"Yes, we're both healthy."
"Are you carrying drugs?"
Chase was about to say no when Ruth said, "Medical supplies. No hard drugs or hallucinogens."
"Show me."
She opened the aluminum case and the sergeant looked at the plastic bottles, capsules, and vials in their padded compartments, the syringes in their pouches. Everything was clearly labeled, though whether the sergeant knew the difference between digitoxin and ethyloestrenol was open to doubt, in Chase's view.
The trooper returned with the ID cards. He handed them to the sergeant without a word, who folded the papers he was holding and gave them to Chase. The sergeant recited:
"You are allowed to remain twelve hours within the Reno city boundary. One minute longer will be considered a violation of the special emergency law, as will the sale or purchase of drugs by trade, barter, or any other form of exchange, punishable by imprisonment and confiscation of all possessions and personal effects. Unauthorized purchase of oxygen is also forbidden, subject to the same penalties."
He stepped back and waved them on, his attention already on the next vehicle in line.
A mile farther on visibility was so bad that they had to don the goggles and respirators. Their skin felt prickly, as though a static charge were playing over it.
"Twelve hours," Chase laughed shortly. "Who in his right mind would want to stay any longer?" He squinted up through the murk. The sun was a diffuse orange blur and it was noticeably warmer, by several degrees. A thermal inversion layer, trapping the heat and fumes in a thick vaporous blanket that hugged the ground. It was like driving through a hot burning mist of sulfuric acid.
Buildings loomed and they realized they were in the city itself. Beyond knowing that he wanted to head roughly northwest Chase hadn't a clue where he was going or which direction to take. Headlights came toward them like dim yellow eyes. Several times he had to stamp on the brakes as a glowing red taillight warned him of stalled traffic.
"Like being back in New York," Ruth said with mordant humor.
Chase peered hopelessly ahead. "Can you see any signs? Can you see anything?" Nightmares were like this, wandering about lost in an eerie blank timelessness. He began to believe that it was a dream and would last forever, driving through acid mist for all eternity. It was almost restful, nothing to see, everything distant and muffled and muted--
"Watch out!"
Chase wrenched the wheel and the jeep skidded, missing the tailgate of a truck by less than a foot. They hit the curb with a bouncing jolt that threw them forward, Ruth striking her forehead above the goggles on the windshield's metal upright, blood spattering the glass like teardrops.
They had stopped with their headlights blazing into a shop window. The world was indeed going crazy. Illuminated like a stage set, the window was filled with inflatable rubber dolls with jutting red nipples and silky vaginas.
Ruth was holding her head in both hands and moaning softly, blood seeping through her fingers and running down her wrists.
If there was one part of the procedure that Cy Skrote abhorred, it was this. Bad enough to theorize about it in the sterile atmosphere of the labs, or engage in dispassionate debate over coffee with his colleagues, but the surgical blood and guts of it made him physically ill. There was no escape, however--he had to be present in the operating room, gowned and masked, custodian of the refrigerated vacuum flask containing the culture.
The seeds of our own destruction . . . the thought flitted unbidden through his mind like a torn scrap of paper.
Standing three feet away from the operating table he had a ringside view of the surgeon at work. The column of mirror-directed light from above made every last detail clear and sharp. On a stretcher nearby the round gray flask with the chrome handle.and the recessed red stirrup release mechanism waited ominously: on its side in stenciled black letters, sterile cell culture, and underneath in scrawled graphics, Experimental Batch MC-D117-92.
The last two digits indicated that this was the ninety-second strain to be tested. Incubation would take anything from fourteen weeks to the usual nine months, always supposing the fetus didn't self-abort. The success rate wasn't high. Of the previous ninety-one, forty-eight had been rejected within six weeks, some in under two weeks.
What had come as a surprise was the fourteen-week pregnancy. Not a termination, as had been supposed, but the full-term delivery of a perfect specimen: blind, dumb, deaf and mentally retarded, but with lungs three times the normal capacity. Dr. Rolsom had congratulated the team, calling it "an important and encouraging breakthrough."
Skrote tried not to look as the surgeon's scalpel sliced through the epidermis and the fatty layer of the abdomen. The surgeon made another incision at right angles to the first and a nurse folded back the flap of tissue and swabbed the V-shaped area underneath, already saturated with blood.
"Tie off," the surgeon instructed. The nurse clamped the pumping arteries and applied ligatures to stanch the flow.
"Young, healthy, good pelvic cavity," the surgeon said, pleased. "She should give us a fine bouncing mute or my name's not Sweeney Todd."
Everyone around the table laughed. It was one of his standard jokes, but it helped break the monotony.
Before going in, the surgeon glanced toward the anesthesiologist, who was looking down at the woman's face, obscured by a sterile green sheet. "How is she?"
"Everything okay. She's dreaming of fluffy white lambs in a spring meadow." The eyes of the anesthesiologist curved as he grinned behind his gauze mask.
"I'm fond of lambs myself," the surgeon quipped. "Especially with mint sauce."
Everyone laughed again, and one of the younger nurses got the giggles.
"Right, boys and girls, in we go." The surgeon began cutting in earnest, the three assisting nurses standing by with sponges, clamps, plastic tubes and ligatures. It was a perfectly choreographed ballet of gloved hands and shiny steel instruments. As the layers were stripped back and the cords of muscles pushed out of the way, the surgeon became more intent as his work became more intricate. In the center of the raw gaping hole the narrow end of the Fallopian tube, at the point where it entered the uterus, was now exposed. A tiny snick of an incision in the wall of the Fallopian, high up at the site of fertilization, and he was ready for the cell culture.
Grasping the red stirrup, Skrote unscrewed the heavy lid from its brass seating and lifted it out. A puff of dry ice floated away. Very carefully he withdrew the stainless-steel core and set it down on the stand alongside the operating table. Now the surgical team would take over; ensuring that the correct culture was delivered safely from lab to operating room was Skrote's task and responsibility, implantation was theirs.
Batch ninety-two was rather special. It comprised the splicing of genes from two patients with different characteristics. Both were severely deformed, yet each possessed certain physical peculiarities that, combined in the right proportions, might produce the ideal specimen. Skrote wasn't too optimistic, however. It was a wild gamble and he had the nagging fear that the "ideal" specimen might well resemble a monster.
Part of its genetic heritage would enable it to survive in conditions normally hostile to human beings--the lungs would be rudimentary, their function taken over by gill-like growths on either side of the neck and chest. These would give it an appearance not unlike that of a humanoid water-dwelling lizard.
The other fundamental difference was in cranial capacity. Breathing deoxygenated air would render a normal-size brain comatose, followed quickly by death. So this brain had to be smaller and less complex and yet capable of the basic modes of comprehension and communication. After all, there wasn't much point in breeding a new species that was incapable of understanding commands and carrying them out.