“Whoa. I didn’t say that.” Freedman took his cup and disposed of it for him. “It expresses, it spreads, it infects. That’s a disease, wherever it comes from.”
“Ben Tice has analyzed two hundred rejected fetuses. Every single one of them contained a large follicular mass, similar to an ovary but containing only about twenty follicles. Every single one—”
“I know, Christopher. Three or fewer erupted follicles. He sent me his report last night.”
“Marian, the placentas are tiny, the amnion is just a thin little sack, and after the miscarriage, which is incredibly easy — many of the women don’t even feel pain — they don’t even shed their endometrium. It’s as if they’re still pregnant.”
Freedman was becoming very agitated. “Please, Christopher—”
Two other researchers, both young black men, came in, recognized Dicken, though they had not yet met, nodded greetings, then went to the refrigerator. Freedman lowered her voice.
“Christopher, I am not going to stand between you and Mark Augustine when the sparks fly. Yes, you’ve shown that the Georgian victims had SHEVA in their tissues. But their babies were not these misshapen egg-case things. They were normally developing fetuses.”
“I would love to get one of them for analysis.”
“Take it somewhere else, then. We are not a criminal lab, Christopher. I’ve got one hundred and twenty-three people here and thirty vervets and twelve chimpanzees and we are dedicated to a very focused mission. We are exploring endogenous virus expression in simian tissues. That’s it.” She spoke these last words in a low whisper to Dicken near the door. Then, more loudly, “So come and take a look at what we’ve done.”
She led Dicken through a small maze of cubicle offices, each with its own little flat-screen display. They passed several women in white lab coats and a technician in green overalls. The air smelled of antiseptic until Marian opened the steel door to the main animal lab. Then, Dicken smelled the old-bread smell of monkey chow, the tang of urine and feces, and again, the smells of soap and disinfectant.
She brought him into a large concrete-walled room with three female chimpanzees, each in separate sealed plastic and steel enclosures. Each enclosure was supplied with air by its own ventilation system. A lab worker had inserted a bar clamper into the nearest enclosure, and the chimp was busily trying to push past the restraining steel posts. Slowly, the clamper closed, ratcheted down by the worker, who waited, whistling tunelessly, as the chimp finally acquiesced. The clamper held her almost flat; she could no longer bite, and only one arm waved through the bars, away from where the lab technician was going to do her work.
Marian watched, face blank, as the restrained chimp was withdrawn from the enclosure. The clamper swung around on rubber wheels and a technician took blood and vaginal swabs. The chimp shrieked protests and grimaced. Both the worker and the technician ignored her shrieks.
Marian approached the clamper and touched the chimp’s extended hand. “There, Kiki. There, girl. That’s my girl. We’re sorry, sweety.”
The chimp’s fingers brushed Marian’s palm repeatedly. The chimp grimaced and squirmed but no longer shrieked. When she was returned to her enclosure, Marian swiveled to face the worker and the technician.
“I’ll can the next son of a bitch that treats these animals as if they’re machines,” she said in a low, harsh growl. “You understand? She’s socializing. She’s been violated and she wants to touch somebody to feel reassured. You’re the closest thing she’s got to friends and family. Understand me?”
The worker and technician sheepishly apologized.
Marian steamed past Dicken and jerked her head for him to follow.
“I’m sure it’s going great,” Dicken said, distressed by the scene. “I trust you implicitly, Marian.”
Marian sighed. “Then come back to my office and let’s talk some more there.”
The corridor back to the office was empty, doors closed at both ends. Dicken made broad gestures as he spoke. “I’ve got Ben on my side. He thinks this is a significant event, not just a disease.”
“So will he go up against Augustine? All our funding is predicated on finding a treatment, Christopher! If it isn’t a disease, why find a treatment? People are unhappy, sick, and they think they’re losing babies.”
“These rejected fetuses aren’t babies, Marian.”
“Then what in hell are they? I have to go with what I know, Christopher. If we get all theoretical—”
“I’m canvassing,” Dicken said. “I want to know what you think.”
Marian stood behind her desk, put her hands on the Formica top, tapped her short fingernails. She looked exasperated. “I am a geneticist and a molecular biologist. I don’t know shit about much else. It takes me five hours each night just to read a hundredth of what I need to keep up in my own field.”
“Have you logged on to MedWeb? Bionet? Virion?”
“I don’t get on the net much except to get my mail.”
“Virion is a little informal netzine out of Palo Alto. Private subscription only. It’s run by Kiril Maddox.”
“I know. I dated Kiril at Stanford.”
This brought Dicken up short. “I didn’t know that.”
“Don’t tell anybody, please! He was a brilliant and subversive little shmuck even then.”
“Scout’s honor. But you should check it out. There are thirty anonymous postings there. Kiril assures me they’re all legitimate researchers. The buzz is not about disease or treatment.”
“Yes, and when they go public, I’ll join you and march in to Augustine’s office.”
“Promise?”
“Not on your life! I am not a brilliant researcher with an international reputation to protect. I’m an assembly-line kind of gal with split ends and a lousy sex life who loves her work and wants to keep her job.”
Dicken rubbed the back of his neck. “Something’s up. Something really big. I need a list of good people to back me when I tell Augustine.”
“Try and set him straight, you mean. He will kick your ass right out of CDC.”
“I don’t think so. I hope not.” Then, with a twinkle and a squint, Dicken asked, “How do you know? Did you date Augustine, too?”
“He was a medical student,” Freedman said. “I stayed the hell away from medical students.”
Jessie’s Cougar was half a flight down from the street, fronted by a small neon sign, a cast faux-wood plaque, and a polished brass handrail. Inside the long, narrow showroom, a burly man in a fake tux and black pants served beer and wine at tiny wooden tables, and seven or eight naked women, one after another, made generally unenthusiastic attempts to dance on a small stage.
A small hand-lettered sign on a music stand beside the empty cage said that the cougar was sick this week, so Jessie wouldn’t be performing. Pictures of the limp cat and its pumped-up, smiling blond mistress lined the wall behind the small bar.
The room was cramped, barely ten feet across, and smoky, and Dicken felt bad the moment he sat down. He looked around the gawker’s side of the floor and saw older men in business suits in groups of two or three, young men in denims, alone, all white, nursing beers in small glasses.
A man in his late forties approached a dancer just going off stage and whispered something to her and she nodded. He and his companions then filed off to a back room for some private entertainment.
Dicken had not had more than a couple of hours to himself in a month. By chance, he had this evening free, no social connections, nowhere to go but a small room at the Holiday Inn, so he had walked to the club district, past numerous police cars and a few beat cops on bike and on foot. He had spent a few minutes in a big chain bookstore, found the prospect of spending his free night just reading almost unbearable, and his feet had moved him automatically where he knew he had intended to go in the first place, if only to look upon a woman he was not connected with by business.