Kaye held out her thumb and forefinger and spaced them an inch apart, then raised and lowered them rhythmically. “Test tube exercises,” she said.

“Right brain, left brain,” Saul rejoined, grabbing his temples and shifting his head from side to side. “You’ve got three weeks’ worth of Internet jokes to catch up on.”

“Poor me,” Kaye said.

“Breakfast!” Saul shouted, and swung his legs out of bed. “Downstairs, fresh, waiting to be reheated.”

Kaye followed him in her dressing gown. Saul is back, she tried to convince herself. My good Saul is back.

He had stopped by the local grocery to pick up ham-and-cheese stuffed croissants. He arranged their plates between cups of coffee and orange juice on the little table on the back porch. The sun was bright, the air was clean after the squall and warming nicely. It was going to be a lovely day.

For Kaye, with every hour of good Saul, the lure of the mountains faded like a girlish hope. She did not need to get away. Saul chattered about what had been happening at EcoBacter, about his trip to California and Utah and then Philadelphia to confer with their client and partner labs. “We have four more preclinical tests mandated by our caseworker at the PDA,” he said sardonically. “But at least we’ve shown them we can put antagonistic bacteria together in resource competition and force them to make chemical weapons. We’ve demonstrated we can isolate the bacteriocins, purify them, produce them in neutralized form in bulk — then activate them. Safe in rats, safe in hamsters and vervets, effective against resistant strains of three nasty pathogens. We’re so far ahead of Merck and Aventis they can’t even spit at our butts.”

Bacteriocins were chemicals produced by bacteria that could kill other bacteria. They were a promising new weapon in a rapidly weakening arsenal of antibiotics.

Kaye listened happily. He had not yet told her the news he had promised; he was building to that moment in his own way, taking his own sweet time. Kaye knew the drill and did not give him the satisfaction of appearing eager.

“If that wasn’t enough,” he continued, his eyes bright, “Mkebe says we’re close to finding a way to gum up the whole command and control and communication network in Staphylococcus aureus. We’ll attack the little buggers from three different directions at once. Boom!” He pulled back his eloquent hands and wrapped his arms around himself like a satisfied little boy. Then his mood changed.

“Now,” Saul said, and his face went suddenly blank. “Give it to me straight about Lado and Eliava.”

Kaye stared at him for a moment with an intensity that almost crossed her eyes. Then she glanced down and said, “I think they’ve decided to go with someone else.”

“Mr. Bristol-Myers Squibb,” Saul said, and lifted a rolling and waving hand in dismissal. “Fossil corporate architecture versus young new blood. They are so wrong.” He gazed across the yard at the sound, squinted at a few sailboats dodging small whitecaps in the light morning breezes. Then he finished his orange juice and smacked his lips dramatically. He fairly wriggled in the chair, leaned forward, fixed her with his deep gray eyes, and clasped her hands in his.

This is it, Kaye thought.

“They will regret it. In the next few months we are going to be so busy. The CDC just broke the news this morning. They have confirmed the existence of the first viable human endogenous retrovirus. They’ve shown that it can be transmitted laterally between individuals. They call it Scattered Human Endogenous Retro Virus Activation, SHERVA. They dropped the R for dramatic effect. That makes it SHEVA. Good name for a virus, don’t you think?”

Kaye searched his face. “No joke?” she asked, voice unsteady. “It’s confirmed?”

Saul grinned and held up his arms like Moses. “Absolutely. Science marches on to the promised land.”

“What is it? How big is it?”

“It’s a retrovirus, a true monster, eighty-two kilobases, thirty genes. Its gag andpol components are on chromosome 14, and its env is on chromosome 17. The CDC says it may be a mild pathogen, and humans show little or no resistance, so its been buried for a very long time.”

He placed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “You predicted it, Kaye. You described the genes. Your prime candidate, a broken HERV-DL3, is the one they’re targeting, and they are using your name. They’ve cited your papers.”

“Wow,” Kaye said, her face going pale. She leaned over her plate, the blood pounding in her head.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, feeling dizzy.

“Let’s enjoy our privacy while we can,” Saul said triumphantly. “Every science reporter is going to be calling. I give them about two minutes to go through their Rolodexes and search MedLine. You’ll be on TV, CNN, Good Morning America!’

Kaye simply could not wrap belief around this turn of events. “What kind of illness does it cause?” she managed to ask.

“Nobody seems clear on that.”

Kaye’s mind buzzed with possibilities. If she called Lado at the institute, told Tamara and Zamphyra — they might change their minds, go with EcoBacter. Saul would stay good Saul, happy and productive.

“My God, we’re hot shit,” Kaye said, still feeling a little woozy. She lifted her fingers, la di da.

“You’re the one who’s hot, my dear. It’s your work, and it ain’t shit.”

The phone rang in the kitchen.

“That’ll be the Swedish Academy,” Saul said, nodding sagely. He held up the medallion and Kaye took a bite out ofit.

“Bull!” she said happily, and went to answer.

11

Innsbruck, Austria

The hospital gave Mitch a private room as a show of respect for his newfound notoriety. He was just as glad to get away from the mountaineers — but it hardly mattered how he felt or what he thought.

An almost total emotional numbness had stolen over him in the past two days. Seeing his picture on the television news, on the BBC and Sky World, and in the local papers, proved what he knew already; it was over. He was finished.

According to the Zurich press, he was the “Sole Survivor of Body-Snatching Mountain Expedition.” In Munich, he was “Kidnapper of Ancient Ice Baby.” In Innsbruck, he was called simply “Scientist/Thief.” All reported his preposterous story of Neandertal mummies, helpfully relayed by the police in Innsbruck. All told of his stealing “American Indian Bones” in the “Northwest United States.”

He was widely described as an American crackpot, down on his luck, desperate to get publicity.

The Ice Baby had been transferred to the University of Innsbruck, where it was being studied by a team headed by Herr Doktor Professor Emiliano Luria. Luria himself was coming later in the afternoon to speak with Mitch about the find.

So long as Mitch had information they needed, he was still in the loop — he was still a kind of scientist, investigator, anthropologist. He was more than just a thief. When his usefulness was over, then would come the deeper, darker vacuum.

He stared blankly at the wall as an elderly woman volunteer pushed a wheeled cart into his room to deliver his lunch. She was a cheerful, dwarfish woman about five feet tall, in her seventies, with a wizened apple face, and she spoke in rapid German with a soft Viennese accent. Mitch couldn’t understand much of what she said.

The elderly volunteer unfolded his napkin and tucked it into his gown. She pressed her lips together and leaned back to examine him. “Eat,” she advised. She frowned and added, “One damned young American, neinl I do not care who you are. Eat or sickness comes.”

Mitch picked up the plastic fork, saluted her with it, and began to pick at the chicken and mashed potatoes on the plate. As the old woman left, she switched on the television mounted on the wall opposite his bed. “Too damned quiet,” she said, and waved her hand back and forth in his direction, delivering a chiding, long-distance slap to his face. Then she pushed the cart through the door.