“It doesn’t work,” she told him. “Your God Particle. Because of the velocity. There is no detonation. Nothing that creates that kind of velocity. Nothing outside Hiroshima. And we would’ve all felt that. The whole world.”
“But there is.” He nodded to the sky, to the stars she had named.
“The fastest possible speed for a meteor is seventy-three kilometers per second. That would require a solar orbit plus retrograde into Earth.”
“You know this? You’ve thought this out?”
She shook her head. “Only from reading my medical texts. There is one documented case of a meteor striking a person. Alabama, 1954. It crashed through her roof and bruised and burned her thigh. NASA has other studies. One of their biggest fears for space exploration was high-velocity micrometeors, something that would pass right through any helmet, any skull. It’s still a valid fear but distant enough. We just take the risk.”
“There are other kinds,” he said. “There are faster ones. Extrasolar ones, yes? With near-infinite velocity.”
“Look, Mullich.” She took the range finder, pulled it to her eyes. It was still looped about his neck, and he had to lean in to her, shoulder to shoulder. She only used it as binoculars, to look at Mizar and Alcor. “I like this. Talking about this. Out here. It’s good for me. I get what you’re doing. But if you go too far, you’ll become a patient.”
He shifted, relaxing the strap by moving his shoulder behind her shoulder. He could just about whisper in her ear. “Those detonations. The ones you need for velocity. There are billions of them out there. Happening billions at a time over billions of years. The odds are better than you might think.”
She kept the scope pressed to her eyes, gazed at empty space.
“That I need? Velocity that I need? Don’t make this about me.”
She returned the range finder to his chest, pushing him away with the motion.
“It’s a virus,” she said. “Hiding inside us. The way a virus must hide. If it is to survive and evolve. If it is to survive us.” She motioned to the sky. “It’s not out there.” She jabbed a finger into his ribs three times. “It’s. In. There.”
She meant none of it. The third jab felt desperate. Mullich raised his arm to give her a clear shot, but his expression was matter-of-fact. She dropped her aim and looked to the sky.
33.
Mendenhall went directly from the roof to Pathology. The lab door wasn’t locked. She entered. Claiborne was slumped over a side desk, head resting on arms. His feet had dolled outward, nothing holding him up but the stool, which appeared ready to slide away and spill him to the floor. Cello music played, a soft, pulsing solo. Above him two screens displayed full-body scans.
Each body was shown in both profile and sublimate position. She felt herself already gone into ER mode, three seconds of assessment before moving.
“When it’s crazy bad,” her mentor had explained, “count to three before moving. You’ll save time. You’ll spare yourself, the front end of your nerves.”
But this shouldn’t have been crazy. There was only one thing—Claiborne. The scans above, the two bodies multiplied, were throwing her, casting her perception into a high wind. She snapped on fresh gloves and rushed to Claiborne. His lips were parted, his fingers in a gnarl, no respiration. But she wasn’t waiting that long, long enough to watch for breathing. In front, her gloved hand felt disconnected, leading.
He bolted upright before she touched him, and she froze, hand raised, two fingers ready. He blinked and then focused on her hand.
“You put on gloves. You were going to check for pulse.”
She nodded upward to the screens. “It was them, the other bodies. Sorry.”
Claiborne pulled at the back of his neck, flexed his shoulders.
“Don’t be. It shows there’s hope for you. It shows you kind of really might think it’s viral.”
“I’ve been thinking that,” she said. “Mullich got me thinking. I told him it was in there. In him. In them. Us.”
“Well.” He motioned to the screens. “It’s not in you or him.”
She realized the one screen was her. She flinched and turned to the one for Mullich.
“What?” asked Claiborne. He nodded to the scan of Mullich.
“What’s he have you thinking?”
She resisted looking at the scans. She focused on the cello music, imagined breathing it. “What if it is in us? Some of us.”
“You’re thinking syndrome?”
“Why not? We have nothing but death and indicators. Maybe we can’t find the one thing because there are two things. It happens to us all the time in ER. Maybe it’s like Reye’s. Working off a common virus. Coryza plus something else. Zoster plus something else.”
He almost laughed, no smile but a straightening of the shoulders.
“You and Thorpe are still going the same way. He’ll like that. I think.”
“Assuming the virus is horizontal,” she replied. “In us. Then the other factor has to be vertical.”
“They’ve taken all the air filters. All disposal receptacles.”
At first she felt a sense of headway, almost a rush. She examined the overhead scans, briefly hers, focusing on Mullich’s form, sublimate to profile. That could take forever, to search and test for the vertical factor. It would split resources. They could never find it.
As in Reye’s Syndrome. We just know it’s there. We just know the two ends of the equation: pox plus aspirin plus childhood times y equals sudden death. Remove any one additive and we’re okay; damn that unknown variable.
She sympathized with Thorpe and hated him at the same time.
She was almost able to picture him, to recall which one of those onstage experts he was.
On the overheads Mullich’s scans looked better than hers.
Sublimate, his form appeared ready, arms and legs evenly spread; in profile, the form was serene, jawline perpendicular to throat. He displayed himself proudly. Both of hers were askew. In profile, her face angled toward torso, a body fearing itself. Sublimate, she had swept her left arm inward, turned the right foot more outward. The form was almost Chaplinesque, or Kabuki.
She returned to Mullich’s scans.
“You trust him?” she asked.
Claiborne looked at the scans, studied Mullich’s. “All I can say is that I’m glad he’s set up down here.”
She traced the outline of Mullich’s face, squinted, pretended to see something. “Did he ask for these, or did you request them?”
“After I took your blood and your scans, he told me I should do the same for him. Told me he was there with you and Cabral.”
Mendenhall clicked her tongue. “Did Thorpe ever find out who called in Meeks? Who found Meeks first and called ER? Used Meeks’s cell?”
Claiborne shook his head. “If it wasn’t Meeks himself, we figured it was somebody from physical plant who was scared. Scared of infection, scared of quarantine. Makes sense they would call it in quick and then dash, use Meeks’s cell.”
“But it doesn’t make sense that Thorpe can’t find that person,”
replied Mendenhall. “I mean, I could find that person. You know what makes more sense?” She pointed directly to the middle of Mullich’s sublimate form. “That. Him. Who else would be poking around the basements? Who would want the body to get to ER—to me, then maybe you?”