"Mutes?" queried Devanney with a frown.
"The Starbuck term for mutants," Madden elucidated. "Molecular biologists have their own slang, like all closed communities."
"The TCDD virus was created by genetic means, isn't that so?" asked the red-haired woman. When Madden nodded she said, "Then why not use the same technique to produce these mutes of yours? Isn't the process similar?"
Madden called on Lutz, the expert, who nodded briskly and told the woman, "Yes, you're quite right, ma'am. Gene splicing--in other words chopping up DNA to obtain the pieces you want and then growing multiple copies--is the same basic technique used in all genetic manipulation experiments. But the order of complexity alters dramatically with different organisms. Let us take, say, a simple laboratory strain of Escherichia coli, or E. coli as it's known. This is the bacterium that lives in the human gut and has a single chromosome. Incidentally, the TCDD-bearing virus is even more primitive in terms of cell structure. Anyway, when we come to deal with human cells, which are roughly six hundred times the size of E. coli, these have not just one chromosome but forty-six. Each human cell contains a thousand times more DNA than a simple cell of E. coli, so perhaps you can gain some idea of how much more complex it becomes when you're dealing with the human cell, even though we're employing the same gene-splicing techniques of restriction enzymes and a plasmid cloning vehicle to--"
"Yes, yes, yes." The red-haired woman raised a hand in self-defense. "I take your point--or rather, I don't. But never mind."
"And when you've perfected this mutant technique, or process, or whatever it is," said Jim Devanney, "how many of these creatures can be produced?"
Madden said, "Once we have the genetic blueprint, as many as we need. A million. Ten million. A billion." He shrugged. "There's literally no limit. We can recolonize all of Africa, India, the Far East, China--everywhere--with our own people."
"People?" Devanney said, staring. "People?"
"Whatever you care to call them, they'll be ours," Wayne Hansom said, his upper lip slightly curled where a fine scar tugged at it. "Ten years from now the Russians will be gasping for breath themselves; they'll be in no fit state to offer any kind of challenge. At least half their population will be on the verge of extinction. In my opinion we're very fortunate that General Madden was perceptive enough to foresee this several years ago and to lay his plans accordingly. ASP has proved itself of inestimable benefit to the United States, as I'm sure everyone here today acknowledges."
"You mentioned something about surgical experiments," Devanney said to Madden. He was like a man with a loose tooth who couldn't stop probing it with his tongue. "On whom are you experimenting?"
"Children," Madden said, smiling at him. If the whining son of a bitch wanted it, he could have it straight between the eyes. "The Pryce-Darc Clinic sends us kids with pollution sickness and genetic deformities. Dr. Rolsom came up with the idea that we could make use of their defects and surgically adapt them for our own purposes. Grafting tissue and transplanting organs and so on."
"Jesus Christ, what for?" Devanney asked faintly.
"Research," Madden said, as if he'd been asked a stupid question. "Maybe we can construct the perfect model for the next generation of Americans. I find that a pretty exciting prospect, don't you?"
The rasping siren was part of his dream, warning him not to step into the minefield. He sat bolt upright, the sound real and all around him as the dream faded into the warm black air.
Chase switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the telephone just as the red light began to wink in time to the urgent bleeping. He snatched up the handset and threw back the sheets.
"Duty Officer, sir. Somebody trying to gain entry through access five."
He recognized Drew's voice. "How many, Sam?"
"We're not sure. Eight, ten, maybe more."
"Are all other access points secure?"
"So far, though eight and nine have yet to report."
The attack hadn't been unexpected. Even though the Tomb was hidden belowground and even though the supply trucks approached Desert Range from the Nevada side, keeping a hundred miles clear of Baker, Garrison, Mitford, and Lund, the movement of supplies could have been spotted by somebody with a curious mind and a suspicious nature. Probably they thought it was a top-secret government establishment--as it had been once--which in these fraught times would be enough to provoke hostility and feelings of revenge.
None of this surprised Chase. Nobody was sure anymore who controlled what. The location of the political and military seat of power-- still referred to as Washington--was a mystery to the population at large. For a while "Washington" had been in Des Moines, then moved, so rumor had it, to Minneapolis. When the president appeared on television, speaking from a replica of the Oval Office, he might have been on the far side of the moon as far as anyone knew.
The general public had the certain conviction that their esteemed leaders had folded their tents and stolen softly into the night. In fact they'd stolen, according to Prothero, to the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska--an impregnable underground installation that had been constructed to protect SAC from nuclear attack, and which might have been custom-built to serve as a command and communications center for "Washington" and the Pentagon. The air in Nebraska was still breathable, with the additional safeguard that the SAC HQ was a sealed enclosure with its own self-contained oxygen plant.
The siren's harsh blare would have woken the dead, so Chase was prepared for the bleary-eyed faces peering out of the rooms as he ran for the elevator. He didn't waste breath on explanations; everyone had been drilled in the emergency procedure. He thumbed the button, fretting as the huge elevator rose with ponderous slowness to the upper level. If the attackers were from one of the nearby townships they might be merely a bunch of guys filled with liquor and frustration who'd decided to find out what was going on at the old Desert Range MX missile site. That was his hope, because their security force was more than adequate to deal with what might be a straightforward policing situation.
And then again, maybe they weren't just curious, and that could be bad.
All year long there'd been a steadily growing exodus from the south. This corner of Nevada, mostly desert scrub and dried-up water holes, wasn't exactly hospitable, and so the stream of immigrants kept right on heading north, looking for a better place to settle. Chase hadn't seen any of them with his own eyes, but he'd had reports. Among the dispossessed families and the anoxia and pollution victims were looters, drug-crazed youngsters, and, worst of all, freaks with deranged minds that had been eaten away by chemicals and cancer. He'd heard tales of bloody battles on the road and of small towns terrorized by demented mobs. His fear was that some of these had accidentally stumbled across the site, in which case they could be in for real trouble.
The grain of comfort he nurtured and jealously clung to was that even at this moment Frank Hanamura was setting up the pilot plant on the Scripps' research vessel in San Diego. At least Hanamura and his team were well out of it and able to carry on the work.
Sam Drew looked up from the map table as Chase entered the operations room. Drew was ex-army, like most of the others in the security force--all of whom had been carefully screened and chosen for their commitment to the project. A guard in dun-colored camouflage gear stood at his elbow and there were three radio operators wearing headsets at the communications console, receiving reports and issuing instructions to the other command posts, nine in all, throughout the complex.