Crosscut (30 page)

“The pain vaccine,” I said.

Cantwell nodded. “It can cause fatal congenital malformations, but that’s not all it does. It’s not only teratogenic but mutagenic.”

“It causes mutations?” Tommy said.

The lights in the room seemed to pop with little bites of color.

“It causes chromosomal mutations in the host. I never had access to the pharmacological formula, and I don’t know the exact mechanism by which it operates. But I suspect that it affects mitochondrial DNA, so that it becomes embedded in the genetic code and is passed on to an exposee’s children.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tommy said. “How long have you known this?”

Cantwell shook his head. “I wasn’t sure until very recently.”

I put my hand to my forehead. “But some of us are healthy and have healthy children. Not everybody who was exposed has become infected.” The colors nipped at the air around my face. “Have they?”

“I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. Prion diseases can take decades to manifest.” He caught my eye. “You don’t have children, do you?”

Tommy’s face was stark. “I do. Five kids, you bastard.”

Cantwell looked at him. “Don’t you see? I know next to nothing about this. Just that this prion is potentially a million times worse than mad cow, fatal insomnia, kuru, any of those TSEs.”

“Why?” I said.

“Those diseases are hard to get. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a couple hundred cases after repeated exposure to contaminants, and the epidemic slowed down when infected meat was removed from the food chain. Likewise kuru. The epidemic spread like crazy over the course of a few decades, coinciding with the rise of ritual cannibalism among the tribe in Papua New Guinea. Once missionaries convinced the tribe to stop the practice, the epidemic diminished radically.” He spread his hands. “But kuru wasn’t genetically transmissible. This is. Easily transmissible.”

He raked his fingers through his stringy hair. When he dropped his hands to his lap his combover stuck up like a bunch of frightened threadworms.

“It can infect the genome. That’s what you don’t understand. It can get
loose
.”

“This is science fiction,” Tommy said.

“How do you think mad cow got started? Feeding ground-up sheep brains to cattle that should have been grazing on green fields.
That’s
science fiction. And South Star was a top-secret government research project. What they were doing out there with genetic manipulation and enhancement—who knows?”

My voice sounded weak. “You’re saying this thing could spread like wildfire.”

“Do you know how prions work? They’re not like viruses or bacteria. Prions are the only known disease agent that have no DNA. They’re pure protein. So they don’t replicate. They turn other proteins into prions.”

Science fiction. A memory scythed across my mental landscape.

“Prions are deformed proteins. When one touches a normal protein it deforms too, converting into another prion. And then those new prions touch other proteins and convert them, until they clump together in the brain.”

He worried his tie clip like a rosary. “Amyloid plaques, those are protein deposits. The brain has defense mechanisms, but prion diseases build these clumps too fast to fight. They turn the brain to mush, and the body’s defense-less.”

“How do you kill prions?” Tommy said.

“You can’t. They aren’t alive,” Cantwell said.

“Destroy them, then.”

Cantwell’s eyes were red. “They’re virtually indestructible. Normal sterilization measures are futile. Autoclaving at high temperatures, exposure to ultraviolet light or high-power X-rays, cold, drying, organic detergents—they’re all useless.”

He looked at us, hopeless. “The pain vaccine—it’s made you exposees dangerous. You can spread the prion agent and infect human DNA.”

I felt nauseated. “It’s like ice-nine.”

Cantwell nodded. “You aren’t the first person to draw the analogy.”

I glanced at Tommy. “
Cat’s Cradle
, Kurt Vonnegut. A scientist invents an alternate form of water called ice-nine. It crystallizes every drop of H
₂
O it touches and turns it into more ice-nine.” I felt distraught to see Cantwell nodding in agreement. “It’s what prions do. They touch normal proteins and turn them into more prions, setting off a chain reaction. Until they eat out your brain.”

“So what?” Tommy said.

“In the novel, ice-nine eventually gets into the water supply. It freezes all the oceans.” I slumped back. “We’re the oceans. People. These things could get loose and corrupt the human genome.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Maybe. But that’s what Coyote believes. And he’s trying to stop it,” I said.

“So how do
we
stop it?” He waved his hands. “I mean, these prions turn on. How do we turn them off? Reverse this thing?”

Cantwell fussed with his tie clip. “You can’t.”

Tommy stood up, looking as though he’d taken a hundred-thousand-volt hit. “I don’t believe you. There has to be some way to stop it.”

“Stop breeding.”

“What else?”

Flat stare. “Coyote’s solution. Get rid of the breeders and their children.”

Tommy lunged at him across the desk. He grabbed him by the tie and yanked him forward onto his green desk blotter.

“I have kids, you ass wad. Why didn’t you tell us? What if they’re going to get sick? What if Coyote goes after them?”

I jumped to my feet and grabbed the back of Tommy’s shirt. “Stop it.”

He twisted Cantwell’s tie. I yanked on his collar and he whipped around, fist cocked.

“Don’t hit me.” I leaped back, one hand in front of my face, the other over my stomach.

Tommy let go of Cantwell and put his hands up. “Done. I’m done.”

The doctor slumped back, breathing heavily. The door burst open. The starchy receptionist stood in the doorway, aghast.

“Doctor?”

Cantwell raised a hand. “It’s all right, Helen.”

She looked doubtful, but he straightened his tie and finger-combed his thready hair. He reassured her again and she left, beady eyed, closing the door behind her.

Tommy sat down. “Sorry.”

Cantwell shook his head. “No, I deserved that.” He laughed, and the laugh turned into another bout of sobbing. “I deserve everything I get.” He looked at us. “You’ve completely forgotten, haven’t you? My family’s at risk here, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Tommy said.

“My wife. Antonia was with you on the field trip that day. She’s as much in peril from this disease as any of you kids.”

 
Turning the key in the lock, Jesse opened his front door and scanned the entryway, the living room, and, outside the plate-glass windows, the deck and the blue surf rushing up the sand.

This couldn’t be good.

He tossed the keys on the table, loosened his tie, and wheeled over to unlock the door out to the deck.

“Evan’s not here. She flew to China Lake,” he said.

Phil Delaney tipped the front legs of his chair back to the deck and glanced around slowly, taking him in from under the brim of his hat.

“Yes. I drove her to the airport.”

The man’s stare had a
High Noon
quality. It was disquieting as hell. Jesse nodded him in, turned, and headed for the kitchen. Phil’s boot heels barked on the hardwood floor behind him.

“I’m going to change and hit the road. If I push it I’ll get up to China Lake by eleven,” Jesse said.

He opened the fridge and took out two Cokes. Leaned back and grabbed the opener from a drawer, popped off the bottle caps, and one-armed his way over to the kitchen table, where Phil was standing.

“Obliged.” Phil took the bottle, drank, and stared down at him again. “I know she’s pregnant.”

That stare fixed him. He heard the fridge humming and the surf crashing up the beach and the static inside his head, hissing,
Dude, you’re toast
.

“There’s something you have to do for Evan,” Phil said.

“I’m going to marry her.”

“No.”

Son of a bitch. “Yes, I am. Absolutely.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Phil set the Coke bottle on the table. “Though we’ll talk about the constancy of your intentions another time. This is something else.”

He took off his hat. The look on his face was brooding. “Are you as tough as I hope you are?”

“Man, just spit it out.”

“Evan cannot have this baby.”

Jesse stared at him, numb.

Phil’s voice was flat. “You have to convince her to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Get out,” Jesse said.

Phil’s eyes were hard in the sunlight. “It’s an appalling thing to ask. I know that.”

Slamming his Coke bottle down on the kitchen table, Jesse crossed the living room, threw open the front door, and spun around.

“Get the hell out of my house.”

“You have to listen to me,” Phil said.

Phil walked toward him.

“Coyote wants to cleanse the gene pool. He’s killing women who are having children.”

“So we protect Evan. You don’t ask her to abort the baby.”

“This pregnancy puts her at the top of Coyote’s kill list. What do you want to do, take her to Australia? The Himalayas? That’s not enough. He’d hunt her down.”

“No. It’s unconscionable.”

“Jesse—”

“You’re Catholic. What is fucking wrong with you?”

Phil’s stride was slow and heavy. “You could hide out on the moon, and having this baby could still kill her. She has to end the pregnancy.”

A cold white pain, like electricity, ran through him. With horror, he realized that Phil wasn’t angry with him.

“Could? You want her to have an abortion on the basis of
could
? This is your grandchild, my . . .” The white electricity spread along his arms. “My child.”

“Dana West wasn’t the first to have a terminally ill baby. It’s happened to others, and it could happen to Evan too.” Phil stopped in front of him. “Son, this child might not survive. If it has the same neurological abnormalities as some others, it won’t live more than a few hours.”

Electricity crawled across Jesse’s chest. “Might not. Don’t you hear yourself?” His voice had gone; he could barely hear himself. “Kill the baby on the chance it might not survive? That’s unspeakable. The baby might be fine. No.
No
.”

“If the baby’s born too sick to live, Evan will die inside. You and I both know that. She’ll consider herself responsible.”

The conviction and pain in Phil’s voice were all too real. Jesse closed his eyes.

“Don’t ask this.”

“We don’t know what triggers this disease. Maybe pregnancy itself ignites it. We can’t take that chance, not with Evan’s life.”

“You don’t know.”

“You saw the video of Dana West.”

“This is wrong. And if . . .” Electrical hiss in his head. “If pregnancy triggers it, then Evan’s already . . .”

“We simply don’t know. Hormones increase over time as a pregnancy develops. The endocrine system adjusts; the body’s metabolism shifts. It could be a case of reaching a tipping point, a saturation level. Some kind of point of no return.”

Jesse shook his head. “There has to be a way. Ask Maureen Swayze. She developed the pain vaccine. She knows what it is and how it operates.”

“She won’t divulge that information. She’s bound by the National Security Act.”

“Then fucking make her divulge it. Christ,
think
.”

“No. She’s even more implacably cussed than I am. Besides, telling anybody else about the pregnancy would be dangerous. Once that news gets out, there’s no way to prevent it from reaching Coyote.”

Jesse clutched his push-rims. “I won’t do it. There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t. I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours sweating bullets to come up with another solution, and there isn’t one. And while you’re sitting here, the odds are going against Evan. Every single second that you wait she’s in greater danger.”

All the air had gone from the house. He yanked at the knot in his tie and pulled it off.

“You’re telling me it’s Evan or the baby.”

“My daughter’s life is on the line. Why the hell else do you think I would ask such a terrible thing?” Phil took one step closer. “I’m a hard-ass, because life demands hard choices. I’m asking you to make one now. If you love Evan anywhere close to the way I do, you’ll think about it and understand.”

His vision spiked gold with fear. He wheeled to the plate-glass windows, wanting to jump up and run across the sand and dive into the water and swim, go, put his head down and kick through the waves, sprinting out into the Pacific until Phil’s demand and this nightmare and the possibility it might be true sank and drowned.

Phil’s boots tolled behind him again. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Coyote is a professional killer and he apparently has backing. You cannot imagine how these people think, how little ordinary morality affects them, or how far they’ll go.”

No. Jesse shook his head, clearing it. What was he thinking? Grab Evan and hold her tight, that was what mattered. Keep her from all of this, her and the baby.

He felt Phil standing behind him. “I know you want to protect Evan. I’d expect no less from you. If you want to marry my daughter, it’s essential that I know how deeply you’ll commit yourself to doing that.” He stepped into view. “But you can’t do it by yourself. Not with all your fast talk and determination. Not even with your Glock.” He loomed over him. “Jesse, face it. You can’t equalize things.”

Phil was staring at him, not at the wheelchair, but he got the message. He was never going to take down a killer like Coyote. He held Phil’s gaze.

“Have you already asked her yourself?” he said.

Phil glanced out at the beach. “No. I shoot straight, and most of the time she’ll take that from me. But I can’t ask Evan this. She would turn against me.”