Firechild (7 page)

“They made him agree to sit on the story, but the mobile crew kept taping what they could, digging for answers. Trying to run down the truth about EnGene and what it was to Washington. Prying for comment on crazy tales they picked up. Rumors EnGene had been doing illegal biological research that must have got out of control. Never got a word from anybody that admitted knowing anything.”

Marty Marks stopped to listen again.

“Okay, folks.” Gingerly avoiding the scratch, he mopped sweat off his grimy forehead and pushed the broken glasses back up his nose. “That’s all I know about how the thing began. Just past noon, the labs blew up. Could have been a gas explosion—our news people had smelled escaping gas.”

Explosion? Belcraft shivered in the hot room, wondering if that blast had killed his brother.

“—other buildings caught.” He heard Marty Marks again. “Cops let the first fire trucks inside the lines, but they hadn’t done much before something knocked them out. Something—you tell me what! Equipment still there, but standing still. Nobody fighting the fires. A lot of buildings still blazing now, all across the southwest side of town.

“Middle of the afternoon, bigger wheels got here from Washington. Our mobile unit caught ‘em at the airport, landing in a military transport. Claimed to come from an outfit we’d never heard of before. Bioscience Alert.

“A funny thing about Bioscience Alert. They claimed to be unofficial. Just a handful of scientists concerned about what they called the promises and the dangers of genetic engineering. But they all had special badges and emergency authority straight from the top. Giving orders to the FBI and the CIA and the state police and everybody else. Threatened to have our own people shot if we reported anything about them.”

Marty Marks grinned bleakly into the camera.

“They ain’t here to stop me now, and I’ll say what I know. They took things over. Ordered the cops to pull back their lines and evacuate everybody in six blocks of the lab. Our camera crew climbed on a roof to take what happened when they went in. Half a dozen men looking like spacemen in masks and plastic suits. Went in toward the fire and never came out. What did come out—”

Marty Marks stopped to listen, sweating, yet still shivering.

“What it is, I don’t know. Don’t reckon they did. Nothing you could see or hear, but it kills people. Quick! Wherever, it catches ‘em. On the streets and in their houses when they try to hide and in their cars when they try to get out. Never any warning they’ve got time to tell about.

“It spread from the dead. With the wind, I reckon, because the cops kept calling our weatherman for wind forecasts. As long as he stuck around. Winds light all day, which I guess is lucky. It hit the cops and firemen first, close around the lab. Those that tried to run never got far. Not if they’d already caught it—whatever it is.

“The cops still alive—along with whoever was left of the G-men and those Washington bigshots—they tried to stop the spread of it. Moved the roadblocks back when it got past their lines. Dynamited the river bridges and the viaduct over the railroad yards.

“The last I heard of McGrath—he is or was our news director—he was reporting a run-in with one of those Bioscience wheels. About the news blackout. If the country is in danger—sure as hell it is—McGrath thought the public ought to be told. The wheel said no. McGrath said to hell with him. Called the studio to stand by for a direct broadcast from the mobile van.

“We stood by, but he never came on. The rest of the day crew checked out to cover the story—or more likely to get out of town. I stayed here to put McGrath on the air. Night crew never showed up. Not that I blame anybody. Good friends of mine. Just hope to God they took off in time. Could be the wheels had somebody shoot McGrath. Could be the wind from the lab caught them all.

“Suicide to try the streets now, so I’m still here. On the air!” A haggard grin. “At six o’clock, when nobody turned up and I felt damn sure nobody would, I decided to tell what I can, as long as I can talk—to hell with Washington and Bioscience Alert!

“One thing more—not that I know what it means.” Biting his lower lip, Marty Marks twisted to listen again. Blood-pinked sweat oozed down his dark-stubbled chin. He squinted again into the camera. “All quiet down below, last time I looked. But things are—shining.

“Everything, I reckon, that ever was alive. Bodies. Clothes they had on. Grass and trees down the street in Eisenhower Park. Shining with a pale gray light. Burning, I first thought, but there ain’t no smoke. Not except from those blazes, off toward where the lab was.

“Don’t ask me what makes the shine. I don’t know. Don’t know if anybody ever will. But I’m signing off for now. Time for a break, and another good snort of Phil’s Old Smuggler. Maybe a snack, if I can find anything— a couple of the staffers used to bring lunches, and I don’t think they ever had time to eat.”

Behind the desk, Marty Marks stood up and stretched himself.

“So that’s all for now. Can’t guess how much time I’ve got left. Or what time you’ve got—anybody out there still cool enough to listen. But I’ll take another gander from the penthouse terrace and get back to tell you what I see. If I can get back. Just one more word, while I can talk.”

Suddenly swaying, he sat down again.

“If you see anybody comin‘ out of Enfield, don’t let ‘em—”

The nasal voice faded. The blood-streaked features relaxed into an empty leer. The mouth yawned open. The dirty lenses slid off the vacant eyes and struck the desk with a tiny clatter. Marty Marks slumped slowly out of view. Nothing else moved. The studio was silent.

10

Alyoshka

A
nya followed Shuvalov out of the Lubyanka. They found the plainclothes lieutenant waiting with the Chaika. Fast again, he drove them out of Moscow, southwest across the ring road and on into the empty-seeming greenbelt.

Well inside the forest they passed a billboard that read
HALT! NO TRESPASSING! WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT.
Out under the dull sky again, he parked beside a guardhouse identified with a gold-lettered sign.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CENTER.
Khaki-clad sentries checked Shuvalov’s pass, frowned over the visas in Anya’s passport, and telephoned the colonel before they were passed through the turnstile.

Inside the tall chain link fence, the seven-story office building of the First Chief Directorate made a striking contrast to the grimy old prison, its window-walls of aluminum and glass shimmering out of well-kept lawns and flower beds.

Bogdanov was a dark massive man with thinning gray hair and a face like the nose of a battle tank. He sat facing them across a wide, uncluttered desk. As if to accent his air of implacable iron, the room was fragrant with a mass of fresh cut roses in an antique brass vase on the end of the desk. His career had begun on a livestock collective, and he still had the manner of a butcher. He kept them standing while his slaty eyes narrowed to inspect Anya as if she had been a fallow heifer. She had reddened in spite of herself before he nodded curtly for them to sit.

“This ultimatum?” His guttural Russian exploded at her. “Are you insane?”

“Colonel Bogdanov, we—we have tested every alternative.” She held herself stiffly upright, trying not to tremble. “If anybody is insane, it is our informer in the weapons laboratory. A computer programmer named Carboni. He has demanded freedom for this dissident and his family, with adequate measures to assure their safety. He refuses to consider anything else. I think—” She had to catch her breath. “I think you should know why.”

“So!” A grunted command.

“We have gathered a dossier.” Eyes still on him, she tried not to see him. “Information that seems to explain his behavior.” She spoke rapidly and flatly, almost as if reading the words. “This Arnoldo Carboni was born in the American city of Boston. His mother’s family had once been wealthy, but while she was still an infant her father failed in business and killed himself. When her mother died, she used the insurance money to attend Columbia University in the city of New York. She met Leon Alyoshka there—”

“In New York?” The colonel squinted, at her. “When?”

“Many years—”

“Comrade Bogdanov,” Shuvalov broke in, “the traitor was once a trusted man, though he had never joined the party. His Jewish ancestry had been concealed. He had earned honors in science at Moscow University. He was allowed to spend two years in America as a graduate student in nuclear physics.”

“True.” She nodded. “And Carboni is his bastard son.”

“A son?” The colonel blinked at Shuvalov. “Is that possible?”

“Not likely.” Shuvalov shook his head, scowling at her. “I aided the investigations of Alyoshka. I never heard of any American son.”

“Neither did Alyoshka.” She straightened to face their disbelief. “Comrades, if I may explain. Alyoshka was married. Here. His wife was not permitted to go abroad with him, no doubt to guarantee his return. It is not surprising that he fell in love with an American girl. A fellow student at Columbia. Although he seems to have told her about his wife, she allowed him to involve her in a passionate affair.

“When his two years ran out, that had to end. The girl had become pregnant, but she never told him. She kept the child—named for him; he used to sign himself Arny Ames when they checked into motels. Later, she was briefly married to a laborer named Carboni. He adopted Arny, but she was still obsessed with Alyoshka and the marriage soon dissolved.

“She raised Arny—raised him to love the father he had never seen. She tried to follow Alyoshka’s career through the news reports of his achievements in science and his later deviations. His photograph hung at the foot of her bed above a little shelf of momentos. A sort of shrine to him. Russian novels he’d given her, a doll in Cossack costume, a photo of St. Basil’s on a postcard that must have been the last message she ever got from him.

“After her death, the son kept those items in his own room. He is described as a lonely oddball who knows computers better than people, but he seems to worship his father—or, rather, that saintlike image he got from his mother. It became the only human value in his life. He has brooded over the sensational speculations in the capitalistic press about Alyoshka’s current troubles. He has always longed to know him, longed for a chance to show his love. Now this freak of circumstance has given him a weapon. He’s determined to—”

Beneath his blank stare, she had to stop for breath and courage.

“Colonel, I think the dissident will have to be set free.”

“Nyet!”

Bogdanov shook his head, considering her. Absently, pale eyes still upon her, he took a rose from the vase to sniff its sweetness. Angry at herself, she knew she was flushing again.

“You must be told.” He nodded at last. “Alyoshka is dead.”

“Oh—” Her voice was gone.

“He died in a psychiatric hospital.” The colonel seemed almost smug. “As you know, before the onset of his paranoid deviations he had been considered a brilliant scientist. Our foremost psychiatrists did everything possible to correct his tragic antisocial delusions, but their best efforts failed. They reported a bad reaction to the drug aminazin. The illness destroyed his mind.”

“I—I see.” She tried not to shiver. “Could we—could we possibly inquire if Carboni would bargain for the wife and daughter?”

As if surprised to find the rose in his hand, the colonel tossed it abruptly aside. His face turned bleaker. “They suffered from similar delusions. They attempted street demonstrations in support of the traitor. Loyal Soviet citizens were so much incensed by their activities that they were forced into hiding. Their whereabouts are not now known.”

Silently, she nodded.

“Your problem, Comrade Ostrov.” A tone of cold command. “You will return to America at once and proceed to solve it. I advise you not to tell anybody what you have learned about the fate of the deviants. You are free, however, to choose your own plan of action. In the past you have done excellent work, but never anything so important. You must not fail! If means to secure the Belcraft file do not now exist, you will create them.”

“If—” She gulped. “We’ll do our utmost.”

“Get them!” The colonel rose. “You may ago.”

He bent to bury his nose in the roses.

Anya Ostrov left Sheremetyvo by Aeroflot that same afternoon. In flight, she saw attendants gathered in the galley, whispering in a seeming alarm which they denied when she asked what was wrong. The weather ahead was excellent. The pilots had not reported any difficulty with the aircraft. It landed at Kennedy without incident. In the terminal building, she found excited people clustered around a man holding up a newspaper to show bold headlines:

GENE PLAGUE

KILLS CITY!

11

Plan Black

Cat

C
legg waited at the end of that massive mahogany table in the Holy Oaks library, watching Kneeland turn and move uncertainly back toward to group.

“Please, Gus! For the good of the club—the good of the country—please sit down and listen.” Though he seldom smiled, his dark granite face had softened a little, and he kept his tone carefully placatory. “We’re going to need the best you can give us.”

He paused again, while Kneeland hesitated and finally, almost sheepishly, sank into the big leather chair.

“Thank you, Gus.” He cleared his throat and scanned the silent circle. “I’ve more to say to all of you. If things are as bad as they seem, we Catonians will have a new role to play. We can—we must seize the lead. The iron hand concealed of course, but we must act at once to defeat this newborn evil that our best efforts have failed to abort.”

His shadowed eyes came slowly back to Kneeland’s red-flushed face.

“We’re going to need you, Gus.” Again he tried to smile, but his voice had an imperative edge. “I hope you never forget that we depend on you as a founding member, your total loyalty duly sworn to the club. You are obligated to share in our decisions, and to let us share in the nation’s. We will continue to require your aid and advice. The whole nation will require ours.