chapter THIRTY-NINE
Calix led them through the halls, and Kira discovered that the hospital was not a converted warehouse but a converted laboratory, full of state-of-the-art equipment—this must have been part of the old ParaGen facility as well. The halls were relatively empty, but Kira’s heart leapt into her throat at the sound of crying babies—not sick, screaming infants like she’d always known in East Meadow, but healthy babies and happy, cooing mothers. She wanted to run and see them but blinked back her tears and followed Calix. She needed the cure first; then she could get some answers.
Samm stiffened suddenly, his head jerking around to look for something, and Kira instinctively dropped into a combat stance, ready for attack. Samm breathed deeply, scanning the hall, and finally caught Kira’s eye. She started to speak, but he shook his head and nodded toward Calix. The blond girl had stopped by an office door and was looking back at them oddly.
“Is everything okay?” Kira couldn’t help but notice that she was asking Samm. He started to answer, but Kira cut him off.
“Is that his office?”
“Yeah,” said Calix, and knocked on the door. A gruff voice on the other side shouted for them to come in, and they followed Calix through. Dr. Vale was short and average-looking, old but healthy; Kira couldn’t actually tell if he was older than Dr. Skousen or not, and wondered if he’d had any of the longevity gene mods that some of the older, richer people had gotten before the Break. If he had, there’d be no real way to guess his age—he could be anywhere from sixty to a hundred and twenty. Samm stared at him a moment, and Kira couldn’t help but feel a faint wave of suspicion wash through her. Samm didn’t like the doctor, she didn’t even need the link to tell her that. Kira cleared her mind and prepared herself for the conversation, ready for whatever happened.
“Please sit down,” said Dr. Vale, gesturing at the chairs in front of his desk. Calix began to sit with them, but Vale stopped her with a kind smile and a gesture toward the door. “Would you be so kind as to wait outside, dear? Our guests are going to have a lot of questions, and I want to make sure we’re not disturbed.”
Calix seemed none too pleased about this, but sighed and left the room—making sure to flash Samm a quick smile on her way out. Samm didn’t even seem to notice, focusing all his attention on Vale, and Kira felt a glow of inexplicable satisfaction.
Calix closed the door behind her, and Vale looked at Samm and Kira. “So,” he said. “You’re the two wanderers from across the Badlands.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kira. “We came here looking for . . . answers. And we need to find a cure for RM, and we understand you’ve synthesized one.”
“That I have,” said the doctor, “that I have. Tell me, how many of you did you say there are?”
“Humans or Partials?” asked Kira.
Vale smiled. “Both.”
“Thirty-five thousand humans,” said Kira. “Roughly. And about half a million Partials.”
Vale practically beamed. “Then this is a bittersweet meeting, isn’t it? To learn in one short second that one’s entire picture of the world is obsolete. I admit I’m not prepared for this revelation, and I pride myself in being prepared for everything.”
“Please, sir,” said Kira. “Tell me about the cure.”
“It works,” said Vale, raising his hands in a contented shrug. “What else is there to say? We inoculate each child as he or she is born, and RM can never harm them again. Not the best long-term solution, I’ll grant you—I’d hate to think that a hundred years from now we’re still giving shots to every human child ever born—but then that’s what we did before the Break as well, isn’t it? Vaccinations and antibiotics and a whole chemical stew. Even before RM, the world had become far more hostile to our species than we like to admit.”
There was something odd about him that Kira couldn’t quite put her finger on. She’d grown up as a medical intern, spending her entire life around doctors, and this Dr. Vale was . . . different. He didn’t talk like a doctor.
“What we need,” he continued, gesturing toward the darkened window behind him, “is a cure that works like our Preserve.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kira.
Vale smiled again. “The paradise we live in was once so deadly it was restricted territory, devoid not only of humans but of plants and animals as well. A barren wasteland, much like the one you crossed, but now the tables are turned, aren’t they? What nuclear technology destroyed, biotechnology resurrected.”
Kira frowned. “This place was nuked?”
“No, no, no,” said Vale, “or at least not in the way you’re thinking. The Rocky Flats Plant was a nuclear weapons facility for World War II, the first site chosen for the production of hydrogen bombs. More radioactive material passed through here than through the entire city of Hiroshima, but technology, as we have seen, has a way of getting out of hand. The facility became such a health hazard it was completely dismantled, and after decades of cleanup efforts it was finally deemed safe for habitation—not by humans, of course, it wasn’t that safe, but who likes deer anyway? Let them have cancer, we don’t insure them. Thus was born, in the year 2000, the Rocky Flats Wildlife Preserve, and thus it stayed for more decades, clean enough to mollify our consciences without actually being clean. Such is the human capacity for altruism.”
“You mentioned biotech,” said Kira. She wasn’t sure where he was going with any of this, but at least he was talking. Kira pushed him along, trying to learn more. “I’m guessing that’s when ParaGen showed up.”
“You guess correctly,” said Vale. “ParaGen, the front-runner in a burgeoning new industry. We weren’t always here—we started on the south side, in Parker—but our first foray into the realm of biotechnology was a series of hungry microbes designed to eat things that no one else wanted—”
“You worked for ParaGen?” Kira blurted out.
“Naturally,” said Vale. He glanced at Samm, still stiff in his chair, then looked back at Kira. “It was my background in biotechnology that made the cure possible.”
Kira had to force herself not to leap up out of her chair—a biotechnologist from ParaGen? Was he part of the Trust? She was bursting with questions, but wasn’t sure yet how to approach him: If she just came out and asked about the Partials or the expiration date or the Failsafe or anything else, would he answer her? Would he clam up? Would he fly into a rage? She decided to keep him talking, to get a read on his personality. “You built microbes?”
“Microbes that ate waste products,” he said, practically giddy to be discussing the topic. “Radiation. Heavy metals. Poisonous chemicals. All very different things, but all, in their own way, a perfect energy source for an organism designed to use it. A couple of government contracts, a few years for the microbes to work their magic, and all of a sudden the poor, bedraggled Rocky Flats was a Garden of Eden. A success like that leads to more contracts, bigger projects, bigger checks; a few more successes and you can start writing your own checks, and one of them turned out to be Rocky Flats itself, a vast tract of perfect real estate that nobody else would ever want. Our karmic reward for saving it, and still the microbes churn away in the soil, holding back the toxic wasteland and maintaining our little corner of paradise.”
He loves to talk about this stuff, thought Kira. Should I push him a little further? She cleared her throat. “So you were part of the research team that created new organisms.”
“That I am,” said Vale. He glanced at Samm again, still as cold and silent as a statue. Kira wondered what was wrong, but Vale looked back at her with a kind smile. “I’m a geneticist, to the extent that any genetics work is even possible these days. The cure I have is workable, for now, but I need something that works like those microbes—something that lives under the surface and spreads itself out and protects us without any guidance or intervention. Something that passes from mother to child.”
“But what you have now is still a cure,” said Kira. “It still works. Where we come from in New York, we haven’t had an infant live past three days since the Break. We found a way to cure one child a few months ago, but that’s it. We have one miracle child, but you have hundreds. We’ve been trying to reproduce our cure and we can’t do it, but you could give us a future. Please—I’m a medic, I’ve trained for this exact moment my entire life. Take me to your lab, show me how you do it, and we could save tens of thousands of children. An entire generation.” Kira felt herself crying. “We could have a future again.”
“The cure isn’t portable,” said Vale.
“What?” She furrowed her brow in confusion. “How could it not be portable?”
“You’ll see,” said Vale.
Kira stood up. “Right now.”
“Be patient,” he said, waving her back to her chair. She didn’t sit down. “I want to help, but we have to be careful..”
“What is there to be careful about?”
“We have a delicate balance here in the Preserve,” he said. “I’ll help you, but I need to do it without upsetting that balance.”
“Then let us help you,” said Kira eagerly. “I’ve studied RM, we’ve crossed the wasteland, we know the terrain and the politics and everything else. What do you need to know?”
“Nothing tonight,” said Vale. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Kira clenched her fists in frustration. “What about the expiration date?” she asked. He looked up, eyes wide and curious, as if he didn’t understand. “The Partial expiration date,” she said again, “the mechanism in their genome that kills them after twenty years. Do you know anything about it? Have you figured out how it works?”
“The others will find you a place to stay,” said Vale, rising from his chair and walking to the door. His voice was less certain now, his joy at discussing the microbes replaced with a mumbling uncertainty. “It’s going to rain tonight, and microbes or not, you don’t want to be caught outside.”
“Why won’t you answer me?” Kira demanded.
“I’ll answer you tomorrow,” he said. “Follow Calix, and I’ll send for you in the morning.” He opened the door and gestured toward the hallway.
“First thing in the morning,” said Kira. “Promise us.” Samm stood to follow her.
“Of course,” said Vale. “First thing.”
Calix had been sitting on the floor in the hallway, and rose quickly to her feet. “We need to hurry,” she said. “The acid rains are coming soon; everyone else will be inside.” She looked at Samm. “You can stay at my place—both of you—but we’ll have to hurry.”
Kira looked back at Vale, his maddening smile still pasted to his face. “First thing,” she said, and turned to follow Calix as she ran down the hall.
They reached the front door and Calix looked out carefully, peering up at the thick black storm clouds that filled the sky. “No rain yet. Come on.” She ran out, and Kira moved to follow her, but Samm caught Kira’s arm.
“Wait,” he said, and leaned in to whisper in Kira’s ear. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it. “Did you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Dr. Vale,” said Samm. “I felt him on the link. He’s a Partial.”