He led the way down the central aisle, the muted hiss and rumble of oxygen being piped into the tents the only sound. It was like a mortuary, keeping alive the undead. A technician in a white smock was injecting an old man. The party stopped to observe.
"New arrival," Rolsom said, after glancing at the chart. "We're pepping him up a bit. No good to us dead. It's a hormone extraction that dramatically improves their condition. After a couple of months they have a relapse."
"What happens then?" Skrote asked.
Rolsom looked at him, puzzled, as if it were a trick question. "They die," he said. He leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed, raising his voice. "How are you feeling today, Mr. Walsh? Not a thing to worry about. You're in good hands."
The old man gazed up at them dully with brown watery eyes. His face was the same color as the pillow, except that his lips were purple.
As they were moving away Skrote said, "Where do these people come from?"
"You mean how do we get hold of them?" Rolsom said over his shoulder. "Our main source of supply is the Pryce-Darc Clinic in Maryland. As you probably know it's funded and administered by ASP through an intermediary organization. In effect the clinic is a staging post. They send us anoxia and pollution cases referred to them by hospitals."
"They come here willingly?"
"Sure." Rolsom held the door into the corridor open and caught Madden's eye as if the two of them shared a private joke. "The patients are told they've been selected for special treatment, very expensive treatment, which is free of charge. Naturally they're only too happy to participate. They think Starbuck is a highly advanced medical research unit with miracle cures galore." He chuckled gruffly. "Once we get them here it's too late to change their minds."
Major Jones said, "How many of them will you inject with TCDD?"
They were approaching a large iron sliding door with a red
"We intend to isolate six to begin with, three males, three females. We'll inject just one of them and see how quickly it spreads. What we're really hoping for is a chain reaction: A male infects a female and carries on infecting other females, while the females infect the other males. We also want to find out whether males or females make the best carriers." They were climbing concrete steps now, whitewashed walls on all sides. "You know," Rolsom added, as if anxious that the full implication of this shouldn't escape them, "in quite a short space of time it ought to be possible to infect a city of twenty million people, starting off with a handful of carriers."
"I like the sound of it." Madden patted the director's arm. "I think you're on the right track."
Rolsom shrugged it off, though he was obviously pleased by this rare praise. He pushed a large black hand through thinning wiry hair and led on with renewed enthusiasm. Skrote followed behind Colonel Madden and Major Jones, worrying about how, when they'd infected the patients in the ward with TCDD, they intended disposing of the corpses. Burial would be too dangerous. Incineration seemed the best way, and certainly the safest. If the infection were ever to get loose on the island . . .
This section of Zone 4--behind the iron door with the red M-- reminded him of a modern and sophisticated version of the old Victorian lunatic asylum. Padded cells, barred windows, heavy metal doors. Everything monitored and controlled by an all-seeing electronic surveillance system. Now they were entering Cy Skrote's territory, that of genetic manipulation. But whereas Skrote was a theorist, this was where the theories found practical expression.
They passed through a complicated series of checkpoints and entered a darkened control gallery in which twenty or so people sat wearing headsets, presiding from a semicircular instrumentation console over a huge bank of TV screens.
Skrote stood between Madden and Jones, all three silent, because all three weren't sure what they were looking at until Rolsom explained that what the screens showed were "natural" mutants: creatures misshapen in their mothers' wombs by the genetic damage of the deteriorating environment. Many of them were so grotesquely deformed as to be incapable of movement. Others were maniacally strong and dangerously homicidal. Hence the need for the high-level security and the constant electronic vigilance.
It seemed to Skrote as if each screen showed a separate section of the human anatomy--as if all the screens together would make up one complete human being. It finally dawned on him what in fact he was looking at. On each screen there was a human being, though not necessarily a complete one. He stared, sickened and fascinated.
