Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

“Somebody tell me if I’m wrong.”

There was another excruciating silence.

“Damn it!” he barked. “There are reasons why we have safety rules in Level-5. You all are working with the most dangerous pathogen in existence. The whole world depends on you not fucking up. And you almost fucked up.”

“I’m sorry,” Vanderwagon blurted out. “I acted without thinking. All I could think of was that it could be me—”

“Fillson!” Scopes said abruptly.

The animal handler approached the screen, his hands twitching nervously, his pendulous lower lip moist.

“By failing to latch the cage properly, you caused incalculable harm. And you also failed to keep the quarantined animals’ nails trimmed, as per explicit instructions. You are, of course, fired. Furthermore, I have instructed our lawyers to initiate a civil lawsuit against you. If Brandon-Smith should die, her blood will be on your hands. In short, your unforgivable carelessness will haunt you legally, financially, and morally for the rest of your life. Mr. Marr, please see that Fillson is immediately escorted out of the premises and dropped off at Engle, to make his own way home.”

Mike Marr pushed himself away from the wall, a smile playing about his lips, and sauntered over.

“Mr. Scopes—Brent— please ,” Fillson began as Marr grasped him roughly by the arm and pulled him through the door.

“Susana?” Scopes said.

De Vaca remained silent.

Scopes shook his head. “I don’t want to fire you, but if you can’t see the mistake you made, I’ll have to. It’s too dangerous. More than one life was at stake back there. Do you understand?”

De Vaca dropped her head. “Yes. I understand,” she said finally.

Scopes turned to Vanderwagon. “I know that you and Susana both were motivated by decent human emotions. But you must have more discipline when dealing with a danger as great as this virus. Remember the phrase: ‘If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ You can’t let such emotions, no matter how well intended, get the better of your reason. You are scientists. We will examine the consequences, if any, of this incident on your bonus package at a later time.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vanderwagon.

“And you too, Susana. You’re both on probation for the next six weeks.”

She nodded.

“Guy Carson?”

“Yes,” Carson said.

“I’m more sorry than I can say that your experiment failed.”

Carson said nothing.

“But I am proud of the way you acted this morning. You could have joined the rush to free Brandon-Smith, but you didn’t. You stayed cool and used your head.”

Carson remained silent. He had done what he thought was right. But de Vaca’s withering insult, her branding him a murderer, had struck home. Somehow, hearing himself praised by Scopes like this, in front of everyone, made him uncomfortable.

Scopes sighed. Then he addressed the entire group. “Rosalind Brandon-Smith and Roger Czerny are receiving the best medical treatment possible, their suits have been resealed, and they are resting comfortably. They must remain in the quarantine unit for ninety-six hours. You all know the procedure and the reasons behind it. Level-5 will remain closed except to security and medical personnel until the crisis period is over. Any questions?”

There was a silence. “If they test X-FLU-positive—?” someone began.

A look of pain crossed Scopes’s face. “I don’t want to consider that possibility,” he said, and the screen went black with a pop of static.

“Get some sleep, Guy. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

Singer, looking drawn and haggard, sat at one of the rolling chairs in the Monitoring Station, his eyes glancing over a bank of black-and-white video screens. Over the last thirty-six hours Carson had returned time and again to the station, gazing at the images on the video screens, as if the sheer force of his will could bring the two scientists out of quarantine. Now he picked up his laptop, said a reluctant good-bye to Singer, and left the subdued blue glow of the station for the empty halls of the operations building. Sleep was impossible, and he allowed his feet to take him to one of the aboveground labs beyond the inner perimeter.

Sitting at a long table in the deserted lab, he went over the failed experiment again and again in his head. He’d recently been told that the escaped chimp had tested positive for X-FLU. He could hot forget, even for a moment, that if he had been successful this would not have been the case. To make things worse, the paternal, encouraging messages from Scopes had ceased. He had let everyone down.

And yet the inoculation should have worked. There was no flaw that he could find. All the preliminary tests had shown the virus altered in precisely the way he intended.

He powered up his computer and began listing the possible scenarios:

Possibility 1: An unknown mistake was made.

Answer: Repeat experiment.

Possibility 2: Dr. Burt got the gene locus wrong.

Answer: Find new locus, repeat experiment.

Possibility 3: Chimps already had dormant X-FLU when inoculated.

Answer: Monitor successive inoculatees for results.

Possibility 4: Viral product exposed to heat or some other mutagen.

Answer: Repeat experiment, taking paramount care with viral culture between gene splicing and in vivo trial.

It all boiled down to the same thing: repeat the damned experiment. But he knew he’d get the same results, because there was nothing that could be done any differently. Wearily, he called up Burt’s notes and began going through the sections that dealt with the mapping of the viral gene. It was superb work, and Carson could hardly see where Burt had gone wrong, but it was worth going over again anyway. Maybe he should remap the entire viral plasmid from scratch himself, a process that he knew would take at least two months. He thought of spending two more months locked up in the Fever Tank. He thought of Brandon-Smith, somewhere in quarantine at this very moment, deep in the Tank. He remembered the blood welling from her raked side, the expression of fear and disbelief on her face. He remembered standing there, watching, while the guards dragged her away.

He worked in front of a large picture window that looked out over the desert. It was his only consolation. From time to time he stared out, watching the afternoon sun grow golden on the yellow sands.

“Guy?” he heard a voice say behind him. It was de Vaca. He turned and found her standing in the door, in jeans and T-shirt, her lab coat slung over her arm.

“Need any help?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry about my comment in the Fever Tank.”

He turned away silently. Talking with this woman only ended in grief.

He heard a rustle as she moved closer.

“I came to apologize,” she said.

He sighed. “Apology accepted.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You still sound mad.”

Guy turned toward her. “It’s not just the comment in the Fever Tank. You bitch about everything I say.”

“You say a lot of stupid things,” de Vaca said, flaring up.

“That’s just what I mean. You didn’t come to apologize. You came to argue.”

There was a silence in the empty lab.

De Vaca stood up. “We can at least maintain a professional relationship. We’ve got to. I need that bonus for my clinic. So the experiment failed. We’ll try again.”

Carson looked at her, standing illuminated in the picture window, her violet eyes darting at him, her long black hair flowing wild down her back and shoulders. He found himself holding his breath, she was so beautiful. It took all the steam out of his anger.