Phantoms

Bryce stopped abruptly.

Tal and Frank reached automatically for their own sidearms.

“No!” Bryce shouted, “No shooting, for Christ's sake! We're on the same side.”

One of the soldiers spoke. Lieutenant Underhill. His voice issued tinnily from a small radio amplifier in a six- inch-square box on his chest. “Please stay back from the vehicles. Our first duty is to guard the integrity of the labs, and we will do so at all costs.”

“Damn it,” Bryce said, “we're not going to cause any trouble. I'm the one who called for you in the first place.”

“Stay back,” Underhill insisted.

The rear door of the first motor home finally opened. The four individuals who came out were also dressed in airtight suits, but they were not soldiers. They moved unhurriedly. They were unarmed. One of them was a woman; Jenny caught a glimpse of a strikingly lovely, female, oriental face. The names on their helmets weren't preceded by designation of rank: BETTENBY, VALDEZ, NIVEN, YAMAGUCHI. These were the civilian physicians and scientists who, in an extreme chemical biological warfare emergency, walked away from their private lives in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Western cities, putting themselves at Copperfield's disposal. According to Bryce, there was one such team in the West, one in the East, and one in the Southern-Gulf states.

Six men came out of the second motor home. GOLDSTEIN, ROBERTS, COPPERFIELD, HOUK. The last two were in unmarked suits, no names above their faceplates. They moved up the line, staying behind the armed soldiers, and joined up with Bettenby, Valdez, Niven, and Yamaguchi.

Those ten conducted a brief conversation among themselves, by way of intersuit radio. Jenny could see their lips moving behind their plexiglass visors, but the squawk boxes on their chests did not transmit a word, which meant they had the capability to conduct both public and strictly private discussions. For the time being, they were opting for privacy.

But why? Jenny wondered. They don't have anything to hide from us. Do they?

General Copperfield, the tallest of the twenty, turned away from the group at the rear of the first motor home, stepped onto the sidewalk, and approached Bryce.

Before Copperfield took the initiative, Bryce stepped up to him, “General, I demand to know why we're being held at gunpoint.”

“Sorry,” Copperfield said. He turned to the stone-faced troopers and said, “Okay, men. It's a no-sweat situation. Parade rest.”

Because of the air tanks they were carrying, the soldiers couldn't comfortably assume a classic parade rest position. But, moving with the fluid harmony of a precision drill team, they immediately slung their submachine guns from their shoulders, spread their feet precisely twelve inches apart, put their arms straight down at their sides, and stood motionless, facing forward.

Bryce had been correct when he'd told Tal that Copperfield sounded like a tough taskmaster. It was obvious to Jenny that there was no discipline problem in the general's unit.

Turning to Bryce again, smiling through his faceplate, Copperfield said, “That better?”

“Better,” Bryce said, “But I still want an explanation.”

“Just SOP,” Copperfield said, “Standard Operating Procedure. It's part of the normal drill. We don't have anything against you or your people, Sheriff. You are Sheriff Hammond, aren't you? I remember you from the conference in Chicago last year.”

“Yes, sir, I'm Hammond. But you still haven't given me a suitable explanation. SOP just isn't good enough.”

“No need to raise your voice, Sheriff.” With one gloved hand, Copperfield tapped the squawk box on his chest. “This thing's not just a speaker. It's also equipped with an extremely sensitive microphone. You see, going into a place where there might be serious biological or chemical contamination, we've got to consider the possibility that we might be overwhelmed by a lot of sick and dying people. Now, we simply aren't equipped to administer cures or even amelioratives. We're a research team. Strictly pathology, not treatment. It's our job to find out all we can about the nature of the contaminant, so that properly equipped medical teams can come in right behind us and deal with the survivors. But dying and desperate people might not understand that we can't treat them. They might attack the mobile labs out of anger and frustration.”

“And fear,” Tal Whitman said.

“Exactly,” the general said, missing the irony, “Our psychological stress simulations indicate that it's a very real possibility.”

“And if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work,” Jenny said, “would you kill them?”

Copperfield turned to her. The sun flashed off his faceplate, transforming it into a mirror, and for a moment she could not see him. Then he shifted slightly, and his face emerged into view again, but not enough of it for her to see what he really looked like. It was a face out of context, framed in the transparent portion of his helmet.

He said, “Dr. Paige, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Doctor, if terrorists or agents of a foreign government committed an act of biological warfare against an American community, it would be up to me and my people to isolate the microbe, identify it, and suggest measures to contain it. That is a sobering responsibility. If we allowed anyone, even the suffering victims, to deter us, the danger of the plague spreading would increase dramatically.”

“So,” Jenny said, still pressing him, “if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work, you'd kill them.”

“Yes,” he said flatly, “Even decent people must occasionally choose between the lesser of two evils.”

Jenny looked around at Snowfield, which was as much of a graveyard in the morning sun as it had been in the gloom of night. General Copperfield was right. Anything he might have to do to protect his team would only be a little evil. The big evil was what had been done — what was still being done — to this town.

She wasn't quite sure why she had been so testy with him.

Maybe it was because she had thought of him and his people as the cavalry, riding in to save the day. She had wanted all the problems to be solved, all the ambiguities cleared up instantly upon Copperfield's arrival. When she'd realized that it wasn't going to work out that way, when they had actually pulled guns on her, the dream had faded fast. Irrationally, she had blamed the general.

That wasn't like her. Her nerves must be more badly frayed than she had thought.

Bryce began to introduce his men to the general, but Copperfield interrupted. “I don't mean to be rude, Sheriff, but we don't have time for introductions. Later. Right now, I want to move. I want to see all those things you told me about on the phone last night, and then I want to get an autopsy started.”

He wants to skip introductions because it doesn't make sense to be chummy with people who may be doomed, Jenny thought. If we develop disease symptoms in the next few hours, if it turns out to be a brain disease, and if we go berserk and try to rush the mobile labs, it'll be easier for him to have us shot if he doesn't know us very well.

Stop it! she told herself angrily.

She looked at Lisa and thought: Good heavens, kid, if I'm this frazzled, what a state you must be in. Yet you've kept as stiff an upper lip as anyone. What a damned fine kid to have for a sister.

“Before we show you around,” Bryce told Copperfield, “you ought to know about the thing we saw last night and what happened to—”

“No, no,” Copperfield said impatiently, “I want to go through it step by step. Just the way you found things. There'll be plenty of time to tell me what happened last night. Let's get moving.”

“But, you see, it's beginning to look as if it can't possibly be a disease that's wiped out this town,” Bryce protested.

The general said, “My people have come here to investigate possible CBW connections. We'll do that first. Then we can consider other possibilities. SOP, Sheriff.”

Bryce sent most of his men back into the Hilltop Inn, keeping only Tal and Frank with him.