Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

34

“PULL IN HERE,” Erin Palmer instructed the driver of the cab they had called, a tall, unshaven man with a Russian accent. Erin had provided the address of their destination over the phone, and she and Kyle Hansen had remained silent in the backseat after the cab had picked them up on the little used bridge over the now-dry Santa Cruz River. Since Erin’s face, disguised though it was, had appeared on every television station in the Southwest, Hansen had screened her from view when they had entered the cab and she had immediately shut her eyes and dropped her head to her chin, pretending to be taking a nap.

Twenty minutes later they arrived at their destination; the back end of the University of Arizona’s psychology building, near the loading dock.

“She just needs to grab something from her office,” explained Hansen as Erin exited the cab, turned away from the driver, and strode behind a corner and out of sight. “Shouldn’t be more than five or ten minutes.”

“I’ll wait as long as you want,” said the driver in a thick accent. “The meter’s running.”

Hansen nodded. They had checked their cash reserves, and guessed they’d be down to their last fifty bucks after paying the cabbie.

Hansen tried to act bored, but couldn’t help glancing around nervously. It was hard to imagine Fuller would expect Erin to return to her office. Fuller had probably had her apartment under surveillance in the beginning, but Hansen wondered if he was continuing to waste manpower on such an effort. Erin had shown herself as far too capable to be foolish enough to return there. If she were in a horror film, Hansen knew, she wouldn’t be the dumb hot chick who went into the dark basement alone after hearing all the screaming.

Given the considerable territory Fuller’s people now had to cover, it was unlikely they were still watching the psychology building, if they ever had been, but just to be on the safe side they had decided to use the back entrance. All the door locks around the entire building were the same, and Erin’s pass code would gain her access to any entrance.

Even though Hansen believed this analysis intellectually, it was still hard not to be on the jumpy side, and he didn’t want to give the cabbie any reason to suspect he wasn’t completely relaxed. You’d think the man would wonder how they had come to need a cab where he had picked them up, but the cabbie had probably seen just about everything before, so had stopped wondering how people ended up in the unlikely circumstances they did long ago.

Seven minutes later, Erin rounded the corner of the building. When she approached the cab, Hansen said, “I’m sorry, but do you take credit cards?” knowing that this would distract the cabbie from studying her face as she returned.

It worked. The cabbie’s eyes left Erin and glanced at Hansen in his rearview mirror with a distasteful expression that said, what kind of shit are you trying to pull here—you’ll pay your fare if I have to beat it out of you. But aloud he simply shook his head and grunted, “Cash only.”

“Oh, okay,” said Hansen as Erin slid in beside him. “No problem.”

“Downtown Hilton please,” said Erin, throwing Hansen a nod that indicated she had been successful.

Erin had told him that during the long period she had waited for him to regain consciousness, she had reflected on a number of subjects: her life, her research, how she had ended up where she was, and her advisor, Jason Apgar. And then it had hit her.

Apgar was at a scientific conference the entire week. In Boston. Erin had told Hansen it was all she could do not to scream for joy at the top of her lungs, which would have risked giving away their position, even though she suspected she could have screamed for hours and never been heard.

This was incredibly lucky, she had explained, because she knew where Apgar kept a spare set of car keys in the office. And the exact lot at which he parked whenever he flew out of Tucson International Airport. He was a creature of habit, and they had attended conferences together on several occasions, during which he had taken her to the airport. And parked in the same lot each time.

It was too good to be true. If she had remembered this from the very beginning, they’d be well on their way to Colorado already.

But they couldn’t go directly to the airport. If the abandoned Malibu was found, Fuller’s people would quickly find the cabbie who had picked them up, and he would tell them of their trip to Erin’s lab and then to the airport. Better to pretend to be going to a large hotel first, to kill any possible trail.

They arrived at the Hilton, a beautiful stone structure honeycombed with rooms and surrounded by stately palm trees, and Hansen paid the cabbie while shielding Erin once again from his view. They waited until the cab was out of sight, made sure no one was watching, and slid into another cab, directing it to the airport.

Only twenty minutes later they had paid the second cabbie, and Hansen was pulling out of the airport lot in a gunmetal-gray Lexus with leather seats and all the electronic gadgets and extras anyone could ever want. A smooth-driving, sleek luxury car, the exact opposite of the Blue Medusa, although he had to admit that that car had done its job well.

“I’m pretty beat,” said Erin, as Hansen accelerated onto the onramp to I-10 East, a highway they would take for the next two hundred miles on the long journey to Boulder. “How would you feel about turning into a chauffeur in about thirty minutes?”

“Well, let’s see. You saved my life back at the Saguaro Inn. And you watched over me while I was unconscious for most of the past twelve hours. So … even though it will be an incredible sacrifice … I’ll do it.” He raised his eyebrows. “But just this one time.”

Erin smiled. “Just let me sleep for four or five hours and then I’ll drive and let you get some rest. In the meanwhile, how are you doing? Any aftereffects from whatever was in that dart? Which apparently had enough juice to put out an elephant.”

“I feel fine. A little sore here and there from throwing myself out of a car onto pavement. But, really, I’m just happy to be alive.”

It was also true that his entire psyche was still humming blissfully, despite their recent close calls and current desperate situation. He had met a phenomenal woman and had spent a night with her—after a considerable stretch in the sexual desert—that he would never forget. She had done wonders for him: physically, emotionally, psychologically … and every other way he could name, and he was well on his way to infatuation. He thought about voicing this sentiment but decided against it. He didn’t want to come across as giddy, and while he knew she wasn’t the type to jump into bed on a whim, and that she had definite feelings for him, he didn’t know just how deep these feelings went. They had just met, after all.

“Other than being tired, how are you holding up?” he asked instead.

“Surprisingly well,” she replied. “It’s funny, but this life-and-death stuff really does focus the mind. There is a certain appeal to it. A certain simplicity. Life is so complicated. So many decisions. But when you’re fighting for your life things become very straightforward. Priorities become very clear. And the excitement and adrenaline are there too.”

Hansen nodded. “I’ve heard that soldiers can get addicted to it.”

“There is still a large part of us that is animal. A will to live in the moment. And that’s what the survival instinct does for you. It frees you from petty daily worries and having to struggle with thorny ethical issues.”

“It didn’t free you from ethical issues at the motel,” Hansen pointed out. “You could have taken those guys out and you didn’t.”

“I have too much blood on my hands already,” said Erin. “Even if it is the blood of monsters.”

They drove in silence for a time, the highway nearly deserted at this late hour, and the all-enveloping night, broken only by their headlights lancing through the darkness, was hypnotic.

“So before I fall asleep on you,” said Erin as they passed an eighteen-wheeler, “tell me more about yourself. You haven’t really told me much.” Breaking into a smile, she added, “You know, other than your relationship status.”

Hansen groaned. “I’m never gonna live that one down, am I?”

She shook her head no.

“Well, I’m the youngest of three brothers. Grew up in Indy as I’ve said. I was a good long-distance runner on the track team in high school. Not because of my great athleticism, but because I was persistent enough to put in the hours needed.”

“And I’m guessing you were a chick magnet.”

Hansen laughed. “Well, yeah,” he said in amusement. “That goes without saying. I mean look at me,” he added, waving his hand past his bald head and down to the crosses inked on his neck. “What girl could possibly resist?”

“That’s why I shaved you,” said Erin. “So you’d be less appealing to the competition.”

Hansen smiled. With her in the game, there was no competition, he thought. Aloud he said, “Anyway, to continue, my father died in a car accident when I was seventeen.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Erin.

“Me too. I just wish I had fonder memories of him. He treated the family pretty badly. He wasn’t physically abusive, he could just be bitter and nasty a lot of the time. A brilliant guy, but he was the oldest boy of a family of eight when his father passed away. He had earned an academic scholarship to Indiana University, but he had to come home and take over the family furniture business, to support his mother and siblings.”

“That’s rough.”

“He didn’t take it well. He felt he never had the chance to live up to his potential, and resented the world for it.” He paused. “I was determined not to be like him in that way. That even if my dreams were crushed, I wouldn’t take it out on others.”

Erin opened her mouth to ask another question when Hansen said, “What about you? Yes, I started out knowing more about you than you did about me. But only on paper. What was it like growing up with your aunt and uncle?”

Erin sighed. “Complicated,” she said. “I was a real mess for quite a while. And while I had lost my immediate family in the most horrible way possible, my aunt had suffered the loss of a sister, brother-in-law, and niece. And they had three kids of their own, so integrating into the family was … complicated.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“I was also just about to enter puberty. A time when most kids are struggling to fit in and figure things out. My aunt and uncle were, and are, good people. But in the early days I found myself resenting them for not being my parents. And I hated myself for not doing more to save my sister, Anna. So I lashed out. I got into trouble in school. I got into drugs. I got into … well, let’s just say it’s a wonder I lived to see fourteen.”

“So how did you turn yourself into the well-adjusted, remarkable woman you’ve become?”

Erin laughed. “Well-adjusted is debatable. Remarkable is, too, but I’ll take it. But the answer is, I found a way to come to terms with the trauma I’d experienced. Which was obviously responsible for my increasingly reckless behavior. I decided to deal with these memories, with this trauma, head-on. To dedicate my life to studying the force that had destroyed the people I loved. To help society root out these monsters, identify them for what they were, before they could destroy other lives. To make myself strong, mentally and physically, so I would never feel helpless again.”

She stopped, and Hansen waited patiently for her to continue at her own pace.

“And now I find myself living the definition of the word irony. I would never have dreamed that I’d actually be in a position, not just to root out these monsters, but to eradicate their condition from the face of the earth. And if you would have told the sixteen-year-old me that I would grow to actually resist the idea, I’d have said you were crazy.” She sighed. “I guess the future is more unpredictable than any of us can imagine.”

“As someone who’s been working with an alien for many years now,” said Hansen, “you won’t get an argument from me.”

“It isn’t just that you never know what the future will hold,” said Erin. “It’s that people can be so dogmatic in their beliefs. So certain of their views they can’t imagine these could ever change, no matter what the circumstances. And convinced anyone who believes otherwise is either stupid or misinformed. But I’ve talked to any number of people whose most deeply held beliefs of early adulthood have changed over the years, through repeated exposure to new and different experiences, and to new ways of thought. I’m just struck by how absolutely certain we can be about things for which there is no objective certainty. How stubborn. And how often we can fool ourselves.”

Hansen nodded. “I think it’s even worse than that,” he said. “We’re all guilty of being absolutely sure of things we have no business being sure of. But I think most of us also cling to these cherished beliefs with superhuman tenacity. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we’re wrong.”

Erin eyed him appreciatively. “Superhuman tenacity. I like that. Very eloquent for a physicist,” she said. “I find you to be a wise, fun, brave, and slightly geeky man, Kyle Hansen. Exactly the type of man I’ve been looking for.” She paused. “Only I didn’t know it until we met.”

She turned away and sighed as the Lexus continued to slice smoothly through the star-filled night. “You’d just better be the man I think you are,” she added under her breath.

35

HANSEN CHECKED THE address again and nodded. “This is the place,” he said.

Erin squinted through the tall wrought-iron gate, but the pavement twisted just beyond it, and a thick barrier of various pine trees and other foliage surrounded and completely obscured the residence within, which was clearly the intent.

A keypad and monitor stood as a sentry before the gate and Hansen pulled up alongside it, lowered the window of Apgar’s Lexus, and pushed a button on the keypad. They had been driving for twelve hours without incident and had seen no sign of pursuit.

After almost a minute’s wait, a male voice came through the monitor, but the video remained off. “What can I do for you?” said the voice suspiciously.

Hansen cleared his throat. “My name is Kyle Hansen. An associate of mine named Drake said you’d be expecting me.”

There was a long pause. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have the wrong place.”

Hansen eyed Erin in confusion. He was sure he had the right address.

Erin determined the source of the problem before he did, pointing to her head and then to his.

Hansen rolled his eyes and turned back to the electronic sentry. “I’m guessing I’m on camera right now,” he said. “And you were probably sent my picture. Do me a favor and mentally subtract all hair from the picture, and add some large neck tattoos. And then look at me again. I had some close calls getting here and I changed my appearance, ah … slightly.”

“Slightly?” said the voice after another few seconds. “I don’t think your own mother would recognized you—or claim you,” he added. “You should have a passenger with you. I need to see her and have her introduce herself.”

Erin leaned across Hansen so her face would register on the camera. “Hi,” she said. “Erin Palmer here.”

There was a loud click and the gate began to swing inward. “Welcome,” said the voice as Hansen drove through. “Can’t say I love either of your new hairstyles,” he added.

Yeah, tell me about it, thought Hansen.

After winding along the private driveway for only thirty yards the residence came into full view. “Wow,” said Hansen appreciatively.

The mansion was the height of opulence. It appeared to Hansen as if three ordinary luxury homes had been linked together into one, although in a jagged pattern rather than a perfectly straight line. Stone, brick, and wood combined to form pillars, turrets, and balconies.

“This is where Drake keeps his genetic engineer?” said Erin in disbelief.

“Apparently so,” said Hansen as he inched toward the circular drive that abutted the front rotunda entrance. “But trust me, he keeps his quantum physicist in a twelve-by-twelve room in a small underground facility in Yuma. I should have studied genetic engineering,” he added with a smile.

“Well, at least he put the money you guys stole to good use,” she said with a playful twinkle in her eye. Erin had teased him the night before about feeling more guilty about stealing fifty bucks’ worth of T-shirts from the U of A bookstore than about skimming millions of dollars from government slush funds. He had explained that he’d been able to make peace with that theft, even though he knew it was a rationalization. He figured, if the government were to know about Drake and his mission, they would have funded him to at least this high of a level.

As they pulled up in front of two stately cherry-wood doors, a good ten or twelve feet tall, two men emerged from the house, weapons drawn. They were dressed casually, but had a hard edge to their features and demeanor. One was thin and wiry while the other, taller man, looked to be a bodybuilder, with his musculature showing even through clothes not designed to put this on display.

“Out,” ordered the bodybuilder, and both Hansen and Erin exited the car, their hands in front of them.

The thinner man looked inside the car, while his partner said, “Open the trunk.”

Hansen studied Apgar’s car remote and pushed a button with a picture of a trunk on it. Both men inspected the trunk, but it was totally empty.

The thinner man now had a phone in his palm. “Any sign they were followed?” he said into it without bringing it any closer to his mouth, indicating it was on speaker.

“No,” said a distant voice. “They look to be clean.”

Both men holstered their weapons. “Sorry about that,” said the thinner man, holding out his hand. “Greg Gibb. I head the security detail.”

After Hansen and Erin had shaken his hand, he gestured to his partner. “And this is Slade Zalinsky,” he added, after which the handshaking ceremony was repeated.

Hansen wasn’t at all surprised that Drake had hired these men to protect this property. He certainly hadn’t skimped on security in Yuma, for all the good it had ended up doing him.

Gibb led them through the towering doors into the house, which was just as spectacular inside as out. “Tough duty,” said Gibb, noticing his guests gawking. “But somebody has to do it.”

As they walked through the residence, Hansen couldn’t help but notice that the spectacular bookshelves they passed were largely empty. No paintings hung on the walls and no knickknacks adorned shelves. Most of the rooms didn’t contain a single piece of furniture. The size and opulence of the mansion was just a cover, ensuring the outer gate and presence of a security detail wouldn’t be out of place. But when Drake had purchased it and the previous owners had moved their belongings out, no one had taken the time to personalize the place in any way.

A short, heavyset man with glasses rushed down a magnificent spiral staircase and greeted them, introducing himself as Max Burghardt. Minutes later Gibb and Zalinsky had gone back to their duties while Burghardt and the two newcomers gathered around a marble-and-glass table in a kitchen the size of two large living rooms. The short molecular biologist procured three sixteen-ounce bottles of Coke from a stainless-steel refrigerator and handed them out.

“I take it Drake hasn’t made it here yet,” said Hansen as he unscrewed the lid.

“No,” said Burghardt. “But he’s acquired a smartphone and has been calling in.”

“And you know how to reach him?” said Hansen.

“Yes. You can call and say hello soon.” He checked his watch. “I’m scheduled to call him in forty minutes. First things first, though. We’re on the verge of an epic transformation of the human race. With respect to speed and impact, unquestionably the most profound change in the history of the species. Revolutionary. Evolutionary.”

It was surreal to hear this, but Hansen knew that as over the top as he sounded, Burghardt was absolutely accurate.

“But Drake has filled me in on current events. He tells me there’s someone who is ruthless and controls vast resources trying to prevent us from succeeding. So our window of opportunity may not be very wide. So as much as I’d like to spend time getting to know you both, we really don’t have that luxury. I have everything ready to go. With the help of Drake’s computer again, I’ve just finished engineering the most infectious agent the world has ever seen.”

Burghardt turned to Erin. “So if you tell me the precise relative concentrations needed of the eight genes, I can see that they are modulated in exactly this way after being released from my viral construct.”

“How is that done?” asked Erin.

“Are you a molecular biologist?” he asked.

“No, but I have some background.”

“As you know,” explained Burghardt, “the levels of gene expression are controlled by promoter sequences in the DNA upstream of the open reading frames of interest. Another factor is how many introns are in the sequence, and how efficiently they are removed. With the help of Drake’s advanced computer, I’ve come up with an algorithm that tells me the exact sequence and placement of promoters to use to dial in any required expression level. With breathtaking accuracy. I’ve perfected it through tests on hundreds of insertions so that it’s now absolutely foolproof.”

“Once I give you the required levels for all eight,” said Erin, “how long for the algorithm to spit out the answer?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes. The algorithm is very complex, and the number of calculations required is mind-boggling. Even so, fifteen minutes is an eternity for a modern computer.”

“Then how long to finish your construct?”

“Say … twenty-four hours. Working around the clock.”

“Somehow I imagined it being faster than that. Isn’t the synthesis all automated?”

“Yes, but I have to cut open the DNA for each gene where the program instructs me to, insert the proper sequences, and close them up again. Then I have to insert all of this into the virus. Then I have to ramp up production so huge numbers of infectious constructs are synthesized. And finally, I have to put the finished product in aerosol form to enhance the spread of infection.” He paused. “So no time like the present. If you tell me the combination now, I can enter it into my program and have my algorithm solve it by the time we contact Drake.”

Erin took a deep breath. “Look, Max,” she began. “I understand the importance of this. I understand the monumental impact this will have. But because of that, I’m going to need to slow the express train for just a few hours.”

Burghardt looked at her in horror, as if she had just informed him he was dying of an incurable cancer. “Why?” he said in absolute dismay.

“Because before I tell anyone anything, I need to talk to Drake. I’m the only one of us who’s never done so. I’ve spoken with a human projection of him, but never to him in his alien form. I also need to confirm that the viral construct you’re using is actually the common cold, and not something more deadly.”

“It’s absolutely the common cold,” said Burghardt, as though offended. “I can vouch for that. And you do understand that Drake is trying to save the human race, right?” He turned to Hansen for help, but Hansen returned a helpless look that said, I’ve already tried to convince her—you’re on your own here.

“That’s almost certainly true,” said Erin. “But if I’m going to be part of releasing a hyperinfectious agent, I need to be absolutely certain it’s on the benign side.”

“If Drake wanted to spread something deadly,” said Burghardt in exasperation, “he would just spread something deadly. Why would he even need the information you have?”

“I don’t know. I admit I’m being paranoid. But I won’t risk the world’s population if there’s even a one in a million chance we’re being deceived. Drake’s powerful computer has obviously been a huge benefit to you. But without your help, he couldn’t have gotten this far, correct? You wouldn’t have been able to design the most infectious agent in history. Or control gene expression with such precision.”

Burghardt nodded.

“So maybe he needed the fiction of curing psychopathy to get you to help. To get you to perfect these things. And then slipped in something else. Who knows?”

“So what do you propose exactly?”

“First, I need to speak with Drake. Then, I want you to run your construct through your sequencer. I’ll take the sequence it generates and check it online against the known sequences of rhinoviruses. Any extended bit of sequence that isn’t a match, I’ll check against all known pathogens. Just to be sure.”

Burghardt digested this for some time. Finally, he glared at Erin and said, “Is there any possible argument I can make that will persuade you to change your mind?”

Erin sighed. “I’m afraid not. I guess I can be pretty stubborn,” she said.

Burghardt turned to Hansen. “And you don’t have any pull with her?”

“I’m on your side on this,” replied Hansen. “But without her skills, she and I would be long dead. And it’s probably only a two– or three-hour delay. So I’m going to have to support her on this.” He smiled. “Besides, I think I will sleep just the tiniest bit easier knowing your construct is what you think it is.”