Clay's Ark (8 page)

wiped her mouth or scratched or licked her hand to quiet the slight itching sensation contamination sometimes

produced. And the disease organism could live on the skin for hours in spite of normal, haphazard hand-washing. Any

person he touched was almost certainly doomed in one way or another.

"Why are your hands wet?" she asked. And when he did not answer, she examined his hands. He had expected her to

drop them in disgust, but she did not seem disgusted. She was a big, strong girl. Maybe she could be saved. Maybe he

could save her -if he stayed.

He remembered trying vainly to save his wife, Disa. She had been a short, slender woman with no weight to lose,

barely big enough to qualify for the space program. The disease had eaten her alive. She had been one of the mission's

two M.D.s, however, and before she died, she and Grove Kenyon, the other doctor, had discovered that the disease

organism caused changes that could be beneficial-if the host survived its initial onslaught. Surviving hosts became

utterly resistant to more conventional diseases and more efficient at performing certain specialized functions. Only the

toxin excreted by the disease organism was life-threatening. Not surprisingly, the human body had no defense against

it. But in time the organism changed, adapted, and chemically encouraged its host to adapt. Its by-products ceased to be

toxic to its host and the host ceased to react as strongly to increased sexual needs and heightened sensory awareness-

inevitable effects of the disease. The needed time was bought by new organisms of the same disease-new organisms

introduced after significant adaptation had occurred. The new, unadapted organisms quickly spent themselves

neutralizing the toxic wastes of the old. Thus, the new organisms had to be replaced frequently. The host body was a

hostile environment for them-an environment already occupied, claimed, chemically marked by others of their kind.

Their toxin-neutralization was merely their reflexive effort to survive in that hostile environment.

But the original invading organisms had too much of a start. Or, if they were not well started, if the new organisms

were introduced too soon, those new organisms simply became part of the original invasion, and the host, the patient,

was no better, no worse.

The meager statistics provided by the crew and the few experimental animals they managed to raise from frozen

embryos seemed to support these findings. All four of the surviving crew members had been reinfected several times.

There were no survivors among the first crew members stricken. These had been isolated and restrained. Their vital

functions had been continually monitored and restored when they failed. But finally their brains had ceased to function.

Reinfection was the answer, then-or an answer. A partial answer. Without it, everyone died. With it, some lived. Disa

had died. Meda was obviously stronger. Perhaps she could live.

PRESENT 8

Meda brought Blake his bag when he asked for it and permitted him to examine her. She even permitted him to cleanse

the scratches she had made on his arm and face, though she warned it would do no good. It had never done any good

before when someone was infected, she said. The organisms were aggressive and fast. He had the disease.

She or someone else had found and sabotaged his panic button with one of the newer permanent glues. With these,

permanent meant permanent. He could not use the bag to call for help. Otherwise, the bag was intact. For Keira's sake

in particular, it was one of the best. His scope would probably give him a look at the Clay's Ark organism, even if it

was as small as Meda had said. He needed all the information he could get before he made his escape. It was not only a

matter of his wanting to pass the information on. He also needed to know now of any weaknesses these people had.

They were too good to be true in every way except appearance. He had to find something he could use against them.

"I could have used you when my children were born," Meda told him as he took her blood pressure.

"Didn't you have a doctor?" he asked. He checked her pulse.

"No. Just Eli and Lorene, my sister-in-law. We don't bring anyone here if we don't plan to keep them. And I didn't dare

go to a hospital. Imagine how many people I'd infect there."

"Not if you told them the truth."

She watched as he drew blood from her left arm. It went directly into the analyzer as would all her other specimens.

"They'd put me in a goddamn cage," she said. "They'd put my kids in one, too. They were born with the disease, you

know."

"Did they have any special problems?"

She turned her head to stare directly at him. "Not a one," she said. She made no effort to conceal the fact that she was

lying.

"What about you?" Blake asked gently. "Easy births?"

"Yeah," she said. Her defensiveness vanished. "The first one really surprised me. I mean, I was scared. I expected to be

in agony, and I don't handle real pain that well. But the kid popped out with no trouble at all. Felt like cramps."

"You were lucky there was no emergency. May I see your children?"

"Not until you're safe, Blake."

"Safe?"

"When you've been sick and gotten well again, then we'll have nothing to worry about. We'll show you anything you

want."

He frowned. "Do you imagine I'd hurt a child?"

"Probably not," she said. "But you're at the seeking-weakness stage, and Jacob and Joseph would be a hell of a

weakness. If you used them, we'd have to kill you. We want you alive, Blake."

He looked away from her in growing desperation. They really were too good-always a step ahead. How many times

had they done this-abducted people, made them vanish from the world outside. He had to beat them at a game they

knew all too well. But how?

Meda rubbed his arm with a wet hand. "Look," she said, "it isn't so bad here. You can do a lot of good-maybe more

good than you could do anywhere else. You can help us prevent an epidemic."

"It's only a matter of time before your disease gets out of hand," he said.

"We've kept that from happening for more than four years."

"Yet it could happen tomorrow."

"No!" She got up and began to pace. "I can't really make you understand until you've felt it, but we'd go crazy if we

were caged. We'd probably kill ourselves trying to escape. The compulsion keeps us on a pretty thin edge as it is. Eli

says we're holding on to our humanity by our fingernails. I'm not sure we're holding on to it at all. In some ways, I'm

more realistic than he is. But maybe we need a little of his idealism. God knows how he's kept it." She glanced at

Blake. "He's my kids' father, you know."

"I guessed," Blake said.

"He helps us hold on even if all we're holding on to is an illusion. Take away that illusion and what's left is something

you wouldn't want to deal with. You'll see."

"If your veneer of humanity is that thin," Blake said, "it's only a matter of time before someone finds it too thin. And if

what you've told me about the disease is true, one person could infect hundreds and those hundreds could infect

thousands-all before the first victims began to show symptoms and realize they were sick."

"Your estimate is low," she said. "Now do you see why you have to stay here? You could become that one person."

He did not argue with her. He would escape and go to a hospital; that was all. "I'd like you to undress," he said. He had

just collected a little of her sweat and taken-almost painlessly- a minute specimen of her Hesh. The analyzer found

something incomprehensible in both-probably the same something it had found in her blood and urine.

"Unidentifiable microbes," the small screen said. It was able to show him tiny, spiderlike organisms in her flesh, some

of them caught in the act of reproducing along with her cells-as part of her cells. They were not viruses. According to

the computer, they were more complete, independent organisms. Yet they had made themselves at home in human cells

in a way that should not have been possible-like plasmids invading and making themselves at home in bacteria. But

these were hardly plasmids-solitary rings of DNA. These were more complex organisms that had sought out higher

game than bacteria and managed to combine with it without killing it. They had changed it, however, altered it slightly,

subtly, cell by cell. In the most basic possible way, they had tampered with Meda's genetic blueprint. They had left her

no longer human.

"The ones that live in the brain don't have little legs-cilia, I mean," Meda said over his shoulder.

"What?"

"Eli told me they get into the brain cells, too. It sounds frightening, but there isn't anything we can do about it. I guess

they'd have to reach the brain to change us so."

She did not know how changed she was. Could there be any hope of reversing such elemental changes? There must be,

for his daughters' sake.

"Eli and I used to talk about it a lot," she said. "He wanted me to know everything he knew-in case anything happened

to him. He said his wife and the other doctor did autopsies on the crew members who died before them. They found

little round organisms in the brains of every one of them."

"Rabies again," Blake muttered. But no. Rabies was only a virus, preventable and curable.

"Eli's wife tried to make antibodies," Meda said. "It didn't work. I don't remember what else she tried. I didn't

understand, anyway. But nothing worked except reinfection. They found out about that by accident. And it works better

person-to-person than person-to-syringe. Maybe that's just psychological, but we don't care. We'll use anything that

works. That's why I'm here with you."

"You're here to try to make a good carrier of me," he said.

She shrugged. "You'll be that or die. I'd rather live myself."

There was another answer. There had to be. He could not find it with only his bag, but others, researchers with lab

computers, would sooner or later come up with answers. First, though, they had to be made aware of the questions.

He turned to look at Meda and saw that she had stripped. Surprisingly, she looked less scrawny without her clothing.

More like the human female she was not. What could her children be like?

She smiled. "All my clothes are too big," she said. "I put them on and I look like a collection of sticks, I know. Maybe

now I'll buy a few new things next time I'm in town."

He ignored the obvious implication, but could not ignore the way she kept reading him. He became irrationally afraid

that she was reading his mind, that he would never be able to keep an escape plan from her. He tried to shake off the

feeling as he proceeded with the examination. She-said nothing more. He got the impression she was sparing him,

humoring him.

He asked to examine others in the community when he finished with her, but she was not ready to share him with

anyone else.

"Start checking them tomorrow if they'll let you," she said. "You'll smell different then. Less seductive."

"Seductive?"