Taji's Syndrome (39 page)

“Doctor Ross is here, Doctor Jarvis,” said the crackly voice of the head nurse on the intercom.

“Send him in.” Sam gave the order automatically, doing his best to ignore the interruption.

“You already have one visitor,” admonished the head nurse’s voice.

“So I’ll have two. Send him in.”

“Maybe I’d better leave,” Dien offered.

“Why?” Sam asked. “You’re going to need to talk with Harper sooner or later, so you might as well do it now. This is as neutral ground as you’ll find.” When he did his best to chuckle, the sound he made was horrible.

“You need your rest,” Dien said, starting to rise.

“Sit!” Sam commanded. “I don’t think I’ll have a chance like this again, and I want to make the most of it before they turn the sod over me.”

“Jesus,” she muttered, unable to deny his condition, but annoyed at how blatantly he traded on it.

“Maybe him, too,” said Sam, and locked his fingers behind his head. “You two should have been comparing notes weeks ago. I’m not going to let you get out of it now.”

“But Sam—” Dien protested just as the door opened and Harper Ross stepped through.

He had lost more than twenty pounds in the last three months; his clothes made him look like a scarecrow. His face was pasty in the first visible touch of TS. He halted as he saw Dien sitting by the bed. “Sam?”

“Sam, meet Doctor Paniagua. I think that means bread-and-water, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Dien, her defensive attitude shaken by this unexpected and mundane question.

“This is Harper Ross. He’s Mason’s father,” Sam added, to remind Dien that she would have to use some diplomacy when dealing with the professor.

“Hello,” said Dien, holding out her hand.

Harper held his printouts more tightly. “Hello.”

“If you’re going to act like that, I’ll have you both thrown out,” said Sam in his most conversational manner.

“Doctor Paniagua,” Harper capitulated, holding one hand out to her.

She took it. “Professor Ross.” They shook hands in some embarrassment. “I’ve almost finished my business with Doctor Jarvis. I’ll leave you alone shortly.”

“No, you won’t,” Sam informed her. “We’ve got a lot of work to do and I haven’t much time to do it in. We have some survivors we need to find ways to locate and there are a lot of kids out there who need our help, right now.” From the ragged sound of his voice it was clear he was, exhausted, but neither Harper nor Dien was willing to state the obvious. “Sit down, Harper.”

There was a very uncomfortable straight-backed plastic chair by the bathroom door; Harper retrieved it and placed it next to Sam’s bed, opposite Dien. “I’ve got as much information as I can find, but it doesn’t tell us very much,” he began carefully.

“That’s important—that they’re concealing information.” Sam looked briefly at Dien with a faltering I-told-you-so grin.

“It looks as if they’re concealing information,” Harper said, refusing to be forced into an opinion he did not share.

“For the time being, we’ll go along with looks,” said Sam, nodding once to punctuate his determination. “You’d better find out from Atlanta who’s putting pressure on whom about the survivors. Until we have the answer to that, we’ll be in no position to change anything.”

“The money’s on the ESA,” said Harper, reluctant to admit that much. “They’re making surveys of all hospitals with TS patients in them, or so the reports say.”

“Maybe they’re trying to protect themselves,” said Dien softly, to stop Harper from taking over completely.

“Protect themselves how?” Sam demanded, his eyes alert as he struggled to get his body to respond.

“Well, suppose this is the side effect of . . . oh, some kind of testing done years ago. Done before Steve Channing was born—”

“October twenty-fourth, nineteen eighty-two,” Harper supplied.

“Yes, before then,” said Dien, flustered by the interruption. “Suppose they know that the government or military was doing experiments that might—I said
might
—bring about these symptoms? Suppose they’re doing their best to stop anyone finding out. If they only
suspect
that this might be the case, they can’t afford to take chances, can they?” She addressed all her questions to Sam, knowing that if she had to face Harper, it would be more than she was prepared to deal with.

“Suspect?” Harper echoed derisively. “Might?”

“We haven’t any proof,” Dien reminded him stubbornly. “You think it’s easy to ask these questions?”

“Isn’t it?” Harper asked.

“No,” Dien said. “I don’t like to think that the government is so . . . so isolated that there are people in it who cannot recognize statistics as human beings, and cannot see that what they are damaging is lives.” She put her fingers to her mouth, as if to block any more words from escaping.

“You’re making a number of assumptions that could bring about a lot of trouble,” said Sam, motioning Harper to be silent. “Once we ask them, there will be no way to retract. And if you’re right, then we may have to confront issues far beyond the medical ones that are already more than we’re ready to deal with.” He waited for Dien to continue.

She began hesitantly. “But . . . if there are governmental considerations . . . if they’ve had a hand in TS, any hand at all, then . . . they share responsibility for what’s happened. They can’t be excused. If they’re trying to throw us off the track, it could mean that they’re afraid of what we could. find out about them. And if they are involved, then we must find out. Otherwise TS will continue to wipe out thousands of Americans every week.”

“And Canadians, and Europeans, and Orientals,” Harper added gloomily. “We got the most recent World Health Organization figures yesterday. They’re pretty discouraging.”

“It’s spreading,” said Sam bluntly.

“At an increasing rate,” Harper confirmed. “Nine thousand cases in Europe, over seven thousand in Africa, over thirty thousand in Canada, and probably another twenty thousand in Asia.” The printouts were offered as if into evidence.

“That’s the first upswing on the curve,” said Sam. “Give it a month or two and the increase will be staggering.”

“I don’t want to give it that long,” Dien objected. “I want to stop it now. Today. This minute.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “And we’ll work on it.” He motioned to Harper. “You’re the criminologist. What do you think about the chance of governmental interference?”

“Not much,” Harper said without apology. “And I’ll tell you why. They were taken by surprise as much as we were. This tends to make it look like they had not planned on TS, or anything like it. I’m willing to admit that they might have done some experiments in the past that might be responsible in some way for the outbreak. They certainly have been monkeying around with the genetic components of ESP and the like. So it’s not impossible that one of their older experiments went awry and we ended up with TS. But I’ll bet my last drop of blood that TS was a side effect, not a primary development of whatever they were doing with the genetic material.” He had risen as he spoke and now he paced restlessly around the room. “That could account for the unpredictable behavior, and it would explain why President Hunter had trouble getting an investigatory commission together—none of the security guys want to get caught in the crunch.”

“And why is that?” Sam asked with a decidedly rhetorical air.

“They weren’t expecting TS,” said Harper. “They were on the lookout for something, but not TS.” He came to a halt near the foot of Sam’s bed. “It makes sense,” he insisted.

“Of a sort,” Sam agreed. “All right. Talk to Jeff and see what he can turn up about experiments in the early 80s with DNA or basic physical chemistry. They probably took that approach, because that’s one that was more academically acceptable back then.”

“Sam,” said Dien, her concern showing in the softening of her voice. “You’re worn out.”

“True enough,” Sam admitted. “All right, tell you what: you two compare notes and report back here after dinner. I want the strongest possible case made for governmental cover-up, or security division interference. Anything that will help us gain access to the information we have to have.” As he paused to catch his breath, he could feel his pulse flutter in his neck. “Not now,” he whispered.

“Sam, if we do what you want, we’ll be on such thin ice that paper’ll be more attractive,” Harper said. “If we’re wrong, then we’ll destroy our credibility. You know how merciless the security agencies are.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sam.

“They could block what research is already going on,” Harper went on. “You know that they can influence how much gets spent on what.”

“I also know that Palmer Fields did a lot to change that,” Sam reminded them. “Things have been different since ninety-three, thanks to Fields. A phone call or two and Fields would be on their case again, especially for something like this. You know as well as I do that the Pentagon can’t take another Pentagate scandal. And stopping or influencing research on TS would make Pentagate look like nothing.”

Dien stared at Sam. “Palmer Fields doesn’t talk to people like us. Even if we had something to offer him, he wouldn’t take it on.”

“If he didn’t, John Post would, you can be damned sure,” said Harper, his eyes narrowing as he considered what Sam was telling him. “All right, so we look for the good guys and we tell them that there might be bad guys. They find out one of the carriers is my kid and they ignore me.”

“No. they won’t. Not if you tell them where you’re working and what you’re working on. Since the names of the carriers haven’t been made public, you have a good chance to be heard without the association getting made.” Sam had to stop. He panted and slowly a little of the color came back into his face.

“We’d better let you get some rest,” said Harper. “We’ll come back later, after we’ve cobbled some kind of plan together.” He looked at Dien and saw her nod of assent. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way.”

“I’m counting on it,” said Sam, his voice so soft that the air conditioning was louder.

When they had got out of their quarantine suits, Dien and Harper met again near the elevators, both taking a little time to size the other up. Harper tried to think of something to say. “Sam tells me you have a kid.”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s . . . he’s with one of my cousins in St. Louis. I sent him there last week.” Her eyes revealed her sadness far more than her words. “It’s safer.”

“How old is he?” Harper asked, thinking of his own surviving sons.

“Three years, two months.” She looked suddenly defensive. “He’s not old enough to get TS. I know that. But I want him to have as little exposure as possible. No one knows how long the incubation period on TS is, and I don’t want to take chances.”

“A good point,” said Harper as they stepped into the elevator. “What are we going to do about Sam?”

“You mean in regard to a possible military side to this?” Her eyes hardened and the line of her jaw became firmer. “If there’s any association, any association whatever, then I want to have them answer for it. And I’ll use Palmer Fields or President Hunter or anyone else to do it.”

“Sounds like a tall order for someone,” said Harper, his brows lifting at the determination Dien showed.

“What’s the alternative?” she challenged. “Wait until TS has wiped out half the people in the country? Why are we all working ourselves into exhaustion if that’s the only thing we can do. I can’t believe that there’s no hope, no solution, and I
won’t
believe it.”

Harper accepted this. “All right, but fighting TS alone is more than a full-time job. If you want to take on the Pentagon as well, you’re not going to have energy enough to tie your shoes.” He stood aside as the door opened and followed her toward the cafeteria.

The room was messy and the serving line was staffed by two cooks’ assistants instead of the usual four. The cashier said, in response to a mild criticism Harper made, “We’ve got more than half the staff out, either sick, or with sick family, or so scared that they can’t be here. So take care of your trays and if you want more coffee, you get it yourselves.”

“Thanks,” said Harper, chagrined.

“You see what we’re up against?” Dien asked, nodding once in the direction of the harried cashier.

“I see the figures every day,” Harper said.

“Not the figures, the reality. This is the reality. Sam is the reality. And Coach Jackson missing is the reality. That’s what we’ve taken on.” She sat down abruptly, as if this admission might overwhelm her.

Harper sat opposite her. “There has been progress made,” he reminded her.

“Maybe, but we’re losing ground. We need to buy some time. If we knew what this was all about, where the DNA modification came from, and when, we could buy a little time, and that might be enough.” She made herself stop. “Read any good books lately?”

Harper stared at her as if she had suddenly grown an extra limb or turned bright blue. “What? Books?”

“We’ve got to talk about something else for a little while,” she said reasonably. “High stress and food don’t mix. And it won’t take much to bring on a bad case of job burn-out if all we talk about is how many people are dying from this disease.” As Dien said this, her face began to relax, her features to regain some of the softness they usually held.

“You might be right,” said Harper.

“Damn right,” Dien said at her most angelic. “So? What about good books?”

—Laurie Grey, Mason Ross and Jeff Taji—

By ten at night the laboratory at the Control Facility—as it was vaguely and euphemistically known—was as close to deserted as it ever was; a skeleton staff of nine worked through the night, comparing data on the six teenagers living in their care. The head technician for the night was a massive black man called Ace by everyone except his records card, which had his full name: Horace Percival Hardy. The card also listed his academic credentials, which included two M.S. degrees and a Ph.D.

“Hi, Doc,” he called out as Jeff Taji was buzzed through the security door. “Where you been the last week?”

“Don’t ask,” said Jeff. “Utah. Texas. California twice. Wyoming. Ohio. South Carolina.” He ran his fingers through his thick hair; it was noticeably greyer than it had been a month ago.