Frozen Solid A Novel

44




“DAVID, IT MUST BE UNGODLY EARLY THERE IN D.C.,” IAN KENDALL said.

“A little after midnight.” Gerrin was sitting at the desk in the study of his modest home in the Virginia suburb called Vienna. He lived alone, had never married—had not avoided women, just the entanglements of matrimony. He was looking at Kendall and Belleveau’s video-call images.

“Shortly past nine-thirty in the morning in New Delhi,” Jean-Claude Belleveau said. “This must be important.”

“There are complications.” Gerrin described the deaths of Lanahan, Montalban, and Bacon. Merritt had told him about Leland, as well, but he didn’t mention that part of their problem.

“Is there reason to believe they were related to Triage?” Kendall asked.

“It can’t be ruled out,” Gerrin said.

“This is not good,” Kendall said. “How long before winterover flyout?”

“Tomorrow,” Gerrin said. “If the temperature allows.”

“God in heaven,” Belleveau said. “What does Orson think about the deaths?”

Gerrin sighed. “He is afraid. And that makes me afraid. I have worried about him from the beginning.”

“It was not easy finding a physician sympathetic to our cause and willing to spend a year at the South Pole,” Belleveau said.

“He might well be afraid,” Kendall said. “It was his swabs and needles did the work, didn’t they?”

Belleveau said something in French. Then, in English: “How could this have happened?”

“Conjoining picornavirus and streptococcus was not child’s play, Jean-Claude,” Gerrin said.

Kendall waved a hand dismissively. Like most Englishmen, he was slow to anger, but once aroused, his temper was fierce. The glow was beginning. “Please, David. Joining bacteria and viruses is nothing new. Fischetti and Schuch discovered new symbiotic relationships between B. anthracis and viruses back in 2009. Even before that, Chisholm and Zeng at MIT figured out that viruses were manipulating genes in both Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus for their own benefit. Conjoining was not the challenge here. It was altering strep’s genetic sequencing to produce ovarian-cell affinity. If Blaine bollixed that and those bacteria are attacking other cell types …” He shook his head, unable to find a term of adequate gravity.

“Blaine knows his work,” Gerrin said.

“Victor Frankenstein thought he did, too,” Belleveau put in. “Trite to say, but true nonetheless.”

“David, we are talking about three dead women.” Kendall sounded more disturbed with each sentence.

“Four, actually,” Belleveau pointed out.

“Of course you’re right,” Kendall said. “But the first wasn’t from Triage. What else do we know?”

“Morbell says that two women exsanguinated. The third suffered some kind of allergic reaction that closed her airway.”

“What about the people at the station? What are they saying?”

“He told them that one woman’s death was almost certainly a result of throat surgery. Another had had a difficult cesarean delivery. The third, he’s supposed to be running tests on her blood to detect allergies.”

“Killing was never part of our plan. Never.” Kendall’s face was red.

“None of the mice died,” Gerrin said. “Nor any of the dogs or cats or chimps, I remind you.” He paused, held up his hand, let seconds pass. “My friends, we have seen the future. In my country alone, every year half a million children under the age of five starve to death. Stop and really think about that. Starve. To. Death. We witnessed dogs eating corpses in Lagos, and we know people are eating them there and elsewhere. Fifty years from now, or likely sooner, the earth’s population will exceed fifteen billion. Those estimates of nine billion that governments throw out, by mutual agreement, are useful only for preventing panic. There will be famines, resource wars, terminal climate change. People will be eating one another raw. The human race has become a pathogen that will destroy itself and kill this planet in the process. You know all this.”

“How many women has Morbell inoculated at this point?” Belleveau asked.

Gerrin closed his eyes, thought. “Thirty-six. No, thirty-seven, counting Leland. What are you thinking, Jean-Claude?”

“If three out of thirty-seven die, that is roughly eight percent, correct?”

“Yes.” Gerrin saw where Belleveau was going. Not a destination he wished for, but he could think of no good way to derail the conversation.

“Bear with me,” Belleveau said. “Approximately half the women on earth carry the Krauss gene—about one and a half billion. The plan was for Triage to infect only those.”

“Yes,” Gerrin said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

“Eight percent of one and a half billion is one hundred and twenty million,” Belleveau said, with finality.

“David,” Kendall said. “My God. I can’t even begin to imagine that.” There was an audible tremor in the older man’s voice.

Not in Gerrin’s. “I must remind you that we don’t know Triage caused their deaths.”

“But we goddamned bloody well have to assume it did, don’t we now?” Kendall shouted. “This was never part of what we were about. God in heaven.”

“I do not think he is listening to us anymore,” Belleveau said. To Gerrin: “We need to discuss alternatives. What happens if we decide to stop now?”

“We would have to remove the women,” Gerrin said.

“Remove? To where?” Belleveau asked.

“I believe he means ‘excise,’ ” Kendall said. “That was the word you used for the first one, wasn’t it, David?”

“Not possible,” Belleveau said. If Kendall now sounded horrified, Belleveau sounded appalled.

“It is possible, actually,” Gerrin said. “A plan for that contingency has been in place since the beginning. An accident. No connection to us.”

“You never told us anything about that,” Kendall said.

“No. But such a plan was essential.”

“What would happen?” Belleveau asked.

“There are options depending on a number of variables. The most likely involves an accidental explosion. Earlier in the year it would not have worked because people were living outside the station. Now everybody is in that one place, so …”

The silence stretched. Kendall said, “Someone would have to survive, though, wouldn’t they? I mean, whoever made this happen would presumably not want to take his own life in the process.”

“That has been accommodated,” Gerrin said. “Our security asset will facilitate the explosion. He will wait at the runway, believing a plane will retrieve him.”

“Believing?”

“Yes.”

“So there will be no plane?”

“No.”

“But excising the women means excising the men, as well, does it not?” Belleveau said. “I’m sorry. I cannot accept this. I will not be a part of it.” He sat back and crossed his arms, his expression grave.

“There are only two options, Jean-Claude,” Gerrin said. “This, or take the greater risk.”

“That’s not correct, actually.” Kendall sat forward, new energy in his voice. “There is another option.”

“No,” Gerrin said. “There is not.”

“Yes, there is.”

“What do you see that we are missing, Ian?” Belleveau asked.

“We tell the people they are infected. Not just the women. Everybody. Quarantine them long enough to find a countermeasure.”

No one spoke for some time. Then Gerrin said, “We might as well walk into the International Criminal Court and confess.”

“No. Listen to me,” Kendall said. “Morbell could announce that he has identified the pathogen that’s making people sick. Say it was in the blood samples he’s already obtained. Nothing about having created it. Nobody would know where it came from. The people would believe that, wouldn’t they? The station could be placed under strict quarantine. No one comes or goes until a countermeasure is produced.”

“They would all have to winter over. Are their facilities adequate for such research?” Belleveau directed the question to Gerrin.

“Yes,” he said. “Some things at the Pole are skimped on, but science is not one.”

“Well then. Wintering over is the best possible containment, isn’t it? They could involve other government labs. Even private industry, if they saw fit, couldn’t they?” Kendall asked.

“It is even possible—remotely—that an existing antibiotic might prove effective,” Belleveau mused. “It won’t against the viral component, though.”

“The viral component is of no consequence,” Kendall said. “That is simply the carrier. It’s the streptococcus payload that Blaine engineered to destroy ovarian cells. We don’t know what antibiotics might work against it.”

“Do we know what antibiotics they may have on hand down there?” Belleveau asked.

“Stockpiles of amoxicillin, ampicillin, and ciprofloxacin sufficient to deal with infections during winterover,” Gerrin said. “Protocol for any serious illness before winterover is evacuation to McMurdo and Christchurch.”

“Too bad they don’t have clindamycin or lincomycin. Effective against strep,” Belleveau said.

“But this strep? We don’t know, do we? We could get lucky, though,” Kendall mused. “They might be able to air-drop things, even if they can’t land. That’s been done in previous emergencies, I believe.”

“I think this is our only option,” Belleveau said. “David?”

They both looked at Gerrin. For several moments, he said nothing. Then he drew a long breath and nodded.

“Yes, of course you’re both right. As you said, Jean-Claude, we’ve never been about killing breeders. Just sterilizing them.”

“Thank God,” Kendall breathed. “For a moment there I thought …” He let the sentence trail off.

“What is our next step, then?” Belleveau asked.

“I will communicate our decision to Merritt,” Gerrin said. “She will inform the others.” He paused. “You see, Jean-Claude? God is listening to us, after all.”