Transhuman (30 page)

 

Y-18

T
HE FLIGHT TO
Spokane was quick and smooth, although they landed not at the commercial airport but at another Air Force installation.

And instead of going into another SUV, Rossov led them to a big helicopter that was waiting on the tarmac, its huge rotors drooping almost to the ground. Several Air Police were standing by, with heavy pistols strapped to their blue uniforms.

As they approached the chopper, Angela walked beside Luke. Tamara, on the other side of the child, nodded toward Novack, who was at the end of their little procession.

“We're under guard,” she said to Luke.

“Important persons,” he said.

“More like prisoners.”

*   *   *

A
NGELA KEPT HER
nose pressed against the window as the helicopter lifted off and headed east, toward the mountains. Luke had never been in a helicopter before, and found he had an innate distrust of a flying machine that had no wings. But he kept his feelings bottled inside him. People have been flying these things for damned near a century, he told himself. Still, he would have felt better in a fixed-wing aircraft.

The flight was surprisingly smooth, though. Even over the snow-clad mountains the copter chugged easily past the peaks, with none of the bumpiness Luke expected. And the cabin was well insulated, acoustically: The roar of the jet engines was muted, and the swooshing sound of the rotors practically inaudible.

Tamara was sitting alone across the aisle from Luke, with Rossov in the seat behind her. Novack sat by the main hatch, reading from his iPad, while Hightower sat across the aisle from him, seemingly dozing.

Tapping a fingernail on the window glass, Tamara asked, “Is that where we're going?”

Rossov nodded. “Yep. That's the place.”

Luke unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the chair beside Tamara's. Past her shoulder he saw a cluster of small, low-roofed buildings. Didn't look like much. This is a first-rate biomedical facility? he asked himself.

Angela called out, “I want to see, too.”

Rossov tapped Luke's shoulder. “I'll get her. You stay put.”

And the White House executive got up as Angela unbuckled and slid to the aisle seat.

“Come on, Angela,” he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, “you can sit with me, right behind your grandpop.”

Angela clambered to the window seat. Luke started to tell her to fasten her safety belt, but she did it by herself without prompting, then gave Luke a self-satisfied little smirk.

The chopper was getting lower. Luke saw that most of the buildings down there were two-story wooden structures; they looked like barracks. Paved roads and walkways between them. Parking lot only partly filled with cars, many of them Army green with white stars painted on their hoods.

And a helicopter pad, he saw, off to one side of the buildings. Then he realized that the entire complex was surrounded by a high wire fence topped with coils of razor wire.

“By God,” he whispered to Tamara, “it does look like a prison.”

*   *   *

A
QUARTET OF
soldiers helped them out of the helicopter and carried their luggage to a waiting Army truck.

Luke looked around. The area seemed barren, not a tree anywhere. Hardly any grass on the bare, dusty ground. Snow-covered mountains in the distance. We're a million miles from anyplace, he thought.

A heavyset officer in an unzipped tan windbreaker walked briskly up to him. His short-cropped brown hair was starting to turn silver; it made him look quite distinguished.

“Professor Abramson?”

“That's me,” said Luke.

A quizzical smile spread across his pudgy face. “I had expected an older man, from the photos in your dossier.”

My dossier? Luke thought.

“Well, anyway, I'm Colonel Dennis,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Welcome to Y-18.”

Luke took the man's hand warily, noting the silver eagle on one shirt collar and the snake-entwined caduceus, symbol of the Army medical corps, on the other.

“Y-18?” he asked.

With a sweep of his hand, the colonel explained. “That's the designation for this base. But don't let its looks fool you. We're doing some top-level work here.”

Colonel Dennis, it turned out, was the commander of this godforsaken base in the wilderness. He insisted that Luke and the others call him Frank as he led them to a pair of olive green Army sedans waiting for them.

“We're in the rain shadow of the mountains here,” he explained cheerily to Luke as they piled into the cars. “Semiarid, you know. But we don't get those bleak gray skies like they do on the other side. Lots of sunshine here!”

Luke sat in the rear of the sedan with Angela and Tamara, wondering how Del was going to behave in the other car with Rossov and Novack. At least Hightower's with them; he'll keep the peace, Luke thought.

Colonel Dennis took the seat beside the driver, a corporal young enough to still have acne spotting his lantern-jawed face.

“I can't tell you how glad we are to have someone of your caliber staying with us, Professor,” said Colonel Dennis, turning halfway around in his seat to face Luke. “The whole research staff is eager to meet you.”

“What kind of research do you do here?” Luke asked as they drove away from the helicopter.

“Biological warfare, mainly.”

Tamara blurted, “Biological war—”

“Not weaponry,” the colonel quickly interrupted her. “We don't work on bioweapons.”

“Then what?”

“Countermeasures. We look at possible biological warfare agents and try to come up with countermeasures against them.”

“Terrorists,” Luke muttered.

“Exactly right,” the colonel agreed. “Most security people worry about planes crashing into skyscrapers, or some nut case trying to bomb a nuclear reactor. But one fanatic pouring a vial of anthrax bacteria into a city reservoir could kill thousands of people. Tens of thousands.”

“I guess so,” Luke said.

“And there are new potential threats all the time,” the colonel went on. “Genetically engineered viruses, plague bacilli, not to mention the H5N1 avian flu virus. The government should never have permitted the scientific community to lift its moratorium on that.”

“And you try to find countermeasures for all that,” Tamara said.

Nodding vigorously, Colonel Dennis replied, “Vaccines, antidotes … We're kept pretty damned busy. There aren't enough resources to cover everything, so we have to pick our targets carefully.”

Luke wondered, If his staff is stretched so thin, how's he going to find the people to work with me?

As if he could read Luke's mind, the colonel said, “But we're very glad to have you on board, Professor Abramson. Mr. Rossov is making arrangements for a half-dozen new personnel to assist you.”

“Oh. That's good.” Then he said, “I'd like to recruit some of my grad students from back in Massachusetts. They've worked with me and know what they're doing.”

Looking a little shamefaced, the colonel replied, “I'm afraid that won't be possible, Professor. Security clearances and all the paperwork, you know. The people we'll bring in will be top-rate, I promise you.”

Luke said nothing, but he thought, Great. Now I'll have to break in a new crop of assistants.

The car pulled up in front of one of the two-story wooden buildings.

“Well, this will be your home sweet home for the time being,” said the colonel as he opened the car door.

Luke got out and surveyed the building warily. It looked brand-new, as if it had just been put up.

Standing beside him in the cold clear sunshine, Colonel Dennis said, almost shyly, “Um, I've set up a dinner for you this evening with a few of my key staff people. We're all anxious to hear about your work.”

Luke nodded absently and helped Angela out of the car. “Here she is,” he said brightly. “This little girl is going to become very famous someday soon.”

Colonel Dennis nodded. “Someday,” he said.

 

The Staff

D
EL CLIMBED OUT
of the sedan he'd ridden in like a man trying to escape a life insurance salesman. He looked sullen, disgruntled, almost angry.

Having him ride with Novack wasn't such a hot idea, Luke said to himself. Rossov must've had to referee between them. More likely Hightower did.

The building they stood before was indeed newly constructed, Luke saw once he and the others stepped inside. He could smell the paint that had just been applied, and the faint odor of sawdust that still hung in the air.

“Welcome to the Abramson Laboratory,” Colonel Dennis said grandly, sweeping the bare room with his outstretched arms.

Luke blinked with surprise.

“This first floor will be your work area,” the colonel explained, standing in the middle of the empty space. “Equipment's not here yet, but it's on its way.”

Leaving Novack, Rossov, and Hightower on the first floor, Luke, Angela, Tamara, and Del followed Dennis upstairs. Four bedrooms, two baths. Decent furniture: nothing spectacular, but adequate, Luke thought. We're not going to be here that long, he told himself.

Standing in the hallway that bisected the upper floor, Colonel Dennis said, “I thought the two ladies could take the rooms on this side”—he pointed—“and share the bathroom between them. You two men can take the other two and share that bathroom. Will that be okay?”

Luke glanced at Tamara, who nodded, then said, “Fine.” Del said nothing.

The colonel smiled broadly. “Good. Great. Now about dinner tonight. Seven
P.M
.” Turning to Tamara, his face turned apologetic. “I'm afraid dinner is going to be strictly stag. You can eat in the base mess hall, if you don't mind.”

Tamara looked almost amused. “I don't mind. Do you, Angela?”

Angie looked surprised to be asked. But she replied, quite seriously, “I don't mind. Do they have any pies? I like peach pie.”

Colonel Dennis beamed at her. “I'll see that the cooks bake you a peach pie.”

Del managed a smile. “I like peach pie, too.”

*   *   *

“
Y
OU ACTUALLY DESTROYED
the brain tumors by restricting the patient's telomerase production?” asked one of the scientists at the dinner table. Like almost all of Colonel Dennis's research staff, he was a civilian: middle-aged, wiry, intense, wearing a flannel shirt and a bushy beard that made him look like a frontiersman. Appropriate, for this place, Luke thought.

Luke nodded patiently. He had heard the same question, in one form or another, at least four times during the course of the dinner.

They were seated at a long table in a room off the main mess hall area. The officers' club, Colonel Dennis had called it. The only other military officer at the table was a crisply uniformed captain who had not said a word all evening.

“How do you know the tumors won't start growing again?” asked another civilian.

Luke shrugged. “We'll keep the patient under careful observation, of course. But so far, so good.”

“Cancerous cells grow spontaneously in the body all the time,” said another of the men. “The immune system destroys them before they get big enough to cause trouble.”

“Usually,” said Colonel Dennis, “but not always.”

“The patient,” Luke said, lapsing into the impersonal style of medical reports, “was born with only one p53 in her genome. We've inserted a second p53, to bring her immune system up to normal.”

That led to a dozen questions on how the gene was inserted into the patient's cells. By the time dessert was finished, Luke was feeling very much at home with these researchers.

Except for one, a broomstick-thin man with a wild thatch of black hair and an impressive mustache. The colonel had introduced him as Nicholas Pappagannis, a biochemist.

Shaking his head dolorously, Pappagannis said, “You may think you've beaten the cancer, but the disease is insidious, you know.”

“I know,” Luke agreed.

“It will find a way to beat you, wait and see.”

The table fell silent. Luke felt a sudden flare of anger. “That's what we're doing now,” he said tightly. “Waiting and watching.”

“Don't take Nick too seriously,” Colonel Dennis said lightly. “He's our resident pessimist.”

Pappagannis forced a smile. “That's right. I try to keep all these optimists from thinking too highly of themselves.”

*   *   *

O
UT IN THE
mess hall, Tamara, Angela, and her father were sitting at one end of a mostly empty long table, enjoying fresh-baked peach pie for dessert. Angie was picking up the last crumbs from her plate between her thumb and forefinger.

“You must have enjoyed that,” said Tamara, smiling at the child.

“Could I have seconds?” Angela asked.

Del frowned at his daughter. “You know the rule, Angel.”

Tamara thought otherwise, but decided not to contradict the child's father. Very gently, she said, “I don't think it would be a good idea, Angie.”

Looking disappointed, Angela said, “I guess not.”

Edward Novack pulled up a chair next to Tamara and sat down, uninvited. “Good-looking woman like you shouldn't be dining alone,” he said, with a grin.

“I'm not alone,” Tamara said coldly, nodding toward Angela, at her other side, and Del, across the table. “Besides, we're finished.” To Angela, she said, “Come on, Angie, let's go back to our place.”

Novack got to his feet alongside her. “That's not very sociable.”

Del rose, too, glaring at him.

She turned away from him, but Novack grasped her wrist and made her face him. “You're going to be here for a long time, lady. You're going to get pretty damned lonesome.”