The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 44

CLOSING IN meant "No reason to stay here."

I "Beware, danger."

"Bad water."

They were blinding on a passenger train, moving fast up the Eastern Seaboard sitting on the narrow ledge behind the baggage car. They had elected to ride outside rather than buy a ticket so they could dismount if they spotted the Choir hiding anywhere along the tracks. Cris read Stacy the hobo markings on the sides of the shacks outside each switching yard as they strobed past. Former train riders had also obligingly left "track options" scribbled there, telling what rail lines intersected in each town. Also inscribed on the weathered lumber were all sorts of useful symbols, like the ones he showed her in Shreveport. He explained them to her:

"Good jungle."

"Bad jail."

.

They were a few miles out of Harpers Ferry, at the Maryland border, on the Norfolk Southern track, which would land them only ten miles from Fort Detrick.

"Sometimes, when it was late, we'd lie in bed and talk," Stacy said suddenly, picking up the strains of an earlier conversation about Max Richardson. "We'd discuss things I'd never really thought about. Sometimes Max could see around corners. He'd spot dangers or see problems where it seemed others in the scientific community never even bothered to look. He worried about the effect this science would have on evolution, and its environmental effect on human development. That's why he was so worried about what they were doing at Fort Detrick."

"He sounds pretty impressive," Cris said, looking at her as her eyes clouded with loss at the memory of her dead husband.

"Sometimes, in science, people get target fixation," she went on. "It's like you're so bent on succeeding and beating your competitors to the prize that you forget the collateral damage your discoveries might one day cause. Scientific history is full of these oversights, from thalidomide to the Manhattan Project to Dexter DeMille's work with Prions. His research started out as a life-saving cure for a horrible disease in New Guinea, but it ended up as a genetically targeted bio-weapon. I'm sure if you asked Dr. DeMille when it went from good science to bad, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint the moment. In his mind, it was undoubtedly all about a fantastic discovery and scientific acclaim. Max used to say that the Nobel Prize hangs in front of all of us, a big ugly carrot on a string, driving scientific ego without regard for mankind's capacity for moral mistakes. To get funding, you often make horrible compromises with the business community or the military- anything to fund the science, anything for academic glory. Some great scientific theories have turned into potential world-ending nightmares."

"Like the whole Nuclear Age?" he asked.

"You got it. I'm sure Albeit Einstein never imagined that his Theory of Relativity would turn into the basis for understanding the apogee of the neutron, which eventually produced nuclear weapons. Every time something good is discovered, there is also the potential for unforeseen and horrific applications. Max understood that. It's one of the things that made him so special."

"Then why did he go study at Fort Detrick? From what Wendell Kinney said, everybody knew Dexter DeMille had started using Prion research for military reasons." Stacy didn't answer; she remained silent, so Cris went on, "Wendell said that the Pentagon funds lots of university programs, and that military research into Prions was aimed at creating antipersonnel weapons."

"Max believed that he needed to find out what DeMille was doing," she finally said.

"So he was spying on Dr. DeMille?" Cris persisted.

"Look, it isn't as easy as all that. It's not black and white." She was getting angry now. "I mean, knowledge is precious, and sometimes you form strange alliances to mine certain truths that you'll ultimately be able to use for the betterment of mankind. Sometimes people like Dexter DeMille have to be temporarily part of that equation."

"But if USC was getting military funding, along with all those other universities like Sam Houston and the University of Texas, then wouldn't Max be part of the decision-making process if he ran the Microbiology Department?"

"No!" she said. Now she was angry. "You just will never be able to understand how difficult it is to balance the need for funding against the moral equation. Max did that dance better than anybody!"

Cris realized that he had become annoyed at Stacy's worship of her dead husband. He wondered if he was subconsciously trying to tear down his memory because she was so obviously still in love with him. Cris was suddenly ashamed of himself. "You loved him," he said sympathetically.

"I adored him," she said, then fell silent as the train slowed for Harpers Ferry.

Cris knew that they would have to get off the passenger train in about ten minutes. Already the sleek ten-car varnish was slowing for the station. The ragtag buildings that seemed to announce every new town were now drifting past the car they were blinding on. On the outskirts of town were leaning, unpainted shacks with tar-paper roofs. Soon those structures were replaced by small boxy industrial brick buildings with low-slanted eaves, announcing that they were getting closer to the yard.

"We fought about just what you said the night before he left," Stacy continued softly. "I didn't want him to go. I was afraid of the research, where it was going. The last night he spent at home we argued about Dexter DeMille." She was speaking so quietly that he could barely hear her over the grinding metal brake shoes on the slowing train.

"We have to get off. You got everything?" Cris said, changing the subject.

She nodded and grabbed a small backpack she'd purchased in Shreveport. Then she shrugged her shoulders into the straps.

"Let's go," he said, as the train slowed to less than five miles an hour, and they easily dismounted the metal strip that was on the back of the baggage car.

Cris and Stacy moved away from the tracks and down into a gully. They crouched in the tall grass until the train was out of sight, moving very slowly into the yard.

"It's about a ten-mile walk into Frederick," Stacy said.

"How far is the Fort from there?" Cris asked.

"Not far. Just on the outskirts of town."

"If Fannon came here, he and DeMille must be collecting something from the base," he reasoned. "A military installation that big should be fed by rail. We oughta be able to catch a supply train into the property."

They climbed down a long, sloping hillside to a spot where they could see the two-lane highway slanting across the valley.

"I think I can get us in through the front door of the Fort without sneaking in," she said. "I left Max's ashes there, in Colonel Chittick's office. He said he was going to ship them, but what if we just show up to collect them?"

"I don't like it," Cris said. "I think it's dangerous for them to know you're on the base. After what happened last time, somebody will call Admiral Zoll and you're gonna be sitting in some interrogation room trying to talk your way out again."

"So, what do we do?"

"Let's head over there and I'll check the rail line that feeds the Fort. Somebody along the track oughta know what time the rail deliveries are made. It's probably once or twice a day."

They moved down to the two-lane highway and walked along the shoulder, heading northwest. It was a perfect day, cool and crisp. A fall wind was beginning to gust leaves across the road; they danced and flipped along in their orange and gold colors like nimble circus acrobats.

Cris found the rail heading into Fort Detrick, more or less by instinct. Most experienced hobos could look at the general terrain of an area and discern where the track would be; railroad engineers would shun any grade that exceeded twenty degrees and didn't allow for a switchback. After looking at the shape of the valley, Cris thought the rail leading into the Fort would most likely lie on the eastern slope, so he and Stacy headed that way. Before noon they found the spur leading into Fort Detrick and began walking alongside the track.

Ever since Shreveport, Cris had been feeling his old energy coming back. He got the rhythm into his stride, swinging his arms and legs, moving briskly until he could hear Stacy huffing behind him.

His lean body glistened with sweat, and he glowed with newfound purpose.

Around eight-thirty A. M., they arrived at the perimeter fencing of the Fort, near where the trains entered. The terrain was wooded, and a few hundred yards past the fence his view was obstructed by a dense growth of trees.

"It's surprising nobody is guarding this entrance. At the front gate they have Marines with automatic weapons," she said.

"Rail tracks are the back door to the twentieth century," he said, somewhat poetically. "A freight train is a very efficient transportation system, but it doesn't fit in with the jet age. It's still used, but strangely forgotten."

They found an old hobo sitting under a nearby tree. He was eating a peach, the juice running into his white beard. His face and clothes were grimy. Cris moved over and squatted in front of him. "Howdy. I'm Lucky," he said.

"Don't have t'tell me that, not with a pair a' shoes like them you got on," the old 'bo said.

"What time's the feeder train come through?" Cris asked.

"Two of 'em. First one's already come through, goes by at nine ever' night. It was the military train, fulla shit from the Pentagon. Anytime from now on, ya got yer supply train, food, soft goods, stuff like that. They're both pushers. Hard t'get on, not that y'wanna. Line stops a few miles in. They got patrols all over… ridin' in jeeps. Ya can hear 'em runnin' around all the way out here."

"Those the only two? The nine-o'clock olive and the supply train?" Cris asked, looking at his watch.

" 'Cept fer yesterday night. Damnedest thing I ever saw came through here… Sum'bitch was evil-lookin', cold an' mean as a pale ghost." Then the old man gave Cris and Stacy a description of the White Train, with its two low-flying black helicopters.

"What's it for?" Cris asked.

"Beats the shit outta me, but it probably ain't here deliverin' cookies," the old 'bo said.