“The truth probably combines both views. It’s a weird old biological ballgame, and most scientists agree we’re not even in the second inning.”
“Who’ll buy ad time? It’s too scary. What the hell does ‘tremulous’ mean? I’m tired of all this science shit. Science ruins my day. Let me know if and when the president stays on the pot long enough to get his job done. He’s our boy. Maybe if, maybe then, but no promises.”
1
FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND
Kaye stared into Mrs. Rhine’s darkened living room. The furniture had been rearranged in bizarre ways; a couch overturned, covered with a sheet, the bumps of its legs pointing into the air and pillows arranged in a cross on the floor around it; two wooden chairs leaning face-forward against the wall in a corner as if they were being punished.
Small white cardboard boxes covered the coffee table.
Freedman tapped the intercom button. “Carla, we’re here. I’ve brought Kaye Lang Rafelson.”
Mrs. Rhine walked briskly through the door, took a chair from a corner, swung it into the center of the room, two yards from the thick window, and sat. She wore plain blue denim coveralls. Gauze covered her arms and hands and most of her face. She wore a kerchief, and it did not look as if she had any hair. The little flesh that showed was red and puffy. Her eyes were intense between the mummy folds of gauze.
“I’ll turn my lights down,” she said, her voice clear and almost etched over the intercom. “You turn yours up. No need to look at me.”
“All right,” Freedman said, and brightened the lights in the viewing room.
The lights in Mrs. Rhine’s living room darkened until they could see her only in silhouette. “Welcome to my home, Dr. Rafelson,” she said.
“I was pleased to get your message,” Kaye said.
Freedman folded her arms and stood back.
“Christopher Dicken used to bring flowers,” Mrs. Rhine said. Her movements were awkward, jerky. “I can’t have flowers now. Once a week I have to go into a little closet and they send a robot in here to scrub everything. They have to get rid of all the little house-dust things. Fungus and bacteria and such that might grow from old flakes of skin. They can kill me now, if they build up in here.”
“I appreciated the letter you sent me.”
“The Web is my life, Kaye. If I may call you Kaye.”
“Of course.”
“I seem to know you, Christopher has spoken of you so often. I don’t get too many visitors now. I’ve forgotten how to react to real people. I type on my clean little keyboard and travel all around the world, but I never go anywhere or touch or see anything, really. I thought I had gotten used to it, but then I just got angry again.”
“I can imagine,” Kaye said.
“Tell me what you imagine, Kaye,” Mrs. Rhine said, head jerking.
“I imagine you feel robbed.”
The dark shadow nodded. “My whole family. That’s why I wrote to you. When I read what happened to your husband, to your daughter, I thought, she’s not just a scientist, or a symbol of a movement, or a celebrity. She’s like me. But of course you can get them back, someday.”
“I am always trying to get back my daughter,” Kaye said. “We still search for her.”
“I wish I could tell you where she is.”
“So do I,” Kaye said, swallowing within the hood. The air flow in the stiff isolation suit was not the best.
“Have you read Karl Popper?” Mrs. Rhine asked.
“No, I never have,” Kaye said, and arranged a plastic wrinkle around her midriff. She noticed then that the suit was patched with something like duct tape. This distracted her for a moment; she had heard that funding had been cut, but she had not fully realized the implications.
“… says that a whole group of philosophers and thinkers, including him, regard the self as a social appurtenance,” Mrs. Rhine said. “If you are raised away from society, you do not develop a full self. Well, I am losing my self. I feel uncomfortable using the personal pronoun. I would go mad, but I… this thing I am…” She stopped. “Marian, I need to speak with Kaye privately. At least let me believe nobody is listening or recording us.”
“I’ll check with the technician.” Freedman spoke briefly with the safety technician. She then moved gingerly out of the viewing room, the umbilical coiling behind her. The door closed.
“Why are you here?” Mrs. Rhine asked in a low voice, barely audible. Kaye could see the reflections in the woman’s eyes from the brighter lights behind the glass.
“Because of your message. And because I thought it was time that I meet you.”
“You’re not here to reassure me that they’ll find a cure? Because some people come through here and say that and I hate it.”
“No,” Kaye said.
“Why, then? Why speak with me? I send e-mail letters to lots of people. I don’t think most of them get through. I’m surprised you got yours, actually.”
Marian Freedman had made sure of that.
“You wrote that you felt you were getting smarter and more distant,” Kaye said, “but you were losing your self.” She stared at the shadowy figure in the dark room. The eczema had gotten very bad, so Kaye had been told in the briefing before joining Marian Freedman. “I’d like to hear more,” Kaye said.
Suddenly, Mrs. Rhine leaned forward. “I know why you’re here,” she said, her voice rising.
“Why?” Kaye asked.
“We’ve both had the virus.”
A moment’s silence.
“I don’t get you,” Kaye said softly.
“Ascetics sit on pillars of rock to avoid human touch. They wait for God. They go mad. That is me. I’m Saint Anthony, but the devils are too smart to waste their time gibbering at me. I am already in hell. I don’t need them to remind me. I have changed. My brain feels bigger but it’s also like a big warehouse filled with empty boxes. I read and try to fill up the boxes. I was so stupid, I was just a breeder, the virus punished me for being stupid, I wanted to live so I took the pig tissue inside of me and that was forbidden, wasn’t it? I’m not Jewish but pigs are powerful creatures, very spiritual, don’t you think? I am haunted by them. I’ve read some ghost stories. Horror stories. Very scary, about pigs. I’m talking a mile a minute, I know. Marian listens, the others listen, but it’s a chore for them. I scare them, I think. They wonder how long I’ll last.”
Kaye’s stomach was so tense she could taste the acid in her throat. She felt so much for the woman beyond the glass, but could not think of anything to say or do to comfort her. “I’m still listening,” she said.
“Good,” Mrs. Rhine said. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to die soon. I can feel it in my blood. So will you, though maybe not so soon.”
Mrs. Rhine stood and walked around the overturned and shrouded couch.
“I have these nightmares. I escape from here somehow and walk around and touch people, trying to help, and I just end up killing everybody. Then, I visit with God… and I make Him sick. I kill God. The devil says to Him, ‘I told You so.’ He’s mocking God while’s He’s dying, and I say, Good for you.”
“Oh,” Kaye said, swallowing. “That isn’t the way it is. It isn’t going to be that way.”