The receptionist is still eyeing me, but with some resignation, like a cat swishing its tail at the foot of a tree full of inaccessible baby birds. I feel moved to make a lame reply to her earlier question.
“I’ve been ill,” I say, looking apologetic.
She simply nods, and all through the orientation, I feel her eyes boring into the back of my head. I watch inane tapes about Geiger counters and dust-proof white lab clothing. I watch people walking calmly for flashing exit signs during emergencies, and then checking in with their supervisors outside for a lackadaisical head count. No one is running, screaming on the wires, burned by radiation and blasted apart by bullets.
All through the videos I feel Sarah Rasmussen’s eyes.
Report: Sarah Rasmussen, Internal Security, TA 96:
Of all the people present that day, I feel the most responsible for letting Dr. Giddeon get through. I was the only one, to my knowledge, that suspected him in the slightest. What threw me off was his comment about being ill. So many of the great minds here seem to be encased in oddly misshapen bodies. I took Bob Kieffer’s flustered reaction to indicate that this was the case with Gideon, and that I was causing undue embarrassment. His face did indeed closely match the photos, as did his thumbprints.
Still, it was my mistake not to listen to my instincts.
Gideon’s Transcript:
The close call with the receptionist has left me shaken. I can hardly hold the red placard saying: UNCLEARED VISITOR IN AREA. Three badges now weigh down my shirt-front. One is a temporary security clearance badge, the second an ID badge, while the third, redundantly, identifies me as a security risk.
“How about a cup of coffee before we go down to the lab?”
I startle, almost dropping my red placard, but recover. Will I be able to go through with this? What if I am never alone? Can I reach inside my shirt and pull the tiny aluminum tab and kill Bob Kieffer?
Bob escorts me to the cafeteria. He, or one of the others on my short escort list, must be with me at all times. If I take a piss, they are supposed to look over my shoulder to see if I’m holding it right. We put the large ugly placard on the wall outside, where it sticks with a magnetic click. As I enter the room, the PA system announces that an Uncleared Visitor is in the cafeteria. Few of the people in the room bother to look up, but I feel like a microbe on a slide anyway. I sip my coffee and begin to realize that this whole thing is crazy, that in a matter of minutes something will go wrong. What was Sarah Rasmussen doing right now? Calling the right number at the right time?
My cancer feels bad today; it is a presence in my body. I know that if I did lead Bob Kieffer to the bathroom, there would be blood in my bowels. I can feel it.
It seems like ages have gone by. I don’t have much time left before the correct version of Dr. Gideon shows up. Finally, we get up and head down to the labs. I walk toward the first vault doors and another battery of Geiger counters in a dream-like state.
Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, TA 96.
The first clue I picked up that something was wrong with Dr. Gideon came when we reached the first vault doors. I began to wonder if the man was drunk or something. When I spoke to him, he often didn’t hear me on the first attempt. He seemed distracted and a bit anxious. We had waved all the drug-screening, since he was only supposed to work on site for four days. I began to think this could have been a mistake.
Gideon’s Transcript:
First, I dress in white overalls, booties and a hairnet. Then they run detectors over every inch of me. I nearly have a heart attack when the detectors sing over my breast pocket. They remove two diskettes and keep searching. I pray that my belly is as inert as everyone told me it was because now they’re patting it down. Gelatinous explosive, warm from my body heat, is jiggling and pressing against my ribs.
We’re through. We walk down a long hall that seems to telescope out before us. The doors have painted arcs on the floor in front of them to show where the swing could reach. Round bubble-like mirrors like those in hospitals perch over the intersections so you can see people coming at you. I can smell a strange chemical odor now, like that of the doctor’s office back as the compound. My heart is pounding freely now, my head is floating.
We reach the second vault. Outside we drop off our keys and leave our security badges with yet another guard. He gives me yet another badge, a dosimeter badge that will change color if I get too many rads. We walk through an airlock and an alarm sounds.
“Just the airlock,” explains Kieffer to my white face. “It does that if you don’t give the doors a chance to seal before walking through.”
We give the doors what they want and proceed into a room full of glove boxes. Long rubber gloves reach into leaded glass enclosures to work with trays full of radioactive material. Next to each set of gloves is a Geiger counter, ready to detect any contamination. The chemical smell is much stronger here. It assaults me, digging its way into my nostrils.
“This way,” says Kieffer and I follow him like a zombie. “Remember, don’t eat anything. Don’t even chew gum. If there is a leak and you ingest the dust, we can’t save you. Don’t sit down, either. Don’t even lean on anything.”
I nod vaguely. “What about the biological stuff?”
Kieffer shrugs. “They share this lab, but that’s another department. They’re making three-eyed polliwogs or something.”
I crack a smile. The man has no idea. I really want to make sure he gets out alive now.
He leads me to the computer workstation, all wrapped up in its own little environment, with its own air- conditioner and power supply. He looks over my shoulder while I work the membrane keyboard. For the first time I feel a bit at ease. I can even see what they have done wrong with the system, why they are having problems. Fixing networks like this was all part of my training, to make me more authentic. It’s the only useful thing I can do.
I’m stalling. I remember a video of a kid on a big rock, looking down into a swirling green chute of water, getting up the nerve to jump. There isn’t much time left.
Stepping back, I take a look around. There it is. I can see the thing: it looks like a lighting effect device in a dance-club movie. It’s stainless steel with tubes running in and out, like Sputnik with a thyroid condition. The particles shoot down those tubes into the center, where the genes are spliced and manipulated. Next to it is the rack of vacuum bottles. Their contents are frozen with liquid nitrogen.
How do I get up there? The thing is sitting on top of the stack of glass glove boxes. To climb up there on the catwalks will take a bit of time, and it will definitely be noticed.
I reach into my shirt, through the lab whites, and finger the detonator in my artificial belly. I turn to Bob Kieffer and he looks at me quizzically. I just stare at him, and finally, realization dawns there in his face. We communicate without words for perhaps five seconds.
“Better go now, Bob,” I say gently.
He opens his mouth once, blinks rapidly, bird-like, then turns and rushes for the doors.
Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, TA 96.
There was something very odd in his eyes. Partly an apology perhaps, partly a deep sadness and concern. I have no doubt that he believed utterly in what he was doing.
I have never met up with insanity before. I had no idea that it was such a human thing.
Gideon’s Transcript:
I climb the aluminum catwalk steps and make my way to the Sputnik thing. I get there before the guard shows up. Leaning against it, I get a last moment of peace.
I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if the bomb wrapped around my guts will destroy all the work done in genetics by this lab. The embryos and actual lab equipment will go, of course, and the hard disks with the primary database should all be lost. I don’t know if the secondary tape back-ups will go in the fire, though. Actually,
