“Why should that make her untrustworthy?”
“Not that. Her firing was news for a few days. But she could have walked right into a cushy professorship. Instead, here she is, working at Alcatraz on ice for seventy-five grand a year. Something doesn’t add up.” He folded his hands, looked at her. “Goose and gander, Dr. Leland.”
She got it, but hesitated. Had Merritt asked that her comments about Graeter stay strictly confidential? No. Even so, Hallie bridled. But Graeter had been honest with her. Fair was fair.
“Okay. She said you’d been down here too long and were, um, disturbed.”
It was the first time she had seen him laugh. Not much of a laugh, more a gargly snort, but clearly he was amused. “Disturbed. Ha. Was that it?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“She mentioned an accident on a submarine. And what happened after.”
The amusement faded, but, to Hallie’s surprise, it was not replaced by anger. Sadness loosened his clenched features.
“Is it true?” Hallie asked.
“It’s true.”
“The part about the captain and your wife?”
“True. All of it.”
“Did you have any children?”
“No, thank God. Sea duty wasn’t conducive to raising a family.” He looked down at his raw, red hands. What was it he had said? Could still play. Just not allegro anymore. She wondered what other things he could no longer do. Or feel.
“Mr. Graeter, I’m sorry for the boys on your sub. And for you. My father was West Point, sixty-six. He led men in combat in Vietnam and lost a good many. He’s in Arlington now, but they walked with him until the day he died. The hurt never stopped.”
“No. It never does.” He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, and looked at her in a way she had not seen before. “A goddamned Army brat. I should have known.”
She thought, My God. How about that? “Beat Navy.”
For a moment he just stared. Then he grinned and said, “Beat Army.”
“Do you know about Vishnu?” she asked.
“Buddhist god of something or other, right?”
“Hindu god of preservation.”
“Whatever. Why?”
“Agnes Merritt said she’d briefed you about what Emily and Fida were doing.”
“She said they found something growing down under the ice and brought samples back to the lab.”
“Nothing else?”
“I asked her if it could blow up or catch on fire or poison anybody. She said no. That was all I needed.”
“She didn’t describe the actual research? Tell you why they were calling it Vishnu?”
“I didn’t need to know that. Not my job. Merritt runs the Beakers and science. I run the station and keep people alive. Paragraph, period, end of story.”
She laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“It’s period, paragraph, end of story.”
“A period goes at the end of a paragraph last time I checked. Right?”
“Yes, but—” She laughed again.
“What’s funny now?”
“The fact that we can be here amid all the crap that’s been happening, arguing about the correct wording of a trite phrase.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we could be more alike than either of us has cared to admit.”
He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You may be right.”
“Did you know that NASI is owned by a petroleum corporation called GENERCO?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Do you think GENERCO would have problems with Vishnu?”
He let slip a half-grin, wiped if off. “You mean, because it eats carbon dioxide and pisses fuel?”
She gaped. “You knew? All this time?”
“Christ, Leland, a captain has to know crap like that. And for the record, no, GENERCO would not have a problem with it. Those people aren’t stupid. They put money — very quietly — into solar and hydrogen some time ago. They see what’s coming just like the rest of us.”
“You pass,” she said.
“What?”
She had made a quick calculation. He needed to know about Emily’s death. But Emily was gone, and nothing could change that. It was more important for him to know about what was down in the lab first, because it might be putting a lot more people at risk.
“Never mind. I’ll explain later. Right now, there’s something I have to show you.”
“What’s the yellow stuff?” he asked. The microbial colonies had grown larger, occupying more space now than the red agar.
“I don’t know yet. But it’s growing faster than anything I’ve seen.”
“How did you do this?”
She told him about taking samples in the morgue and starting the cultures here. She expected him to offer some SOR-based reprimand, but he just nodded and said, “Guts and smarts — I like that. You’re just full of surprises.” He peered at her, then back at the dishes. “So it’s unusual for something to grow like this?”
“Normal time for cultures to become visible to the naked eye is twenty-four hours, minimum. I saw them after a few minutes. And it’s more than doubled since then.”
“You don’t know what it is, though.”
“No. But isn’t it reasonable to believe it had something to do with the women’s deaths?”
“Yes. And that means we have to assume it’s dangerous.”
“Absolutely.” She saw him staring at the dishes. “It’s safe here. The cultures are sealed, and the incubator cabinet provides a second level of containment. I isolated the swabs and gloves and the other things I used.”
“Good to know. Can you analyze it, or whatever, to see what we’re dealing with?”
“We, Mr. Graeter?”
He looked surprised for just an instant. “Yes, we. You’re the expert here. I’m strict, Leland, but I’m not stupid. So what do you do?”
“Analysis is mostly performed with scanners and computers now. I doubt either are here. So we’ll rely on biochemical testing.”
“What does that involve?”
“A long series of eliminative, identifying tests — oxidase, indole production, coagulase test, MR-VP test—”
“Okay, enough. The more important question is, how long will it take?”
“Starting from scratch, with what I have here to work with, twenty-four hours minimum. But didn’t you say that Doc was working with blood samples?”
“So he told me.”
“If he’d come up with anything, he would have called you, right?”
“Or risk getting my foot up his ass,” he snapped. “Sorry. Navy talk.”
“Forget it. My father spoke Army. For the tests I’ll run, it could be sooner. Or later.”
“Should we tell everyone?”
“Understand that I come from a facility where all information is closely held. Need-to-know is the first commandment.”
“That BARDA place.”
“Right, that BARDA place. So I can sound a little paranoid. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t.”
“Rationale?”
“I was remembering your comment about destabilizing an already fragile population. All those T3s walking around chatting with themselves. It’s one thing to tell people they’re locked in with a possibly lethal unknown pathogen. Much better if we can say, ‘And we have a countermeasure.’ There’s always a chance that it’s treatable — staph, strep, whatever.”
“Information could get out of here, too. Just imagine — CNN breaking news: ‘Killer Superbug Devastates South Pole, Threatens Planet,’ ” he said.
“Which they would do.”
“In a heartbeat. If it bleeds, it leads. Suppose some people aren’t infected? If we wait, carriers could make healthy ones sick, right?”
“They could do that even if we tell them. Right now, we don’t know who to quarantine.”