21

Washington, D.C.

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.

“It’s in the stats,” Dicken countered. “We checked this out very thoroughly. It’s transmitted from males to their female partners, over a fairly long exposure. Homosexual men do not transmit it to their partners. If there is no heterosexual contact, it is not passed along. It’s a sexually transmitted disease, but a selective one.”

“Christ,” Shawbeck said, whether in doubt or awe, Dicken could not tell.

“We’ll accept that for now,” the surgeon general said. “What’s made SHEVA come out now?”

“Obviously, SHEVA and humans have an old relationship,” Dicken said. “It might be the human equivalent of a lysogenic phage. In bacteria, lysogenic phages express themselves when the bacteria are subjected to stimuli that could be interpreted as life-threatening—stress, as it were. Maybe SHEVA reacts to things that cause stress in humans. Overcrowding. Social conditions. Radiation.”

Augustine shot him a warning glance.

“We’re a hell of a lot more complicated than bacteria,” he concluded.

“You think SHEVA is expressing now because of overpopulation?” Kirby asked.

“Perhaps, but that isn’t my point,” Dicken said. “Lysogenic phages can sometimes serve a symbiotic function. They help bacteria adapt to new conditions and even new sources of nutrition or opportunity by swapping genes. What if SHEVA serves a useful function in us?”

“By keeping the population down?” Shawbeck ventured skeptically. “The stress of overpopulation causes us to express little abortion experts? Wow.”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” Dicken said, nervously wiping his hands on his pants. Kirby saw this, looked up coolly, a little embarrassed for him.

“Who does know?” she asked.

“Kaye Lang,” Dicken said.

Augustine made a small gesture with his hand, unseen by the surgeon general; Dicken was on very thin ice. They had not discussed this earlier.

“She does seem to have gotten a leg up on SHEVA before everybody else,” Kirby said. Her eyes wide, she leaned forward over her desk and gave him a challenging look. “But Christopher, how did you know that...Way back in August, in the Republic of Georgia? Your hunter’s intuition?”

 “I had read her papers,” Dicken said. “What she wrote about was intrinsically fascinating.”

“I’m curious. Why did Mark send you to Georgia and Turkey?” Kirby asked.

“I seldom send Christopher anywhere,” Augustine said. “He has a wolf’s instincts when it comes to finding our kind of prey.”

Kirby kept her gaze on Dicken.

“Don’t be shy, Christopher. Mark had you out scouting for a scary disease. I admire that—like preventive medicine applied to politics. And in Georgia, you encountered Ms. Kaye Lang, by accident?”

“There’s a CDC office in Tbilisi,” Augustine said, trying to be helpful.

“An office that Mr. Dicken did not visit, even for a social call,” the surgeon general said, brows coming together.

“I went looking for her. I admired her work.”

“And you said nothing to her.”

“Nothing substantive.”

Kirby sat back in her seat and looked to Augustine. “Can we bring her in?” she asked.

“She’s having some problems,” Augustine said.

“What kind of problems?” she asked.

“Her husband is missing, probably a suicide,” Augustine said.

“That was over a month ago,” Dicken said.

“There seems to be more trouble in store. Before he disappeared, her husband sold their company out from under her, to pay off an investment of venture capital she apparently did not know about.”

Dicken had not heard about this. Obviously, Augustine had been conducting his own probe on Kaye Lang.

“Jesus,” Shawbeck said. “So, she’s what, a wreck, we leave her alone until she heals?”

“If we need her, we need her,” Kirby said. “Gentlemen, I don’t like the feel of this one. Call it a woman’s intuition, having to do with ovaries and such. I want all the expert advice we can get. Mark?”

“I’ll call her,” Augustine said, giving in with uncharacteristic speed. He had read the breeze, saw the windsock swinging; Dicken had won a point.

“Do that,” Kirby said, and swiveled in her chair to face Dicken dead on. “Christopher, for the life of me, I still think you’re hiding something. What is it?”

Dicken smiled and shook his head. “Nothing solid.”

“Oh?” Kirby raised her eyebrows. “The best virus man in the NCID? Mark says he relies on your nose.”

“Sometimes Mark is too damned candid,” Augustine said.

“Yeah,” Kirby said. “Christopher should be candid, too. What’s your nose say?”

Dicken was a little dismayed by the surgeon general’s question, and reluctant to show his cards while his hand was still weak. “SHEVA is very, very old,” he reiterated.

“And?”

“I’m not sure it’s a disease.”

Shawbeck released a quiet snort of dubiety.

“Go on,” Kirby encouraged.

“It’s an old part of human biology. It’s been in our DNA since long before humans existed. Maybe it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.”

“Kill babies?” Shawbeck suggested tartly.

“Regulate some larger, species-level function.”

“Let’s go with what’s solid,” Augustine suggested quickly. “SHEVA is Herod’s. It causes gross birth defects and miscarriages.”

“The connection is strong enough for me,” Kirby said. “I think I can sell the president and Congress.”

“I agree,” Shawbeck said. “With some deep concerns, however. I wonder if all this mystery could catch up to us down the road a ways and bite us in the butt.”

Dicken felt some relief. He had almost blown the game but had managed to hold back an ace to play later; traces of SHEVA from the corpses in Georgia. The results had just come back from Maria Konig at the University of Washington.

“I’m seeing the president tomorrow,” the surgeon general said. “I have ten minutes with him. Get me the domestic stats on paper, ten copies, full color.”

SHEVA would soon become an official crisis. In the politics of health, a crisis tended to be resolved using familiar science and bureaucratically tried and true routines. Until the situation showed its true strangeness, Dicken did not think anybody would believe his conclusions. He could hardly believe them himself.

Outside, under felt-colored skies, a dull November afternoon, Augustine opened the door to the government Lincoln and said, over the roof, “Whenever anyone asks you what you really think, what do you do?”

“Go with the flow,” Dicken said.

“You got it, boy genius.”

Augustine drove. Despite Dicken’s near fumble, Augustine seemed happy enough with the meeting. “She’s only got six weeks left before she retires. She’s taking my name in to the White House chief of staff as a suggested replacement.”

“Congratulations,” Dicken said.

“With Shawbeck as a very close backup,” Augustine added. “But this could do it, Christopher. This could be the ticket.”