Aftermath a-1 Read online

  Dana and Art, without a word, separated and began their own inspection of the space between and around the workbenches.

  “Dr. Rothstein,” she said after a few seconds. “And Gil Senta — he was the first person to interview me, when I wanted to join the program. Here’s somebody I don’t recognize — probably from outside, he’s dressed differently. Dr. Lasker is underneath Gil. Looks like she died of gunshot wounds. Three of them, in the head.”

  Art seemed to be the lucky one, if that was the right word for it. The aisle along which he walked was a jungle of shattered glass and twisted metal, but he saw no people. Then he turned the corner, and wasn’t lucky after all. Four bodies, ice-cold when he moved them to see their faces, lay tangled together.

  “Dr. Taunton is here,” he said. He did his best to keep his voice neutral, as Seth and Dana had done. They would realize, without histrionics or explanations on his part, that his words spelled doom for all of them. Dr. Taunton was the third member of the triumvirate. The three leaders of the telomod treatment group were all dead, and telomod therapy still had a big experimental component. Even if living members of the Institute’s support staff could be found, they lacked the knowledge needed to adapt treatments to changing circumstances.

  Art kept walking the aisles. The damage to equipment, when you looked at it more closely, was not so bad as at first sight. Given good technicians — and electrical power, and spare parts, and working microchips — it might be made to work again. None of those things was available; but nothing was so complete a disaster as the loss of the top brains of the program.

  Seth Parsigian had given up on his own inspection. He climbed on top of one of the workbenches and sat cross-legged amid the mess. His arms were folded, and he hunched forward with his head bowed.

  “All right,” he said as Dana and Art walked over to join him. “We got us a setback. Question is, where do we go from here?”

  “They’re dead,” Dana said. She clutched Art’s arm, hard. “All of them. Even if some technicians got away, they don’t know enough to help.”

  “Maybe in some other city, on the West Coast . . .” Art said. But as he spoke he knew he was offering false hope. The telomod treatment group had drawn its members from all over the country. There were even a couple from Asia and Europe. Why would they come all the way to the Institute if the same thing could be found anywhere?

  Seth picked up a long splinter of glass and fingered its edge. “No, no. It’s hard enough to travel locally. We’d be chasing rainbows lookin’ for another group someplace. Anyway, we don’t have time for that.”

  Finally he raised his head, to stare at the other two. “We’re down to long shots. How much risk are you willing to take?”

  “Anything,". Dana said at once. Art nodded agreement, but he was thinking: Down to long shots? Wasn’t this trip to the Institute already a long shot?

  “Any amount of risk,” he said. “If I knew what to do. Do you have something in mind?”

  “Oh, yes.” Seth acted amused — there was a smile on his face, no matter how little it seemed to belong there. “How long since you joined the telomod program?”

  “Nearly three years,” Art said, and Dana added, “Closer to four for me — my anniversary is next month.”

  “That right? Me, I’m one of the old-timers — in the program near five years, started when they didn’t hardly know what they was doin’. Got scars to prove it. And I got a lot more years to go, touch wood.” Seth slapped the black bench top, which was hardened plastic. “I’m not about to give up.”

  Dana glanced at Art, a look that said, Is Seth losing it? What’s he talking about?

  “Back then,” Seth went on, “Lasker and Taunton were already involved. Dr. Chow arrived four months after I had my first shot of telomerase inhibitor, two months after my tumors started shrinking and I began to think I might have some kind of chance. Old Chinaman Chow was a new boy compared to me. And ’cause I was one of the first, I heard some of the old history, back before my time. See, Lasker and Taunton knew what they were doing, but the techies round the labs told me they weren’t the brains behind the project. The real genius, the spark who started things going here, he was somebody else.”

  “I never heard of anybody like that,” Art said slowly. “And I think I’ve met most people around the Institute.”

  “Yeah. See, he was never at the Institute. He was a big-brain research scientist, doing his own thing at some ol’ college. He never had a hands-on role in the application of telomod therapy, but he knew more about the basics than anybody. And I’d bet money — if money meant anything now — that you did hear of him.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “Me neither,” Dana added.

  “Ah. Neither of you ever heard of a man called Guest?”

  “Never,” Dana said, while Art stood staring.

  “Oliver Guest? Doctor Oliver Guest?” Parsigian laughed aloud at the expressions of understanding and disbelief on their faces. “Ah, now you’re gettin’ there.”

  “Grisly Guest,” Dana said.

  “The child murderer,” added Art.

  “One and the same.” Seth nodded casually. “From around these parts, too. Local boy makes good.”

  “But he worked on clone research, not telomod therapy,” Dana objected. “The clone king. He knew more about cloning than anybody. At least, that’s what they reported during the trial.”

  “He did telomods, too. A real broad-gauge maniac, old Oliver. You didn’t hear about him from the telomod group, because he wasn’t somebody the project was goin’ to advertise when it went lookin’ for grants and experimental subjects. His name was a no-no at the Institute. But I checked him out after I heard. He started the whole ball rolling for the telomod treatment. Without him our program wouldn’t exist. Then he got a bit sloppy, and they nabbed him for his after-hours hobby.”

  “He was found guilty,” Art said. “Fifteen children—”

  “ — eighteen, by the time they was all done. Found guilty, and iced down for six hundred years. He was under forty when it happened. Which means that he ought to be alive now, in that Q-5 judicial sleep place down south of here where they put the weirdo cases. Wake him up, and he can treat us. If we can get to where he is, through all the shit that’s flyin’ around since Supernova Alpha. And if he’s alive, I don’t know how quick they spoil when they’re not bein’ looked after. And if we can control him, so he don’t add us to his little list. That one may be the toughest — I reckon he’s one smart and crazy son of a bitch.”

  Seth pushed himself off the bench. Hot, dark eyes challenged Art and Dana. “See now why I ask you: How much do you want to live? How much risk you willing to take?”

  How much do you want to live?

  Art lay on his bed at the Treasure Inn, shivered in spite of his warm clothes, and tried to answer the question.

  It had been on his mind as they struggled back from the Institute through a whiteout blizzard that reduced visibility to a few yards; on his mind as they cooked and ate rice and beans; on his mind as darkness descended early, and the chances of anyone else reaching the inn faded to zero. On his mind now, in the middle of a long night when he could not sleep and time seemed to have stopped.

  How much do you want to live?

  The faint creak of the opening door would not have awakened a sleeper. It brought Art to full alert and had him reaching for the gun at his bedside.

  “Who’s that?” He was ready to fire into the darkness.

  “Dana.” She spoke in a whisper. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t. I can’t sleep. What do you want?”

  “Nothing special. I just didn’t want to stay in my room. It’s next to Seth’s, and I could hear him prowling and prowling. I don’t know if he ever sleeps.”

  “Everybody sleeps — even Seth. Maybe he feels as wound up as I am. What were you going to do here?”

  “Nothing. Feel a bit less nervous, I
guess. I was going to stretch out on the floor.”

  “No need for that. It’s a double bed.” He felt he had to add, “Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with me.”

  He heard a skeptical grunt in the darkness. “Sure. How many times have I heard that line? In another universe, before I got sick, before Supernova Alpha. Come into my bed, you’ll be safe with me.” The mattress dipped to the left under her added weight. “You can trust me; men have been saying that since I was twelve years old. It’s one of the three big lies. Move over.”

  Art slid to the right, at the same time as a groping hand touched his.

  “My God. You’re freezing. No wonder you can’t sleep. Here, this will help.”

  He felt a rough blanket laid over him, and a warm body moved against his. It was hardly a personal contact — there were layers of clothing between them. But it was oddly soothing.

  Soothing. What did it say about your age and condition, when you found the midnight arrival of an attractive woman in your bed soothing?

  “He’s not really asking us, you know.” Dana’s voice was muffled against his shoulder.

  Art didn’t have to inquire who and what. “You’re right. Seth’s going to do it anyway, no matter what we want. The only question is, do we help?”

  “It will be illegal — though I don’t think there’s much law enforcement at the moment. And it will be dangerous. The media didn’t have anything good to say about Oliver Guest, but they agreed on one thing. He is brilliant, and he’s ruthless. We’d be releasing a monster. Could we control him?”

  “I don’t know.” Already, Art was feeling warmer and more relaxed. “Maybe we ought to think of it this way: If Seth brings Oliver Guest out of judicial sleep, are his chances of controlling Guest better if we are involved?”

  “I think they are, but that’s still not the real issue.” Dana wriggled, the contours of her body fitting more comfortably against Art’s. “I don’t trust Seth — I do trust you, or I wouldn’t be here — but he does have a way of asking the key question. For a chance to go on living, how far are we willing to go?”

  “And what’s your answer?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. I think we need to wait and see.”

  “That’s a cop-out.” Dana snuggled closer and put her arm over Art’s chest. “Let’s not debate it tonight.”

  “Mm.” With warmth came mental ease, and a desire for sleep. Art, who only a few minutes ago had expected to be awake all night, could feel himself beginning to lose focus, moving into the state where thoughts lose their sharp edges.

  How much of human communication was done without words? He and Dana talked of making a decision, but he knew that their decision was already made: they would do whatever they had to do, within (and perhaps beyond) reason. They would seek out Oliver Guest.

  And after that?

  How much do you want to live?

  A lot.

  Maybe, in their own ways, he and Dana were no different from Seth Parsigian.

  9

  From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.

  I have observed a characteristic pattern in those whose ways wander far from socially acceptable behavior. It applies equally to bigamists, confidence tricksters, thieves, and murderers. Thus:

  At first, extreme caution is practiced. Every record is deleted, every step is double-checked, no trace of physical evidence is allowed to remain.

  With continued success comes a change in attitude. Since I have not been caught, I am smarter than judicial control; therefore, I will not be caught. So runs the false logic. Contempt for law increases. Behavior becomes more and more sloppy. The trail is no longer erased, physical evidence is left behind, the fruits of crime are introduced into the household. At last — often, it is true, after an amazingly long time — a final and fatal error is made; the authorities descend.

  Having noticed such behavior patterns I was careful to avoid them. I took nothing from my victims that anyone would ever be able to measure. No physical evidence of my avocation was permitted in my house. I never used the same collection procedure twice, since repetitive actions can lead to the development of a psychological profile.

  Even so, I allowed for the possibility that I might one day become a suspect. In such a situation it was then predictable that my property would be searched. I made special provisions to insulate and isolate the subbasement level of my house, but even if that other lab were discovered, the work going on there had no apparent relevance to crime. It would seem to be an independent, if unconventional, research activity.

  How, then, was I caught?

  Attend, those of you with urges that you are powerless to resist. We are, every one of us, slaves to chance and the compulsions of our own natures.

  My would-be nineteenth victim was a beautiful girl, just fourteen, with lustrous dark hair and skin, and startling blue eyes. LaRona lived in a filthy apartment, sharing it with five noisy siblings by different fathers and with a blank-eyed mother whose intelligence barely was able to correlate intercourse with subsequent birth.

  I saw LaRona during one of my scouting visits to the poorest districts. I never went twice to the same area, unless of course I spotted a candidate there. After observing LaRona on a dozen separate occasions, twice walking past the open door of the apartment where she lived — empty boxes in the hallway, smells of grease and mildew and human excrement — I knew that I must act. I had in my collection nothing remotely like LaRona, no one with her coloring, her walk, or the lapidary quality of her jeweled eyes. It would be a kindness to remove such a perfect creation from so awful a setting. Foul play would probably never be suspected. Any rational investigator, examining the circumstances of LaRona’s life in the apartment and her disappearance, would conclude that she had wisely run away from the intolerable.

  I made my preparations.

  Luring LaRona directly away from the apartment complex would be impossible. Mere survival there required wariness, and during my visits I had been careful to adopt clothing that fitted the setting. No one in her right mind would trust such a man with anything. However, the mother was once more pregnant by yet another transient father. And LaRona, the only remotely responsible member of the family, had taken it upon herself to make sure that her mother visited the nearest clinic for periodic examination and remedial medications.

  My medical reputation was, if I say so myself, outstanding. An offer of pro bono services, which I explained to the clinic I did for one month each year, was welcomed. On my first day I examined the records for LaRona’s mother. They were disgusting. I offered to take responsibility for all nonstandard clinical tests, and for the preparation and administration of tailored antibodies.

  LaRona and her mother came in as scheduled. I explained to them — or rather to LaRona, since her mother appeared to understand nothing — that we had a problem with incipient Paget’s disease. It would not affect her mother now, but if left untreated it would lead to chronic inflammation of the bones and their eventual softening. My diagnosis, prognosis, and proposed treatment were all completely accurate. I did not mention that Paget’s disease is a problem for the elderly, and that the symptoms would not manifest themselves for many years. Nor did I offer my opinion that in view of the mother’s lifestyle, her survival until she became elderly was highly unlikely.

  LaRona listened to me with total attention and understanding. She was eye-achingly, mouth-wateringly beautiful. I longed to possess her forever.

  Patience, I said to myself, patience.

  LaRona and her mother would come to the clinic for six consecutive days. Her mother would be partially sedated for two hours. During those two hours I would administer the designed organism that would cure the disease. And in those same two hours, although it was not described in any treatment record or agreed to in advance, I intended that LaRona and I would sit and talk to each other.

  We did. Slowly and awkwardly at first, but by the third day she
was telling me of her dreams and hopes and aspirations. Shyly, she admitted to me that she wanted to become a physician. Just like you, she said. I doubted that. But incredibly, in that hellhole where she lived, she was observing diseases and attempting to make her own diagnoses.

  While her mother lay snoring we wandered through the clinic together. I tested her. What did she think was wrong with that man’s hand? Why did that woman’s neck bulge so oddly? How would you treat it? She answered, I lectured, she questioned, I explained. Hours of bliss, and not only for me. She swooped on facts and theories and drained every drop of blood from them. It reminded me of my own youth, when new knowledge filled the world.

  Our golden time had to end. On the sixth and final day of her mother’s treatment, I went down to the basement lab of my home and prepared my collection kit. I emptied the back of my car. The next few hours were my unavoidable period of vulnerability, when a sharp judicial officer seeing LaRona and the collection kit together could correlate means and crime.

  Mother was sedated for her treatment. Instead of ranging through the clinic, today I took LaRona into the little office allocated to me. She brought with her, faint but unmistakable, a delicate odor of gardenias. There was a medical research conference going on north of the city, I said. I was heading there as soon as her mother’s treatment ended. Would LaRona possibly be interested in going with me? I could have her back by nine o’clock. I was careful to say, “back at the clinic.” Dr. Oliver Guest, of course, had no idea where she lived.

  She hesitated. “What about Mother?”

  “She’ll be all right. She knows her own way home, doesn’t she?”

  Neither of us suggested that her mother might like to go with us. Nor was I about to offer to drive Mother home. I had always been careful to take public transportation when visiting LaRona’s district. There was no way that I would risk my car being seen there.

  It was a foregone conclusion, as I had known it would be. To visit a medical research conference, LaRona would have agreed to send her mother home by parcel post.