Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Shawbeck lifted his hand. “It probably will be us. I’ve got meetings scheduled with four CEOs tomorrow — Merck, Schering Plough, Lilly, Bristol-Myers,” he said. “Americol and Euricol next week. They want to talk sharing and subsidies. As if that isn’t enough, Dr. Gallo’s coming in this afternoon — he wants to have access to all of our research.”

“This has nothing to do with Hiy’ Augustine said.

“He claims there might be similar receptor activity. It’s a long shot, but he’s famous and he has a lot of clout on the Hill. And apparently he can help us with the French, now that they’re cooperating again.”

“How are we going to treat this, Frank? Hell, my people have found SHEVA in every ape from green monkeys to highland gorillas.”

“It’s too early for pessimism,” Shawbeck said. “It’s only been three months.”

“We have forty thousand confirmed cases of Herod’s on the Eastern Seaboard alone, Frank! There is nothing on the horizon!” Augustine pounded the whiteboard with his fist.

Shawbeck shook his head and held up both hands, making little shushing noises.

Augustine dropped his voice and let his shoulders slump. Then he picked up a cloth and meticulously wiped the edge of his hand where it had smeared across the ink on the board. “On the bright side, the message is getting out,” he said. “We’ve had two million hits on our Herod’s web site. But did you hear Audrey Korda on Larry King Live last night?”

“No,” Shawbeck said.

“She practically calls men devils incarnate. Says women could get along without us, that we should be put in quarantine… Pffi!” He shot out his hand. “No more sex, no more SHEVA.”

Shawbeck’s eyes glittered like little wet stones. “Maybe she’s right, Mark. Have you seen the surgeon general’s list of extreme measures?”

Augustine ran his hand back through his sandy hair. “I hope to hell it never leaks.”

Toothpaste dribbles lay like little blue tadpoles in the bottom of the sink. Kaye finished washing out her mouth, spat water in an arc to swirl the tadpoles down the drain, and wiped her face on a towel. She stood in the bathroom doorway and glanced down the long upstairs hall at the closed master bedroom door.

This was her last night in the house; she had slept in the guest bedroom. Another moving van — a small one — was arriving at eleven this morning to remove what few belongings she wanted to take with her. Caddy was adopting Crickson andTemin.

The house was up for sale. In a booming market, she would get top dollar. That at least was protected from their creditors. Saul had put the house in her name.

She chose her clothes for the day — plain white panties and bra, a blouse and cream sweater combination, pale blue slacks — and rolled the few items of wardrobe that hadn’t already been packed into a suitcase. She was weary of dealing with stuff, apportioning this and that to Saul’s sister, marking bags for Goodwill, other bags for trash.

It had taken Kaye almost a week to remove those marks of their life together that she did not want to take with her and that the real estate agent thought might “color” the place for potential buyers. She had gently explained about the detrimental effect of “All these science books, the journals…Too abstract. Too cold. Too much the wrong color.”

Kaye pictured snooty upper-class lookie-loos invading the house in critically mindless pairs, well-dressed in tweeds and penny loafers or draped silk and knee-length microfiber, shunning signs of true individuality or intellect, but finding hints of style from Sunday supplement magazines all too charming. Well, by itself, the house had plenty of that sort of charm. She and Saul had bought furniture and curtains and carpeting that did not overtly offend that sort of charm. Their own life, however, had to be expunged before the house could go on the market.

Their own life. Saul had ended his share of any more life. She was erasing the evidence of their time together; AKS was disbanding and scattering their professional life.

Mercifully, the agent had not mentioned Saul’s bloody incident.

How long would the guilt go on?She stopped herself going down the stairs and bit the ball of her thumb. No matter how many times she tired to jerk herself up short and get back on whatever track was left to her, she would wander off into a maze of associations, emotional paths to an even deeper un-happiness. The offer from the Herod’s Taskforce was a way back on a single track, her own new path, cool and solid. Nature’s oddities would help her heal the oddities of her own life, and that was bizarre, but it was also acceptable, believable; she could see her life working like that.

The doorbell chimed melodiously, “Eleanor Rigby.” Saul’s touch. Kaye finished the descent and opened the door. Judith Kushner stood on the porch, her face tight. “I came as soon as I saw a pattern,” Judith said. She wore a black wool skirt and black shoes and a white blouse, and her London Fog raincoat trailed its buckles on the step.

“Hello, Judith,” Kaye said, a little at a loss. Kushner grasped the door, glanced at her to ask a sort of permission to enter, and stepped into the house. She swung off her coat and draped it over a maple silent butler.

“By pattern, I mean that I called eight people I know, and Marge Cross has contacted all of them. She drove out personally to where they live, says she’s on her way to a business meeting somewhere — hell, five live around New York, so it’s a good excuse.”

“Marge Cross — of Americol?” Kaye asked.

“And Euricol, too. Don’t think she doesn’t pull all the strings overseas. Christ, Kaye, she’s a great big bull of a woman — she has Linda and Herb with her now! And they’re just the first.”

“Please, Judith, slow down.”

“Fiona was like a little mooncalf when I turned Cross down, I swear! But I hate this conglomerate shit. 1 hate it like fury. Call me a socialist — call me a child of the sixties—”

“Please,” Kaye said, holding up her hands to stem the torrent. “It’s going to take forever if you stay this angry.”

Kushner stopped and glared. “You’re smart, sweetie. You can figure it out.”

Kaye blinked for a second or two. “Marge Cross, Americol, wants a piece of SHEVA?”

“Not only can she fill her hospitals, she can supply directly with any drug ‘her’ team develops. Treatment programs exclusive to Americol-associated HMOs. Plus, she announces a blue-ribbon team, and her companies’ valuations go through the roof.”

“She wants me?”

“I got a call from Debra Kim. She said that Marge Cross was going to put her in a lab, house her SCID mice, buy out her patent rights on the cholera treatment — for a very fair figure, enough to make her wealthy. All before there is a treatment. Debra wanted to know what she should tell you.”

“Debra?” This was going much too fast for Kaye.

“Marge is a master at human psychology. I know. I went to medical school with her in the seventies. She took an MBA at the same time. Lots of energy, ugly as sin, no man trouble, extra time you and I might have wasted on dating…She jumped off the gurney in 1987, and now look at her.”

“What does she want with me?”

Kushner shrugged. “You’re a pioneer, you’re a celebrity — Hell, Saul’s made you a bit of a martyr, especially to women…Women who are going to come looking for treatment. You have great credentials, great publications, credibility just smeared all over you. I thought they might shoot the messenger, Kaye. Now I think they’re going to offer you the gold ring.”

“My God.” Kaye walked into the living room with the blank walls and sat on the freshly cleaned couch. The room smelled soapy, faintly piney, like a hospital.