Kaye walked into Lab 6, where she did most of her research. She had handed off her bacteriocin studies a month ago to some postdocs in Lab 5. This lab was being used by Kirn’s assistants for the time being, but they were at a conference in Houston, and the lab had been closed, the lights turned off.

When she wasn’t working on antibiotics, her favorite subjects had been Henle 407 cultures, derived from intestinal cells; she had used them to meticulously study aspects of mammalian genomes and to locate potentially active HERV. Saul had encouraged her, perhaps foolishly; she could have focused completely on the bacteriocin research, but Saul had assured her she was a golden girl. Anything she touched would advance the company.

Now, lots of glory, but no money.

The biotech industry was unforgiving at best. Maybe she and Saul simply did not have what it took.

Kaye sat in the middle of the lab on a rolling chair that had somehow lost a wheel. She leaned to one side, hands on her knees and tears slicking her cheeks. A small and persistent voice in the back of her head told her that this could not go on. The same voice continued to warn her that she had made bad choices in her personal life, but she could not imagine how she could have done otherwise. Despite everything, Saul was not her enemy; far from being a brutal or abusive man, he was simply a victim of tragic biological imbalances. His love for her was pure enough.

What had started her tears was this treasonous inner voice that insisted that she should get out of this situation, abandon Saul, start over again; no better time. She could get work in a university lab, apply for funding for a pure research project that suited her, escape this damned and very literal rat race.

Yet Saul had been so loving, so right when she had returned from Georgia. The paper on evolution had seemed to rekindle his interest in science over profit. Then…the setbacks, the discouragement, the downward spiral. Bad Saul.

She did not want to face again what had happened eight months ago. Saul’s worst breakdown had tested her own limits. His attempted suicides — two of them — had left her exhausted, and, more than she cared to admit, embittered. She had fantasized about living with other men, calm and normal men, men closer to her own age.

Kaye had never told Saul about these wishes, these dreams; she wondered if perhaps she needed to see her own psychiatrist, but she had decided against it. Saul had spent tens of thousands of dollars on psychiatrists, had gone through five regimens of drug therapy, had once suffered complete loss of sexual function and weeks of being unable to think clearly. For him, the miracle drugs did not work.

What did they have left, what did she have left in the way of reserves, if the tide turned again and she lost Good Saul? Being around Saul in the bad times had eaten at some other reserve — a spiritual reserve, generated during her childhood, when her parents had told her, You are responsible for your life, your behavior. God has given you certain gifts, beautiful tools…

She knew she was good; once, she had been autonomous, strong, inner-directed, and she wanted to feel that way again.

Saul had an outwardly healthy body, and intellectually a fine mind, yet there were times when, through no fault of his own, he could not control his existence. What then did this say about God and the ineffable soul, the self? That so much could be skewed by mere chemicals…

Kaye had never been too strong on the God thing, on faith; the crime scenes in Brooklyn had stretched her belief in any sort of fairy-tale religion; stretched it, then broke it.

But the last of her spiritual conceits, the last tie she had to a world of ideals, was that you controlled your own behavior.

She heard someone come into the lab. The light was switched on. The broken chair scraped as she turned. It was Kirn.

“ Hereyou are!” Kim said, her face pale. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Where else would I be?” Kaye asked.

Kim held out a portable lab phone. “It’s from your house.”

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.