The Blood Artists
- Автор: Хоган Чак
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-688-15622-0
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Blood Artists». Краткое содержание книги:
Maryk sat looking at the blinds turned down over the window and the glowing lines disappearing between the thin white slats. He heard car doors thumping and engines starting up in the parking lot below and realized that it must be four-thirty.
Cascade time was lazy and formless like a summer day. He had been dozing in his office for most of the afternoon. His frequent administerings to Stephen meant sacrificing countless hours to the voice of his cascades.
The BDC at night reminded him of his internships and residencies and the various city hospitals he had patrolled as though they were his. But Stephen was wrong: Maryk had no designs on running the BDC He had already made Special Pathogens over in his own image. An artist must know his place in the world.
He would nap again soon to drain off the remains of this Pearse-induced cascade. Then he could work long into the night.
His office door opened and Melanie Weir entered alone behind the chair he had arranged for her.
“Your inhaler,” Maryk said and waved at it on his desk. It was stickered with a fresh prescription label.
She did not move. She was staring at the blinds and pretending to ignore him. The girl’s posture and the low angle of her resentful eyes spoke for her.
“Take it,” he said.
She came forward without looking at him and took it from his desktop. Then she turned to leave.
“Sit down,” he said.
She slowed at the door. Pasco had brought her there and was waiting beyond to bring her back inside if necessary. She must have sensed this. She came back and sat in the arranged chair.
The girl’s short hair was the deep red color of vine berries. She wore a short black skirt and thick black stockings and a long white T-shirt with the corporate affiliation bleached out. She sat deeply in the chair but was alert and assessing him at every turn.
“Dr. Pasco walked you through a tour of the BDC,” Maryk said. He licked his lips. “This is my office.”
She sat with her arms and legs crossed. She did not respond.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You feel as though you’ve been treated poorly.”
“I feel as though I’ve been raped,” she said. “Repeatedly and routinely, for over four years. Violated. Taken advantage of. How long do you think you can hold me here?”
“Plainville took advantage of you,” Maryk said. “I gave you life.”
She stared in apparent amazement. “You know what? We have nothing more to discuss. I have been drugged and jabbed with needles. I’ve been used like a voodoo doll against some crazed disease. I’ve had experiments performed on me, been followed around, spied upon. I’ve been humiliated. All by you — whoever you really are. You’re warped, all right? And that — that comes as a total relief to me. Because now I know I’m fine. You’re the sick one.”
He nodded after a moment. “Good,” he said.
“What’s good? Don’t you smile at me.”
He had indeed underestimated her. “I can see now how you survived your time in the hospital,” he said.
She did not know how to respond to that. Her expression grew a little less guarded. “Why didn’t you wear one of those suits?” she said.
The question surprised him. “It’s all coming back to you.”
“No. I only remember the others sealed inside a suit in order to survive being in the same room as me. All except you.”
Maryk nodded. He stood then and felt confident on his feet and moved to the front of his desk.
“Natural immunity,” he told her. “A fluke of nature, not unlike yourself. My immune system is exceptionally strong. It detects invading foreign agents immediately and executes the infected host cell itself, thereby expelling both the virus and the infection at once. I require no protection against airborne exposure to Plainville. You and I are the only two people in the world who could withstand it.”
Her eyes seemed to relax and she spoke with the power and authority of revelation. “You’re drunk.”
Maryk half smiled and held on to the edge of the desk. “I was coming to that. Natural killer cells, unlike other immune system cells, don’t wait to be told what to do. They search and destroy on their own. Everybody’s system produces some; mine happens to make billions. But the kill-off from any significant exposure taxes my system to exhaustion — a cellular massacre and leukocyte surge triggering an energy drain, which I call a ‘cascade.’ Makes me drowsy sometimes, slows me down. Depends on the pathogen and the extent of the exposure. You undergo a typical antibody reaction; you feel nothing, unaware of the services being rendered by your immune system. This,” he pointed at himself, “what you see here, is the machine working at maximum efficiency, ridding my body of Plainville. This is human superiority over a virus.”
She looked at him with something like disgust.
Maryk nodded in the general direction of Building Seven. “Stephen Pearse is isolated nearby. I left him some time ago. Pearse is my patient, as are you.”
“Were,” she said.
He ignored that. “Stephen and I used to be research partners. We went to school together, joined the bureau together.”
“So he’s in on this too.”
“Oh no.” Maryk showed a frowning grin. “Not Stephen. Stephen turned his back on creative science some time ago. He thought he could do more good by being more good himself, and abandoned his medical gifts for something like faith. He wanted to heal by example, rather than by practice; to cure purely through the power of his presence. The high priest of world medicine. Now, of course, quite the opposite is true.”
She was still staring. “This makes you happy?”
He realized he was rambling and checked himself Perhaps he was more fatigued than he had realized. He cleared his throat. “Pasco tells me you refused to give your blood.”
She hardened. “Since when do you need my permission?” She thrust out her left arm and pushed back the sleeve. “Here. Take it.”
“I will,” he said. He pushed off the edge and started toward her. “I will take it, if I have to. I will hang you upside down from the ceiling and bleed you — your blood is that important to the world. But it would be easier for you if you cooperate. It’s not me you would be helping. I don’t require your help.” She leaned away from him as he neared. “You have a gift,” he said. “You are different.”
“I am not different.”
“You are special.”
She insisted, “I am not special.”
“Your blood is.”
She veered away as he stood next to her chair. “Stay away from me,” she said.
“My system kills without manufacturing any biological solution. Your system produces antibodies. Your blood stops the virus in others.”
She stood out of the chair but he seized her arm and held her still. She twisted in his grip. She looked up from his restraining hand into his face.
“I will scream,” she said.
He realized he was hurting her. He released her and she hurried to the door. He did not go after her. The door opened and slammed and she was gone.
He left the chair for the wall and followed it staggeringly to the couch. He sat heavily with his arms dead in his lap and tipped back his head. His breath came out in short pantlike gasps.
It had been a mistake to allow her to see him this way. He hadn’t realized how depleted he still was.
Night grayed the ceiling above him as he sat. The regretted encounter swirled in his mind until the words no longer made human sense. The darkness of the ceiling became the dark insides of his heavy eyelids. The rhythmic huffing of his chest became the mantra of deep sleep.
The Language of Disease