Gravity Page 23

  Roman hit the intercom button. “Your suit! Is there a breach?”

  As she slowly rose to her feet, he could see her expression of terror. She looked down at her gloves, her sleeves, then at the juncture where the hose fed air into her suit. “No,” she said, and it was almost a sob of relief. “No breach.”

  Blood splattered the window. Roman jerked back as bright droplets trickled down the glass. Helsinger was banging his head against the floor now, his spine relaxing, then hyperextending. Opisthotonos. Roman had seen this bizarre posture only once before, in a victim of strychnine poisoning, the body curved backward like a bow strung under tension. Helsinger spasmed again, and his skull slammed backward against the concrete. Blood sprayed the faceplates of the two nurses.

  “Back off!” Roman commanded through the intercom.

  “He’s hurting himself!” said the physician.

  “I don’t want anyone else exposed.”

  “If we could get these seizures under control—”

  “There’s nothing you can do to save him. I want you all to move away now. Before you get hurt.”

  Reluctantly the two nurses backed away. After a pause, so did the physician. They stood in silent tableau as the scene of horror played out at their feet.

  New convulsions sent Helsinger’s head whipping backward. The scalp split open, like cloth ripping along a seam. The pool of blood widened into a lake.

  “Oh, God, look at his eyes!” one of the nurses cried.

  The eyes were popping out, like two giant marbles straining to burst out of the sockets. Traumatic proptosis, thought Roman. The eyeballs thrust forward by catastrophic intracranial pressure, the lids shoved apart, wide and staring.

  The seizures continued, unrelenting, the head battering the floor. Splinters of bone flew up and ticked against the window. It was as though he were trying to crack open his own skull, to release whatever was trapped inside.

  Another crack. Another spattering of blood and bone.

  He should have been dead. Why was he still seizing?

  But even decapitated chickens continue to twitch and thrash, and Helsinger’s death throes were not yet over. His head lifted off the floor, his spine curling forward like a spring winding up to unbearable tension just before it snaps. His neck lashed backward. There was a crack, and the skull split open like an egg. Shards of bone flew. A lump of gray matter splashed the window.

  Roman gasped and stumbled backward, nausea rising in his throat. He dropped his head, fighting to stay in control. Fighting the darkness that threatened to envelop his vision.

  Sweating, shaking, he managed to lift his head. To look, once again, through the window.

  Nathan Helsinger at last lay still. What was left of his head rested in a lake of blood. There was so much blood that for a moment Roman could not focus on anything else but that spreading pool of scarlet. Then his gaze settled on the dead man’s face. On the blue-green mass that clung, quivering, to his forehead. Cysts.

  Chimera.

  August 14

  “Nicolai? Nicolai, please respond!”

  “My ear—It is in my ear—”

  “Pain? Does your ear hurt? Look at me!”

  “It’s going deeper! Get it out! Get it…”

  White House Security Council science adviser Jared Profitt pressed the OFF button on the cassette recorder and looked at the men and women seated around the table. All of them wore expressions of horror. “What happened to Nicolai Rudenko was more than just a decompressive accident,” he said. “That’s why we took the action we did. That’s why I urge you all to stay the course. There’s too much at stake. Until we learn more about this organism—how it reproduces, how it infects—we can’t let those astronauts come home.”

  The response was stunned silence. Even NASA administrator Leroy Cornell, who had led off the meeting with an outraged protest about the takeover of his agency, sat utterly speechless.

  It was the president who asked the first question. “What do we know about this organism?”

  “Dr. Isaac Roman from USAMRIID can answer that better than I can,” said Profitt, and he nodded to Roman, who was not seated at the table, but on the periphery, where he’d been largely unnoticed by everyone in the room. Now he stood so that he could be seen, a tall and graying man with the look of exhaustion in his eyes.

  “I’m afraid the news is not good,” he said. “We’ve injected Chimera into a number of different mammalian species including dogs and spider monkeys. Within ninety-six hours, all were dead. A mortality rate of one hundred percent.”

  “And there’s no treatment? Nothing has worked?” asked the secretary of defense.

  “Nothing. Which is frightening enough. But there’s worse news.”

  The room went very still as fear rippled across faces. How could this get any worse?

  “We have repeated the DNA analysis of the most recent generation of eggs, collected from the dead monkeys. Chimera has acquired yet a new cluster of genes, specific to Ateles geoffroyi. The spider monkey.”

  The president blanched. He looked at Profitt. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

  “It’s devastating,” said Profitt. “Every time this life-form cycles through a new host, every time it produces a new generation, it seems to acquire new DNA. It has the ability to stay several steps ahead of us by picking up new genes, new capabilities it’s never had before.”

  “How the hell can it do this?” asked General Moray of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “An organism that picks up new genes? That keeps remaking itself? It sounds impossible.”

  Roman said, “It’s not impossible, sir. In fact, a similar process occurs in nature. Bacteria often share genes with each other, trading them back and forth by using viruses as couriers. That’s how they develop antibiotic resistance so quickly. They spread around the genes for resistance, adding new DNA to their chromosomes. Like everything else in nature, they’ll use every weapon they have to survive. To perpetuate their species. That’s what this organism is doing.” He moved to the head of the table, where a blowup of an electron micrograph was displayed. “You can see here, in this photograph of the cell, what looks like tiny granules. They’re clumps of helper virus. Couriers that travel into the host cell, raid its DNA, and bring back bits and pieces of genetic material to Chimera. Adding new genes, new weapons to its arsenal.” Roman looked at the president. “This organism came equipped to survive any environmental conditions. All it needs to do is raid the local fauna’s DNA.”

  The president looked ill. “So it’s still changing. Still evolving.”

  There were murmurs of dismay around the table. Frightened glances, creaking chairs.

  “What about that doctor who got infected?” asked a woman from the Pentagon. “The one USAMRIID had in Level Four isolation? Is he still alive?”

  Roman paused, a look of pain in his eyes. “Dr. Helsinger died late last night. I witnessed the terminal event and it was…a horrible death. He began to convulse so violently we didn’t dare control him for fear someone’s space suit would be torn and someone else exposed. These were seizures unlike any I’ve ever seen. It was as though every single neuron in his brain fired at once in a massive electrical storm. He broke the bed rail. Snapped it cleanly off the frame. Rolled off the mattress and began to—to batter his head on the floor. So hard, we could . . .” He swallowed. “We could hear the skull crack. By then there was blood flying everywhere. He kept smashing his head against the floor, almost as if he were trying to break it open. To release the pressure building up inside. The trauma only made it worse, because he began to bleed into his brain. At the end, the intracranial pressure was so great, it bulged his eyes out of their sockets. Like a cartoon character. Like an animal you see squashed on the road.” He took a deep breath. “That,” he said quietly, “was the terminal event.”

  “Now you understand the possible epidemic we face,” said Profitt. “This is why we can’t afford to be weak or careless. Or sentimental.”

/>   There was another long silence. Everyone looked at the president. They were all waiting for—hoping for—an unequivocal decision.

  Instead, he swiveled his chair toward the window and stared outside. “I wanted to be an astronaut, once,” he said sadly.

  Didn’t we all? thought Profitt. Which child in this country has not dreamed of riding a rocket into space?

  “I was there when they launched John Glenn on the shuttle,” the president said. “And I cried. Just like everyone else. Goddamn it, but I cried like a baby. Because I was proud of him. And proud of this country. And proud of just being part of the human race . . .” He paused. Took a deep breath and wiped his hand across his eyes. “How the hell do I condemn those people to death?”

  Profitt and Roman exchanged unhappy glances.

  “We have no choice, sir,” said Profitt. “It’s five lives versus the lives of God knows how many people here on earth.”

  “They’re heroes. Honest-to-God heroes. And we’re going to leave them up there to die.”

  “The chances are, Mr. President, we wouldn’t be able to save them anyway,” said Roman. “All of them are probably infected. Or they soon will be.”

  “Then some of them may not be infected?”

  “We don’t know. We do know Rudenko definitely is. We believe he was exposed while in his EVA suit. If you’ll recall, Astronaut Hirai was found seizing in the EVA equipment lock ten days ago. That would explain how the suit got contaminated.”

  “Why aren’t the others sick yet? Why only Rudenko?”

  “Our studies indicate this organism needs incubation time before it reaches the infectious stage. We think it’s most contagious around the time the host dies, or afterwards, when it’s released from the corpse. But we’re not certain. We can’t afford to be wrong. We have to assume they’re all carriers.”

  “Then keep them in Level Four isolation until you know. But at least get them home.”

  “Sir, that’s where the risk comes in,” said Profitt. “In just bringing them home. The CRV’s not like the shuttle, which you actually guide down to a specific landing strip. They’d be coming home in a far less controllable vehicle—essentially a pod with parachutes. What if something goes wrong? What if the CRV breaks up in the atmosphere, or crashes on landing? This organism would be released into the air. The wind could carry it anywhere! By then, it will have so much human DNA in its genome, we won’t be able to fight it. It will be too much like us. Any drug we use against it would kill humans as well.” Profitt paused, letting the impact of his words sink in. “We can’t let emotions affect our decision. Not with so much at stake.”

  “Mr. President,” cut in Leroy Cornell, “with all due respect, may I point out that this would be a politically disastrous move. The public will not allow five heroes to die in space.”

  “Politics should be our last concern right now!” said Profitt. “Our first priority is public health!”

  “Then why the secrecy? Why have you cut NASA out of the loop? You’ve shown us only parts of the organism’s genome. Our life-sciences people are ready and willing to contribute their expertise. We want to find a cure every bit as much as—even more than—you do. If USAMRIID would just share all its data with us, we could work together.”

  “Our concern is security,” said General Moray. “A hostile country could turn this into a devastating bioweapon. Giving out Chimera’s genetic code is like handing out a blueprint for that weapon.”

  “Meaning you don’t trust NASA with that information?”

  General Moray met Cornell’s gaze head-on. “I’m afraid NASA’s new philosophy of sharing technology with every two-bit country under the sun does not make your agency a good security risk.”

  Cornell flushed with anger but said nothing.

  Profitt looked at the president. “Sir, it is a tragedy that five astronauts must be left up there to die. But we have to look beyond that, to the possibility of a far greater tragedy. A worldwide epidemic, caused by an organism we’re just beginning to understand. USAMRIID is working around the clock to learn what makes it tick. Until then, I urge you to stay the course. NASA is not equipped to deal with a biological disaster. They have one planetary-protection officer. One. The Army’s Biological Rapid Response Team is prepared for just this sort of crisis. As for NASA operations, leave that under the control of U.S. Space Command, backed up by the Fourteenth Air Force. NASA has too many personal and emotional ties to the astronauts. We need a firm grip on the helm. We need absolute discipline.” Profitt slowly looked around at the men and women seated at the long table. Only a few of these people did he truly respect. Some were interested only in prestige and power. Others had earned a seat here because of political connections. Still others were easily swayed by public sentiment. Few had motives as uncomplicated as his.

  Few had suffered his nightmares, had awakened soaked with sweat in the darkness, shaken by the terrible vision of what they might face.

  “Then you’re saying the astronauts can never come home,” said Cornell.

  Profitt looked at the NASA administrator’s ashen face and felt genuine sympathy. “When we find a way to cure it, when we know we can kill this organism, then we can talk about bringing your people home.”

  “If they’re still alive,” murmured the president.

  Profitt and Roman glanced at each other, but neither responded. They already understood the obvious. They would not find a cure in time. The astronauts would not be coming home alive.

  Jared Profitt wore his jacket and tie as he walked through that sweltering day, but he scarcely noticed the heat. Others might complain of the miseries of a D.C. summer. He did not mind the soaring temperatures. It was winter he dreaded, because he was so sensitive to cold, and on frosty days his lips would turn blue and he’d shiver under layers of scarves and sweaters. Even in summer he kept a sweater in his office to combat the effects of the air conditioner. Today the temperature was in the nineties, and perspiration gleamed on all the faces he passed on the street, but he did not remove his jacket or loosen his tie.

  The meeting had left him deeply chilled, both in body and soul.

  He was carrying his lunch in a brown paper bag, the identical lunch he packed every morning before he left for work. The route he walked was the one he always took, west toward the Potomac, the Reflecting Pool on his left. He took comfort in the routine, the familiar. There were so few things in his life that offered much reassurance these days, and as he grew older, he found himself adhering to certain rituals, much as a monk in a religious order adheres to the daily rhythm of work and prayer and meditation. In many ways, he was like those ancient ascetics, a man who ate only to fuel his body and dressed in suits only because it was required of him. A man for whom wealth meant nothing.

  The name Profitt could not be further from the reality of the man.

  He slowed his pace as he walked along the grassy slope past the Vietnam War Memorial, and gazed down at the solemn line of visitors shuffling past the wall etched with names of the dead. He knew what they were all thinking as they confronted those panels of black granite, as they considered the horrors of war: So many names. So many dead.

  And he thought, You have no idea.

  He found an empty bench in the shade and sat down to eat. From his brown bag he removed an apple, a wedge of cheddar, and a bottle of water. Not Evian or Perrier, but straight from the tap. He ate slowly, watching the tourists as they made the circuit from memorial to memorial. And so we honor our war-heroes, he thought. Society erected statues, engraved marble plaques, raised flags. It shuddered at the number of lives lost on both sides in the slaughterhouse of war. Two million soldiers and civilians dead in Vietnam. Fifty million dead in World War II. Twenty-one million dead in World War I. The numbers were appalling. People might ask: Could man have a more lethal enemy than himself?

  The answer was yes.

  Though humans could not see it, the enemy was all around them. Inside them. In the air they breathed,
the food they drank. Throughout the history of mankind, it has been their nemesis, and it would survive them long after they have vanished from the face of the earth. The enemy was the microbial world, and over the centuries, it has killed more people than all of man’s wars combined.

  From A.D. 542 to 767, forty million dead of the plague in the Justinian pandemic.

  In the 1300s, twenty-five million dead when the Black Death returned.

  In 1918 and 1919, thirty million dead of influenza.

  And in 1997, Amy Sorensen Profitt, age forty-three, dead of pneumococcal pneumonia.

  He finished his apple, placed the core in the brown bag, and carefully rolled his rubbish into a tight bundle. Though the lunch had been meager, he felt satisfied, and he remained on the bench for a while, sipping the last of the water.

  A tourist walked by, a woman with light brown hair. When she turned just so and the light slanted across her face, she looked like Amy. She felt him staring, and she glanced his way. They regarded each other for a moment, she with wariness, he with silent apology. Then she walked away, and he decided she did not look like his dead wife after all. No one did. No one could.

  He rose to his feet, discarded his trash in a receptacle, and began to walk back the way he’d come. Past the wall. Past the uniformed veterans, gray and shaggy now, keeping vigil. Honoring the memory of the dead.

  But even the memories fade, he thought. The image of her smile across the kitchen table, the echo of her laughter—all those were receding as time went by. Only the painful memories hung on. A San Francisco hotel room. A late-night phone call. Frantic images of airports and taxis and phone booths as he raced across the country to reach Bethesda Hospital in time.

  But necrotizing streptococcus has its own agenda, its own timetable for killing. Just like Chimera.

  He drew in a breath of air and wondered how many viruses, how many bacteria, how many fungi, had just swirled into his lungs. And which of those might kill him.

  TWENTY