The Nirvana Plague (8 page)

Marley couldn’t suppress a stunned grin. “What, now?”

“Yes.” She nodded toward the two guards. “This is Lieutenant Tyminski and Lieutenant Tennover.” She waved Tennover forward. “I’m assigning Lieutenant Tennover to you as your personal aide. From this moment, you won’t go anywhere without him. When you reach Andrews—”

Tennover nodded stiffly. “Doctor.”

Marley blinked up at him — carrot-top, spattered all over with freckles, soft round face — bucks to balls he’d been called “Red” his whole life.

Lieutenant Tyminski, on the other hand, was tall, dark, and ugly. If he had ever smiled, it hadn’t left a mark.

Benford looked like she was ready to go. She was just waiting for Marley to catch up.

“You want me to take off to Washington tonight? Just like that?”

“No, doctor, not tonight. Now.”

He kept trying to smile, for safety’s sake, but he couldn’t keep it up in front of her. “You couldn’t call first?”

“Dr. Marley,” she said slowly, “listen to me carefully, please. We are in the early stages of an outbreak of infectious psychosis. Nobody in the general public really knows that yet, and almost nobody in the government. And that’s the way we want to keep it. You have direct clinical experience with this disease. Your paper is the first description of it in the medical literature outside classified Defense Department studies. And, frankly, it’s the most intelligent thing anybody has said about it
in or out
of the government. I realize you could never have imagined an hour ago this is how your day would end up, but it has. This is real. This is happening. Your country needs you.”

Not a hint of self-consciousness or irony or satire.
Your country needs you. What’s it gonna be, boy?

“Well,” he said, “I have patients, you know.”

“If you’d been hit by a bus crossing the street this morning, your patients—”

He put up a hand to stop her. “All right. I get the point.”

“I have a car outside. We’ll drive you home so you can pack, then take you on to O’Hare. Why don’t you let the lieutenant drive your car, and I’ll fill you in on the details en route?”

A black sedan, government plates, crouched like a cat in front of the hospital, illegally parked, motor running. A white Chicago PD patrol car sat behind it, lights flashing. For a second, Marley thought the cops were calling a tow on it — which was funny. Then he realized it was a police escort — which was not.

Marley surrendered his car keys to Tennover and pointed toward the staff parking lot across the street. Holding up the carfinder, the lieutenant trotted off, following its beacon. Marley followed Benford into the back of the government car. Her other aide dropped into the driver’s seat like a fighter pilot into a flight simulator.

Benford extracted a tablet from a metal case on the seat beside her and handed it to him.

He looked at it blankly.

“That’s
your
machine,” she said. “Put your finger in the circle. That will authenticate it to your biochemical signature. Nobody but you will be able to use it.”

“Which finger?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll want to review those materials today, so you can hit the ground running tomorrow.”

He didn’t touch it. He thought of making some joke about the psychosexual implications of putting his finger in the hole: what if he couldn’t get it back out again? He looked up at her. “How long is this going to take?”

“As long as it takes. We have been ordered to submit a plan of action by the end of the week. The plan itself will determine what happens after that.”

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

“Yes?”

“Why all the dramatics? I mean, flying out here to fetch me straight back to Washington, hit the ground running tomorrow, and all that. Why all this cloak and dagger urgency now if you’ve known about this thing since January?”

“The initial outbreaks were scattered, they weren’t recognized as anything more than ordinary battle stress reaction. It wasn’t until February that someone at the Pentagon began to suspect something more might be going on. Memos were generated, reports made, and so on. Eventually, the problem attracted enough interest that the Joint Chiefs commissioned an analysis. A panel was formed, looked into it and drew a conclusion. The conclusion was that there was nothing to it. It could not be ruled out that individual incidents were not stress reactions or phony medical chapters. Clusters were attributed to statistical anomalies and copycatting. The recommended response was psychotherapy or disciplinary action. I was on that panel, but I dissented from their conclusions.”

She paused.

Her lieutenant swung the car through a left. Heading for the expressway. He knew exactly how to get to Marley’s house.

Marley nodded. “So.”

“So,” she continued, “the JCS didn’t quite buy it either. The outbreaks continued and seemed to be getting worse. And then a similar outbreak was reported in the non-classified literature.”

“My paper.”

“Yes.”

“That brings us up to today. You’ll find a detailed timeline on that computer,” she said, as if trying to convince him to imprint it.

They stopped at a traffic light.

Marley looked out the tinted window. Men and women in trench coats hunched their shoulders against the cold wind. From the grimy plate glass of a failed boutique a naked mannequin watched the street, one delicate hand poised to bestow a blessing. Steam danced over a sidewalk grate in an eddy of wind; a bald beggar sat muttering to himself in its warmth.

Pulling his attention back into the car, he ID’d himself to his new computer with the ball of his thumb.

“I guess I’d better call my wife,” he said, “and tell her I won’t be home for dinner this month.”

“Good. Here’s what you can tell her.…”

Coffee Alley occupied the alley-corner of a block of glass-front shops on Sherman Avenue in Evanston, hard by the campus. A dozen tables lay scattered between the counter in the back and the tinted glass walls in the front. From speakers in the ceiling, old Van Morrison recordings melted down into the ambience. Students sat hunched over battered tablets, sipping coffee from cardboard cups, making it last as long as it could stay warm. A couple of faculty members sat near the counter, looking more relaxed, discussing the morning news over their own tablets.

Karen nodded to them as she passed on her way to the back, shoulder bag bouncing against her hip.

“Hullo, Karen!” the proprietor said, looking up from behind the counter.

Ally was tall and thin. Big wet violet eyes. Straight auburn hair kept back in a braid. She favored long, dark, shapeless dresses with paisley prints. Purple fingernails. Cheap silver rings on most of her fingers.

“Morning, Ally — afternoon rather. What’s going on with Carl? His secretary just called saying he was going to be out of town on business for ‘an indefinite period.’ Wanted me to reschedule Roger with Dr. Alexander.”

“Yeah, he called me about an hour ago,” she said. “From the airport! — Let’s have some coffee. Want some lunch?”

“Sure.”

“What would you like?”

“Anything. I don’t care.”

“I think we still have some of that left. Take a seat, I’ll bring it out.”

Karen stayed at the counter, talking to her while she brought out some rolls and spread, sliced the rolls, and slathered them with faux tuna delight — made from chickpeas and God knew what else.

“So where did he say he was going?”

Ally answered over her shoulder from the cutting table: “Washington.”

“What about?”

“He said he’d been asked to serve on some kind of government commission at the NIH. A research project or something.”

“Government research? Was this the first you heard about it?”

“Weird, huh?”

“Is that all he said?”

“Pretty much. I’m sure he’ll call later. He was about to get on the plane. Sounded rushed. Said he had to call the office too, to arrange coverage for his appointments.”

“Roger’s not going to see Alexander. He’s not going to see anyone anymore.”

Ally plopped two cups of coffee on the counter in front of Karen.

“Didn’t he say what the rush was about?” Karen said.

“No.”

Karen took the coffees, and Ally came round the end of the counter with two plates of food. They sat down close by the cash register so Ally could help customers as needed. At the next table, the two Northwestern staff were still reading and chatting about current events.

“Did he say what kind of research?”

“Something psychiatric I suppose.”

“So your husband calls you from the boarding gate at the airport to tell you he suddenly has to jet off to Washington to do some emergency psychiatric research for the NIH?”

Ally laughed. “When you put it like that.…”

“Maybe it’s another woman! Maybe he’s got something going on the side in DC!”

“Maybe he’s running away from home at last.”

“At last?”

“Well.” Ally looked away.

“Anyway, it couldn’t be that,” Karen said. “He wouldn’t have called the office if it was that.”

“No, I suppose not.” Ally wasn’t smiling.

“I guess it’s not funny,” Karen said.

The news was flickering silently on the screens in each corner of the room.

Karen’s phone bleeped in the bottom of her bag, and she fished it out. “Yes?”

An unfamiliar male voice responded. “Dr. Hanover?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is Gordon DeStefano. I’m with the Chicago Board of Health.”

“Yes?”

“We’re looking for your husband, Dr. Hanover. Where are you now?”

“What?”

“We’re looking for you husband. Roger Sturgeon. Where are you now, Dr. Hanover?”

“I’m, uh — Why are you looking for Roger? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Could you tell me where you are, please? I mean, is there somewhere we could meet you? We’d like your help.”

After ten years of living with a brilliant schizophrenic astrobiologist, Karen had learned how to keep her feet in the most bizarre conversations. But even Roger made more sense than this voice on the line. “What’s wrong?”

“Like I said, nothing’s wrong. We—”

“If nothing’s wrong then why are you looking for my husband?”

“There’s no need for you to be concerned. We’ll explain everything when we see you. Now where can we pick you up?”

“If there’s nothing for me to be concerned about then there’s nothing to explain, is there?”

“Where are you, please?”

She punched off the call, and immediately rang Roger’s phone.

Ally was watching her from behind her coffee cup.

“What’s wrong?”

Karen was listening to Roger’s phone ring. “The hell if I know! Some fool from the board of health. — Answer, goddammit!”

“Board of health?”

“That’s what he sa — Roger?”

The ringing had stopped, but Roger didn’t answer.

“Hello?” she said louder. She heard noises, people talking. Sounded like students. She heard someone breathing. “Roger! Are you there?”

“Here,” came the answer.

“Roger. Where are you?”

“Here.”

“Yes. But where is that?”

“Well…”

“Are you on campus?”

“Yes,” Roger said.

She heard a beep on the line. Board-of-Health man calling her back. She ignored it.

“Are you all right?”

“Well…” He was considering the question, parsing it.

“What’s all?”

“Roger, hand the phone to someone else, will you? Anybody. Hand it to someone. Hand the phone to someone.”

Roger didn’t say anything.

She listened intently.

Someone said, “No thanks.”

Someone laughed.

Then:
crack
. He’d dropped the phone. She heard footsteps crunching past.

She shouted into the phone.

“Roger! God
damn
it!”

The two professors stopped talking and looked at her. Everyone was looking at her.

She stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to go find him.” She was already crossing toward the exit. “He’s probably down by Tech. That’s where he goes.”

Ally stood and called after her: “Anything I can do?”

“I’ll call you later.”