Mount Dragon

PurBlood.”

“Ah, yes. PurBlood.” Teece pursed his lips distastefully. “Nasty idea, that.”

“What do you mean?” Carson asked, mystified. “Blood substitutes can save countless lives. They eliminate shortages, the need for blood typing, protect against transfusions of tainted blood—”

“Perhaps,” Teece interrupted. “Just the same, the thought of injecting pints of it into my veins isn’t pleasant. I understand it’s produced by a vat of genetically engineered bacteria that have had the human hemoglobin gene inserted into them. It’s the same bacteria that exists by the trillions in ...” His voice trailed off, and he added the word “dirt” almost soundlessly.

Carson laughed. “It’s called streptococcus. Yes, it’s the bacterium found in soil. The fact is, we at GeneDyne know more about streptococcus than any other form of life. It’s the only organism other than E. coli whose gene we have completely mapped from beginning to end. So it’s a perfect host organism, just because it lives in dirt doesn’t make it disgusting or dangerous.”

“Call me old-fashioned, then,” said Teece. “But I’m straying from our subject here. The doctor who’s treating Burt tells me that he repeats an apparently nonsensical phrase over and over again: ‘Poor alpha.’ Do you have any idea what that might mean? Could it be the beginning of some longer sentence? Or perhaps his nickname for somebody?”

Carson thought a moment, then shook his head. “I doubt if it’s anybody here.”

Teece frowned. “Another mystery. Perhaps the notebook will shed light on this, as well. In any case, I have some ideas on how to go about searching for it. I plan to follow them up when I get back.”

“When you get back?” Carson echoed.

Teece nodded. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow for Radium Springs to file my preliminary report. Communication links to the outside world are practically nonexistent here. Besides, I need to consult with my colleagues. That’s why I’ve spoken to you. You are the person closest to Hurt’s work. I’ll be needing your full cooperation in the days to come. Somehow, I think Burt is the key to all this. We need to make a decision soon.”

“What decision is that?”

“On whether or not to allow this project to continue.”

Carson was silent. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Scopes allowing the project to be terminated. Teece was getting up, wrapping his towel tighter.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Carson said.

“Advise what?”

“Leaving tomorrow. There’s a big dust storm coming up.”

“I didn’t hear anything about it on the radio,” Teece frowned.

“They don’t broadcast the weather for the Jornada del Muerto desert on the radio, Mr. Teece. Didn’t you notice the peculiar orange pall in the southern sky when we came out of the Fever Tank this evening? I’ve seen that before and it means trouble.”

“Dr. Singer’s lending me a Hummer. Those things are built like articulated lorries.”

For the first time, Carson thought he saw a look of uncertainty in Teece’s face. He shrugged. “I’m not going to stop you. But if I were you, I’d wait.”

Teece shook his head. “What I’ve got to do can’t wait.”

The front had gathered its energy in the Gulf of Mexico, then moved northwestward, striking the Mexican coastline of Tamaulipas State. Once over land, the front was forced to rise above the Sierra Madre Oriental, where the moist air of the higher altitudes condensed in great thunderheads over the mountains. Vast quantities of rain fell as the front moved westward. By the time it descended on the Chihuahua desert, all moisture had been wrung from it. The front veered northward, moving laterally through the basin and range provinces of northern Mexico. At six o’clock in the morning it entered the Jornada del Muerto desert.

The front was now bone dry. No clouds or rain marked its arrival. All that remained of the Gulf storm was an enormous energy differential between the hundred-degree air mass over the desert and the sixty-five-degree air mass of the front.

All this energy manifested itself in wind.

As it moved into the Jornada, the front became visible as a mile-high wall of orange dust. It bore down across the land with the speed of an express train, carrying shredded tumble-weeds, clay, dry silt, and powdered salt picked up from playas to the south. At a height of four feet above the ground, the wind also included twigs, coarse sand, pieces of dry cactus, and bark stripped from trees. At a height of six inches, the wind was full of cutting shards of gravel, small stones, and pieces of wood.

Such desert storms, though rare enough to occur only once every few years, had the power to sandblast a car windshield opaque, strip the paint off a curved surface, blow roofs off trailer homes, and run horses into barbed-wire fences.

The storm reached the middle Jornada desert and Mount Dragon at seven o’clock in the morning, fifty minutes after Gilbert Teece, senior OSHA investigator, had driven off in a Hummer with his fat briefcase, heading for Radium Springs.

Scopes sat at his pianoforte, fingers motionless on the black rosewood keys. He appeared to be in deep thought. Lying beside the hand-shaped lid prop was a tabloid newspaper, torn and mangled, as if angry hands had crumpled it, then smoothed it again. The paper was open to an article entitled “Harvard Doc Accuses Gene Firm of Horror Accident.”

Suddenly, Scopes stood up, walked into the circle of light, and flounced down on the couch. He pulled the keyboard onto his lap and typed a brief series of instructions, initiating a videoconference call. Before him, the enormous screen winked into focus. A swirl of computer code ran up along one edge, then gave way to the huge, grainy image of a man’s face. His thick neck lapped over a collar at least two sizes too tight. He was staring into the camera with the bare-toothed grimace of a man unused to smiling.

“Guten tag,” said Scopes in halting German.

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable speaking in English, Mr. Scopes?” the man on the screen asked, tilting his head ingratiatingly.

“Nein,” Scopes continued in bad German. “I want to practice the German. Speak slowly and clearly. Repeat twice.”

“Very good,” the man said.

“Twice.”

“Sehr gut, sehr gut,” the man said.

“Now, Herr Saltzmann, our friend tells me you have clear access to the old Nazi files at Leipzig.”

“Das ist richtig. Das ist richtig.”

“This is where the Lodz Ghetto files currently reside, is it not?”

“Ja. Ja.”

“Excellent. I have a small problem, an—how does one say it?—an archival problem. The kind of problem you specialize in. I pay very well, Herr Saltzmann. One hundred thousand Deutschmarks.“

The smile broadened.

Scopes continued to talk in pidgin German, outlining his problem. The man on the screen listened intently, the smile slowly fading from his face.

Later, when the screen was blank once again, a soft chime, almost inaudible, sounded from one of the devices on the end table.

Scopes, who was still sitting on the decrepit sofa, keyboard in lap, leaned toward the end table and pressed a button. “Yes?”

“Your lunch is ready.”

“Very well.”

Spencer Fairley entered, the foam slippers on his feet in ludicrous contrast to the somber gray suit. He made no noise as he crossed the carpet and set a pizza and a can of Coca-Cola on the far end table.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” Fairley asked.