The Tomorrow Code Part 23

One of the other soldiers approached and said quietly, although for little purpose, as they could still hear every word, "We are ready for the test now, Doctor."

"Then get on with it," Crowe said.

"Z1 or Z2?"

Crowe shrugged. "Whichever."

"They are living creatures. Why do you call them by numbers?" Rebecca asked. "Why not give them names?"

"They're not pets," Crowe replied curtly. "Pets have names. These are lab animals."

The Texan opened one of the animal cages and the older-looking chimp, Z2, jumped out with a squeal of delight and began tousling the tall man's hair.

He smiled and Tane laughed.

"She's got character." Rebecca smiled. "I'll name her for you." She thought for a moment. "Z-two, zeto..."

"Zeta," supplied Tane.

Rebecca looked at him for a moment, before accepting it.

"Zeta," she said. "Hi, Zeta!"

Zeta looked over at her and held out a hand as if she would like to jump onto Rebecca, but the Texan held the animal firmly.

Crowe did not find it funny. "They're not pets," he repeated.

"Makes it harder to stick electrodes in their brains and vivisect them, doesn't it," Rebecca said with a little-girl innocence completely at odds with her words. "How about the other one, Z-one?"

"Xena," suggested Tane.

"Zeta and Xena," Rebecca declared. "And what little test have we got lined up for you today, Zeta?" She held out a hand to Zeta, who patted it and looked up at her with big, sad clown eyes.

"We're going to put her in the tank," Crowe said flatly, to Rebecca's look of horror.

The end of the tank was a separate box, sealed off from the rest of the tank by a gla.s.s door with thick rubber seals.

They let Zeta climb in the box, which she did willingly, trustingly, and then sealed the lid above her. In the main compartment of the tank, there were whistling, swishing noises as the jellyfish, agitated, swept around in circles in the mist.

Zeta jumped a little and turned around and around inside the small area, but otherwise didn't seem too concerned about being shut in a gla.s.s box.

"You can't!" Rebecca said, again and again. "You can't put her in the tank with that thing!"

Southwell, looking quite uncomfortable, tried to explain. "She'll give us very valuable data. Chimps are our closest cousins."

Manderson contributed, "Genetically, they are ninety-nine percent the same as humans."

"Don't flatter yourself," Rebecca muttered, but the insult went straight over Manderson's curly head.

Crowe said, "We need to know what these pathogens can do to us."

"And you need to sacrifice an innocent animal to find out?"

"It's just one chimp," Crowe said with a look of annoyance. "Fifty thousand human beings got 'sacrificed' in Whangarei. And there'll be more if we can't figure out what is going on."

With a nod from Crowe, Manderson released the seals and Zeta's compartment flooded with the fog.

"No!" shrieked Rebecca. She pressed her fingers against the gla.s.s by Zeta's head. Zeta looked at her and gave her a big clown smile. The other USABRF men gathered around to watch.

Zeta seemed bemused by the fog at first, as it started to fill her chamber, then a little confused as it thickened around her. The jellyfish whistled around in the thick of the fog, avoiding the thin vapor at the other end.

"They can't exist outside of the fog," Crowe murmured, watching intently. "They can't move, they can't live. It's their nutrition and their locomotion."

One jellyfish flashed down the side of the tank near them. By now the fog had spread evenly between the two part.i.tions. The jellyfish whirled around Zeta, then disappeared back into the fog.

That was all. Nothing else happened.

After a while, Zeta went for a walk. Tane held his breath and could hear from the sharp intake of air from Rebecca that she was doing the same.

Zeta wandered through the main tank, comically trying to wave the fog away from in front of her eyes. She found one of the jellyfish, drifting at about her eye level, and Tane winced as she stretched out a hand toward it.

The jellyfish remained motionless. She even batted at it with her hand, swatting it like a fly, but without effect.

"It's not interested in her," Southwell said with a puzzled look.

"Okay, that's long enough," Crowe said.

"Go, Zeta!" Rebecca yelled in a mixture of delight and relief, hopping from one leg to the other and punching the air. "You go, girl!"

Zeta screeched and danced happily inside the cage, a little two-legged, two-armed Irish jig. Tane and Fatboy laughed, but Crowe just shook his head.

They reversed the procedure with the small compartment at the end of the tank, sealing off the main section before pumping in air and extracting the fog.

"Are you going to let her out?" Rebecca asked.

"She may be contaminated," Crowe replied, then, a little too quickly, said, "Dr. Southwell, would you show them the journals?"

Southwell led them to the far side of the room, where a series of notebooks were spread out on a table.

"Professor Green's notes," she said. "Do you know much about what they were researching?"

"Tell me," Rebecca said. "Vicky told us it was rhinoviruses."

"Actually, it was rhinoviruses they were researching. They did a small amount of work on NLVs, but only for a short time, to confirm some aspect of their main research. They were researching conserved antigens. That's common structures within the viruses that can-"

"She told us about that too," Rebecca interrupted. "How much do you know about the Chimera Project?"

Southwell said, "Conserved antigens proved to be elusive. Our immune systems just kept getting fooled by the changing shapes of the viruses. It was a dead end."

"So?"

"Professor Green recently gained health department approval to experiment on the other side of the equation."

"The human side of the equation?"

"Yes. They were playing around with bone marrow, where antibodies are produced, genetically engineering our immune systems to try to produce a generic antibody."

"An antibody that would recognize any kind of virus."

"Any kind of rhinovirus. That was the field they were concentrating on."

"And how," Rebecca asked, a little skeptically, "do you start to create a generic antibody?"

"The scope of the project approval was quite specific. They were genetically splicing together different kinds of antibodies, creating a..." She trailed off, seemingly unwilling to finish the sentence.

"A chimera." Rebecca finished it for her. "Is that it? Is there anything else you can tell me?"

Southwell shook her head. "Nothing. Professor Green had not yet submitted a report on the results of the research. All we have is her notes." She indicated the table again. "Would you mind having a look through? Tell us if anything sticks out."

"Of course," Rebecca said, and picked up the first journal.

Tane idly leafed through one. Rebecca was the only one with a hope of understanding them, but it was interesting to see the clearly handwritten notes, dates, and formulas that the late Professor Green had written. Vicky's handwriting was small, neat and verbose, flowing on, page after page. Tane idly wondered why she hadn't just typed up her notes on a computer.

Fatboy was the first to notice, glancing across at the other side of the room. "What are they doing?" he wondered.

Tane looked across, and Rebecca also. Two of the men had their hands in the gloves in the sides of the compartment. One was holding Zeta while the other ran a needle into her arm.

Zeta didn't like it; she screeched and snarled at the men.

"They'll be taking a blood sample," Rebecca said. "To see if the fog had any effect on her."

She looked back at the journal she was reading, only to look up again a second later to check on Zeta.

The man with the syringe had withdrawn it, but it was empty. With a frown, Rebecca walked across the room to the tank. Zeta looked sadly, imploringly, at her from inside the gla.s.s.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "You're taking a blood sample, right?"

Crowe was there now. "Miss Richards, this is our work. I'd like you to let us get on with it."

"That was a blood sample, right?"

Inside the tank, Zeta began to shiver. She sat down suddenly and looked up at Rebecca like a frightened child. The top lip of her clownish mouth drew up into a sneer.

Southwell put her arm around Rebecca's shoulders and tried to steer her away. She shook the arm away violently.

"What have you done to her?"

Zeta slumped against the side of the tank, her eyes open. Her breathing was ragged, heavy. She looked up at Rebecca one last time; then her eyes just glazed over and remained open. Her chest was still.

Crowe took Rebecca's arm this time, firmly, and drew her away from the tank.

Rebecca cried, "You killed her! What are you going to do, dissect her to see if the fog has affected her?"

Crowe said nothing.

"You are! You monsters!"

"Monsters?" Crowe hissed, the stony facade cracking for the first time. "Monsters!" He grabbed Rebecca by the back of the neck and pressed her face against the gla.s.s of the large tank. There was a whistle and a flash of white fog, and two of the jellyfish smashed into the gla.s.s, just a few thin fractions of an inch away from her eyes and mouth. She screamed. Tane jumped forward, and Fatboy was with him, but strong arms gripped their elbows, pinning them.

"There are your monsters! We don't have time to wait and see how the animal is feeling in a month or so. We have just a few days before the fog hits Auckland. We need answers right now!"

"Murderer!" Rebecca whispered, sobbing, her lips crushed against the gla.s.s.

Manderson reached in with the rubber gloves and laid the body of the chimpanzee flat on the floor of the tank. In death, Zeta had found peace once again. The forced sneer was gone, and her face held its natural sad-clown expression.

Crowe looked at Rebecca with stony eyes. "I told you not to give it a name," he said.

XENA Rebecca could move pretty quickly when she wanted to. The soldiers should have known that already. But they were all gathered around the tank. when she wanted to. The soldiers should have known that already. But they were all gathered around the tank.

Rebecca was at the cage, unsnicking the lock, and Z1-Xena-was in her arms before anybody realized what she was doing.

"Put the animal down," Crowe ordered, and he was clearly a man who was used to being obeyed.

Rebecca was a girl who was used to disobeying. "You've murdered one innocent creature today; you're not getting this one too."

Crowe moved toward her. Manderson and another soldier, Crawford, according to a badge on his helmet, moved slowly in behind her. She edged to her side. "Leave us alone!" she yelled.

"Leave her alone," Southwell said. "Let her calm down."

Crowe almost looked as if he were considering that for a moment, then he said, "No, we don't have the time. I had hoped that they might be useful in understanding Professor Green's work, but so far they've been just an obstruction."

He spoke to Crawford, behind Rebecca. "Take the animal off her and get all three of them back to Auckland." He turned to Southwell. "Get them charged with trespa.s.s or...something...so your police can keep them out of our hair."

Crawford nodded and circled around Rebecca to grab Xena. Manderson gripped her shoulders from behind, despite her shaking and struggling. Crawford put his hands under Xena's arms and began to pull. Rebecca held on tightly, and the chimpanzee, sensing the struggle, hugged her tightly back. Crawford was just trying to pry Rebecca's hands from around the chimp's back when Tane hit him broadside.

Fatboy had played rugby league in school and had a pretty tough reputation from years of tackling huge front-row forwards. Tane had never played rugby in his life. But he'd been to plenty of games to watch his brother play, and he hit Crawford in a textbook midriff tackle.

It cut him in half, knocking him to the floor and sliding both of them across the room toward the tables holding the tank. Crawford's back hit one of the table legs and the whole structure shuddered.