Mutant (7 page)
“Are you saying they take your claims seriously?”
“Ask them that.”
“How do we know you wouldn’t come up just as empty around other research centers which use naked DNA vectors, filters or no filters—that the stuff just isn’t infectious?”
“We don’t. I’m suggesting we check the grounds of every such plant worldwide, to find out. And for the tests to be reliable, the companies must be pressured to disclose what vectors they’re using so we’d know which primers to use.”
The initial outburst subsided to a sullen grumbling as the rest of the reporters, most of them ignoring the two women’s conversation, angrily shoved back their chairs, stuffed notepads into briefcases, and packed up tape recorders. More than once Sullivan heard the word
hoax
.
“Wait a minute. Listen, all of you!” said Steve Patton, jumping up from his chair. “Don’t you realize the real story here is the testing method we just walked you through— that there exists an easy and cheap way to screen whether naked DNA has infected the environment?”
“Sit on it, mister,” snarled the man at the end of the table. “I don’t like being manipulated.” He stormed out the door.
“The fact that no one is running such tests is really what you should be in an uproar about,” Patton shouted after him. “The fact that not one corporation worldwide provides independent geneticists with the access they need to company grounds or discloses the vectors we should be testing for—that’s the true outrage. And I’m here to announce that the Blue Planet Society would finance any such study.”
The reporter never looked back.
Patton turned to Sullivan and shrugged.
Sullivan eyed those who were still packing up their equipment. “Won’t you grasp the opportunity here? You could report
how
these simple standard procedures can be used to establish essential screening, then maybe pressure will build to make it happen. If it does, possibly someone somewhere will find the hard evidence we need to wake everyone up to the fact that the risks are real. And if we’re truly lucky, that will happen before some lab accidentally causes a catastrophe with permanent consequences, such as resurrecting a new equivalent of the Spanish flu.”
A few paused to listen, but most left, still fuming. The woman from
Environment Watch
said nothing more, but rather stood where she was and regarded Sullivan with a steady, thoughtful gaze. After a few seconds, she nodded and joined the others.
“It’s so unfair,” consoled Azrhan later as he took a cup of tea with Sullivan and Patton in his mentor’s office. “They were the ones who insisted on coming here.” He appeared much more relaxed now that he’d proved himself in his first encounter with the press.
Sullivan sighed wearily. “I’d so hoped that we could convince them to get on board with us—issue a call for mandatory screening and a disclosure of vectors.” She gave a sarcastic laugh. “As it is, we’ll get pasted for crying wolf, or if we’re lucky, they’ll consider it ‘no news’ and run nothing.” She absently fingered the printouts that documented their negative findings. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that somehow Bob Morgan discovered what I did and was so confident I’d ‘come up empty,’ as that shrew from
Environment Watch
put it, he leaked the fact that I was running the tests to the media—all to discredit me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Patton with a laugh.
“Is it? Who else would know? Surely no one here spilled the beans. And he’s such a creep—I can just imagine him gloating over
me
having to say that I could find no evidence of environmental contamination around his plant.”
Patton smiled behind his hand, his round wire-rimmed glasses and curly gray hair making him look owlishly wise in a way she found irksome.
Azrhan, on the other hand, stared at her, his eyes widening in earnest amazement. “You really think he’d do that?” he said.
“You bet I do. And for him to be that certain I’d find nothing, it means for sure they’re using a vector he knows we’ll never guess the primers for, or they really do have effective filters.”
Azrhan nodded and continued to sip his tea in silence, letting his gaze slip out the window to where the winter dusk was settling over downtown Manhattan. Sullivan absently followed his line of sight, and saw he was watching the Twin Towers reflect the final seconds of the setting sun and turn themselves into pillars of fire.
“Concentrate on the press, Kathleen,” said Patton with a chuckle. “You’ll accomplish more if you succeed in getting our message out with them than by obsessing about Agrenomics.” He got up from the easy chair opposite her desk. “And I wouldn’t write off that ‘shrew’ from
Environment Watch
. She seemed to be listening to you at the end.”
“You’re going?” said Sullivan, feeling a twinge of disappointment. She’d hoped to have dinner with him.
“Sorry, but I’m meeting a potential donor to the Blue Planet Society for drinks. But let’s talk later. I’ll be at home.”
“Sure,” she said, trying to quell the pangs of jealousy that shot through her. Most of his “potential donors” were wealthy socialites, women who adored being in his company and were willing to offer him much more than cash. Easy, Sullivan, she cautioned herself, you knew what he was when you allowed yourself to climb into his bed. “Hope you score big, for the sake of the environment,” she added with a smile, the rude tease a throw-back to the time when they’d been just friends and she’d reveled in ribbing him about his wicked ways.
He gave her a merry grin and bent over to kiss her good-bye. She turned her face, offering him her cheek instead of her lips.
As he vanished out the door, she returned her attention to Azrhan. He discreetly continued to stare out the window. Finding the silence embarrassing, she said, “There’s still one thing I can’t figure.”
“What’s that, Dr. Sullivan?” If he sensed anything between her and Patton, he showed no sign of it.
“Why should the people at Agrenomics be such nervous Nellies about people getting onto the grounds?”
“What do you mean?”
“If Morgan’s feeling so secure that the likes of me with all my expertise won’t find anything incriminating, what are all the armed guards around the place for?”
“Maybe he’s worried about industrial espionage?”
“Maybe,” said Sullivan, putting down her cup and packing up her papers to leave for the night. In the process, she managed to knock over the dozen or so unanswered Christmas cards that she’d allowed to accumulate on her desk these past weeks, a reminder of how much the work on her samples had kept her from preparing for the rapidly approaching holidays. “Or perhaps it’s because he’s got something else to hide—something that can’t be found by prowling around outside the building and using a geneticist’s tool kit. In any case, I’m certainly going to be keeping my eye on Agrenomics.”
“What’s the matter, Mom?” asked Lisa, looking at her across the kitchen table with green eyes and auburn hair identical to her own. “You’ve barely touched your dinner. And after I slaved at least six minutes in front of the microwave making it for you.”
Kathleen Sullivan smiled. “Oh, it’s just some trouble I had with the media today.”
The teenager cocked her head and twisted her youthful features into a skeptical look. “Come on. You never worry about the media. In fact, you relish every dustup I’ve ever seen you in, and it’s you who starts most of them.” She dipped a buffalo wing into a glob of blue cheese. “What’s really the matter?”
“No, seriously—”
“Mother, is this about Steve Patton?”
Sullivan leaned back in her chair and, feeling an odd mixture of sadness and pride, studied the slim young woman who, in growing up fast, had become so astute. Ever since her father had walked out on them seven years ago, Lisa had all too quickly stepped out of her childhood and developed a tough-mindedness that would serve her well in life. But that jump had cheated her of the innocent silly phase most of her girlfriends got to pass through in their early adolescence. For the millionth time Sullivan felt a familiar regret over what her own failures as a wife had cost her daughter. She gave a rueful smile and said, “Who made you so smart?”
“I’ve told you to dump the guy.”
“Lisa, it’s not like that. We’re friends—”
Lisa stripped the wing with her teeth, got up, and retrieved a bottle of cola from the refrigerator. “If a man slept around on me, you’d say I should dump him.”
“Lisa!”
“Have you even told him how you feel?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“My God, Mother, how could a woman who’s so smart be so silly? And to think I’ve relied on you to advise me about my love life.”
Sullivan started to laugh. “So I’m great at genetics, lousy with men. It’s embarrassing enough that I don’t need to be lectured about it by my know-it-all seventeen-year-old—”
“Oh, yeah, tell me which part I got wrong. Let’s see: He’s got other women, it’s driving you crazy, and yet you grin and bear it because you both promised not to get involved beyond being pals who happen to have sex together.”
She felt herself go red. “Lisa!”
“Are you not going to eat this?” said the teenager, helping herself to most of what remained on her mother’s plate.
Sullivan burst into laughter. “Come here, you woman of the world. What I need is a hug.”
Her daughter grinned, stepped around the table, and gave her a big squeeze. “You deserve the best from a man, Mommy. You taught me to expect that. Don’t forget it about yourself.”
Sullivan waited until eleven that evening before finally phoning Patton. Lisa’s right, she told herself. I can’t continue like this. Time to have a talk with my sex pal, and admit I’m just not sophisticated enough for this type of arrangement. How could I have been so stupid to have ever thought it would be good for me?
As she dialed his number, her mind drifted back to the night about twelve months ago when they’d become lovers. Her own latest relationship having just gone on the rocks—the fifth to have ended that way in as many years—Steve had invited her out to the Plaza Hotel for a benefit and dinner dance. “Can you take a piece of advice from a man fifteen years your senior?” he said in all seriousness as he waltzed her around the floor.
“Maybe.”
“You know how to avoid going through a string of men who you can never really like or love because they aren’t half as bright as you, Kathleen?”
“Tell me.”
“Cut the loneliness by having sex with a friend who has smarts equal to yours, no strings attached. It’ll keep you from getting mixed up with losers you’ll only have to disentangle yourself from later.”
“And who might this friend be?”
He’d suddenly pressed her to him, taking her breath away as their thighs glided against each other. The fierceness in his eyes as they locked on to hers said he wasn’t kidding.
“Yes, Steven, I think I’d like that,” she’d said, the idea appealing to her at the time in its simplicity.
It had been wonderful, for a while, until his other sexual adventures began to bother her. Even though he made no secret of what he did and repeatedly told her to pursue anyone else she wished, she found herself becoming more emotionally attached to him than either of them ever intended. Yet she felt increasingly reluctant to say anything about it, afraid that by doing so she’d make things between them impossible, especially their work, and her turmoil grew worse.
“Hello,” he said, breaking her out of her reverie, his voice husky and his breathing audible through the receiver.
Her insides did a somersault. She knew from all the times they’d been in bed together what he sounded like when he was in the throes of making love. She forced a laugh. “Sorry, Steve. I guess I caught you at a bad time.”
He gave a wicked chuckle. “Not at all. This is pretty exciting, Kathleen. Kind of a fantasy I had.” His breathing got coarser.
“Good night, Steve,” she said, fighting the impulse to demand to know who he had with him, and put down the receiver harder than she intended.
She got out of bed and started pacing the length of her small bedroom. She felt buffeted by feelings of jealousy and fury at him for having such a disruptive effect on her. Having to admit she couldn’t really fault him for any of it was even more frustrating. After all, he’d provided exactly what he’d promised—sex with a friend and no strings attached.
“Damn!” she muttered. “Damn him to hell.”
After a few dozen revolutions through the room, she determined to take Lisa’s advice and “dump the guy.”
Chapter 4
The Eve of the Third Millennium Rodez, France
The massive stone spire of the giant cathedral loomed over Pierre Gaston as he hustled by. It seemed to be floating on the mist, its stained-glass windows glowing with soft blues, reds, and greens that bled like water-colors into the surrounding gray. Yet he found no beauty in the sight. Instead, the weightiness of the structure oppressed him, and made him huddle even deeper into his coat than did the cold.
He knew that something more than weather and medieval monuments was the source of his morose mood. The real reason—that on this night of nights in a thousand years he hurried home from work to a solitary meal and a lonely vigil before the television as he always did—galled him to the point that his stomach burned. It would be even more wretched than usual, since he’d be watching the entire world attend a party to which he hadn’t been invited. At the age of forty-two, unmarried, and labeled an ordinary talent by his
patron
at the lab where he’d worked for the last decade, he needed no such additional reminders about the mediocrity of his life.
He tried to ignore the people who brushed past him as he trudged up the narrow cobblestone street leading to his apartment. But their gay chatter, laughter, and shouts of greeting to each other echoed along the centuries-old stone walls, following after him until he couldn’t help but imagine the galas that they were hurrying off to prepare for. Even the rattle of metal shutters being rolled down all over the quarter bothered him, since it served as notice that shopkeepers were closing early because they also had somewhere special to go. Through the windows of bistros and restaurants, the sight of the waiters inside shaking out white tablecloths, laying out place settings, and scurrying around in preparation for the festivities depressed him further.
He reached his building—a stained, plaster boxlike structure built in the fifties with no regard to the surrounding architecture. He slammed the heavy front door behind him, perversely intent on keeping even a hint of the celebratory sounds outside where they wouldn’t penetrate the dingy hallway and its musty smells and thereby make his living quarters feel more unbearable. He lumbered up a set of steep stairs covered by the threadbare remnants of a once maroon rug, got out his key, and caught the scent of the perfume.
It lingered in the stale air at his door.
She’s here! he thought. She must have let herself in with the key he’d given her.
Instantly he unlocked his apartment and stepped inside. “Ingrid?” he said softly. No answer, only the silence of his empty rooms. He snapped on a light. The drab forlorn furniture of his salon greeted him. A glance into his bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom completed his search. Nevertheless, his excitement persisted. She’d returned to Rodez, and that meant surely he’d see her. Yet he remained puzzled. She’d come to his apartment and left. Why hadn’t she stayed as she had the other times? She must have known that when he recognized her perfume he’d realize she’d been here—he’d bought it for her the last time they’d been in Paris together. There had to be a note, a message, something to explain what was going on. Quickly he went through his apartment again, this time hunting for a scrap of paper.
Nothing.
He had another thought. He went over to his computer and clicked it on. When his screen lit up, he saw that it contained a new file. He tried to open it, but a beep sounded and instructions appeared, demanding a password. He typed
Ingrid
. The machine flashed him a happy face and then yielded what he wanted. Eagerly he read the document.
My Darling, it is far too dangerous that we meet here. I’m sure that I’m being followed. Bring what you have for me to “the place” and erase this message.
He raced down the steps two at a time and back-tracked through the streets toward where he worked. In his excitement, even the surroundings affected him differently from before, because now he felt part of the festiveness since he, too, rushed to an encounter. And such a meeting it would be. The thought of her naked body and her special appetites shot him full of desire. He felt himself harden as he hurried his pace.
She controlled when they saw each other, where they went, and the sex—especially the sex. It had been that way since they’d first met at the conference in Paris where he’d been lecturing less than a year ago. Yet as little as he saw her, she’d become the one part of his life that made enduring the rest worthwhile. Never in his wildest dreams had he believed he’d ever have such a woman interested in him. His own reflection in the store windows cruelly summarized why. Overweight, not too tall, prematurely balding, he wasn’t the sort of specimen women of any kind sought out, but especially not women like her. He could hardly avoid admitting to himself the real reason she took such an interest in him—the secrets he passed to her—but even then she made him feel proud to do it, that he was helping the world and serving a cause that she held sacred.
He recalled how she had seemed to single him out from all the other speakers that first time. Tall, long-necked, her hair woven like a gold skein and piled atop her head, she’d appeared regal. “Can I buy you a drink?” she’d offered in English, her blue eyes boring into him as she claimed to be Norwegian and unable to speak French.
English had been just fine with him.
Over cocktails, her questions about his work had seemed endless and amazingly informed. That night when she took him to bed, he’d felt like a rock star with his own groupie.
Since then she’d come to him at intervals of her own choosing. He always took pains to have a “secret” ready for her. Her degree of pleasure with what he came up with invariably determined the degree of his pleasure afterward in bed, sometimes even whether he got there at all. But when he gave her something that particularly pleased her, she murmured how much she adored him during their subsequent passion. Those were the moments in which he could fool himself into believing her.
It had been especially good last time. He passed on a tidbit that, from all her questions, he knew would interest her, and the revelation ignited their lovemaking beyond his wildest dreams. It also took her demands to new heights. “Take what you made in the lab one step further, and give me a sample that is live,” she ordered, gyrating over him while teasing his cock to new ecstasies. “I’ll go public with it, and the revelation will so shock the world that government leaders will have no choice but to enforce better safeguards.”
Secretly he’d scoffed at this grandiose proclamation, just as he had at all her other jingoistic pronouncements in the past. Whatever she’d been doing with the information he’d given her, her cause hadn’t made a single headline with it. Not that he cared. His own cause—to have her whenever he could—remained his first priority.
“For that prize, I would award you with the biggest orgasm of your life,” she’d continued, purring into his ear, and he readily agreed.
When he spotted his bus pulling away from its stop up ahead, the prospect of her fulfilling that promise tonight spurred him on to such an uncharacteristic burst of speed he overtook it in time to clamber aboard.
The plant housing his lab sat in an acre of floodlit lawns, shrubs, and trees located at the edge of town about a kilometer from where the public transit routes ended. The building itself was a single-story, windowless sprawling structure covered in beige aluminum siding and topped off by a roof bristling with vents. The grounds bordered a farmer’s field at the back and looked out on an oversize iron gateway in the front. A modest sign attached to the bars read AGRITERRE INC, the sight of which always brought a cynical smile to Gaston’s lips. The locals still believed the company developed fertilizer products to increase crop yields—a clever distortion of the truth that the managers of the place took great pains to preserve. Since the company’s inception, they’d imposed a strict code of secrecy on the staff and enforced it with the threat of stiff fines.
Standing in the mist under the surveillance of an overhead video camera, he got out his pass card, slipped it into the automatic lock of the gate, and let himself through. Walking up the path leading to the main door, he felt the particles of moisture in the air cool against his face and found the sensation soothing. Inside, the lone security guard who’d drawn the bad luck to be working on this unique night in history wished him
bonne année
. Gaston returned the greeting, signed in, and went on to his office without explanation. The nature of his work had everyone used to his comings and goings at all hours.
He unlocked his desk and took out the computer disk that explained the method behind what he’d done. This copy was for Ingrid. Then he stepped into the lab and found the vial of the substance itself, which he’d secreted away in a specimen refrigerator amongst some other work handled only by him. The clear tube contained an opaque liquid that looked like little more than watery milk, yet he knew it could possibly change the world. For once, Ingrid’s hyperbole might not be so off the mark, he thought. If this time she really did expose what he gave her to the media, its revelation would probably shock legislators into regulating genetic vectors just as she claimed, not that he cared.
And Agriterre Incorporated, he knew, would go berserk. Even when he’d first started passing information to Ingrid, he’d understood it was the sort of company that tried to send whistle-blowers to jail. In this incidence especially, if they traced the source of the leak back to him, the company lawyers would have a clear-cut case for charging him with theft. But recently he’d taken a special precaution that would give him the bargaining power he’d need to avoid prison if he ever got caught. Taiwan and Oahu. Those two words involved the part of the secret he hadn’t revealed to anyone, not even Ingrid. And Agriterre, along with its parent company, Biofeed International, would agree to anything, he knew, to keep it that way. The thought of a letter he’d composed and left in the safekeeping of his notary—to be sent to Dr. Kathleen Sullivan in the event of his arrest—gave him comfort as he left the facility and headed for the place where he knew Ingrid would be waiting.
Construction of the Rodez cathedral began in the first part of the last millennium and had taken four centuries to complete. Nearly the size of Notre-Dame in Paris, it dominates to this day the town that has built up around its base over the centuries. Even viewed from a distance, the spired edifice appears enormous as it sits atop a gentle hill, the houses and shops with their tiny upright chimneys huddled around its skirts like reaching children.
Stepping inside the gloom of its interior, he found this grandeur to be haughty and arrogant, designed to make the supplicant feel cowed when looking up into the dim recesses and vaulted ceilings. He shivered as the cold dampness from above descended on him, until it clung like a clammy shroud, chilling him far more within this house of God than he’d felt without. What light he saw came from the hundreds of candles that flickered everywhere— on the altar, beside the confessionals, and in the dozens of side chapels where a few people huddled in prayer. The dark rows of pews were empty, as much as he could make them out, for they receded into the blackness at the back of the church. He walked along a side aisle toward this dark section, thinking that if Ingrid was hiding anywhere, it would probably be there. His steps echoed on the stone slabs which composed the floor, the sound blending with the hushed murmurs of prayer and an occasional muffled cough.
She’d always warned him that if she ever felt it unsafe to meet at his apartment, the cathedral would be where he’d find her. “It’s the perfect place for a person to sit alone in the dark, or for two people to huddle together and whisper, with no one thinking it odd,” she’d once told him in all sincerity. He’d found it all rather melodramatic, yet he began to worry about what had set her off tonight. Not because he really believed that they were in any immediate danger—that would come once she went public—but because at other times when she’d been afraid of being followed, she’d cut short their time at his apartment, foregoing the sex. She better not pull that shit tonight, he thought, suddenly growing angry. He’d protested on some of the other evenings when she’d tried to leave early, and occasionally she’d relented, insisting they at least get away from his building. Then he’d had her in out-of-the-way places—back alleys, parks, anywhere there were shadows—and the furtiveness had seemed to excite her more. The memory of her at those times caused his loins to stir again.
He’d strolled nearly three-quarters of the way down the length of the church—a distance of over a hundred meters—when he passed a large alcove situated behind wrought-iron bars but with its gate ajar. A good-size area, it contained a large ancient confessional off in one corner, and at its center stood a table with two chairs. Here the light became particularly dim, and massive columns on either side of the recess obscured the sight lines to and from the rest of the church. The sign over a receptacle for offerings read CHAPEL OF RECONCILIATION.
Exactly the kind of place Ingrid would choose, he thought, pausing with his hand on the bars while wondering if he should check farther back still. But all he could see in those shadows was a collection of raised, ancient stone crypts, their covers supporting full-sized statues, presumably of the holy men whose remains lay within, and some scaffolding where renovations to a crumbling wall were under way.
He decided to look there anyway, thinking she might be hiding behind one of the tombs, when he caught the scent and froze. Though faint, it was definitely her perfume. TABOO, the label had read. Over the months since he’d given it to her, it had become an aphrodisiac to him, and already half aroused, he found that even such a dilute trace of it made him fully erect and ready for her in seconds. Controlling his breathing, he remembered how once he’d caught a whiff of some other brand on her hips. He’d driven himself crazy, imagining other men giving her such gifts and plying her body. But he’d never dared ask about her other lovers. Shoving all such torments out of his head, he’d thought only, Tonight she is mine.