In proof of which, Chip leaned over to kiss Mary on the lips. They were alone in the sitting room.
"How's her blood work look, Barb?"
"Loaded with antibodies, and starting to get some small bricks. She ought to be symptomatic in another few days."
"Eat, drink, and be merry, people, for next week, you die," the other physician told the TV screen.
"Too bad," Dr. Archer agreed. She showed the emotion one might display on seeing a dead dog at the side of the road.
"Nice figure," the man said, as the pajama tops came off. "I haven't seen an X-rated movie in a longtime, Barb." A videotape was running, of course. The experimental protocol was set in stone. Everything had to be recorded so that the staff could monitor the entire test program. Nice tits, he thought, about the same time Chip did, right before he caressed them on the screen.
"She was fairly inhibited when she got here. The tranquilizers really work, depressing them that way." Another clinical observation. Things progressed rapidly frond that point on. Both doctors sipped their coffee as they watched. Tranquilizers or not, the baser human instincts charged forward, and within five minutes Chip and Mary were humping madly away, with the usual sound elects, though the picture, blessedly, wasn't all that clear. A few minutes later, they were lying side by side on the thick shag rug, kissing tiredly and contentedly, his hand stroking her breasts, his eyes closed, his breathing deep and regular as he rolled onto his back.
"Well, Barb, if nothing else, we have a pretty good weekend getaway for couples here," the man observed with a sly grin. "How long do you figure on his blood work?"
"Three or four days until he starts showing antibodies, probably." Chip hadn't been exposed in the shower as Mary had.
"What about the vaccine testers?"
"Five with -A. We have three left as uncontaminated controls for -B testing."
"Oh? Who are we letting live?"
"M2, M3, and F9," Dr. Archer replied. "They seem to have proper attitudes. One's a member of the Sierra Club, would you believe? The others like it outdoors, and they should be okay with what we're doing."
"Political criteria for scientific tests-what are we coming to?" the man asked with another chuckle.
"Well, if they're going to live, they might as well be people we can get along with," Archer observed.
"True." A nod. "How confident are you with -B?"
"Very. I expect it to be about ninety-seven percent effective, perhaps a little better," she added conservatively.
"But not a hundred?"
"No, Shiva's a little too nasty for that," Archer told him. "The animal testing is a little crude, I admit, but the results follow the computer model almost exactly, well within the testing-error criteria. Steve's been pretty good on that side."
"Berg's pretty smart," the other doctor agreed. Then he shifted in his chair. "You know, Barb, what we're doing here isn't exactly-"
"I know that," she assured him. "But we all knew that coming in."
"True." He nodded submission, annoyed at himself for the second thoughts. Well, his family would survive, and they all shared his love of the world and its many sorts of inhabitants. Still, these two people on the TV, they were humans, just like himself, and he'd just peeped in on them like some sort of pervert. Oh, yeah, they'd only done it because both were loaded with drugs fed to them through their food or in pill form, but they were both sentenced to death and
"Relax, will you?" Archer said, looking at his face and reading his mind. "At least they're getting a little love, aren't they? That's a hell of a lot more than the rest of the world'll get-"
"I won't have to watch them. " Being a voyeur wasn't his idea of fun, and he'd told himself often enough that he wouldn't have to watch what he'd be helping to start.
"No, but we'll know about it. It'll be on the TV news, won't it? But then it will be too late, and if they find out, their last conscious act will be to come after us. That's -he part that has me worried."
"The Project enclave in Kansas is pretty damned insecure, Barb," the man assured her. The one in Brazil's even more so." Which was where he'd be going eventually. The rain forest had always fascinated him.
"Could be better," Barbara Archer thought.
"The world isn't a laboratory, doctor, remember?" Wasn't that what the whole Shiva project was about, or Christ's sake? Christ? he wondered. Well, another ice a that had to be set aside. He wasn't cynical enough to invoke the name of God into what they were doing. Nature, perhaps, which wasn't quite the same thing, he thought.
"Good morning, Dmitriy," he said, coming into his office early.
"Good morning, sir," the intelligence officer said, rising to his feet as his employer entered the anteroom. It was a European custom, harkening back to royalty, and one that had somehow conveyed itself to the Marxist sate that had nurtured and trained the Russian now living in New York.
"What do you have for me?" the boss asked, unlocking his office door and going in.
"Something very interesting," Popov said. "How important it is I am not certain. You can better judge that than I can."
"Okay, let's see it." He sat down and turned in his swivel chair to flip on his office coffee machine.
Popov went to the far wall, and slid back the panel that covered the electronics equipment in the woodwork. He retrieved the remote control and keyed up the large-screen TV and VCR. Then he inserted a videocassette.
"This is the news coverage of Bern," he told his employer. The tape only ran for thirty seconds before he stopped it, ejected the cassette, and inserted another. "Vienna," he said then, hitting the PLAY button. Another segment, which ran less than a minute. This he also ejected. "Last night at the park in Spain." This one he also played. This segment lasted just over a minute before he stopped it.
"Yes?" the man said, when it was all over.
"What did you see, sir?"
"Some guys smoking - the same guy, you're saying"
"Correct. In all three incidents, the same man, or so it would appear."
"Go on," his employer told Popov.
"The same special-operations group responded to and terminated all three incidents. That is very interesting."
"Why?"
Popov took a patient breath. This man may have been a genius in some areas, but in others he was a babe in the woods. "Sir, the same team responded to incidents in three separate countries, with three separate national police forces, and in all three cases, this special team took over from those three separate national police agencies and dealt with the situation. In other words, there is now some special internationally credited team of special-operations troops-I would expect them to be military rather than policemen currently operating in Europe. Such a group has never been admitted to in the open press. It is, therefore, a `black' group, highly secret. I can speculate that it is a NATO team of some sort, but that is only speculation. Now," Popov went on, "I have some questions for you."
"Okay." The boss nodded.
"Did you know of this team? Did you know they existed?"
A shake of the head. "No." Then he turned to pour a cup of coffee.
"Is it possible for you to find out some things about them?"
A shrug. "Maybe. Why is it important?"
"That depends on another question-why are you paying me to incite terrorists to do things?" Popov asked.
"You do not have a need to know that, Dmitriy."
"Yes, sir, I do have such a need. One cannot stage operations against sophisticated opposition without having some idea of the overall objective. It simply cannot be done, sir. Moreover, you have applied significant assets to these operations. There must be a point. I need to know what it is." The unspoken part, which got through the words, was that he wanted to know, and in due course, he might well figure it out, whether he was told or not.