"Goose Lake, Oregon." Chase could see the trooper inside the glass-walled booth feeding data into a keyboard terminal. What did they expect to find? That he and Ruth were a couple of homicidal maniacs on the run from a mental institution? He gripped the wheel with both hands, fingers flexing, trying to curb his impatience. They couldn't turn them back now. There was no earthly reason why. They
"Are the two of you healthy? Pollution sickness?" To judge from the flat gaze behind the faceplate he might have been inspecting a side of beef to see whether it ought to be condemned.
"Yes, we're both healthy."
"Are you carrying drugs?"
Chase was about to say no when Ruth said, "Medical supplies. No hard drugs or hallucinogens."
"Show me."
She opened the aluminum case and the sergeant looked at the plastic bottles, capsules, and vials in their padded compartments, the syringes in their pouches. Everything was clearly labeled, though whether the sergeant knew the difference between digitoxin and ethyloestrenol was open to doubt, in Chase's view.
The trooper returned with the ID cards. He handed them to the sergeant without a word, who folded the papers he was holding and gave them to Chase. The sergeant recited:
"You are allowed to remain twelve hours within the Reno city boundary. One minute longer will be considered a violation of the special emergency law, as will the sale or purchase of drugs by trade, barter, or any other form of exchange, punishable by imprisonment and confiscation of all possessions and personal effects. Unauthorized purchase of oxygen is also forbidden, subject to the same penalties."
He stepped back and waved them on, his attention already on the next vehicle in line.
A mile farther on visibility was so bad that they had to don the goggles and respirators. Their skin felt prickly, as though a static charge were playing over it.
"Twelve hours," Chase laughed shortly. "Who in his right mind would want to stay any longer?" He squinted up through the murk. The sun was a diffuse orange blur and it was noticeably warmer, by several degrees. A thermal inversion layer, trapping the heat and fumes in a thick vaporous blanket that hugged the ground. It was like driving through a hot burning mist of sulfuric acid.
Buildings loomed and they realized they were in the city itself. Beyond knowing that he wanted to head roughly northwest Chase hadn't a clue where he was going or which direction to take. Headlights came toward them like dim yellow eyes. Several times he had to stamp on the brakes as a glowing red taillight warned him of stalled traffic.
"Like being back in New York," Ruth said with mordant humor.
Chase peered hopelessly ahead. "Can you see any signs? Can you see
"Watch out!"
Chase wrenched the wheel and the jeep skidded, missing the tailgate of a truck by less than a foot. They hit the curb with a bouncing jolt that threw them forward, Ruth striking her forehead above the goggles on the windshield's metal upright, blood spattering the glass like teardrops.
They had stopped with their headlights blazing into a shop window. The world was indeed going crazy. Illuminated like a stage set, the window was filled with inflatable rubber dolls with jutting red nipples and silky vaginas.
Ruth was holding her head in both hands and moaning softly, blood seeping through her fingers and running down her wrists.
If there was one part of the procedure that Cy Skrote abhorred, it was this. Bad enough to theorize about it in the sterile atmosphere of the labs, or engage in dispassionate debate over coffee with his colleagues, but the surgical blood and guts of it made him physically ill. There was no escape, however--he had to be present in the operating room, gowned and masked, custodian of the refrigerated vacuum flask containing the culture.
Standing three feet away from the operating table he had a ringside view of the surgeon at work. The column of mirror-directed light from above made every last detail clear and sharp. On a stretcher nearby the round gray flask with the chrome handle.and the recessed red stirrup release mechanism waited ominously: on its side in stenciled black letters, sterile cell culture, and underneath in scrawled graphics,
