Mount Dragon (6 page)

Carson looked out across the motor pool toward a sweeping cluster of white buildings which rose abruptly from the desert sands: curves, planes and domes thrusting from the ground. The stark placement of the buildings in the desert terrain, along with a total absence of landscaping, gave the laboratory a Zen-like feeling of purity and emptiness. Glassed-in walkways connected many of the buildings, forming crisscrossing patterns.

Singer led Carson along one of the covered walkways. “Brent is a great believer in architecture as a means of inspiring the human spirit,” he said. “I'll never forget when that architect, what's-his-name—Guareschi—came from New York to ‘experience' the site.”

Singer chuckled softly.

“He arrived in tasseled loafers and a suit, with this silly straw hat. But the guy was game, I'll give him that. He actually camped out for four days before he got heatstroke and hightailed it back to Manhattan.”

“It's beautiful,” Carson said.

“It is. Despite his bad experience, the man did manage to capture the spareness of the desert. He insisted there be no landscaping. For one thing, we didn't have the water. But he also wanted the complex to look as if it was part of the desert, and not imposed on it. Obviously, he never forgot the heat. I think that's why everything's white: the machine shop, the storage barracks—even the power plant.” He nodded toward a long building with gracefully curving rooflines.

“That's the power plant?” Carson asked in disbelief. “It looks more like an art museum. This place must have cost a fortune.”

“Several fortunes,” Singer said. “But back in '85, when construction began, money wasn't much of an issue.” He ushered Carson toward the residency compound, a series of low curvilinear structures gathered together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “We'd obtained a nine-hundred-million-dollar contract through DATRADA.”

“Who?”

“Defense Advanced Technology, Research and Development Administration.”

“Never heard of it,” said Carson.

“It was a secret Defense Department agency. Disbanded after the Reagan years. We all had to sign a lot of formal loyalty documents and the like. Secret clearance, top-secret clearance, you name it. Then they investigated us—boy, did they investigate. I got calls from ex-girlfriends twenty years removed: ‘A bunch of suits were just here asking a lot of questions about you. What the hell did you do now, Singer?'” He laughed.

“So you've been here from the beginning,” Carson said.

“That's right. Only the scientists have six-month tours. I guess they figure I don't do enough real work to get burnt out.” He laughed. “I'm the old-timer here, me and Nye. And a few others, old Pavel and the fellow you just met, Mike Marr. Anyway, it's been much nicer since we went civilian. The military boys were a pain in the posterior.”

“How did the changeover happen?” Carson asked.

Singer steered him through the smoked-glass door of a structure on the far side of the residency compound. A river of air-conditioning washed over them as the door hissed shut. Carson found himself in a vestibule, with slate floors, white walls, and taupe furniture. Singer led him toward another door.

“At first, we did strictly defense research. That's how we got these land parcels in the Missile Range. Our job was to look for vaccines, countermeasures and antitoxins to presumed Soviet biological weapons. When the Soviet Union fell apart, so did our brief. We lost the contract in 1990. We almost lost the lab, too, but Scopes did some quick lobbying behind closed doors. God knows how he did it, but we were able to get a thirty-year lease under the Defense Industry Conversion Act.”

Singer opened a door into a long laboratory. A series of black tables gleamed under fluorescent lights. Bunsen burners, Erlenmeyer flasks, glass tubing, stereozoom microscopes and various other low-tech equipment sat in neat, spotless rows.

Carson had never seen a lab look so clean. “Is this the low-level facility?” he asked incredulously.

“Nope,” Singer said. “Most of the real work is done on the inside, our next stop. This is just eye candy for congressmen and military brass. They expect to see an upscale version of their old university chem lab, and we give it to them.”

They passed into another, much smaller room. A large, gleaming instrument sat in its center. Carson recognized it instantly.

“The world's best microtome: the Scientific Precision ‘Ultra-Shave,'” Singer said. “That's what we call it, anyway. It's all computer controlled. A diamond blade that cuts a human hair into twenty-five hundred sections. Widthwise. This one's just for show, of course. We've got two identical units operating on the inside.”

They walked back into the baking heat. Singer licked a finger and held it up. “Wind's from the southeast,” he said. “As always. That's why they picked this place—always blowing from the southeast. The first town downwind of us is Claunch, New Mexico, population twenty-two. One hundred forty miles away. The Trinity Site, where they blew up the first A-bomb, is only thirty miles northwest of here. Good place to hide an atomic explosion. You couldn't find a more isolated place in the lower forty-eight.”

“We called that wind the Mexican Zephyr,” Carson said. “When I was a kid, I hated to go out in that wind more than anything. My dad used to say it caused more trouble than a rat-tailed horse tied short in fly time.”

Singer turned. “Guy, I have no idea what you just said.”

“A rat-tailed horse is a horse with a short tail. If you tie him short and the flies start tormenting him, he'll go crazy, tear down your fence and take off.”

“I see,” Singer said without conviction. He pointed over Carson's shoulder. “Over there are the recreational facilities—gymnasium, tennis courts, horse corral. I have a strong aversion to physical activity, so I'll let you explore those on your own.” He patted his paunch affectionately and laughed. “And that awful-looking building is the air incinerator for the Fever Tank.”

“Fever Tank?”

“Sorry,” Singer said. “I mean the Biosafety Level-5 laboratory, where the really high-risk organisms are worked on. I'm sure you've heard of the Biosafety classification system. Level-1 is the safety standard for working with the least infectious, least dangerous microbes. Level-4 is for the most dangerous. There are two Level-4 laboratories in the country: the CDC has one in Atlanta, and the Army's got one at Fort Detrick. These Level-4 laboratories are designed to handle the most dangerous viruses and bacteria that exist in nature.”

“But what's this Level-5? I've never heard of it.”

Singer grinned. “Brent's pride and joy. Mount Dragon has the only Level-5 laboratory in the world. It was designed for handling viruses and bacteria
more
dangerous than anything naturally existing in nature. In other words, microbes that have been genetically engineered. Somebody christened it the Fever Tank years ago, and the name stuck. Anyway, all the air from the Level-5 facility is circulated through the incinerator and heated to one thousand degrees Celsius before being cooled and returned. Sterilized completely.”

The alien-looking air incinerator was the only structure Carson had seen at Mount Dragon that was not pure white. “So you're working with an airborne pathogen?”

“Clever. Yes we are, and a very nasty one at that. I enjoyed it much more when we were working on PurBlood. That's our artificial blood product.”

Carson glanced over in the direction of the corrals. He could see a barn, stalls, several turnouts, and a large fenced pasture beyond the perimeter fence.

“Can you ride outside the facility?” he asked.

“Of course. You just have to log out and log in.” Singer glanced around and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Christ, it's hot. I just never get used to it. Let's go inside.”

“Inside” meant the inner perimeter, a large chain-linked area at the heart of Mount Dragon. Carson could see only one break in the inner fence, a small gatehouse directly in front of them. Singer led the way through the gate and into a large building on the far side. The doors opened to a cool foyer. Through an open door, Carson could see a row of computer terminals on long white tables. Two workers, ID cards hung around their necks, wearing jeans under white lab coats, were busily typing at terminals. Carson realized with surprise that, except for guards, these were the first workers he'd seen on the site.

“This is the operations building,” Singer said, gesturing into the mostly empty room. “Administration, data processing, you name it. Our staff isn't large. There were never more than thirty scientists here at one time, even in our military days. Now the number is half that, all focused on the project.”

“That's pretty small,” Carson said.

Singer shrugged. “The human-wave approach just doesn't work in genetic engineering.”

He gestured Carson out of the foyer into a large atrium paved in black granite and roofed with heavily tinted glass. The strong desert sun, attenuated to a pale light, fell on a small grouping of palm trees in the center. Three corridors branched out from the atrium. “Those lead to the transfection labs and the DNA-sequencing facility,” he said. “You won't be spending much time there, but you can get somebody to take you through at your leisure, if you like. Our next stop's out there.” He pointed at a window. Through it, Carson could make out a low, rhombus-like structure poking up from the desert.

“Level-5,” Singer said unenthusiastically. “The Fever Tank.”

“Looks pretty small,” Carson said.

“Believe me, it feels small. But what you see is just the housing for the HEPA filters. The real lab's beneath that, underground. Added protection in case of an earthquake, fire, explosion.” He hesitated. “Guess we might as well go in.”

A slow descent in a cramped elevator deposited them in a long, white-tiled corridor lit by orange lights. Video cameras hung from the ceiling, tracking their progress. At the end of the corridor, Singer stopped at a gray metal door, its edges curved to fit the doorframe and sealed with thick black rubber.

To the right was a small mechanical box. Bending over, Singer spoke his name into the device. A green light came on above the door, and a tone sounded.

“Voice recognition,” said Singer, opening the door. “It's not as good as hand-geometry readers or retinal scanners, but those don't work through biosuits. And this one, at least, can't be fooled by a tape recorder. You'll be coded this afternoon, as part of your entrance interview.”

They moved into a large room, sparsely decorated with modern furniture. Along one wall was a series of metal lockers. On the far side stood another steel door, polished to a high gloss, marked with a bright yellow-and-red symbol.
EXTREME BIOHAZARD
, read a legend above the frame.

“This is the ready room,” Singer said. “The bluesuits are in those lockers.”

He moved toward one of the lockers, then paused. Suddenly he turned toward Carson. “Tell you what. Why don't I get someone who really knows the place to show you around?”

He pressed a button on the locker. There was a hiss as the metal door slid up, revealing a bulky blue rubber suit, carefully packed into a molded container that resembled a small coffin.

“You've never entered a BSL-4 facility, right?” Singer asked. “Then listen closely. Level-5 is a lot like Level-4, only more so. Most people wear scrub under the full-body suits for comfort, but it's not a requirement. If you wear your street clothes, all pens, pencils, watches, knives must come out of the pockets. Anything that could puncture the suit.” Carson quickly turned his pockets inside out.

“No long fingernails?” Singer asked.

Carson looked at his hands. “Nope.”

“That's good. I'm always worrying mine down to the quick, so I don't have a problem.” He laughed. “You'll find a pair of rubber gloves in that lower left compartment. No rings, right? Good. You'll have to take off your boots and put on those slippers. And no long toenails. You'll find toenail clippers in one of the locker compartments, if you need them.”

Carson removed his boots.

“Now step into the suit, right leg first, then left leg, and draw it up. But not all the way. Leave the visor open for now so we can talk more easily.”

Carson fumbled with the bulky suit, drawing it over his clothes with difficulty.

“This thing weighs a ton,” he said.

“It's fully pressurized. See that metal valve at your waist? You'll be on oxygen the entire time you're inside. You'll be shown how to move from station to station. But the suit itself contains ten minutes' worth of air, in case of emergencies.” He walked toward an intercom unit, pressed a series of buttons. “Rosalind?” he asked.

There was a short pause. “What?” came the buzzing response.

“Could I trouble you to give our new scientist, Guy Carson, a tour of BSL-5?”

There was a longer silence.

“I'm in the middle of something,” the voice came back.

“It'll just take a few minutes.”

“Aw, for Chrissakes.” The voice cut off immediately.

Singer turned to Carson. “That's Rosalind Brandon-Smith. She's a little eccentric, I guess you could say.” He leaned toward Carson's open visor conspiratorially. “Actually, she's extremely rude, but don't pay any attention. She was instrumental in developing our artificial blood. Now she's wrapping up her part of the new project. She did a lot of work with Frank Burt, and they were pretty close, so she may not be too friendly to his replacement. You'll be meeting her inside, no reason for her to go through decontam twice.”

“Who's Frank Burt?” Carson asked.

“He was a true scientist. And a fine human being. But he found conditions here a little too stressful. Had something of a breakdown recently. It's not uncommon, you know. About a quarter of the people who come to Mount Dragon can't finish their tour.”