Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman Read online

  From time to time she could see the white water of the creek plunging down cliff and canyon from Lake Vivian, the first of the Enchantment Lakes high above. About a third of the way up, the trail switched out to the creek near a beautiful series of crystal pools, usually her first two-minute rest stop. This time she dumped her pack like an elephant off her back and sank down on a log, not even looking at the creek.

  Abruptly, she realized she was shaking. She couldn't hold her hands or legs still, and her teeth were chattering so fiercely she could hear them. She was suddenly icy cold, frigid, nearly shaking herself off the log, shaking too hard to grip her arms across her chest. Chills. That means fever, high fever, that's what the first-aid book says. Heat stroke? Impossible, her neck and forehead were still wet with sweat. She sat shaking for fifteen minutes until gradually, gradually, the chills subsided and she felt a little better. She shouldered the pack and started slowly up again.

  Two hours later, still nowhere near the top, she had another chill, worse and longer than the first. This time a spasm of coughing wouldn't seem to stop until she was totally breathless, and left red streaks on her handkerchief. There seemed to be a trace of a bad odor on her breath that she couldn't get away from. Perils of the wilderness didn't scare Pam Tate, she knew what they were and what to do about them, but perils of the body were something else. Suddenly she was frightened, wishing very much that Frank were here, wishing she were up on top of this rockpile and not still a third of the way down. For the first time she thought of dumping her pack and going on without it—but that was irrational. She had to have the pack, up on top. She started on.

  It was almost 2:00 p.m. when she finally reached the open granite slabs that led up into the pocket where Lake Vivian lay, a cool, deep, green lake, clear as fine emerald, surrounded by scrub pine and larch and great rocky outcroppings, Mt. Temple rising like a vast granite crenellated castle behind it. She didn't pause there. She barely even glanced at the sublime beauty of the place, then crossed the outlet creek and up the rock trail that climbed five hundred more feet into a saddle and down into Lancelot, the lake where she usually camped. Several camps were already set up on the long, rocky point that extended out into Lancelot, but nobody was at the far end of the point, and nobody had taken "her own" campsite near the tiny fairy pond surrounded by stunted pink heather and twisted gray weath-erbeaten larch. The place she sought had a wind-shelter of rocks, good drainage from the coarse sand of the tent site, a rock "table" for her camp stove.

  She dumped her pack and sank down on the sandy ground. For a long time she did nothing at all, chilling and chilling, head and body aching fiercely. Her armpits and groin felt sore as boils—there seemed to be huge lumps there now, soft and mushy and agonizingly painful to touch. She stripped off her blouse, saw great black-and-blue welts where the pack straps had pressed, and more on her legs where the boots had rubbed.

  She staggered to her feet, somehow got her tent out and raised, coughing repeatedly and bringing up great foul-smelling clumps of red-streaked stuff with each paroxysm. All thoughts of doing anything that day were pushed aside—she had to rest, get her breath somehow, get this aching and chilling to stop. While she worked, reality began to fade in and out, as though there really were enchantment up here. At one point, as she struggled mightily to get her sleeping bag lofted and into the tent, a half-hour job, she thought Frank was there and she was talking to him, but she never could focus on him. At another point she thought she was still down at the Snow Lakes, camped near the deep swimming pond, and went wandering off looking for it, then had to search and search to find her way back.

  Finally the tent was ready. To keep a grip on things and fight away the phantom ideas flooding her mind now, she found her notebook and pencil and with hands still shaking started to scribble her short daily log. She knew what she was writing didn't make any sense, she'd already written about the Com-stocks before, and she'd worked on the Snow Lakes trail yesterday, not today, but she plunged on. At one point, without any conscious intent, she found herself writing a love letter to Frank, a real love letter, pouring out all the things she felt but had never really been able to say to him, but the scrawl got so bad even she couldn't read it and somehow there was blood on the bottom of the page, so she threw it aside and crawled into the tent, aching all over and coughing until she was breathless.

  She slept and woke and slept, repeatedly awakened by the coughing. At one point she took some pills from a little bottle, ampicillin and aspirin, she thought—had to be, there wasn't anything else there. Presently it was dark and she slept again, fitfully. . . .

  Hours later she woke, suffocating and hardly able to move. The tent stank like a sewer and her body was baking. Desperately she tore open her sleeping bag. She screamed out as she moved an arm—something warm and slimy was draining down from the mushy lump in her armpit. She began coughing again, and found some dark, wet, sticky stuff pouring from her mouth and running down her chin and breast, soaking into the down bag around her. Her scream was choked off by the gurgling sound of more coughing. With a supreme effort she twisted her head down to the tent entrance, choking, suffocating, smothering, frantic for air. She wrenched the tent open and got herself halfway out. Oh, God, Frank, she thought, help me. . . . She inched a little bit more out of the tent before she collapsed, unable to move.

  She died two hideous hours later, at 2:15 in the morning, facedown in a little pile of coarse granite sand.

  2

  In Brookdale, Connecticut, on the night Pam Tate died, Jack Dillman was standing in the bathroom putting the finishing touches on his second shave of the day when his wife banged on the door. "You planning to stay in there all night?" she called. "We're already half an hour late."

  Jack opened the door. "Just finished," he said, and raised his eyebrows. Carmen was wearing a silky dress of bright scarlet, cut deep between her breasts. "Wow," Jack said. "You going on the prowl tonight?"

  "Always prepared," Carmen said. She turned her head when he bent to kiss her. "Careful, you'll muss my hair."

  "Gonna give Hal a big thrill, I suppose."

  "He's always responsive, the poor silly ass. And he's the host."

  "He's silly enough, all right," Jack said sourly. "He wouldn't know what to do if you dropped it in his lap."

  Carmen turned businesslike eyes to the mirror, retouching her makeup. "Then I might have to teach him," she said. "If you didn't hate him so much, it wouldn't be near as much fun."

  Actually, Jack reflected as they drove the half-mile to the party, he didn't hate Hal Parker at all. The guy was stupid, and an awful bore, for all his money, but nothing you couldn't put up with one evening a week. And he doubted that Carmen was serious about Hal anyway—just about anybody else would do as well. Not that it mattered too much anyhow, he reflected. He had learned to make a sort of peace with that years ago.

  All the same, Jack thought, it wouldn't hurt to give Hal Parker a little jolt this evening, just to remind him that the goodies didn't necessarily come free, so he began considering what kind of a jolt might do it. Trouble was, with a guy like Hal, it took quite some kind of jolt to get through at all.

  3

  At Grizzly Creek, Montana, on the night Pam Tate died, Harry Slencik came into the cabin late, his arms and legs caked with mud, and tossed his ten-gallon hat onto the elkhorn rack over the fireplace with a sigh. "Well, speaking of good news," he said to his wife, "I think the irrigation pump's quit."

  Amy Slencik looked up from the pan of frying chicken. "Aw, Harry, come on. We just bought it last spring."

  "It ain't pumpin' water."

  "But it's got to." The woman's alarm was real and intense. "Harry, it was 110 out in that sun today, and the dirt in the garden is bone-dry. Another day or two and everything we planted will be down the tube."

  "What we need is some rain," Harry said.

  "Rain, hell! We aren't going to have any rain now until the snow flies, and you know it. What we need is those spuds out
there." She sat down with him at the little kitchen table. "Harry, with that underground wiring contract you've got going there in Bozeman, we're in right up to the neck. Every dime we've got is tied up in that job. You've got payrolls to meet every Friday and cash to pay for materials, and meanwhile the damned city waits six months to pay off your invoices. We couldn't borrow another ten bucks at the bank right now even if we wanted to pay their interest rates. So what do you think we're going to eat this fall? We need those spuds."

  "I know, I know." Harry sighed. "I'll take the pump apart tomorrow, see if I can find what's wrong with it. Either something's jammed in the intake pipe or one of the impellers has gone squat. But I'll get it fixed."

  "Well, you'd better. And we'd better get some venison this fall, too. Both of us. Unless you want to eat nothing but chicken all winter." She gave him a little shove. "Now go get yourself a short one. Dinner'll be ready in fifteen minutes."

  Harry poured a little whiskey and walked out on the stoop of the cabin looking out on the creek. He could probably fix the pump, or cook up some other way to irrigate the garden while they were back in town. He could also worry about the under-grounding contract, damndest mess he'd ever gotten himself into, but he didn't want to think about that, right now. That's why they came over here to the creek as often as they could, to get things like that off his mind. Sometimes he felt like just dumping the damned business, maybe turn it over to the two boys, he was getting too old for that kind of hassle all the time. Bag it all and just come over here and settle down and grow a garden and raise a steer and a hog and take it easy. Maybe not such a bad idea at that, he thought. Not such a bad idea at all.

  4

  In Indianapolis, Indiana, on the night Pamela Tate died, a small blond woman with hair caught back in kewpie-doll ponytails stood up with an audible snort of disgust and marched out of the press conference, leaving the man from Sealey Labs droning on and on behind her. Once outside the conference room she unhooked the press pass from her blouse and gave it one final look before dropping it in the trash can. In addition to press, the badge said: sally grinstone—Philadelphia inquirer in large red letters.

  And so much for casting your bread upon the water, Sally thought sourly. All that plane fare blown, a day's work blown, a perfectly good dinner date blown—well, crappio! You should have known better than to bother with a Sealey Labs press conference anyway. Should have known that anything Sealey produced would be sleazy in some way—but you never learn, do you, Sal? Especially when you think you smell blood . . .

  Another reporter followed on her heels, finally caught up. "Heard all you could stand?" he asked her, with a wry grin.

  "You'd better guess. All they've got to promote is one more garden variety of arthritis drug, and they're hyping it up to the moon. And not one word about the Australian studies, even though they sponsored them and paid for them."

  "Australian studies?"

  Sally Grinstone glanced up at the man, her green eyes suddenly penetrating. "Haven't done your homework, eh, Saul? Well, I should make you do it, but I'm too kindhearted. Anyway, this is too small for me to get excited about. You want a story? You can have it free. Just check out Heinz and Faber's work in the Acta Scandinavica back in 1979, and the Australian team's report in our own Immunology in late '84 and '85. See what those people turned up about this 'safe' little arthritis drug that Sealey Labs is hyping now—press conference with the great Mancini himself, their top production man. And when you get finished, remember that you owe Sally Grinstone a stroke sometime when she needs it. . . ."

  At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, on the night Pam Tate died, Dr. Ted Bettendorf was sitting late at his desk staring angrily at the bundle of papers in his hand. Damn those people! he thought for the twentieth time in an hour. Damn them! They just can't let well enough alone. . . .

  He'd been hearing rumors about the request for weeks now, and he'd done his best to discourage it, unofficially, but now here it was on paper, demanding an official, appealable yes or no answer from him. They wanted to tie up the Hot Lab for the next four solid months—his own people—and tonight he had to think up some completely supportable reason to turn them down.

  An hour earlier, just before she left for the evening, Mandy had brought him the sheaf of papers—the research protocol and formal applications. She had paused at the door, looking back at him. "Ted—this work they want to do is a bad scene, isn't it?"

  "Yes, of course it's a bad scene."

  "Do you have to decide tonight?"

  "Better than next week."

  "Can I help you? Do you want me to stay?"

  He looked up at her. "No. Thanks, but no. I'm the one that has to do it. Nobody else."

  After she'd left, he stretched his long, skinny legs under the desk, ran his fingers through his thick, graying hair. He'd be sixty-one next week, and sometimes he thought he was getting too old for the hassle, as Administrator of the Uncommon Dis-cases section at the CDC. Leprosy. Plague. Rabies. Anthrax. Half a dozen other living horrors. And smallpox. He'd thought lie could put that on the back burner a few years ago when the disease was officially declared extinct on earth by the WHO. Hut now his own people wanted to use the Hot Lab to play around with smallpox again. . . .

  Momentarily he turned his thoughts to the Hot Lab itself— (hat fantastically beautiful, fantastically secure laboratory-within-a-laboratory-within-a-laboratory, occupying a whole building to itself a few hundred yards from his office, a place for the safe study of the deadliest of all microorganisms ever let loose on the face of the planet—one of the half-dozen such totally safe laboratories in existence in the world. It was here in his Hot Lab that the Lassa fever virus had been pinned down after it first made its deadly appearance on the Gold Coast of Africa in 1976. It was here also that the Marburg virus, another merciless slaughterer from Africa, had met its nemesis in a six-month crash-study program. Variant strains of Yersinia had been studied here, off and on; work had been done here on the human diploid vaccine for rabies, the new chloroquine-resistant strains of Plasmodium that had made incurable malaria another new horror story in the world, the N43-B lymphoma virus with its strange cross-relationship with multiple sclerosis . . .

  And now they wanted to play with smallpox again. A disease dead and gone, only four laboratory repositories of the live, wild virus remaining on earth, one of them here, deep in a quadruple-locked vault in the CDC, maintained only for possible future needs or scientific study. And that, of course, was what his people were asking for—use of the Hot Lab for further scientific study.

  Ted Bettendorf knew without the slightest doubt that his answer had to be no. The question was: why? The reason had to be plausible—scientifically supportable—or they could challenge him in a court appeal, and veiy well might. But the only argument he could think of at the moment was that the program would tie up the Hot Lab for one-third of a year, which meant it couldn't be used for anything else once the program was started. This smallpox research was not critical to human life, right now—but something critical could turn up at any moment. . . .

  He squirmed, searched through other reports. He knew of nothing. A human rabies case, fatal, from New Mexico, transmitted by bat guano in a cave. Two hundred and seventy-three new cases of leprosy identified in the last twelve months, a stable, steady growth of that disease each year for the past six years, much of it imported with refugees, nothing yet to become alarmed about. A sharp upsurge in new pulmonary tuberculosis in the slums, a hundred percent consistent with the continuing cutback in welfare funds. An oddly shifting pattern for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, more cases in the southeastern states than in the West—but other than things like that, nothing to hang his hat on.

  Well, he thought suddenly, it really didn't have to be decided tonight. By the rules, he had fourteen days to respond to this request, and he would by God take fourteen days this one time. Tomorrow he would set Mandy to searching for something he could use. Maybe tonight somebo
dy is dying of something that will make a difference, he thought wryly. A reach, perhaps, but there you were. Ted Bettendorf threw the sheaf of papers on his desk, scribbled a brief note on the paper in front of him and climbed wearily to his feet. In the words of the immortal Willis McCawber, Esq., he thought, "Something will turn up. . . ."

  6

  In another CDC office in Atlanta, Georgia, on the night Pam Tate died, Dr. Carlos Quintana was still dictating correspondence at 8:30 p.m. when Monique came in with a foot-high stack of folders in her arms. "You're going to hate me for this," she said.

  "Impossible," Carlos said firmly. "Nothing you could

  do could create such a situation. But why are you still

  here?"

  "Because you need this stuff for your report on that Legionella outbreak in Kansas City," she said. "It's all microbiology, and it's going to take you three weeks just to analyze it, unless you persuade me to leave my microscope and come do it for you. And Ted is going to be breathing down your neck in one week, because that's when he wants your report, wrapped up and finished."

  "Yes, I know." The young man came around the desk as she dumped the pile of folders there. He placed his hand on her hip and kissed her gently. She was a striking woman: long slender legs, blond hair, an even, intelligent face, deep breasts. Fantastically competent behind that microscope, he thought. And elsewhere. He leafed through the first few folders. "Splendid excuse for working late tonight," he murmured. "Who could argue with one of Ted's deadlines?"

  "You aren't going to like what you find here," Monique said.

  "No? Why not?"

  "Because you are a nitpicking perfectionist, my friend, who spent almost two weeks out there trying to tie up that mini-epidemic in a nice, neat scientific package—but there's nothing remotely neat about this lab data that you need to support your case. The truth is, it's one big indecisive mess. My people did the best they could with the stuff your people shipped us, but Jesus, Carlos ..."