Invasion

18

9:15 A.M.

The gas station looked like a movie set in the nineteen-thirties or the cover of an old Saturday Evening Post magazine. There were two old skinny gas pumps that resembled miniature skyscrapers with art deco round tops. In the middle of the tops an image of a red Pegasus still could be discerned despite the peeling paint.

The building behind the pumps was of the same vintage. It defied belief it was still standing. Over the last half century the sand blowing in off the desert had scoured the clapboards of any vestige of paint. The only thing that was reasonably intact was the old asphalt shingle roof. The screen door minus its screens blew back and forth in the hot breeze: a standing tribute to the longevity of its hardware.

Pitt pulled the van over to the side of the road opposite the dilapidated station so that they could look at it.

“What a Godforsaken place,” Sheila commented, wiping the sweat out of her eyes. The desert sun was just beginning to give evidence of its noonday power.

They were on an essentially abandoned two-lane road that at one time had been a major route across the Arizona desert. But the interstate twenty miles to the south had changed that. Now cars rarely ventured along this rutted tarmac, as evidenced by the encroaching wisps of sand.

“This is where he said he’d meet us,” Jonathan said. “And it is exactly as he described it, screen door and all.”

“Well, where is he?” Pitt asked. He ran his eyes around the distant horizon. Except for a few lonely mesas in the distance, there was nothing but flat desert in every direction. The only movement visible was that of clumps of tumbleweed.

“Maybe we should just sit and wait,” Jonathan suggested. He was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open from lack of sleep.

“There’s no cover out here whatsoever,” Pitt said. “It gives me the willies.”

“Maybe we should look inside the broken-down station house,” Sheila said.

Pitt restarted the van, pulled across the road, and parked between the ancient gas pumps and the dilapidated building. They all eyed the structure with unease. There was something about it that was spooky, particularly with the screen door opening and closing repeatedly. Now that they were close enough they could hear the aged hinges squeaking. The small paned windows, which were surprisingly intact, were too filthy to see through.

“Let’s take a look inside,” Sheila said.

Hesitantly they climbed out of the van and warily approached the porch. There were two old rocking chairs whose cane seats had long ago rotted out. Next to the door was the rusting hulk of an old-style, ice-cooled Coke dispenser. The sliding lid was open and the interior was filled with all manner of debris.

Pitt propped open the screen door and tried the interior door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open.

“You guys coming or what?” Pitt asked.

“After you,” Sheila said.

Pitt stepped inside followed by Jonathan and then Sheila. They stopped just over the threshold and glanced around. With the dirty windows the light was meager. There was a metal desk to the right with a calendar behind it. The year was 1938. The floor was littered with dirt, sand, broken bottles, old newspaper, empty oil cans, and old car parts. Cobwebs hung like Spanish moss from portions of the ceiling joists. To the left was a doorway. The paneled door was partially ajar.

“Looks like nobody’s been in here for a long time,” Pitt said. “You think this supposed meeting was some kind of setup?”

“I don’t think so,” Jonathan said. “Maybe he’s waiting for us in the desert, watching us to make sure we’re okay.”

“Where could he be watching us from?” Pitt asked. “It’s as flat as a pancake outside.” He walked over to the partially opened door and pushed it open all the way. Its hinges protested loudly. The second room was even darker than the first, with only one small window. The walls were lined with shelving, suggesting it had been a storeroom.

“Well, I’m not sure it makes a hell of a lot of difference if we find him or not,” Sheila said dejectedly. She nudged some of the trash on the floor with her foot. “I was holding out hope that since he was giving us some interesting information, he had access to a lab or something. Needless to say we’re not going to be able to do any work in a place like this. I think we’d better move on.”

“Let’s wait a little while,” Jonathan said. “I’m sure this guy is legit.”

“He told us he’d be here when we got here,” Sheila reminded Jonathan. “He either lied to us or... ”

“Or what?” Pitt asked.

“Or they got to him,” Sheila said. “By now he could be one of them.”

“That’s a happy thought,” Pitt said.

“We have to deal with reality,” Sheila said.

“Wait a second,” Pitt said. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” Sheila asked. “The screen door?”

“No, it was something else,” Pitt said. “A scraping noise.”

Jonathan reached up and felt the top of his head. “Something’s fallen on me. Dust or something.” He looked up. “Uh oh, there’s someone up there.”

Everyone looked up. Only now did they appreciate that there was no ceiling. Above the rafters it was darker than below in the room. But now that their eyes had adjusted to the low level of illumination they could just make out a figure in the attic space, standing on the joists.

Pitt reached down and snatched up a tire iron from the debris on the floor.

“Drop it,” a raspy voice called down. With surprising speed the figure dropped out of the attic by swinging down on one hand. In his other hand he held an impressive Colt.45. He studied his visitors with a steady eye. He was a man in his early sixties with ruddy skin, curly gray hair, and a wiry frame.

“Drop the club,” the man repeated.

Pitt abandoned the tire iron by tossing it noisily onto the floor and held up his hands.

“I’m Jumpin Jack Flash,” Jonathan said excitedly while repeatedly tapping his chest. “It was my name on the Internet. Are you Dr. M?”

“I might be,” the man said.

“My real name is Jonathan. Jonathan Sellers.”

“I’m Dr. Sheila Miller.”

“And I’m Pitt Henderson.”

“Were you checking us out?” Jonathan asked. “Is that why you were hiding up in the rafters?”

“Maybe,” the man said. Then he motioned for his three guests to move into the storeroom.

Pitt was hesitant. “We’re friends. Really we are. We’re normal people.”

“Get!” the man said while extending the pistol toward Pitt’s face.

Pitt had never seen a.45 before, particularly not from the point of view of looking directly down the dark, threatening barrel.

“I’m going,” Pitt said.

“All of you,” the man said.

Reluctantly everyone crowded into the dark storeroom.

“Turn around and face me,” the man said.

Fearful about what was going to happen, everyone did as he was told. With throats that had gone completely dry they eyed this sinewy man who’d literally dropped in on them. The man returned their stare. There was a moment of silence.

“I know what you are doing,” Pitt said. “You’re checking our eyes. You’re looking to see if our eyes glow!”

The man nodded finally. “You’re right,” he said. “And I’m pleased to report, they don’t shine at all. Good!” He holstered his.45. “My name’s McCay. Dr. Harlan McCay. And I guess we’ll be working together. I’m glad to see you people, really I am.”

With great relief Pitt and Jonathan shadowed the man out into the sunlight where they shook hands enthusiastically. Sheila followed but seemed irritated over the initial reception. She complained that he’d terrified her.

“Sorry,” Harlan said. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but being careful is a product of the times. But that’s all behind us now. Let’s get you over to where you’ll be working. I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time if we’re going to have any effect whatsoever.”

“You have a lab or someplace to work?” Sheila questioned. Her mood brightened.

“Yeah,” Harlan said. “I got a little lab. But we need to drive a ways. It’ll take about twenty minutes.” He opened the van’s slider and climbed in. Pitt got behind the wheel. Sheila took the front passenger seat, and Jonathan joined Harlan.

Pitt started the van. “Where to?” he asked.

“Straight on,” Harlan said. “I’ll let you know when to turn.”

“Were you in private practice before all this trouble?” Sheila asked as the van pulled out into the road.

“Yes and no,” Harlan said. “The first part of my professional life was spent at UCLA in an academic position. I was trained in internal medicine with a subspecialty in immunology. But about five years ago I realized I was burned out, so I came out here and started a general practice in a little town called Paswell. It’s just a blip on the map. I worked a lot with Native Americans on the surrounding reservations.”

“Immunology!” Sheila commented. She was impressed. “No wonder you were sending us such interesting stuff.”

“I could say the same to you,” Harlan said. “What’s your training?”

“Unfortunately mostly emergency medicine,” Sheila admitted. “I did do an internal medicine residency, though.”

“Emergency medicine!” Harlan commented. “Then I’m even more impressed with the sophistication of your data. I thought I was communicating with a fellow immunologist.”

“I’m afraid I can’t take the credit,” Sheila said. “Jonathan’s mother was with us then, and she was a virologist. She did most of the work.”

“Sounds like I shouldn’t be asking where she is now,” Harlan said.

“We don’t know where she is,” Jonathan said quickly. “She went to a pharmacy last night to get some drugs and didn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry,” Harlan said.

“She’ll contact me on the Internet,” Jonathan said, not about to give up hope.

They drove for a few minutes in silence. No one wanted to contradict Jonathan.

“Are we heading for Paswell now?” Sheila asked. The idea of being in a town had a lot of appeal. She wanted a shower and a bed.

“Heavens no,” Harlan said. “Everybody’s infected there.”

“How did you manage to avoid being infected yourself?” Pitt asked.

“Dumb luck at first,” Harlan said. “I happened to be with a friend at the moment he got stung by one of those black discs, so I avoided them like the plague. Then when I got an inkling of what was happening and that there wasn’t anything I could do, I took to the desert. I’ve been out here ever since.”

“How does being out here in the desert account for the data you were requesting and sending?” Sheila asked.

“I told you,” Harlan said. “I got a little lab.”

Sheila looked out her side of the van. The featureless desert stretched off toward distant mountains. There weren’t any buildings, much less a biological laboratory. She began to worry about how many marbles Harlan McCay was dealing with beneath his shock of gray hair.

“I do have a bit of encouraging news,” Harlan said. “Once you were able to give me the amino acid sequence of the enabling protein, and I was able to make some, I’ve developed a rather crude monoclonal antibody.”

Sheila’s head spun around. She studied the leathery-faced, blue-eyed, stubbled desert man with disbelief. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Sure I’m sure,” Harlan said. “But don’t get bent out of shape, because it’s not as specific as I’d like. But it works. The main point is that I’ve proven the protein is antigenic enough to elicit an antibody response in a mouse. I just have to select out a better B lymphocyte to make my hybridoma cell.”

Pitt hazarded a quick glance at Sheila. Despite having had a number of advanced biology courses, Pitt had no idea what Harlan was talking about or even whether he was making sense. Yet Sheila was obviously extraordinarily impressed.

“To make a monoclonal antibody you need sophisticated reagents and materials, like a source of myeloma cells,” Sheila said.

“No doubt,” Harlan said. “Take a right up here, Pitt, just beyond that cactus.”

“But there’s no road,” Pitt said.

“A mere technicality,” Harlan said. “Turn anyway.”

Cassy awoke from a short nap, got up from the bed, and went to the large, multipaned window. She was in a guest room on the second floor of the mansion facing south. To the left she could see a line of pedestrian traffic coming and going on the driveway. Directly ahead, her view of the grounds was limited by a tall, leafy tree. To the right she could see the tip of the terrace that surrounded the pool as well as about a hundred yards of lawn before it butted up against a pine forest.

She looked at her watch. She wondered when she would start feeling ill. She tried to remember the interval that Beau had experienced between being stung and his first symptoms, but she couldn’t. All he’d told her was that he’d been in class. She didn’t know which class.

Returning to the door, she gave the knob another twist. It was still locked as securely as when she’d been put in the room. Turning around, she leaned against the door and surveyed her surroundings. It was a generous bedroom with a high ceiling, but except for the bed, it was completely empty. And the bed itself consisted of a bare mattress on a box spring.

The short nap had revived Cassy to a point. She felt a mixture of depression and anger. She thought about lying back on the bed but didn’t think she could sleep. Instead she returned to the window.

Noticing there was no lock, she tried the sash. To her surprise it opened with ease. Leaning out the window, she looked down. About twenty feet below was a flagstone walkway that connected the back terrace with the front. It was edged with a limestone balustrade. It would be a very hard landing if she tried to jump, but she gave the idea serious thought. Death might be preferable to becoming one of them. The problem was, a twenty-foot fall would probably only maim, not kill.

Cassy raised her eyes and looked more carefully at the tree. One stout branch in particular caught her attention. It grew out of the main trunk, arched directly toward the window, then angled off to the right. Her interest was directed at a short horizontal section that was about six or seven feet away from where she was standing.

The question went through Cassy’s mind whether she could leap from the window, catch the branch, and hold on. She didn’t know. She’d never done anything like it in her life and was surprised the idea even occurred to her. Yet these were hardly normal circumstances, and she quickly became intrigued. After all it seemed possible, especially with all the working out with weights she’d been doing over the last six months with Beau’s encouragement.

Besides, Cassy thought, what if she missed? Her present prospects were dismal. Dashing herself against the balustrade didn’t seem much worse and might do more than injure.

Climbing up on the windowsill, Cassy pushed the sash up to its full height to create an opening about five feet square. From that position the ground looked dramatically farther away.

She closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding, and she was breathing rapidly. Her courage vacillated. She recalled going to a circus as a child and seeing the trapeze artists and thinking she could never do anything like that. But then she thought of Eugene and Jesse and what Beau was becoming. She thought of the horror of losing her identity.

With sudden resolve, Cassy opened her eyes and leapt out into the air.

It seemed forever before she made contact. Perhaps drawing on some arboreal instincts she didn’t realize she possessed, Cassy had judged the distance perfectly. Her hands made proper contact with the branch, and she grabbed on. Now the question became whether she could hold on as her legs swung beneath her.

There were a few moments of terror before her swinging came to a halt. She’d done it! But it wasn’t over. She was still twenty feet off the ground, although now she was suspended over lawn, not flagstone.

Swinging her legs to help her, Cassy moved along the branch until she came to a point where she could get her right foot on a lower branch. From there it was relatively easy to work her way down the tree and eventually jump onto the grass.

The moment her feet touched the ground, Cassy was up and walking. She resisted the temptation to run out across the expansive lawn, knowing full well that it would only draw attention to herself. Instead she forced herself to assume a leisurely pace after climbing over the low balustrade. She followed the walkway to the front of the house.

Mimicking the smiles, the blank staring into the middle distance, and the relaxed walk, Cassy melded into the crowd of infected people heading out the driveway. Her heart was in her throat and she was terrified, but it worked. No one paid her any attention. The hardest part was forcing herself not to look around her, especially not at the dogs.

“How do you know where we are going?” Pitt asked. They had traveled miles on a track that in places was barely discernable from the desert itself.

“We’re almost there,” Harlan said.

“Oh, please!” Sheila said impatiently. “We’re in the middle of the damned desert. Without the paved road this is more Godforsaken than the area around that deserted gas station. Is this some kind of joke?”

“No joke,” Harlan said. “Be patient! I’m giving you all a chance to help save the human race.”

Sheila glanced over at Pitt, but his attention was glued to the track. Sheila sighed loudly. Just when she’d started feeling good about Harlan, it was becoming apparent he was taking them on a wild-goose chase. There was no lab out there in the desert. The whole situation was absurd.

“Okay,” Harlan said. “Stop up there next to that flowering cactus.”

Pitt did as he was told. He pulled on the brake and cut the engine.

“All right,” Harlan said. “Everybody out,” He opened the slider and stepped out onto the sand. Jonathan followed at his heels.

“Come on,” Harlan encouraged the others.

Sheila and Pitt rolled their eyes for each other’s benefit. They were parked in the middle of the desert. Except for a few scattered boulders, a handful of cacti, and some low rolling sand hills, there was nothing around them.

Harlan had walked about twenty feet away before turning back. He was surprised no one was following him. Jonathan had gotten out of the van, but since the others hadn’t, he’d hesitated.

“For chrissake!” Harlan complained. “What d’ya need, a special invitation?”

Sheila sighed and alighted from the vehicle. Pitt followed suit. Then all three trudged after Harlan, who was striking out into nowhere land.

Sheila wiped her brow. “I don’t know what to make of this,” she whispered. “One minute this guy seems like a godsend, the next like a crackpot. And on top of that it’s hotter than Hades.”

Harlan stopped and waited for the others to catch up to him. He pointed down to the ground and said: “Welcome to the Washburn-Kraft Biological Warfare Reaction Laboratory.”

Before anyone could respond to this preposterous statement, Harlan bent down and grasped a camouflaged ring. He pulled up and a circular portion of the desert floor lifted up. Beneath was a round opening lined with stainless steel. Just the tip of a ladder was visible.

Harlan made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “This whole area around here all the way to within a few miles of Paswell is honeycombed with underground facilities. It was supposed to be a big secret, but the Native Americans knew about it.”

“It’s an operational lab?” Sheila questioned. This indeed was too good to be true.

“It had been mothballed in kind of suspended animation,” Harlan said. “It was built back at the height of the cold war but then deemed superfluous when the threat of germ warfare coming to the USA diminished. Except for a few bureaucrats who kept the thing stocked, it was pretty much forgotten about; at least that’s my take on the situation. Anyway, after all this trouble started, I got into it and cranked it up to speed. So to answer your question: yes, it is an operational lab.”

“And this is the entrance?” Sheila questioned. She leaned out over the rim of the opening and looked down. There were lights below. The ladder went straight down about thirty feet.

“No, this is an emergency exit plus an air vent,” Harlan said. “The real entrance is closer to Paswell, but I’m afraid to use that lest I be seen by some of my former patients.”

“Can we go inside?” Sheila asked.

“Hey, that’s what we’re here for,” Harlan said. “But before a tour I want to cover the van with a camouflage tarp.”

They all climbed down the ladder to a white, high-tech corridor illuminated by banks of fluorescent lights. From a storage locker at the base of the ladder, Harlan got out the tarp he’d mentioned. Pitt returned topside with Harlan to give him a hand.

“Pretty cool,” Jonathan said to Sheila while they waited. The corridor seemed to stretch off in either direction to infinity.

“Better than cool,” Sheila said. “It’s a godsend. And to think it was built to help thwart a germ-warfare attack by the Russians and instead is to be used to do the same thing for aliens is truly ironic.”

When Harlan and Pitt returned back down, Harlan led them off in what he said was a northerly direction.

“It will take you a while to orient yourselves,” he said. “Until then I recommend you stick together.”

“Where are the people that kept this place up?” Sheila asked.

“They came in shifts like the guys that used to man the underground missile silos,” Harlan said. “But after they got infected, I guess they either forgot about it or went off someplace. The talk in Paswell was that a lot of people were going to Santa Fe for some reason. Anyway they’re not around, and by now I don’t expect them.”

They came to an air lock. Harlan opened it and had everybody climb into a chamber. Inside the chamber were showers and blue jump suits. Harlan closed the door, then twisted some dials. Air was heard entering the lock.

“This was to make sure none of the biological warfare agents got into the lab except in biohazard containers,” Harlan said. “Obviously that’s not our worry now.”

“Where does the power come from?” Sheila asked.

“Nuclear,” Harlan said. “It’s kinda like a nuclear submarine. The whole place is independent of what’s going on topside.”

Everybody had to clear their ears as the pressure built up. When it was equalized with the interior of the lab, Harlan opened the inner door.

Sheila was flabbergasted. She’d never seen such a laboratory in her entire life. It was a series of three large rooms with walk-in incubators and freezers. Adding to her astonishment was the fact that all the equipment was state-of-the-art.

“These freezers are a little scary,” Harlan said, tapping one of the stainless steel doors. “They contain just about every known potential biological agent, both bacterial and viral.” He then pointed toward another door with large bolts like a walk-in safe. “In there is a library of chemical agents. One of James Bond’s villians would have had a ball down here.”

“What’s through those doors?” Sheila asked, pointing to pressure-sealed hatches with round porthole windows.

“That goes into confinement rooms and a sick bay,” Harlan said. “My guess is that they considered such a facility necessary in case any of the people working in here succumbed to whatever they were trying to vanquish.”

“Look!” Jonathan said, pointing toward a row of black discs positioned beneath an exhaust hood.

“Don’t touch those!” Harlan said anxiously.

“Don’t worry,” Jonathan said. “We know about them.”

Everyone walked over and looked at the collection.

“They can do more than infect people,” Sheila said.

“Don’t I know,” Harlan said. “Come with me. Let me show you something.”

Harlan led everyone to a short corridor off of which were several X-ray rooms as well as an MRI scanner. He opened the door to the first X-ray room. Inside the machine had been twisted out of shape as if it had been melted and pulled inward.

“My God!” Sheila said. “This looks just like what happened in a room in the student overnight ward. Do you know how this happened?”

“I think so,” Harlan said. “I tried to X-ray one of those black discs, and it didn’t like it. This may sound crazy, but I think it created a miniature black hole. My guess is that’s how they get here and how they leave.”

“Cool,” Jonathan said. “How can they do that?”

“I wish I knew,” Harlan said. “But I’ll tell you how I explained it to myself. Somehow they have the ability to generate enough internal energy to create an instantaneous huge gravitational field so they subatomically implode.”

“So where do they go?” Jonathan asked.

“Now you have to go way out on a limb,” Harlan said. “And perhaps subscribe to the wormhole theory of the cosmos. In that scenario they’d be in another parallel universe.”

“Wow,” Jonathan said.

“That’s a bit too much for me,” Pitt said.

“Me too,” Sheila said. “Let’s get back to the lab.” As they returned she asked: “And there’s mice and myeloma cells available down here for monoclonal antibody production?”

“We’ve got more than mice,” Harlan said. “We’ve got rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, and even a few monkeys. In fact, half my time is taken up feeding the guys.”

“What about living quarters?” Sheila asked. As tired and dirty as she was, she couldn’t help but think about the pleasure of a shower and a nap.

“This way,” Harlan said. He lead them out into the main corridor and through a pair of double doors. The first room they came to was a gigantic living room, complete with a large screen TV and an entire wall filled with books. Next to the living room was a dining area adjacent to a modern kitchen. Beyond the dining room and leading off a central corridor were multiple guest rooms, each with its own bath.

“Hey, this is okay,” Jonathan said, seeing that each bedroom had its own computer terminal.

“This is good,” Pitt said, eyeing the bed. “This is very good.”

Once Cassy had gotten away from the institute, she’d been able to find a car with ease. There were hundreds of them simply abandoned as if many of the infected people weren’t interested in them any longer. The people seemed to prefer walking.

As soon as she got to a phone she’d tried calling the cabin. After letting the phone ring twenty times, she’d given up. Obviously no one was there which could only mean one thing: they’d been discovered. Such a realization had been heartbreaking for Cassy, and for over an hour she’d sat in her commandeered car feeling depressed to the point of paralysis. Her wish to at least speak once more with Pitt and the others had been thwarted.

What finally pulled Cassy from the depths of her torpor was a sudden stinging sensation in her nose followed by a series of violent sneezes. Instantly she knew what was happening; the symptoms of the alien flu were starting.

Cassy went back to the telephone, and despite knowing it was in vain, tried calling the cabin again. As she’d expected, there was still no answer. But as the phone rang she thought that there was at least a small possibility that even if the cabin had been discovered, one or more might have gotten away. That was when she thought about what Jonathan had been so patient to teach her: logging onto the Internet.

By the time Cassy got back to the car, the discomfort she felt in her nose had spread down to her throat, and she began to cough. At first it was only a clearing of her throat, but it quickly progressed to a cough.

Cassy drove into the town. There was still some traffic, but it was slight. In contrast there were thousands of people walking about and busily involved with all the necessities of life. A lot of people were gardening. Everyone was smiling, and there was little conversation.

Cassy parked the car and got out onto the sidewalk. Although many businesses were still functioning, others were deserted as if the employees had just stood up at some arbitrary time and walked out the door. Nothing was locked.

One of the empty businesses was a dry-cleaning store. Cassy went inside but didn’t find what she was looking for. Instead she found it next door in a copying concern. What she wanted was a computer connected to a modem.

Cassy sat down and activated the screen. When the employees had left they hadn’t even turned the equipment off. Remembering Jonathan’s Internet name, Jumpin Jack Flash, Cassy began typing.

“This is all you have?” Sheila asked Harlan. She was holding a small vial of clear fluid.

“That’s it for now,” Harlan said. “But I got a batch of mice with the hybridoma cells implanted in their peritoneal cavities as well as a bunch of cell cultures cooking in the incubator. We can certainly extract more of this monoclonal antibody. But it’s only weakly active. I’d much rather try to find a more avid antibody-producing cell.”

Sheila, Pitt, and Jonathan had taken showers and rested briefly, but were too wired to sleep. Sheila was especially anxious to get working and had urged Harlan to show her everything he’d done.

Jonathan and Pitt had tagged along. Pitt was having trouble following Harlan’s explanations, whereas Jonathan didn’t even try. Since he hadn’t had much biology, it all sounded like Greek to him. Instead Jonathan ignored the others, sat down at one of the many terminals available, and started typing.

“I’ll show you two the process used to select B lymphocytes from emulsified mouse spleen,” Harlan said. “Provided you show me the virions you and Jonathan’s mother isolated.”

“We’re not positive the virions are in the tissue culture,” Sheila said. “We just suspect they are. We were just about ready to isolate them.”

“Well, we can find out simply enough,” Harlan said.

“Oh my God!” Jonathan called out suddenly.

Shocked by this outburst, everyone looked across at Jonathan. His eyes were glued to the monitor.

“What’s the matter?” Pitt asked nervously.

“It’s a message from Cassy!” Jonathan cried.

Pitt practically vaulted over a lab bench to get to Jonathan’s side. He stared at the monitor with wide eyes.

“She’s typing into the mail drop this instant,” Jonathan said. “I mean this is a real-time phenomenon.”

“This is fantastic,” Pitt managed.

“What a cool girl,” Jonathan said. “She’s doing just like I taught her.”

“What’s she saying?” Sheila asked. “Is she saying where she is?”

“Oh no!” Jonathan said. “She says she’s been infected.”

“Damn!” Pitt agonized, gritting his teeth.

“She says she’s already experiencing the first symptoms of the flu,” Jonathan continued. “She wants to wish us good luck.”

“Contact her!” Pitt shouted. “Now, live, before she signs off.”

“Pitt, it’s no use,” Sheila said. “It will just make it more difficult. She’s infected!”

“She might be infected, but obviously she’s still Cassy,” Pitt said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t be wishing us good luck.” He forcibly nudged Jonathan aside and started typing furiously.

Jonathan looked up at Sheila. Sheila shook her head. Although she knew it was wrong, she didn’t have the heart to stop him.

For Cassy the image on the monitor was intermittently blurry. As she’d typed the tears had come. Closing her eyes for a moment and wiping them with the back of her hand, she tried to get herself under control. She wanted to leave one last message for Pitt. She wanted to tell him that she loved him.

Opening her eyes and returning her hands to the keyboard, Cassy was about to type her last sentence when a live message popped onto her screen. She gazed at it in astonishment. It said: “Cassy, it’s me, Pitt. Where are you?”

It was the longest few seconds of Pitt’s life. He goggled at the monitor and willed it to respond. Then as if answering a prayer, the black characters began popping out of the luminous background.

“Yes!” Pitt shouted while punching the air with a fist. “I caught her. She knows I’m here.”

“What is she saying?” Sheila ventured. She was afraid to ask because she was sure this contact was going to lead to heartache and trouble.

“She’s saying she’s not too far from here,” Pitt said. “I’m going to tell her to meet me.”

“Pitt, no!” Sheila shouted. “Even if she’s not one of them now, she will be shortly. You can’t take the chance. You certainly can’t expose this lab.”

Pitt looked over at Sheila. His emotional pain was palpable. His breaths were coming in short gasps. “I can’t abandon her,” he said. “I just can’t.”

“You must,” Sheila said. “You saw what happened to Beau.”

Pitt’s fingers were poised above the keyboard. He’d never felt such heart-wrenching indecision.

“Wait,” Harlan said suddenly. “Ask her how long it has been since she was stung.”

“What difference does that make?” Sheila said angrily. She felt irritated that Harlan would interfere at such a moment.

“Just do it,” Harlan said. He walked over to stand behind Pitt.

Pitt typed the question. The answer came back instantly: about four hours. Harlan looked at his watch and bit the inside of his cheek while thinking.

“What is going on inside your head?” Sheila demanded, looking Harlan in the eye.

“I have a little confession to make,” Harlan said. “I wasn’t telling the whole truth about those black discs. One of them did sting me when I was out collecting the last batch.”

“Then you are one of them!” Sheila said with horror.

“No, at least I don’t think so,” Harlan said. “I tied my weak monoclonal antibody to the enabling protein, and I’ve been giving myself shots ever since. I’ve had the sniffles but no flu.”

“That’s fantastic,” Pitt said. “Let me tell Cassy.”

“Wait!” Sheila commanded. “How long after you were stung did you give yourself the antibody?”

“That’s my only concern,” Harlan said. “There was a three-hour interval. I was in Paswell at the time it happened. It took me three hours to get back here.”

“Cassy has already been four,” Sheila said. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Harlan said. “We can put her in one of the containment rooms and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, there’s no way she can get out of there. They’re like dungeons.”

Pitt didn’t need any more encouragement. Without another word he began telling Cassy they had an antibody to the protein and giving her directions to the deserted gas station.

“Why didn’t you tell us you’d been stung?” Sheila questioned. She didn’t know whether to be angry or encouraged by this new development.

“To be honest,” Harlan said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t trust me that I was okay. I was going to tell you sooner or later. Actually the fact that it has seemingly worked makes me feel a bit optimistic.”

“Well, I should say so!” Sheila said. “It’s the first positive piece of information so far.”

Pitt finished his communication with Cassy and came over to Sheila and Harlan.

“I hope you were as discreet as possible with the directions,” Harlan said. “We certainly don’t want a truckload of infected people to be there at the station waiting for you when you arrive.”

“I tried to be,” Pitt said. “But at the same time I wanted to make sure Cassy found the place. It is so isolated.”

“Actually the risk is probably pretty small,” Harlan said. “My feeling is that the infected people aren’t using the Net. They don’t seem to need it since they appear to know what each other are thinking.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Pitt asked Harlan.

“I don’t think I’d better,” Harlan said. “There’s only a partial dose of my antibody left. I’ll have to get busy extracting more so that it’s available when your friend gets here. That means you’ll have to find your own way. Think you can do it?”

“Sounds like I don’t have much choice,” Pitt said.

Harlan handed Pitt the vial of what antibody he had along with a syringe. “I hope you know how to give an injection,” he said.

Pitt commented that he thought he could do it because he’d been clerking in the hospital for three years.

“You’d better give it IV,” Harlan said. “But be prepared for some mouth to mouth if she has an anaphylatic reaction.”

Pitt visibly gulped, but he nodded.

“And you might as well take this,” Harlan said, unbuckling his holstered Colt.45. “My advice is to use it if you have to. Remember, the infected people feel very strongly about you being infected if they sense you aren’t.”

“What about me?” Jonathan asked. “I’ll go with Pitt. He might have trouble finding his way back here, and four eyes will be better than two.”

“I think you’d better stay here,” Sheila said. “We can find plenty for you to do.” She rolled up her sleeves. “And we are going to be very busy.”

Once Cassy had been located, brought to the institute, and subsequently infected, progress on the Gateway speeded up. Although the thousands of workers didn’t have to be individually told what to do, ultimately their instructions came from Beau. Consequently it was necessary for Beau to spend a good deal of time in the vicinity of the construction and for his mind to be clear of extraneous thoughts. With Cassy upstairs and soon to be one of the infected, Beau found it easy to fulfill his responsibilities.

Progress had even reached a point where it was possible to energize briefly a portion of the electrical grids. The test was a success although it did indicate that portions of the system needed further shielding. With those instructions communicated, Beau took a break.

He climbed the main stairs in a normal bipedal fashion, although he was conscious of the fact that it would probably be easier for him now to hop up, taking six or eight steps at a time. There had been considerable augmentation of his quadriceps.

Reaching the upper hall he sensed something was wrong. He hadn’t felt it downstairs because the level of unspoken communication about the Gateway was so intense. But now that he was alone, it was different. By this time he should have been getting stirrings of Cassy’s developing collective consciousness. Since there was none at all he feared she’d died.

Beau quickened his pace. His fear was that perhaps Cassy had been harboring some disastrous gene that had yet to express itself. In that case the virus would have self-destructed.

With a sense of panic that he didn’t understand, Beau struggled to open the locked door. Bracing himself to see her lifeless body draped across the mattress, he was even more surprised to find the room empty.

Beau gazed at the open window. He walked over to it and looked down at the ground outside. He saw the walkway and the balustrade. Then his eyes went up the tree, and he looked at the branch. Suddenly he knew. She’d fled.

Letting out a shriek that echoed through the huge mansion, he rushed from the room and charged down the stairs. He was overcome with anger, and anger wasn’t healthy for the collective good. The collective consciousness had rarely experienced anger, and it didn’t know how to handle it.

Beau entered the ballroom and instantly all work came to a halt. All eyes turned to Beau, feeling the same anger but having no idea why. Beau’s nostrils flared as his eyes searched for Alexander. He spotted him at the command control console.

Boldly Beau strode over to his lieutenant and clamped down on his arm with his snakelike fingers. “She is gone! I want her found! Now!”