Dragon Virus (3 page)

Also Papal Line, if from an older, long-gone pope. These
days, science and religion were uneasy bedmates, and oft as not religion was
prone to cry rape.

The tech was still poking at the limbs, disturbing all the
work the old man had done to arrange them. “Lungs, huh? Like all the work went
into reforming the outside, and it forgot about the inside.”

‘It?” The
Lóng
sequence,
of course. The Chinese researchers had named it, but the Wheelers, a messianic
sect popular when he was a kid, had given it a personality: the Dragon, tearing
apart humanity one strand at a time. History now, and he had no interest in
history.

“Everyone wants to be the one to find the cure,” the tech
says, running his mouth while he prods the unresponsive flesh. “Me, I just want
to find the pattern. There are so many variables in the mutating lines, it
seems almost random, but there’s nothing random in biology, not really. It all
follows a pattern, if we can only just see it.”

The old man suspects that the tech is talking to himself;
forgetting there was another living soul in the morgue with him. It happens to
them all.

“The ones I’ve seen, I’ve been wondering if there is a
correlation between the external changes and the internal failures.” The tech
has definitely forgotten he has an audience.

“If there is, then there should be some way to monitor them,
perhaps correct for the failures before they become fatal...”

He draws the sheet all the way down off the tiny body and
studies it clinically.

“Shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, if I start right
away.”

“Right then,” the old man says. It is one thing to keep the
wee one company a while.

The old man wasn’t so keen on staying around to watch the
dissection. There are other bodies to move, gurneys to repair, floors to mop. “I’ll
just be gone, then.”

“What? Oh, yes, of course, goodbye.” The tech goes to the
far wall and presses a button that starts the recording system, lifting the
dark red breath mask over his face and holding it there it until it clicks,
indicating that his lungs are protected against anything that might float, or
spew, or otherwise spray into the air during the examination.

Without such protections, the old man reclaims the gurney,
and exits out the way he came in, the stainless steel doors swinging shut
behind him.

The tech seems oblivious, adjusting the cameras so that they
cover every inch of the operating area, but the moment the doors still, so does
he.

“Idiot,” he says, his voice muffled. “No, worse,
self-righteous.” He has no such expectations of himself; he is no better than
the rest of his class, overly fascinated with what he cannot control, ever
desiring to be better than God, and so damned for his presumption. Once damned,
he has determined, there is an amazing amount of freedom in what you may or may
not do.

He reaches up and puts the camera on pause, then removes his
mask. “You can come in now.”

A door slides open, narrow enough for only one person to
walk through at a time.

Behind the figure, ruddy sunlight streaks through, glinting
off the steel and reflecting back into the tech’s eyes. He squints, and in that
time the door closes again, the glimpse of outside gone.

“Rain stopped?”

The figure stops: shaven head, smooth features, a mix of
genetics that could come from anywhere, or nowhere. “For the moment.” Unlike
most visitors, the newcomer is not wearing rain gear or the usual breath mask,
but is draped instead in a simple robe, the dark yellow of the fabric clashing
with the steel and red of the morgue. And yet, he does not seem out of place.

“You have to hurry. I can only pause the tape so long
without it being noted.”

Even as the tech says the words, he knows that they are
useless. This will not be hurried.

It takes as long as it takes, and the risk is one he knew
when he agreed to it.

“You won’t... harm it?” He isn’t sure why he cares, why he
even asks, except that damages will injure his findings.

“The body will remain as it was when it came in,” the figure
assures him, and he got the sense that it laughed at him, although the words
were even and unemotional. “We have no interest in what is left behind.”

“Yeah, right, whatever. Get on with it.”

He turns away, intentionally blocking out whatever the
saffron-cloaked figure intends to do. Plausible deniability. Instead, he thinks
of the money deposited — not to his account, but the one not in his name, the
one set up to fund an on-going research program. The one he has been promised
access to, as a fellow, if they reach a certain goal.

A goal this act will make possible.

Dragons were not meant for this world, he thinks. That does
not mean they can’t be useful. And some day, they will understand what the
mutations are, where they came from, and how to stop them — and how to make use
of that knowledge in ways that can only benefit humanity. That is the dream he
chases.

There is a scent of something pungent but not unpleasant,
out of place in this sterile environment, and he feels the first flutter of
panic. He has never done this before, only has the words of others that it will
be simple. “Are you —”

A gentle clash, like soft wood hitting metal, a ringing of
chimes, and the panic subsides. He has been promised there will be no trace
left behind, no damage done to his research subject. All will be well. He does
not question that certainty.

He wasn’t sure, but the figure moving behind him was not one
of those who approached him; the voice was different, the shoulders less
rounded and hunched. There had been two of them, robed and solemn, a mobile
oasis in the middle of a particularly hectic day in the middle of shift.
Normally he would have shoved them off, maybe even called the cop patrolling
down that corridor, but something in their eyes made him stop and listen.

The dragons weren’t protected, particularly. There was a law
against selling bodies, same as there was for any corpse. You had to keep track
of those. And selling pictures, or the right to take pictures, could get you
censured for tackiness, if nothing else, and the hospital hated bad press. But
there was no law against letting someone in to say a few prayers and wave some
juju over the body.

The Church won’t be much pleased about his letting the monk
in, and he knows that they will find out, no matter how he tries to hide the
visit. Other techs have been discovered, turned out of their jobs, before these
monks approached him in turn, but the tech had told the old man true; his only
concern was finding the cause, finding a reason.

He was not going to buck the Church, not when it was the
only ride in town toward his cause, no. If they say that the body on his table
has no soul to be damned or saved, then it has no soul. But if someone is
willing to pay to make sure that a non-existent soul didn’t wander lost for all
eternity, or whatever these monks were doing... Discovery of any kind, but
especially scientific, requires risk and a certain level of brutal practicality
True Believers lack. The Church may not approve, but once he has his research,
and his funding, he will be beyond the Church’s reach. He hopes.

As with any pathogen, there are risks. The Church might
decide to eradicate him as well. He does not underestimate the virulence of
Faith, especially coupled with fear.

The monk finishes whatever he is doing, and the smell of
incense fades away, as though the tech had merely imagined it.

“The forty-nine days of bardo lead us to the final truth,”
the monk says. “Even one such as she, brief flame of life, must find the first
stage, and choose. The clear white light will receive her, and the self may
find release from this suffering to enter Nirvana. Or if it is to be so, she
will find her way back into the world, and complete her cycle. ‘One in all
things: all things in one. If only this is realized, no more worry about the
illusion of not being perfect!’”

The monk sounds wistful, almost envious of the dead dragon.
The tech merely waits, his arms crossed over his chest, trying to remain as
impassive as the robed man. He doesn’t care. He can’t afford to care.

The monk seems less than impressed by his lack of interest,
making the tech wonder why he bothered to say anything at all. The thought
touches him that perhaps the announcement was not meant for his ears, and a
shiver shimmies along his spine before he is able to dismiss it.

Religion has no place in his life, not the Church and not
some fringe Asian mystic. Let them argue with each other; he has work to do.
What’s important is the here and now, the quality of life, not a mystical
maybe.

A twist of the robe, and the monk’s arms are covered, the
chimes that appeared out of seeming nowhere back to nowhere again. He holds up
his hands, palms together, in a graceful motion, like saints praying, and bends
his head toward the corpse, and then once again toward the tech before he
leaves through the same side door he entered through.

The tech ignores the closing door, already reaching up to
restart the recording and re-pressurizing his mask. A console drops down, and
he touches the controls with ease of familiarity, bringing the table up and a
multi-pronged metallic arm down until they meet with the delicate whir of motor
and saw.

“Subject is female dragon, approximately three hours old at
time of death.” He checks his notes to confirm that, then continues. “Cause of
death is suffocation, most likely during the birthing process. Dissection began
at 3:25 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 3rd.” He clicks the sound off,
watching the machine work for a moment, and then leaves the room to let it
delve for him, its internal circuits recording what is found in more precise
and minute detail than any human eye. Once it has recorded everything, then the
human mind can extrapolate the cause —and the cure.

o0o

As the metal whirrs, readying to cut into flesh and bone,
the sound is overlaid for half an instant by the echo of metal chimes, the
swinging of a distant wooden door, and the rustle of leathery wings, spread for
the first time for flight.

This is no world for
dragons,
fierce angels seem to whisper.
Yet.

o0o

And the machine makes its first cut into flesh.

o0o

LegalWire Update —June 7th 2042 10:12 a.m.

The “Clean Gene” movement was dealt a blow today
when Iowa courts ruled that the so-called “Dragon children,” born with the
genetic mutation Lóng , were covered under the Genetic Discrimination
Protection Act of 2013. Members of the movement have petitioned the courts to
restrict Dragons from claiming minority status, since they do not meet the
standard expectations of a community as specified in the Act, considering the
diversity of mutations and the range of social and economic settings the
children are born into. Spokespeople for both groups expect the decision to head
all the way to the Federal level.

[
click here to see the full ruling
]

Jordan was a changeling, the other kids whispered. The
fairies had come and taken the real Jordan, leaving him behind in the crib. He
wasn’t human. Wasn’t real.

His mother held him when he cried. “You ignore them,” she
would say into his small, inverted ears. “You ignore them, and know your momma
and daddy love you.”

But Daddy had left when Jordan was five, after one too many
doctor’s appointments, one too many negative results. “Be thankful you have a
healthy child,” the last doctor said, out of patience with this man who wanted
his son to act like all the other kids on the block. “Twenty years ago, you
would have lost him at birth.”

“It’s just you and me now, Jordy,” his mother had said a
week later, when the papers came from the lawyer. At five, even smarter than
most kids his age, Jordan hadn’t understood how a bunch of papers could say his
parents hadn’t ever been married, say that he couldn’t —didn’t — exist, and
make it be true. By the time he was seven, he understood. His daddy could get
an annulment — say the marriage never happened — because the Church didn’t
think he was human.

By the time Jordan was ten, he knew he wasn’t human either.
But that was okay. He knew by then that being human wasn’t all it was cracked
up to be.

o0o

“Overheads up!”

They were playing freeball. Three teams of three players
each, and all you had to do was keep the ball out of your zone, any way you
could. Jordan, Marta and Steve had come up with the basic idea during the last,
endless days of school last year. The rules were fluid: three players, one for
each layer: ground defense, air defense, and attack. A zone was one corner of
the field, marked off by old soccer nets, one for each zone. Score any way you
could. Keep the other two teams from scoring any way you could.

Jordan was an okay attack-player, and the way his arms and
legs were jointed helped him make some catches nobody else could, but it was
hard to lose with Marta on your side. She wasn’t very tough, but the membrane
between her shoulder blades made her the best air-defense player in school. She
could jump like a frog, and hover like a kite just long enough to spike the
ball away from their territory. Usually onto some grounder’s head.

Max was their grounder. He wasn’t afraid to dive for the
ball, or take a few bonks on the head, either. He wasn’t Changed, even though
Marta was his twin. There wasn’t much reason to how it happened, Jordan’s mom
said. It just happened.

“To you, Steve, to you, catch it catch it!”

“Ah, bite me, Carly.”

Jordan winced when Steve said that. Carly was sensitive
about her serpent’s teeth; in first grade she had actually taken a chunk of
skin from someone’s arm when they were wrestling.