challenge, and you’d be astonished at the phone charges I rang up in the process. A certain Mrs. Harriet Smythe of Northfield, Minnesota, is going to be rather upset when she gets her long-distance bill next month, I’m afraid.

The finger pressed a few more keys and waited while the file was downloaded. Then both screens zapped to black. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft whine of the CPU fans, and, through the open window, a single cricket chirruping in the warm night. And then there came a low laugh, a rising wheeze of mirth that racked and rattled the wasted, shrunken body in the wheelchair.

The chef at Mount Dragon—an Italian named Ricciolini— always served the main course himself, in order to bask in the expected compliments, and as a result dinner service was ex­ecrably slow. Carson sat at a center table with Harper and Vanderwagon, battling a stubborn headache without success. Despite the pressure from Scopes, he’d been able to accom­plish almost nothing that day, his mind full of Levine’s mes­sage. He wondered how in hell Levine was able to get inside the GeneDyne net, and why Levine had picked him to contact. At least, he thought, nobody noticed. As far as he could tell.

The little chef laid the plates with a flourish at Carson’s table and stepped back expectantly. Carson looked suspi­ciously at his serving. The menu called them sweetbreads but what arrived did not look like bread at all, but the mysterious inner part of some animal.

“Wonderful!” cried Harper, taking the cue. “A master­piece!”

The Italian gave a quick half bow, his face a mask of delight.

Vanderwagon sat silently, polishing his silverware with a napkin.

“What is it, exactly?” inquired Carson.

“Animella con marsala e funghi!” the chef cried. “Sweetbreads with wine and mushrooms.”

“Sweet bread?” Carson asked.

A puzzled expression came over the man’s face. “Is not English? Sweetbreads?”

“What I mean is, exactly what part of the cow—?”

Harper clapped him on the back. “ ’Tis better not to in­quire too closely into some things, my friend.”

The Italian gave a puzzled smile and returned to the kitchen.

“They should clean these dishes better,” Vanderwagon muttered, wiping his wineglass, holding it up to the light, and wiping again.

Harper shot a look across the room, where Teece was eating at a table by himself. His fastidious manners were almost a caricature of perfection.

“Has he talked to you yet?” Harper whispered to Carson.

“No. You?”

“He buttonholed me this morning.”

Vanderwagon turned. “What did he ask?”

“Just a lot of sly questions about the accident. Don’t be deceived by his looks. That guy is no fool.”

“Sly questions,” Vanderwagon repeated, picking up his knife a second time and wiping it carefully. Then he laid it down and carefully squared it with his fork.

“Why the hell can’t we have a nice steak once in a while?” Carson complained. “I never know what I’m eating.”

“Think of it as experiencing international cuisine,” said Harper, slicing open the sweetbreads and stuffing a jiggling piece into his mouth. “Excellent,” he said, his mouth full.

Carson took a tentative bite. “Hey, these aren’t bad,” he said. “Not very sweet, though. So much for truth in advertising.”

“Pancreas,” said Harper.

Carson laid down his fork with a clatter. “Thanks a lot.”

“What kind of sly questions?” Vanderwagon asked.

“I’m not supposed to say.” Harper winked at Carson.

Vanderwagon turned sideways and gave Harper a pene­trating stare. “About me.”

“No, not about you, Andrew. Well, maybe a few, you know. You were, shall we say, in the thick of things.”

Vanderwagon slid his uneaten plate away and said nothing.

Carson leaned over. “This is from the pancreas of a cow?”

Harper shoveled another mouthful in. “Who cares? That Ricciolini can cook anything. Anyway, Guy, you grew up eating Rocky Mountain oysters, right?”

“Never touched ’em,” Carson said. “That was just something we served to the dudes as a joke.”

“If thy right eye offends thee,” Vanderwagon said.

The others turned to look at him.

“Getting religion?” Harper asked.

“Yes. Pluck it out,” Vanderwagon said.

There was an uneasy silence.

“You all right, Andrew?” Carson asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Vanderwagon.

“Remember Biology 101?” Harper asked. “The Islets of Langerhans?“

“Shut up,” Carson warned.

“Islets of Langerhans,“ Harper continued. “Those clusters of cells in the pancreas that secrete hormones. I wonder if you can see them with the naked eye?”

Vanderwagon stared at his plate, then slowly brought his knife up and sliced neatly through the sweetbreads. He picked up the piece of organ with his fingers, looked carefully at the incision he’d made, then dropped the morsel again, sending sauce and pieces of mushroom flying onto the white table­cloth. He poured some water into his napkin, folded it, and carefully wiped his hands. “No,” he said.

“No what?”

“They’re not visible.”

Harper snickered. “If Ricciolini saw us playing with our food like this, he’d poison us.”

“What?” Vanderwagon said loudly.

“I was just kidding. Calm down.”

“Not you,” Vanderwagon said. “I was talking to him.”

There was another silence.

“Yes sir, I will!” Vanderwagon shouted. He came to atten­tion suddenly, knocking his chair over as he stood up. His hands were straight at his sides, fork in one and knife in the other. Slowly, he raised the fork, then swiveled it toward his face. Each movement was calculated, almost reverent. He looked as if he was about to take a bite from the empty fork.

“Andrew, what are you up to now?” Harper said, chuckling nervously. “Look at this guy, will you?”

Vanderwagon raised the fork several inches.

“For Chrissakes, sit down,” Harper said.

The fork inched closer, the tines trembling slightly in Vanderwagon’s hand.

Carson realized what the scientist was about to do the instant before it happened. Vanderwagon never blinked as he placed the tines of the fork against the cornea of one eye. Then he pressed his fist forward with slow, deliberate pressure. For a second, Carson could see, with horrifying clarity, the ocular membrane yielding under the tines of the fork; then there was the sound of a grape being stepped on and clear liquid sprayed across the table in a viscous jet. Carson lunged for the arm, jerking it back. The fork came out of the eye and clattered to the floor as Vanderwagon began to make a high, keening noise.

Harper leaped forward to help but Vanderwagon slashed with his knife and the scientist fell backward into his chair. Harper looked down in disbelief at the red stripe spreading across his chest. Vanderwagon lunged again and Carson moved in, bringing a fist up toward his gut. Vanderwagon anticipated the blow, jerked sideways, and Carson’s hand glanced harmlessly off Vanderwagon’s hipbone. A moment later, Carson felt a stunning blow to the side of his skull. He stumbled backward, shaking his head, cursing himself for un­derestimating the man. As his vision cleared he saw Vander­wagon bearing down on him and he swung with his right, connecting with the scientist’s temple. Vanderwagon’s head snapped sideways and he crashed to the floor. Grabbing the wrist that held the knife, Carson slammed it to the floor until the knife came free. Vanderwagon arched forward, screaming incoherently, fluid streaming from his ruined eye. Carson gave him a short, measured blow to the chin and he rolled sideways and lay still, his flanks heaving.

Carson eased back carefully, hearing for the first time the tremendous hubbub of voices around him. His hand began to throb in time with the beat of his heart. The rest of the diners had come forward, forming a circle around the table. “Med­ical’s on the way,” a voice said. Carson looked up at Harper, who nodded back. “I’m okay,” he gasped, pressing a bloodied napkin against his chest.

Then there was a hand on Carson’s shoulder and Teece’s thin, peeling face passed his field of vision. The inspector knelt beside Vanderwagon.

“Andrew?”

Vanderwagon’s good eye slid around and located Teece.

“Why did you do that?” Teece asked sympathetically.

“Do what?”

Teece pursed his lips. “Never mind,” he said quietly.

“Always talking ...”

“I understand,” Teece said.

“Pluck out ...”

“Who told you to pluck it out?”

“Get me out of here!” Vanderwagon suddenly screamed.

“We’re going to do just that,” said Mike Marr as he made his way through the circle of diners, pushing Teece aside. Two medical workers lifted Vanderwagon onto a stretcher. The investigator followed the group toward the door, leaning over the stretcher, crooning: “Who? Tell me who?”

But the medic had already sunk a needle in Vanderwagon’s arm and the scientist’s one good eye rolled up into his head as the powerful narcotic took effect.

The studio’s Green Room wasn’t green at all, but a pale yel­low. A sofa and several overstuffed chairs were lined up against the walls, and in the center a scratched Bauhaus coffee table was piled high with copies of People, Newsweek, and The Economist. On a table in the far corner sat a pot of well-cooked coffee, a pile of Styrofoam cups, some elderly looking cream, and an untidy heap of sweetener packages.

Levine decided not to chance the coffee. He shifted on the sofa, glancing around again. Besides himself and Toni Wheeler, the foundation’s media consultant, there was only one other person in the room, a sallow-faced man in a glen plaid suit. Feeling Levine’s eyes on him, the man glanced up, then looked away, dabbing his sweaty forehead with a silk handkerchief. He was clutching a book: The Courage to Be Different, by Barrold Leighton.

Toni Wheeler was whispering into his ear, and Levine made an effort to listen.

“—a mistake,” she was saying. “We shouldn’t be here, and you know it. This isn’t the kind of forum you should be seen in.”

Levine sighed. “We’ve already been through this,” he whis­pered back. “Mr. Sanchez is interested in our cause.”

“Sanchez is only interested in one thing: controversy. Look, what’s the point of paying me if you never take my advice? We need to be shoring up your image, making you look dignified, patrician. A statesman in the crusade against dangerous science. This show is exactly what you don’t need.”

“What I need is more exposure,” Levine replied. “People know I speak the truth. And I’ve been making real progress in recent weeks. When they hear about this”—he patted his breast pocket—“they’ll learn what ‘dangerous science’ really is.”

Ms. Wheeler shook her head. “Our focus group research shows you’re beginning to be perceived as eccentric. The re­cent lawsuits, and especially this thing with GeneDyne, are throwing your credibility into question.”

“My credibility? Impossible.” The perspiring man caught his eye again. “I’ll bet that’s Barrold Leighton himself,” Lev­ine whispered. “Here to promote his book, no doubt. Must be his first time on television. The Courage to Be Different, indeed. He’s a poor choice to be hawking courage to the world.”

“Don’t change the subject. Your credibility is compro­mised. The Harvard chair, your work with the Holocaust Fund, just isn’t enough anymore. We need to regroup, do damage control, alter your public perception. Charles, I’m asking you again. Don’t do this.”

A woman poked her head in the door. “Levine, please,” she said in a flat voice.

Levine stood up, smiled and waved at his publicist, then followed the woman through the door and into Makeup. Damage control, indeed, Levine thought as a cosmetician placed him in a barber chair and began working his jawline with a crayon. Toni Wheeler sounded more like a submarine captain than a media consultant. She was clever and savvy, but she was a spin doctor at heart. She still didn’t understand that it wasn’t his nature to back down in the face of a struggle. Besides, he’d decided he needed a vehicle like this. The press had barely touched his account of the Novo-Druzhina acci­dent. They thought it was too long ago and far away. “Sammy Sanchez at Seven” was based in Boston, but its broadcast feed was picked up by a string of independent stations across the country. Not “Geraldo,”perhaps, but good enough. He felt inside his suit jacket for the two envelopes. He was confident, even buoyant. This was going to be very, very good.

Studio C was typical: a faux Victorian oasis of dark wallpaper and mahogany chairs surrounded by dangling lights, televi­sion cameras, and a hundred snaking cables. Levine knew the other two panelists well: Finley Squires, the pit-bull-in-a-suit of the pharmaceutical industry, and consumer activist Theresa Court. They’d already had the first segment of the show to themselves, but Levine relished the disadvantage. He stepped across the concrete floor, picking his way carefully over the cables. Sammy Sanchez himself sat in a swivel chair at the far side of the round table, his lean predatory face gazing at Levine. He motioned him to a seat as the countdown to the second segment began.

As the live feed started, Sanchez briefly introduced Levine to the other panelists and the estimated two million viewers, then turned the discussion over to Squires. From the monitor in the makeup room, Levine had seen Squires holding forth on the benefits of genetic engineering. Levine couldn’t wait: he felt like a boxer in top shape, advancing into the ring.

“Do you have a baby with Tay-Sachs disease?” Squires was saying, “Or sickle-cell anemia? Or hemophilia?”

He gazed into the camera, his face full of concern. Then he gestured at Levine without looking at him. “Dr. Levine here would deny you the legal right to cure your child. If he has his way, millions of sick people, who could be cured of these genetic diseases, will be forced to suffer.”

He paused, voice dropping.

“Dr. Levine calls his organization the Foundation for Ge­netic Policy. Don’t be fooled. This is no foundation. This is a lobbying organization, which is trying to keep the miraculous cures offered by genetic engineering from you. Denying your right to choose. Making your children suffer.”

Sammy Sanchez swiveled in his chair, raising one eyebrow in Levine’s direction. “Dr. Levine? Is it true? Would you deny my child the right to such a cure?”

“Absolutely not,” Levine said, smiling calmly. “I’m a ge­neticist by training. After all, as I recently made public, I was one of the developers of the X-RUST variety of corn, though I have refrained from profiting by it. Dr. Squires is grossly distorting my position.”

“A geneticist by training, perhaps, but not by practice,” Squires continued. “Genetic engineering offers hope. Dr. Levine offers despair. What he terms a ‘cautious, conservative approach’ is really nothing more than a suspicion of modern science so deep it’s practically medieval.”

Theresa Court began to say something, then stopped. Levine glanced at her without concern; he knew she’d side with the winner whichever way things shook out.

“I think that what Dr. Levine is advocating is greater re­sponsibility on the part of the companies engaged in genetic research,” Sanchez said. “Am I right, Doctor?”

“That’s part of the solution,” Levine replied, content for the time being to press his usual message home. “But we also need greater governmental oversight. Currently, corporations are seemingly free to tinker with human genes, animal and plant genes, viral genes, with little or no supervision. Path­ogens of unimaginable virulence are being created in labs to­day. All it takes is one accident to cause a catastrophe with potentially worldwide implications.”

At last, Squires turned his scornful gaze toward Levine. “More government oversight. More regulation. More bu­reaucracy. More stifling of free enterprise. That is precisely what this country does not need. Dr. Levine is a scientist. He should know better. Yet he persists in fostering these un­truths, frightening people with lies about genetic engineer­ing.”

It was time. “Dr. Squires is attempting to portray me as deceitful,” Levine said. He reached a hand inside his jacket, feeling for the inner pocket. “Let me show you something.”

He slipped out a bright red envelope, holding it up to the cameras. “As a professor of microbiology, Dr. Squires is be­holden to no one. He’s only interested in the truth.”

Levine shook the sealed envelope slightly, hoping that Toni Wheeler was watching from the Green Room. The red color had been a stroke of genius. He knew the cameras had focused on the envelope, and that countless viewers were now waiting for it to be opened.

“And yet, what if I told you that, in this envelope, I have proof that Dr. Squires has been paid a quarter of a million dollars by the GeneDyne Corporation? One of the world’s leading genetic engineering firms? And that he has kept this employment secret, even from his own university? Would that, perhaps, call his motives into question?”

He laid the envelope in front of Squires.

“Open it, please,” he said, “and show the contents to the camera.”

Squires looked at the envelope, not quite comprehending the trap that was being set. “This is preposterous,” he said at last, brushing the envelope to the floor.

Levine could hardly believe his luck. He turned to the cam­era with a triumphant smile. “You see? He knows exactly what’s inside.”

“This is grossly unprofessional,” snapped Squires.

“Go ahead,” Levine goaded. “Open it.”

The envelope was now on the floor, and Squires would have to stoop to pick it up. In any case, Levine thought, it was too late for Finley Squires. If he had opened it immedi­ately he might have maintained his credibility.

Sanchez was looking from one scientist to the other. It began to dawn on Squires what was happening. “This is the lowest form of attack I have ever witnessed,” he said. “Dr. Levine, you ought to be ashamed, of yourself.”

Squires was on the ropes but still combative. Levine re­moved the second envelope from his pocket.

“And in this envelope, Dr. Squires, I have some infor­mation about recent developments at GeneDyne’s secret genetic-engineering lab, the one known as Mount Dragon. These developments are extremely disturbing, and of interest to any scientist who has the greater interests of humanity at heart.”

He laid the second envelope in front of Squires. “If you won’t open the other, at least open this. Be the one to expose GeneDyne’s dangerous activities. Prove that you have no in­terest in the company.”

Squires sat very stiffly. “I will not be intimidated by intel­lectual terrorism.”

Levine felt his heart racing. It was almost too good to be true: the man was still putting his foot into every trap.

“I can’t open it myself,” Levine said. “GeneDyne has sued my foundation for two hundred million dollars in an effort to silence me. Someone else must do it.”

The envelope sat on the table, cameras focused upon it. Sanchez swiveled in his chair, gazing back and forth between the panelists.

Court reached over and snatched it up. “If no one else has the courage to open it, I will.”

Good old Theresa, thought Levine; he knew she could not resist the opportunity to play a role in the drama.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet of white paper, containing a message in a simple, sober-looking typeface.

Court read the document aloud, stopping several times to look incredulously at Levine. As she finished, Sanchez swiveled his chair toward Finley Squires.

“Any comment?” he asked.

“Why would I comment?” Squires said irritably. “I have nothing whatsoever to do with GeneDyne.”

“Shall we open the first envelope?” Sanchez said, a faint but wicked smile appearing on his cadaverous face.

“Be my guest,” said Squires. “Whatever’s inside will undoubtedly be a forgery.”

Sanchez picked up the envelope. “Theresa, you seem to be the one with the guts around here,” he said, handing it to her.

She ripped it open. Inside was a computer printout indi­cating that the sum of $265,000 had been wired from GeneDyne Hong Kong to a numbered account at the Rigel Bancorp, Netherlands Antilles.

“There’s no name on this account,” said Sanchez, looking closer.

“Hold the second page up to the cameras,” said Levine.

The second page was fuzzy but readable. It was a screen print, covertly seized from a live image on a computer ter­minal by an expensive and prohibited device. The screen contained wiring instructions from Finley Squires regarding an account at the Rigel Bancorp, Netherland Antilles. The account had the same number.

There was a chill silence, and Sanchez wrapped the seg­ment, thanking the participants and asking the audience at home to stay tuned for Barrold Leighton.

The moment the cameras shut off, Squires stood up. “This charade will be met with massive legal reply,” he said tersely, and strode off the set.

Sanchez swiveled toward Levine, his lips pursed appraisingly. “Cute act,” he said. “I hope for your sake you can back it up.”

Levine merely smiled.

Returning to his lab after retrieving some test results from Pathology, Carson moved awkwardly through the narrow crawl spaces of the Fever Tank. It was after six, and the facility was almost empty. De Vaca had left hours earlier to run some enzyme tests in the computer lab; it was time to close up shop and make the long slow trek toward the surface. But much as he hated the tight spaces of the Fever Tank, Carson found himself in no hurry to leave. He’d lost his dinner partners: Vanderwagon was gone, of course, and Harper would be in the infirmary for another day.

At the lab hatchway, he stopped short. A strange blue-suit was in his lab, poking around his worktable, turning over objects. Carson punched the intercom button on the sleeve of his suit. “Looking for something?” he asked.

The suit straightened up and swiveled toward him, and the painfully sunburnt face of Gilbert Teece came into view through the faceplate.

“Dr. Carson! How nice to make your acquaintance. I wonder if I could have a few words with you.” The figure extended its hand.

“Why not,” Carson said, feeling foolish as he shook the inspector’s hand through several layers of rubber. “Have a seat.”

The figure looked around. “I still haven’t figured out how to do that while wearing this bloody suit.”

“I guess you’ll have to stand, then,” said Carson, moving forward and taking a seat at the worktable.

“Just so,” said Teece. “It’s quite an honor, you know, speak­ing to the descendant of Kit Carson.”

“Nobody else seems to think so,” Carson said.

“You have your own modesty to thank for that,” Teece said. “I don’t think many people around here know. It’s in your personnel file, of course. Mr. Scopes seemed very taken with the historical irony of it.” Teece paused. “Quite a fas­cinating character, your Mr. Scopes.”

“He’s brilliant.” Carson looked appraisingly at the inves­tigator. “Why did you ask that question about Brandon-Smith’s autopsy back in the conference room?”

There was a brief silence. Then Carson heard Teece’s laughter crackling over the speaker in his headset. “You prac­tically grew up among the Apache Indians, right? Then you may know one of their ancient sayings: ‘Some questions are longer than others.’ That question I asked in the conference room was very long.” He smiled. “But you’re a relatively re­cent arrival, and it was not aimed at you. I’d rather we talked about Mr. Vanderwagon for a moment.” He caught Carson’s grimace. “Yes, I know. Terrible doings. Did you know him well?”

“After I arrived here, we became fairly good friends.”

“What was he like?”

“He was from Connecticut. Very preppie, but I liked him. Underneath that serious exterior he had a wicked sense of humor.”

“Did you notice anything unusual prior to the incident in the dining room? Any strange behavior? Personality changes?”

Carson shrugged. “This last week, he seemed preoccupied, withdrawn. You’d speak to him and he wouldn’t answer. I didn’t think much about it, really, because we were all in shock after what happened. Besides, people often act a little strange around this place. The level of tension is unbeliev­able. Everyone calls it Mount Dragon fever. Like cabin fever, only worse.”

Teece chuckled. “I’m feeling a bit of that myself.”

“After what happened, Andrew was publicly reprimanded by Brent. I think he took it pretty hard.”

Teece nodded. “If thy right eye offends thee,” he mur­mured. “According to the tapes I watched, Scopes quoted that to Vanderwagon during his dressing-down in the con­ference room. Still, poking one’s eye out is a rather extreme reaction to stress, in my book. What did Cornwall say in King Lear: ‘Out, vile jelly. Where is thy lustre now?’ ”

Carson was silent.

“Do you know anything about Vanderwagon’s past history at GeneDyne?” Teece asked.

“I know he was brilliant, very highly thought of. This was his second tour here. University of Chicago grad. But you must know all this.”

“Did he speak to you about any troubles? Any worries?”

“None. Except the usual complaints about the isolation. He was a great skier, and there obviously isn’t any skiing around here, so he used to complain about that. He was pretty liberal, and he and Harper used to argue politics a lot.”

“Did he have a girlfriend?”

Carson thought a moment. “He did mention someone. Lucy, I think. She lives in Vermont.” He shifted in the chair. “Look, where have they taken him, anyway? Have you learned anything yet?”

“He’s undergoing tests. So far, we know very little. It’s very difficult here, with no open phones to the outside. But already there are some perplexing developments, which I’d ask you to keep to yourself for the time being.”

Carson nodded.

“Preliminary tests show Vanderwagon suffering from unu­sual medical problems: overly permeable capillaries and ele­vated levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain.”

“Permeable capillaries?”

“Leaky blood vessels. Somehow, a small percentage of his blood cells have disintegrated, releasing hemoglobin. This he­moglobin has leaked out of his capillaries and into various parts of his body. Naked hemoglobin, as you may know, is poisonous to human tissues.”

“Did that contribute to his breakdown?”

“It’s too early to say,” Teece replied. “The elevated levels of dopamine, however, are very significant. What do you know about dopamine? Serotonin?”

“Not much. They’re neurotransmitters.”

“Correct. At normal levels, there’s no problem. However, too much of either in the brain would dramatically affect human behavior. Paranoid schizophrenics have elevated lev­els of dopamine. LSD trips are caused by a temporary increase in the same neurotransmitter.”

“What are you saying?” Carson asked. “That Andrew has elevated levels of these neurotransmitters in his brain because he’s crazy?”

“Perhaps,” Teece replied. “Or vice versa. But there really isn’t any point in speculating until we know more. Let’s move on to my original purpose here, and talk about this X-FLU strain you’re working on. Perhaps you can tell me how, while you thought you were neutralizing the virus, you instead man­aged to make it more deadly.”

“God, if I could answer that question ...” Carson paused. “We don’t really understand yet how X-FLU does its dirty work. When you recombine genes, you never really know what will happen. Suites of genes work together in compli­cated ways, and removing one or putting a new one into the mix often causes unexpected effects. In some ways, it’s like an incredibly complex computer program that nobody fully understands. You never know what might happen if you plug in strange data or change a line of code. Nothing might hap­pen. Or it might work better. Or the whole program might crash.” He had the vague realization that he was being more frank with this OSHA investigator than Brent Scopes might like. But Teece was sharp; there was no point dissembling.

“Why not use a less dangerous virus as a vehicle for the X-FLU gene?” asked Teece.

“That’s difficult to explain. You must know that the body is composed of two types of cells: somatic cells and germ cells. In order for X-FLU to be a permanent cure—one that would be passed on to descendants—we have to insert the DNA into germ-line cells. Somatic cells won’t do. The X-FLU host virus is uniquely capable of infecting human germ cells.”

“What about the ethics of altering germ cells? Of intro­ducing new genes into the human species? Has there been any discussion of that at Mount Dragon?”

Carson wondered why this subject kept coming up. “Look,” he said, “we’re making the tiniest change imaginable: insert­ing a gene only a few hundred base pairs long. It will make human beings immune to the flu. There’s nothing immoral in that.”

“But didn’t you just say that making a small change in one gene can have unexpected results?”

Carson stood up impatiently. “Of course! But that’s what phased testing is all about—looking for unexpected side ef­fects. This gene therapy will have to go through a whole gamut of expensive tests, costing GeneDyne millions of dol­lars.”

“Testing on human beings?”

“Of course. You start with in vitro and animal tests. In the alpha phase you use a small group of human volunteers. The beta phase is larger. The tests will be done using an out-group monitored by GeneDyne. Everything is done with excruci­ating care. You know all this as well as I do.”

Teece nodded. “Forgive me for dwelling on the subject, Dr. Carson. But if there are ‘unexpected side effects,’ wouldn’t you be perpetuating these side effects in the human race if you introduce the X-FLU gene into the germ cells of even a few people? Creating, perhaps, a new genetic disease? Or a race of people different from the rest of humanity? Remember, it took just a single mutation in one person—one person—to introduce the hemophilia gene into the race. Now, there are countless thousands of hemophiliacs across the world.”

“GeneDyne would never have spent almost half a billion dollars without working out the details,” Carson snapped, un­certain why he was feeling so defensive. “You’re not dealing with a start-up company here.” He walked around the side of his worktable to face the investigator. “My job is to neutralize the virus. And believe me, that’s more than enough. What they do with it once it’s neutralized is not my concern. There are suffocating government regulations covering every inch of this problem. You, of all people, should know that. You probably wrote half the damn regulations yourself.”

Three tones chimed in his headset. “We’ve got to leave,” Carson said. “They’re doing an early decontamination sweep tonight.”

“Right,” Teece replied. “Would you mind leading the way? I’m afraid I’d be lost within fifty feet.”

* * *

Outside, Carson stood silently for a moment, shutting his eyes and letting the warm evening wind blow over him. He could almost feel the accumulated tension and dread dissipating on the desert breeze. He blinked his eyes open, noticed the un­usual color of the sunset, and frowned. Then he turned to Teece.

“Sorry if I was a bit brusque back there,” he said. “That place wears on me, especially by the end of the day.”

“Perfectly understandable.” The investigator stretched, scratched his peeling nose, and glanced around at the white buildings, thrown into dramatic relief by the sunset. “It’s not so bad here, once that bloody great sun goes down.” He looked at his watch. “We’d better hurry if we’re going to catch dinner.”

“I guess.” Carson’s tone betrayed his reluctance.

Teece turned to look at him. “You sound about as eager as I feel.”

Carson shrugged. “I’ll be all right by tomorrow. I just don’t feel all that hungry.”

“Me neither.” The investigator paused. “So let’s go have a sauna.”

Carson turned his head in disbelief. “A what?”

“A sauna. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“Are you crazy? That’s the last thing I—” Carson stopped when he caught the expression on Teece’s face. Realizing it was an order, not an invitation, he narrowed his eyes.

“Fifteen minutes, then,” he said, and headed for his room without another word.

When the plans for Mount Dragon were drawn up, the de­signers, realizing that the occupants would be virtually im­prisoned by the vast desert around them, went to great lengths to add as many distractions and creature comforts as possible. The recreation facility, a long low structure next to the res­idency compound, was better equipped than most professional health spas, boasting a quarter-mile track, squash and racquetball courts, swimming pool, and weight room. What the designers hadn’t realized was that most of the scientists at Mount Dragon were obsessed with their work, and avoided physical exertion whenever possible. Practically the only res­idents who made use of the recreation center were Carson, who liked to run in the evenings, and Mike Marr, who spent hours working with the free weights.

Perhaps the most unlikely feature of the recreation center was the sauna: a fully equipped Swedish model with cedar walls and benches. The sauna was popular during the cold high-desert winters at Mount Dragon, but it was shunned by everyone in the summer.

As he approached the sauna from the men’s locker room, Carson saw by the external thermometer that Teece was al­ready inside. He pulled the door open, turning involuntarily from the blast of hot air that emerged. Stepping in, he saw through smarting eyes the pallid form of Teece, sitting near the bank of coals at the far end of the chamber, a white towel wrapped around his skinny loins. His pasty white complexion was in hilarious contrast to his burnt face. Sweat was pouring from his forehead and collecting at the end of his sun-abused nose.

Carson took a seat as far from the inspector as he could, gingerly settling the backs of his thighs against the hot wood. He breathed the fiery air in shallow gulps.

“All right, Mr. Teece,” he said angrily. “What is this about?”

Teece looked at him with a wry smile. “You should see yourself, Dr. Carson,” he panted. “All drawn up with right­eous manly indignation. But don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve asked you here for a very good reason.”

“I’m waiting to hear it.” Carson could already feel a sheen of sweat coating his skin. Teece must have this thing cranked to a hundred and sixty, he thought.

“There’s something else I want to discuss with you,” Teece said. “Mind if I add some steam?”

At some point, a Mount Dragon wag had replaced the usual wooden water dipper with a retort full of distilled water. Be­fore Carson could protest, the investigator had picked up the retort and poured a pint of water onto the glowing coals. Clouds of steam rose immediately, filling the room with a scorching vapor.

“Why the hell did we have to come in here?” Carson croaked, head reeling.

“Mr. Carson, I don’t mind sharing most of my discussions,” came the disembodied voice through the steam. “In fact, more often than not it has served my own purposes. As with our talk in your lab this afternoon. But right now, what I want is privacy.”

Comprehension came slowly to Carson’s brain. It was com­monly believed around Mount Dragon that any conversation taking place in the bluesuits was monitored. Obviously, Teece didn’t want anybody else overhearing what he was about to say. But why not meet in the cafeteria, or the residency com­pound? Carson answered his own question: The canteen ru­mor mill suspected Nye of bugging the entire facility. Teece, apparently, believed the rumors. That left the sauna—with its corrosive heat and steam—as the only place where they could talk.

Or did it? “Why couldn’t we have just taken a walk along the perimeter fence?” Carson gasped.

Teece suddenly materialized through the vapor. He took a seat next to Carson, shaking his head as he did so. “I have a horror of scorpions,” he said. “Now, listen to me a moment. You’re wondering why I asked you here, of all people. There are two reasons. First, I’ve watched your response to the Brandon-Smith emergency several times on tape. You were the one scientist who was intimately involved with the pro­ject, and with the tragedy, who behaved rationally. I may need that kind of impartiality in the days ahead. That’s why I spoke with you last.”

“You’ve talked to everyone?” Teece had been on-site only a few days.

“It’s a small place. I’ve learned a great deal. And there is much else that I suspect, but do not yet know for certain.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. “The second and most important reason involves your pred­ecessor.”

“You mean Franklin Burt? What about him?”

“In your lab, I mentioned that Andrew Vanderwagon was suffering from leaky blood vessels and overdrives of dopamine and serotonin. What I didn’t tell you was that Franklin Burt is suffering from the same symptoms. And, according to the autopsy report, so to a lesser degree was Rosalind Brandon-Smith. Now, why would that be, do you suppose?”

Carson thought for a moment. It made no sense at all. Unless ... Despite the heat of the sauna, a sudden thought chilled him.

“Could they be infected with something? A virus?” My God, he thought, could it be some long-gestating strain of X-FLU? Dread coursed through him.

Teece wiped his hands on his towel, grinning. “What’s happened to your unswerving faith in safety procedures? Re­lax. You aren’t the first to jump to that conclusion. But nei­ther Burt nor Vanderwagon show any X-FLU antibodies. They’re clean. Brandon-Smith, on the other hand, was rid­dled with them. So there’s no commonality.”

“Then I can’t explain it,” Carson said, expelling a pent-up breath. “Very strange.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Teece murmured.

He added more water to the coals. Carson waited.

“I assume you studied Dr. Burt’s work in detail when you first arrived,” Teece went on.

Carson nodded.

“So you must have read his electronic notebook?”

“I have,” said Carson.

“Many times, I imagine.”

“I can recite it in my sleep.”

“Where do you think the rest of it is?” asked Teece.

There was a short silence.

“What do you mean?” Carson asked.

“As I read the on-line files, something in them struck me as funny, like a melody that was missing some notes. So I did a statistical analysis of the entries, and I found that over the course of the last month the average daily entry dropped from over two thousand words to a few hundred. That led me to the conclusion that Burt, for whatever personal or paranoid reasons of his own, had started to keep a private notebook. Something Scopes and the others couldn’t see.”

“Hard copy is forbidden at Mount Dragon,” Carson said, knowing he was merely stating the obvious.

“I doubt if rules meant much to Dr. Burt at that point. Anyway, as I understand it, Mr. Scopes likes to roam GeneDyne cyberspace all night long, poking and prying into everyone’s business. A hidden journal is a logical response to that. I’m sure Burt wasn’t the only one. There are probably several completely sane people here who keep private logs.”

Carson nodded, his mind working fast. “That means—” he began.

“Yes?” Teece prompted, suddenly eager.

“Well, Burt mentioned a ‘key factor’ several times in his last on-line entries. If this secret journal exists, it might con­tain that key, whatever it is. I was thinking it might be the missing piece to solving the riddle of rendering X-FLU harm­less.”

“Perhaps,” Teece said. Then he paused. “Burt worked on other projects before X-FLU, correct?”

“Yes. He invented the GEF process, GeneDyne’s proprie­tary filtration technique. And he perfected PurBlood.”

“Ah, yes. PurBlood.” Teece pursed his lips distastefully. “Nasty idea, that.”

“What do you mean?” Carson asked, mystified. “Blood sub­stitutes can save countless lives. They eliminate shortages, the need for blood typing, protect against transfusions of tainted blood—”

“Perhaps,” Teece interrupted. “Just the same, the thought of injecting pints of it into my veins isn’t pleasant. I under­stand it’s produced by a vat of genetically engineered bacteria that have had the human hemoglobin gene inserted into them. It’s the same bacteria that exists by the trillions in ...” His voice trailed off, and he added the word “dirt” almost soundlessly.

Carson laughed. “It’s called streptococcus. Yes, it’s the bacterium found in soil. The fact is, we at GeneDyne know more about streptococcus than any other form of life. It’s the only organism other than E. coli whose gene we have completely mapped from beginning to end. So it’s a perfect host organ­ism, just because it lives in dirt doesn’t make it disgusting or dangerous.”

“Call me old-fashioned, then,” said Teece. “But I’m stray­ing from our subject here. The doctor who’s treating Burt tells me that he repeats an apparently nonsensical phrase over and over again: ‘Poor alpha.’ Do you have any idea what that might mean? Could it be the beginning of some longer sen­tence? Or perhaps his nickname for somebody?”

Carson thought a moment, then shook his head. “I doubt if it’s anybody here.”

Teece frowned. “Another mystery. Perhaps the notebook will shed light on this, as well. In any case, I have some ideas on how to go about searching for it. I plan to follow them up when I get back.”

“When you get back?” Carson echoed.

Teece nodded. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow for Radium Springs to file my preliminary report. Communication links to the outside world are practically nonexistent here. Besides, I need to consult with my colleagues. That’s why I’ve spoken to you. You are the person closest to Hurt’s work. I’ll be need­ing your full cooperation in the days to come. Somehow, I think Burt is the key to all this. We need to make a decision soon.”

“What decision is that?”

“On whether or not to allow this project to continue.”

Carson was silent. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Scopes allowing the project to be terminated. Teece was getting up, wrapping his towel tighter.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Carson said.

“Advise what?”

“Leaving tomorrow. There’s a big dust storm coming up.”

“I didn’t hear anything about it on the radio,” Teece frowned.

“They don’t broadcast the weather for the Jornada del Muerto desert on the radio, Mr. Teece. Didn’t you notice the peculiar orange pall in the southern sky when we came out of the Fever Tank this evening? I’ve seen that before and it means trouble.”

“Dr. Singer’s lending me a Hummer. Those things are built like articulated lorries.”

For the first time, Carson thought he saw a look of uncer­tainty in Teece’s face. He shrugged. “I’m not going to stop you. But if I were you, I’d wait.”

Teece shook his head. “What I’ve got to do can’t wait.”

The front had gathered its energy in the Gulf of Mexico, then moved northwestward, striking the Mexican coastline of Tamaulipas State. Once over land, the front was forced to rise above the Sierra Madre Oriental, where the moist air of the higher altitudes condensed in great thunderheads over the mountains. Vast quantities of rain fell as the front moved westward. By the time it descended on the Chihuahua desert, all moisture had been wrung from it. The front veered north­ward, moving laterally through the basin and range provinces of northern Mexico. At six o’clock in the morning it entered the Jornada del Muerto desert.

The front was now bone dry. No clouds or rain marked its arrival. All that remained of the Gulf storm was an enormous energy differential between the hundred-degree air mass over the desert and the sixty-five-degree air mass of the front.

All this energy manifested itself in wind.

As it moved into the Jornada, the front became visible as a mile-high wall of orange dust. It bore down across the land with the speed of an express train, carrying shredded tumble-weeds, clay, dry silt, and powdered salt picked up from playas to the south. At a height of four feet above the ground, the wind also included twigs, coarse sand, pieces of dry cactus, and bark stripped from trees. At a height of six inches, the wind was full of cutting shards of gravel, small stones, and pieces of wood.

Such desert storms, though rare enough to occur only once every few years, had the power to sandblast a car windshield opaque, strip the paint off a curved surface, blow roofs off trailer homes, and run horses into barbed-wire fences.

The storm reached the middle Jornada desert and Mount Dragon at seven o’clock in the morning, fifty minutes after Gilbert Teece, senior OSHA investigator, had driven off in a Hummer with his fat briefcase, heading for Radium Springs.

Scopes sat at his pianoforte, fingers motionless on the black rosewood keys. He appeared to be in deep thought. Lying beside the hand-shaped lid prop was a tabloid newspaper, torn and mangled, as if angry hands had crumpled it, then smoothed it again. The paper was open to an article entitled “Harvard Doc Accuses Gene Firm of Horror Accident.”

Suddenly, Scopes stood up, walked into the circle of light, and flounced down on the couch. He pulled the keyboard onto his lap and typed a brief series of instructions, initiating a vidйoconfйrence call. Before him, the enormous screen winked into focus. A swirl of computer code ran up along one edge, then gave way to the huge, grainy image of a man’s face. His thick neck lapped over a collar at least two sizes too tight. He was staring into the camera with the bare-toothed grimace of a man unused to smiling.

“Guten tag,”said Scopes in halting German.

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable speaking in En­glish, Mr. Scopes?” the man on the screen asked, tilting his head ingratiatingly.

“Nein,”Scopes continued in bad German. “I want to prac­tice the German. Speak slowly and clearly. Repeat twice.”

“Very good,” the man said.

“Twice.”

“Sehr gut, sehr gut,”the man said.

“Now, Herr Saltzmann, our friend tells me you have clear access to the old Nazi files at Leipzig.”

“Das ist richtig. Das ist richtig.”

“This is where the Lodz Ghetto files currently reside, is it not?”

“Ja. Ja.”

“Excellent. I have a small problem, an—how does one say it?—an archivalproblem. The kind of problem you specialize in. I pay very well, Herr Saltzmann. One hundred thousand Deutschmarks.“

The smile broadened.

Scopes continued to talk in pidgin German, outlining his problem. The man on the screen listened intently, the smile slowly fading from his face.

Later, when the screen was blank once again, a soft chime, almost inaudible, sounded from one of the devices on the end table.

Scopes, who was still sitting on the decrepit sofa, keyboard in lap, leaned toward the end table and pressed a button. “Yes?”

“Your lunch is ready.”

“Very well.”

Spencer Fairley entered, the foam slippers on his feet in ludicrous contrast to the somber gray suit. He made no noise as he crossed the carpet and set a pizza and a can of Coca-Cola on the far end table.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” Fairley asked.

“Did you read the Herald this morning?”

Fairley shook his head. “I’m a Globe reader,” he said.

“Of course you are,” said Scopes. “You should try the Herald once in a while. It’s much more lively than the Globe.”

“No, thank you,” said Fairley.

“It’s over there,” Scopes said, pointing to the pianoforte.

Fairley went over and returned, holding the rumpled tab­loid. “Unpleasant piece of journalism,” he said, scanning the page.

Scopes grinned. “Nah. It’s perfect. The crazy son of a bitch has put the knife to his own throat. All I need to do is give his arm a little nudge.”

He pulled a rumpled computer printout from his shirt pocket. “Here’s my charity list for the week. It’s short, only one item: a million to the Holocaust Memorial Fund.”

Fairley looked up. “Levine’s organization?”

“Of course. I want it done publicly, but in a quiet, dignified way.”

“May I ask ...?” Fairley raised an eyebrow.

“... Why?” Scopes finished the sentence. “Because, Spen­cer, you old Brahmin, it’s a worthy cause. And between you and me, they’re shortly going to lose their most effective fund­raiser.”

Fairley nodded.

“Besides, if you thought about it, you would realize there are also strategic reasons to free Levine’s pet charity from excessive dependence on him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Fairley, look, my jacket has a hole in the elbow. Would you like to go shopping with me again?”

A look of extreme distaste passed quickly across Fairley’s face, then disappeared again. “No, thank you, sir,” he said firmly.

Scopes waited until the door hissed shut. Then he laid the keyboard aside and lifted a slice of pizza from the box. It was almost cold, exactly the way he liked it. His eyes closed in enjoyment as his teeth met in the gooey interior of the pizza crust.

“Auf wiedersehen, Charles,” he mumbled.

Carson emerged from the administration building at five o’clock and stopped in amazement. All around him, the build­ings of Mount Dragon stood in the dim aftermath of the dust storm, dark shapes emerging from an orange pall. The land­scape was deathly still. Carson breathed in gingerly, testing the air. It was arid, like brick dust, and strangely cold. As he stepped forward, his boot sank an inch into powdery dirt.

He’d gone to work very early that morning, before sunup, eager to get the analysis of X-FLU II out of the way. He worked diligently, almost forgetting the windstorm raging above che silent underground fastness of the Fever Tank. De Vaca arrived an hour later. She had beaten the storm, too, but just barely; her muttered curses, and the dirt-streaked face that scowled back at him through the visor, attested to that.

This must be what the surface of the moon looks like, he thought as he stood outside the administration building. Or the end of the world. He had seen plenty of storms on the ranch, but nothing like this. Dust lay everywhere, coating the white buildings, glazing the windows. Small drifts of sand had ac­cumulated in long fins behind every post and vertical rise. It was an eerie, twilit, monochromatic world.

Carson started toward the residency compound, unable to see more than fifty feet ahead in the thick air. Then, hesitat­ing a moment, he turned and headed instead for the horse corral. He wondered how Roscoe had fared. In a bad storm, he had known horses to go crazy in their stalls, sometimes breaking a leg.

The horses were safe, covered with dust and looking irri­tated but otherwise unhurt. Roscoe nickered a greeting and Carson stroked his neck, wishing he had brought a carrot or a sugar cube. He looked the animal over quickly, then stood back with relief.

A sound from outside the paddocks, muffled and deadened by the dust, reached his ears. Glancing up, he saw a shadow looming out of the pall of dust. Good God, he thought, there’s something alive out there, something very large. The shadow van­ished, then reappeared. Carson heard the rattle of the perim­eter gate. It was coming in.

He stared through the open door of the barn as the ghostly figure of a man on horseback materialized out of the dust. The man’s head hung low on his shoulders, and the horse shuffled on trembling legs, exhausted to the point of collapse.

It was Nye.

Carson withdrew into the dim spaces of the barn and ducked into an empty stall. The last thing he wanted was another unpleasant encounter.

He heard the gate swing shut, then the sound of boots slowly crossing the sawdust floor of the barn. Squatting down, Carson peered through a knothole in the frame of the stall.

The security director was saturated, head to toe, in dun-colored dust. Only his black eyes and crusted mouth broke through the monotony of the powdery coat.

Nye stopped in front of the tack area and slowly untied his rifle boot and saddlebags, hanging them on a rack. He uncinched the saddle, jerked it off the horse, and set it on a carrier, slinging the saddle blankets on top. Every movement raised small mushroom clouds of gray dust.

Nye led the horse toward its stall, out of Carson’s view. Carson could hear him brushing the horse down, murmuring soothing words. He heard the snip of a bale being cut, the thump of hay thrown into the stall and a hose filling the water bucket. In a few moments, Nye reappeared. Turning his back to Carson, he pulled out a heavy tack box from one corner of the barn and unlocked it. Then, moving to his saddle bags, he unbuckled one side and extracted what looked like two squares of clear stiff plastic, sandwiching a ragged—and com­pletely unauthorized—piece of paper. Placing them on the floor of the tack area, Nye removed what looked like a wax pencil from the saddlebags, bent over the paper, and began making notations on the covering plastic. Carson pressed his eye to the crack, straining for a better view. The piece of paper looked old and well worn, and he could see a large, handwritten phrase across its upper border: Al despertar la hora el бquila del sol se levanta en una aguja del fuego, “At dawn the eagle of the sun stands on a needle of fire.” Beyond that he could make out nothing.

Suddenly, Nye sat up, alert. He looked around, craning his neck as if searching for the source of some noise. Carson shrank into the shadows at the back of the stall. He heard a shuffling sound, the click of a lock, the heavy clumping of feet. He peered out again to see the security director leave the barn, a gray apparition vanishing into the mist.

After a few moments, Carson got up and, eyeing the tack box curiously for a moment, moved over to the stall that held Muerto, Nye’s horse. It stood spraddle-legged, a string of brown saliva hanging from its mouth. He reached down and felt the tendons. Some heat, but no serious inflammation. The corona was hot but the hooves were still good, and the horse’s eye was clear. Whatever Nye had been doing, he had pushed the animal almost to its limit, maybe even as much as a hundred miles in the last twelve hours. The animal was still sound; there was no permanent damage and the horse would be back in form in a day or two. Nye had known when to quit. And he had a magnificent horse. A zero branded into its right jaw and a freeze brand high on its neck indicated it was registered with both the American Paint Horse Associ­ation and the American Quarter Horse Association. He pat­ted its flank admiringly.

“You’re one expensive piece of horseflesh,” he said.

Carson left the stall and moved to the barn entrance, peer­ing out into the dust that hung like smoke in the oppressive air. Nye was long gone. Closing the barn door quietly, Carson headed quickly for his room, trying to make sense of a man who would risk his life in a savage dust storm. Or a security director who would risk his job carrying around a piece of paper topped by a meaningless Spanish phrase at a place where paper was forbidden.

Carson passed through the canteen and out onto the balcony, the weathered banjo case knocking against his knees. The night was dark, and the moon obscured by clouds, but he knew that the figure sitting motionless by the balcony railing was Singer.

Since their first conversation on the balcony, Carson had often noticed Singer sitting out, enjoying the evening, fin­gering chords and runs on his battered guitar. Invariably, Singer had smiled and waved, or called out a cheerful greet­ing. But Singer seemed to change after the death of Brandon-Smith. He became quieter, more withdrawn. The arrival of Teece, and Vanderwagon’s sudden fit in the dining room, seemed only to deepen Singer’s mood. He still sat on the canteen balcony in the evenings, but now his head drooped in the desert silence, the guitar lying silent by his side.

During the first few weeks, Carson had often joined the director on the balcony for an evening chat. But as time went on and the pressure increased, Carson had found there was always more on-line research to be done, more lab notes to be recorded in the quiet solitude of his room after working hours. This evening, however, he was determined to find the time. He liked Singer, and didn’t like to see him brooding, no doubt blaming himself unnecessarily for the recent trou­bles. Perhaps he could draw the man out of himself for a bit. Besides, the talk with Teece had left Carson with nagging doubts about his own work. He knew that Singer, with his unswerving faith in the virtues of science, would be the per­fect tonic.

“Who’s there?” Singer asked sharply. The moon passed out of the clouds, temporarily throwing the balcony into pale re­lief. Singer caught sight of Carson. “Oh,” he said, relaxing. “Hello, Guy.”

“Evening.” Carson took a seat next to the director. Al­though the balcony had been swept clean of its mantle of dust, fresh clouds of the stuff rose dimly into view as he settled his weight into the chair. “Beautiful night,” he said, after a pause.

“Did you see the sunset?” Singer asked quietly.

“Incredible.” As if to make up for the fury of the dust storm, the desert sunset that evening had been a spectacular display of color against the smoky haze.

Without speaking further, Carson leaned over, unsnapped the case, and pulled out his Gibson five-string. Singer watched, a spark of interest kindling in his tired eyes.

“Is that an RB-3?” he asked.

Carson nodded. “Forty-hole tone ring. 1932 or there­abouts.”

“It’s a beauty,” Singer said, squinting appraisingly in the moonlight. “My God. Is that the original calfskin head?”

“That’s right.” Carson drummed the dirty head lightly with the tips of his fingers. “They don’t like desert conditions, and this one’s always going flat. Some day I’ll break down and buy a plastic one. Here, take a look.” He handed the instrument to Singer.

The director turned it over in his hands. “Mahogany neck and resonator. Original Presto tailpiece, too. The flange is pot-metal, I suppose?”

“Yes. It’s warping a little.”

Singer handed it back. “A real museum piece. How’d you come by it?”

“A ranch hand who worked for my grandfather. He had to leave our place in a hurry one day. This is one of the things he left behind. It sat for decades on top of a bookcase, collecting dust. Until I went to college, got the bluegrass bug.”

As they spoke, Singer seemed to lose some of his funk. “Let’s hear how it sounds,” he said, reaching over and picking up his old Martin. He strummed it thoughtfully, tuned a string or two, then swung into the unmistakable bass line of “Salt Creek.” Carson listened, nodding his head in time to the music as he vamped background chords. It had been months since he’d picked up the instrument, and his chops weren’t what they had been at Harvard, but gradually his fingers lim­bered up and he tried some rolls. Then suddenly Singer was playing backup and Carson found himself taking a solo break, smiling almost with relief when he found that his pull-offs still sounded crisp and his single-string work was clean.

They finished with a shave-and-a-haircut tag and Singer launched immediately into “Clinch Mountain Backstep.” Carson swung into the tune behind him, impressed by the director’s virtuosity. Singer, meanwhile, seemed wholly en­grossed, playing with the abandon of a man suddenly freed of a terrific burden.

Carson followed Singer through the strong, ancient changes of “Rocky Top,” “Mountain Dew,” and “Little Mag­gie,” feeling more and more comfortable and at last allowing himself an up-the-neck break that brought a smile and a nod from the director. Singer moved into an elaborate ending tag, and they closed with a thunderous G chord. As the echoes died, Carson thought he heard the faint, brief sound of clap­ping from the direction of the residency compound.

“Thank you, Guy,” Singer said, putting aside the guitar and wiping his hands together with satisfaction. “We should have done this a long time ago. You’re an excellent musician.”

“I’m not in your league,” Carson said. “But thanks all the same.”

A silence fell as the two men stared out into the night. Singer stood up and moved into the canteen to fix himself a drink. A disheveled-looking man walked by the balcony, counting imaginary numbers on his fingers and muttering loudly in what sounded like anguished Russian. That must be Pavel, Carson thought, the one de Vaca told me about. The man disappeared around a walkway corner into the night. A mo­ment later, Singer returned from inside. His tread was slower now, and Carson sensed that whatever mantle of responsi­bility had temporarily been lifted was quickly settling again.

“So how’ve you been keeping, Guy?” Singer said, settling back into the chair. “We haven’t really spoken for ages.”

“I suppose Teece’s visit kept you busy,” Carson said. The moon had once again vanished behind thickening clouds, and he sensed, rather than saw, the director stiffen at the inves­tigator’s name.

“What a nuisance that turned out to be,” Singer said. He sipped his drink while Carson waited. “Can’t say I think much of Mr. Teece. One of those people who act like they know everything, but won’t reveal any of it to you. He seems to get a lot of his information by setting people against each other. Know what I mean?”

“I didn’t speak with him for very long. He didn’t seem too pleased with the work we’re doing,” Carson said, choosing his words carefully.

Singer sighed. “You can’t expect everyone to understand, let alone appreciate, what we’re trying to do here, Guy. That’s especially true of bureaucrats and regulators. I’ve met people like Teece before. More often than not, they’re failed scien­tists. You can’t discount the jealousy factor in people like that.” He took a swallow. “Well, he’ll have to give us his report sooner or later.”

“Probably sooner,” Carson replied, instantly sorry that he’d spoken. He felt Singer’s eyes on him in the dark.

“Yes. He left here in an awful hurry. Insisted on taking one of the Hummers and driving himself to Radium Springs.” Singer took another swallow. “You seem to be the last one he spoke to.”

“He said he wanted to save those closest to X-FLU for last.”

“Hmm.” Singer finished his drink and placed the glass heavily on the floor. He looked back again at Carson. “Well, he’ll have heard about Levine by now. That won’t make things any easier for us. He’ll be back with a fresh set of questions, I’ll bet money on it.”

Carson felt a cold wave pass through him. “Levine?” he asked as casually as possible.

Singer was still looking at him. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard, the rumor mill is full of it. Charles Levine, head of the Foundation for Genetic Policy. He said some pretty damaging things about us on national television a few days ago. GeneDyne stock is down significantly.”

“It is?”

“Dropped another five and a half points today. The com­pany has lost almost half a billion dollars in shareholders’ equity. I needn’t tell you what that does to our stock hold­ings.”

Carson felt numb. He was not worried about the small amount of GeneDyne stock in his portfolio; he was worried about something entirely different. “What else did Levine say?”

Singer shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s all lies, any­way, all shitty lies. The problem is, people eat up that sort of stuff. They’re just looking for something else to use against us, something to hold us back.”

Carson licked his lips. He’d never heard Singer swear before. He wasn’t very good at it. “So what’s going to happen?” A look of satisfaction surfaced briefly on Singer’s features. “Brent will deal with it,” he said. “That’s just the kind of game he likes.”

The helicopter approached Mount Dragon from the east, across the restricted airspace of the White Sands Missile Range, unmonitored by civilian air-traffic control. It was after midnight, the moon had disappeared, and the desert floor was an endless carpet of black. The helicopter’s blades were of a noise-baffled military design, and the engine was equipped with pink-noise generators to minimize the aircraft’s sound signature. The running lights and tail beacon were off, the pilot using downward-pointing radar to search for its target.

The target was a small transmitter, placed in the center of a reflective sheet of Mylar held down by a circle of stones. Next to the transmitter sat a Hummer, its engine and head­lights off.

The helicopter eased down near the Mylar, the rotor wash tearing and shredding the material into confetti. As the run­ners settled on the desert floor, the dark figure of a man stepped out of the Hummer and ran toward the helicopter’s hatch, an oddly shaped metal suitcase imprinted with the GeneDyne logo in one hand. The hatch opened, and a pair of hands reached out for the case. As soon as the hatch was secured, the helicopter lifted off, banked, and disappeared again into the blackness. The Hummer drove away, its shielded lights following the two tire tracks that had brought it. A single shred of Mylar, borne aloft in an updraft, curled and drifted away. Within moments, a bottomless silence had once again settled on the desert.

That Sunday, the sun rose to a flawless sky. At Mount Dragon, the Fever Tank was closed as usual for decontami­nation, and until the obligatory evening emergency drill, the science staff would be left to their own devices.

As his coffee brewed, Carson looked out his window at the black cone of Mount Dragon, just becoming visible in the predawn light. Usually, he spent his Sundays like the rest of the staff: isolated in his room, laptop for company, catching up on background work. But today, he would climb Mount Dragon. He’d been promising himself he’d do just that since first arriving at the site. Besides, the balcony session with Singer had whetted his appetite to play again, and he knew the sharp nasal sounds of the banjo strings echoing through the quiet residency compound would incite half a dozen irate e-mail messages through the lab net.

Dumping the coffee and grounds into a thermos, he slung his banjo over his shoulder and headed to the cafeteria to pick up some sandwiches. The kitchen staff, usually almost unbearably chipper, were morose and silent. They couldn’t still be upset about what had happened to Vanderwagon. Must be the early hour, Carson thought. Everyone seemed to be in a bad mood these days.

Checking out with the perimeter guard, he set off down the dirt road that wound northeastward toward Mount Dragon. Reaching the base, he began the climb toward the summit, leaving the road in favor of a steep, narrow trail. The instrument felt heavy on his back, and the cinders slid under his feet as he climbed. Half an hour of hard work brought him to the top.

It was a classic cinder cone, its center scooped out by the ancient eruption. A few mesquite bushes grew along the rim. On the far side, Carson could see a cluster of microwave and radio towers, and a small white shed surrounded by a chain-link fence.

He turned around, breathing hard, ready to enjoy the view he’d worked hard for. The desert floor, at the precise instant of dawn, was like a pool of light, shimmering and swirling as if there were no surface at all, but merely a play of light and color. As the sun climbed fully over the horizon and flung a sheet of golden light across the ground, each solitary mesquite and creosotebush attached itself to shadows that ran endlessly toward the horizon. Carson could see the edge of light race across the desert, from east to west, etching the hills in light and the washes in darkness, until it rushed away over the curve of the earth, leaving a blanket of light in its wake.

Several miles away, he could see the wrecked outline of the old Anasazi pueblo—he now knew it was called Kin Klizhini—throwing shadows like black slashes across the dusty plain. Still farther away, the desert floor became black and mottled: the Malpaнs lava flow.

He chose a comfortable spot behind a large block of tufa. Putting the banjo beside him, he stretched out and shut his eyes, enjoying the delicious solitude.

“Shit,” came a familiar voice several minutes later.

Startled, Carson looked up and saw de Vaca standing over him, hands on her hips.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Carson grabbed the handle of his banjo case. His day was already ruined. “What does it look like?” he asked.

“You’re in my spot,” she said. “I always come up here on Sundays.”

Without another word, Carson heaved himself to his feet and started to walk away. This was one day he was going to avoid an argument with his lab assistant. He’d take Roscoe out a good ten miles, do his playing out there.

He halted when he saw the expression on her face.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

Carson looked at her. His instincts told him not to strike up a conversation, not to ask, just to get the hell out of there.

“You look a little upset,” he said.

“Why should I trust you?” de Vaca asked abruptly.

“Trust me about what?”

“You’re one of them,” she said. “A company man.” Beneath the accusatory tones, Carson sensed genuine fright.

“What is it?” he asked.

De Vaca remained silent for a long time. “Teece disap­peared,” she said at last.

Carson relaxed. “Of course he did. I talked to him the night before last. He was taking a Hummer to Radium Springs. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

She shook her head angrily. “You don’t understand. After the storm, his Hummer was found out in the desert. Empty.”

Shit. Not Teece. “He must have gotten lost in the sand­storm.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

He turned toward her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

De Vaca wouldn’t look at him. “I overheard Nye. He was talking to Singer, saying that Teece was still missing. They were arguing.”

Carson was silent. Nye ... A vision came into his head: a vision of a man emerging from the sandstorm, encased in dust, his horse nearly dead from exhaustion.

“What, you think he was murdered?” he asked.

De Vaca did not reply.

“How far from Mount Dragon was the Hummer?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because I saw Nye return with his horse after the dust storm. He’d probably been out searching for Teece.” He told her the story of what he’d seen in the stables two evenings before.

De Vaca listened intently. “You think he’d be out searching in a dust storm? Returning from burying the body, more likely. He and that asshole, Mike Marr.”

Carson scoffed. “That’s ludicrous. Nye may be a son of a bitch, but he’s not a murderer.”

“Marr is a murderer.”

“Marr? He’s as dumb as a lump of busted sod. He doesn’t have the brains to commit murder.”

“Yeah? Mike Marr was an intelligence officer in Vietnam. A tunnel rat. He worked in the Iron Triangle, probing all those hundreds of miles of secret tunnels, looking for Viet-cong and their weapons caches and frying anybody they found down there. That’s where he got his limp. He was down a hole, following a sniper. He triggered a booby trap and the tunnel collapsed on his legs.”

“How do you know this?”

“He told me.”

Carson laughed. “So you’re friends, are you? Was this be­fore or after he planted the butt of his shotgun in your gut?”

De Vaca frowned. “I told you, the scumbag tried to pick me up when I first got here. He cornered me in the gym and told me his life story, trying to impress me with what a bad dude he was. When that didn’t work, he grabbed my ass. He thought I was just some kind of easy Hispana whore.”

“He did? What happened?”

“I told him he was asking for a swift kick in the huevos.”

Carson laughed again. “Guess it took that slap at the picnic to cool his ardor. Anyway, why would he or anybody else want to murder an OSHA inspector? That’s insane. Mount Dragon would be shut down in an instant.”

“Not if it looked like an accident,” De Vaca returned. “The storm provided a perfect opportunity. Why did Nye take a horse out into the storm, anyway? And why haven’t we been told about Teece’s disappearance? Maybe Teece found out something that he wasn’t supposed to know.”

“Like what? For all we know, you could have misinter­preted what you heard. After all—”

“—I heard it, all right. Were you born yesterday, cabrуn? There are billions at stake here. You think this is about saving lives, but it isn’t. It’s about money. And if that money is jeopardized ...” She looked at him, eyes blazing.

“But why kill Teece? We had a terrible accident on Level-5, but the virus didn’t escape. Only one person died. There’s been no cover-up. Just the opposite.”

“ ‘Only one person died,’ ” de Vaca echoed. “You ought to hear yourself. Look, something else is going on around here. I don’t know what it is, but people are acting strange. Haven’t you noticed? I think the pressure is driving people over the edge. If Scopes is so interested in saving lives, why this im­possible timetable? We’re working with the most dangerous virus ever created. One misstep, and adiуs muchachos. Already, people’s lives have been ruined by this project. Burt, Vanderwagon, Fillson the zookeeper, Czerny the guard. Not to mention Brandon-Smith. How many more lives?”

“Susana, you obviously don’t belong in this industry,” Carson replied wearily. “All great advances in human progress have been accompanied by pain and suffering. We’re going to save millions of lives, remember?” Even as he spoke the words, they sounded hollow and clichйd in his ears.

“Oh, it all sounds noble enough. But is this really an ad­vance? What gives us the right to alter the human genome? The longer I’m here, the more I see of what goes on, the more I believe what we’re doing is fundamentally wrong. Nobody has the right to remake the human race.”

“You’re not talking like a scientist. We’re not remaking the human race, we’re curing people of the flu.”

De Vaca was digging a trench in the cinders with short, angry movements of her heel. “We’re altering human germ cells. We’ve crossed the line.”

“We’re getting rid of one small defect in our genetic code.”

“Defect. What the hell is a defect exactly, Carson? Is having the gene for male pattern baldness a defect? Is being short a defect? Being the wrong skin color? Having kinky hair? What about being a little too shy? After we eradicate the flu, what comes next? Do you really think science is going to refrain from making people smarter, longer-lived, taller, handsomer, nicer? Particularly when there’s billions of dollars to be made?”

“Obviously, it would be a highly regulated situation,” Carson said.

“Regulation! And who is going to decide what’s better? You? Me? The government? Brent Scopes? No big deal, let’s just get rid of the unattractive genes, the ones nobody wants. Genes for fatness and ugliness and obnoxiousness. Genes that code for unpleasant personality traits. Take off your blinders for a moment, and tell me what this means for the integrity of the human race.”

“We’re a long way from being able to do all that,” Carson muttered.

“Bullshit. We’re doing it right now, with X-FLU. The map­ping of the human genome is almost complete. The changes may start small, but they’ll grow. The difference in DNA be­tween humans and chimps is less than two percent, and look at the vast difference. It won’t take big changes in the genome to remake the human race into something that we’d never even recognize.”

Carson was silent. It was the same argument he had heard countless times before. Only now—despite his best efforts to resist—it was starting to make sense. Perhaps he was just tired, and didn’t have the energy to spar with de Vaca. Or perhaps it was the look on Teece’s face when he’d said, What I’ve got to do can’t wait.

They sat silently in the shadow of the volcanic rock, look­ing down toward the beautiful cluster of white buildings that were Mount Dragon, trembling and insubstantial in the rising heat. Even as he fought against it, Carson could feel something crumbling inside him. It was the same feeling he’d had when, as a teenager, he had watched from a flatbed truck while the ranch was being auctioned off piece by piece. He had always believed, more firmly than he believed anything else, that the best hopes for mankind’s future lay in science. And now, for whatever reason, that belief was threatening to dissolve in the heat waves rising from the desert floor.

He cleared his throat and shook his head, as if to dislodge the train of thought. “If your mind is made up, what do you plan to do about it?”

“Get the hell out of here and let people know what’s going on.”

Carson shook his head. “What’s going on is one-hundred-percent legal, FDA-regulated genetic research. You can’t stop it.”

“I can if somebody was murdered. Something’s not right here. Teece found out what it was.”

Carson looked at her as she sat with her back against the rock, her arms wrapped around her knees, the wind whipping her raven hair away from her forehead. Fuck it, he thought. Here goes.

“I’m not sure what Teece knew,” he said slowly. “But I know what he was looking for.”

De Vaca’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Teece thinks Franklin Burt was keeping a private note­book. That’s what he told me the night he left. He also said that Vanderwagon and Burt had elevated levels of dopamine and serotonin in their bloodstreams. So did Brandon-Smith, to a lesser extent.”

De Vaca was silent.

“He thought that this journal of Hurt’s could shed light on whatever might be causing these symptoms,” Carson added. “Teece was going to look for it when he got back.”

De Vaca stood up. “So. Are you going to help me?”

“Help you what?”

“Find Burt’s notebook. Learn the secret of Mount Dragon.”

Charles Levine had taken to arriving at Greenough Hall very early, locking his office door, and leaving instructions for Ray that he was taking no calls and seeing no visitors. He had temporarily passed on his course load to two junior instruc­tors, and he’d canceled his planned lecture schedule for the coming months. Those had been the last pieces of advice from Toni Wheeler before she resigned as the foundation’s public-relations adviser. For once, Levine had decided to follow her suggestions. The internal pressure from the college trustees was growing, and the telephone messages left for him by the dean of faculty were becoming increasingly strident. Levine sensed danger, and—against his nature—had decided to lay low for a while.

So he was surprised to find a man waiting patiently in front of his locked office door at seven o’clock in the morning. Instinctively, Levine held out his hand, but the man only looked back at him.

“What can I do for you?” Levine said, unlocking the door and showing him in. The man sat down stiffly, gripping his briefcase across his lap. He had bushy gray hair and high cheekbones, and looked about seventy.

“My name is Jacob Perlstein,”he said. “I am a historian with the Holocaust Research Foundation in Washington.”

“Ah, yes. I know your work well. Your reputation is without peer.” Perlstein was known around the world for the unflag­ging zeal with which he brought to light old records from Nazi death camps and the Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe. Levine settled into his chair, puzzled by the man’s hostile air.

“I will come to the point,” the man said, his black eyes peering at Levine through contracted eyebrows.

Levine nodded.

“You have claimed that your Jewish father saved Jewish lives in Poland. He was caught by the Nazis and murdered by Mengele at Auschwitz.”

Levine did not like the wording of the question, but he said nothing.

“Murdered through medical experimentation. Is that cor­rect?”

“Yes,” said Levine.

“And how do you know this?” the man asked.

“Excuse me, Mr. Perlstein, but I’m not sure I appreciate the tone of your questions.”

Perlstein continued to stare at him. “The question is simple enough. I would like you to tell me how you know this.”

Levine strove to conceal his irritation. He had told this story in countless interviews and at innumerable fund-raisers. Surely Perlstein had heard it before. “Because I did the re­search myself. I knew my father had died at Auschwitz, but that was all. My mother died when I was very young. I had to know what happened to him. So I spent almost four months in East Germany and Poland, combing Nazi files. It was a dangerous time, and I was doing dangerous work. When I found out—well, you can imagine how I felt. It changed my view of science, of medicine. It gave me deeply ambivalent feelings about genetic engineering, which in turn—”

“The files on your father,” the man interrupted brusquely. “Where did you find them?”

“In Leipzig, where all such files are kept. Surely you already know this.”

“And your mother, pregnant, escaped, and brought you to America. You took her name, Levine, rather than your fa­ther’s name, Berg.”

“That’s correct.”

“A touching story,” said Perlstein. “Odd that Berg is not a commonly Jewish name.”

Levine sat up. “I don’t like the tone of your voice, Mr. Perlstein. I must ask you to say whatever it is you’ve come to say, and leave.”

The man opened his briefcase and took out a folder, which he laid distastefully on the edge of Levine’s desk. “Please ex­amine these documents.” He pushed the folder toward Levine with the edge of his fingers.

Opening the folder, Levine found a thin sheaf of photo­copied documents. He recognized them immediately: the faded gothic typeface, the stamped swastikas, brought back memories of those horrible weeks behind the Iron Curtain, sifting through boxes of paper in damp archives, when only an overwhelming desire to know the truth had kept him go­ing.

The first document was a color reproduction of a Nazi ID. card, identifying one Heinrich Berg as an Obersturmfьhrer in the Schutzstaffel—the German SS—stationed at the concen­tration camp of Ravensbrueck. The photograph still appeared to be in excellent shape, the family resemblance extraordi­nary.

He pawed through the rest of the papers quickly, in growing disbelief. There were camp documents, prison rosters, a report from the army company that liberated Ravensbrueck, a letter from a survivor bearing an Israeli postmark, and a sworn af­fidavit. The documents showed that a young woman from Poland named Miyrna Levine had been sent to Ravensbrueck for “processing.” While there, she had come into contact with Berg, become his mistress, and later been transferred to Auschwitz. There she had survived the war by informing on resistance movements within the camp.

Levine looked at Perlstein. The man was staring back, the eyes dry and accusatory.

“How dare you peddle these lies,” Levine hissed when he had at last found his voice.

Perlstein’s breath rasped inward. “So, you continue to deny. I expected as much. How dare you peddle your lies! Your father was an SS officer and your mother a traitor who sent hundreds to their deaths. You are not personally guilty of your parents’ sins. But the lie you are living compounds their evil, and makes a mockery of the work you do. You claim to be searching for truth for everyone else, yet the truth doesn’t apply to you. You—who allowed your father’s name to be carved among the righteous at Yad Vashem: Heinrich Berg, an SS officer! It is an insult to the true martyrs. And this insult shall be made known.” The man’s hands trembled as they clutched the leather case.

Levine struggled to remain calm. “These documents are forgeries, and you are a fool to believe them. The East German communists were famous for faking—”

“Since this was brought to my attention several days ago, the originals have been examined by three independent ex­perts in Nazi documents. They are absolutely genuine. There can be no mistake.”

Suddenly, Levine was on his feet. “Get out!” he screamed. “You’re just a tool for the revisionists. Get out, and take this filth with you!” He stepped forward, raising one arm threat­eningly above his head.

The elderly man tried to snatch the folder, ducking in alarm, and the contents spilled onto the floor. Ignoring them, he retreated to the outer office, then out into the corridor beyond. Levine slammed his office door and leaned against it, the pulse hammering in his head. It was an outrageous, vicious lie, and he would clear it up quickly ... he had cer­tified copies of the real documents, thank God ... he would simply hire an expert to debunk the forgeries. The slander against his murdered father was like a stab through the heart, but this was not the first time he had been foully attacked and it would not be the last—

His eye fell on the folder, its documents and their filthy lies lying scattered across the floor, and a sudden, terrible thought struck him.

He rushed to a locked filing cabinet, jammed in a key, and reached for a folder marked, simply, “Berg.”

The folder was empty.

“Scopes,”he whispered.

The next day, with a tone of infinite regret, the Boston Globe carried the story on the front page of its second section.

Muriel Page, a volunteer for the Salvation Army store on Pearl Street, watched the young man with the slept-on hair pawing through a rack of sport coats. It was the second time he had come in that week, and Muriel couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He didn’t look like a self-medicator—he was clean and alert—no doubt just a young man down on his luck. He had a boyish, slightly awkward face that reminded her of her own grown son, married now and living in Cali­fornia. Except this young man was so thin. He certainly wasn’t eating right.

The young man flipped through the rack at high speed, glancing at the jackets as they went by.

He stopped suddenly and pulled one out, sliding it on over his black T-shirt as he walked toward a nearby mirror. Muriel, watching out of the corner of her eye, had to admire the man’s taste. It was a very nice jacket, with narrow lapels and little overlapping triangles and squares in red and yellow floating on a field of black. Probably dated from the early fifties. Very stylish, but not something—she thought a little mournfully— that most young men today would like. Clothes had been so much classier when she was a young lady.

The young man turned around, examined himself from var­ious angles, and grinned. He came walking toward the counter, and Muriel knew she had a sale.

She removed the tag. “Five dollars,” she said with a cheer­ful smile.

The young man’s face fell behind the black glasses. “Oh,” he said. “I was hoping ...”

Muriel hesitated for just an instant. The five dollars prob­ably represented several meals to him, and he looked hungry. She leaned forward and spoke conspiratorially. “I’ll let you have it for three, if you won’t tell anyone.” She fingered the sleeve. “That’s real wool, too.”

The man brightened, smoothing his unruly cowlick with a self-conscious hand. “Very kind of you,” he said, fishing in his pocket and removing three crumpled bills.

“It’s a lovely jacket,” Muriel said. “When I was a young lady, a man wearing a jacket like that... well!” She winked. The young man stared back at her, and instantly she felt silly. Briskly, she wrote out a receipt and handed it to him. “I hope you enjoy it,” she said.

“I will.”

She leaned forward again. “You know, just across the street we have a very nice place where you can get a bite of hot food. It’s free and there are no strings attached.”

The man looked suspicious. “No religious harangues?”

“None at all. We don’t believe in forcing religion on peo­ple. Just a hot, nourishing meal. All we require is that you be sober and drug-free.”

“Really?” he asked. “I thought the Salvation Army was a religious group of some kind.”

“We are. But a hungry person isn’t likely to be thinking about spiritual salvation, just his next meal. Feed the body and you free the soul.”

The man thanked her and exited. Taking a covert peek out the window, she was gratified to see him head directly for the soup kitchen, take a tray at the door, and get in line, striking up a conversation with the man in front of him.

Muriel felt a tear well up in her eye. That absentminded, slightly lost expression was so much like her son’s. She hoped that whatever had gone wrong in his life would straighten itself out before too long.

The following morning, the Pearl Street Salvation Army store and soup kitchen received an anonymous donation in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars, and no one was more surprised than Muriel Page when she was told it was in honor of her work.

Carson and de Vaca walked silently down the trail and back to the Mount Dragon complex. Outside the covered walkway leading to the residency compound, they stopped.

“So?” de Vaca prompted, breaking the silence.

“So what?”

“You still haven’t told me if you’re going to help me find the notebook,” she said in a fierce whisper.

“Susana, I’ve got work to do. So do you, for that matter. That notebook, if it exists, isn’t going anywhere. Let me think about this a while. OK?”

De Vaca looked at him for a moment. Then she turned without a word and walked into the compound.

Carson watched her walk away. Then, with a sigh, he climbed the staircase to the second floor, stepping through the doorway into the cool, dark corridor beyond. Maybe Teece had been right about Burt’s secret notebook. And maybe de Vaca was right about Nye. In which case, what Teece thought didn’t matter as much anymore. But what concerned Carson most was that horrible moment on top of Mount Dragon, when he’d suddenly felt the strength of his convictions turn soft. Since his father died and the last ranch had failed, Carson’s love of science—his faith in the good it could accomplish—had meant everything to him. Now, if ...

But he wouldn’t think about it any more today. Maybe tomorrow, he’d have the strength to face it again.

Back in his room, Carson stared at the drab white walls for a minute, summoning the energy to switch on his laptop and begin sorting through the X-FLU II test data. His eye fell upon the battered banjo case.

Hell with it, he thought. He’d play a little; without picks, to keep the noise down. Just five minutes, maybe ten. Get his mind off all this. Then he’d get to work.

As he lifted the five-string from the case, his eye fell on a folded piece of paper lying on the yellowing felt beneath. Frowning, he picked it up and unfolded it on his knee.

Dear Guy,

I’ve always hated this infernal instrument. For once, how-ever, I hope you practice with regularity. You’ve apparently already left for the morning, and I can’t delay my departure any further. This seems the best—indeed, only—way to con­tact you.

As you know, I’ll be gone for a couple of days. Since we spoke, I have tried without success to learn where Burt might have hidden his notebook. You know the Mount Dragon complex, you know the surrounding area, and—most importantly—you know Burt’s work. It’s quite possible that, perhaps inad­vertently, Burt left behind a clue to the whereabouts of the notebook. Would you please look through Burt’s electronic notes and see if you can find such a clue?

Do not, however, try to find the notebook yourself. Let me do that when I return from my journey. Meanwhile, please don’t mention this to anyone.

Had I felt there was more time, I would not have burdened you with this. I have a feeling you are someone I can trust. I hope I am not mistaken.

Yours,

Gil Teece

Carson reread the hastily scrawled note. Teece must have come looking for him the morning of the dust storm and, not finding him, left the message in the one place Carson would be most likely to find it. When he’d opened the case on the canteen balcony, the night had been dark and he hadn’t seen the note. He felt a momentary anxious stab as he thought about how easily the paper could have fallen unnoticed to the floor of the balcony, to be discovered later by Singer. Or maybe Nye.

He angrily shook aside the thought. Another couple of days and I’ll be as paranoid as de Vaca. Or even Burt. Shoving the note into his back pocket, he punched de Vaca’s extension on the residency intercom.

 “So this is where you live, Carson? It figures they’d give you one of the better views. All I see from my room is the back end of the incinerator.”

De Vaca moved away from the window. “They say the way a person decorates their own space is a good barometer of personality,” she went on, scanning the bare walls. “Figures.”

She leaned over his shoulder while he booted up his resi­dency laptop.

“About a month before he left Mount Dragon, Burt’s en­tries began to grow shorter,” Carson said as he logged in. “If Teece is right, that’s the time he started keeping the illegal journal. If there are any clues as to its whereabouts in Burt’s on-line notes, that’s where I figure we should start looking.”

He began paging through the log. As the formulas, lists, and data scrolled by, Carson was reminded irresistibly of the first time he had read the journal, a lifetime ago, on his first workday in the Fever Tank. His heart sank as he skimmed yet again the failed experiments, the recordings of hopes that were alternately lifted, then shattered. It all felt uncomfortably close to home.

As he scrolled on, the scientific notes were increasingly leavened by conversations with Scopes, personal entries, even dreams.

May 20

I dreamt lost night that I was wandering, lost, in the desert. I walked toward the mountains, and it grew darker and darker. Then a great light appeared, like a second dawn, and a vast mushroom cloud rose from behind the mountain range. I knew I was witnessing the Trinity explosion. I saw the wave of over­pressure bearing down on me, and then I woke up.

“Damn,” Carson said, “if he confides stuff like this to his on-line notes, why would he bother keeping a secret diary?”

“Keep going,” urged de Vaca.

He continued scanning.

June 2

When I shook out my shoes this morning, a little scorpion fell out and landed on the floor all in a tizzy. I felt sorry for him and brought him outside. ...

“Keep going, keep going,” de Vaca repeated impatiently.

Carson continued scrolling. Poetry began appearing among the data tables and technical notes. Finally, as Burt’s madness emerged, the log degenerated into a confusing welter of im­ages, nightmares, and meaningless phrases. Then there was the last horrifying conversation with Scopes; a burst of apoc­alyptic mania; and the end-of-file marker was reached.

They sat back and looked at each other.

“There’s nothing here,” Carson said.

“We’re not thinking like Burt,” de Vaca said. “If you were Burt, and you wanted to plant a clue in the record, how would you do it?”

Carson shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would. Teece was right: subconscious or con­scious, it’s human nature. First, you’d have to assume that Scopes was going to read everything. Right?”

“Right.”

“So what would Scopes be least likely to read in here?”

There was a silence.

“The poetry,” they both said at once.

They scrolled back to the point in the journal where the poems first appeared, then paged slowly forward. Most, but not all, were on scientific subjects: the structure of DNA, quarks and gluons, the Big Bang and string theory.

“You notice that these poems start around the same time the journal entries get shorter?” Carson asked.

“No one’s ever written poetry quite like this before,” de Vaca replied. “In its own way, it’s beautiful.” She read aloud:

There is a shadow on this glass plate.

A long exposure in the emission range

Of alpha hydrogen

Yields satisfactory results.

M82 was once ten billion stars,

Now it has returned to the slow lazy dust of creation.

Is this the mighty work

Of the same God who fires the Sun?

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“Messier 82 is a very strange galaxy in Virgo. The whole galaxy blew up, annihilating ten billion stars.”

“Interesting,” said de Vaca. “But I don’t think it’s what we’re looking for.”

They scrolled on.

Block house in the sheeted sun

The ravens rise as you approach,

They circle and float, crying at the trespass,

Waiting for emptiness to return.

The Great Kiva

Is half-filled with sand,

But the sipapu

Lies open.

It empties its silent cry into the fourth world.

When you leave

The ravens settle back,

Croaking with satisfaction.

“Beautiful,” said de Vaca. “And somehow familiar. I won­der what this black house is?”

Carson suddenly sat up. “Kin Klizhini,” he said. “It’s Apache for ‘Black House.’ He’s writing about the ruin just south of here.”

“You know Apache?” de Vaca asked, looking at him curi­ously.

“Most of our ranch hands were Apache,” Carson said. “I picked up some stuff from them when I was a kid.”

There was a silence while they read the poem again.

“Hell,” said Carson. “I don’t see anything here.”

“Wait.” De Vaca held up her hand. “The Great Kiva was the underground religious chamber of the Anasazi Indians. The center of the kiva contained a hole, called the sipapu, that connected this world with the spirit world below. They called that world the Fourth World. We live in the Fifth World.”

“I know that,” Carson said. “But I still don’t see any clues here.”

“Read the poem again. If the kiva was filled with sand, how could the sipapu be open?”

Carson looked at her. “You’re right.”

She looked at Carson and grinned. “At last, cabrуn, you learn to speak the truth.”

They decided to take the horses, in order to be back in time for the evening emergency drill. The sun had passed the meridian and the day was at its hottest.

Carson watched de Vaca throw a saddle on the rat-tailed Appaloosa. “I guess you’ve ridden before,” he said.

“Damn right,” de Vaca replied, buckling the flank cinch and looping a canteen over the horn. “You think Anglos have a monopoly? When I was a kid, I had a horse named Barbarian. He was a Spanish Barb, the horse of the Conquest.”

“I’ve never seen one,” Carson said.

“They’re the best desert horse you can find. Small, stout, and tough. My father got some from an old Spanish herd on the Romero Ranch, Those horses had never interbred with Anglo horses. Old Romero said he and his ancestors always shot any damn gringo stallions that came sniffing around their mares.” She laughed and swung herself into the saddle. Carson liked the way she sat a horse: balanced and easy.

He mounted Roscoe and they rode to the perimeter gate, punched in the access code, then reined toward Kin Klizhini. The ancient ruin reared up on the horizon about two miles away: two walls poking up from the desert floor, surrounded by mounds of rubble.

De Vaca tilted her head back, gave her hair a shake. “In spite of everything that’s happened, I never get tired of the beauty of this place,” she said as they rode.

Carson nodded. “When I was sixteen,” he said, “I spent a summer on a ranch at the northern end of the Jornada, called the Diamond Bar.”

“Really? Is the desert up there like it is down here?”

“Similar. As you move northward, the Fra Cristуbal Moun­tains come around in an arc. The rain shadow from the moun­tains falls across there and it gets a little greener.”

“What were you, a ranch hand?”

“Yeah, after my dad lost the ranch I cowboyed around for the summer before going to college. That Diamond Bar was a big ranch, about four hundred sections between the San Pascual Mountains and the Sierra Oscura. The real desert started at the southern edge of the ranch, at a place called Lava Gate. There’s a huge lava flow that runs almost to the foot of the Fra Cristуbal Mountains. Between the lava flow and the mountains is a narrow gap, maybe a hundred yards across. The old Spanish trail used to go through there.” He laughed. “Lava Gate was like the gates of hell. You didn’t want to go south from there, you might never come back. And now here I am, right in the middle of it.”

“My ancestors came up that trail with Oсate in 1598,” said de Vaca.

“Up the Spanish trail?” Carson asked. “They crossed the Jornada?”

De Vaca nodded, squinting against the sun.

“How did they find water?”

“There’s that doubting look on your face again, cabrуn. My grandfather told me they waited until dusk at the last water, and then drove their stock all night, stopping at about four in the morning to graze. Farther on, their Apache guide brought them to a spring called the Ojo del Бguila. Eagle Spring. Its location is now lost. At least, that’s what my grand­father said.”

There was a question Carson had been curious about for some time, but had been afraid to ask. “Where, exactly, did you get the name Cabeza de Vaca?”

De Vaca looked at him truculently. “Where’d you get the name Carson?”

“You have to admit, ‘Head of Cow’ is a little odd for a name.”

“So is ‘Son of Car’ ”

“Forgive me for asking,” Carson said, mentally reprimand­ing himself for not knowing better.

“If you knew your Spanish history,” de Vaca said, “you’d know about the name. In 1212, a soldier in the Spanish army marked a pass with a cow skull, and led a Spanish army to victory over the Moors. That soldier was given a royal title and the right to use the name ‘Cabeza de Vaca’.”

“Fascinating,” Carson yawned. And probably apocryphal, he thought.

“Alonso Cabeza de Vaca was one of the first European settlers in America in 1598. We come from one of the most ancient and important European families in America. Not that I pay any attention to that kind of thing.”

But Carson could see from the proud look on her face that she paid a great deal of attention to that kind of thing.

They rode for a while, saying nothing, enjoying the heat of the day and the gentle roll of the horses. De Vaca rode slightly ahead, her lower body moving with the horse, her torso relaxed and quiet, left hand on the reins and right hooked in her belt loop. As they approached the ruin, she stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

He drew alongside and she looked at him, an amused gleam in her violet eyes.

“Last one there is a pendejo,”she said suddenly, leaning forward and spurring her horse.

By the time Carson could recover and urge Roscoe forward, she was three lengths ahead, the horse going at a dead run, its head down, ears flattened, hooves throwing gravel back into Carson’s face. He urged Roscoe on with urgent, light heel jabs.

Carson edged up on her and the two horses raced alongside, leaping the low mesquite bushes, the wind roaring in their ears.- The ruin loomed closer, the great stone walls etched against the blue sky. Carson knew he had the better mount, yet he watched in disbelief as de Vaca leaned close to her horse’s ear, urging him forward in a low but electric voice. Carson jabbed and shouted in vain. They flashed between the two ruined walls, de Vaca now half a length ahead, her hair whipping like a black flame behind her. Ahead of them, Carson saw a low wall rise suddenly out of the brown sands. A group of ravens burst upward with a raucous crying as they both took the wall at a leap and were suddenly past the ruin. They slowed to a lope, then a trot, turning the horses back, cooling them off.

Carson looked over at de Vaca. Her face was flushed, and her hair wild. A fleck of foam from the sweaty horse lay across her thigh. She grinned. “Not bad,” she said. “You almost caught me.”

Carson flicked his reins. “You cheated,” he said, hearing the peevishness in his own voice. “You got the jump on me.”

“You have the better horse,” she said.

“You’re lighter.”

She smirked. “Face it, cabrуn, you lost.”

Carson smiled grimly. “I’ll catch you next time.”

“Nobody catches me.”

Reaching the ruin, they dismounted, tying their horses to a rock. “The Great Kiva was usually in the very center of the pueblo, or else far outside its borders,” de Vaca said. “Let’s hope it hasn’t collapsed completely.”

The ravens circled far overhead, their distant cries hanging in the dry air.

Carson looked around curiously. The walls were formed from stones of shaped lava, cemented together with adobe. Walls and room blocks rose on three sides of the U-shaped ruin, the fourth side opening onto a central plaza. Potsherds and pieces of flint littered the ground beneath their feet. Much of it was covered by sand.

They walked into the plaza, long overgrown with yucca and mesquite. De Vaca knelt down by a large fire-ant hill. The ants had fled inside to escape the noonday heat, and she carefully smoothed the gravel with her ringers, examining it closely.

“What are you doing?” Carson asked.

Instead of answering, de Vaca picked something off the mound and held it between thumb and forefinger. “Take a look,” she said.

She placed something in his palm, and he squinted at it: a perfect little turquoise bead, with a hole no wider than a human hair drilled through its center.

“They polished their turquoises using blades of grass,” she said. “No one is really sure how they got the holes so small and perfect, without the use of metal. Perhaps by twirling a tiny sliver of bone against the turquoise for hours.” She stood up. “Come on, let’s find that kiva.”

They moved to the center of the plaza. “There’s nothing here,” Carson said.

“We’ll separate and search beyond the perimeter,” de Vaca replied. “I’ll take the northern semicircle, you take the southern.”

Carson moved out beyond the edge of the ruin, tracing a widening arc, scanning the desert as he did so. The huge storm and drying winds had erased any signs of footprints; it was impossible to tell whether Burt had been there or not. Centuries before, the subterranean kiva would have had a roof flush with the desert floor, with only a smoke hole on the surface revealing its presence. While it was likely the roof had collapsed long ago, there was a chance that it had remained intact and was now completely concealed by the shifting sands.

Carson found the kiva about one hundred yards to the southwest. The roof had collapsed, and the kiva was now nothing but a circular depression in the desert, thirty feet across and perhaps seven feet deep. Its walls were of shaped rock, from which projected a few stubs of ancient roof timbers. De Vaca came running at his call, and together they stood at its edge. Near the bottom, Carson could make out places where the walls were still plastered in adobe mud and red paint. At the base, the wind had piled up a crescent of sand, completely burying the floor.

“So where’s this sipapu?” Carson asked.

“It was always in the exact center of the kiva,” said de Vaca. “Here, help me down.” She scrambled down the side, paced off the center, then knelt, digging in the sand with her fingers. Carson dropped down and began to help. Six inches into the sand, their hands scraped against flat rock. De Vaca brushed the sand away excitedly, moving the stone aside.

There, in the sipapu hole, sat a large plastic specimen jar, its GeneDyne label still intact. Inside the jar was a small book with dented corners, bound in a stained, olive-colored canvas.

“Madre de Dios,”de Vaca whispered. She lifted the jar out of the sipapu, pried open the lid, and pulled out the journal, opening it as Carson looked on.

The first page was headed May 18. Below the date, the page was covered in dense, precise handwriting, so tiny that two lines were written in each ruled space.

Carson watched as de Vaca flipped through the pages in­credulously. “We can’t bring this back to Mount Dragon,” he said.

“I know. So let’s get started.”

She turned to the beginning.

May 18

Dearest Amiko,

I write to you from the ruins of a sacred Anasazi kiva, not far from my laboratory.

When we were packing my things, that last morning before I flew to Albuquerque, I stuck this old journal into the pocket of my jacket, on impulse. I’d always planned to use it for bird sightings. But I think now I’ve found a better use for it.

I miss you so terribly. The people here are friendly, for the most part. Some, like the director, John Singer, I think I can even count as friends. But we are associates before we are friends here, all pushing toward one common goal. There is pressure upon us; tremendous pressure to move ahead, to suc­ceed. I feel myself drawing inward under such pressure. The endless desolation of this awful desert magnifies my loneliness. It is as if we have stepped off the edge of the world.

Paper and pencil are forbidden here. Brent wants to keep track of everything we do. Sometimes, I believe he even wants to keep track of what we think. I’ll use this small journal as my lifeline to you. There are things I want to tell you, in good time. Things that will never appear in the on-line records at GeneDyne. Brent is, in many ways, still a boy, with boyish ideas; and one of those ideas is that he can control what others do and think.

I hope you will not worry when I tell you such things. But I forget; when you read this, it will be with me by your side. And these will be but memories. Perhaps the passage of time will allow me to laugh at myself and my petty complaints. Or feel pride at what we have accomplished here.

It’s a long walk out to this kiva, and you know how poor a rider I am. But I think it does me good, to spend this time with you. The journal will be safe here, under the sand. No­body leaves the facility except the security director, and he seems to have his own strange desert business to attend to.

I will come again, soon.

May 25

My darling wife,

It is a terribly hot day. I keep forgetting how much water one needs in this frightful desert. I will have to bring two canteens next time.

It is no wonder, in this waterless landscape, that the entire religion of the Anasazi was directed at the control of nature. Here, in the kiva, is where the rain priests called on the Thunderbird to bring the rain.

Oh, male divinity!

With your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us,

With the zigzag lightning flung out on high over your head, come to us soaring,

With these I wish the foam floating on the flowing water over the roots of the great corn,

Happily abundant dark clouds I desire,

Happily abundant dark mists I desire,

Happily may fair blue corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

This was how they prayed. It is a very ancient desire, this thirst for knowledge and power, this hunger to control the secrets of nature, to bring the rain.

But the rain did not come. Just as it does not come today.

What would they think if they could see us now, laboring day after day, in our warrens beneath the earth, working not only to control nature, but to shape it to our will?

I can write no more today. The problem I’ve been given is demanding all my time and energy. It’s hard to escape it, even here. But I will return soon, my love.

June 4

Dearest Amiko,

Please forgive my long absence from this place. Our sched­ule in the laboratory has been fiendish. Were it not for the requisite decontaminations, I believe Brent would have us working round the clock.

Brent. How much have I told you about him?

It’s strange. I never knew that I could feel such profound respect for a man, and yet dislike him at the same time. I suppose I might even hate him. Even when he’s not actually pushing me to work faster, I can still see his face, frowning, because the results are not as he would like. I hear him whis­pering in my ear: Just five more minutes. Just one more test series.

Brent is probably the most complex person I’ve ever met. Brilliant, silly, immature, cool, ruthless. He has an enormous internal storehouse of witty aphorisms which he brings forth for any occasion, quoting them with great delight. He gives away millions while arguing bitterly over hundreds. He can be suffocatingly kind to one person and unbearably cruel to the next. His knowledge of music is extraordinary. He owns Beethoven’s last and finest piano, the one that supposedly prompted him to write his final three sonatas. I can only guess at the price.

I’ll never forget the first time I spoke to him. It was when I was still working in GeneDyne Manchester, shortly after my breakthrough with GEF, the filtration system. Our prelimi­nary results were excellent, and everyone was excited. The system promised to cut production time in half. The team in the transfection lab were beside themselves. They told me they were going to nominate me for president.

That’s when the call came from Brent Scopes. I assumed it was congratulatory; perhaps another bonus. But instead, he asked me to come to Boston, on the next plane. I had to drop everything, he said, to assume leadership of a critical GeneDyne project. He didn’t even allow me to finish the final tests on GEF; I had to leave that to my staff at Manchester.

You remember my trip to Boston. I’m sure I must have seemed evasive on my return, and for that I am sorry. Brent has a way of pulling you in behind his banner, of electrifying you with his own enthusiasm. But there seems no reason not to tell you about it now. It will be in all the newspapers in a matter of months, anyway.

My task—putting it simply—was to synthesize artificial blood. To use the vast resources of GeneDyne to genetically engineer human blood. The preparatory work had already been done, Brent said. But he wanted someone with my back­ground, and my expertise, to see it through. My work on the GEF filtration process made me the perfect choice.

It was anoble idea, I admit, and Brent’s delivery was su­perb. Never again would hospitals suffer from blood shortages and emergencies, he said. No longer would people have to fear contaminated transfusions. No longer would people with rare blood types die for lack of a match. GeneDyne’s artificial blood would be free of contamination, would match all types, and would be available in limitless quantities.

And so I left Manchester—I left you, our home, everything I hold dear—and came to this desolate place. To pursue a dream of Brent Scopes, and, with any luck, make the world a better place. The dream lives. But its cost is very high.

June 12

Dearest Amiko,

I have decided to use this journal to continue the story I began in my last entry. Perhaps that was my purpose all along. All I can tell you is that, after leaving this kiva on my last visit, I felt a tremendous sense of release. So I will continue, for my own sake if not for posterity.

I remember one morning, perhaps four months ago. I was holding a flask of blood. It was the blood of a human being, yet it had been manufactured by a form of life as far removed from human as possible: streptococcus, the bacterium that lives in the soil, among other places. I had spliced the human he­moglobin gene into strep and forced it to produce human hemoglobin. Vast quantities of human hemoglobin.

Why use streptococcus? Because we know more about strep than about almost any other form of life on the planet. We have mapped its entire genome. We know how to snip apart its DNA, tuck in a gene, and sew everything back together.

You will forgive me if I simplify the process. Using cells taken from the lining of a human cheek (my own), I removed a single gene located on the fourth chromosome, 16s rDNA, locus D3401. I multiplied it a millionfold, inserted the copies into the strep bacteria, and grew them in large vats filled with a protein solution. Despite how it sounds, my dear, this part wasn’t difficult. It has been done many times before with other genes, including the gene for human insulin.

We made this bacterium—this extremely primitive form of life—ever so slightly human. Each bacterium carried a tiny, invisible piece of a human being inside it. This human piece, in essence, took over the functions of the bacterium and forced it to do one thing: produce human hemoglobin.

And that, to me, is the magic—the irreducible truth of genetics, the promise that will never grow stale.

But this is also where the difficult work really began.

Perhaps I should explain. The hemoglobin molecule con­sists of a protein group, called a globin, with four heme groups riding shotgun on it. It collects oxygen in the lungs, ex­changes this oxygen with carbon dioxide in the tissues, and then dumps carbon dioxide into the lungs to be exhaled.

A very clever, very complicated molecule.

Unfortunately, hemoglobin by itself is deadly poisonous. If you injected naked hemoglobin into a human being, it would probably be fatal. The hemoglobin needs to be enclosed in something. Normally, this would be a red blood cell.

We therefore had to design something that would seal up the hemoglobin, make it safe. A microscopic sack, if you will. But something that would “breathe,” that would allow oxy­gen and carbon dioxide to pass through.

Our solution was to create these little “sacks” out of pieces of membrane from ruptured cells. I used a special enzyme called lyase.

Then came the final problem: to purify the hemoglobin. This may sound like the simplest problem of all.

It was not.

We grew the bacteria in huge vats. As the amount of he­moglobin produced by the bacteria built up, it poisoned the vat. Everything died. We were left with a soup of crap: mol­ecules of hemoglobin mixed with dead and dying bacteria; bits of DNA and RNA; chromosomal fragments; rogue bac­teria.

The trick was to purify this soup—to separate the healthy hemoglobin from all the junk—so that we would end up with pure human hemoglobin and nothing else. And it had to be extremely pure. Getting a blood transfusion is not like taking a tiny pill. Many pints of this substance might go inside a human being. Even the slightest impurities, multiplied by those quantities, could cause unpredictable side effects.

It was around this time that we got word of what was going on back in Boston. The marketing people were already study­ing—in great secrecy—how to market our genetically engi­neered blood. They assembled focus groups of ordinary citizens. They discovered that most people are terrified of get­ting a blood transfusion because they fear contamination: from hepatitis, from AIDS, from other diseases. People wanted to be reassured that the blood they were receiving was pure and safe.

So our unfinished product was dubbed PurBlood. And the decree came down from corporate headquarters: henceforth, in all papers, journals, notes, and conversations, the product would be called PurBlood. Anyone calling it by its trade name, Hemocyl, would be disciplined. In particular, the mar­keting decree stated, any use of the word “genetic engineer­ing” or “artificial” was verboten. The public did not like the idea of genetically engineered anything. They didn’t like ge­netically engineered tomatoes, they didn’t like genetically en­gineered milk, and they really hated the phrase “genetically engineered artificial human blood.” I guess I can’t blame them, really. The thought of having such a substance pumped into something as inviolate as one’s own veins has to be dis­turbing to a layman.

My love, the sun is growing low in the sky, and I must leave. But I will return tomorrow. I’ll tell Brent I need a day off. It’s not a lie. If you only knew how pouring out my soul to you on these pages has lifted a great weight from my shoul­ders.

June 13

Dearest Amiko,

I come now to the most difficult part of my story. The part, in fact, that I was not sure until now I could bring myself to tell you. I may yet burn these pages, if my resolve weakens. But it is a secret I can no longer keep within myself.

... So I began the purification process. We fermented the solution to free the hemoglobin from its bacterial prison. We centrifuged it to clear out the refuse. We forced it through ceramic micron filters. We fractionated it. To no avail.

You see, hemoglobin is extremely delicate. You cannot heat it; you cannot use overly strong chemicals; you cannot sterilize or distill it. Each time I attempted to purify the he­moglobin, I ended up destroying it. The molecule lost its del­icate structure: it “denatured.” It became useless.

A more delicate purification process was required. And so Brent suggested we try my own GEF filtration process.

I realized immediately that he was right. There was no rea­son not to. It must have been misplaced modesty on my part that kept it from occurring to me before.

The process I’d been working on in Manchester was a type of modified gel electrophoresis, an electric potential that drew precisely the correct molecular weight molecule through a set of gel filters.

Setting up the process took time, however—time during which Brent grew increasingly impatient. At last, I was able to purify six pints of PurBlood using the gel process.

The GEF process was successful beyond my wildest hopes. Using four of the six pints as samples, I was able to prove the mixture was pure down to sixteen parts per million. Thus, out of one million hemoglobin molecules, there were no more than sixteen foreign particles. And probably less.

This may sound pure. And it is pure enough for most drugs. But, in this case, it was not. The FDA had decided, with typical capriciousness, that 100 parts per billion would be safe. Sixteen parts per million was not. The number 16—it will haunt me forever. In scientific terms, a purity of 1.6 X 10^-7.

Please don’t misunderstand. I believed—and I still be­lieve—that PurBlood is much purer than that. I just couldn’t prove it. The difference is crucial. But to me, the distinction was unfair and artificial.

There was one test for purity—the ultimate test—that I had not performed, because it was discouraged under FDA regulations. I secretly performed that test. Please forgive me, my love—one night, in the low-security lab, I opened a vein in my arm and bled out a pint. Then I replaced it with a transfusion of PurBlood.

It was rash, perhaps. But PurBlood passed with flying colors. Nothing happened to me, and all medical tests proved it was safe. Naturally, I couldn’t report the results of that test, but it satisfied me that PurBlood was pure.

So I did something else. I infinitesimally diluted my last pint of PurBlood with distilled water, two hundred to one, and ran the array of tests that automatically calculated and recorded purity. The result was, of course, a purity of 80 parts per billion. Well within the FDA safety range.

That was all I had to do. I did not make a report, I did not change figures or falsify data. When Scopes downloaded the test results that night, he knew what they meant. The next day he congratulated me. He was beside himself.

The question I now ask myself—the question you may ask me—is why did I do it?

It wasn’t for the money. I have never really cared that much about money. You know that, my darling Amiko. Money is more trouble than it’s worth.

It wasn’t for fame, which is a terrific nuisance.

It wasn’t to save lives, although I have rationalized that this was the reason.

I think perhaps it was pure, naked desire. A desire to solve this last problem, to take that final step to completion. It is the same desire that led Einstein to suggest the terrible power of the atom in a letter to Roosevelt; it is the same desire that led Oppenheimer to build the bomb and test it not thirty miles from here; it is the same desire that led the Anasazi priests to meet in this stone chamber and exhort the Thunderbird to send the rain. It was the desire to conquer nature.

But—and this is what haunts me, what has driven me to commit this all to paper—the success of PurBlood does not alter the fact that I cheated.

I am only too well aware of this. Especially now ... now that PurBlood has gone on to large-scale production, and I am banging my head against another, even more insoluble problem.

Anyway, dearest one, I hope you can find it in your heart to understand. Once I am free of this place, I will make it my life’s resolve never to be apart from you again.

And perhaps that will be sooner than you think. I’m be­ginning to suspect certain people here of— but more on that some other time. I had best end this for today.

You will never know what being able to speak this secret has done for me.

June 30

It took me a long time to get here today. I had to take a special route, a secret route. The woman who cleans my room has been looking at me strangely, and I don’t want her fol­lowing me. She’ll talk to Brent about it, just as my lab assis­tant and the network administrator have done.

It’s because I’ve discovered the key. And now I must be ceaselessly vigilant.

You can tell them by the way they leave things on their desks. Their messiness gives them away. And they are pol­luted with germs. Billions of bacteria and viruses hiding in every crevice of their bodies. I wish I could speak of it to Brent, but I must continue as if nothing had happened, as if all were normal.

I don’t think I had better come here again.

Carson was silent. The sun settled toward the horizon, its shape ballooning in the layers of air. The old stone walls of the ruin smelled of dust and heat, mingled with the faint scent of corruption. One of the horses whinnied with impatience, and the other answered.

At the sound of the horses, de Vaca started. Then she quickly stuffed the journal in the container, placed it into the sipapu, covered the hole with the flat rock, and smoothed the warm concealing sand over the spot.

She straightened up, brushing off her jeans. “We’d better get back,” she said. “There’ll be questions if we miss the emer­gency drill.”

They climbed out of the ruined kiva, mounted their horses, and reined slowly in the direction of Mount Dragon.

“Burt, of all people,” de Vaca muttered as they rode. “Fak­ing his data.”

Carson was silent, lost in thought.

“And then using himself as guinea pig,” de Vaca went on.

Carson roused himself, startled by a sudden realization. “I guess that’s what he meant by ‘poor alpha,’ ” he said.

“What?”

“Teece told me that Burt has been raving about ‘poor al­pha, poor alpha.’ I guess he meant himself, as the alpha test subject.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t call him a guinea pig, though. Making himself the alpha was very much in char­acter. A man like Burt wouldn’t deliberately risk thousands of lives on unproven blood. He was under incredible time pressure to prove its safety. So he tested it on himself. It’s not unheard of. It isn’t exactly illegal to do something like that, either.” He looked at de Vaca. “You have to admire the guy for putting his life on the line. And he had the last laugh. He proved the blood was safe.”

Carson fell silent. Something was teasing the back of his mind; something that had surfaced as they read the journal. Now it remained just out of the reach of consciousness, like a forgotten dream.

“Sounds like he’s still having the last laugh. In a nuthouse somewhere.”

Carson frowned. “That’s a pretty callous remark, even for you.”

“Maybe so,” de Vaca replied. Then she paused. “I guess it’s just that everyone talks about Burt like he was larger than life. This is the guy who invented GeneDyne’s filtration pro­cess, synthesized PurBlood. Now we find he faked his data.”

There it was again. Suddenly, Carson realized what it was in the journal that had raised an unconscious flag. “Susana, what do you know about GEF?”

She looked back at him, puzzled.

“The filtration process Burt invented when he was working at Manchester,” Carson went on. You just mentioned it. We’ve always simply assumed the filtration process works on X-FLU. What if it doesn’t?”

De Vaca’s look of puzzlement turned to scorn. “We’ve tested X-FLU again and again to make sure that the strain coming out of the filter is absolutely pure.”

“Pure, yes. But is it the same strain that went in?”

“How could the filtration process change the strain? It makes no sense.”

“Think about how GEF works,” Carson replied- “You set up an electrical field that draws the heavy protein molecules through a gel filter, right? The field is set precisely to the molecular weight of the molecule you want. All the other molecules are trapped in the gel, while what you want emerges from the other end of the filter.”

“So?”

“What if the weak electrical field, or the gel itself, causes subtle changes in the protein structure? What if what comes out is different from what went in? The molecular weight would be the same, but the structure would be subtly altered. A straightforward chemical test wouldn’t catch it. All it takes is the tiniest change in the surface protein of a virus particle to create a new strain.”

“No way,” said de Vaca. “GEF is a patented, tested process. They’ve already used it to synthesize other products. If there was anything wrong, it would’ve shown up a long time ago.”

Carson reined in Roscoe and stood motionless. “Have any of the tests for purity we’ve done looked at that possibility? That specific possibility?”

De Vaca was silent.

“Susana, it’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”

She look at him for a long moment.

“All right,” she said at last. “Let’s check it out.”

The Dark Harbor Institute was a large, rambling Victorian house perched on a remote headland above the Atlantic. The institute counted one hundred and twenty honorary members on its rolls, although at any given time only a dozen or so were actually in residence. The responsibility of the people who came to the institute was to do only one thing: to think. The requirements for membership were equally simple: ge­nius.

Members of the institute were very fond of the rambling Victorian mansion, which 120 years of Maine storms had left without a single right angle. They especially liked the anonymity, since even the institute’s closest neighbors—mostly summer visitors—did not have the vaguest idea of who those bespectacled men and women were who came and went so unpredictably.

Edwin Bannister, associate managing editor of the Boston Globe, checked out of his inn and directed the placing of his bags into the back of his Range Rover, his head still throbbing from the effects of the bad bordeaux he’d been served at the previous evening’s dinner. Tipping the porter, he walked around the Rover, eyeing as he did so the little town of Dark Harbor, with its fishing boats and church steeple and salt air. Very quaint. Too damn quaint. He preferred Boston, and the smoke-filled atmosphere of the Black Key Tavern.

He slid behind the wheel and consulted the hand-drawn map that had been faxed to him at the newspaper. Five miles to the institute. Despite the assurances, a part of him still doubted whether or not his host would really be there.

Bannister accelerated through a yellow light and swung onto County Road 24. The car lurched over one pothole, then another, as it left the tiny town behind. The narrow road headed due east to the sea, then ran along a series of high bluffs over the Atlantic. He rolled down the window. From below, he could hear the distant thunder of the surf, the crying of gulls, the dolorous clang of a bell buoy.

The road ran into a stand of spruce, then emerged at a high meadow covered with blueberry bushes. A log fence ran across the meadow, its rustic length interrupted by a wooden gate and shingled guardhouse. Bannister stopped at the gate and powered down his window.

“Bannister. With the Globe,”he said, not bothering to look at the guard.

“Yes sir.” The gate hummed open, and Bannister noted with amusement that the rustic logs of the gate were backed with bars of black steel. No car bombers crashing this party, he thought.

The mansion’s oak-paneled foyer seemed empty, and Ban­nister walked through to the lounge. A fire blazed in an enor­mous hearth, and a long series of casement windows looked out over the sea, sparkling in the morning light. The faint sound of music could be heard in the background.

At first, Bannister thought he was alone. Then, in a far corner, he spotted a man in a leather armchair, drinking cof­fee and reading a paper. The man was wearing white gloves. The newspaper rustled between them as its pages were turned.

The man looked up. “Edwin!” he said, smiling. “Thank you for coming.”

Bannister immediately recognized the unkempt hair, the freckles, the boyish looks, the retro sports jacket over black T-shirt. So he had come, after all.

“Good to see you, Brent,” Bannister said, taking the prof­fered armchair. He automatically glanced around for a waiter.

“Coffee?” Scopes asked. He had not offered to shake hands.

“Yes, please.”

“We help ourselves here,” Scopes said. “It’s over by the bookcase.”

Bannister hauled himself to his feet again, returning with a cup that promised to be less than satisfactory.

They sat in silence for a moment, and it dawned on Ban­nister that Scopes was listening to the music. He sipped his coffee and found it surprisingly good.

The piece ended. Scopes sighed with satisfaction, folded the newspaper carefully, and placed it next to an open brief­case beside his chair. He removed his ink-stained reading gloves and placed them on top of the paper.

“Bach’s Musical Offering,”he said. “Are you familiar with it?”

“Somewhat,” said Bannister, hoping that Scopes wouldn’t ask a question that would reveal the lie. Bannister knew next to nothing about music.

“One of the canons of the Offering is entitled ‘Quaerendo Invenietis.’ ‘By seeking, you will discover.’ It was Bach’s puz­zle, asking the listener to see if he could tell what intricate canonical code was used to create the music.”

Bannister nodded.

“I often think of this as a metaphor for genetics. You see the finished organism—such as a human being—and you wonder what intricate genetic code was used to create such a marvelous thing. And then you wonder, of course: If you were to change a tiny piece of this intricate code, how would that translate into flesh and blood? just as changing a single note in a canon can sometimes end up transforming the entire melody.”

Bannister reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a tape recorder, and showed it to Scopes, who nodded his approval. Turning on the device, Bannister settled back in his chair, his hands folded.

“Edwin, my company is in a bit of a predicament.”

“How so?” Bannister already knew this was going to be good. Anything that brought Scopes out of his aerie had to be good.

“You know about the attacks Charles Levine has been making against GeneDyne. I hoped that people would recognize him for what he is, but that’s been slow to happen. By hiding under the skirts of Harvard University, he acquired a credibility I wouldn’t have thought possible.” Scopes shook his head. “I’ve known Dr. Levine for over twenty years. I was once a close friend of his, in fact. It pains me a great deal to see what has happened to him. I mean, all those claims about his father, and then it turns out he was an SS officer. Now, I don’t begrudge a man for protecting the memory of his father, but did he have to lionize him with such an offensive story? It just shows that this man holds truth secondary to achieving his own ends. It shows that one must scrutinize every word he utters. The press hasn’t really done that. Except for the Globe, thanks to you.”

“We never publish anything without verifying the facts.”

“I know, and I appreciate that. And I’m sure the people of Boston appreciate it, given that GeneDyne is one of the state’s larger employers.”

Bannister inclined his head.

“In any case, Edwin, I can’t sit still and take these scurrilous attacks any longer. But I need your help.”

“Brent, you know I can’t help you,” Bannister said.

“Of course, of course,” Brent waved his hand dismissively. “Here’s the situation. Obviously, we’re working on a secret project at Mount Dragon. It isn’t secret because of any par­ticular danger factor, but because we face tremendous com­petition. We’re in a winner-take-all business. You know how it works. The first company to patent a drug makes billions, while the rest eat their R-and-D investments.”

Bannister nodded again.

“Edwin, I want to assure you—as someone whose judgment I respect—that nothing uncommonly dangerous is going on at Mount Dragon. You have my word on that. We have the only Level-5 facility in existence, and our safety record is the best of any pharmaceutical company in the world. Those are facts of record. But don’t take my word for it.”

He slid a file out of his briefcase and placed it before Ban­nister.

“This folder contains the entire safety record of GeneDyne. Normally, this information is proprietary. I want you to have it for your story. Just remember: It didn’t come from me.”

Bannister looked at the file without touching it. “Thanks, Brent. You know, however, that I can’t just take your word for it that you aren’t working on dangerous viruses. Dr. Levine’s charges—”

Scopes chuckled. “I know. The doomsday virus.” He leaned forward. “And that’s the primary reason I’ve asked you here. Would you care to know just what this terrible, inconceivably deadly, virus is? The one that Dr. Levine says may end the world?”

Bannister nodded, the many years of professionalism successfully concealing his eagerness.

Scopes was looking at him, grinning mischievously. “Ed­win, this is off the record, of course.”

“I would prefer—” Bannister began.

Scopes reached over and turned off the tape recorder. “There is a Japanese corporation working on a very similar line of research. On this particular type of germ-line research, they’re actually ahead of us. If they realize its ramifications before we do, then we’re dead. Winner take all, Edwin. We’re talking about a fifteen-billion-dollar annual market here. I’d hate to see the Japanese increase their trade deficit with us, and have to close down GeneDyne Boston, all because Edwin Bannister at the Globe revealed what virus we were working with.”

“I see your point,” Bannister said, swallowing hard. Sometimes it was necessary to work off the record.

“Good. It’s called influenza.”

“What is?” Bannister said.

Scopes’s grin widened. “We’re working with the flu virus. And that is the only virus we are working with at Mount Dragon. That is Levine’s so-called doomsday virus.”

Scopes sat back with a look of triumph.

Bannister felt the sudden, desperate emptiness of a lead story disappearing beneath his fingers. “That’s it? Just flu vi­ruses?”

“That’s right. You have my solemn promise. I want you to be able to write with a clear conscience that GeneDyne is not working with dangerous viruses.”

“But why the flu?”

Scopes looked surprised. “Isn’t it obvious? Countless dollars in productivity are lost every year because of flu. We are work­ing on a cure for the flu. Not like these flu shots that you have to take every year, and that don’t work half the time. I’m talking about a permanent, onetime cure.”

“My God,” said Bannister.

“Just think what that will do to our stock price if we suc­ceed. Those who own GeneDyne stock are going to become rich. Especially considering how cheap the stock has become recently, thanks to our friend Levine. Not rich tomorrow, but in a few months, when we announce the discovery and go into phased FDA testing.” Scopes smiled, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “And we’re going to succeed.” Then he reached over and switched on the tape recorder.

Bannister said nothing. He was trying to imagine just how large a number fifteen billion was.

“We are taking vigorous action against Dr. Levine and his libelous statements,” Scopes continued. “You’ve done an ex­cellent job so far in reporting our lawsuits against Dr. Levine and Harvard. I have news on that front. Harvard has revoked the university charter for Levine’s foundation. They’ve been keeping the revocation under wraps, but it’s about to be made public. I thought you might be interested. We will be drop­ping our lawsuit against Harvard, of course.”

“I see,” said Bannister, thinking quickly. There might be a way to salvage this, after all.

“The Faculty Committee on Tenure is reviewing Dr. Lev­ine’s contract. There is a clause in all university contracts allowing tenure to be revoked in cases of ‘moral turpitude.’ ” Scopes laughed softly. “Sounds like something out of the Vic­torian Age. But it’s cooked Levine’s goose, I can tell you.”

“I see.”

“We’re not yet sure how he did it, but certain grains of truth in his otherwise false allegations prove he used illegal, not to mention unethical, methods to gain confidential in­formation from GeneDyne.” Scopes slid another folder toward Bannister. “You’ll find the details in here. I’m sure you will find out more in your own fashion. Obviously, my name must not appear in connection with any of this. I’m only telling you this because you’re the one reporter whose ethics I most respect, and I want to help you write a balanced, fair article. Let the other newspapers write down everything Levine says without fact-checking. I know the Globe will be more careful.”

“We always check our facts,” said Bannister.

Scopes nodded. “I’m counting on you to set the record straight.”

Bannister stiffened slightly. “Brent, all you can count on is a story that presents a strictly objective, accurate rendition of the facts.”

“Exactly,” Scopes said. “That is why I’m going to be totally honest with you. There is one charge Levine made that is partially true.”

“And that is—?”

“There was a death at Mount Dragon recently. We were keeping the matter quiet until the family could be notified, but Levine somehow found out about it.” Scopes paused, his face growing serious at the memory. “One of our best scien­tists was killed in an industrial accident. As you’ll see in the first folder I gave you, certain safety procedures were not fol­lowed. We immediately notified the necessary authorities, who dispatched inspectors to Mount Dragon. It’s a formality, of course, and the lab remains open.”

Scopes paused. “I knew the woman well. She was—how shall I say it?—an original. Dedicated to her work. In certain ways, perhaps a bit difficult. But undeniably brilliant. You know, it’s very difficult to be a brilliant woman in science, even today. She had a rough time of it until she got to GeneDyne. I lost a friend as well as a scientist.” He looked briefly at Bannister, then dropped his eyes. “The CEO is ultimately responsible. This is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”

Bannister watched him, genuinely moved. “How did she—?” he began,

“She died of a head injury,” Scopes said. Then he looked at his watch. “Damn! I’m running late. Anything else you’d care to ask, Edwin?”

Bannister picked up his tape recorder. “Not at the mo­ment—”

“Good. I hope you’ll excuse me. Call me if you have any questions.”

Bannister watched the thin, slight figure of Scopes walk out of the room, toes pointing toward the walls, lugging the briefcase that seemed three sizes too large for him. An amaz­ing fellow. Worth an amazing amount of money.

As Bannister wound his way back along the Atlantic head­lands, he kept returning to that fifteen-billion-dollar figure, and what such an announcement would do to the value of GeneDyne stock. He wondered what GeneDyne was trading at right now. Come to think of it, he’d have to check that out. It wouldn’t hurt to put in a call to his broker and stick his money in something a little more exciting than tax-free munis.

Carson glanced up, peering through his visor at the oversized clock on the lab wall. The amber LED display read 10:45 P.M.

An hour earlier, the Fever Tank had been full of frenzied sound, as the shriek of the alert siren sounded the drill and the suited bodies tramped down the low corridors. Now the lab was once again deserted and almost preternaturally quiet, the only audible sound the whisper of air in Carson’s bluesuit and the faint hum of the negative-airflow system. The chimpan­zees, disturbed by the drill, had finally ceased their hooting and screaming and had fallen into troubled sleep. Outside his own brightly lit lab, the corridor glowed a subdued red, and the cramped spaces of the Fever Tank were full of shadows.

Because the Fever Tank was decontaminated each week-night and again over the weekend, Carson had rarely been inside this late. Although the red nocturnal illumination was creepy and a little disorienting, he preferred it to what had come just before. The full-scale stage-one alert drills—which had begun to supplant the less severe stage-two and stage-three drills since Brandon-Smith’s death—were grim affairs. Nye was now personally supervising the drills, directing events from the security substation on the bottom level of the Fever Tank, and his brusque tones had rung irritatingly through Carson’s headset.

The one advantage of the frequent drills was that Carson had become more adept at moving around the Fever Tank in his bluesuit. He found that he could maneuver quickly through the corridors and around the labs, avoiding protru­sions deftly, hooking and unhooking his air hoses to his suit instinctively, like breathing.

He looked away from the clock toward de Vaca, who was staring skeptically back at him.

“Just how do you plan to test this theory of yours?” came her voice over the private channel.

Instead of taking the time to answer, Carson turned to the small lab freezer, dialed its combination, and removed two small test tubes containing X-FLU samples. The tops of the test tubes were covered with thick rubber seals. The virus existed as a small white crystalline film at the bottom of each tube, If I handle this stuff a million times, he thought, I’ll never get used to the fact that it’s potentially more lethal to the human race than the largest hydrogen bomb. He placed both tubes inside the bioprophylaxis table and sealed it carefully, waiting for the samples to reach room temperature.

“First,” he said, “we’re going to split open the virus and get rid of the genetic material.”

Moving to a silver cabinet on the far wall of the lab, he removed some reagents and two sealed bottles labeled DEOXYRIBASE.

“Give me a number-four Soloway, please,” he said to de Vaca.

Since hypodermics were considered too dangerous for any­thing other than animal inoculation in the Fever Tank, other devices for transferring materials had to be used. The Soloway Displacer, named after its inventor, used blunt-ended plastic vacuum-needles to siphon liquid from one container to an­other.

Carson waited for de Vaca to place the instrument inside the bioprophylaxis table. Then, moving his gloves through the rubber openings in the front end of the table, he inserted one nozzle of the Soloway device into a reagent and the other through the rubber seal in one of the two test tubes. A cloudy liquid squirted into the tube. Gingerly, Carson swirled the tube in one gloved hand. The liquid became clear.

“We just killed a trillion viruses,” Carson said. “Now to undress them. Take off their protein coats.”

Using the device, Carson added a few drops of a blue liquid through the rubber seal, then removed .5 cc’s of the resulting solution, injecting it into the deoxyribase container. He waited while the enzyme broke up the viral RNA, first into its base pairs, then into nucleic acids.

“Now, to get rid of the nucleic acids.” He tested the precise acidity of the solution, then performed a remote-assist titration with a high-pH chemical. Then he drained off the so­lution, centrifuged out the precipitate, and transferred the pure, unfiltered X-FLU molecules that remained to a small flask.

“Let’s see what this little old molecule looks like,” he said.

“X-ray diffraction?”

“You got it.”

Carson carefully placed the X-FLU flask into a yellow bio-box and sealed it. Then, holding the box carefully in front of him, he removed his air hose and followed de Vaca down the corridor toward the central hub of the Fever Tank, ducking at last through a hatchway into a deserted lab. A single red light glowed from the ceiling. Already small, the compart­ment was cramped by the eight-foot stainless-steel column that dominated the center of the room. Next to the column was an instrument housing that contained a-computer work­station. There were no knobs, switches or dials on the col­umn; the diffraction machine was controlled entirely by computer.

“Warm it up,” Carson said. “I’ll prepare the specimen.”

De Vaca sat down at the workstation and began typing. There was a click and a soft, low hum that gradually increased in pitch until it disappeared into inaudibility, followed by the hiss of air being evacuated from the interior of the column. De Vaca typed in additional commands, tuning the diffrac­tion beam to the correct wavelength. In a few moments, the terminal beeped its readiness.

“Open the mount, please,” Carson said.

De Vaca typed a command, and a titanium-alloy stage mount slid out of the base of the column. It contained a small removable well.

Using a micropipette, Carson removed a single drop of the protein solution and placed it in the well. The stage mount slid shut with a hiss.

“Chill.”

There was a loud drumming noise as the machine froze the drop of solution, lowering its temperature toward absolute zero.

“Vacuum.”

Carson waited impatiently as the air was removed from the specimen chamber. The resulting vacuum would force all wa­ter molecules from the solution. As it did so, a faint electro­magnetic field would allow the protein molecules to settle into a lowest-energy configuration. What remained would be a microscopic film of pure protein molecules, spaced with mathematical regularity on the titanium plate, held steady at two degrees above absolute zero.

“We’re green,” de Vaca said.

“Then let’s go.”

What happened next always seemed like magic to Carson. The huge machine began to generate X-rays, shooting them at the speed of light down the vacuum inside the column. When the high-energy X- rays struck the protein molecules, they would be diffracted by the crystal lattice structures. The scattered beams would be digitally recorded with an array of CCD chips and sent, as an image, to the computer screen.

Carson watched as a blurred image appeared on the screen, bands of dark and light. “Focus, please,” he said.

Using an optical mouse, de Vaca manipulated a series of diffraction gratings inside the column, which tuned and fo­cused the X-rays onto the specimen at the bottom. Slowly, the blurred image came into focus: a complicated series of dark and light circles, reminding Carson of the surface of a pond stippled with rain.

“Great,” he said softly. “Easy does it.”

The X-ray diffraction machine took just the right touch, Carson knew, and de Vaca had that touch.

“That’s as sharp as it gets,” she said. “Ready for film and data feed.”

“I want sixteen angles, please,” Carson said.

De Vaca typed in the commands, and the CCD chips cap­tured the diffraction pattern from sixteen separate angles.

“Series complete,” she said.

“Let’s feed this into the central computer.”

The machine’s computer began loading the diffraction data into the GeneDyne net, where it was sent across a dedicated land line at 110,000 bits per second to the GeneDyne super­computer in Boston. All Mount Dragon jobs had high pri­ority, and the supercomputer immediately began translating the X-ray diffraction pattern into a three-dimensional model of the X-FLU molecule. For over a minute, those working late in the GeneDyne home office noticed a perceptible slowdown while several trillion floating-point operations were per­formed and fed back to Mount Dragon, where the image was reassembled on the diffraction machine’s workstation.

An image appeared on the workstation screen: a breathtakingly complex cluster of vibrantly colored spheres, glowing in rainbows of rich purples, reds, oranges, and yellows: the protein molecule that made up the viral coat of X-FLU.

“There it is,” Carson said, peering at the image over de Vaca’s shoulder.

“The cause of such terrible suffering and death,” came de Vaca’s voice in his headset. “And look how beautiful it is.”

Carson continued gazing at the image for a moment, mes­merized. Then he straightened up. “Let’s purify the second test tube with the GEF filtration process. It’s almost decontam time, we have to vacate the Tank for an hour or two anyway. Then we’ll come back, take another look at it, and see if the molecule has changed.”

“Lots of luck,” de Vaca grumbled. “But I’m too tired to object. Let’s go.”

By the time the second filtered X-FLU molecule crystallized on the computer screen, dawn was breaking over the desert floor fifty feet above their heads. Once again Carson marveled at the beauty of the molecule: how surreal it was, and how deadly.

“Let’s compare the two molecules side by side,” he said.

De Vaca split the screen into two windows and called up the image of the unaltered X-FLU molecule from the com­puter’s memory, displaying it side by side with the filtered molecule.

“They look the same to me,” she said.

“Rotate them both ninety degrees along the X axis.”

“No difference,” de Vaca said.

“Ninety degrees along the Y axis.”

They watched as the images rotated on the computer screen. Suddenly, the silence turned electric.

“Madre de Dios,”breathed de Vaca.

“Look how one of the tertiary folds of the filtered molecule has uncoiled!” said Carson excitedly. “The weak sulfur bonds along the entire side have become unstuck.”

“Same molecule, same chemical composition, different shape,” said de Vaca. “You were right.”

“What’s that?” Carson asked, looking at her with a grin.

“Okay, cabrуn. You win this one.”

“And it’s the shape of a protein molecule that makes all the difference.” Carson stepped away from the diffraction ma­chine. “Now we know why X-FLU keeps mutating back to its deadly form. The last thing we always do before the in vivo test is to purify the solution using the GEF process. And it’s the GEF process itself that causes the mutation.”

“Burt’s original filtration technique was to blame,” de Vaca answered. “He was doomed from the beginning.”

Carson nodded. “Yet nobody, least of all Burt, thought the process itself could be flawed. It’s been used before without any problems. And here we’ve been banging our heads against the wrong door all this time. The gene splicing, everything else, was fine to begin with. It’s like sifting through the wreck­age of a plane crash to determine the cause of an accident, when in reality the problem was faulty directions from the control tower.”

He leaned wearily against a cabinet. The full significance of the discovery began to sink in, like a flame in his gut. “Hot damn, Susana,” he breathed. “After all this time, we’ve solved it at last! All we need to do is change the filtration process. It may take some time to correct, but we know the real culprit now. X-FLU is as good as manufactured.” He could almost picture the expression on Scopes’s face.

De Vaca was silent.

“You agree, don’t you?” Carson prompted.

“Yes,” said de Vaca.

“So what’s the problem? Why the long face?”

She looked at him for a long moment. “We know the flaw in the filtration process causes mutations in the X-FLU protein coat. What I want to know is, what the hell does it do to PurBlood?”

Carson stared back at her, not comprehending. “Susana, who cares?”

“What do you mean, who cares?” de Vaca said, flaring up. “PurBlood could be dangerous as hell!”

“It’s not the same thing at all,” Carson replied. “We don’t know that the filtration flaw would affect anything other than the X-FLU molecule. And besides, the kind of purity neces­sary for X-FLU doesn’t necessarily apply to hemoglobin.”

“Easy for you to say, cabrуn. You’re not putting the stuff into your veins.”

Carson fought to keep his temper. This woman was at­tempting to spoil the greatest triumph of his life. “Susana, think a moment. Burt tested it on himself, and he survived. It’s been in phased FDA testing now for months. If anybody had become sick, we’d have heard of it. Teece would have known. And, believe me, the FDA would have yanked it.”

“Nobody getting sick? So tell me, where’s Burt now? In a fucking hospital, that’s where he is!”

“His nervous breakdown came months after he tested him­self with PurBlood.”

“There still might be a connection. Maybe it breaks down in the body, or something.” She looked at him defiantly. “I want to know what the GEF process does to PurBlood.”

Carson sighed deeply. “Look. It’s seven-thirty in the morn­ing. We’ve just made one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of GeneDyne. And I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to report this to Singer. Then I’m going to take a shower, and get some well-deserved rest.”

“Go ahead and get your gold star,” de Vaca snapped. “I’m going to stay here and finish what we started.”

She switched off the machine, disconnected the air hose from her suit valve with an angry yank, then turned and marched out of the compartment. As he watched her go, Carson heard other voices on the intercom, people announc­ing their arrival in the lab. The workday was beginning. He wearily pushed himself away from the cabinet. God, he was tired. De Vaca could tinker with PurBlood as much as she liked. He was going to spread the good news.

Carson stepped outside, breathing in the cool morning air with relish. He was tired, but elated. While there might be other snags ahead, he knew that this, at long last, was the home stretch.

Ducking back into the administration building, he bounded up the stairs and headed for Singer’s corner office. At the far end of the main hall, he could see the director’s door standing open, the light reflecting brilliantly off the white surfaces.

As he entered the office, Carson saw Singer sitting near the kiva fireplace. Another man stood before Singer, his back to Carson; a man with a ponytail, wearing a safari hat.

Singer looked up. “Ah, Guy. Mr. Nye and I were just about to have a private meeting.”

Carson stepped forward. “John, there’s something you’ll be—”

Nye swiveled toward him, then waved his hand impa­tiently, cutting him off.

Singer leaned over the coffee table, adjusting a magazine. “Guy, another time, please.”

“Dr. Singer, it’s extremely important.”

Singer looked up again, staring at him, a puzzled expression on his face. Carson was shocked at how bloodshot his eyes were, and at the faint cast of yellow in the whites. Singer didn’t appear to have heard. Carson watched as the director plucked a malachite egg from the coffee table and began turn­ing it over and over in his hands.

Nye glowered at Carson, arms crossed, a dark expression on his face. “Well?” he said. “What’s so bloody important, then?”

Carson watched as Singer replaced the egg on the coffee table, adjusting its position carefully. Then the director’s hands slowly passed over each item on the table, uncon­sciously adjusting them, lining and squaring them up.

“Carson?” Nye spoke again, more sharply.

The director looked up at Carson as if he had forgotten he was there. His eyes were watering.

In an instant, other images forced their way into Carson’s consciousness. Brandon-Smith’s mannerism of rubbing her hands along her thighs time and again. The way the knick-knacks on her desk were so carefully arranged. The way Vanderwagon had carefully polished and lined up the tableware at dinner that night, just before putting out his own eye.

His eye. That was another thing: They all had bloodshot eyes.

Suddenly, everything became perfectly, terribly clear.

“It can wait,” Carson said, backing out the door.

Nye watched him closely as he left. Then, without a word, he stepped forward and shut the door.

In the darkness of his suite at the institute, Scopes washed his hands meticulously. Then he paced restlessly, awaiting the helicopter that would return him to Boston. His front room boasted a spectacular view of the stormy Atlantic, but the heavy curtains were closed.

Abruptly, Scopes paused in his pacing. Then he moved quickly toward his PowerBook, plugging its thin cable into a wall jack. He knew the institute had a dedicated link into Flashnet, and from there, with his access key, he could enter the GeneDyne network.

There was something that had been tugging at the back of his mind for days; something his discussion with the Globe reporter had at last made clear. It had been obvious from the start, given the quality of Levine’s data on Brandon-Smith and X-FLU, that the information had come from within GeneDyne, rather than from sources in the FDA or OSHA. But what had escaped Scopes’s attention was the timing of Levine’s information.

Levine had known details about X-FLU that even the nosy bastard Teece, the investigator, couldn’t have learned until arriving at Mount Dragon. Levine had aired his dirt on the Sammy Sanchez show while Teece was still nosing around in New Mexico. And there were no standard long-distance lines out of Mount Dragon. Scopes knew that the only commu­nications out of Mount Dragon were across the GeneDyne net. He knew it, because he had seen to it himself.

That meant Levine must not only have obtained his in­formation from a source within GeneDyne—he must have obtained it from a source within Mount Dragon. And that meant Levine had gained unprecedented access to GeneDyne cyberspace.

Once inside the GeneDyne net, Scopes worked silently and intently. Within minutes, he was within a region that he and he alone had access to. Here, his finger was on the pulse of the entire organization: terabytes of data covering every word of every project, e-mail, program file, and on-line chat gen­erated by GeneDyne employees over the last twenty-four hours. With the click of a few more keys, Scopes moved through his personal region of the network to a dedicated server containing a single massive application, which he had called, whimsically, Cypherspace.

Slowly, a strange landscape materialized on his small com­puter screen. It was like no landscape on earth, and too com­plex and symmetrical to have been conceived solely by a human mind. This was the virtual landscape of GeneDyne cyberspace. The Cypherspace application used direct links into the GeneDyne operating system to transform datastreams, memory contents, and all active processes into shapes, surfaces, shadows, and sounds. A strange sighing sound, like sustained musical notes, vibrated from the laptop’s speaker. To a layman such a landscape would appear surreal and bi­zarre, but to Scopes, who loved to wander through this strange junglescape late at night, it was as familiar as the backyard of his childhood.

Scopes wandered through the landscape, looking, listening, watching. For a moment, he was tempted to go to a special place in this landscape—a secret among secrets—but he re­alized there was no time.

Suddenly Scopes sat up and breathed out. In the landscape, there was something that was not right. It was a thread, in­visible of itself, manifest only by what it obscured. As Scopes crossed the invisible thread, the strange music dropped to silence. It was a tunnel of nothing, an absence of data, a black hole in cyberspace. Scopes knew what it must be: a hidden data channel, visible only because it had been hidden a little too well. Whoever had programmed this back channel was transcendentally clever. It couldn’t have been Levine. Levine was brilliant, but Scopes knew that Levine’s computer abili­ties had always been his weakest suit.

Levine had help.

Accessing his bag of digital tricks, Scopes selected a trans­parent relay, readying it for insertion in the channel. Then, slowly, with infinite care, he began to follow the thread, twist­ing and turning in its mazy path, losing it, picking it up again, working methodically back toward its hidden target.

Carson found de Vaca at work in Lab C. She had a small flask of PurBlood, still smoking from the deep freeze, sitting on the bioprophylaxis table.

“You’ve been gone for eight hours,” came her voice over the private channel. “What, did they fly you to Boston for your awards ceremony?”

Carson moved toward his stool and sat down numbly. “I was in the library archives,” he replied.

De Vaca swiveled her computer screen toward him. “Take a look at this.”

Carson sat still for a long moment. Finally, he turned to­ward the screen. More than anything, he did not want to know what de Vaca might have discovered.

On her screen were two images of phospholipid capsules, side by side. One was smooth and perfect. The other was ragged, full of ugly holes and tears where molecules had ob­viously been displaced from their normal order.

“The first image shows an unfiltered PurBlood ‘cell.’ This second image shows what happens to PurBlood after it passes through the GEF filtration.” The excitement in de Vaca’s voice was clear even through the speaker in Carson’s headset. Mistaking his silence for disbelief, she continued. “Listen. You remember how PurBlood is made. Once the hemoglobin has been encapsulated, it has to be purified of all manufac­turing by-products and any toxins produced by the bacteria. So they used Burt’s GEF filtration on the hemoglobin to—”

De Vaca stopped, looking at Carson. He had positioned himself between her and the lab’s video camera, blocking its view. He was moving his gloved hands downward in a sup­pressing motion. Through the visor, she could see him shak­ing his head and silently mouthing the word stop.

De Vaca frowned. “What’s up?” she asked. “Been chewing peyote buttons, cabrуn?”

Carson brusquely motioned her to wait. Then he looked around the lab as if searching for something. Suddenly he reached for a cabinet, pulled out a large vial of disinfectant powder, and sprinkled a light dusting of it on the glass surface of the bioprophylaxis table. Shielding his actions from the camera, he formed letters in the white dust with a gloved finger:

Don’t use intercom.

De Vaca stared at the words for a moment. Then, extend­ing a gloved finger, she formed a large question mark in the powder.

Tell me the rest HERE, Carson wrote.

De Vaca paused, looking narrowly at Carson. Then she wrote out the message: PurBlood contaminated by GEF filtra­tion. Burt used himself as alpha tester. That’s what’s wrong with him.

Carson quickly smoothed out the message and sprinkled a little more disinfectant on the surface. He quickly wrote: THINK. If Burt was alpha tester, who were the beta testers?

He saw a look of fear spread slowly across her face. She was mouthing words but he could not hear them.

He wrote: Library. Half hour. After waiting for her to nod agreement, he erased the tracings with a sweep of his glove.

The Mount Dragon library was an oasis of rusticity in a high-tech desert: its yellow, gingham-checked curtains, rough-hewn roof beams, and coarse floorboards were designed to resemble an oversized Western lodge. The intent of the de­signers had been to provide relief from the sterile white cor­ridors of the rest of the facility. However, given the moratorium on paper products at Mount Dragon, the library contained mostly electronic resources, and in any case few members of the overworked Mount Dragon staff had time to enjoy its solitude. Carson himself had only been in the library twice before: once when poking around the facility during his initial explorations, and again just a few hours before, im­mediately after leaving Singer and Nye to themselves.

As he closed the heavy door behind him, he was glad to see that de Vaca was the library’s only occupant. She was sitting in a white Adirondack chair, dozing despite herself, long black hair fallen carelessly across her face. She looked up at his approach.

“Long day,” she said. “And long night.” She looked at him speculatively. “They’re going to wonder why we left the Fever Tank early,” she added in a lower tone.

“They would have wondered a lot more if I’d let you keep running your mouth,” Carson muttered back.

“Hell, and I thought I was paranoid. You really think some­body listens to all those monitor tapes, cabrуn?”

Carson gave a short shake of the head. “We can’t take that chance.”

De Vaca stiffened slightly. “Don’t pull a Vanderwagon on me, Carson. Now, what’s this about beta testers for PurBlood?”

“I’ll show you.” He motioned her over to a data terminal in a far corner of the library. Pulling up two chairs, he put the terminal’s keyboard on his lap, entering his employee ID at the waiting prompt.

“What research have you done on PurBlood since you got here?” he asked, turning to her.

De Vaca shrugged. “Not much. The later lab reports of Burt’s. Why?”

Carson nodded. “Exactly. The same kind of materials I examined: sample runs, lab notes Burt made while he was transferring his attention to X-FLU. The only reason we were interested in PurBlood at all was because Burt had worked on it prior to getting involved with our own project, X-FLU.”

He punched keys. “I did see Singer this morning. But I didn’t really speak with him. I came here instead. I remem­bered what you’d said about PurBlood, and I wanted to learn a little more about its development. Look what I found.”

He gestured at the screen:

“These are all the video files in the PurBlood research archives,” he went on in a low tone. “Most of them are the usual: animations of molecules and the like. But look at the second from the last on the list, the one called pr. Notice its extension: it’s a digital dump from a video camera, not the video compression format used in computer animations. And look at its huge size: almost a gigabyte.”

“What is it?” de Vaca asked.

“It’s a rough-cut video, unreleased, probably created for public-relations purposes.” With a few more keystrokes, he called up a multimedia software object to play back the video file. An image appeared in a window on the terminal screen, grainy but perfectly distinct.

“You’ll have to watch closely,” he said. “There’s no asso­ciated audio file.”

A caravan of Hummers is approaching across the desert. The camera zooms out briefly to show the Mount Dragon complex, the white buildings, the blue New Mexico sky.

The camera returns to the caravan, now parked at the Mount Dragon motor pool. The passenger door of the lead vehicle opens, and a man emerges. He stands on the tarmac, waving, grinning, and shaking hands.

“Scopes,” Carson murmured.

The entire Mount Dragon staff are on hand to greet him. There is much backslapping and grinning.

“Looks like a camp meeting,” said de Vaca. “Who’s that big-nosed guy standing next to Singer?”

“Burt,” Carson replied. “It’s Franklin Burt.”

Now Burt is standing next to Scopes on the tarmac, talking to the crowd. Scopes puts his arm around him, and they raise hands in a victory gesture. The camera pans across the crowd.

The scene shifts to the Mount Dragon gymnasium. It has been cleared of all equipment, and in the center are two rows of chairs, carefully arranged. They are occupied by what appears to be the entire Mount Dragon staff. The camera, positioned on the balcony running track, now focuses on a temporary stage built at one end of the gym. Scopes is giving a talk to the enthusiastic crowd.

As Scopes continues, the camera pans the crowd again. Several of the faces seem to have grown somber, even uncertain.

A nurse comes from offstage, dressed in white, wheeling a stretcher with an IV rack. The rack holds a single unit of blood.

Scopes sits on the edge of the stretcher and the nurse rolls up his left sleeve. Franklin Burt now mounts the stage and begins to talk passionately, moving back and forth across the stage.

The camera zooms in as the nurse swabs Scopes’s arm and slides in the IV. Then she hooks up the pint of blood and turns a plastic stopcock, starting the flow. While Scopes receives the blood, Burt talks to him, obviously monitoring his vital signs.

“Jesus Christ,” de Vaca said. “He’s getting PurBlood, isn’t he?”

The camera makes a few cuts and in a few minutes the pint of blood is empty. The nurse removes the IV, places a gauze patch on the arm, and folds the arm up to seal the vein.

Scopes stands with a grin and holds up his other arm in a victory salute.

The camera turns to the audience. Everyone is clapping; some enthusiastically, others with more reserve. One scientist stands up. Then another. Soon the group is giving Scopes a standing ovation. Another nurse comes onstage, wheeling two large IV racks, each holding two dozen or so pints of blood.

Nye strides up to the stage. He shakes Scopes’s hand and rolls up his left sleeve. The nurse inserts an IV into his arm and starts a unit of blood.

Another scientist comes forward, then a maintenance worker. Then Singer himself begins to approach the stage, and the audience breaks into another round of applause. The camera focuses on Singer’s plump face. It is white, and beads of sweat stand out on his brow. Yet he, too, sits down on a cot and rolls up his sleeve, and soon the blood is flowing into his veins.

After that, the audience stands in unison. Within moments, a line has formed from the stage, snaking back toward the rows of chairs.

“Look,” de Vaca whispered. “There’s Brandon-Smith. There’s Vanderwagon and Pavel what’s-his-name. And there’s—oh, my God.”

Abruptly, Carson halted the video, logged off the network, and cut the terminal’s power.,

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

“They were the beta testers,” said de Vaca, as they walked slowly around the inner perimeter fence. “They all got it, didn’t they?”

“Every single one,” said Carson. “From the custodians to Singer himself. Everybody except us. We’re the only new ar­rivals since February 27th, the date of that file.”

“How exactly did you figure this out?” de Vaca was hugging herself tightly as she walked, seemingly chilled despite the late-afternoon heat.

“When I went to see Singer this morning, I saw him lining up the objects on his coffee table. There was something very obsessive about his movements that struck me as unusual, out of character. I remembered how Vanderwagon had acted just before he put his eye out, and Brandon-Smith’s obsessive hab­its in the last days. And then I noticed Singer’s bloodshot eyes, with the yellow cast in the whites. It was just what Vanderwagon’s eyes looked like. And Nye. Think about it. Don’t a lot of the people here seem to have bloodshot eyes these days? I assumed it was the stress.” He shrugged. “So I spent the day in the library, looking through the research files.”

“And found that tape,” de Vaca said.

“Yes. It must have been Scopes’s brainchild, having the rest of the Mount Dragon team be the beta test subjects for PurBlood. It’s a common enough thing in certain pharma­ceutical companies, you know, to draw the volunteer pool from the company itself. They must have filmed it, thinking it would make good press later on.”

“Only some of the volunteers didn’t look too pleased about it,” de Vaca said wryly.

Carson nodded. “Scopes is a brilliant speaker. Between him, Burt, and peer pressure, sure, it’s not hard to see why everyone fell in line.”

“But what the hell is happening to them now?” De Vaca struggled to keep the sound of panic out of her voice.