Containment Read online

  15 April, Thursday

  Bethesda, Maryland / 9:10 a.m.

  A tall, thin man barged into Kraig Drennan's office.

  Kraig looked up, annoyed. "About time," he said.

  Roderick Halkin sat down on one of the Spartan chairs. His dark hair was short and combed neatly, his suit was composed of a stretchable fabric that stretched or shrank rapidly, matching itself to body contours whether the wearer was sitting or standing. No wrinkles.

  "I asked for a lead time of 48 hours," said Roderick. "It's not unreasonable."

  "Nice duds," said the assistant director. Kraig's open-necked shirt looked like he'd slept in it—which he had. And the sleeves were rolled up. "Looks like the change went smoothly."

  Kraig didn't know much about Roderick Halkin's personal life and didn't care to dig too deeply. Halkin enjoyed a certain flexibility, in terms of both his job and his lifestyle. At one time he'd been a part-time worker though Kraig had strongly encouraged him to become a full-time employee, and offered a flexible schedule as an incentive. Kraig had taken advantage of one of the several influenza emergencies to hire him full-time—it was best to make controversial moves when something important was occupying the bureaucrats' attention.

  One of Halkin's peculiarities centered on an unshakeable conviction in the lateralization of brain function. The right and left hemispheres of the brain performed vastly different functions, so claimed Halkin, whose ideas were supported by a small amount of neuroscience research that Halkin fully accepted. To explain the contrary data—tests that showed functions such as logic and creativity belonged to both hemispheres—Halkin asserted that such ambivalence resulted from a lack of neural efficiency. Hemispheric specialization, Halkin believed, was the pinnacle of evolution, and the most efficient possible use of brain capacity.

  Kraig remembered visiting Halkin and his significant other a few times at their Virginia home. Once Kraig and his girlfriend ate dinner there; this was back when he had a girl friend, back when he had time for such luxuries. Roderick's significant other—Kraig didn't know if they were legally married and never asked—was an intelligent looking woman with incredibly piercing blue eyes. She spoke of meditation and biofeedback, and the ways in which people can control their brain waves, changing from one hemisphere to another as desired, swinging back and forth between cold, analytical logic and out-of-the-box creativity. With animated gestures and abundant enthusiasm she talked about brain waves and how to generate them, how to control them and shift them from one hemisphere to the other. Anyone could do this, she claimed, provided they could get feedback on how they were doing. Kraig had listened quietly as she described various neurofeedback monitors and recording devices.

  But she and Roderick believed in what they were doing, and perhaps that was all that mattered. Kraig didn't concern himself with Roderick's personal life; new age or not, Roderick Halkin excelled in the laboratory. And that, to Kraig, was all that mattered.

  "The transition went tolerably well," said Roderick. "Now this case you've given me. It has its interests."

  "You read the latest report?"

  "Of course." Roderick glanced at his wristwatch. "As of 7 o'clock this morning."

  "We're not making much headway," admitted Kraig. He gave Roderick a sharp look. "Cecily is worried."

  "So are you, it seems."

  Kraig was aware of being closely scrutinized, though Roderick appeared to be staring disinterestedly at the top of the desk. Kraig frowned. "Yeah, but I'm always worried. That's my job."

  Roderick leaned forward. "How did you manage to convince the director to assign Cecily to the case?"

  "He doesn't know her. That's how I convinced him."

  "Of course. Perhaps it also had something to do with the director's perception of the relative importance of this case. That is to say, its relative unimportance."

  "You know where Chet is now?" Kraig grinned. It was a grin of malice, not of mirth. "He's at his usual morning golf game. Hasn't got a care in the world. At least he doesn't look like he does. He goes around in this smiling daze all the time. You look at him and you think he's the sort of kindly gentleman you hand your tickets to at an amusement park."

  A raspy chuckle came from deep in Roderick's throat.

  "Cecily says the rodents are dying," said Kraig. "And I believe her."

  Roderick nodded once. "Cecily Sunday is a person who makes few mistakes."

  "But there's nothing showing up at the hospitals." Kraig waved a hand. "Oh, sure, there are the usual unexplained cases. But nothing consistent. No trends."

  Frustration had crept into Kraig's voice. He started to say something else, then shook his head and fell silent.

  "Did you expect anything?" asked Roderick.

  "People don't just drop dead, Rod. They die of something."

  "True. But the immune system was quiescent in the victims. A considerable number of the symptoms for many infections are caused by the body fighting the invaders."

  "God," said Kraig, tiredly. "That's all we need. People just slipping away." Something caught in his throat. He looked up, saw Roderick staring at him. Staring at him with that indecipherable expression.

  "It's been almost two days," said Roderick, "and there have been no further victims." He paused. "Don't assume the worst just yet. This may all blow over without any more trouble whatsoever."

  "Rod, what if this is something that we...we can't deal with?"

  "We have to be prepared to deal with anything. If there does prove to be an agent, and if it's contagious, we must stop the source. Assume, for the moment, that mice, or some parasitic organism of mice, are a source of the infection. With this knowledge we are well armed, because the contagion becomes controllable. All contagions are controllable once you know the route of transmission."

  "All previous contagions," said Kraig.

  "And there's no reason to suspect otherwise here."

  "If it's such a silent killer...." Kraig didn't finish his sentence. "You know what really worries me, keeps me up at night? There are so many laboratories all over the world, in universities and research organizations and high-tech companies—all of them fiddling with microbes or chemicals or nanothis and nanothat. Who knows what these things could do? And none of these people talk to us."

  "Even so, it's remarkable that there have been so few incidents. You mentioned nanotechnology, and naturally there were fears for so many years of some sort of 'gray goo' taking over the world as little machines replicate out of control and cover everything, consuming all resources like a kind of global cancer. Quite fanciful, that. Well, I don't buy it for a moment. Surely such machines will be as sensitive to the environment as other machines as well as life itself, and therefore they will be subject to the same constraints as everything else."

  Kraig shook his head. "I don't share your optimism. And just because we haven't had a nanotechnology disaster before doesn't mean there won't be a first time. There's always a first time. That's all the world needs, little nanothings replicating out of control."

  "Indeed. But you must admit it's unlikely. And they fail to mutate."

  "Who says they don't mutate? If they can replicate, why can't they mutate? Scientists are cooking up little nanomachines these days using proteins as a starting point. You've got proteins that transport particles, open channels, form structures, do all kinds of things in the body. Maybe you can design other kinds of molecules to do those things, and other jobs too. And maybe they'll mutate out of control."

  "Hardly likely, Kraig. Everything obeys laws, including a replicating nanomachine, if such things really exist at the moment. With no genetic material, there is nothing on which natural selection can act. If the nanomachine doesn't carry out its replication instructions correctly, it is broken and no longer reproduces. It doesn't turn into something else. This works at all levels and all scales of design, small and large. When your vacuum cleaner breaks it simply stops working, it doesn't turn into a dishwasher."

  "Okay
, forget about nanotech for the moment. What about prions? Those malformed proteins can somehow induce properly functioning proteins to fail. If an important protein goes rogue and can turn others of its kind into zombies, we've got a huge problem."

  "But prions are exceptionally rare. Proteins are stable molecules, particularly ones that perform important functions in the body—evolution preserved most of them across millions of years of time and in plenty of different species. I doubt very much that we're dealing with a new prion here."

  "Say it's a virus, then. A sneaky one. And a new one, because its diagnostic antibody isn't in the CDC data banks."

  "Then we contain it, as we've done for all other viral infections in the past 50 years in this country. Likewise for bacteria, protozoa, and fungi. Whatever the agent, it can be contained. The spread of infectious agents obeys the laws of science just as much as anything else. There's no magic involved."

  "Containment." Kraig stared at Rod. "Do you know how many people are in Medburg?"

  "No, but however many there are, we'll do what we have to do. Let's not worry about things that might never happen when we have so many other and more useful things with which to occupy our minds."

  The speaker phone beeped, startling Kraig. The voice that followed was Cecily's. "Hey, Kraig. You there, sweetie?"

  A touch of red came to the assistant director's cheeks. "What?"

  "We got problems."

  Kraig sat up. "I don't want to hear about problems. I only want solutions."

  "Then pry Sherlock away from his violin and get him to work."

  "I am thusly situated at the moment," said Roderick. "Uncomfortably, I might add."

  "Sherlock?" The speaker made a muffled noise—Cecily's laughter. "I'm glad to hear you."

  "The problem," prompted Kraig.

  "It's a big confirm on the mice," said Cecily. "We've been digging and we've got the bodies to prove it now."

  "They're on their way to the lab, I trust," said Roderick.

  "By the bagful."

  "Get away from there, Cecily."

  Kraig's worried voice was followed by a few seconds of silence. "Grab Lisa and the rest of the team and get out of there now," he added.

  "Already done, boss. Anyone who handled the bodies was wearing a moon suit. And was sprayed afterward."

  Kraig looked at Roderick. "Tell me it's just the mice, Rod." His voice sounded challenging, but tinged with hope.

  Roderick shrugged.

  "How's that?" said Cecily. "I didn't catch Sherlock's answer."

  "I didn't give one. It may well be an agent that is deadly to mice but only harmful to humans in large quantities, or perhaps only to people with a certain genetic characteristic. Or, alternatively, it might be deadly to many, or even most mammalian species, but acts quicker in mice. All we can do is analyze the samples you've provided. As of yet we don't have any answers."

  "Wait, I know," said Cecily. "You can't theorize without data. Right?"

  "Correct," said Roderick, smiling. "But at any rate, there may be a silver lining in this new development."

  "We could sure use one right about now," said Cecily.

  "If the mice are dying quickly, then the agent—if it happens to replicate—may die with the mice. A parasite that kills its host must replicate and spread quickly or it dies too."

  "That's not such a silver lining," said Kraig. "Replicating and spreading quickly."

  "That's pure speculation. It could be anything. For all we know at the present juncture the mice deaths may have been caused by an inert chemical. Cecily, will you be staying near the city?"

  "I'm on my way to Montgomery County, after I go through decontamination again."

  "Vision Cell Bioceuticals gave the government a call this morning," said Kraig, looking at Roderick. "They invited us to visit them. Cecily's going."

  "You see?" said Roderick. "Cooperation."

  Montgomery County, Pennsylvania / 11:15 a.m.

  Gordon stared at the small, dark woman chatting with Burnett Sellás at the laboratory entrance. No, he realized, looking more carefully at her—not dark, except for the clothes. And her hair definitely had a reddish tint, which looked kind of funny under the harsh fluorescent lights.

  Burnett beckoned Gordon.

  "This is Dr. Gordon Norschalk, vice-president of our company and chief scientist." Burnett gave the woman a smile. "He'll be your contact person at the company during your investigation. Gordon, this is Cecily Sunday, an independent investigator working for the Micro Unit of HHS. Now if you'll excuse me, Cecily, I've got a huge quantity of work piling up on my desk even as we speak."

  The woman gave him a friendly wave, then turned to Gordon. She held out a thin, bony hand.

  For a moment Gordon stared at the hand as if it were a snake. Then, embarrassed at the delay, he quickly reached out and shook it.

  "Sorry," he mumbled. "Things have been crazy around here and I'm a little frazzled."

  "That's all right." Cecily smiled, making Gordon even more uneasy. "I thought maybe you were reluctant to shake hands with a Micro person. Understandable. You never know where our hands have been. But I'm clean, so you've got no worries. I've even been irradiated recently. I hope I don't start glowing in the dark—I'm going to the theater later."

  Gordon couldn't help but give the woman a strange look as he escorted her to his office. He was pleased to be able to offer her a comfortable seat, otherwise he'd feel compelled to give up his chair to this strange woman.

  "The government appreciates your openness." Cecily stared at him. "Not many companies would have contacted our office the way you did."

  Gordon realized he was squirming under her stare and tried desperately to stop. "Vision Cell Bioceuticals prides itself on being environmentally conscious." He mentally groaned at the cliché, but it was all he could think of saying.

  Cecily glanced at the screen of a small laptop computer she'd pulled from her shoulder bag. "No hot viruses at all?"

  "Nothing," answered Gordon promptly. "There are a few labs here that use viruses, but only as vectors to transfer genes. These viruses of course are gutted and are harmless."

  Cecily nodded while she kept looking at the screen. Gordon felt himself start to sweat; stealthily he mopped his brow without, he hoped, seeming to do so. He averted his gaze, staring at the shelf mounted on the wall, loaded with books. Almost every neuroscience title published in the last few years was there. Gordon Norschalk was an avid reader.

  And yet here he was, fidgeting like a guilty school boy under the interrogation of a small woman he hardly knew, yet feared.

  Should he tell Cecily Sunday about Jennifer, the researcher who'd fallen sick? But her illness was just a cold—Gordon had checked it out himself, deciding to his satisfaction that there was nothing at all suspicious about it. Besides, if something malicious had gotten loose in Jennifer's lab then the technicians would be much more likely to get sick, since they were the ones on the front lines, so to speak. They did the actual work, at least in Jennifer's lab, as in most labs.

  But if Micro found out about Jennifer they'd snoop around even more, perhaps prying into Jennifer's personal life. Burnett had said very clearly that the less Micro finds out, the better. The words were spoken with a mixture of authority and pleading that Gordon found highly persuasive.

  Gordon suddenly looked up and stared straight into Cecily's eyes—she was looking right at him. He felt a rush of adrenaline, a crackle of tension.

  "Relax," said Cecily. "I'm on your side. I don't want to find anything here, nor am I even slightly interested in any of your private research data."

  Gordon smiled. "Believe me, I didn't think you're the type who would be."

  "Here's the thing," said Cecily, still looking at him. "You've been honest with us and I'd like to be honest with you. We have a problem in Medburg. You know about the two bodies, but you don't know about the latest results and they aren't exactly encouraging."

  "There hasn't been any more
fatalities, has there?"

  "Not unless you count the four-legged kind."

  "Rats? Or mice?"

  "Mice." Cecily nodded, as if she'd expected Gordon to catch on quickly.

  "How many?"

  "They're being wiped out."

  Gordon felt a sharp intake of breath. But then there was a sense of relief. "So the mice are the carriers. Or something that the mice host."

  "Could be. But it's also possible that they're just innocent bystanders."

  Gordon's relief started slipping away. "But I don't think I understand. If the mice are dying first—"

  "I'm not sure it's the mice that are dying first. The two human victims may have been the start of all this, the very beginning."

  "You're suggesting that the humans got something and passed it onto the mice?"

  Cecily nodded solemnly.

  "That's a bit odd, isn't it?"

  "You know, everything about this whole case is odd. When I first found out about the mice I figured like you did. Hey, I thought, this means that there's some kind of bug in the mice or in one of their parasites that's killing them off. In which case, sometimes the bug may jump off the mice and onto to us. Hence the two victims in Medburg. That's serious, but not too big of a deal, probably. Once the mice are gone, the problem is gone."

  Cecily rubbed her face. Then she continued, "But that theory just doesn't add up. I'll admit something. When I got this assignment I looked on the map and found the creek, then discovered your company. And so I said, 'Aha!' You know what I mean?"

  Gordon knew. He found himself squirming again. This woman, Cecily Sunday, was a person he just couldn't figure out. She seemed to be hinting at some sort of damaging information, damaging to his company, yet she was reluctant to bring it up. As if she was trying not to accuse him. Like a nurse who keeps assuring you it won't hurt a bit, even while she's holding a needle the size of your whole arm.

  "So maybe I was biased from the start," Cecily went on. "I don't know. All I know is, it doesn't add up. You see, the thing is, all the evidence seems to point a big fat finger right at that creek."