Dragon Virus (2 page)

Something wiggles against my memory, skates through my
brain. It’s not quite there, not quite real.

The smart thing would be to go back to bed, dump it all
tomorrow morning, be given mental absolution with talk of dream symbolism, the
subconscious, emotional defenses working themselves out in dreamtime.

But there’s an itch I need to scratch.

The computer’s already on. Pull up a search engine, enter
keywords: dragons, destruction, stars. Toss anything biblical on principle.
Science; medical, physics. Computers; viruses. Literature; poetry, prose. Close
eyes, push a button. The coffee mug was refilled and half-emptied, then left to
cool while the results scrolled down. Paydirt. A news report: brief, factual,
followed by half a dozen stories one more extreme than the other. Almost a year
old; I must have been on a
Science Times
kick back then, otherwise I would never have seen it to remember. Chinese
researchers found it first, called it
Lóng
,
the dragon, for the way it curled around the embryos’ chromosomes like a winged
snake.

Attached sequences of amino acids, but without any
discernible pattern of attack. No one sequence was singled out; everything was
at risk.

The few infants born alive were bent, twisted; the word “fluidity”
came up in a couple of case studies. Homeotic mutant phenotypes. Not that I knew
what any of the science babble meant, but a few indigestible facts stood out.
It messed with the genetic structure from the inside out. And it was spreading.
Four examples were found ten years ago. Four hundred last year.

Every racial type. Almost every continent. No known cause. A
foreign protein, maybe. Human-created, maybe. Or just god, throwing dice.
Infecting us, warping us. Tied into our genetic code, from here on in.

No known treatment. No idea where even to begin.

I crawl back to bed, curled the blankets around me, slept
until the alarm clock dragged me back. Shower, shave, dress, drive. More
god-delivered chaos waiting for me: this time it’s Thumpers holding another
rally outside Town Hall, waving heavy-looking Bibles and chanting. “Awake,
awake, the Lord has spoken. Awake, awake.” They clear the way for my car,
having learned manners the hard way. A wide-eyed young woman leans against my
window; her lips form words I’m not listening to.

If Wheelies are gnats, Thumpers are wasps, or hornets. They’re
the radicals, the pushers and the callers. Every year further we went into the
new millennium they seemed to get more and more het up, like waiting for the
bride to walk down the aisle so they could get to the bar at the reception.
Wheelies were mellow, comparatively speaking. They knew the secret: you can’t
rush revelation.

I’ll go talk to the shrink. I’ll tell the Homeland brass
everything the kid said. I’ll scrape it off me and give it to them. It won’t
make any difference. The Thumpers were right. The Wheelies were right. In the
way that right is completely wrong.

You accept the impossible when it becomes the obvious. The
kid — the Rapture — looked skyward for his dragons of destruction. But they
were already inside.

o0o

Washington Day-Review
Tuesday, July 6th, 2027

…Dr. Yanir reported to the Pan-American Medical
Association this week they have seen a 41% increase in the number of fetuses
carrying the mutated gene Lóng since its discovery in Suiyuan Province fifteen
years ago.

Dr. Yanir admitted
that inconsistent reporting from countries where many of the fetuses are
aborted and not reported makes it difficult to be certain, and that the numbers
may be considerably higher. However, he does not see a cause for long-term
concern.

“Worries over a
potential change in the human genetic markup are, in my opinion, overstated to
the point of hysteria,” Dr. Yanir said in an interview after his presentation.

“The Lóng gene is not viable. Most of the infants
who survive, die within days of birth. It is a genetic dead end. I see no
reason to expect that the mutation will not burn itself out as quickly as it
appeared.”

The old man had seen too much. Forty years on this job, he
should be tougher. Should have skin like leather, like steel, not let anything
slip by to the soft stuff underneath.

It’s just that it’s so small, the body. Poor wee thing; blue
and black marks against such pale, pale skin and always a tragedy, always. Any
life gone is tragedy, no matter what you say, no matter the relief that it’s
over, God’s will, it’s better this way.

God’s will it be born, God’s will it be gone, the priests
say. God, he thinks but only to himself, has much to answer for.

“Forgive me, Lord,” he says out loud, half in jest. “You
will test us, and this is the way of the Universe. But just once, could you
grade on a curve? We are mere mortals, as you made us, and as our Maker you
know that we are fallible.”

As he speaks, he moves the gurney down the hallway, barely
any weight on the flat surface to restrict the cart’s movement. His destination
is inevitable: old or newborn, all end up in the same place. There might be
irony there, or justice. Or both. He’s a simple man, and he doesn’t know.

One of the gurney’s wheels turns oddly as he pushes,
squeaking against the linoleum, protesting ill-usage.

“You’ll get yours,” he promises it, leaning a little into
the handle to make the gurney go straight. A little oil, a few bangs with a
wrench, good as second-hand. Maintenance isn’t supposed to be his thing, he’s
just the ferryman, but budget cuts meant that everything was backlogged so
badly now, and it was easier just to do it himself than wait for someone to
come down and do it someday.

You did what was needed, was his philosophy. Keep the world
turning, one lack-of-drama at a time. He didn’t look much beyond that, any
more.

“Here we are, darling,” he says to the still form in his
care. “Home sweet home, for the duration.”

They go through swinging doors, solid steel and cold through
the fabric of his white lab coat as he shoulders the door open. The linoleum
gives way to antiseptic tile, and the gurney rattles louder. No need to muffle
noises here. The dead don’t care.

“Anybody home?”

No answer, and he shrugs. Never very lively down here
anyway, but he knows what to do without some tight-assed tech three months on
the job ordering him around.

The gurney rattles to a stop, and he pushes the brake into
place, locking it into position in the middle of the room.

The far wall is more sterile steel, rows of blank doors with
latch handles. The other three walls are filled with the latest tech, arcane
and expensive ways to categorize, decipher, and catalog death in all its
manifestations.

“Up you go, darling, gently, gently.” His gloved hands are
delicate with the damaged flesh, lifting it off the flat surface as though
motion might wake the infant, cradling the tiny head in the palm of one hand.

You were supposed to use gear to move bodies down here, not
be hands-on. Too many scares these days to touch anything you didn’t have to,
not with the origin of the
Lóng
mutation still unknown, the cause and vectors equally mysterious. Like the old
AIDS scare, only you didn’t have sexual righteousness to hide behind, not when
the sins were visited upon innocent children, not caring who their dams or
sires were. Righteous and damned alike felt the Dragon’s tail lashing them,
these days, even the Church said so.

Little bodies, twisted and alone. The Union and the hospital
regs could be damned.

He was an old man, not about to drop his seed into some
fertile womb. There wasn’t any risk here, not any more, and it was the one
last, only thing he could do, to apologize for their harsh treatment, hello and
goodbye.

“It’s not such a bad world.” He places her on the table,
face-up, limbs arranged by her side like she might have slept, warm in a
bassinet, or swaddled in an incubator, waiting for momma’s touch. “A little
screwed up right now, maybe, a lot noisy what with everyone yelling, and maybe
people aren’t what they might be, but not bad, overall. Don’t judge from what
little you saw.”

Little enough, womb to stainless white womb, stainless and
plastic now where loving arms should have surrounded it. No way to tour the
world, in and out.

He looks down, witnessing, in his own way, a life that never
happened.

Translucent-pale skin so delicate even silk is too heavy a
blanket. So pale, veins shimmered green, the bruises almost three-dimensional.
Pale brown fuzz covers the scalp, a matching thin line over closed eyes and
snub of a nose, mouth barely a pink button. The neck is too long, two dark
blotches at the collarbone. Forceps, he identifies the marks after a moment. No
surprise —the only surprise that it hadn’t been a C-section.

“Didn’t want the scars to remind them,” he guesses, although
it is an unfair assumption. Not every parent is so cold. Not every parent
escapes without tears and doubts.

He would have buried his daughter. He would have done that
little, at least. He hopes he would have, anyway.

He fusses a little with the hands, so impossibly tiny,
doll-fingers curled into doll-palms, but no doll ever had texture that felt
like this. Cool and unmistakable, the touch of dead skin even through latex.
The normal position is palms up, elbows in. Impossible for this wee one, the
way the virus bent the bones and muscle, and not his concern, but he fusses
nonetheless, arranging and rearranging until all four limbs lay palms-up,
asking for something only God could give, now.

Explanations, maybe, or a second chance. A better world.

For all his long discussions with that mysterious figure, he
long ago gave up on God.

Not to disbelieve; simply neither to ask nor to wait for a
response. God had done His job in the Creation; now it was their turn.

“And a fair mess of it we’re making.” Let the Bible-thumpers
and Jesusfreaks scream about Wrath and Judgment, let the scientists mutter
about climate changes and environmental poisons. He didn’t know enough to say
anything either way. Facts were facts, things were changing. Only a fool sits
and whines when the flood’s at his door.

“All right then, wee one. This is where I leave you. Don’t
be scared, if you’re still hanging around. Flesh is only flesh and you didn’t
have much of it for very long anyway.”

News calls ’em dragons, news and newsies and the media at
large, after the thing that kills them. Bible-thumpers, though, they call ’em
devils, these poor misbegotten infants.

Sin-spawn, Lucifer’s get. The only dragon those folk know is
the one Saint George whacked. No wonder God-fearing parents want nothing to do
with them, not even to bury them. But it feels wrong, to him, to leave her
here, alone.

“I suppose I could sit with you for a bit.” There are chores
waiting on him, other bodies to be wheeled about, living people in need. Things
he could do, upstairs, among the noise and stench of the world.

Instead, he leans against the gurney, and considers the
small body. “They offered me a lot of money for you,” he tells it. “Oh, not you
specifically, but one like you. The ghouls. The ones who like to shock, and the
ones who like to poke and prod. If you hadn’t been handed off to us so fast,
they’d probably have gone after your...” He stops. “Parents” doesn’t seem like
the right word to use. “They offer a lot of money. I’m always afraid someday
they’ll catch me at a weak moment, when one of you is down here, unwanted,
unclaimed, and I’ll think ‘who will it hurt?’ And those are the days, wee one,
I hate this world, and everything in it.”

“Everything?”

He jumps, heart thudding into his throat even as he turns to
see a lab-coated tech come in through the sterile doors. The newcomer is
slender, dark-skinned, with a shaved head and bright eyes. Young, healthy, and
as arrogant as all his kind: wearing the dark red scrubs and booties of the
so-called dead brigade, the morgue technicians.

“Talking to yourself, old man?” he asks now, mocking.

“Me and the wee one were having a philosophical discussion,”
he replies, stung; even if it is true, he is old. Ancient, by this cub’s
standards. “Nothing you’d understand.”

The lab tech moves forward, economical motion, rubber-soled
booties quiet on the floor. “A dragon spawn. Interesting. Haven’t had one of
those down here in a while, but I’ve been reading about them.” He picks up an
instrument from the side table, uses it to poke at the soft flesh. The old man
starts to protest, then subsides. It wasn’t as though it would do any good.

This is what the wee one is down here for, after all.

“Quad-limbed, doesn’t look like any of them would have been
functional. Pity. Can you imagine how useful having subset arms could be?”

He finds the tech’s enthusiasm offensive, somehow.

“Wee one probably would have traded them for lungs that
worked.”

“Ah. Yeah.” Give the tech credit, he looks abashed for about
three seconds. “Still, the mutation is fascinating. Have you noticed that all
of the changes are evolutionarily sound? Even the false starts and dead ends
are potentially not only viable, but progressive.”

The old man is curious. “So you don’t think this is God’s
punishment upon us sinners, do you?”

This is a Catholic hospital; for twenty years the Papal Line
has been that the deformed children were born without souls; that was why the
flesh was so abused. God’s Will, to mark the fouled, the unclean. Better than a
triple 6 on the forehead, for ease of discovery. The tech could have been
fired, or worse, for what the old man thought he was saying.

“God created science,” the tech sidesteps the question. “He
gave me a brain and the ability to observe, and to do anything less would be to
disrespect his gifts.”