Last Gasp (48 page)

From the jetty they were taken to Zone 2, the bacteriological research center where the director, Dr. Jeremiah Rolsom, and members of his staff were waiting to greet them. Everyone donned protective white suits and technicians adjusted the air supply to the bulky fishbowl helmets. Then the party lumbered out like spacemen on their tour of the sterile bays.

“The problem is twofold,” Rolsom explained over the intercom. “Deployment and containment. If that seems contradictory, that’s because it is. TCDD has extreme toxicity and we don’t want to spread the stuff around indiscriminately. Somehow we’ve got to keep it away from the protected territories, namely the United States, Russia, and parts of Europe. So you’ll understand it’s a matter of precise selectivity.”

Skrote understood very well indeed. Tetrachlorodibenzo-paradioxin was the most virulent poison known to man. Spray Africa from cruise missiles, for example, and there was the danger of wiping out the populations of Spain, Portugal, and most of southern Europe as well.

The party moved on to the animal experimentation area. Rabbits, guinea pigs, and hamsters were drinking water laced with a few parts per million of TCDD. Contaminating the water supply held promise, the director informed them. Minute concentrations caused changes in the blood cells and enzymes and led to liver damage, cancer, and severe fetal deformities.

Lloyd Madden paused by a row of cages and fondled one of the rabbits. Even though the colonel was wearing thick rubber gloves, Skrote couldn’t repress a shudder. He turned in the cumbersome suit and looked at Major Jones, but the face in the fishbowl was impassive, quite unperturbed.

It was irrational for him to react in this way, Skrote knew. Safety precautions on Starbuck were rigorous and strictly enforced. He could only put it down to his experience in genetics, which made him edgy.

Colonel Madden had a question. Why not employ the techniques already developed for DEPARTMENT STORE? “We had some very effective methods of deploying 2,4,5-T, which contains dioxin,” he said to Rolsom. “The only difference here, as I see it, is that we need to disseminate TCDD in its pure form rather than as part of a weaker mix. Am I right?”

“You’re right, Colonel, but that difference is crucial. In the past we wanted to achieve maximum spread and penetration in the shortest time possible.” Rolsom pushed through a pair of rubber doors and held one aside for the others to follow. “But now we have to set precise limits and know we can confine the spread of TCDD within them. If we don’t, it’s going to get out of hand and kill our people too.”

“Including the Russians,” said Major Jones.

“Yes.”

“Maybe that can’t be helped anyway.” Madden’s laconic remark seemed to hold a number of veiled meanings.

In the next bay the party stood on a yellow gantry while Rolsom went on about “contaminatory media,” which Skrote understood to mean air, water and food.

“Drop a liter of TCDD in the Bombay water system and we can guarantee a wipeout of eighty to eighty-five percent of the population within a fifteen-mile radius. Unfortunately the rest of the city-dwellers drink collected rainwater. With food we can spray grain crops and rice fields, but again we can’t be certain of total wipeout. There’s the question of toxic runoff into the oceans too, which could spread the contaminant globally. However ...”

Rolsom beckoned and the group clustered around an angled observation panel. Inside the garishly lit chamber was a family of chimpanzees, two adults and five offspring. All were slumped or sprawled, eyes dull, patches of fur missing, the flesh raw underneath. Some of their fingernails had dropped off.

The director pointed out one of the small males, marked with a circle of red dye on its back. “That’s Chappaquidik. We injected him with a ten-ppm solution about a week ago. Look closely and you’ll see that he’s gone blind. But more interesting, from our point of view, he’s transmitted it to the others. Now they’re all starting to show symptoms.”

Skrote was surprised. “I didn’t know genetic damage caused by TCDD was contagious.”

“In the normal course of events it isn’t,” Rolsom replied. “All previous outbreaks, from Seveso onward, were air- or waterborne.” A quiet note of pride crept into his voice. “One of our toxicologists injected hamsters to test for its effect on enzymes. Purely by accident he discovered that above a certain concentration—roughly seven parts per million—the disease is transferable by means of infected bacteria. Depending, that is, on a specific behavioral pattern. Can you guess what?” he asked, turning to them.

Nobody could.

Rolsom pursed his thick lips and over the intercom came a metallic kissing sound. “Hamsters and chimps are very affectionate creatures. They kiss and cuddle a lot. And that’s it—that’s how the disease is transmitted.”

Rolsom wore a triumphant grin, like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

“Animal carriers,” Colonel Madden mused. “Deployment and containment in one neat simple package.”

“Somebody here gave it the name of the ‘Kissing Plague,’ ” said Rolsom, still grinning. “We’ve hopes for humans too.”

“You’ve tried it on humans?” Madden asked.

“Not yet. But the physiology of chimps and humans is very similar.” Rolsom winked at them through the fishbowl. “And humans also kiss a lot.”

After lunch they were shown the special area known as Zone 4 on the far side of the lagoon. The laboratories and medical wards were outwardly unimpressive: an untidy jumble of single- and two-story white stucco buildings surrounded by a double perimeter electrified fence. The only odd thing about it, for a research establishment, was that the windows were very small and barred, like those of a prison.

On the short ride across the lagoon Rolsom jokingly remarked that the electrified fence wasn’t to keep intruders out; it was to keep the patients in. If any of them escaped and managed to interbreed, Starbuck might become—in his phrase—“an island of freaks.”

Even with his experience in genetic engineering Skrote had never seen anything like it. The director hadn’t been joking after all—it really was like a fairground freak show.

First they were shown the anoxia and pollution victims, gray shriveled wrecks in oxygen tents living on borrowed time. In answer to Skrote’s inquiry, Rolsom said, “We use these to study the effects on body tissue resulting from drastic oxygen depletion. Very little medical research has been done on the subject till recently. We also need them as guinea pigs to find out if TCDD can be transferred as effectively in humans as in chimps. We’ll be starting on that in about a month from now.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Major Jones sardonically. “Force them to kiss one another?”

Rolsom smiled and shook his head. “You’d be surprised—or maybe you wouldn’t—at the strength and persistence of the human sexual impulse. Even in cases such as these.” He nodded down the ward at the rows of oxygen tents. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that the wards are mixed. At night we turn out the lights and let them get on with it.” He led the way down the central aisle, the muted hiss and rumble of oxygen being piped into the tents the only sound. It was like a mortuary, keeping alive the undead. A technician in a white smock was injecting an old man. The party stopped to observe.

“New arrival,” Rolsom said, after glancing at the chart. “We’re pepping him up a bit. No good to us dead. It’s a hormone extraction that dramatically improves their condition. After a couple of months they have a relapse.”

“What happens then?” Skrote asked.

Rolsom looked at him, puzzled, as if it were a trick question. “They die,” he said. He leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed, raising his voice. “How are you feeling today, Mr. Walsh? Not a thing to worry about. You’re in good hands.”

The old man gazed up at them dully with brown watery eyes. His face was the same color as the pillow, except that his lips were purple.

As they were moving away Skrote said, “Where do these people come from?”

“You mean how do we get hold of them?” Rolsom said over his shoulder. “Our main source of supply is the Pryce-Darc Clinic in Maryland. As you probably know it’s funded and administered by ASP through an intermediary organization. In effect the clinic is a staging post. They send us anoxia and pollution cases referred to them by hospitals.”

“They come here willingly?”

“Sure.” Rolsom held the door into the corridor open and caught Madden’s eye as if the two of them shared a private joke. “The patients are told they’ve been selected for special treatment, very expensive treatment, which is free of charge. Naturally they’re only too happy to participate. They think Starbuck is a highly advanced medical research unit with miracle cures galore.” He chuckled gruffly. “Once we get them here it’s too late to change their minds.”

Major Jones said, “How many of them will you inject with TCDD?” They were approaching a large iron sliding door with a red M in a white circle on it.

“We intend to isolate six to begin with, three males, three females. We’ll inject just one of them and see how quickly it spreads. What we’re really hoping for is a chain reaction: A male infects a female and carries on infecting other females, while the females infect the other males. We also want to find out whether males or females make the best carriers.” They were climbing concrete steps now, whitewashed walls on all sides. “You know,” Rolsom added, as if anxious that the full implication of this shouldn’t escape them, “in quite a short space of time it ought to be possible to infect a city of twenty million people, starting off with a handful of carriers.”

“I like the sound of it.” Madden patted the director’s arm. “I think you’re on the right track.”

Rolsom shrugged it off, though he was obviously pleased by this rare praise. He pushed a large black hand through thinning wiry hair and led on with renewed enthusiasm. Skrote followed behind Colonel Madden and Major Jones, worrying about how, when they’d infected the patients in the ward with TCDD, they intended disposing of the corpses. Burial would be too dangerous. Incineration seemed the best way, and certainly the safest. If the infection were ever to get loose on the island ...

This section of Zone 4—behind the iron door with the red M— reminded him of a modern and sophisticated version of the old Victorian lunatic asylum. Padded cells, barred windows, heavy metal doors. Everything monitored and controlled by an all-seeing electronic surveillance system. Now they were entering Cy Skrote’s territory, that of genetic manipulation. But whereas Skrote was a theorist, this was where the theories found practical expression.

They passed through a complicated series of checkpoints and entered a darkened control gallery in which twenty or so people sat wearing headsets, presiding from a semicircular instrumentation console over a huge bank of TV screens.

Skrote stood between Madden and Jones, all three silent, because all three weren’t sure what they were looking at until Rolsom explained that what the screens showed were “natural” mutants: creatures misshapen in their mothers’ wombs by the genetic damage of the deteriorating environment. Many of them were so grotesquely deformed as to be incapable of movement. Others were maniacally strong and dangerously homicidal. Hence the need for the high-level security and the constant electronic vigilance.

It seemed to Skrote as if each screen showed a separate section of the human anatomy—as if all the screens together would make up one complete human being. It finally dawned on him what in fact he was looking at. On each screen there was a human being, though not necessarily a complete one. He stared, sickened and fascinated.

A body without a rib cage, lungs exposed. A smooth head with blank depressions for eyes. A trunk with four legs, two where the arms should have been. A head and torso narrowing down to a bifurcated stump. A child with liver, pancreas, kidneys, and bowels growing externally. Another child (he couldn’t be sure) with two tiny hands sprouting from its neck. A hairless woman with a vaginalike slit up to her navel. A skeletal figure with transparent flesh, the organs visible inside (like a medical student’s anatomy model). A gargantuan head, all the features squashed into the lower left side. Hands with no thumbs and seven, eight, nine fingers. Arms and legs jointed the wrong way. Feet attached heel to heel and joined in a single limb. Bodies with both sets of sexual organs. A man (he assumed it was male) with membranes of pink translucent flesh attaching elbows to chest. A fishlike creature with bulbous eyes and what appeared to be gills on its neck. A baby without a face, with apertures in its chest and stomach for breathing and eating.

Rolsom braced his hands on the backs of two chairs, leaning forward. “What we’re seeing is natural selection at work. The human species adapting genetically to changes in the environment. Their parents have been exposed to conditions that have affected the chromosomal structure of their offspring—such things as solar and cosmic radiation, pollutants in the air and water, nuclear fallout, herbicidal and pesticidal contamination, carcinogenic agents in food, tobacco, vehicle exhaust, industrial waste, so on and so on.

“In recent years the declining 0
₂
levels have contributed significantly to the numbers and varying types of genetic mutation. What you see here represents the tip of the iceberg. Nature has many ways of dealing with aberrations from the norm, of course. Infertility, abortions, stillbirths.” Rolsom gestured at the screens. “In fact these—the ones who survive—probably account for less that fifteen percent of the total.”

“It must be one hell of an operation just keeping them alive,” Major Jones marveled. He seemed awestruck.

“This control room is manned round the clock,” Rolsom said. “We keep an audio-visual check on them and they’re wired up to alert us of any primary malfunction. We do lose some,” he admitted, “but not many.”

“What do you think?”

Madden’s question caught Skrote off-guard. He had to clear his throat before he could find his voice. “I’ve never in my life seen anything like it,” he managed to say, which was the gospel truth.

“I’m damn sure of that,” Madden replied crisply. “This is the only research facility of its kind in the world.” He turned to Rolsom. “How are the breeding experiments coming along?”