The Andromeda Strain Read online

Chapter 6

 

  It was then that they heard the sound of crying.

  ***

  At first it seemed like the sound of the wind, it was so high and thin and reedy, but they listened, feeling puzzled at first, and then astonished. The crying persisted, interrupted by little hacking coughs.

  They ran outside.

  It was faint, and difficult to localize. They ran up the street, and it seemed to grow louder; this spurred them on.

  And then, abruptly, the sound stopped.

  The two men came to a halt, gasping for breath, chests heaving. They stood in the middle of the hot, deserted street and looked at each other.

  "Have we lost our minds?" Burton said.

  "No," Stone said. "We heard it, all right. "

  They waited. It was absolutely quiet for several minutes. Burton looked down the street, at the houses, and the jeep van parked at the other end, in front of Dr. Benedict's house.

  The crying began again, very loud now, a frustrated howl.

  The two men ran.

  It was not far, two houses up on the right side. A man and a woman lay outside, on the sidewalk, fallen and clutching their chests. They ran past them and into the house. The crying was still louder; it filled the empty rooms.

  They hurried upstairs, clambering up, and came to the bedroom. A large double bed, unmade. A dresser, a mirror, a closet.

  And a small crib.

  They leaned over, pulling back the blankets from a small, very red-faced, very unhappy infant. The baby immediately stopped crying long enough to survey their faces, enclosed in the plastic suits.

  Then it began to howl again.

  "Scared hell out of it," Burton said. "Poor thing. "

  He picked it up gingerly and rocked it. The baby continued to scream. Its toothless mouth was wide open, its cheeks purple, and the veins stood out on its forehead.

  "Probably hungry," Burton said.

  Stone was frowning. "It's not very old. Can't be more than a couple of months. Is it a he or a she?"

  Burton unwrapped the blankets and checked the diapers. "He. And he needs to be changed. And fed. " He looked around the room. "There's probably a formula in the kitchen. . . "

  "No," Stone said. "We don't feed it. "

  "Why not?"

  "We don't do anything to that child until we get it out of this town. Maybe feeding is part of the disease process; maybe the people who weren't hit so hard or so fast were the ones who hadn't eaten recently. Maybe there's something protective about this baby's diet. Maybe. . . " He stopped. "But whatever it is, we can't take a chance. We've got to wait and get him into a controlled situation. "

  Burton sighed. He knew that Stone was right, but he also knew that the baby hadn't been fed for at least twelve hours. No wonder the kid was crying.

  Stone said, "This is a very important development. It's a major break for us, and we've got to protect it. I think we should go back immediately. "

  "We haven't finished our head count. "

  Stone shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We have something much more valuable than anything we could hope to find. We have a survivor. "

  The baby stopped crying for a moment, stuck its finger in its mouth, and looked questioningly up at Burton. Then, when he was certain no food was forthcoming, he began to howl again.

  "Too bad," Burton said, "he can't tell us what happened. "

  "I'm hoping he can," Stone said.

  ***

  They parked the van in the center of the main street, beneath the hovering helicopter, and signaled for it to descend with the ladder. Burton held the infant, and Stone held the Scoop satellite-- strange trophies, Stone thought, from a very strange town. The baby was quiet now; he had finally tired of crying and was sleeping fitfully, awakening at intervals to whimper, then sleep again.

  The helicopter descended, spinning up swirls of dust. Burton wrapped the blankets about the baby's face to protect him. The ladder came down and he climbed up, with difficulty.

  Stone waited on the ground, standing with the capsule in the wind and dust and thumpy noise from the helicopter.

  And, suddenly, he realized that he was not alone on the street. He turned, and saw a man behind him.

  He was an old man, with thin gray hair and a wrinkled, worn face. He wore a long nightgown that was smudged with dirt and yellowed with dust, and his feet were bare. He stumbled and tottered toward Stone. His chest was heaving with exertion beneath the nightgown.

  "Who are you?" Stone said. But he knew: the man in the pictures. The one who had been photographed by the airplane.

  "You. . . " the man said.

  "Who are you?"

  "You. . . did it. . . "

  "What is your name?"

  "Don't hurt me. . . I'm not like the others. . . "

  He was shaking with fear as he stared at Stone in his plastic suit. Stone thought, We must look strange to him. Like men from Mars, men from another world.

  "Don't hurt me. . . "

  "We won't hurt you," Stone said. "What is your name?"

  "Jackson. Peter Jackson. Sir. Please don't hurt me. "

  He waved to the bodies in the street. "I'm not like the others. . . "

  "We won't hurt you," Stone said again.

  "You hurt the others .

  "No. We didn't. "

  "They're dead. "

  "We had nothing--"

  "You're lying," he shouted, his eyes wide. "You're lying to me. You're not human. You're only pretending. You know I'm a sick man. You know you can pretend with me. I'm a sick man. I'm bleeding, I know. I've had this . . . this . . . this. . . "

  He faltered, and then doubled over, clutching his stomach and wincing in pain.

  "Are you all right?"

  The man fell to the ground. He was breathing heavily, his skin pale. There was sweat on his face.

  "My stomach," he gasped. "It's my stomach. "

  And then he vomited. It came up heavy, deep-red, rich with blood.

  "Mr. Jackson--"

  But the man was not awake. His eyes were closed and he was lying on his back. For a moment, Stone thought he was dead, but then he saw the chest moving, slowly, very slowly, but moving.

  Burton came back down.

  "Who is he?"

  "Our wandering man. Help me get him up. "

  "Is he alive?"

  "So far. "

  "I'll be damned," Burton said.

  ***

  They used the power winch to hoist up the unconscious body of Peter Jackson, and then lowered it again to raise the capsule. Then, slowly, Burton and Stone climbed the r into the belly of the helicopter.

  They did not remove their suits, but instead clipped on a second bottle of oxygen to give them another two hours of breathing time. That would be sufficient to carry them to the Wildfire installation.

  The pilot established a radio connection to Vandenberg so that Stone could talk with Major Manchek.

  "What have you found?" Manchek said.

  "The town is dead. We have good evidence for an unusual process at work. "

  "Be careful," Manchek said. "This is an open circuit. "

  "I am aware of that. Will you order up a 7-12?"

  "I'll try. You want it now?"

  "Yes, now. "

  "Piedmont?"

  "Yes. "

  "You have the satellite?"

  "Yes, we have it. "

  "All right," Manchek said. "I'll put through the order. "

  8. Directive 7-12

  DIRECTIVE 7-12 WAS A PART OF THE FINAL Wildfire Protocol for action in the event of a biologic emergency. It called for the placement of a limited thermonuclear weapon at the site of exposure of terrestrial life to exogenous organisms. The code f
or the directive was Cautery, since the function of the bomb was to cauterize the infection-- to burn it out, and thus prevent its spread.

  As a single step in the Wildfire Protocol, Cautery had been agreed upon by the authorities involved-- Executive, State, Defense, and AEC-- after much debate. The AEC, already unhappy about the assignment of a nuclear device to the Wildfire laboratory, did not wish Cautery to be accepted as a program; State and Defense argued that any aboveground thermonuclear detonation, for whatever purpose, would have serious repercussions internationally.

  The President finally agreed to Directive 7-12, but insisted that he retain control over the decision to use a bomb for Cautery. Stone was displeased with this arrangement, but he was forced to accept it; the President had been under considerable pressure to reject the whole idea and had compromised only after much argument. Then, too, there was the Hudson Institute study.

  The Hudson Institute had been contracted to study possible consequences of Cautery. Their report indicated that the President would face four circumstances (scenarios) in which he might have to issue the Cautery order. According to degree of seriousness, the scenarios were:

  1. A satellite or manned capsule lands in an unpopulated area of the United States. The President may cauterize the area with little domestic uproar and small loss of life. The Russians may be privately informed of the reasons for breaking the Moscow Treaty of 1963 forbidding aboveground nuclear testing.

  2. A satellite or manned capsule lands in a major American city. (The example was Chicago. ) The Cautery will require destruction of a large land area and a large population, with great domestic consequences and secondary international consequences.

  3. A satellite or manned capsule lands in a major neutralist urban center. (New Delhi was the example. ) The Cautery will entail American intervention with nuclear weapons to prevent further spread of disease. According to the scenarios, there were seventeen possible consequences of American-Soviet interaction following the destruction of New Delhi. Twelve led directly to thermonuclear war.

  4. A satellite or manned capsule lands in a major Soviet urban center. (The example was Stalingrad. ) Cautery will require the United States to inform the Soviet Union of what has happened and to advise that the Russians themselves destroy the city. According to the Hudson Institute scenario, there were six possible consequences of American-Russian interaction following this event, and all six led directly to war. It was therefore advised that if a satellite fell within Soviet or Eastern Bloc territory the United States not inform the Russians of what had happened. The basis of this decision was the prediction that a Russian plague would kill between two and five million people, while combined Soviet-American losses from a thermonuclear exchange involving both first and second-strike capabilities would come to more than two hundred and fifty million persons.

  As a result of the Hudson Institute report, the President and his advisers felt that control of Cautery, and responsibility for it, should remain within political, not scientific, hands. The ultimate consequences of the President's decision could not, of course, have been predicted at the time it was made.

  Washington came to a decision within an hour of Manchek's report. The reasoning behind the President's decision has never been clear, but the final result was plain enough:

  The President elected to postpone calling Directive 7-12 for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Instead, he called out the National Guard and cordoned off the area around Piedmont for a radius of one hundred miles. And he waited.

  9. Flatrock

  MARK WILLIAM HALL, M. D. , SAT IN THE TIGHT rear seat of the F- 104 fighter and stared over the top of the rubber oxygen mask at the file on his knees. Leavitt had given it to him just before takeoff-- a heavy, thick wad of paper bound in gray cardboard. Hall was supposed to read it during the flight, but the F-104 was not made for reading; there was barely enough room in front of him to hold his

  I hands clenched together, let alone open a file and read.

  Yet Hall was reading it.

  On the cover of the file was stenciled WILDFIRE, and underneath, an ominous note:

  THIS FILE IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET.

  Examination by unauthorized persons is a criminal offense punishable by fines and imprisonment up to 20 years and $20,000.

  When Leavitt gave him the file, Hall had read the note and whistled.

  "Don't you believe it," Leavitt said.

  "Just a scare?"

  "Scare, hell," Leavitt said. "If the wrong man reads this file, he just disappears. "

  "Nice. "

  "Read it," Leavitt said, "and you'll see why. "

  The plane flight had taken an hour and forty minutes, cruising in eerie, perfect silence at 1. 8 times the speed of sound. Hall had skimmed through most of the file; reading it, he had found, was impossible. Much of its bulk of 274 pages consisted of cross-references and interservice notations, none of which he could understand. The first page was as bad as any of them:

  THIS IS PAGE 1 OF 274 PAGES

  PROJECT: WILDFIRE

  AUTHORITY: NASA/AMC

  CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET (NTK BASIS)

  PRIORITY: NATIONAL (DX)

  SUBJECT: Initiation of high-security facility to prevent dispersion of toxic extraterrestrial agents.

  CROSSFILE: Project CLEAN, Project ZERO CONTAMINANTS, Project CAUTERY

  SUMMARY OF FILE CONTENTS:

  By executive order, construction of a facility initiated January 1965. Planning stage March 1965. Consultants Fort Detrick and General Dynamics (EBD) July 1965. Recommendation for multistory facility in isolated location for investigation of possible or probable contaminatory agents. Specifications reviewed August 1965. Approval with revision same date. Final drafts drawn and filed AMC under WILDFIRE (copies Detrick, Hawkins). Choice of site northeast Montana, reviewed August 1965. Choice of site southwest Arizona, reviewed August 1965. Choice of site northwest Nevada, reviewed September 1965. Nevada site approved October 1965.

  Construction completed July 1966. Funding NASA, AMC, DEFENSE (unaccountable reserves). Congressional appropriation for maintenance and personnel under same.

  Major alterations: Millipore filters, see page 74. Self-destruct capacity (nuclear), page 88. Ultraviolet irradiators removed, see page 81. Single Man Hypothesis (Odd Man Hypothesis), page 255.

  PERSONNEL SUMMARIES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM THIS FILE. PERSONNEL MAY BE FOUND IN AMC (WILDFIRE) FILES ONLY.

  The second page listed the basic parameters of the system, as laid down by the original Wildfire planning group. This specified the most important concept of the installation, namely that it would consist of roughly similar, descending levels, all underground. Each would be more sterile than the one above.

  THIS IS PAGE 2 OF 274 PAGES

  PROJECT: WILDFIRE

  PRIMARY PARAMETERS

  1. THERE ARE TO BE FIVE STAGES:

  Stage 1: Non-decontaminated, but clean. Approximates sterility of hospital operating room or NASA clean room. No time delay of entrance.

  Stage II: Minimal sterilization procedures: hexachlorophene and methitol bath, not requiring total immersion. One-hour delay with clothing change.

  Stage III: Moderate sterilization procedures: total-immersion bath, UV irradiation, followed by two-hour delay for preliminary testing. Afebrile infections of UR and GU tracts permitted to pass. Viral symptomatology permitted to pass.

  Stage IV: Maximal sterilization procedures: total immersion in four baths of biocaine, monochlorophin, xantholysin, and prophyne with intermediate thirty-minute UV and IR irradiation. All infection hafted at this stage on basis of symptomatology or clinical signs. Routine screening of all personnel. Six-hour delay.

  Stage V: Redundant sterilization procedures: no further immersions or testing, but destruct clothing x2 per day. Prophylactic antibiotics for forty-eight h
ours. Daily screen for superinfection, first eight days.

  2. EACH STAGE INCLUDES:

  1. Resting quarters, individual

  2. Recreation quarters, including movie and game room

  3. Cafeteria, automatic

  4. Library, with main journals transmitted by Xerox or TV from main library Level 1.

  5. Shelter, a high-security antimicrobial complex with safety in event of level contamination.

  6. Laboratories:

  a) biochemistry, with all necessary equipment for automatic amino-acid analysis, sequence determination, O/R potentials, lipid and carbohydrate determinations on human, animal, other subjects.

  b) pathology, with EM, phase and LM, microtomes and curing rooms. Five full-time technicians each level. One autopsy room. One room for experimental animals.

  c) microbiology, with all facilities for growth, nutrient, analytic, immunologic studies. Subsections bacterial, viral, parasitic, other.

  d) pharmacology, with material for dose-relation and receptor site specificity studies of known compounds. Pharmacy to include drugs as noted in appendix.

  e) main room, experimental animals. 75 genetically pure strains of mice; 27 of rat; 17 of cat; 12 of dog; 8 of primate.

  f) nonspecific room for previously unplanned experiments.

  7. Surgery: for care and treatment of staff, including operating room facilities for acute emergencies.

  8. Communications: for contact with other levels by audiovisual and other means.

  COUNT YOUR PAGES

  REPORT ANY MISSING PAGES AT ONCE

  COUNT YOUR PAGES

  As Hall continued to read, he found that only on Level 1, the topmost floor, would there be a large computer complex for data analysis, but that this computer would serve all other levels on a time-sharing basis. This was considered feasible since, for biologic problems, real time was unimportant in relation to computer time, and multiple problems could be fed and handled at once.