The Leap, page 26
Unlike Maizy Newell, who had a few visitors, no one had visited Fields. So if there was someone who knew Fields and could interpret, they hadn’t appeared.
The next patient was Ethan Stiles. Booth felt personally responsible for Ethan, not just as his doctor but as a colleague. Stiles was the premier medical examiner in the area yet he’d been stepped over by Prentiss for the position in Osada. And Ethan was a friend and a good person. He’d been at the clinic regularly since this entire mess began and was working away on trying to find a cure for this inexplicable disease. That a medical examiner was devoting himself to finding a cure for a disease was unheard of. The man should be a researcher, not a corpse butcher. If—when—he recovered, Booth would tell him so.
Booth entered the room, where Stiles was sitting up in bed and Booth saw his fever had abated.
“Ethan, you’re awake.”
“Barely. Say, did Jonathan Lee give you my notebook?”
“Your friend Summers?”
“Yes. I asked him to. I think. I . . . it’s . . . my thoughts, my words—convoluted. Sorry, Axel. It’s this virus. Can’t seem to get clarity.”
“No, Summers didn’t give me your notebook.”
“You need to see what I’ve been working on. I need to get out of here.”
“No chance, my friend. You don’t want to spread this beast, do you?” Booth needed to appeal to Stiles’s altruistic tendencies. Telling him he couldn’t leave because his own life was in danger might not be convincing enough to keep him here, where he belonged.
“I don’t think I can spread it. I think only a computer can.”
Booth laughed just as he heard a knock on the door.
“Jay. Did you bring my notebook?”
Jonathan Lee Summers, who was some kind of computer expert out at the Acres, came into the room. “Ethan. Sean commed me. She’s waiting outside, but Ziva said you were asking for me.”
“This is Axel Booth, Jay.”
“I’ve seen you around, Doctor. Is Ethan going to be all right?”
“There are too many unknowns here, Summers, but he seems to be improving.” Booth left out that no one he’d seen with this thing had so far recovered. Yet there could always be a first. And there were living, although not well, patients.
“Jay, I gather you haven’t given my notebook to Axel.”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
“I told you. Out at Sean’s.”
“You weren’t exactly coherent then, Ethan. Where is your notebook?”
“At the lab. Top drawer of the left-most table. I think I have to sleep.”
Stiles put his head back and closed his eyes.
“Let’s go outside, Summers. I think Ethan needs to rest. This is the most activity he’s had in days.”
Summers followed Booth to the changing room and they both discarded their gear, then showered and dressed and went to Booth’s office.
“Your friend Walls has told me quite a tale about Stiles’s ideas on this pathogen,” Booth said.
“The leap,” Summers said.
“Oh, she told you too?”
“It’s not about her telling me. It is the leap, as far as we can tell.”
“I thought you were a scientist, Summers. Ziva Walls is just, well, I don’t know what she is, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Neither do you. Ethan, Sean Meade, Ziva Walls, and I have been following this thing since Oliver Hirata’s death. And when we put everything together, the leap virus is what we’ve come up with.”
“Nonsense.” Booth stopped himself from saying insane.
“I think the same thing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Let me go over to the lab and get Ethan’s notebook and you can see what he’s been working on. He trusts you, so I’m going to trust you as well. We need as many minds working on this as we can get. I have some colleagues from the Acres here, Hal Ledyard’s on his way, and we’re trying to get Ed Sperry to help as well. But you’ve been working with these patients—”
“Hang on, Summers. You mean to tell me you think this is a virus that leapt from a computer into a human? Or several humans?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what we think.”
“How, exactly, do you propose this could occur?”
“We have only theories at this point. At the computer end, the virus’s methods have proven . . . well . . . difficult to pinpoint. They’re almost certainly hidden in a program that’s written in a cryptic code. But we’re working on it. The pathogen Ethan’s isolated is RNA-based and there are computer viruses with somewhat similar configurations.”
“This is the stuff of coincidence or more like a story you’d tell your kids if you wanted them off their computers and outside playing.” Booth had yet to find a tactic that would work with his own kids.
“It’s neither. Let me go over to the lab and get Ethan’s notebook. You can read what another medical expert is thinking about this.”
“Say it is true—and I’m not conceding it is—how would a computer be able to send a virus from itself into a person? Or how would the virus itself be able to leave the computer? If someone had ever figured out a way to have anything leave a computer and get into a human, well, that would be grand. Think of all the knowledge we could carry around with ourselves, conveyed into our brains by our computers.”
“It’s still unknown, but we’re working on a few possibilities. The photonic filamentation could be the transfer medium.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You know how your computer’s array can be displayed anywhere? In front of you, on your desk, on the wall, even on your skin if you want it to be.”
“Some very odd things have gone on with people using it that way. But the array didn’t infect them. It can’t.” Booth brushed aside mental images of all the craziness he’d witnessed working in emergency when he was in training. People who’d used the array in very creative ways. He’d removed computer cubes from . . . he didn’t want to think about it.
“It’s not the array that’s doing the infecting. It’s the virus itself.” Jonathan Lee Summers meant this. He wasn’t just spinning some fantasy. Booth was paying attention now.
“The method’s still unclear,” Summers said, “but the idea is that the virus is able to penetrate the filamentation and convey itself either directly into the user or perhaps into the air, which would make finding a prevention and a cure even more urgent. If the contagion’s airborne and direct contact with a computer is unnecessary.”
“Let’s see Ethan’s notes. I don’t like this theory of yours at all, but if there’s any possibility it could be true, then I’m forced to explore it. Althea Pierce’s death . . . and of course I don’t want anyone else to succumb.”
When Jonathan Lee Summers returned to the clinic with Stiles’s notebook, Booth sat in his office and read for hours. Ziva Walls had described Ethan’s theories with remarkable accuracy. Stiles had included in his notes many of the ideas that Summers had told Booth.
In the early morning, his usual defenses shut down after not having eaten or slept for nearly a day, Booth realized he could no longer reject the impossible. Stiles had laid out his findings, his thoughts and theories, with an elegant logic.
The leap—a virus that originated on a computer and infected humans. This might not be the only explanation for what was happening, but as absurd as it seemed, it was a plausible explanation. The most convincing. And the most impossible to defeat.
Chapter 38
Sean’d brought Ziva a change of clothes and some decent food. Zee had been able to take a shower in one of the unused isolation ward rooms and she’d put on the clean skirt and blouse, but Sean hadn’t seen her eat anything.
A few weeks ago when she’d first met Ziva, Sean would never have been able to predict she’d be the sort of person who’d keep a vigil for a friend or who’d be so helpful during a crisis. Yet she’d spent untold hours contacting the tenants at the Normandie, urging them to get tested. And now she was at the clinic, making sure Ethan was being properly seen to, waiting and watching, while Sean was going to a funeral.
She picked up Jonathan Lee at Beryl’s house and they drove out to Tuigen together.
Jonathan Lee slept for much of the ride but woke up as Sean drove onto the rough road leading to the Pierces’ country residence.
“Damn. That’s the first rest I’ve had in a while. Felt good. Sean, have you been sleeping?” Jonathan Lee stretched, yawned, and ran his hands back through his hair. He was simultaneously familiar and stimulating.
The leap had brought them together, was keeping them together until it was solved. Afterward, though. Afterward was unknown. Sean wanted to pull over to the side of the road, darken the windows, and continue where they’d left off yesterday before she’d had to leave. But she couldn’t. The funeral was about to start and she wanted to be there to investigate, to see who was there, who Charley Pierce was favoring. Hear what people were saying. Be there in case anyone else had the leap and was showing symptoms. Eavesdrop.
“I don’t remember what sleep is.” Sean slept very little anyway. She’d never needed it. Three or four hours sufficed and now she was running on one or two.
“Want to tell me how you plan on getting us in to this spectacle?”
It was all over the mesh—the grand sendoff Charley Pierce was giving his dead wife. Thousands of invited guests, many of them celebrities and Osada City’s most illustrious residents, some sort of performance by a famous singer so famous even Sean had heard of her, and what had been described as a pyrotechnic display for the ages. More like an overblown party than a funeral.
“Don’t worry. I’ll just flash my detective credentials—they look quite official—and they’ll let us in.”
“Am I your sidekick?”
“Absolutely. Just pretend you’re part of the team.”
“I am part of the team. You, me, Ethan, Ziva, and now we have more members. Dorian, Glen, Violet, and the rest of the group from the lab at the Acres. Hal Ledyard arrived this morning. I would’ve introduced you but he’s already deep into it and I didn’t want to disturb him.”
“Ziva’s been a surprise.”
“Wait, I think you missed the turn.”
Sean backed up. She had missed the turn. It wasn’t marked well. Nothing out here was. Privacy and seclusion were part of the exclusive character of the place. Unmarked roads, keeping out the unwanted. Just the sort of thing the owner of a megacorp would indulge in—a primitive-seeming setting for a pricey, sophisticated estate and grounds. Out here the estate was hidden from view, disguised behind a surround of dense, untouched forest with a dirt road as the only hint that something was beyond.
“I like Zee,” Jonathan Lee said. “So does Ethan.”
“Is there something more there?”
“I’m oblivious. You’ll have to ask Ethan after he’s feeling better. Were you able to talk to him?”
“Just for a moment. Booth thinks he’s improving.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Sean was paying close attention and didn’t miss the next turn, but it seemed like they were going away from everything instead of toward something.
“You think this is right?” Jonathan Lee sounded skeptical.
“Supposed to be. We’ll find out. JL, while I have the chance—you know, in case I get the leap or anything else happens—I want to tell you—it’s been great. You, me, us, I mean. And if this is all there is, that’s fine. I’m no good at this sort of thing. Just ask Ethan when he’s feeling better. After we’ve got the leap under control. Fixed, I mean. I’m trying to say something here but it’s not coalescing.”
“It’s still great, Sean. Don’t overthink it. Let’s just keep going. Since I’ve been here, my entire life has been upended. My schedule’s destroyed, my habits have been thrown out, my days have lost their rhythm. But it’s fine. I get to be with you and—stop.”
“What?”
“Stop right here. Pull over.”
“We can’t. Not right now. The funeral’s going to start soon. Even though I want to.”
“I want to as well, but it’s not what I mean. Look over there.” Jonathan Lee pointed to what looked like a clump of bushes. Sean stopped the transcer. Beyond the bushes was a sign she hadn’t noticed. She’d been too busy trying to stay on the right road—to even see the road, which was often indistinguishable from the forest floor.
The sign said No Trespassing / Violators Will Be Disposed Of Accordingly.
“That’s a bit ugly, isn’t it?” Jonathan Lee said. “Disposed of?”
“These are the Pierces. They can do whatever they want. Well, except for Althea. She’s pretty limited these days.”
“I am going to decline a laugh here. After all, we’re on our way to crash her funeral. I think we should show some respect.”
“I can’t help myself. My introduction to Althea Pierce as a person instead of just a sort of celebrity—you know, the person who wrote Keeping the Promise and Charley Pierce’s wife—was when Zee came to me because Morris was missing and he’d been having an affair with Althea. She just seemed like a run-of-the-mill homewrecker. I didn’t think I’d be sneaking into her funeral in a few weeks. Say, what if Morris is here? Maybe I’ll finally find him.”
“It wouldn’t be the first odd thing that’s happened lately.”
Sean drove past the threatening sign and, gasping, stopped again. The forest was no more. Instead, in front of them was a rolling lawn, acres of the lushest grass Sean had ever seen, the brightest flowers, the most magnificent trees, and beyond that, an enormous, huge, gigantic, gargantuan house.
“That almost makes the Normandie seem small.” Sean couldn’t stop staring.
Jonathan Lee hadn’t gasped, but maybe he’d seen something like this before. Sean never had.
“That can’t be just the house of one couple. Well, one person now. Can it?”
Sean looked over and Jonathan Lee looked as shocked as she felt.
“It’s hardly a house. More like a hotel. Or a castle.”
“No turrets. I think you need them to call something a castle.”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s just an ordinary old palace. JL, they’re going to notice us. We do not fit in here. And where is everyone?”
“Out back, I suppose. Didn’t you say the ceremony was on the river? I don’t see a river yet, so it’s got to be behind the building. There could be thousands of people there. Millions, perhaps.”
Sean drove farther in and to their left was an enormous parking area manned by a crew of people, all of them dressed in the same blue and silver outfit, just like the guards in Keeping the Promise had worn.
“This is too much,” Jonathan Lee said. “Who would want a funeral like this?”
“JL, the corpse never gets a say in these things. The funeral is for the living.”
“Odd expression, isn’t it? The living? The only time we ever refer to ourselves that way is when someone else dies. But someone else is dying all the time.”
“Let’s not get too morbid, JL.”
“Yet this is the only time it’s justified.”
“We have work to do.”
“You’re right of course.”
One of the uniformed guards gestured and Sean drove up to where she’d indicated. The guard leaned over and Sean opened the window.
“Invitation, please,” the guard said. “No entry without one.”
Sean flashed her official-looking credentials. “I’m here on business,” she said.
The guard took Sean’s card and scrutinized it. Sean thought they were going to be turned away and concentrated on devising a plausible story, something about her being Althea’s old classmate or maybe Jonathan Lee was her relative and they’d come a long way and—
“Over there,” the guard said, pointing with one hand and giving Sean back her unimpressive credentials with the other.
Sean followed the directions and left the transcer amid a mass of other vehicles, some of them worth more than Sean’s house, although Sean’s house was more like a shack when you compared it to the magnificent structure they were now walking past.
“We’re getting closer,” Jonathan Lee said.
“Yeah, I can hear the crowd now.” The voices were murmurs. It was a funeral and despite the unusual setting and upcoming dramatics, people seemed to be behaving like they were at a more traditional ceremony.
Sean and Jonathan Lee stopped while they were still separated from the sight of what had to be a huge gathering. They leaned against a stone wall at the side of the mansion. Jonathan Lee took Sean’s hand in his. He spoke in an undertone, although there was no one nearby who could have heard him.
“Closer—I mean with the leap virus. The transmission, anyway. It seems likely it’s being conveyed through the photonic filamentation on the array. The filaments can sort of buoy up the RNA particles, which is what they must be, as they’re released from the program—although it’s not yet clear how that happens but it seems the most likely mechanism—and as soon as someone comes in close contact with the display, the virus moves over to the human. One good thing here—I think scrolls are safe. Their display uses an entirely different technology.”
“Zee will be relieved. She’s been keeping her scroll on the windowsill and sitting as far away from it as she can while still being able to read it.”
“Are you ready for this?” Jonathan Lee gave her hand a squeeze and they left their safe place against the wall and started walking again.
“I’m prepared but I’m not sure I could ever be ready.”
The murmurs got louder as Sean and Jonathan Lee got closer to the river, and Sean gasped again when they were able to see the crowd.
“I’ve never seen this many people all in one place at the same time.”
“I guess you’ve never been to a Convergence.”
“Right. Like I could afford it. What’s it like?”
“I’ve only heard of it. Beryl told me about it. She wanted to go but I don’t know if she ever did. I hope she did. I hope she got to do everything she wanted to do before she died. But everything she was working on—it’s all stopped. I don’t know if she had any colleagues who’ll take over.”
