He looked over the results for twenty-two teachers, staff, and security officers. All had had continuous contact with infected children for the past forty-eight hours. They were exhausted, stressed, worn down. Six of these—four nurses from the main pool and one teacher from the special treatment wing, and the counselor, Dewitt—tested positive for the virus, but in low titers compared to infected children. None showed symptoms of infection.
Neither he nor Mark Augustine tested positive.
Dicken held up his chart once more. The conclusions were compelling.
Only infected SHEVA children showed symptoms.
SHEVA children lacking recent adult contact tested negative for the virus and showed no symptoms.
Contagion did not spread from the children to adults with much efficiency, if at all; and if it was passed on, did not cause illness in adults.
Contagion probably did spread from child to child, but the chain always began with children who had had recent contact with adults.
He had not gathered specimens from every child, alive or dead, or from all the adults that had been at the school; it was possible that an asymptomatic child was the source; it was also possible that exposed adults would get ill, eventually.
But he doubted it. The children were almost certainly not the source. And adults did not get sick. The river flowed in only one direction, downstream from teachers and staff, adults, to the new children.
The computer chimed again. Dicken looked at the screen. The Ideator had identified a sequence from its standard human genomic library. He touched a box on the screen. It expanded outward, showing a gene map for an obscure and defective HERV. Coxsackie viruses—for that matter, the superfamily of Picornaviridae—had never been known to recombine with legacy retroviral genes. Yet he was looking at a protein traced to a gene from the suspect virus, and it was very similar—90 percent homologous—to a protein once coded for by an ancient human endogenous retrovirus found in two chromosomes.
The presence of the protein converted a relatively benign RNA virus into one that killed, in large numbers.
He typed in another search. The Ideator scanned the Genesys bank for a match within the 52-chromosome genome of the new children. According to the Genesys bank, that particular defective primordial HERV did not exist in any SHEVA child.
Both of its copies had been discarded during the supermitotic splitting and rearrangement of the old chromosomes.
Dicken stared at the screen for several minutes, thinking furiously. His vision blurred. He grabbed the crumpled wipe and dabbed again at his face. His left leg cramped. He pushed away from the bench and walked around the small lab room, bracing on tables, equipment.
What Augustine and the Emergency Action people feared most had happened. Ancient viruses had somehow self-corrected and contributed one or more novel genes to a common virus, producing a deadly disease. But the recombination had not taken place in SHEVA-affected children.
It had begun in adults.
Adults were creating viruses that could infect and kill the SHEVA children. Those same viruses did not harm the adults. Dicken could yet be sure, but he suspected that the viral protein took advantage of yet another protein expressed only in the children—two units not in themselves toxic, but lethal in combination.
A new role for viruses: agents of a species-level immune response. Biological warfare, one generation against another.
An old species trying desperately to kill the new? Or just an awful mistake, a slip-up with deadly consequences?
He secured the samples, backed up the computer files, made a set of printouts, locked up the lab, and brutally shoved the outer door of the research building. It slammed open, and he walked out into the glare of the afternoon sun.
50
PENNSYLVANIA
Mitch had put on one of George Mackenzie’s white terry robes to check on Stella. He now lay on the bed beside Kaye, the robe ridiculously short over his long legs. His breathing was even. She could feel his hand, large and wide, with long, thick fingers, resting on her arm.
Kaye rolled over and put her head on his chest, where the robe had pulled open. “Have I been acting a little crazy?” she asked.
Mitch shook his head. “Defensive.”
“Do you remember before we were together? You were doing archaeology. I was working away madly, and confused.”
“I wasn’t doing much archaeology,” Mitch said. “I’ve been out of action for longer than I’ve known you. My own damned fault.”
“I loved your rough hands. All the calluses. What would we be without Stella?”
Mitch’s eyes narrowed. Wrong question.
“Right,” Kaye said. She lay back on the pillow. “I insisted. We don’t have any other life now.”
“I helped,” Mitch said.
“I’ve neglected you. In so many ways.”
Mitch shrugged.
“What do you want for Stella?” Kaye asked.
“A reasonably normal life.”
“What will that be? She isn’t like us, not really.”
“She’s more like us than she’s different.”
Kaye wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. She could still feel the caller, and when she touched it with her thoughts, waves of comfort surged through her and her eyes flowed over. She could not understand this feeling of glorious ease in the midst of their fear.
Mitch touched her cheek. His finger gently dabbed the wet corner of one eye.
“What’s it like to have a stroke?” she asked. “Or a seizure?”
“You’re the doctor,” Mitch said, taken aback.
“Sam had a stroke,” Kaye said. Sam was Mitch’s father.
“He went down like a tree,” Mitch said.
“He was paralyzed and he died in a couple of hours.”
“It was fast. What are you getting at?”
“Do people have seizures that make them feel good? They wouldn’t go to the doctor for that, would they?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Mitch said.
“But it wouldn’t be reported, would it, unless they happened to catch it… on an MRI or CAT scan or something. The brain is so mysterious.”
“What brings this on?” Mitch asked. “We make love and you talk about having good strokes.” He tried to smile. “It’s called having an orgasm, little lady.”
Kaye lifted her head and rolled over to face him, refusing to be amused. “Have you ever felt something or someone touch your thoughts? Approving of everything about you, filling you with understanding?”
“No-o-oo,” Mitch said. He did not like this conversation at all. There was a glow about Kaye’s face that reminded him of when she was pregnant, a soft and intimate light in her eyes.
“Is it rare? What do people do, who do they talk to, when it happens that way?”
“What way?”
Kaye sat up and put her hands on his shoulders, staring at him imploringly, helpless. “Is that what makes people religious?”
The look on Mitch’s face was so serious, she had to smile. “Maybe I’m becoming a priestess. A shaman.”
“Generally,” Mitch began, putting on a professorial tone, “shamans are a little crazy. The tribe feeds them and puts them to work. Shamans are more entertaining than reading entrails or tossing knucklebones.”
Kaye clenched her jaw. “I’m trying to understand something.”
“Out on the dock, did you feel like you were having a stroke?” Mitch asked, unable to keep the concern from his voice.
“I don’t know.” She smiled as if at a pleasant memory. “It’s still with me.”