Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Then she left the house and drove the car to EcoBacter. The building was mostly empty by dinnertime, and she was not hungry. She used her key to open the small side office where Saul had placed a cot and blankets, then hesitated a moment before opening the door. She pushed it slowly inward.

The small windowless room was dark and empty and cool. It smelled clean. Everything in order.

Kaye undressed and got under the beige wool blanket and crisp white sheets.

That morning, early, before dawn, she awoke in a sweat, shivering, not ill, but horrified by the specter of her new self, a widow .

The reporters finally found Mitch at Heathrow. Sam sat across from him at a small table in the court around the open seafood bar while five of them, two females and three males, clustered just outside a low barrier of plastic plants surrounding the eating area and peppered him with questions. Curious and irritated travelers watched from the other tables, or brushed past carting their luggage.

“Were you the first to confirm they were prehistoric?” the older woman asked, camera clutched in one hand. She selfconsciously pushed back wisps of hennaed hair, her eyes twitching left and right, finally zeroing in on Mitch for his answer.

Mitch picked at his shrimp cocktail.

“Do you think they have any connection with Pasco man in the U.S.A.?” asked one of the males, obviously hoping to provoke.

Mitch could not tell the three men apart. They were all in their thirties, dressed in rumpled black suits, carrying steno pads and digital recorders.

“That was your last debacle, wasn’t it?”

“Were you deported from Austria?” another man asked.

“How much did the dead climbers pay you to keep their secret? What were they going to charge for the mummies?”

Mitch leaned back and stretched ostentatiously, then smiled. The hennaed female duly recorded this. Sam shook his head, hunkered down as if under a rain cloud.

“Ask me about the infant,” Mitch said.

“What infant?”

“Ask me about the baby. The normal baby.”

“How many sites did you plunder?” Henna-hair asked cheerily.

“We found the baby in the cave with its parents,” Mitch said, and stood, pushing back the cast-iron chair with an ugly scraping sound. “Dad, let’s go.”

“Fine,” Sam said.

“Whose cave? The cavemen’s cave?” the middle male asked.

“Caveman and cavewoman,” the younger woman corrected.

“Do you think they kidnapped it?” Henna-hair asked, licking her lips.

“Kidnapped a baby, killed it, carried it for food perhaps into the Alps…Got caught in a storm, died!” Left-side-male enthused.

“What a story that would be!” Number-three-male, on the left, said.

“Ask the scientists,” Mitch said, and worked his way to the counter on crutches to pay the check.

“They give out news like it was holy dispensation!” the younger woman shouted after them.

Dicken sat beside Mark Augustine in the office of the surgeon general, Doctor Maxine Kirby. Kirby was of medium height, stout, with discerning almond eyes set in chocolate skin that bore only a few character lines and belied her six decades; those lines had deepened in the last hour, however.

It was eleven P.M. and they had gone through the details twice now. For the third time, the laptop automatically cycled through its slide show of charts and definitions, but only Dicken was watching.

Frank Shawbeck, deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, returned to the room through the heavy gray door after having made a visit to the lavatory down the hall. Everyone knew that Kirby did not like others using her private washroom.

The surgeon general stared up at the ceiling and Augustine gave Dicken a small, quick scowl, concerned that the presentation had not been convincing.

She lifted her hand. “Shut that down, please, Christopher. My brain is spinning.” Dicken hit the ESCAPE key on the laptop and turned off the overhead projector. Shawbeck turned up the office lights and shoved his hands into his pockets. He took a position of loyal support on the corner of Kirby’s broad maple desk.

“These domestic stats,” Kirby said, “all from area hospitals — that’s a strong point, it’s happening in the neighborhood…and we’re still getting reports from other cities, other states.”

“All the time,” Augustine confirmed. “We’re trying to be as quiet as we can, but—”

“They’re getting suspicious.” Kirby grabbed hold of her index finger and stared at a chipped, painted nail. The nail was teal blue. The surgeon general was sixty-one years old, but she wore teenager’s enamel on her nails. “It’ll be on the news any minute now. SHEVA is more than just a curiosity. It’s the same as Herod’s flu. Herod’s causes mutations and miscarriages. By the way, that name…”

“Maybe a bit on the nose,” Shawbeck said. “Who made it up?”

“I did,” Augustine said.

Shawbeck was acting watchdog. Dicken had seen him play the adversary with Augustine before, and never knew how genuine the role was.

“Well, Frank, Mark, is this my ammunition?” Kirby asked. Before they could answer, she made an approving and speculative face, pouching out her lips, and said, “It’s damned scary.”

“It is that,” Augustine said.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Kirby said. “Something pops out of our genes and makes monster babies…with a single huge ovary? Mark, what in hell ?”

“We don’t know what the etiology is, ma’am,” Augustine said. “We’re way behind, down to minimum staff on any single project as it is.”

“We’re asking for more money, Mark. You know that. But the mood in Congress is ugly. I do not want to be caught in anything like a false alarm.”

“Biologically, the work is top notch. Politically, this is a ticking bomb,” Augustine said. “If we don’t go public soon—”

“Damn it, Mark,” Shawbeck said, “we have no direct connection! People who get this flu — all of their tissues are suffused with SHEVA, for weeks after! What if the viruses are old and weak and don’t have any oomph? They express because, what,” he waved his hand, “there’s less ozone and we’re all getting more UV or something, like herpes coming out in a lip sore? Maybe they’re harmless, maybe they have nothing to do with the miscarriages.”

“I don’t think it’s coincidence,” Kirby said. “The figures look too close. What I want to know is, why doesn’t the body eat up these viruses, shed them?”

“Because they’re released continuously for months,” Dicken said. “Whatever the body does with them, they’re still being expressed by different tissues.”

“Which tissues?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Augustine said. “We’re looking at bone marrow and lymph.”

“There’s absolutely no sign of viremia,” Dicken said. “No swelling of the spleen and lymph nodes. Viruses all over, but no extreme reaction.” He rubbed his cheek nervously. “I’d like to go over something again.”

The surgeon general returned her gaze to him, and Shaw-beck and Augustine, seeing her focus, grew quiet.

Dicken pulled his chair forward a couple of inches. “The women get SHEVA from steady male partners. Women who are single — women without committed partners — don’t get SHEVA.”

“That’s stupid,” Shawbeck said, his face curled in disgust. “How in hell does a disease know whether a woman is shacked up with somebody or not?” It was Kirby’s turn to frown. Shawbeck apologized. “But you know what I mean,” he said defensively.