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It was five in the morning. It would be eight o'clock in Atlanta. He would try
that number again, and then try to log on with his repaired laptop and send an
e-mail message.
In the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. Hair awry, face sweaty
and oily, two days' growth of beard, wearing a ripped T-shirt and BVDs. "A
regular Jeremiah," he said.
Then he started another general cleanup by blowing his nose and brushing his
teeth.
42
Atlanta
Christopher Dicken had returned to his small house on the outskirts of Atlanta
at three in the morning. He had worked at his CDC office until two, preparing
papers for Augustine on the spread of SHEVA in Africa. He had lain awake for
an hour, wondering what the world was going to be like in the next six months.
When he finally drifted off into sleep, he was awakened it seemed moments
later by the buzzing of his cell phone. He sat up in the queen-size bed that
had once belonged to his parents, wondered for a moment where he was, decided
quickly he was not in the Cape Town Hilton, and switched on the light. Morning
was already glowing through the window shutters. He managed to pull the phone
out of his coat pocket in the closet by the fourth ring and answered it.
"Is this Dr. Chris Dicken?"
"Christopher. Yeah." He looked at his watch. It was eight fifteen. He had
managed to sleep a mere two hours, and he was sure he felt worse than if he
had had no sleep at all.
"My name is Mitch Rafelson."
This time, Dicken remembered the name and its association. "Really?" he said.
"Where are you, Mr. Rafelson?"
"Seattle."
"Then it's even earlier where you are. I need to get back to sleep."
"Wait, please," Mitch said. "I'm sorry if I woke you up. Did you get my
message?"
"I got a message," Dicken said.
"We need to talk."
"Listen, if you are Mitch Rafelson, the Mitch Rafelson, I need to talk to
you...about as much as..." He tried to come up with a witty comparison, but
his mind wouldn't work. "I don't need to talk with you."
"Point made...but please listen anyway. You've been tracking SHEVA all over
the world, right?"
"Yeah," Dicken said. He yawned. "I get very little sleep thinking about it."
"Me, too," Mitch said. "Your bodies in the Caucasus tested positive for SHEVA.
My mummies...in the Alps...the mummies at Innsbruck test positive for SHEVA."
Dicken pressed the phone closer to his ear. "How do you know that?"
"I have the lab reports from the University of Washington. I need to show what
I know to you and to whoever else is open-minded about this."
"Nobody is open-minded about this," Dicken said. "Who gave you my number?"
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"Dr. Wendell Packer."
"Do I know Packer?"
"You work with a friend of his. Renee Sondak."
Dicken scratched at a front tooth with a fingernail. Thought very seriously
about hanging up. His cell phone was digitally scrambled, but somebody could
decode the conversation if they had a mind to. This made him flash hot with
anger. Things were out of control. Everyone had lost perspective and it was
not going to get better if he just played along.
"I'm pretty lonely," Mitch said into the silence. "I need someone to tell me
I'm not completely nuts."
"Yeah," Dicken said. "I know what that's like." Then, screwing up his face and
stamping his foot on the floor, knowing this was going to give him far more
trouble than any windmill he had ever tilted at before, he said, "Tell me
more, Mitch."
43
San Diego, California
MARCH 28
The title of the international conference, arranged in black plastic letters
on the convention center billboard, gave Dicken a brief thrill-brief and very
necessary. Nothing much had thrilled him in the good old way of work
satisfaction in the past couple of months, but the name of the conference was
easily sufficient.
CONTROLLING THE EN-VIRON-MENT: NEW TECHNIQUES TOWARD THE CONQUEST OF VIRAL
ILLNESS
The sign was not overly optimistic or off base. In a few more years, the world
might not need Christopher Dicken to chase down viruses.
The problem they all faced was that in disease time, a few years could be very
long indeed.
Dicken walked just outside the shadow of the center's concrete overhang, near
the main entrance, reveling in the bright sun on the sidewalk. He had not
experienced this kind of heat since Cape Town, and it gave him a furnace boost
of energy. Atlanta was finally warming, but the cold gripping the East had
kept snow on the streets in Baltimore and Bethesda.
Mark Augustine was in town already, staying at the U.S. Grant, away from the
majority of the five thousand predicted attendees, most of whom were filling
the hotels along the waterfront. Dicken had picked up his convention package-a
thick spiral-bound program book with a companion DVD-ROM disk-just this
morning to get an early glimpse at the schedule.
Marge Cross would deliver a keynote address tomorrow morning. Dicken would sit
on five panels, two of them dealing with SHEVA. Kaye Lang would be on one
panel with Dicken, and on seven others beside, and she would deliver a talk
before the plenary session of the World Retrovirus Eradication Research Group,
held in conjunction with this conference.
The press was already hailing AmericoPs ribozyme vaccine as a major
breakthrough. It looked good in a petri dish-very good indeed-but the human
trials had not yet begun. Augustine was under considerable pressure from
Shawbeck, and Shawbeck was under considerable pressure from the
administration, and they were all using a very long spoon to sup with Cross.
Dicken could smell eight different kinds of disaster in the winds.
He had not heard from Mitch Rafelson for several days, but suspected the
anthropologist was already in town. They had not yet met, but the conspiracy
was on. Kaye had agreed to join them for a talk this evening or tomorrow,
depending on when Cross's people would let her loose from a round of public
relations interviews.
They would have to find a place away from prying eyes. Dicken suspected the
best place would be right in the middle of everything, and to that end, he
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carried a second bag with a blank convention badge-"Guest of CDC"-and program
book.
Kaye walked through the crowded suite, eyes darting nervously from face to
face. She felt like a spy in a bad movie, trying to hide her true emotions,
certainly her opinions- though she, herself, hardly knew what to think now.
She had spent much of the afternoon in Marge Cross's suite-rather, her entire
floor-upstairs, meeting with men and women representing wholly owned
subsidiaries, professors from UCSD, the mayor of San Diego.
Marge had taken her aside and promised even more impressive VIPs near the end
of the conference. "Keep bright and shiny," Cross had told her. "Don't let the
conference wear you down."
Kaye felt like a doll on display. She did not like the sensation.
She took the elevator to the ground floor at five-thirty and boarded a charter
bus to the opener. The event was being held at the San Diego Zoo, hosted by
Americol.
As she stepped down from the bus in front of the zoo, she breathed in a scent
of jasmine and the soil-rich wetness of evening sprinklers. The line at the
entrance booth was busy; she queued up at a side gate and showed the guard her
invitation.
Four women dressed in black carried signs and marched solemnly in front of the
zoo entrance. Kaye saw them just before she was allowed in; one of their signs
read OUR BODIES, OUR DESTINY: SAVE OUR CHILDREN.
Inside, the warm twilight felt magical. She had not had anything like a
vacation in over a year, the last time with Saul. Everything since had been
work and grief, sometimes both together.
A zoo guide took charge of a group of AmericoFs guests and gave them a brief
tour. Kaye spent a few seconds watching the pink flamingos in their wading
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