CDC did, however, get a good supply of Gardiner’s Island. The perpetual project was testing Gardiner’s Island on new hosts to see if it evolved rapidly, as did the AIDS virus, or if it was relatively stable. CDC investigators in the 1990s had found hantavirus in a wide variety of mammals, from urban mice to squirrels, circumpolar, Asia, America, Europe. It was an old virus, generally sub-lethal. Possibly, hantavirus had caused the past’s obscure diseases: galloping consumption, idiopathic kidney failure.
Gardiner’s Island killed once while the Centers for Disease Control were watching for hanta. It now replicated in lab animals.
Sarafina wondered if the Australian had taken hantavirus back with him, and if it would adapt to marsupials as well as the exotic rodents who’d smuggled themselves in with the humans. Or had the marsupials been a firebreak for hanta in Australia? She wondered if an L-4 technician should research her materials, but that joy got stomped well before her smuggled fish.
But if it showed up in Thomas… well, hantavirus wasn’t an exotic, was it? She’d let Africa and those suited men take care of the lieutenant.
“Do you think we can possibly stay sane working in these conditions?” her trainee asked her as they left the decontamination showers.
“At least squirrels don’t throw shit,” Sarafina said, preoccupied. She was trying to think of a way to get the hantavirus out of the lab without infecting herself.
Two weeks later, the squirrels began dying. Sarafina knew that would be no guarantee that the virus would be as lethal to Thomas. She wondered why, if he was such a Green, he hadn’t called the animal rights people down on the lab.
He must be a hypocrite.
Sleight of hand. Syringe of squirrel sputum into tubing between two layers of glove, then she sealed the tubing in another tube. Her trainee didn’t know enough about procedures to question what she was doing. Then into her left ear through the showers.
For a horrible moment, Sarafina wondered how she could return the virus-riddled sputum to the L-4 lab. This is insane. But the Centers for Disease Control should know if hantavirus Gardiners Island was as lethal as the Arizona strain.
She decided that Thomas would probably live through it. The weeks of isolation in the CDC danger ward would be punishment enough. If hanta spread like crazy, we’d all be dead by now. She should have collected urine and blood, too. But how would she infect him? She put the tube of hanta-contaminated materials in her freezer over the frozen fish food and sat watching a scenario generate itself in her brain.
Once upon a time, I used to be an intelligent, goal-oriented woman, but the Universe doesn’t support teleology. Sarafina thought about attacking Thomas in the cafeteria. In the confusion, she could squeeze the squirrel matter into his food. She visualized him eating like a shocked automaton as security guards dragged her off.
Relief. They’ll never put me back in the L-4 lab if I do something so crazy.
But Sarafina knew that her scenario would go sour. The guards would call Sarafina’s HMO and wait for the psychiatric team to show up with pyschotrophic drugs and restraints.
She could tell them, “I used to be a Ph.D. candidate.”
Then the psych team member holding the needle in his hand would look at the guards, as though they’d know if Sarafina was delusional or not.
Perhaps, she hoped, they’ll give me crazy checks and let me live alone with my fish. Of course, they’d never tell her what happened to Thomas.
No, that’s too crazy. Sarafina wanted to know what happened to Thomas.
A week later, Sarafina found a squirrel’s nest out on the institute’s campus. She thawed the tube of virus matter in her gloved hands and injected one baby squirrel. She took it up to Thomas, saying, “It fell out of the nest. Can you help it?”
Thomas said, “Do you know where the nest is?”
“On the grounds, but I don’t know what one. Why don’t you raise it yourself?”
Thomas looked at her as though he wondered if she’d smuggled it from the diseased squirrel colony in the L-4 lab, but she and he both knew that was impossible. She put the squirrel baby in Thomas’s bare hands. It wiggled, looking for a teat.
In three weeks, Sarafina’s lungs began to go, but Thomas was sick, too. She went to her HMO, but as soon as she tested positive for hanta, the HMO shipped her to the L-4 isolation facility. Thomas came in two days later, looking sick and old, but still mobile. He said through the intercom between units, “Why?”
“You got me raped.” Her breath rasped as she struggled for enough of it to talk. “You killed my fish.”
“I put the squirrel back in its nest,” Thomas said. “Thousands of people have come down with hanta. CDC is torching everything mammalian for miles. They’ve finally got their Big One.”
“Didn’t mean for you to do that,” Sarafina said. The hanta strain must have been more virulent than anyone had thought. Her death would kill her remaining fish. How many other creatures would die? Maybe the disease would spread all the way around the world to Africa, and kill her jesting lieutenant too.
Thomas said, “Pity about the other squirrels. But a major die-back for humans wouldn’t be that bad.” He coughed wetly, blood flecking his lips. “Hope I live to see it.”
Wish, Sarafina wanted to say. But she no longer had the breath.”