The man thought about that. Popov was a clever bastard who'd done his jobs without much in the way of questions… and there was little in the way of a paper:rail, certainly nothing his lawyers couldn't handle if it cane to that, and it wouldn't. There were ways of dealing with Popov, too, if it came to that.
"Okay, be there at eight-fifteen."
"Yes, sir," the Russian said, hanging up.
Pete was in real agony now, Killgore saw. It was tine to move him. This he ordered at once, and two orderlies came in dressed in upgraded protective gear to goal the wino onto a gurney for transport to the clinical side. Killgore followed them and his patient. The clinical side was essentially a duplication of the room in which the street bums had lounged and drunk their booze, waiting unknowingly for the onset of symptoms. He now had hem all, to the point that booze and moderate doses of morphine no longer handled the pain. The orderlies loaded Pete onto a bed, next to which was an electronically operated "Christmas tree" medication dispenser. Kilgore handled the stick, and got the IV plugged into Pete's major vein. Then he keyed the electronic box, and seconds later, the patient relaxed with a large bolus of medication The eyes went sleepy and the body relaxed while the Shiva continued to eat him alive from the inside out. Another IV would be set up to feed him with nutrients to keep his body going, along with various drugs to see if any of them had an unexpectedly beneficial effect on the Shiva. They had a whole roomful of such drugs, ranging from antibiotics-which were expected to be useless against this viral infection-to Interleukin-2 and a newly developed -3a, which, some thought, might help, plus tailored Shiva antibodies taken from experimental animals. None were expected to work, but all had to be tested to make sure they didn't, lest there be a surprise out there when the epidemic spread. Vaccine-B was expected to work, and that was being tested now with the new control group of people kidnapped from Manhattan bars, along with the notional Vaccine A, whose purpose was rather different from -B. The nanocapsules developed on the other side of the house would come in very handy indeed. As was being demonstrated even as he had the thought, looking down at Pete's dying body. Subject F4, Mary Bannister, felt sick to her stomach, just a mild queasiness at this point, but didn't think much of it. That sort of thing happened, and she didn't feel all that bad, some antacids would probably help, and those she got from her medicine cabinet, which was pretty well stocked with over the-counter medications. Other than that, she felt pretty mellow, as she smiled at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw, a youngish, attractive woman wearing pink silk jammies. With that thought, she walked out of her room, her hair glossy and a spring in her step. Chip was in the sitting room, reading a magazine slowly on the couch, and she made straight for him and sat down beside him
"Hi, Chip." She smiled.
"Hi, Mary." He smiled back, reaching to touch her hand.
"I upped the Valium in her breakfast," Barbara Archer said in the control room, zooming the camera in. "Along with the other one." The other one was an inhibition reducer. "You look nice today," Chip told her, his words imperfectly captured by the hidden shotgun microphone.
"Thank you." Another smile.
"She looks pretty dreamy."
"She ought to be," Barbara observed coldly. "There's enough in her to make a nun shuck her habit and get it on."
"What about him?"
"Oh, yeah, didn't give him any steroids." Dr. Archer had a little chuckle at that.
In proof of which, Chip leaned over to kiss Mary on the lips. They were alone in the sitting room.
"How's her blood work look, Barb?"
"Loaded with antibodies, and starting to get some small bricks. She ought to be symptomatic in another few days."
"Eat, drink, and be merry, people, for next week, you die," the other physician told the TV screen.
"Too bad," Dr. Archer agreed. She showed the emotion one might display on seeing a dead dog at the side of the road.
"Nice figure," the man said, as the pajama tops came off. "I haven't seen an X-rated movie in a longtime, Barb." A videotape was running, of course. The experimental protocol was set in stone. Everything had to be recorded so that the staff could monitor the entire test program. Nice tits, he thought, about the same time Chip did, right before he caressed them on the screen.
