Chapter 13

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Infection Date 18, 1200 GMT (8:00 a.m. Local)

Isabel called Emma’s name over the room’s speakers. Emma raised her head from her notes. “Would you mind coming over to the window?” Emma went to the glass. “Really close.” Emma leaned until her nose almost touched the frosted pane. “Open your eyes very wide.” Emma complied. “Hey! Look at you. You’ve got some color in your eyes! They’re a little green around the edges! The mydriasis is resolving.”

Emma passed the large vanity mirror without a glance and returned to her notebook.

“Can I ask you a question?” Isabel said. “What are those notes you’re taking?”

“Research,” Emma replied.

“On the disease?” Emma nodded. “What have you concluded?”

“There’s a 60 percent chance SED will arrive here in three weeks,” Emma said. “An 80 percent chance it will be here in under a month.”

“But Emma, Russia seems to have stamped it out. And it’s been eight days since it got to China, and it’s still just limited to the north. We’ve shut down air travel to and from there. How is it going to make it all the way over here in the next few weeks?”

“There are currently, by my estimate, 3.5 to 7 million ambulatory carriers actively spreading the virus. It’s analogous to the decay of plutonium or uranium, which eject subatomic particles that collide with nearby nuclei, causing them to emit even more particles. If the matter is dense enough, each decay leads to more than one reaction and the cascading and progressive process plots as exponential.”

“Matter in your analogy is population?” Isabel said. “And at critical mass—boom? So, is the population dense enough that the chain reaction is unstoppable?”

“In northeastern Siberia, no. It could have dead-ended there, just like 40,000 years ago, and been buried with the drilling crew. But in northern China, yes, it’s unstoppable. The disease can reach America from any number of directions, and once it’s here—in the wild, not the lab—it’s everywhere. It should reach some part of all forty-eight contiguous states within weeks unless Draconian measures are employed, in which case it could take months. I would have thought that more of the hospital’s staff would have quit by now.”

Isabel opened her eyes, looked up and asked, “Then what?” Her voice shook.

“The rate of infection slows hyperbolically as the susceptible population declines.”

“Will anyone survive uninfected?” Isabel asked. She sounded ill herself.

“For a few years. The virus won’t maintain a continuous presence in every isolated community, but will inevitably reemerge in them by reinfection from the outside. If Pandoravirus exists anywhere in the metapopulation, it will inexorably spread to every constituent subpopulation. But the number of Uninfecteds should plateau several times on its way down toward zero as various defensive strategies are employed. Campaigns of eradication by Uninfecteds would arrest the spread sporadically and locally but only temporarily, just as eradication by Infecteds would accelerate the spread by eliminating resistance.”

“Wait. Did you say eradication by the Infecteds?” Emma tried to reduce telltale signs of her sudden agitation, crossing her arms and sinking deeper into her seat. “Why would infected people eradicate the uninfected?”

“To survive. If they’re being killed, they would try to eliminate the threat.”

Her sister said nothing until, “Do you think it’s possible we could live peacefully with one another? Infecteds and Uninfecteds?”

“Possibly,” Emma replied. “Especially if a vaccine is developed. But there may not be enough Uninfecteds left to matter much, and by then you will probably have been killed by violence or infected and either died or turned.” Emma searched the Internet to determine how effective Europe’s walled cities had been during the plagues.

Isabel said, “Do you know why we’re so upset?” Emma looked up to see Beth rubbing Isabel’s back as both cried. “Because inside each of us there’s a ‘self.’ It’s who we are. It’s a bundle of all our hopes and fears and loves and petty annoyances. We’re worried about getting infected and either dying, or that self inside us dying.”

“Does this self speak to you?”

Isabel said, “Yes, in a sense.”

“Is it one voice, or many?”

“Some think each mood has its own voice. One says do it, another says no it’s wrong, like a devil one shoulder and an angel on the other.”

Emma chose black ink to note the security issue. “Do they ever tell you to commit acts of violence?”

“What? It’s not like that. The voices are normal in healthy people. You used to hear them too. It may be the main thing you lost. Why are you asking about violence?”

“Because murderers sometimes hear voices that tell them to kill.”

“No-no-no,” Isabel said. “Those are people suffering from delusions.”

Emma wrote: Uninfecteds hear voices. Delusional? Dangerous?

“What are you writing?” Emma looked down at the word, “Dangerous?” and lied. “Variables that accelerate or slow spread of the disease.”

“Like what variables?” Isabel asked.

Emma chose one at random. “V-sub-U”—violence by the Uninfected. “Some Uninfecteds won’t be willing to use violence against Infecteds. Parents against children, for instance. V-sub-U has lower and upper bounds of zero and one, where zero means the Uninfected would never resort to violence against an Infected, and one means they are willing to kill any Infected they meet. The actual value lies between the two bounds.”

“And,” Isabel said, “V-Sub-I is Infecteds’ willingness to use violence against us?”

“That’s not a variable, it’s a constant—one—and can be ignored mathematically.”

Isabel’s mouth was agape. Beth hugged her, but Isabel stared at Emma, who grew jittery. When the glass fogged, Emma returned to her notes and calmed.

* * * *

Isabel had to get away. She still couldn’t fathom how her sister could possibly be roused to violence against her, but that was what Emma’s math suggested. Was she still even Emma? Isabel headed for the vending machine, turned a corner, and ran into Brandon, Hank, and Street. “Oh,” she said.

After an awkward moment, Street said, “We’re reviewing the results of your sister’s tests.” He handed the document they all perused to Isabel. “Her math skills shot up.”

“Emma was always good at math. She got a perfect score on her math SAT.

“But not on the GRE,” Hank said, “until now.” Isabel read over Emma’s new GRE results. Geometry 100 percent. Algebra 100 percent. Calculus 100 percent. Point-set topology 100 percent. Probability and statistics 100 percent. Real analysis 100 percent. “She didn’t miss a single question and finished early. Her scores on the verbal, in contrast, fell compared to her take ten years ago. Her critical reasoning and vocabulary scores were fine, but her reading comprehension was down. Her improvement in math, however, that’s . . . unprecedented.”

The scientists returned each other’s gazes. Infecteds aren’t zombies, Isabel thought. They’re smarter than that—maybe even than humans—and therefore far more dangerous.

“Euhaplorchis californiensis,” Street said. Eyes rolled, sighs heaved, heads shook, but the tension eased. “They’re flukes—flatworms—that infect killifish, which normally stay out of shallow water to avoid being eaten by wading birds. But the flukes need to get into birds’ stomachs to reproduce, so they form a carpet-like layer on killifish brains and cause them not only to swim to the surface, but to roll over and expose their silvery bellies to the sunlight.” Street doffed an imaginary courtier’s hat. “I bid you all good day.”

Brandon said, “I don’t get it. Does that have something to do with Pandoravirus?”

Isabel replied, “We’re the killifish. But a skills improvement from brain damage?”

Brandon scoffed. “You neuroscientists only focus on deficits, impairments, incapacities, dysfunctions. It’s always a-something: aphonia, aphasia, aphemia, amnesia. Either a brain works just like everyone else’s, or it’s broken.”

“So now you’re a neuropsychologist, too?” Isabel replied cuttingly.

Brandon frowned. “Who are you to say that Emma isn’t a better version of herself now? Changes you call deficits can unleash potential. You’re so hung up on the downside that you miss the ebullience that can come from some changes in function.”

Isabel waited as patiently as she could, then said, “We scientists don’t ignore excesses, manias, teratomas, monstrosities. Hypermnesia, hypergnosia, hypertrophies!”

Hank put away his cell phone. “You should know that Emma’s latest fMRI, ASL, and MEG scans all show decreased left-brain and increased right-brain activity.”

Isabel looked at Brandon. “You’ve seen the scans?” He nodded. But I haven’t!

She spun on her heels and stormed off. “Isabel!” Brandon called out. She wiped away tears, tears, and shoved the bar on the exit so hard the door banged off the wall. The evening was crisp and cool. Fuck them! A crane lowered concrete wall sections. Men in camouflage shouted over growling engines. She headed uphill away from the noise.

Think! she chided herself. More activity in the right hemisphere, responsible for recognizing reality and experiencing consciousness. Could Emma be laboring to work around damage, which in the right brain produces less distinct symptoms?

From her back pocket she extracted Maldonado’s business card and dialed. “White House operator,” a pleasant voice answered. “What can I do for you, Dr. Miller?”

“Oh, uhm. Could I have Patricia Maldonado, please?”

After a moment, she heard, “Isabel! How are you?”

“Could you get me a phone number? A Dr. Hermann Lange, with the WHO?”

“I can do better than that. Haven’t you heard about White House operators?”

Isabel crested the rise and halted. Two Marines in PPE, holding rifles, blocked the walk ahead. At the bottom of the hill beyond them, bright lights lit other armed Marines fully garbed in PPE. A beeping ambulance backed into underground loading docks.

Isabel wandered over to the hooded Marines, phone to her ear. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Another load,” a Marine said, his speech muffled. His buddy shot him a look.

“Hello?” came an accented voice over Isabel’s phone.

She pivoted and walked back up the hill. “Dr. Lange? It’s Isabel Miller. Emma’s sister.”

“Yes!” Lange finally replied after a satellite delay. “I remember you from Khabarovsk. How is Emma?”

“She’s . . .” Isabel began before faltering.

Lange understood. “You know, I tried romancing your sister. She was, how do you say it: playing hard to get.”

Apparently only with you, one vicious self noted. Isabel cringed. Lange’s breathing was labored. “Where are you now?” she asked.

“Me? I’m a few miles from the North Korean border. Near Tonghua, in China.”

“Oh! Wow. Has the infection reached there?”

“Not yet, but several million refugees have piled up on the Chinese side, starving, falling ill from other diseases. We’re here to determine how quickly SED spreads through vulnerable, overcrowded populations with only primitive sanitary conditions.”

“That’s . . . I’m sorry. But you should know that your reports are being read back here with great interest.” Lange seemed genuinely thrilled to hear it, and thanked her profusely. “Look, I called because I need data from the brain dissections.”

“Are you kidding?” Lange cried out. “I should hang up right now!”

She told him why she needed the data, and begged. “How about this: I name a region of the brain, and if it isn’t damaged you say, no. If it is, don’t say anything. So, how about the . . . insular cortex?” There was a pause. “The . . . insular . . . ?”

“Oh-for-God’s-sakes yes! The insular cortex in all the victims is damaged.”

He wasn’t following her rather clear instructions. “The medial prefrontal cortex?”

“Damaged,” Lange said. “Heavily damaged.”

“And the anterior cingulate cortex?”

“No. It isn’t harmed. But that’s it! I’ve got to go.”

That was just what she had predicted to Hank. “Thank you!” Isabel said.

“Good luck,” replied Lange. “It won’t be long.” The smile drained from her face.

Isabel returned to the hospital as another section of wall was lowered into place.