God, what a house was her first thought. Like a king's palace, a huge waste of resources for one man, or even one large family, to use as a private residence. What was it Winston had said of the owner? Good people? Sure. All good people lived like wastrels, glomming up precious resources like that. Another goddamned plutocrat, stock trader, currency speculator, however he earned the money to buy a place like that-and then terrorists had invaded his privacy. Well, gee, she thought, I wonder why they picked him. No sense attacking a sheep farmer or truck driver. Terrorists went after the moneyed people, of the supposedly important ones, because going for ordinary folks had little in the way of a political point, and these were, after all, political acts. But they hadn't been as bright as they ought to have been. Whoever had picked them had.. picked them to fail? Was that possible? She supposed that it was. It was apolitical act, after all, and such thugs could have all manner of real purposes. That brought a smile, as the reporter described the attack by the local police SWAT team-unfortunately not shown, be cause the local cops hadn't wanted cameras and reporters in the way-then the release of the hostages, shown in closeup to let people share the experience. They'd been so close to death, only to be released, saved by the local cops, who'd really only restored to them their programmed time of death, because everything died, sooner or later. That was Nature's plan, and you couldn't fight Nature… though you could help her along, couldn't you? The reporter, went on to say that this had been the second terrorist incident in Europe over the last couple of months, both of them failures due to adroit police action. Carol remembered the attempted robbery in Bern, another botch… a creative one? She might have to find that out, though in this case a failure was as useful as-no, more useful than a success, for the people who were planning things. That thought brought a smile. Yes. It was more useful than a success, wasn't it? And with that she looked down at a fax from Friends of the Earth, who had her direct number and frequently sent her what they thought was important information.
She leaned back in her comfortable high-backed chair to read it over twice. A good bunch of people with the right ideas, though few listened to them.
"Dr. Brightling?" Her secretary stuck his head in the door.
"Yes, Roy?".
"You still want me to show you those faxes-like the one you're reading, I mean?" Roy Gibbons asked.
"Oh, yes-,,
"But those people are card-carrying nuts."
"Not really. I like some of the things they do," Carol replied, tossing the fax in her trash can. She'd save their idea for some future date.
"Fair enough, doc." The head disappeared back into the outer office. The next thing in her pile was pretty important, a report of procedures for shutting down nuclear power reactors, and the subsequent safety of the shut-down reactor systems: how long before environmental factors might attack and corrode the internal items, and what environmental damage could result from it. Yes, this was very important stuff, and fortunately the index appended to it showed data on individual reactors across the country. She popped another starlight mint into her mouth and leaned forward, setting the papers flat on the desktop so that she could stare straight down at them for reading purposes.
"This seems to work," Steve said quietly.
"How many strands fit inside?" Maggie asked.
"Anywhere from three to ten."
"And how large is the overall package?"
"Six microns. Would you believe it? The packaging is white in color, so it reflects light pretty well, especially UV radiation, and in a water-spray environment, it's just about invisible." The individual capsules couldn't be seen with the naked eye, and only barely with an optical microscope. Better still, their weight was such that they'd float in air about the same as dust particles, as readily breathable as secondhand smoke in a singles bar. Once in the body, the coating would dissolve, and allow release of the Shiva strands into the lungs or the upper GI, where they could go to work.
"Water soluble?" Maggie asked.
"Slowly, but faster if there's anything biologically active in the water, like the trace hydrochloric acid in saliva, for example. Wow, we could have really made money from the Iraqis with this one, kiddo - or anybody, who wants to play bio-war in the real world."
Their company had invented the technology, working on an NIH grant designed to develop an easier way than needles to deliver vaccines. Needles required semiskilled use. The new technique used electrophoresis to wrap insignificantly tiny quantities of protective gel around even smaller amounts of airborne bioactive agents. That would allow people to ingest vaccines with a simple drink rather than the more commonly used method of inoculation. If they ever fielded a working AIDS vaccine, this would be the method of choice for administering it in Africa where countries lacked the infrastructure to do much of anything. Steve had just proven that the same technology could be used to deliver active virus with the same degree of safety and reliability. Or almost proven it.
"How do we proof-test it?" Maggie asked.
"Monkeys. How we fixed for monkeys in the lab?"
"Lots," she assured him. This would be an important step. They'd give it to a few monkeys; then see how well it spread through the laboratory population. They'd use rhesus monkeys. Their blood was so similar to humans."
Subject Four was the first, as expected. He was fifty-three years old and his liver function was so far off the scale as to qualify him for a high place on the transplant list at the University of Pittsburgh. His skin had a yellowish cast in the best of circumstances, but that didn't stop him from hitting the booze harder than any of their test subjects. His name, he said, was Chester something, Dr. John Killgore remembered. Chester's brain function was about the lowest in the group as well. He watched TV- a lot, rarely talked to anyone, never even read comic books, which were popular with the rest, as were TV.cartoons-watching the Cartoon Channel was among their most popular pastimes.
They were all in hog heaven, John Killgore had noted. All the booze and fast food and warmth that they could want, and most of them were even learning to use the showers. From time to time, a few would ask what the deal was here, but their inquiries were never pressed beyond the pro-forma answer they got from the doctors and security guards.
But with Chester; they had to take action now. Killgore entered the room and called his name. Subject Four rose from his bunk and came over; clearly feeling miserable.
"Not feeling good, Chester?" Killgore asked from behind his mask.
"Stomach, can't keep stuff down, feel crummy all over," Four replied.
"Well, come along with me and we'll see what wa can do about that, okay?",.
"You say so, doc," Chester replied, augmenting= the agreement with a loud belch.
Outside the door, they put him in a wheelchair. It was only fifty yards to the clinical side of the installation. Two orderlies lifted Number Four into a bed, and restrained him into it with- Velcro ties. Then one of them took a blood sample. Ten minutes later, Killgore tested it' for Shiva antibodies, and the sample turned blue, as expected. Chester, Subject Number Four, had less than a week to live not as much as the six to twelve months to which his alcoholism had already limited him, but not really all that much of a reduction, was it? Killgore went back inside to start an IV into his arm, and to calm Chester down; he hung a morphine drip that soon had him unconscious and even smiling slightly. Good. Number Four would soon die, but he would do so in relative peace. Mare than anything else, Dr. Killgore wanted to keep the process orderly.