Mount Dragon (18 page)

Within an hour, everyone had assembled. Nye stood near a large videoconferencing screen, Singer at his side. Mike Marr slouched against one wall, booted legs crossed, chewing the ever-present rubber band as he lazily surveyed the group. Fear and resentment hung like a pall of smoke. Without a word, the room darkened, and the face of Scopes appeared on the screen.

“I don't need a debriefing,” he said. “Everything was captured on videotape. Everything.”

There was a silence while Scopes's eyes moved back and forth behind his thick glasses as if looking around the room.

“I am very disappointed in some of you,” he said at last. “You know the procedures. You've rehearsed them dozens of times.”

He turned to Singer. “John, you know the rules better than anyone. Mr. Nye was on top of the situation and you were not. He was perfectly correct to assume responsibility during the emergency. In a situation like this, there's no room for confusion in the chain of command.”

“I understand,” Singer said, his face expressionless.

“I know you do. Susana Cabeza de Vaca?”

“What,” said de Vaca defiantly.

“Why did you ignore protocol and try to release Brandon-Smith from Level 5?”

“So she could receive medical attention in a hospital,” de Vaca said, “instead of being locked in a cage.”

There was a long silence while Scopes gazed at her. “And if she by chance had been infected with X-FLU?” he asked at last. “What then? Would medical attention save her life?”

There was a long silence. Scopes sighed heavily. “Susana, you're a microbiologist. I don't need to give you a lesson in epidemiology. If you had succeeded in springing Rosalind from Level 5, and if she were infected, you might have started an epidemic unprecedented in the history of mankind.”

She remained stubbornly silent.

“Andrew?” Scopes said, turning his eyes on Vanderwagon. “In such an epidemic, little children, teenagers, mothers, working men and women, rich and poor, doctors and nurses, farmers and priests, all would have died. Thousands of people, maybe millions, and maybe—” He paused. “—even billions.” Scopes's voice had grown very soft. He allowed another long silence to pass.

“Somebody tell me if I'm wrong.”

There was another excruciating silence.

“Damn it!” he barked. “There are
reasons
why we have safety rules in Level 5. You all are working with the most dangerous pathogen in existence. The whole world depends on you not fucking up. And you almost fucked up.”

“I'm sorry,” Vanderwagon blurted out. “I acted without thinking. All I could think of was that it could be me—”

“Fillson!” Scopes said abruptly.

The animal handler approached the screen, his hands twitching nervously, his pendulous lower lip moist.

“By failing to latch the cage properly, you caused incalculable harm. And you also failed to keep the quarantined animals' nails trimmed, as per explicit instructions. You are, of course, fired. Furthermore, I have instructed our lawyers to initiate a civil lawsuit against you. If Brandon-Smith should die, her blood will be on your hands. In short, your unforgivable carelessness will haunt you legally, financially, and morally for the rest of your life. Mr. Marr, please see that Fillson is immediately escorted out of the premises and dropped off at Engle, to make his own way home.”

Mike Marr pushed himself away from the wall, a smile playing about his lips, and sauntered over.

“Mr. Scopes—Brent—
please
,” Fillson began as Marr grasped him roughly by the arm and pulled him through the door.

“Susana?” Scopes said.

De Vaca remained silent.

Scopes shook his head. “I don't want to fire you, but if you can't see the mistake you made, I'll have to. It's too dangerous. More than one life was at stake back there. Do you understand?”

De Vaca dropped her head. “Yes. I understand,” she said finally.

Scopes turned to Vanderwagon. “I know that you and Susana both were motivated by decent human emotions. But you
must
have more discipline when dealing with a danger as great as this virus. Remember the phrase: ‘If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out.' You can't let such emotions, no matter how well intended, get the better of your reason. You are scientists. We will examine the consequences, if any, of this incident on your bonus package at a later time.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vanderwagon.

“And you too, Susana. You're both on probation for the next six weeks.”

She nodded.

“Guy Carson?”

“Yes,” Carson said.

“I'm more sorry than I can say that your experiment failed.”

Carson said nothing.

“But I am proud of the way you acted this morning. You could have joined the rush to free Brandon-Smith, but you didn't. You stayed cool and used your head.”

Carson remained silent. He had done what he thought was right. But de Vaca's withering insult, her branding him a murderer, had struck home. Somehow, hearing himself praised by Scopes like this, in front of everyone, made him uncomfortable.

Scopes sighed. Then he addressed the entire group. “Rosalind Brandon-Smith and Roger Czerny are receiving the best medical treatment possible, their suits have been resealed, and they are resting comfortably. They must remain in the quarantine unit for ninety-six hours. You all know the procedure and the reasons behind it. Level 5 will remain closed except to security and medical personnel until the crisis period is over. Any questions?”

There was a silence. “If they test X-FLU-positive—?” someone began.

A look of pain crossed Scopes's face. “I don't want to consider that possibility,” he said, and the screen went black with a pop of static.

“Get some sleep, Guy. There's nothing more you can do here.”

Singer, looking drawn and haggard, sat at one of the rolling chairs in the Monitoring Station, his eyes glancing over a bank of black-and-white video screens. Over the last thirty-six hours Carson had returned time and again to the station, gazing at the images on the video screens, as if the sheer force of his will could bring the two scientists out of quarantine. Now he picked up his laptop, said a reluctant good-bye to Singer, and left the subdued blue glow of the station for the empty halls of the operations building. Sleep was impossible, and he allowed his feet to take him to one of the aboveground labs beyond the inner perimeter.

Sitting at a long table in the deserted lab, he went over the failed experiment again and again in his head. He'd recently been told that the escaped chimp had tested positive for X-FLU. He could not forget, even for a moment, that if he had been successful this would not have been the case. To make things worse, the paternal, encouraging messages from Scopes had ceased. He had let everyone down.

And yet the inoculation
should
have worked. There was no flaw that he could find. All the preliminary tests had shown the virus altered in precisely the way he intended.

He powered up his computer and began listing the possible scenarios:

It all boiled down to the same thing: repeat the damned experiment. But he knew he'd get the same results, because there was nothing that could be done any differently. Wearily, he called up Burt's notes and began going through the sections that dealt with the mapping of the viral gene. It was superb work, and Carson could hardly see where Burt had gone wrong, but it was worth going over again anyway. Maybe he should remap the entire viral plasmid from scratch himself, a process that he knew would take at least two months. He thought of spending two more months locked up in the Fever Tank. He thought of Brandon-Smith, somewhere in quarantine at this very moment, deep in the Tank. He remembered the blood welling from her raked side, the expression of fear and disbelief on her face. He remembered standing there, watching, while the guards dragged her away.

He worked in front of a large picture window that looked out over the desert. It was his only consolation. From time to time he stared out, watching the afternoon sun grow golden on the yellow sands.

“Guy?” he heard a voice say behind him. It was de Vaca. He turned and found her standing in the door, in jeans and T-shirt, her lab coat slung over her arm.

“Need any help?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Look,” she said, “I'm sorry about my comment in the Fever Tank.”

He turned away silently. Talking with this woman only ended in grief.

He heard a rustle as she moved closer.

“I came to apologize,” she said.

He sighed. “Apology accepted.”

“I don't believe it,” she said. “You still sound mad.”

Guy turned toward her. “It's not just the comment in the Fever Tank. You bitch about everything I say.”

“You say a lot of stupid things,” de Vaca said, flaring up.

“That's just what I mean. You didn't come to apologize. You came to argue.”

There was a silence in the empty lab.

De Vaca stood up. “We can at least maintain a professional relationship. We've got to. I need that bonus for my clinic. So the experiment failed. We'll try again.”

Carson looked at her, standing illuminated in the picture window, her violet eyes darting at him, her long black hair flowing wild down her back and shoulders. He found himself holding his breath, she was so beautiful. It took all the steam out of his anger.

“What's going on with you and Mike Marr?” he asked.

She looked at him quickly. “That son of a bitch? He'd been coming on to me since day one. I guess he thought no woman could resist big black boots and a ten-gallon hat.”

“You seemed to be resisting pretty well at the Bomb Picnic.”

A rueful expression crossed de Vaca's face. “Yes, and he's not a man who likes to be crossed. He comes across all smiles and aw-shucks, but that's not how he really is, at all. You saw how he planted the butt of his shotgun in my gut, back there in the Fever Tank. There's something about him that scares the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth.” She pulled her hair back brusquely with one finger. “Come on, let's get to it.”

Carson exhaled deeply. “Okay. Take a look at my ideas, see if you can think of any other reasons for the failure.” He pushed the PowerBook over, and she took the next stool at the lab table, reading the information on the screen.

“I have another idea,” she said after a moment.

“What's that?”

She typed:

“What makes you think it was contaminated?” Carson asked.

“It's a possibility.”

“But those samples were run with GEF. They're all cleaner than a Vatican joke.”

“I just said it's a
possibility
,” de Vaca repeated. “You can't always believe a machine. These X-FLU strains are very similar.”

“OK, OK,” Carson sighed. “But first, I want to double-check Burt's notes on the mapping of the X-FLU plasmid. I know it all by heart, but I want to go through it once more, just to be certain.”

“Let me help you,” said de Vaca. “Maybe between us, we can find something.”

They began to read in silence.