a racecourse official. One of the nameless, faceless men hired by the day to stand at various points along the racecourse to watch for falls or other problems. Veder had worked at the racetrack for three weeks. He moved out of the trees and crossed the track and then cut through another wooded area, coming out on the far side of the stands. Then he joined the crowd that moved and yelled in confusion as word of the murder spread through the rumor mill. He eventually ducked out of the crowd, found a bathroom, removed his coat, hat, and boots, and left them in a stall. From under the plastic trash bag in the bathroom dustbin he removed a small parcel that contained new shoes, a blue windbreaker printed with the name of the local football team, wire-framed glasses, and a pair of spectator binoculars. He flushed his mustache down the loo.
When he rejoined the crowd he was one of hundreds who looked and dressed and acted like startled spectators at an afternoon’s event that had become suddenly more interesting.
It was the second kill since he’d accepted the seven-target job from DaCosta. The first had been simpler-the poisoning of a man in a wheelchair whose once brilliant mind was lost in the unlit labyrinth of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Two down, five to go.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Deck
Saturday, August 28, 2:06 P.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 93 hours, 54 minutes E.S.T.
“The Twins are still in the staff room,” said Otto. “They’re interviewing Bannerjee and their other
“No,” said Cyrus as he climbed out of the sensory deprivation tank. “I’m done.” He cut a sharp look at Otto. “What’s wrong?”
“We lost another one,” said Otto as he held out a bathrobe.
Water sluiced down Cyrus Jakoby’s legs to form a salty puddle on the floor. He turned and held his arms backward so Otto could slide the robe on.
“Another what?”
“Researcher. Daniel Horst.”
“Virology?”
“Epideminiology.”
“How?”
“He broke his bathroom mirror and cut his wrists,” said Otto. “He bled out in his tub.”
Cyrus scowled as he padded barefoot to the workstation in the corner. He called up the staff directory, found Daniel Horst, and entered a password to access the man’s most recent psychological evaluations. Cyrus read through and his frown deepened.
“It’s all in there,” said Otto mildly. “In the after-session notes. Both Hastings and Stenner remarked on Horst’s increased levels of stress, frequent headaches, nervousness, lack of direct eye contact. Plenty of signs of depression and diminished self-esteem. He was also a late-night regular at the staff bar every night. Classic stuff.”
“We missed it,” said Cyrus.
“We didn’t see it,” corrected Otto. “We’ve been otherwise occupied.”
“It’s my fault. I’m weeks behind in reading the staff evaluations.”
“Neither of us saw it for the same reason. We need to delegate more, Mr. Cyrus. We’re spreading ourselves too thin. If we try to do everything, then we’ll get sloppy.” He paused. “We need to process more of the SAMs into the Family. We need to put them to work.”
“I wish Eighty-two…” Cyrus let it hang.
“He’s not ready.”
“The others are?”
“Some are. Enough to take some pressure off of us.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Horst’s death could be trouble.”
“No. The cleaning woman who found him reported directly to the security shift supervisor, and he contacted me. I quarantined the cleaner. She’ll be on the next flight to the Hive. The security supervisor is one of the Haeckels, so there’s no problem with him keeping his mouth shut.”
“Good, good,” Cyrus said distractedly. “Do we have a cover story for Horst being missing?”
“He was needed at the Hive. A rumor can be started that he got a juicy promotion and went to the Hive to head up a new division. A component of the rumor will be that his apparent stress was him sweating whether he’d get the promotion or not. It’s worked before and the rumor does some good for morale and overall team efficiency.”
Cyrus nodded. Staff sent to the Hive were never allowed to return to the Deck. Except for a special few-Otto and Cyrus, the SAMs, several of the Haeckels, and one or two key scientists-no one else was allowed to travel between the two facilities. No one outside that circle even knew where the other facility was. Disinformation was frequently seeded into the rumor mill. There was even an abiding belief that there was a Laboratory A somewhere in Mexico and a new facility set to open in Australia, though neither was true. It was useful to sustain the belief when it became necessary for staff members to disappear.
This latest suicide was troubling. Suicides among the virology and epidemiology staff was very high. Drug addiction and alcoholism was even higher, though the recent increases in random urine and blood testing had decreased the risk of technicians staggering into a clean room while high. That had been a lesson they’d learned the hard way.
“What was Horst working on?”
“Tay-Sachs.”
“Why the stress? Surely you vetted him for-”
“We did. He’s not a Jew; he never had any significant Jewish friends, never dated a Jewish woman. His distrust of Jews was marked in his initial evaluations and recruitment interviews. He even scored in the high sevens for resentment against Jews for jobs and grants in his field.”
“Then why was he depressed?”
“Why do most of the suicide cases go soft on us? It’s always the same thing. Conscience. No matter what we do to prevent it, they reach a point where their vision and trust in the New Order is overmatched by fear.”
“Fear of what?” Cyrus snapped.
“Damnation, probably. In one form or another.”
“Bullshit. We screen for atheism in every single member of the science staff.”
“Most atheists are closet agnostics or disappointed believers.”
“So?”
“As you point out in so many of your staff speeches, Mr. Cyrus, we’re at war. The saying that there are no atheists in foxholes is more often true than not. Even if the belief is momentary and conditional.”
“So… you’re saying that this is
“Not at all, Mr. Cyrus. I’m saying that this is evidence of the kind of inherent weakness that the Extinction Wave will wash away.”
Cyrus cinched the robe more tightly around his waist and walked to the window. The view was that of the production tanks and the white-suited technicians who milled around them.
“We should have tried harder to find the gene that controlled the conscience,” said Otto.
“What I don’t understand-and
VMAT2-Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2-was a membrane protein that transports monoamines like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine from cellular cytosol into synaptic vesicles. Geneticist Gene Hamer had pioneered the belief that the gene was more active in persons who held strong religious beliefs and less so in those who held little or no beliefs. Cyrus accepted this as likely and subscribed to several similar
