He didn’t think so. Who could encompass it, understand it all? Certainly he couldn’t; there had been horrors, fearsome things for the mind to acknowledge, to see, and he did not believe he could predict what was going to happen next, for he hardly knew what was happening now.
The dreams. Cities raping Gail. Galaxies sprinkling over them all. What anguish… and then again, what potential beauty—a new kind of life, symbiosis and transformations.
No. That was not a good thought. Change—too much change—and so where did his objections begin, his objections to a new order, a new transformation because he well knew that humans weren’t enough that there had to be more Vergil had made more; in his clumsy unseeing way he had initiated the next stage.
No. Life goes on no period no end no change, no shocking things like Candice in the shower or Vergil dead in the tub Life is the right held by an individual to normality and normal progress normal aging who would take away that right who in their right minds would accept and what was it he was thinking was going to happen that he would have to accept?
He lay down on the couch and shielded his eyes with his forearm. He had never been so exhausted in his life– drained physically, emotionally, beyond rational thought. He was reluctant to sleep because he could feel the nightmares building up like thunderheads, waiting to shower refractions and echoes of what he had seen.
Edward pulled away his forearm and stared up at the ceiling. It was just barely possible that what had been started could be stopped. Perhaps he was the one who could trigger the chain of actions which could stop it. He could call the Centers for Disease Control (yes, but were they the ones he wanted to talk to?). Or perhaps the defense department? County health first, work through channels? Maybe even the VA hospital or Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.
He put his arm back over his eyes. There was no clear course of action.
Events had simply exceeded his capacity. He imagined that had happened often in human history; tidal waves of events overwhelming crucial individuals, sweeping them along. Making them wish there was a quiet place, perhaps a little Mexican village where nothing ever happened and where they could go and sleep just sleep.
“Edward?” Gail leaned over him, touching his forehead with cool fingers. “Every time I come home, here you are– sacked out. You don’t look good. Feeling okay?”
“Yes.” He sat on the edge of the couch. His body was hot and wooziness threatened his balance. “What have you planned for dinner?” His mouth wasn’t working properly; the words sounded mushy. “I thought we’d go out.”
“You have a fever,” Gall said. “A very high fever. I’m getting the thermometer. Just stay there.”
“No,” he called after her weakly. He stood and stumbled into the bathroom to look in the mirror. She met him there and stuck the thermometer under his tongue. As always, he thought of biting it like Harpo Marx, eating it like a piece of candy. She peered over his shoulder into the mirror.
“What is it?” she asked.
There were lines under his collar, around his neck. White lines, like freeways.
“Damp palms,” he said. “Vergil had damp palms.” They had already been inside him for days. “So obvious.”
“Edward, please, what is it?”
“I have to make a call,” he said. Gail followed him into the bedroom and stood as he sat on the bed and punched the Genetron number. “Dr. Michael Bernard, please,” he said. The receptionist told him, much too quickly, there was no such person at Genetron. “This is too important to fuck around with,” he said coldly. “Tell Dr. Bernard this is Edward Milligan and it’s urgent.”
The receptionist put him on hold. Perhaps Bernard was still at Vergil’s apartment, trying to sort out the pieces of the puzzle; perhaps they would simply send someone out to arrest him. It really didn’t matter either way.
“Bernard here.” The doctor’s voice was flat and serpentine—much, Edward imagined, like he himself sounded.
“It’s too late, Doctor. We shook Vergil’s hand. Sweaty palms. Remember? And ask yourself whom we’ve touched since. We’re the vectors now.”
“I was at the apartment today, Milligan,” Bernard said. “Did you kill Ulam?”
“Yes. He was going to release his… microbes. Noocytes. Whatever they are, now.”
“Did you find his girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do with her?”
“Do with her? Nothing. She was in the shower. But listen—”
“She was gone when we arrived, nothing but her clothes. Did you kill her, too?”
“Listen to me, Doctor. I have Vergil’s microbes inside me. So do you.”
There was silence on the other end, then a deep sigh. “Yes?”
“Have you worked out any way to control them, I mean, inside our bodies?”
“Yes.” Then, more softly, “No. Not yet. Antimetabolites, controlled radiation therapy, actinomycin. We haven’t tried everything, but… no.”
“Then that’s it, Dr. Bernard.”
Another longer pause. “Hm.”
“I’m going back to my wife now, to spend what little time we have.”
“Yes,” Bernard said. “Thank you for calling.”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“Of course. Good-bye.”
Edward hung up and put his arms around Gail.
“It’s a disease, isn’t it?” she said.
Edward nodded. “That’s what Vergil made. A disease that thinks. I’m not sure there’s any way to fight an intelligent plague.”
16
Harrison leafed through the procedure manual, making notes methodically. Yng sat in a stressless leather chair in the corner, fingers of both hands forming a pyramid before his face, his long, lank black hair falling over his eyes and glasses. Bernard stood before the black formica-topped desk, impressed by the quality of the silence. Harrison leaned back from the desk and held up his notepad.
“First, we’re not responsible. That’s how I read it. Ulam did his research without our authorization—”
“But we didn’t fire him when we learned of it,” Yng countered. “That’s going to be a bad point in court.”
“We’ll worry about all that later,” Harrison said sharply.
“What we are responsible for is reporting to the CDC. This isn’t a vat spill or breach of lab containment, but—”
“None of us, not one of us, thought Ulam’s cells could be viable outside the body,” Yng said, twisting his hand into a jumble of fingers.
“It’s very possible they weren’t, at first,” Bernard said, drawn into the discussion despite himself. “It’s obvious there’s been a lot of development since the original lymphocytes. Self-directed development.”
“I still refuse to believe Ulam created intelligent cells,” Harrison said. “Our own research in the cube has shown how difficult that would be. How did he determine their intelligence? How did he train them? No—something—”
Yng laughed. “Ulam’s body was being transformed, redesigned… how can we doubt there was an intelligence behind the transformation?”
“Gentlemen,” Bernard said softly. “That’s all academic. Are we, or are we not going to alert Atlanta and Bethesda?”
“What in hell do we tell them?”
“That we are all in the early stages of a very dangerous infection,” Bernard said, “generated in our laboratories by a researcher, now dead—”
“Murdered,” Yng said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“And spreading at an alarming rate.”
“Yes,” Yng said, “but what can the CDC do about it? The contamination has spread, perhaps across the continent by now.”
“No,” Harrison said, “not quite that far. Vergil hasn’t made contact with that many people. It could still be confined to Southern California.”
“He made contact with us,” Yng said ruefully. “It is your opinion we are contaminated?”