Taji's Syndrome (28 page)

Lydia Dawson was waiting for him, a small compact woman with a precise haircut and no-nonsense glasses. “Good afternoon, Doctor Klausen,” she said, accompanying her words with a direct and firm handshake. “Doctor Picknor is on the line. When you’ve finished your conversation, I hope you’ll save some time for me. Health and Environment has a few questions that need answers.” She smiled as she spoke but there was no attempt to disguise the fact that she had issued an order, no matter how politely expressed.

Ms. Dawson’s office was large and neat. There were photographs on her wall, just as there were on Blair’s, but Lydia Dawson preferred to display pictures of her family and headlines from papers that dealt with environmental legislation. One picture showed Lydia Dawson standing in a creek trying to land a medium-sized brown trout. As Max picked up the phone, he sat so that he could study the photographs at leisure.

“Doctor Klausen?” Picknor said sharply.

“Yes; I’m here.” He saw that there was a notebook and pen set out for him, and he hastened to grab for them. “What is all this secrecy about?”

“It’s because I’m worried—worried about Missus Channing first of all, but about this whole TS project.” His voice dropped, as if having a secure line did not console him.

“What are you talking about? What’s going on in Texas?”

“Let me tell it my way, okay?” Picknor asked in his best crusty style.

“Go ahead, Doctor Picknor,” Max offered, determined to keep his mouth shut as much as possible. His head was aching now, along with his back and arms.

“Well, the thing of it is, we thought Irene Channing was as good as dead when we brought her into the hospital. We made all kinds of arrangements for her kids and got her lawyer to handle things like household accounts and the like. Missus Channing is a woman of some means. She’s also an artist. One of the galleries has a show of hers going on right now. Anyway, we were all pretty set for her dying, her included. But it didn’t happen. She got the high fever, her blood—well, you know what her blood looked like—and the ACTH readings were what you’d expect with TS. And then, just when we thought that was that, the fever broke and she started to recover.”

“By recover, what do you mean?” Max warned himself that he had no reason to expect things to work out so well for himself, and that he did not know what recovery from TS might entail. There were diseases that left their survivors little more than human flotsam.

“We’re not quite sure yet. There hasn’t been a long time to observe her, and . . . and we don’t know if it really is over.” Picknor sounded unsure of himself and as he went on, his uncertainty increased. “Her temperature has been normal and most of her tests look okay. She’s starting to take exercise again, and that’s been coming along. Her blood isn’t normal, and her ACTH and CRF levels are . . . abnormal.”

“How, abnormal?” Max went cold again, but this time he did not blame his disease.

“They’re higher and . . . the cycles are unfamiliar.” He cleared his throat. “There’s something else.”

“What is it?” He prepared himself for the worst.

“Well, I don’t know how to say it.” He faltered, then went on without prompting. “The thing is, she seems to have acquired a new talent.”

“What kind of talent?” Max smiled at a photograph of Lydia Dawson, her husband and two children as they chased two half-grown Samoyed puppies over a wide lawn. From the shadow at the base of the picture, it had been taken by one of the neighbors.

“It’s something to do with the mind. We can determine that much through the ACTH levels. Her fever goes up, too, and comes back down almost at once.” Picknor was decidedly uncomfortable now and he hesitated. “She says she can’t do it often, and when she does, it wears her out. She says that it makes her feel dizzy and that she has to sleep a long time after she does it.”

Max’s patience was almost exhausted. “What is it she does?”

“She . . . uh, moves things.” Picknor fell silent.

When there was no more information coming, Max let his attention stray from the photographs. “What’s remarkable about that? Or are these very large or heavy things?”

“It doesn’t matter. She moves them.” Picknor coughed. “I’ve seen her do it. The nurses here have seen her do it. There’s no trick to it. She’s really doing it.”

“Moving things?” Max asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Picknor snapped. “Even if she had the ability before, it was latent. If it is the result of the disease, then who knows what the ramifications might be.”

“You mean that she’s recovered enough to handle normal work?” Max did not want to sound incredulous.

“You aren’t listening to me,” Picknor argued. “You aren’t paying attention.”

Guiltily Max turned away from the photos. “I am,” he said.

“She
moves
things; she doesn’t
handle
them.” He waited and went on. “She lies in bed, and the sweat pours out of her like a cutting horse at work on an August afternoon. And something—the TV or a chair or a nurse or a vase of flowers—rises into the air. The last time she kept something up for about half an hour. Then she slept fourteen hours.”

Max could say nothing for the better part of a minute, and then he asked, “Are you serious?” He was tempted to laugh, but was afraid that he might be making a mistake if he did.

“Serious as I can be,” Picknor said somberly. “I have signed and witnessed statements from several members of the hospital staff. I have photographs. And it scares me, Doctor Klausen. We already know she’s one in several million because she’s alive, but what if . . . what if she’s not the only one? What if TS can do this?”

“You mean cause spontaneous psychokinesis?” Max asked as if he were talking about a picnic lunch.

“Either in its fatalities or its survivors. You think we’re not up to handling it the way it is, can you imagine what it would be like to have—” He could not go on.

It took Max several seconds to collect and organize his thoughts. “Doctor Picknor, how much documentation do you have on this?”

“Not as much as I’d like.”

“Un-huh,” Max said, doing his best to sound neutral. “Could you prepare it all and see that copies are sent to the Environmental Division of the NCDC in Atlanta? Give us as much information as you can, with all the backup material you can find. You’re making some very . . . unusual claims, and we’d better check them out for all our sakes.” He wanted to talk with Jeff and with Sam Jarvis. He did not care that the others might laugh. “If you can spare a copy for us in Portland, I’d really appreciate it.”

“If you insist,” said Picknor. “I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared for Missus Channing. If it gets out that she’s survived TS and ended up able to use her mind that way, who knows who might want to get their hands on her?”

Max privately thought that this was the least of Mrs. Channing’s concerns, but he kept his opinion to himself. “I don’t know what to tell you until I go over your figures. I’ll talk with Doctor Taji and get back to you.”

“Be careful,” warned Picknor. “You could be watched.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Max said unwisely.

“Still, be careful,” said Picknor. “Call me on a secure line when you’ve gone over the things I send you.”

“All right; thanks,” he said and was trying to think of a suitable phrase to end the conversation when Picknor hung up.

Max went back to Blair’s office in a thoughtful frame of mind. Supposing that Picknor had been right and that in some unknown way TS had triggered psychokinetic powers in Mrs. Irene Channing, what could that mean to him, or to anyone else for that matter? Who would bother themselves with the few who actually lived through TS when so many were contracting the disease and dying of it? He decided he would have to find this Coach James Jackson if he wanted to learn for himself.

It was well after eight that evening when Max finally found a reference in the patient records to James Joseph Jackson. It referred to the man as being in critical condition, temperature spiking at close to one hundred five, breathing labored, blood disastrous, ACTH levels incomprehensible. Max admitted that if he had seen these readings, he would assume the patient would not last another forty-eight hours. But he found no death entry for Jackson in any of the records for that day or the day after or the day after that. Then, strangely, there was an authorization for a transfer to a Veterans Administration hospital dated nine days later, well after Max would have thought the man dead.

“Dien?” he said when he reached her at home. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but I have something here that puzzles me.”

There was a child crying somewhere near the phone and Dien’s response was distracted. “What is it?”

“I’ve got a few questions about a TS patient.”

“Oh.” The phone clattered, there was a brief struggle and then Dien said, breathlessly, “Sorry. We’re having a little jurisdictional dispute here.”

“Your kid?”

“He’s growing. The terrible twos.” She paused, then went on more calmly. “What patient is it? Anyone we’ve discussed?”

“No, not directly. He was transferred to a VA hospital last month. He had TS but apparently his condition . . .” He could not find a word to describe what might have become of Coach Jackson.

“They’re trying to get some of the vets into VA hospitals,” Dien said at her most sensible. “We need as many beds as we can find these days.”

Max hesitated. “That’s not quite what I mean,” he said. “I mean that he was still alive after going critical. Has that happened before?”

She did not answer at once, and when she did, her voice was thoughtful. “No. Of course not.”

“Judging from the records, it did in this case.” He thumbed through the printouts again. “There’s one notation here that almost looks like he was listed as dead. Understandable, but a little premature, I think, because the transfer was authorized almost three weeks after that.”

“I’ll give Wil Landholm a call. He knew . . . knows Jackson.” She was more determined now. “He told me Jackson was dead.”

“Good guess, if he had TS,” Max said ironically but without bitterness. Since the death of Cassie, his wife, he was less attached to life. “Tell me what you find out. I leave at ten in the morning. I don’t mean to put pressure on you, but if you can have something for me before then?”

“If I can reach Wil, you’ll hear from me.” She made it a promise. “Where was the VA hospital, can you tell me? Is in on the records?”

Max shuffled through the stack. “It says it’s in Coeur d’Alene.”

“Coeur d’Alene? I didn’t think the VA had a facility there,” Dien said. “It can’t be very big.”

“No record,” Max said, frowning as he tried to recall what Veterans Administration hospital it might be. “I’ll call Atlanta before I go.” He added a few more notes to his already extensive list, trying all the while to hold back the insidious weakness that sapped his will as well as his strength.

—Jeff Taji and Susannah Ling—

Stapleton Airport in Denver was almost deserted. Few travelers waited in the lounge areas, and the ticket counters were inactive. When Jeff found Susannah in the baggage claim area, she gave him a rueful smile.

“This is worse than during the Tunis Flu Two and Three,” he said, indicating the empty terminal.

“Everyone got scared. They’re afraid to travel, afraid of what they could catch or carry, or what they might sit next to. You remember all the dire warnings during the Tunis Flu. Other people remember them, too. Ever since that story on Aaron Post, half the country’s convinced that TS will get them no matter what they do. The other half are preparing for siege.” She had two bags— carry-on and a large Pulman—and a two-wheeled hand trolley to move them.

“I’ll do that,” Jeff offered, taking the handle as she secured her bags to it.

“If you like,” Susannah said, faintly amused. She leaned over and kissed Jeff on the cheek. “I missed you.”

He gave her a startled look. “I missed you, too,” he said, returning the kiss.

As she fell into step beside him, she said, “I warned you at that first dinner that I don’t know how to flirt. I’m not kidding.”

“I don’t know how, either,” he said, letting her precede him through the doors. “It’s chilly.”

“It’s bloody
cold,”
she corrected him as she pulled her coat more tightly around her. “It’s almost May, for Lord’s sake.”

He indicated his government car parked near at hand in an illegal zone. “Privilege of physicians,” he said as he opened the door for her.

“Very convenient.” She got in and waited while he put her things in the trunk. “I brought most of the information you wanted. I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me send it by phone.”

“Because,” he said as he started the car, “I don’t want the information leaking out too soon. There are too many people who can tap in on that.”

“You have a point,” she said, leaning back as he headed for the freeway. “There are cases cropping up all over the country now, you know, and the Canadians are furious.”

“You can’t blame them,” said Jeff.

“No.” She lapsed into silence. “Jamshid,” she said a little later as they headed through Denver toward Golden. “It’s a nice name. I like it.”

“So do I,” said Jeff. “My aunt still calls me that. My kids use Jeff. It’s Jeff on my passport. I list Jamshid as a middle name.”

“Jeffrey Jamshid Taji?” Susannah inquired, faintly amused. “Sort of exotic.”

“Pragmatic,” said Jeff seriously. “As long as I’m Jamshid, I’m a Persian in exile. Jeff is someone who has come home.” He glanced at his watch. “This woman we’re going to see—she’s not very cooperative. She’s had more grief than help from government agencies in the past, but it appears that she might have a clue to the problem.”

“And she might be a nut case. You did say that, too.” She rubbed her eyes. “Is Patrick Drucker always a pompous ass, or does he do that trick just for me?”

“He does it for all of us. He knows his stuff, but he doesn’t know or trust his people.” It was so relaxing to be able to speak candidly, and for the first time in days Jeff began to let down his formality and guard. “Get Weyman Muggridge to talk to you about it sometime. Drucker doesn’t like Weyman.”