Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman (3 page)

Amy Slencik looked up from the pan of frying chicken. "Aw, Harry, come on. We just
bought
it last spring."

"It ain't pumpin' water."

"But it's
got
to." The woman's alarm was real and intense. "Harry, it was 110 out in that sun today, and the dirt in the garden is bone-dry. Another day or two and everything we planted will be down the tube."

"What we need is some rain," Harry said.

"Rain, hell! We aren't going to have any rain now until the snow flies, and you know it. What we need is those spuds out there." She sat down with him at the little kitchen table. "Harry, with that underground wiring contract you've got going there in Bozeman, we're in right up to the neck. Every dime we've got is tied up in that job. You've got payrolls to meet every Friday and cash to pay for materials, and meanwhile the damned city waits six months to pay off your invoices. We couldn't borrow another ten bucks at the bank right now even if we wanted to pay their interest rates. So what do you think we're going to
eat
this fall? We need those spuds."

"I know, I know." Harry sighed. "I'll take the pump apart tomorrow, see if I can find what's wrong with it. Either something's jammed in the intake pipe or one of the impellers has gone squat. But I'll get it fixed."

"Well, you'd better. And we'd better get some venison this fall, too. Both of us. Unless you want to eat nothing but chicken all winter." She gave him a little shove. "Now go get yourself a short one. Dinner'll be ready in fifteen minutes."

Harry poured a little whiskey and walked out on the stoop of the cabin looking out on the creek. He could probably fix the pump, or cook up some other way to irrigate the garden while they were back in town. He could also worry about the under-grounding contract, damndest mess he'd ever gotten himself into, but he didn't want to think about that, right now. That's why they came over here to the creek as often as they could, to get things like that off his mind. Sometimes he felt like just dumping the damned business, maybe turn it over to the two boys, he was getting too old for that kind of hassle all the time. Bag it all and just come over here and settle down and grow a garden and raise a steer and a hog and take it easy.
Maybe not such a bad idea at that,
he thought.
Not such a bad idea at all.

4

In Indianapolis, Indiana, on the night Pamela Tate died, a small blond woman with hair caught back in kewpie-doll ponytails stood up with an audible snort of disgust and marched out of the press conference, leaving the man from Sealey Labs droning on and on behind her. Once outside the conference room she unhooked the press pass from her blouse and gave it one final look before dropping it in the trash can. In addition to
press
, the badge said:
sally grinstone—Philadelphia inquirer
in large red letters.

And so much for casting your bread upon the water,
Sally thought sourly.
All that plane fare blown, a day's work blown, a perfectly good dinner date blown—well, crappio! You should have known better than to bother with a Sealey Labs press conference anyway. Should have known that anything Sealey produced would be sleazy in some way—but you never learn, do you, Sal? Especially when you think you smell blood . . .

Another reporter followed on her heels, finally caught up. "Heard all you could stand?" he asked her, with a wry grin.

"You'd better guess. All they've got to promote is one more garden variety of arthritis drug, and they're hyping it up to the moon. And not one word about the Australian studies, even though they sponsored them and paid for them."

"Australian studies?"

Sally Grinstone glanced up at the man, her green eyes suddenly penetrating. "Haven't done your homework, eh, Saul? Well, I should make you do it, but I'm too kindhearted. Anyway, this is too small for me to get excited about. You want a story? You can have it free. Just check out Heinz and Faber's work in the
Acta Scandinavica
back in 1979, and the Australian team's report in our own
Immunology
in late '84 and '85. See what those people turned up about this 'safe' little arthritis drug that Sealey Labs is hyping now—press conference with the great Mancini himself, their top production man. And when you get finished, remember that you owe Sally Grinstone a stroke sometime when she needs it. . . ."

At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, on the night Pam Tate died, Dr. Ted Bettendorf was sitting late at his desk staring angrily at the bundle of papers in his hand.
Damn those people!
he thought for the twentieth time in an hour.
Damn them! They just can't let well enough alone. . . .

He'd been hearing rumors about the request for weeks now, and he'd done his best to discourage it, unofficially, but now here it was on paper, demanding an official, appealable yes or no answer from him. They wanted to tie up the Hot Lab for the next four solid months—his own people—and tonight he had to think up some completely supportable reason to turn them down.

An hour earlier, just before she left for the evening, Mandy had brought him the sheaf of papers—the research protocol and formal applications. She had paused at the door, looking back at him. "Ted—this work they want to do is a bad scene, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course it's a bad scene."

"Do you have to decide tonight?"

"Better than next week."

"Can I help you? Do you want me to stay?"

He looked up at her. "No. Thanks, but no. I'm the one that has to do it. Nobody else."

After she'd left, he stretched his long, skinny legs under the desk, ran his fingers through his thick, graying hair. He'd be sixty-one next week, and sometimes he thought he was getting too old for the hassle, as Administrator of the Uncommon Dis-cases section at the CDC. Leprosy. Plague. Rabies. Anthrax. Half a dozen other living horrors. And smallpox. He'd thought lie could put that on the back burner a few years ago when the disease was officially declared extinct on earth by the WHO. Hut now his own people wanted to use the Hot Lab to play around with smallpox again. . . .

Momentarily he turned his thoughts to the Hot Lab itself— (hat fantastically beautiful, fantastically secure laboratory-within-a-laboratory-within-a-laboratory, occupying a whole building to itself a few hundred yards from his office, a place for the safe study of the deadliest of all microorganisms ever let loose on the face of the planet—one of the half-dozen such totally safe laboratories in existence in the world. It was here in his Hot Lab that the Lassa fever virus had been pinned down after it first made its deadly appearance on the Gold Coast of Africa in 1976. It was here also that the Marburg virus, another merciless slaughterer from Africa, had met its nemesis in a six-month crash-study program. Variant strains of
Yersinia
had been studied here, off and on; work had been done here on the human diploid vaccine for rabies, the new chloroquine-resistant strains of
Plasmodium
that had made incurable malaria another new horror story in the world, the N43-B lymphoma virus with its strange cross-relationship with multiple sclerosis . . .

And now they wanted to play with smallpox again. A disease dead and gone, only four laboratory repositories of the live, wild virus remaining on earth, one of them here, deep in a quadruple-locked vault in the CDC, maintained only for possible future needs or scientific study. And that, of course, was what his people were asking for—use of the Hot Lab for further scientific study.

Ted Bettendorf knew without the slightest doubt that his answer had to be no. The question was: why? The reason had to be plausible—scientifically supportable—or they could challenge him in a court appeal, and veiy well might. But the only argument he could think of at the moment was that the program would tie up the Hot Lab for one-third of a year, which meant it couldn't be used for anything else once the program was started. This smallpox research was not critical to human life, right now—but something critical could turn up at any moment. . . .

He squirmed, searched through other reports. He knew of nothing. A human rabies case, fatal, from New Mexico, transmitted by bat guano in a cave. Two hundred and seventy-three new cases of leprosy identified in the last twelve months, a stable, steady growth of that disease each year for the past six years, much of it imported with refugees, nothing yet to become alarmed about. A sharp upsurge in new pulmonary tuberculosis in the slums, a hundred percent consistent with the continuing cutback in welfare funds. An oddly shifting pattern for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, more cases in the southeastern states than in the West—but other than things like that, nothing to hang his hat on.

Well, he thought suddenly, it really didn't have to be decided tonight. By the rules, he had fourteen days to respond to this request, and he would by God take fourteen days this one time. Tomorrow he would set Mandy to searching for
something
he could use.
Maybe tonight somebody is dying of something that will make a difference,
he thought wryly. A reach, perhaps, but there you were. Ted Bettendorf threw the sheaf of papers on his desk, scribbled a brief note on the paper in front of him and climbed wearily to his feet.
In the words of the immortal Willis McCawber, Esq., he thought, "Something will turn up. . . ."

6

In another CDC office in Atlanta, Georgia, on the night Pam Tate died, Dr. Carlos Quintana was still dictating correspondence at 8:30
p.m
. when Monique came in with a foot-high stack of folders in her arms. "You're going to hate me for this," she said.

"Impossible," Carlos said firmly. "Nothing you could

do could create such a situation. But why are you still

here?"

"Because you need this stuff for your report on that Legionella outbreak in Kansas City," she said. "It's all microbiology, and it's going to take you three weeks just to analyze it, unless you persuade me to leave my microscope and come do it for you. And Ted is going to be breathing down your neck in one week, because that's when he wants your report, wrapped up and finished."

"Yes, I know." The young man came around the desk as she dumped the pile of folders there. He placed his hand on her hip and kissed her gently. She was a striking woman: long slender legs, blond hair, an even, intelligent face, deep breasts.
Fantastically competent behind that microscope,
he thought.
And elsewhere.
He leafed through the first few folders. "Splendid excuse for working late tonight," he murmured. "Who could argue with one of Ted's deadlines?"

"You aren't going to like what you find here," Monique said.

"No? Why not?"

"Because you are a nitpicking perfectionist, my friend, who spent almost two weeks out there trying to tie up that mini-epidemic in a nice, neat scientific package—but there's nothing remotely neat about this lab data that you need to support your case. The truth is, it's one big indecisive mess. My people did the best they could with the stuff your people shipped us, but Jesus, Carlos ..."

The young doctor laughed. "My dear, you worry about the damndest things. Believe me, somewhere in your pile of data here I will find the answers I need. For now, all I'm worried about, since I'm obviously going to have to work so late, is where we should have dinner. Barron's, would you think?"

She looked at the darkly handsome young man, realizing that he was laughing at her—as usual. "Do you really think that's wise, so soon again?"

He shrugged elaborately.
"Por que no?"

"Porque
Angela is going to get wise one of these days."

"My dear, Angela was wise the day she was born. Don't worry yourself. So. It's Barron's, then?"

She nodded finally.
"Si, "
she said.
"Como no?'

7

In the black south-side ghetto of Chicago, on the night Pam Tate died, Sidonia Harper lay on her cot in her second-story tenement room, staring into the darkness long after she should have been sleeping.

It was amazing, Siddie thought, what you could tell just from the sounds and smells that came to your room. Here, in the summer heat, there was no hiding from the rank garbage smell that came billowing up from the fire-escape alley outside her window. No fresh air ever penetrated here—you didn't expect it to. In the darkness outside she could hear others, sitting out on the metal steps above and below—talking, smoking, now and then laughing, a beer can clattering down onto the alley pavement, a giggling discussion of the weatherbeaten tomcats patrolling the overflowing trash cans. Somewhere else in the building a party was going on, with shrieks and whoops and the thrumming of punk-rock music. And somewhere, inevitably, somebody was cooking cabbage, adding its reek to the fetid garbage stench. Siddie knew them all by their sounds and smells—but there was no way she could go out to join them.

It had been a long day for Siddie. The Man from social services had come today, like he'd said he would, to bring her his answer, like he'd said he would, and the answer was no. There wasn't going to be any banister-lift to carry her and her wheelchair down from this second-story flat to the ground floor below. There wasn't any money for that, the Man said. Everything had been cut back, so they had to do without the frills. A banister-lift wasn't a matter of life or death, the Man had