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once out of idle curiosity and that didn't show either. Robert Lintel was the original Teflon boy. His
three-piece grey suit was immaculate, and he was wearing the particular smug expression that Jeanette
liked least. But Robert always had only seen the possibilities in her work, the ultimate goal, and not the
long process that led there.
"What?" she said sullenly, knowing that letting him see her mood was weakness, and weakness had
always been the thing she defended herself hardest against showing.
"Hey, Campbell. Smile. We're almost there, you know. It worked!"
"Two missing have you found them yet? four crazy, and of the two qualified successes, one
dead. Some success," she grumbled.
"We're looking for the two that vanished, but frankly, I think they went to the same place the chimp
did. I had Elkanah dump the other four out on the street. They should be dead by now, or at Bellevue.
Either way, not our problem." He walked into the room and stood over her desk, beaming down at her
paternally.
"So that leaves what's her name? Borden? And her readings have gone back to normal.
Whatever she had, it's gone," Jeanette said.
"But while she had it, it was enough to get her clean. I had Dr. Ramchandra give her a quick
once-over. According to his interview with her, she'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But she
doesn't have it now. In fact, she's in perfect health. What do you think of that?"
"I think you aren't paying me to find a cure for cancer," Jeanette answered, but Robert's smug smile
only grew wider.
"That's right. But actually, I don't think you need to work on refining your formula any more. We
know it works on ten percent of the population. We just have to find the ten percent it works on." He sat
down in the chair opposite her desk, the big comfy leather one that only Robert ever sat in.
He was talking about mass trials.
"So where are you going to get enough people to put together a profile for that? Carradine and
Borden both manifested Talent, but other than that, they have nothing in common. He was white. She's
black. He was a teenager. She's in her thirties. They were both users, but we don't even know they were
using the same things."
"Campbell, Campbell, Campbell. When are you ever going to learn to trust me? I have this all
figured out." He leaned forward, and she caught a whiff of soap and expensive cologne.
"I want you to go into production with this. Whip me up a few kilos of Batch 157 and portion it out
into single-dose packets we'll call it something like T-Stroke. I'll put it out on the street we'll sell it of
course, but we'll undercut everything else crank, Mexican brown, snow, the whole menu. They'll buy it,
and you'll have your test pool cheap, easy, and nothing for us to clean up after. We'll rope in the ones
that survive, run them through the mill, and find the common thread. Once we have that profile, we can
use it to find volunteer subjects."
Jeanette had always been serenely convinced that nothing could shock her, that she didn't care
about all those faceless drones she shared the world with. But the butcher's bill Robert was proposing so
guilelessly startled even her.
One out of the eight in the first group had survived. Statistically, that meant the odds were that if
eighty people received T-6/157, seventy would die. And if you took those numbers out to the thousands
of doses that Robert was recommending they spread across the streets of New York...
"There's going to be dead junkies stacked like cordwood on every street corner," Jeanette said
slowly, trying to decide how that made her feel. She knew she ought to like the idea, but instead she felt
curiously numb inside. How confident must Robert be, how eager for his results, to suggest a plan that
held so much possibility of... unforeseen consequences.
But Robert didn't even seem to notice her lack of enthusiasm. He bored in, eyes glittering like a
high-pressure salesman closing a big deal.
"And your point is? C'mon, Campbell, we're looking for results here, not scientific validation. If we
generate the Survivor Profile, nobody's going to care how we got it."
"You're right," she said, knowing it was true. Who cared how a lot of junkies died, anyway, so long
as the deaths couldn't be traced back to Threshold? She got to her feet, making Robert stand also.
"Look, I've got to crash. Beirkoff knows the stuff to order to make up about ten keys of T-Stroke. I'll
come back tonight and put it together."
"We could take care of that," Robert said, too casually. "The formula's in your lab notebook, isn't
it?"
Jeanette smiled at him, the street predator that had been hidden beneath a veneer of years and good
living suddenly stark and plain in her eyes. It wasn't that she didn't trust Robert she didn't, that had
never been an issue. But T-Stroke was an entirely bigger deal than the other compounds she'd handed
over. She intended to keep control of it until she was satisfied.
Of what, she wasn't sure.
You're hoping you'll fit the Survivor Profile he'll come up with, don't you? The
Survivors Robert's new race of psionic hitmen. What're you going to do if you do, Campbell?
What are you going to do if you don't?
"Aw, c'mon, Robert. You don't want a numb-nuts like Beirkoff to futz this up at the eleventh hour,
do you? You don't want to be wondering if he got the formula exactly right and have to do it all again to
be sure? Give me a couple of hours. It'll take him that long to get the stuff here anyway. You can call me
when it comes in. And meanwhile, you gotta make up your mind what you want to do with the Survivor
bitch you've already got."
She didn't wait for him to reply. She grabbed her coat and headed out the door before he'd quite [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]