Shock (39 page)

"Thanks to your sleuthing I think we're on our way to the power plant," Deborah said as they began their descent. "Now we just have to hope these batteries hold out."

"Good grief!" Joanna exclaimed. "Don't even suggest such a thing!"

With a new worry of being lost underground in utter darkness, the women picked up their pace to the point of practically jogging. After several hundred yards the tunnel leveled out and became significantly more damp. There were even occasional puddles and stalactitic formations hanging from the arched ceiling.

"I feel like we're halfway to Boston," Deborah said. "Shouldn't we be there already?"

"That power plant was farther away than it looked," Joanna said.

Becoming winded, the women hurried along in silence, each harboring an unspoken worry about what they would face at the other end. A locked, stout door would spell disaster by forcing them back the way they'd come.

"I see something up ahead," Deborah said. She extended the light at arm's distance as they walked. A few moments later the women found themselves at an unexpected juncture; the corridor and the heating pipe bifurcated.

The women stopped, figuratively scratching their heads. Deborah shined the flashlight into both tunnels. They appeared identical, and all three tunnels intersected at approximately the same 120-degree angle.

"I wasn't expecting this," Joanna said nervously.

Deborah shined the light at the corner between the tunnel they were in and the new tunnel to their left. Set into the brick at chest height was a cornerstone of granite. Using the heel of her hand she rubbed off a layer of mold, beneath which were incised letters.

"Okay!" Deborah said with renewed enthusiasm. "One mystery is solved: The tunnel to the left goes to the farm, living quarters, which means the other one must go to the power plant."

"Of course," Joanna affirmed. "Now that I look, the pipe heading to the power plant is definitely a larger diameter."

"Wait a second," Deborah said, reaching out and restraining Joanna who'd already started in the direction of the power plant. "With a choice here, maybe we should think for a minute which might be a better destination. Assuming we're going to be able to get aboveground at either location, I think we . . ."

"Don't even suggest that we're not going to be able to get out," Joanna snapped.

"Okay, okay!" Deborah soothed. "Let's think where we'd rather be: at the power station or at the farm. Once we're out of the hospital building, our problem has become getting off the grounds. Maybe being at the farm would be the best idea. They probably get delivery trucks there like we saw the other day on a regular basis."

"I thought we decided we have to get off the premises tonight," Joanna said.

"That would be best, but we have to have some alternatives in case we can't manage it."

"I still think if we don't get off tonight we'll be caught."

"Do you have any ideas?"

"Considering the razor-wire fence, I think our only chance is going through the gate. If we could get a vehicle, particularly a truck, maybe we could just smash through."

"Hmm, that's an idea," Deborah said. "So where do we have the best chance of getting a vehicle with its keys?"

"I suppose I'd say the farm," Joanna said. "But it's just a guess."

"I'd guess the same thing," Deborah said. "Let's try the farm at least first."

With newly found resolve the women set out toward the farm. They moved quickly avoiding the puddles as well as they could. The puddles had become decidedly more plentiful in this section of the tunnel. After only a hundred yards the tunnel bifurcated again. Another engraved cornerstone directed them to the right for the farm and to the left for the living quarters. The women continued on the right fork.

"Seeing the sign for the living quarters makes me think of Spencer Wingate," Joanna said. "Maybe we should give some thought to approaching him for help."

Deborah stopped and Joanna did the same. With the flashlight directed downward, Deborah looked at her roommate. Joanna's eye sockets were lost in shadow. "Are you suggesting we go to Spencer Wingate?"

"Yes," Joanna said. "We go to his house, which we're at least familiar with, and we tell him what we've uncovered here. We also tell him that the security people are trying to hunt us down and possibly add us to their ovary collection."

Deborah let out a short, scornful laugh: "This is a strange time for you to be developing a sick sense of humor."

"At the moment it's the only way I can deal with the reality we're facing."

"Are you basing this idea of putting ourselves in Spencer Wingate's hands on overhearing that argument between him and Paul Saunders?"

"That and his response to you asking him about the Nicaraguans," Joanna said. "Neither one of us thinks Spencer truly knows what's going on around here. If he's a normal human being, he'd be as horrified as you and I."

"That's a big if, and it would be taking a mighty big risk," Deborah said.

"We've already taken a lot of risk just being here," Joanna said.

Deborah nodded and stared off into the darkness. Joanna was right; they'd taken more risk than they'd bargained for. But did that justify taking the irreversible risk of going to Spencer Wingate?

"Let's check out the farm,' Deborah said. "We'll keep the Spencer Wingate idea on a back burner. At the moment finding some big truck that can take us out of here seems like the best idea to me. Do you agree?"

"I agree," Joanna said. "I just think we have to consider all our options."

TO THE WOMEN'S RELIEF, THE TUNNEL ENTERED THE FARM complex the same way it left the hospital building. It ran unobstructed into a basement area where the heating pipe splintered off in multiple directions before disappearing up through the ceiling. Also like the hospital, the corridor, which was continuous with the tunnel, led to a freight elevator. But the women did not try to open the elevator doors. Instead they searched for stairs. They found a flight behind the elevator shaft.

At the door at the top of the stairs, the women paused. Deborah put her ear to it and reported back to Joanna only the quiet hum of distant machinery. After dousing the light, Deborah cracked the door slowly. The fact that they were in a barn was immediately apparent from the smell. All was quiet.

Deborah eased the door open enough to get her head through and take a look around. There was a low level of illumination from infrequently spaced bare light bulbs on the ceiling of the post-and-beam structure. Across the way, numerous stalls lined the wall three deep. To the left were a number of closed doors. In between were huge stacks of cardboard boxes, bales of hay, and sacks of animal feed.

"Well?" Joanna whispered from a few steps down the stairs. "Do you see anything?"

"There are plenty of animals in the stalls," Deborah said. "But no sign of any people, at least not yet."

Deborah opened the door and stepped out onto the hay-strewn, rough-planked floor. A few of the animals sensed her presence and grunted, bringing others to their feet. Joanna joined Deborah, and the two continued to survey the scene.

"So far so good," Deborah said. "If they have a night shift they must be sleeping."

"What a smell," Joanna said. "I can't imagine how anyone could work in this kind of environment."

"I bet it's the pigs," Deborah said. She found herself looking across the room at the beady eyes of a large pink-and-white sow. The pig seemed to be regarding her with great interest.

"Somebody told me pigs are clean," Joanna said.

"They're clean if they're kept clean," Deborah said. "But pigs don't mind being dirty, and their excrement is bad news."

"Do you see what I see on the wall behind you?" Joanna questioned. She pointed.

Deborah looked over her shoulder, and her face lit up. "A phone]"

The women dashed for the phone. Deborah got it first and put the receiver to her ear. Joanna watched her with great anticipation until Deborah's expression became one of disgust, and she hit the disconnect button several times in a row. Deborah hung up. "No deal! They've turned off the phones."

"I'm not surprised," Joanna said.

"Nor am I," Deborah admitted.

"Let's look for the truck," Joanna said.

Leaving the stairway door slightly ajar, the women skirted the animal feed and the hay and walked to the nearest door. Deborah opened it and shined in the flashlight.

"My word!" Deborah exclaimed.

"What is it?" Joanna asked, trying to see over Deborah's shoulder.

"It's another laboratory," Deborah said with amazement. She had not expected a laboratory, and the transition from a barn to super high tech over a single threshold was dizzying. The lab wasn't nearly as large as the one in the hospital but appeared to be almost equally well equipped.

Deborah let go of the door and stepped into the room. Joanna followed. Deborah moved her light from one piece of equipment to another, seeing such things as DNA sequencers, a scanning electron microscope, and polypeptide synthesizers. It was a molecular biologist's dream come true.

"Shouldn't we be looking for the truck?" Joanna asked.

"In a minute," Deborah said. She walked over to an incubator and looked in at the petri dishes. They were the same as she'd been using that day in the main lab, and she gathered they were doing nuclear transfer here as well. Then her light caught a large plate-glass window dividing a separate room off from the main part of the lab.

Deborah started back toward this room. Joanna followed to avoid being left in the dark.

"Deborah!" Joanna complained. "You're sidetracking."

"I know," Deborah said. "But every time I think I have a general picture of what they are doing at this Wingate Clinic, it turns out they are doing a lot more. I didn't expect another lab here at this farm, and certainly not one this well equipped."

"It's time for professionals,' Joanna pleaded. "We have enough information to justify a search warrant. What we have to do is get ourselves out of here."

Deborah put the lens of the flashlight directly against the plate-glass divider to avoid the glare while illuminating the room beyond. "And here's yet another surprise. This looks like a fully operational autopsy room like the ones they use for people but with a very small table. What in heaven's name is it doing in a barn?"

"Come on!" Joanna urged with growing irritation.

"Just let me check this out,' Deborah said. "It will only take a second. There's a refrigerated compartment like in a morgue."

Joanna rolled her eyes in frustration as Deborah pushed through the autopsy room's door. Joanna watched through the glass partition as Deborah walked over to the compartment and unlatched the door. Except for the light now coming back out through the glass divider from Deborah's flashlight, Joanna was in the dark. She glanced back at the door out of the lab and briefly entertained the idea of searching for a truck on her own, but she decided it was foolish without the flashlight.

Mumbling expletives, Joanna followed Deborah into the small autopsy room with the intent of demanding that Deborah come to her senses, but that goal was quickly forgotten. Deborah had the tray in the refrigerated compartment pulled out and was transfixed by what was on it. Joanna couldn't see what it was, but she could tell that Deborah was trembling by the way she held the light.

"What is it?" Joanna asked.

"Come and look!" Deborah said in a quavering voice.

"Maybe you should just tell me," Joanna said. "Remember, I'm not a biologist like you."

"You have to see this," Deborah said. "There's no way I could describe it."

Joanna swallowed nervously. She took a breath and walked over beside Deborah and made herself look down.

"Ugh!" Joanna muttered as her upper lip involuntarily pulled back in disgust. She was looking at five newborn infants with bloated umbilical vessels and extremely thick, dark lanugo. The faces were flat and broad and the eyes tiny. The noses were mere stubs with the nares oriented vertically. Their appendages ended in paddlelike extremities with minute digits. Their heads were crowned with a shock of black hair accentuated with minute but definite white forelocks.

"It's Paul Saunders clones again,' Joanna sneered.

"I'm afraid so," Deborah said. "But with a new twist. I think what he's doing down here for his stem-cell research is cloning his own cells into pig oocytes, and then gestating them in pigs."

Joanna reached out and took a hold of Deborah's arm. She needed momentary support. Deborah had been right about the Wingate Clinic. This new discovery indicated that Paul Saunders and his team were operating a quantum leap beyond the realm of reasonable or even anticipated ethics. The egotism and intellectual conceit required were simply beyond Joanna's comprehension.

Deborah slid the tray back into the refrigerated compartment and slammed the door. "Let's find a damn truck!"

With indignant anger helping to overcome the shock of their recent discovery, the women retraced their steps back into the barn proper. Emerging from the laboratory, their presence again caused a stirring among the animals. Previously it had been mainly the pigs close to the stairway door which had become aroused. Now it was more generalized with even the cows adding to the growing din.

The women went from door to door until they found a passageway leading to what they assumed would be a garage. But it turned out to be something more. With the light from two red exit signs, they could see it was a hangar. Bathed in the ruby glow was an Aerospatial turbojet helicopter.

"There's our answer, if we could only fly it,' Deborah said. She stood for a moment longingly admiring the craft.

"Come on,' Joanna urged. "I think there's a garage beyond this building."

Joanna turned out to be right, and when they went through the next door, they were rewarded to see a tractor and a dump truck. Both women headed for the truck.

"Keys be there!" Deborah prayed out loud as she mounted the truck's running board and got the door open. She swung herself up into the cab. Frantically her fingers searched for keys while Joanna held the light. Deborah checked along the steering column, then along the dash. She found the ignition key slot but no keys.