The White Plague (58 page)

“We have visitors,” McCrae said.

As he stared at the military guard in the little storage room opposite Hupp’s lab, Ruckerman thought about poor McCrae. The English were adamant about not sending him to Ireland.

“We’ve no facilities for holiday jaunts,” the regional commander had said as he arranged Ruckerman’s transportation to Huddersfield. Poor McCrae had been shunted off to something called “The Holding Center for Foreign Nationals.”

Someone rapped on the storage room door. Ruckerman’s guard opened the door. Someone outside said: “Bring him.”

Ruckerman found himself presently standing beside Hupp. Stonar regarded them both as though they had been scraped off with slime from the underside of a damp rock. Ruckerman, who had met Stonar only briefly at one of the latter’s regular inspections, knew he was in the presence of Authority and now could complain.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ruckerman demanded. “Do you realize who I am?”

“You’re a spy,” Stonar said. “We’ve been known to shoot spies.” He glanced at Hupp. “The frog here has just told me an interesting story. He will keep his mouth shut now while you answer a few questions.”

Fat’s in the fire!
Ruckerman thought. Well, the President had warned him he was on his own at Huddersfield. The United States government could take no official action to protect him.

“We thought your recent report to President Velcourt rather interesting,” Stonar said. “Beckett and his team are going to do some amazing things. What amazing things?”

“They’re very close to a complete description of the plague,” Ruckerman said. He cleared his throat. “I resent being called a spy. Everything I’ve done –”

“Has been monitored by us,” Stonar said. “By amazing, did you mean they will produce a cure?”

“How can we tell until we have the complete picture?” Ruckerman asked.

Hupp nodded.

“Stay out of this, frog,” Stonar warned.

But Ruckerman now had the clue he needed. Hupp had not let the cat out of the bag, not to this turd!

“You are not helping our efforts by this attitude,” Ruckerman said. “There is a high likelihood that we will be able to produce a… cure, if you will.”

“But you used the word
amazing
.”

“The President is impatient,” Ruckerman said. “And it’s my informed guess that we will succeed. As a scientist, however, I cannot tell you flatly right now that we will be able to nullify the plague. All I can say for sure is that we’ll have a complete picture of it quite soon.”

“How soon?”

Ruckerman glanced at Hupp as though to say: “This is too much.” Hupp shrugged. “Weeks, perhaps,” Ruckerman said, a sigh in his voice. “And maybe only days. We are tracing out an extremely complicated organism for which there is no precedent. It is absolutely new, man-made.”

“You told your President that you’ve given Hupp and his team ‘a complete picture.’  A complete picture of what?”

“I brought with me some new software, a computer search program, which has speeded up our efforts remarkably. The President knew I was bringing this.”

“Why didn’t you inform us of this immediately?”

“I didn’t think you would understand it,” Ruckerman said. “I was given to understand that only Beckett’s team was sufficiently advanced to employ this software effectively.”

“Given to understand? By whom?”

“By Beckett himself, among others!”

“And the reports of your spies!” Stonar accused.

“Mister Stonar,” Ruckerman said, “the search program is in Huddersfield’s computer system where anyone can have access to it. If you wish to examine it, please feel free.”

Stonar glared at him. The bastard, Ruckerman! He knew computer software was beyond the inspector’s competence! Scowling, Stonar stepped to the door and opened it. “Send in General Shiles.” Stonar waited to one side of the open door.

Presently, a brigadier general in a superbly tailored field uniform strode into the room. He nodded once to Stonar. Shiles was a tall, skinny figure, monocle in right eye, swagger stick under left arm. He had weathered skin and a hawk’s-beak nose above a tight little mouth and square chin. The eyes were pale blue and the one behind the monocle gave off a glassy sheen.

“You heard the entire conversation, General?” Stonar asked.

“Yes, sir.” Shiles’s voice was brusk and clipped.

“I must be getting back to base immediately,” Stonar said. “I’ll leave you to lay out the conditions to everyone here. You can start with the frog and his friend, the spy.”

“Very good, sir.”

Stonar passed a baleful stare across Hupp and Ruckerman but did not speak. Turning, Stonar left the room. A uniformed hand reached in from outside and closed the door.

“I have a full brigade plus the original guards in position around this establishment,” Shiles said, speaking to a position between Hupp and Ruckerman. “No one from here will be permitted to leave. No more going down to the village pub of an evening. There will be no outside communication without my personal permission. Do you understand?”

“Sir,” Hupp said. “I think I can…”

Ruckerman placed a hand over Hupp’s mouth and shook his head. Shiles regarded Ruckerman with astonishment. Lifting a notepad and pencil from Hupp’s lab table, Ruckerman scribbled a few words and passed the tablet to Shiles.

Time for the carrot
, Ruckerman thought.
The stick sure as hell would not work with this man.

Shiles gave him a momentary cold appraisal before taking the tablet and reading what Ruckerman had written. The monocle dropped out of Shiles’s eye. He replaced it before finding the pencil and writing beneath Rucker-man’s message: “How can this be?”

Ruckerman took the next page in the tablet and wrote: “What we have discovered leaves no other conclusion.”

Shiles glanced at the door through which Stonar had gone, then at Ruckerman.

Ruckerman shook his head, took the tablet and wrote: “He can deliver death; we can deliver life.”

General Shiles tore off the used pages of the tablet and stuffed them into a side pocket. He tapped his left thigh with his swagger stick. Ruckerman could see decision forming in the man. That was a rich carrot displayed on the pages of the tablet. A long, long life and perfect health. And Shiles was a man to believe in scientists. Were they not the ones who had given him atom bombs and rockets? He must know this prize was worth the gamble. He would want to control it.

“Damme!” Shiles said. “It would appear I’ve been given charge over the golden egg.”

“Remember what happened when the farmer killed the goose,” Hupp said.

“You’re quite bright for a frog,” Shiles said. “Just don’t forget that I’m the farmer.”

“I presume you will use discretion,” Ruckerman said.

“Indeed,” Shiles said. “I will leave you two to your scientific devices now. I trust you’ll explain the new rules to your teammates? Leave Wycombe-Finch to me.”

Ruckerman waved a cautionary finger.

“Yes, quite,” Shiles said. “The fewer who know the better.” Turning on one heel, he strode to the door, flung it open and left them.

Hupp heard heels clicking outside and imagined the snappy salutes. The British were very good at snappy salutes.

“It could be worse,” Ruckerman said.

Hupp nodded agreement. Ruckerman had been right to silence him. There were listeners behind every wall. And Ruckerman was correct to bring Shiles into the picture. There was plenty of power to go around. Shiles had the look of a man who enjoyed power, the more power the better.

“Wycombe-Finch is off the hook and we’re on it,” Ruckerman said.

Perhaps our greatest crime was this devotion to violent fanaticism. It led us to kill off or otherwise silence moderation. We destroyed our moderates, that’s what we did. And look what it brought us!

– Fintan Craig Doheny

J
OHN TOOK
an instant dislike to Adrian Peard at the Killaloe Facility. The man was all decked out in lovat green tweeds, standing at the entrance to greet the new arrivals. He was a caricature of the great seigneur, that brown face under the courtyard’s intense lighting.

The Lab had been visible in the fading light as John’s armored car had come down out of the hills. It was not actually at Killaloe, their driver had explained, but farther north. The name was a deliberate bit of confusion, which they were not to expose. The facility was a large stone building that once had been a castle. The daub-gray stone lay within the crooked arm of a hill like a malignant growth that had extruded several feelers toward the nearby lakeshore.

“It doesn’t belong there, that’s what you’re thinking,” the driver had said. “Everyone thinks that. But it’s better inside. From the inside, you cannot see the place.”

“Welcome to the Killaloe Facility,” Peard said after introducing himself. His handshake was dry and perfunctory. “Your fame has preceded you, Doctor O’Donnell. We’re all quite excited.”

John felt anger. Doheny had made good his threat to create a John O’Donnell myth! Father Michael and the boy were assigned a guide and directed to “the other wing.” The priest avoided John’s eyes as he left. Father Michael had been silent and withdrawn ever since John’s confession. O’Neill-Within had ceased howling, though, and John felt somewhat calmer. Confession had helped. The mental confusion that had followed confession lay in a walled-off limbo. All John wanted now was food and rest, a time to think.

“We’ve laid on a small meeting of top staff,” Peard said. “Hope you feel up to it. Time presses.”

John blinked at him, anger suspended in fatigue.

Peard thought the man looked tired and confused, but Doheny had said to give no time to reflect.
Keep him off balance
. Still…
this
was supposed to be O’Neill?

The courtyard air smelled of lake dampness and mildew with overtones of exhaust fumes from the departed armored cars. John was glad to leave it. Peard escorted him inside the great double doors, all the time keeping up a bright patter of conversation. They went down a long hall, many doors, some standing open with people visible inside at various occupations – computer terminals, a centrifuge whirling, the hiss of steam from a sterilizer. John recognized blue laser light in one room. The impression was of well-intentioned but largely senseless industry. There was much bustling about, intent examination of culture dishes and test tubes and even an electron microscope. The hum of a powerful electric motor came from behind one closed door.

There was a curved stairway at the far end of the hall. It took them up to a landing where Peard flung open a heavy oak door and escorted John into a library. Old portraits lined one wall above bookcases and stacks and a wheeled ladder. A small fireplace of Italian marble with carved cherubs decorated the end of an open space where chairs and one heavy table had been set out. The room smelled of pipe smoke and old books. John found himself being introduced to at least ten men. He lost count after the third. They were mostly tweeds and turtleneck pullovers, a few cardigans. There was a Jim somebody, a Doctor Balfour “of whom you’ve heard, of course.” When John had shaken the last hand, a free-standing chalkboard was wheeled out from the stacks and placed near the fireplace.

Peard gestured at the chalkboard, thinking that his people had behaved quite well. They had been carefully briefed, of course. Their expressions betrayed only anxious curiosity.

John stared from the people now seated looking at him to the blank surface of the chalkboard. It had been scrubbed clean, not even a hint of what had been written there before. Empty, dark-green surface. What was he supposed to do with it? Abruptly, he recalled the penance assigned him by Father Michael. Would that arouse O’Neill-Within?

“Doheny says you have a remarkable new approach to the plague,” Peard prompted.

John reached for the chalk on the ledge below the board. O’Neill-Within did not object. The hand was a fascinating thing to watch: It moved of itself. His body had taken on another life. Turning to Peard and the others with a calm smile, John spoke in a firm voice.

“Everyone naturally agrees that a virus must have been used as the specialized structure with which to inject the nucleic acid into the cells of this new bacteria. I assume that the phage approach needs no explanation in this room.”

Several dry chuckles greeted this.

John turned and stared past the chalkboard for a moment, appearing to gather his thoughts. His gaze fell on the fireplace and a portrait above it: an Elizabethan dandy with form-fitting dark coat and lace at the neck and cuffs, cruel eyes, the face of a predatory bird.

“Synthetic hereditary information was incorporated into the DNA complement of the virus,” John said, shifting the chalk from one hand to the other and back.

How intently they listened, hanging on every word.

“There has to be another necessary characteristic of the phage,” John said. “That the virus in its parasitizing of the new bacteria must possess DNA with only a single chain at its end – an incomplete helix designed to lock into the receptor DNA. It is a complementary message being inserted into the host. I assume that the synthetic DNA must adhere to the viral DNA in such a way that it causes the virus to manufacture more of the desired form.”

What a remarkable thing his voice was, John thought. It went on almost of itself, steady and informative. Heads were nodding agreement all around him.

“But what if the phage were created with more than a single dangling chain?” John asked. “Certain human cells have receptors for testosterone, for example. Females have estrogen receptors. There are many similar receptor sites. There also must be a message pattern that determines whether the fetus will be either male or female. The pattern will be different for each sex. The nucleic acid blueprint that directs the creation of proteins must possess a shaping force that can direct substances into locked positions.”

He turned to the chalkboard and watched that remarkable self-directing hand sketch a series of three-letter combinations: