Containment (8 page)

Cecily Sunday knew she was weird. She
'd been weird, and known she was weird, all her life. As a girl growing up in North Carolina, Cecily loved vampires and anything gothic; whereas some little girls played with dolls, and other little girls played softball, Cecily embraced the dark side of life. She learned much later that psychiatrists have a term for it, though it's not in widespread usage: dysphoria addiction. How weird do you have to be, Cecily often wondered, to be addicted to bad vibes?

Yet she didn
't try to fight it. Why should she? Her personality had stinted her career, but that was a price that had been paid by nearly all social misfits, no matter what their oddities. She'd never hurt anyone, and had even cultivated a connection with others, a concern for their well being. Plenty of bad vibes existed in the world without having to generate them yourself—too many of them. And you didn't have to be normal to be nice. All in all, she regarded herself as one of the nicest people she knew.

A minute later her cell phone squawked. Lisa Murdoch
's voice came over the line. "I'm at Emersen Memorial Hospital," announced Lisa. "It's the last one in the area, the last one on my list."

"
You sound tired."

There was a moment of silence. Finally Lisa said,
"I'm buried in so much data." She seemed close to tears.

"
Buck up, kid. Investigations are like that—three yards and a cloud of dust, but eventually you get to the end zone."

"
What?"

"
We keep working and we hit pay dirt or we find out, more often than not, that there isn't any pay dirt and we've wasted our time."

A deep sigh came from the speaker, as if the microphone had been dipped in a wind tunnel.
"How do you deal with wasting so much time?"

"
Damn, girl, that's what you're hoping for. That's the best case scenario." Cecily paused. "If it'll make you feel any better, I don't think we're wasting our time on this one."

* * *

A half hour after Cecily finished talking to Lisa, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a white, coarse towel around her thin body. She combed her wet hair and slipped on a bathrobe.

She went to the telephone, swiped her credit card
—the "company" card—and a moment later Roderick Halkin answered. "Hey, Sherlock," said Cecily. "How's it hanging?"

"
Greetings, Cecily. The situation here at Bethesda is under control. Any news from your end?"

"
They moved us away from Medburg. Kraig's doing? Or did the decision come from higher up?"

"
Kraig is the worrier at Micro," said Roderick. "Who else?"

"
If he's worried about this case he's got company." Cecily summarized her visit to Vision Cell Bioceuticals. Roderick listened intently.

"
Man, I've got a bad feeling in my gut." Cecily shook her head, and some of her wet bangs fell over her face. She pushed them gently out of the way. "Really bad."

Roderick seemed unmoved.
"But no smoking gun, I gather."

"
No, but I was trembling when I got out of that place. It was
that
bad. Listen. There was one lab—I mean, a pair of labs—that really got under my skin. A combinatorial chemist and a retina researcher. There was this weird energy and I don't know what to make of it."

"
There's always some competition in biotechnology companies. Sometimes it's hidden, especially to visitors, but it's there, just underneath the surface. Perhaps that was what you were picking up."

"
I don't know, man. Maybe. But it wasn't the people that were so good—I mean, so bad. It was the whole picture, the whole set-up."

"
The CEO, maybe? The person in charge? Was that what bothered you?"

"
I just don't know." Suddenly Cecily laughed. "You're taking me seriously, aren't you? Or are you just putting me on?"

"
You know me better than that, Cecily."

"
Yeah, I guess I do." Cecily's smile disappeared. "It was that lab, I think. That pair of labs."

"
The combinatorial chemist and retina biologist, you said." Roderick paused. "Human retina, I'm sure."

"
Yeah. She's working on growing retinas in the lab, for transplants. The problem is getting the retinal ganglion cells to generate the optic nerve. That's why they've got the combinatorial chemist. He's mixing up batches of related organic chemicals, trying to come up with some molecule that will coax the ganglion cells to do what they want. I don't know how it all works."

"
Combinatorial chemistry is common these days," said Roderick. "You simply take a basic compound and then perform wholesale reactions to adjust the molecular groups. Which gives me a thought. Perhaps one of those compounds is our culprit. It's not likely that a poisonous compound capable of spreading far and wide would be created in those reactions, because they usually only use fairly safe molecules for the basic compounds. Molecules that are common in the body, for example. However, combinatorial reactions produce thousands of different chemicals, so even if there is only a small chance one of them is harmful, it's possible that over time a dangerous product would get created."

"
The problem with that, Sherlock, is that I think this agent, whatever it is, replicates. Which an inert chemical can't do."

"
What makes you think it replicates?"

Cecily told him her ideas about the creek and the mice.

"You're speculating," said Roderick.

"
Yeah, I know. Awful of me, isn't it?"

"
Have you told Kraig about this?"

"
No." Cecily grinned. "That's what I've got you for, sweetie. You're the brains of our team. You think it's worth telling, you tell him."

Bethesda, Maryland / 5:00 p.m.

A moment later Roderick Halkin stared at his phone. His conversation with Cecily finished, he sat still in his chair—which had organic body-contouring, microadjustable padding that adapted to the user's shape. Roderick's shape was mostly flat and so was the contour.

He sat back in his expensive chair, courtesy of Chet
's budget, and thought about Cecily.

She was, to all outward appearances, a nearly
incomprehensible mystery. She marched to the beat of a different drummer, a drummer that few other people heard; possibly nobody else in the world but her. She was also one of the most eerily perceptive people Roderick Halkin had ever encountered. He even considered her his equal in a number of categories. His superior, in one or two.

Cecily suspected, albeit on flimsy evidence, that whatever was rampaging through Medburg was capable of reproducing itself. And if it were as infectious as the mice epidemic suggested, the consequence could be disastrous. People might begin dying in similar numbers.
The optimism that Roderick had earlier tried to convey to Kraig Drennan had evaporated. A crisis was brewing.

Roderi
ck debated calling Kraig and alerting him. But what could Kraig do? There was no concrete evidence supporting any assertion Roderick could make. And any critical decision would have to be made by politicians, who would consult not with Roderick Halkin or the assistant director but with the director himself. Who would have to be convinced—and convincing—in order to persuade any major decision concerning a whole city and its thousands of residents.

Kraig Drennan was reliable but emotional, which could lead to weakness in a crucial moment. Kraig was
a worrier and an ambitious perfectionist who mercilessly burdened himself with work. The director, on the other hand...Roderick smiled without humor.

The population of Medburg, Pennsylvania, was 83,449 persons. A few minutes ago Roderick had looked up the latest census figure.

It would take too long to go into musician mode, alas. There was no way to speed up the meditative and neurofeedback processes necessary for Roderick to convert his personality into the violin specialist whose music he presently craved to hear—and make. It required an intensely focused state of mind that could only be achieved after hours of concentration, even with the help of all of those feedback devices. Besides, he'd promised he wouldn't, not in the middle of a case. He would have to keep his word.

Instead he settled for playing music over his enveloping, all-point speakers. But the only pieces of music he
selected were funeral dirges.

Bethesda, Maryland / 6:50 p.m.

"Get your taxes done?"

Kraig Drennan frowned at the screen. The communication system displayed Chet
's face and prominent mustache; in the background was the room Chet called his study, one of many finely furnished rooms in his home along the Chesapeake. It was no surprise that Chet had called Kraig at the office to check up on him, using the expensive communication equipment that Chet had convinced the budget office he required at home as well as the office. And it was no surprise that Chet would think of something stupid to ask so that it didn't seem like he was checking up on him. When Kraig stayed late and Chet went home early, the director of the Micro-Investigation Unit looked bad. People gossiped, saying that the assistant director was doing all the work. Which, Kraig thought, was true.

The white mustache twitched, waiting for a response.
"You know it isn't too late to get a postmark, the Post Office stays open until midnight—"

"
I finished my taxes in February," said Kraig.

"
Oh." The white mustache drooped. "Well, you're on the ball, then. So, how's everything at the fort?"

We
're under siege and I'm laundering all our white flags.
"Pretty good."

"
Good. Fine."

There was a silence that stretched beyond a comfortable length.

"Well, then," said the white mustache, "any word about the Medburg situation?"

Kraig was tempted to say,
"What Medburg situation?" Oh so tempted! "The mouse carcasses have arrived. I've got every available technician working on the analysis. Data will start coming in tomorrow, I expect. We still don't know what killed the two homeless victims."

"
I see, I see. Well, it sounds like everything is in order, and proceeding at a sufficient pace. So, Kraig, why don't you call it a night? We'll have a meeting tomorrow morning with the lab boys and girls. Say 10 o'clock?"

"
Fine. I'll be going home in a while."

Another period of silence. The white mustache bristled ever so slightly.
"You worry too much. We have to wait and see what happens."

"
Waiting may not be such a great idea."

The director snorted.
"A calm and reasonable wait is never a bad idea. Quick and careless responses only serve to frighten people, and inconvenience them."

"
A quick response might save more people than it inconveniences."

"
You're too pessimistic. You're positively grim, Kraig."

"
That's my job."

"
No it isn't. That's where you're wrong. Do you know how long you'll last in this business if you keep up this kind of attitude?"

Kraig briefly wondered if that was a subtle threat.

The director went on, "Now, look at me. I've lasted thirty years. I won't say they've all been great years but most of them were tolerable. I've shown stamina and endurance, qualities which, I fear, you will not prove to have."

Cyan light flooded Kraig
's office. Kraig thought about killing the video feed of his communication system, even started to reach for the key to do so, but then let his hand fall limply to his side. Hell with it.

The director continued, apparently oblivious, for the moment, to Kraig
's physio alarm. "You'll worry yourself into an ulcer. You'll worry yourself into becoming a frightened, hunted animal. Listen to me, Kraig! I know what I'm talking about. And I know what I'm doing."

Kraig paused, staring at the proud white mustache, puffed out in its fullest splendor.
"I understand what you're saying." Kraig's tone sounded conciliatory. The cyan light faded. "There's such a thing as hitting the panic button too soon. But listen. We've got two fatalities, so we know this agent kills. We know it's something, some kind of agent of disease, because of the mice. What we don't know is how dangerous it is to humans. We don't know how infectious it is. We don't even have a good idea
what it is
because it doesn't show up on any of our radar screens."

"
Well, then, it certainly bears watching, I agree. But is there a trend in the hospital statistics? Is there a cluster of symptoms making the rounds in the city or in any of the neighboring vicinities? Anywhere in the county?"