Mount Dragon (7 page)

“I didn't know I was replacing anyone,” Carson frowned.

“You are. I'll tell you about it later. You'll be filling some large shoes.” He stepped back. “OK, finish up the zippers. Make sure you close and secure all three. We've got a buddy system here. After you suit up, someone else has to check over everything.”

He did a careful inspection of the bluesuit, then showed Carson how to use the visor intercom. “Unless you're standing next to somebody, it's very hard to hear anything. Press this button on your forearm to speak over the intercom.”

He waved toward the door marked
EXTREME BIOHAZARD
. “On the far side of the air lock is a chemical shower. Once you're inside, it starts automatically. Get used to it, there'll be a much longer one coming out. When the inner door opens, go on through. Be especially careful until you're used to the suit. Rosalind will be waiting for you on the far side. I hope.”

“Thanks,” said Carson, raising his voice to make sure it carried through the thick rubber of the suit.

“No problem,” came the muffled response. “Sorry I won't be going in with you. It's just…” He hesitated. “Nobody goes into the Fever Tank unless they have to. You'll see why.”

As the door hissed shut behind him, Carson walked forward onto a metal grating. There was a sudden rumble, and a yellow chemical solution spurted from shower heads in the ceiling, walls, and floor. Carson could feel the solution drumming loudly on his suit. In a minute it was over; the next door opened, and he stepped into a small antechamber. A motor began to rumble, and he could feel the pressure of a powerful air machine blowing at him from all directions. Inside his suit, the drying mechanism felt like a strange, distant wind: He was unable to tell whether the air was hot or cold. Then the inner door hissed open, and Carson found himself facing a short woman who was staring at him impatiently through the clear faceplate of her visor. Even compensating for the bulkiness of the suit, Carson estimated her weight at 250 pounds.

“Follow me,” a voice inside his helmet said brusquely, and the woman turned away, moving down a tiled corridor so narrow that her shoulders brushed against both walls. The walls were smooth and slick, with no corners or projecting apparatus that might tear a protective suit. Everything—floors, wall tiles, ceiling—was painted a brilliant white.

Carson pressed the left button on his forearm, activating the intercom. “I'm Guy Carson,” he said.

“Glad to hear it,” came the reply. “Now, pay attention. See those air hoses overhead?”

Carson looked up. A number of blue hoses dangled from the ceiling, metal valves affixed to their ends.

“Grab one and plug it into your suit valve. Careful. Turn it to the left to lock it in. When you move from one station to the next, you'll have to detach it and plug into another hose. Your suit has a limited supply of air, so don't dawdle between hookups.”

Carson followed her instructions, felt the snap as the valve seated itself, and heard the reassuring hiss of airflow. Inside the suit, he felt a strange sense of detachment from the world. His movements seemed slow, clumsy. Because of the multiple pairs of gloves, he could barely feel the air hose as he guided it into the attachment.

“Keep in mind that this place is like a submarine,” came the voice of Brandon-Smith. “Small, cramped, and dangerous. Everything and everyone has its place.”

“I see,” said Carson.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because sloppiness is death down here in the Fever Tank. And not just for you. Got that?”

“Yes,” Carson repeated.
Bitch
.

They continued down the narrow hall. As he followed Brandon-Smith, trying to acclimate himself to the pressure suit, Carson thought he could hear a strange noise in the background: a faint drumming, almost more sensation than sound. He decided it must be the Fever Tank's generator.

Brandon-Smith's great bulk eased sideways through a narrow hatch. In the lab beyond, suited figures were working in front of large Plexiglas-enclosed tables, their hands stretched through rubber holes bored into the cases. They were swabbing petri dishes. The light was painfully bright, throwing every object in the lab into sharp relief. Small waste receptacles with biohazard labels and flash-incineration attachments stood beside each worktable. More ceiling-mounted video cameras swiveled, monitoring the scientists.

“Everybody,” Brandon-Smith's voice sounded in the intercom. “This is Guy Carson. Burt's replacement.”

Visors angled upward as people turned to get a look at him, and a chorus of greetings crackled in Carson's helmet.

“This is production,” she said flatly. It wasn't a statement that invited questions, and Carson didn't ask any.

Brandon-Smith led Carson through a warren of other labs, narrow corridors, and air locks, all starkly bathed in the same brilliant light.
She's right
, Carson thought, looking around.
The place is like a submarine
. All available floor space was packed with fabulously expensive equipment: transmission and scanning electron microscopes, autoclaves, incubators, mass spectrometers, even a small cyclotron, all reengineered to allow the scientists to operate them through the bulky bluesuits. The ceilings were low, heavily veined with piping, and painted white like everything else in the Fever Tank. Every ten yards Brandon-Smith halted to hook up to a new air hose, then waited for Carson to do the same. The going was excruciatingly slow.

“My God,” Carson said. “These safety measures are unbelievable. What have you got in here, anyway?”

“You name it,” came the response. “Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, Marburg virus, Hantavirus, Dengue, Ebola, anthrax. Not to mention a few Soviet biological agents. All currently on ice, of course.”

The cramped spaces, the bulky suit, the stuffy air, all had a disorienting effect on Carson. He found himself gulping in oxygen, fighting down an urge to unzip the suit, give himself breathing room.

At last they stopped in a small circular hub from which several narrow corridors branched out like the spokes of a wheel. “What's that?” Carson pointed to a huge manifold over their heads.

“The air uptake,” Brandon-Smith said, attaching another new hose to her suit. “This is the center of the Fever Tank. The entire facility has negative airflow controls. The air pressure decreases the further in you go. Everything flows to this point, then it's taken up to the incinerator and recirculated.” She gestured at one of the corridors. “Your lab's down there. You'll see it soon enough. I don't have time to show you everything.”

“And down there?” Carson pointed to a narrow tube at their feet containing a shiny metal ladder.

“There are three levels beneath us. Backup labs, security substation, CRYLOX freezers, generators, the control center.”

She stepped a few feet down one of the hallways, stopping in front of another door.

“Carson?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Last stop. The Zoo. Keep the hell away from the cages. Don't let them grab you. If they rip a piece off your suit, you'll never see the light of day. You'll be locked up in here and left to die.”

“The Zoo—?” Carson began, but Brandon-Smith was already opening the door. Suddenly the drumming was louder, and Carson realized it was not a generator, after all. Muffled screams and hoots filtered through his pressure suit. Turning a corner, Carson saw that one wall of the room's interior was lined floor to ceiling with cages. Black beady eyes peered out from between wire mesh. The new arrivals in the room caused the noise level to increase dramatically. Many of the prisoners were now pounding on the floors of the cages with their feet and hands.

“Chimpanzees?” asked Carson.

“Good for you.”

A small bluesuited figure at the far end of the row of cages turned toward them.

“Carson, this is Bob Fillson. He takes care of the animals.”

Fillson nodded curtly. Carson could see a heavy brow, bulbous nose, and wet pendulous lip behind the faceplate. The rest was in shadow. The man turned and went back to work.

“Why so many?” Carson asked.

She stopped and looked at him. “They're the only animal with the same immunological system as a human being. You should know that, Carson.”

“Of course, but why exactly—”

But Brandon-Smith was peering intently into one of the cages.

“Aw, for Chrissakes,” she said.

Carson came over, keeping a respectful distance from the countless fingers poking through the mesh. A chimpanzee was lying on its side, trembling, oblivious of the commotion surrounding it. There seemed to be something wrong with its facial features. Then Carson realized that the creature's eyeballs seemed abnormally enlarged. Looking closer, he could see that they were actually bulging from its head, the blood vessels rupturing and hemorrhaging in the sclera. The animal suddenly jerked, opened its hairy jaws, and screamed.

“Bob,” Carson could hear Brandon-Smith saying through the intercom, “the last of Burt's chimps is about to go.”

With a notable lack of haste, Fillson came shuffling over. He was a very small man, barely five feet, and he moved with a slow deliberation that reminded Carson of a diver under water.

He turned to Carson, and spoke with a hoarse voice. “You'll have to go. You too, Rosalind. Can't open a cage when others are in the room.”

Carson watched in horror as one of the eyeballs suddenly erupted from its socket, followed by a gush of bloody fluid. The chimp thrashed about silently, teeth snapping, arms flailing.

“What the hell?” Carson began, frozen in horror.

“Good-
bye
,” Fillson said firmly, as he reached into a cabinet behind him.

“Bye, Bob,” said Brandon-Smith. Carson noticed a distinct change of tone in her voice when she spoke to the animal handler.

The last thing Carson saw as they sealed the door was the chimp, rigid with pain, pawing desperately at its ruined face, as Fillson sprayed something from an aerosol can into the cage.

Brandon-Smith made her ponderous way down another corridor, not speaking.

“Are you going to tell me what was wrong with that chimpanzee?” Carson said at last.

“I thought it was obvious,” she snapped. “Cerebral edema.”

“Caused by what?”

The woman turned to look at him. She seemed surprised. “You really don't know, Carson?”

“No, I don't. And from now on, the name is Guy. Or Dr. Carson, if you prefer. I don't appreciate being called by my last name.”

There was a silence. “Fine,
Guy
,” she replied. “Those chimps are all X-FLU positive. The one you saw is in the tertiary stage of the disease. The virus stimulates massive overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid. In time, the pressure herniates the brain down through the foramen magnum. That's when the lucky ones die. A few hang on until the eyeballs are forced from their sockets.”

“X-FLU?” Carson asked. He could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead and under his arms, dampening the inside of his suit.

This time Brandon-Smith stopped dead. There was a buzz of static and he heard her voice: “Singer, can you enlighten me as to why this joker doesn't know about X-FLU?”

Singer's voice came back. “I haven't briefed him yet on the project. That comes next.”

“Mr. Ass-backwards, as usual,” she said, then turned to Carson. “Let's go,
Guy
, the tour's over.”

She left Carson at the exit air lock. He stepped through the access chamber into another chemical shower, waiting the required seven minutes as the high-pressure solution doused his suit. A few minutes later he was back in the ready room. He was vaguely annoyed to see Singer, cool and relaxed, doing the crossword of the local newspaper.

“Enjoy your tour?” Singer asked, looking up from the paper.

“No,” said Carson, breathing deeply, trying to shake the oppressive feeling of the Fever Tank. “That Brandon-Smith is meaner than a sidewinder in a hot skillet.”

Singer burst out laughing and shook his bald head. “A colorful way of putting it. She's the most brilliant scientist we've got at present. If we pull this project off, you know, we're all going to become rich. Yourself included. That's worth putting up with a Rosalind Brandon-Smith, don't you think? She's really just a frightened, insecure little girl underneath that mountain of adipose tissue.”

He helped Carson out of his suit and showed him how to pack it back inside the locker.

“I think the time has come for me to hear about this mysterious project,” Carson said, closing the locker.

“Absolutely. Shall we head back to my office for a cold drink?”

Carson nodded. “You know, there was a chimpanzee back there with its—”

Singer held up a hand. “I know what you saw.”

“So what the hell was it?”

Singer paused. “Influenza.”

“What?” Carson said. “The
flu?
”

Singer nodded.

“I don't know of any flu that pops your eyeballs out of your skull.”

“Well,” Singer said, “this is a very special kind of flu.” Gripping Carson's elbow, he led him through the outer corridors of the maximum-security lab and back up into the welcoming desert sunlight.