“It does not sound trivial, Michael.” He felt an irrational singe of anger. “Compared to this, everything else is trivial, Paul.”
“Then it will be done. We can expect you—?”
“Within twenty-four hours. Thank you, Paul.” He hung up and glanced at his watch. He doubted if anyone at Genetron understood the magnitude of what was about to happen. It was difficult for him to imagine. But one thing was clear. Within forty-eight hours of Harrison informing the CDC, the North American continent would be placed under virtual isolation—whether officials believed what was said, or not. The key words would be “plague” and “genetic engineering firm.” The action would be completely justifiable, but he doubted if it would be sufficient. Then more drastic measures would be taken.
He did not want to be on the continent when that happened, but on the other hand, he did not want to be responsible for transmitting the contagion. So he would offer himself up as a specimen, to be kept at the finest pharmaceutical research firm in Europe.
Bernard’s mind worked in such a way that he was never bothered by second guesses or extreme doubts—not in his work, at any rate. When in an emergency or tight situation, he always came up with one solution at a time—usually the correct one. The reserve solutions waited in the background of his thoughts, unconscious and unobtrusive, while he acted. So it had always been in the operating room, and so it was now. He did not regard this faculty without some chagrin. It made him seem like a bloody robot at times, self-confident beyond all reason. But it had been responsible for his success, his stature in neurophysiological research, and the respect he had been accorded by fellow professionals and public alike.
He returned to the conference room and picked up his briefcase. His limo, as always, would be waiting for him in the Genetron parking lot, the driver reading or playing chess on a pocket computer. “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” Bernard said to Harrison. Yng stood facing the blank white marker board, hands clasped behind his back.
“I’ve just called CDC,” Harrison said. “They’ll be getting back to us with instructions.”
The word would soon go out to every hospital in the area. How soon before they closed the airports? How efficient were they? “Let me know, then,” Bernard said. He walked out the door and wondered for a moment whether he needed to take anything else with him. He thought not. He had copies of Ulam’s floppy diskettes in his briefcase. He had Ulam’s organisms within his blood.
Surely that would be enough to keep him busy for a while.
People? Anyone he should warn?
Any of his three ex-wives? He didn’t even know where they lived now. His accountant sent them their alimony checks. There was really no practical way—
Anybody he truly cared for, who truly cared for him?
He had last seen Paulette in March. The parting had been amicable. Everything had been amicable. They had orbited around each other like moon and planet, never really touching. Paulette had objected to being the moon, and quite rightly. She had done very well in her own career, chief cytotechnologist at Cetus Corporation in Palo Alto.
Now that he thought of it, she had probably been the one who had initially suggested his name to Harrison at Genetron. After they broke up. No doubt she had thought she was being very fair-minded and objective, helping all concerned.
He couldn’t fault her for that. But there was nothing in him that urged a call to her, a warning.
It just wasn’t practical.
His son he hadn’t heard from in five years. He was in China someplace on a research grant.
He put the notion out of his head.
Perhaps I won’t even need an isolation chamber, he thought. I’m pretty damned isolated already.
17
They nearly died. Within minutes, Edward was too weak to move. He watched as she called his parents, different hospitals, her school. She was frantic with fear that she might have infected her students. He imagined a ripple of news going out, being picked up. The panic. But Gail slowed, became dizzy, and lay down on the bed next to him.
She struggled and cursed, like a horse trying to right itself after breaking a leg, but the effort was useless.
With her last strength she came to him and they lay in each other’s arms, drenched in sweat. Gall’s eyes were closed, her face the color of talcum. She looked like a corpse in an embalming parlor. For a time Edward thought she was dead and sick as he was, he raged, hated, felt tremendous guilt for his weakness, his slowness to understand all the possibilities. Then he no longer cared. He was too weak to blink, so he closed his eyes and waited.
There was a rhythm in his arms, in his legs. With each pulse of blood, a kind of sound welled up within him as if an orchestra were performing thousands strong, but not in unison; playing whole seasons of symphonies at once. Music in the blood. The sensation become more coordinated; the wave-trains finally canceled into silence, then separated into harmonic beats.
The beats melted into the sound of his own heart.
Neither of them had any feel for the passage of time. It could have been days before he regained enough strength to go to the faucet in the bathroom. He drank until his stomach could hold no more and returned with a glass of water. Lifting her head with his arm, he brought the edge of the glass to Gail’s mouth. She sipped at it. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with yellowish crumbs, but there was some color in her skin. “When are we going to die?” she asked, her voice a feeble croak. “I want to hold you when we die.”
Minutes later, he was strong enough to help her into the kitchen. He peeled an orange and shared it with her, feeling the pulse of the sugar and juice and acid down his throat. “Where is everybody?” she asked. “I called hospitals, friends. Where are they?”
The harmonic orchestral sensation returned, beats coordinating into recognizable fragments, the fragments coalescing, coming into a focus of meaning, and suddenly—
Is there DISCOMFORT?
–Yes.
He answered automatically and in kind, as if he had expected the exchange and was ready for a long conversation.
PATIENCE. There are difficulties.
–What? I don’t understand—
*Immune response*. *Conflict*. Difficulties.
–Leave us, then! Go away!
Not possible. Too INTEGRATED.
They weren’t recovering, not to the extent they were free of the infection. Any feeling of returning freedom was illusory. Very briefly, saying what his strength would allow, he tried to explain to Gail what he thought they were experiencing.
She propped herself up out of the chair and went to the window, where she stood on shaking legs, looking out at green commons, other rows of apartments. “What about other people?” she asked. “Have they got it, too? That’s why they’re not here?”
“I don’t know. Probably soon.”
“Are they… the disease. Is it talking to you?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m not crazy.” She walked slowly across the living room. “I’m not going to be able to move much longer,” she said. “How about you? Maybe we should try to escape.”
He held her hand and shook his head. “They’re inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?”
“Then I’d like to be in bed with you, when we can’t move any more. And I want your arms around me.”
They lay back on the bed and held each other.
“Eddie…”
That was the last sound he heard. He tried to resist, but waves of peace rolled over him and he could only experience. He floated on a wide blue-violet sea. Above the sea, his body was mapped onto a seemingly limitless plane. The noocyte endeavors were charted there, and he had no problem understanding their progress. It was obvious that his body was more noocyte than Milligan now.
–What’s going to happen to us?