Prometheus Wakens - 9. Chapter 9: CDC Laboratory Epsilon

Chapter 9: CDC Laboratory Epsilon

Hazel’s wake-up kiss the next morning was intense and promising much, but it was over in an instant. In that same instant, he leapt from the bed and tugged my arm.

“Why are we in a hurry,” I asked.

“Apollo will visit,” he said. “And he brings Aphrodite.”

Our shower was brief, as was breakfast, served by a lithe dryad with scarlet curls. “I am Willow,” he said, “Salix matsudana. In the spring, my new leaves grow on scarlet vinelettes.”

“Welcome, Willow, and thank you for telling me about yourself. I would like to see that, next spring. Will you be sure to fetch me, please?”

He blushed, even more so when I took his hands and kissed him.

“Hazel tells me we will have guests, today. I would like him to stay and help you serve. Would that be all right with you?” I listened carefully, and heard that his yes was sincere.

We had finished breakfast. The table on the patio was clean. Hazel and Willow were prepared to serve nectar, wine, water, and coffee. Willow dithered over whether to offer pastries or cheese and crackers. I said that either would be perfectly acceptable.

The oaks rustled, and Willow panicked. “Aphrodite nears!” he said.

“Willow!” I said, perhaps more sharply than necessary. “Relax. You serve a titan!”

I’m not sure that did any good.

Apollo and a beautiful young woman translocated to the edge of the patio. (Yes, I’m gay, but I would have to have been dead not to appreciate Aphrodite’s beauty. I sensed the same sort of feelings from Hazel and Willow.)

Aphrodite was quick to accept my invitation to informality, perhaps because Apollo had briefed her.

“Aphrodite,” I said after introductions, “You know my mission, and you know of Zeus’ decision, yet you came.”

“Lucas, I know of the mission you and Apollo have discussed. I understand and support that mission. There is, however, something else in your reality that draws my particular attention, and about which I would ask your support.”

I nodded an invitation to continue.

“The evil in that reality includes the churches that have taken a message of love and turned it into a message of hate. Nowhere is this more true than in the message of the Universal Fundamentalist Church. Its headquarters are in your former nation, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to be exact, but its tentacles reach throughout the world.

“I have been given power—Authorities and Attributes—related to love. No one has the equivalent power over hatred; therefore, I have taken it as mine.” She looked at me as if I might challenge her assertion.

“I’m not sure I understand, entirely, but I understand your concern. Please, continue,” I said.

“In this reality, our power came at first from those who created us, and from the worshipers who followed. In your former reality, and increasingly in this one, we are sustained by an older power, one that is a fundamental part of the universes in which the realities are set. We do not understand it, but we use it. I am glad; for it gives me flexibility I did not have, before.

“The Universal Fundamentalist Church and others of that ilk are promoting a message of hate. As goddess of Love, I believe that message to be a challenge to me, and I ask your help.”

“I already have more targets in my old reality than I can attack,” I said, perhaps too quickly.

“No, please,” I added when I saw her reaction. “That doesn’t mean that I reject your request, only that I recognize it as something that not only needs to be done, but also is a claim on my resources.”

I chuckled. “I think I’m remembering more about who I was, before. Rather, I’m remembering more things about my responsibilities—which included the allocation of scarce resources. I also have knowledge of that particular church.”

I thought for a moment, and then said, “It is not the knowledge a communicant would have, for which I am glad, but knowledge that an educated and skeptical person might have.

“Please, tell me more, that I might understand.”

Apollo seemed to encourage her. She spoke. “This is but one of the many stories that have come to my attention.

“This happened not two weeks ago,” she said. “I have been watching, since then.”

Earth Analogue VII

Flames licked up the walls and through the tiles of the suspended ceiling. Once above the ceiling, the fire crawled from room to room. Bits of flaming material dropped from the ceiling, igniting more blazes where they fell. The fire found a plumbing riser and leaped to the second and third floors.

The sprinkler system sat idle. The fusible links melted, but no water flowed—the valves in the basement were closed. The pumps came on, triggered by other sensors, but there was no water for them to move. They began to overheat. Soon, they would burn out and add to the conflagration. The alarm system in the Fire Control Room received signals from throughout the building, but no alarms sounded. The auto-dialer clicked and chattered, but no call reached the Fire Department.

“My god! How could this have happened?” Kent Newman ran his hand through his hair and stared at the smoldering ruins of the building.

“Who are you, sir?” The question came from a man in a fire department uniform.

“Dr. Newman. I’m the director of the laboratory. What happened?”

“I’m Major Steve Taylor, Fire Marshal and the chief arson investigator, and I was hoping you could tell me that.”

Newman shook his head. “I got a call from the campus police that the building was on fire. I just got here. I don’t know what happened.”

“What kind of research, sir?” Taylor asked.

“I’m not at liberty to answer that,” Newman said.

“Dr. Newman, I have a responsibility to my men and to the people of this community. I need to know if they are or have been exposed to any danger. If you don’t tell me, I will arrest you and get a court order requiring you to tell me.”

Taylor saw something in Newman’s expression. “Yes, Dr. Newman, I have arrest powers and if I cry public safety I’ll have a judge on your back in less than an hour.”

“I need to make a phone call,” Newman said. “You may listen.” Taylor raised an eyebrow in question, but nodded.

Newman pushed a single button on his cell phone.

“This is Dr. Newman, ID Kilo 77 437 Zulu. The Boulder laboratory has burned to the ground. There’s a fire marshal from the arson team asking questions.”

“His name is Major Taylor.”

“Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

Newman listened for a bit longer before pressing the end button and returning his phone to his pocket. “Major, I’ve been authorized to tell you that nothing we were doing would endanger your people of the public at large.”

“Doctor, I’m not sure that is sufficient—” The Fire Marshal stopped speaking abruptly when his cell phone rang.

“Taylor.”

“Who?”

“Yes, sir, I’m on the campus . . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Taylor snapped his phone shut. “That was the Mayor of Boulder. He just got a call from the governor. My orders are not to ask you any more questions and not to arrest you.”

The Fireman paused. “I’ll obey orders, of course. I have to respect anyone who can get that kind of influence through those channels in less than a minute.” On the other hand, he thought, no one said I wasn’t to investigate.

“Major,” Dr. Newman said. “We’re not on opposing sides, here. I hope you will believe that. Except for discussing our research, I will do whatever I can to help your investigation. What might I do?”

Taylor thought for a moment. I’ve got to assume he’s sincere. Or, at least, make him think I believe that. “The sprinklers didn’t operate, and there was no alarm sent to the central station. Can you arrange for me to speak to whoever was in charge of those things? The fire spread quickly. More quickly than I would have thought. I suspect arson and the use of accelerants. Can you tell me who might have wanted to burn the place? Employees fired recently? Disgruntled employees?

“I appreciate your offer to help, and I’ll work with you.” Major Taylor added, and the chuckled. “Doctor? Something tells me I should trust you. Let me tell you my philosophy about that. I believe in the consenting adult school of human relations. That means that I trust people until they try to screw me. If they do, all bets are off.”

Newman laughed. He stuck out his hand. “Major, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Major Taylor sat across a table from a man in blue jeans and a work shirt. “Mr. Finger? I understand you’re responsible for the fire control room and the fire systems.”

“I’m the maintenance supervisor,” Finger said. “I’m responsible for the plumbing and electric, for fixing what them scientists breaks, for the janitors, for the company that mows the grass, for painting, and for just about anything else that needs somebody with more hands than brains. Yeah, I guess for the sprinklers and such.”

“When was the last time the fire system was tested?”

“Tested? What do you mean, tested? How can you test it without a fire?”

“Do you not test the sensors with artificial smoke? Do you not conduct fire drills? Do you not check the pressure on the basement pumps?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Finger said. “We keep the pump room and the fire room clean, but we don’t do any of those other things.”

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Finger. You may go now.”

“Go where? I ain’t got a job anymore, do I?” Finger said.

The other members of the maintenance staff were no more helpful than had been Finger.

Gunbarrel Air Force Station, Colorado

Major Taylor wasn’t surprised to get a lunch invitation from his opposite number at the Gunbarrel Air Force Station. The mutual support agreement between the Boulder Fire Department and the Air Force had been exercised often, and Taylor had developed a cordial working relationship with Chief Master Sergeant Thompson. They agreed to have lunch at the NCO Club.

“I’ll meet you at the gate,” Thompson said. “You can park your vehicle, there. After lunch, I want to show you a few things.”

Chief Master Sergeant Thompson managed to turn the lunch conversation to the fire at the CDC laboratory.

“Definitely accelerants,” Taylor said. “We found both burn marks and chemical residue. Fairly crude, but effective: acetone and kerosene for the most part. There were traces of methyl ethyl ketone, which is unusual. The head of the laboratory said they didn’t ever see them.”

“You don’t buy that off the shelf, either,” the Air Force Chief said. “They use a lot of that at the Sun-Wrest plant west of town, though. Part of the manufacturing process for solar cells. They wash all the finished cells with it.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Thompson said. “My son works there, and he was telling me how dirty the process is, and how dumb the environmentalists are to think that solar power is green.”

“Wonder how the Sun-Wrest people would feel about letting me take a look at their inventory sheets, and who might have had access to that stuff,” Taylor said.

“I’ll get you the right names,” Thompson offered.

After lunch, Thompson drove Taylor to a white, windowless building identified only with a number: 817. They walked in the front door to face a security checkpoint. The guard sat behind glass so thick it was green. His voice came over a speaker. “Chief, you are expected. Do you vouch for your guest?”

“Yes, I do, Sergeant.”

A buzzer sounded, and a door swung open. “What’s going on?” Taylor asked.

“Steve,” Chief Thompson said, “You’re going to learn some things that are classified. You’ll be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I didn’t ask you, before, because I’m not supposed to talk about it except in a secure environment. If you don’t want to know, if you don’t want to sign an agreement, now’s the time to back out. I will tell you, it’s about the fire at the CDC laboratory.”

Taylor chuckled. “I’m in, and, by the way, I’m a reservist with a current Top Secret clearance.”

“Actually,” the Air Force Chief said, “actually, I knew that.”

The conference room was already occupied by several people. Dr. Newman greeted Major Taylor. “I’m glad you agreed to come,” he said. “There are some things you need to know that might help solve the fire.”

“You went to some trouble to get me here,” Taylor said.

Newman shrugged, and nodded. “It was important,” he said.

“Thanks,” Taylor said. “Thank you for your trust.”

Dr. Newman introduced his team, and a civilian from Washington. “We’ve reopened the laboratory here,” Newman said. “Where security is greater. Now, let me tell you what we’re doing.”

He put his first slide on the screen. It showed a hollow sphere with odd shapes and names for various parts. “This is a functional diagram of the H1N1 virus,” he said. “If you could look at it through an electron microscope, and dissect it, this is what you’d see . . . without the labels, of course.”

He used a laser pointer to highlight parts of the virus. “It might help to think of the H1N1 virus as a sub-microscopic ball. The surface of the ball is studded with hemagglutinin and neurainidase, the H and N of H1N1. Inside the ball are a mix of polymerases: enzymes made of the same amino acids as the rest of the human body, but with a specific function: to synthesize nucleic acids: specifically, the RNA of the virus.

“The hemagglutinin is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The matching piece is somewhere in the human body. It’s the hemagglutinin that allows the virus to attach itself to a human cell, when it finds the right match on the surface of that cell. The neurainidase then starts a reaction that allows the polymerases inside the ball to slip inside the human cell, where they hijack the cell’s own reproductive mechanism to produce copies of the H1N1 virus.”

He paused as if to think. “Research on creating a universal flu vaccine looks at the hemagglutinin, which does not mutate, rather than the polymerases which do. If we can either destroy the hemagglutinin, or render it ineffective as a puzzle piece, we can immunize against all strains of the H1 virus.”

“And that’s what you were doing? Taylor asked.

“Actually, no,” Newman said. “I told you about that only to prepare you for a much more complicated picture. We were working on an AIDS vaccine.”

A different, more complex picture came onto the screen.

“The AIDS virus is much more complex, although there are two surface molecules, glycoprotein 120 and glycoprotein 41 which are candidates for a vaccine.”

“It’s just a harder problem, then?” Taylor asked.

“Not from a scientific standpoint,” Newman said. “The problem is resistance to our research and the funding for it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Universal Fundamentalist Church, as well as some others who call themselves Christians, have an inordinate amount of influence over the Congress. They have made it clear that our research should not continue. Their opinions range from the God hates queers crowd to those who believe a solution to AIDS would only encourage homosexual promiscuity, to the more moderates who believe that AIDS and all sexually transmitted disease are a curse from god, and that any attempt to stop such disease is blasphemy. They’re the same ones behind the nonsense that the HPV vaccine is should be banned because the threat of cervical cancer serves to deter teenage sex. It doesn’t, of course—all they’re doing is killing people. They’ve not only been able to cut off overt funding, but, we suspect, to infiltrate our research facilities.”

Newman didn’t say what he thought next. And they may have infiltrated our research teams.

“It sounds simple,” Taylor said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean what you’re doing, but what you’ve laid out for me. I need to find Christian radicals who have access to methyl ethyl ketone. Between Chief Thompson and Dr. Newman, I’ve got two pieces of a puzzle.”

On the Island of Thermai

Just after lunch, Apollo had departed, leaving me with Aphrodite. The boys had removed the remains of our lunch, brought water, and left us alone.

“Aphrodite,” I said, “I must ask something—”

“I know your question,” she said, “for it is written on your face every time you look at one of the dryads.

“I am goddess of Love, all Love. Dionysus’s purview is lust, and I am happy that I do not see that here. You have a deep love for these boys. You express that love, as do they, in a form that is comfortable to both you and them. I do not rule or judge; as long as there is love, as long as there is balance and understanding, I do not rule or judge.

“I said that the Universal Fundamentalist Church was spreading its tentacles over the world, did I not? Not content to sew hatred in the United States, they have sent people to Nigeria, Russia, and elsewhere. They are lobbying to make homosexuality illegal, punishable by death, in those countries. Such is their lack of understanding, and their evil.

“Both publically and privately, they decry Muslim beliefs, and cite Muslim terrorist attacks on the USA, Israel, and elsewhere to whip up hatred among their followers. Secretly, however, they send agitators to Muslim countries to foment both attacks and fatwas declaring the USA to be the Great Satan. They are trying to bring about the end of the world, but all they will do is bring on the end of civilization. They are filled with hate.

“Here, however, I see Love in the faces of the boys and in the minds of those oaks who surround your patio and guard you, and in all the dryads of the estate. I see it in the fierce loyalty they have for you, and in the hopes that they will be next selected to serve you—and sleep with you.”

I must have blushed, because she laughed. I’d learned to understand the difference between mocking laughter and joyous laughter. Hers was joyous.

I thanked her for her story and for her affirmation. “I will find some way to deal with the Universal Fundamentalist Church,” I said. “And I hope that you will send me information about them as you learn it. I also hope that you will visit again, to help coordinate attacks on these people.”

Before she left, Aphrodite touched Hazel and Willow’s heads and murmured a few words I did not hear. The boys smiled broadly, though, so I knew it was a blessing of some sort.

I realized: these gods and the dryads have a long history. They have interacted in the past; they must interact in the future, and not just when the gods visit me and are served by the dryads. It was something else for my “to do” list.

Was it something Aphrodite had said to Willow, or some power she had given him with her blessing? Was it the image of twining vinelettes on which his leaves grew in Spring?

Was it . . . Did it matter what it was? Sex with Willow was an expression of Love. I felt what Willow felt and I know he felt what I felt. The softness of his skin, the fall of his hair, the smoothness of his cheeks, the redness of his lips, the perfection of his body—all this, and more were eclipsed by the feeling of Love, of unity, of wonder, which we shared.

Although Aphrodite had issued a new challenge, I slept more soundly that night than I had since arriving in this reality. I knew, I knew as surely as I knew anything, that I would have allies in this battle, and that we would persevere.