18

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta

“Mr. Dicken, this isn’t a baby. It wasn’t ever going to be a baby.”

Dicken looked over the photos and analysis of the Crown City miscarriage. Tom Scarry’s battered old steel desk sat at the end of a small room with pale blue walls, filled with computer terminals, adjacent to Scarry’s viral pathology lab in Building 15. The top of the desk was littered with computer disks, photos, and folios filled with papers. Somehow, Scarry managed to keep his projects sorted; he was one of the best tissue analysts in the CDC.

“What is it, then?” Dicken asked.

“It may have started out as a fetus, but nearly all the internal organs are severely underdeveloped. The spine hasn’t closed—spina bifida would be one interpretation, but in this case, there’s a whole series of nerves branching to a follicular mass in what would otherwise be the abdominal cavity.”

“Follicular?”

“Like an ovary. But containing only about a dozen eggs.”

Dicken drew his brows together. Scarry’s pleasant drawl matched a friendly face, but his smile was sad.

“So—it would have been a female?” Dicken asked.

“Christopher, this fetus miscarried because it is the most screwed up arrangement of cellular material I’ve ever seen. Abortion was a major act of mercy. It might have been female—but something went very wrong in the first week of the pregnancy.”

“I don’t understand—”

“The head is severely malformed. The brain is just a nubbin of tissue at the end of a shortened spinal cord. There is no jaw. The eye sockets are open at the side, like a kitten’s. The skull looks more like a lemur’s, what there is of it. No brain function would have been possible after the first three weeks. No metabolism could have been established after the first month. This thing functions as an organ drawing sustenance, but it has no kidneys, a very small liver, no stomach or intestines to speak of...A kind of heart, but again, very small. The limbs are just little fleshy buttons. It’s not much more than an ovary with a blood supply. Where in hell did this come from?”

“Crown City Hospital,” Dicken said. “But don’t spread that around.”

“My lips are sealed. How many of these have they had?”

“A few,” Dicken said.

“I’d start looking for a major source of teratogens. Forget thalidomide. Whatever caused this is pure nightmare.”

“Yeah,” Dicken said, and pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “One last question.”

“Fine. Then get it out of here and let me get back to a normal existence.”

“You say it has an ovary. Would the ovary function?”

“The eggs were mature, if that’s what you’re asking. And one follicle appears to have ruptured. I said that in my analysis...” He nipped back sheets from the paper and pointed, impatient and a little cross, more with Nature than him, Dicken thought. “Right here.”

“So we have a fetus that ovulated before it was miscarried?” Dicken asked, incredulous.

“I doubt it got that far.”

“We don’t have the placenta,” Dicken said.

“If you get one, don’t bring it to me,” Scarry said. “I’m spooked enough. Oh—one more thing. Dr. Branch dropped off her tissue assay this morning.” Scarry pushed a single paper across the desk, lifting it delicately to clear the other material.

Dicken picked it up. “Christ.”

“You think SHEVA could have done this?” Scarry asked, tapping the analysis.

Branch had found high levels of SHEVA particles in the fetal tissue—well over a million particles per gram. The particles had suffused the fetus, or whatever they might call the bizarre growth; only in the follicular mass, the ovary, were they virtually absent. She had posted a small note at the end of the page.

These particles contain less than 80,000 nucleotides of single-stranded RNA. They all are associated with an unidentified 12,000+ kilodalton protein complex in the host cell nucleus. The viral genome demonstrates substantial homology with SHEVA. Talk to my office. I’d like to obtain fresher samples for accurate PCR and sequencing.

“Well?” Scarry persisted. “Is this caused by SHEVA or not?”

“Maybe,” Dicken said.

“Does Augustine have what he needs now?”

Word spread fast at 1600 Clifton Road.

“Not a peep to anyone, Tom,” Dicken said. “I mean it.”

“No suh, massa.” Scarry zipped his lips with a finger.

Dicken shuffled the report and the analysis into a folder and glanced at his watch. It was six o’clock. There was a possibility Augustine was still in his office.

Six more hospitals in the Atlanta area, part of Dicken’s network, were reporting high rates of miscarriage, with similar fetal remnants. More and more were testing for, and finding, SHEVA in the mothers.

That was something the surgeon general would definitely want to know.