Sector C (5 page)

“What does that mean?” Able to better judge people than blood, Mr. Spalding was looking at the vet, not the tube.

“I don’t know for sure. I wish I did. If it isn’t nitrate poisoning, which we’ll still look for, I’m afraid it could be something worse. Not just for those two cows but for the herd.”

“I may have my nose in spreadsheets more often these days, Dr. Bailey, but I do keep up with the
ag
community around here. These aren’t the first cows acting strange.”  

“No sir, they’re not. I’ve run tests on a lot of your neighbors’ cattle as well as their sheep and goats and horses.
Even a herd of alpaca down south.
Nothing’s come back positive yet. I’ve had the labs look for clostridium, herpes, meningitis, PEM, BSE, anthrax — you name it, I’ve run it in the past two months. I’ve talked to colleagues, researchers at the university and even the local doctors. Something’s going on. And it may be spreading. But until we can get a positive diagnose, I don’t know if we’re dealing with bacteria, a virus, a spore, a parasite or just plain bad luck. All I know is that it’s neurological. Beyond that …”

“I have 378 cows. I need you to tell me what I need to do with those two to ensure the other 376 don’t wind up like them.”

Donna’s shoulders sagged. “It’s not that easy, Mr. Spalding. You could put them down right now because if we don’t figure out what it is, I could try dosing them blindly with different drugs over the next weeks and they’ll still likely die unless we figure out what the pathogen is. As for your other cows, my best guess is that it’s probably either too late to destroy these two because they’ve already passed on whatever it is, or it doesn’t matter because they aren’t the carriers — something else is.”

Donna watched the businessman absorb her words, could almost see the profit-and-loss statements being refigured, readjusted in his mind. At the last, though, it was the cattleman who asked, “What do you suggest?”

“Most of the cattle I’ve seen have lived three or four weeks once they started to show symptoms. If we can figure out what it is before then, these two might have a chance. I can leave some pain meds for them with Dan. Keeping them alive might not be best for them, but watching the disease, seeing how it progresses, what else it does, what works and what doesn’t might help the rest of the herd. We have to know the enemy.”

“I’ll give you ten days. After that …”

“I understand. I’ll send the blood off tomorrow morning. Some things, like BSE, we may not confirm for several weeks. But I started sending blood samples out almost two months ago and we’ve gotten just about all those early results back. We haven’t seen a positive for anything yet. Last month I started sending out tissue samples from affected animals and those results are still coming in. Could be one of them will pinpoint the cause. Meanwhile, I have some injectable Ketoprofen that Dan can give to help with the pain. And I’ll leave a couple of bags of Ringers for the calf if you can’t get it to nurse. Call me in —”

Her attention was drawn to the open barn door as several large shapes darkened it. Chad and Dan had returned from testing the pasture grasses, and they were leading a Holstein cow with a large calf tagging obediently behind her. The cow moved robotically, its legs stiff and unbending, swinging wide with each step.

Beside her, Donna could feel Mr. Spalding go tense and still.

“Nothing on the nitrate tests, Doc,” Chad said. “But we found these two on the way back.”

“Any others?”
Donna asked quietly.

 “Not in the
breeders
field. Dan’s going to check the milkers tomorrow. See if any aren’t coming in to the barns.”

Donna nodded. Dairy operations were far different from beef cattle ranches, where stock could graze for weeks without ranchers seeing every cow and steer in their charge. Dairy ranchers saw most of their stock twice a day, up close and personal. More highly monitored, dairy cows usually got better care day-to-day. That meant any outbreaks could be identified faster. “Let me know what you find.”

Heartsick and frustrated over not being able to come up with a definitive diagnose, Donna returned to the truck and handed over the promised pain meds and fluids to Dan. She wondered if she looked as defeated as the foreman. 

He worked his jaw around before asking in a deep drawl the cows would no doubt find soothing, “You don’t think we’re talkin’ the whole herd, do you?”

Donna sighed. Cattlemen lived on straight answers not hope.
“Maybe.
Or maybe it’s something that’ll hit a few of the weak cows and then just disappear. I really can’t tell you right now.” Environmental shifts, weather conditions, new animals shipped in — these could all cause just enough change to compromise the immune systems of weaker stock and make them susceptible to diseases the haler stock naturally shrugged away. It was one way nature kept wild populations in check. And every few years something would inevitably crop up in commercial herds that seemed to be trying to emulate nature and the natural selection process.

But time, and not her standing here any longer, would be the only deciding factor.

From the back of the truck, she grabbed the hand disinfectant and the bleach solution she used to
wiped
down her boots after each field visit, then tossed them to Chad when she was done.

She whistled for Alfie, who returned looking rather pleased with herself and with a distinct odor of carrion on her breath. Then, piling into the truck, they drove back to the clinic so Donna could complete her evening round.

THE SMALL CONFERENCE ROOM IN the Triple E Enterprises research building was crowded. A dozen and a half people huddled around the mahogany table waiting for Walt Thurman to arrive. The nervous banter and attempt at a joke or two only served to highlight what everyone knew: there was a problem, Thurman would want to know what it was and what their course of action would be, and they, as a group, didn’t have a solution for him.

The 61-year-old chairman walked in right at the top of the hour, punctual as always. He headed directly for the last open chair and sat down — no pleasantries, no acknowledgement of the men and women gathered, no polite inquiries after the health of relatives or ribbing at losses by favorite college sports teams on his way in. A tacit statement that this meeting was about business and would stay focused on business.

“When we started Triple E Enterprises, we made a promise to ourselves and to others: once the venture was stable, we’d take the company public. We gave ourselves ten years from inception to our first shares being traded. We spent the first five years in R&D, living off venture capital. Those were lean years that, you’ll agree, produced phenomenal results. In the four years since, we’ve seen year-over-year gains in the triple digits. That’s meant we’ve been able to pay your salaries off the profits but our capital debt remains high. We’re relying on paper stock to buy down that debt and put this company in the black.

“We’re six months away from seeing our first TEE stock trade on Wall Street. Two years out from repaying debt and adding positive cash flow. We’ve got backlash plans in place, extra security lined up and press releases written.

“We’re almost there, people.
Almost where we’ve been moving this company to over the last decade.

“But.

“Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had three deaths in our mature inventory and half-a-dozen among the young. And we have more on their way to dying. We’ve had to scramble to meet our commitments. We found comparable replacements for two of the dead adults. For the third, we had to provide an upgrade from Sector C.”

There was a collective, audible intake of breath around the table. More than just a reduction in the number of animals available from Sector C, that upgrade meant a substantial revenue loss to the company — a fact lost on none of the meeting attendees, a few of whom were hearing the statistics for the first time.

“One or two viable animals a year — that’s an expected loss.
More than that and we start to feel it — not only in our pocketbooks but our reputation. We’re booking hunts a year out now and requests have nearly doubled. Our clients are satisfied; our hard work is starting to pay off. But we need the inventory to support our increased business. 

“And we’re losing inventory. Why?”

There was a moment of silence while those around the table waited for Thurman to continue. When he didn’t, they realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

Dr. Grigor Volkov, the head geneticist who had been with the company from the beginning and had a firm relationship with Thurman, spoke up. “Our genetic database is far from perfect. The newer the genome, the less time there has been to study it. Still, we are five to ten years ahead of the rest of the scientific world. We are not cloning mice and sheep and household cats that are well known to us, so there will undoubtedly be setbacks. And with limited parent stock, how can we be assured of healthy, thriving offspring? Our genetic pool increases every month. In the natural course, we will be able to produce stronger specimens.”

Thurman frowned. “Just how long does ‘the natural course’ take?”

“Ten years? Twenty?” Dr. Volkov shrugged. “We are in uncharted territory here. It is like asking a navigator how far to the nearest shoal when no one has mapped the coast.”

Thurman dismissed the geneticist’s comments with a wave. “Not an acceptable answer. The future of this company rests on our being able to predict the size and quality of our inventory over the next ten years. If we can’t do that accurately, we open ourselves up to the competition. The minute we go public, we become a target.

“So how do we stop the die-off? I want a plan.

“Meet back here with it in 48 hours.”

“I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS, Dr. Kapur!” The distraught woman clung to Rajesh’s hand as if she could siphon the information directly from it.

Instead of drawing away as others might have done, Rajesh laid his other hand over hers. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. The woman, Marie, had every right to be afraid, Rajesh knew. Her 14-month-old son was dying — and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Watching her grief twisted his heart. Over and over he’d been instructed not to let his own emotions get in the way of his work. But how could any human being set aside his empathy and compassion in the face of such raw devastation? Did this part of it really get easier?

Most of all, he desperately wanted to be able to answer the woman’s question, but he couldn’t. That fact above all humbled him. In the moment of this woman’s greatest need, she turned to him and he couldn’t help her.  

“We all want to know, Marie. If we knew, perhaps we could cure little Tony. Do not give up hope, though. The labs are still running their tests.” Rajesh, however, wasn’t sure how thorough those tests would be. Marie was poor and without insurance, and the hospital had grown extremely busy as of late.

Marie let go his hand and, sobbing, leaned over the incubator where Tony lay with assorted tubes and wires, catheters and electrodes warding his small body. She draped one hand inside and placed her finger in his fist, then pressed her cheek to the glass, her tears streaking down the sides.

Rajesh watched her watching him, shamed that he stood there simply watching. In his mind, he went over the child’s symptoms — a wobble to his head for about a week followed by grand mal seizures. CT scans showed some degeneration in the boy’s brain and into the brainstem. The mother swore the boy had been acting normally up until the head wobbling began. But the technician interpreting the scan was convinced the degeneration had to have taken place over a much longer period of time.
Which seemed to point to a possible genetic disorder.
The lab was following that lead with DNA testing. But Rajesh’s gut said otherwise. He recognized he was only newly out of his internship; still, he believed the mother’s version.
Which would likely mean an environmental trigger.
A trigger that could be anything from lead paint to a stupid relative slipping the baby alcohol to keep him quiet.

Not that it ultimately mattered what was killing the child. Even if they found the cause and were able to keep any more damage from occurring, there was already far too much damage for the child to live any kind of a normal life. He had probably already suffered irreversible paralysis and memory loss — perhaps was even now blind or deaf or unable to process information in a way that would make learning possible. Massive nerve damage could make him insensate to the environment around him — he would never feel the touch of a feather or the icy cold of winter. Nor would he know if the water in a bathtub was too hot until he saw his flesh start to redden. Or he could trip wearing a hiking boot and walk for miles on a broken ankle.