The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (60 page)

“
Stop it!” That wasn’t me
this time; it was Dane. She continued somewhat heatedly, “That’s a
terrible thing to imply when thousands of people are dying...” She
let the words trail off, apparently recalling what Hank had said to
her the last time she’d mentioned deaths attributed to
IFAI.

Then, even more heatedly,
almost angrily, she went on, “The entire scientific world can’t be
wrong! What if you’re wrong? What if the IFAI epidemic is getting
worse, and Dr. Wintersong really has developed a vaccine to prevent
it? If you had your way, you’d make people afraid of being
immunized, you’d allow them to refuse...” Dane stopped again,
shaking her head, and finally said simply, “Damn you!”

“
I know,” Hank said gently.
“Is difficult. We are so used to letting experts do to us what they
think should be done it has become almost habit to agree even when
experts are lunatics. That is most dangerous in medicine, where
truth can improve and prolong our lives, but lies—even simple error
if inflicted upon all—can hasten all our deaths. You say maybe they
are right, I am wrong. If so, so what? How many thousands, or
millions, can my error sicken or kill? My error does nothing to
people, it leaves them alone. But if I am right? What might results
be of their error? And what if it is not error but deliberate
design, part of a monstrous purpose kept secret from its
victims?”

Hank stepped from behind
his desk, began pacing slowly again, both hands still in his hip
pockets. “Concerning Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness, this deadly
IFAI, you also say the entire scientific world can’t be wrong. Of
course it can be. Usually is. But where do you get this ‘entire’
anyway? How about Dr. Hernandez, me? I am part of the scientific
world. So are several hundred physicians in POCUEH plus many
biologists and virologists and engineers and housewives and
husbands. Plus thousands more in USA and around the world. But
their voices are like mine—only those I speak to within earshot, in
person, like you and Sheldon, know I believe most IFAI promoters
are dangerous ignoramuses or worse. Such unacceptable hearsay
remains private, is not published, is not written in newspapers or
verified on TV.”

Hank flashed a quick smile
at me, then turned and began pacing again, saying, “I have unusual
sources of information—some of it secret, or supposed to be many
thousands in POCUEH, plus people in dozens of other organizations
working with us, even a few in CDC, NIH, FDA, and elsewhere. So I
can tell you about results from the first test of Wintersong’s IFAI
vaccine. Of one thousand mice, in ten weeks, four hundred died. So
they started over by cremating the four-hundred dead mice along
with all records about them, saying the test was with only the
remaining six-hundred mice.”

I heard Dane suck in her
breath. Then she said, “That’s not possible. Hank, that’s
deliberate fraud, outright deception. Scientists wouldn’t do
that.”

Hank stopped pacing near
us, smiled at Dane. “Among those six hundred mice, many developed
malignant tumors, others staggering gait, a few developed a
peculiar semi-paralysis with tremors, just lay in their cages and
wiggled, trembled, jerked.”

Dane pulled her head to
one side, eyes squeezed shut, but she didn’t say
anything.

“
So that experiment was
entirely abandoned,” Hank went on pleasantly. “Meaning it never
happened. Wintersong perfected his vaccine some more, maybe diluted
it with Coca Cola made with fluoridated water, nobody has informed
me of this so I am guessing. The next experiment was five hundred
guinea pigs injected with reduced doses of the bugshit—the vaccine.
Only two percent died completely. I have heard the most recent
animal tests, which were fully reported to the Food and Drug
Administration, achieved a zero percent mortality, complete
protection against IFAI, and minimal side effects.”

Dane still looked as if
she’d swallowed something sour. So I said, “How much of that was
exaggeration, Hank? Or pure invention?”

“
Only the Coca
Cola.”

“
But haven’t there been
human tests since then, trying the vaccine out on
people?”

“
Of course, is the only way
to make some kind of record for FDA to approve. Even devout
vivisectionists know what happens to mice and guinea pigs and
elephants is a little different from what happens with people. So
three thousand people got to volunteer for experimental protection
against IFAI. No fatalities. I think six died from profound
immune-system depression resulting in antibiotic-resistant
pneumonia. But those deaths were not attributable to the vaccine,
since all six people obviously died of pneumonia, which was
acceptable.”

Hank took a deep breath,
looked from me to Dane and said intensely, “I do not exaggerate, we
are truly in peril. Because when medical opinions become laws
enforced by the State, any bassackward ‘authorized-and-approved’
whim can become law of the land and then rational argument is
ended—illegal, forbidden!”

After thirty seconds I was
really getting twitchy. Five seconds more and I said, “Well,
ah...”

Hank said soberly, “I do
not know how to stop the forces of our own government, of medicine,
mega-business, and secret unnamed assassins from achieving their
determination to immunize and drug everybody to death. I can not be
sure now what will happen to our hundred lawsuits. I do not know
how to prevent our imminent arrest, torture, and execution. It is
almost incidental, but I do not even know what to do with—” he
waved a hand toward his driveway.

Yeah, his driveway where
sat Dr. Wintersong’s black Cadillac. In which Cadillac was
Wintersong, plotting; and Belking, grunting and wiggling
murderously. Assuming they hadn’t suffocated.

We all sat in lengthening
silence. It stretched, thickened. And my mind was blank. At first.
But then pictures began moving unbidden behind my eyes, slowly
swirling among fragments of thought.

I recalled the first time
I’d seen Hank...the flip book of Jock-Jock with his head snapping
forward, lips spreading, the pale brown eyes and velvety skin of
Lucinda, and the sound of precious Precious squeaking “Maaa!” I
remembered beautiful Rusty, dying, dead, his brown eyes glazing
into orbs of glass, and ugliness of the Vunger’s severed heads,
Helga’s still, empty eyes, Guenther’s wild eyes rolling, Grinner’s
body jerking as my bullets hit him, thick redness spilling from his
mouth, flames licking at palm leaves and turning freeze-dried
animals into ashes reaching for rows of mounted heads bolted
against the walls.

My mind stopped, froze
briefly, then moved again. One thought, one picture, stayed with
me, melted, changed, and I felt a slow surge of warmth rise up in
me and flush my face. I didn’t remember getting to my feet, but I
was out of my chair, standing, then stepping to the edge of Hank’s
desk.

I leaned forward, resting
my hands on the desktop, and said rapidly, “Maybe there’s a way.
What do you think of this?”

And for a full minute I
laid it on him, starting with the picture that had melted in my
mind and then building it up, getting excited as my own words began
to help me visualize the scene more clearly, watching it
work.

When I finished, Hank
frowned, thinking, looking fierce.

Behind me, Dane said
almost shrilly, “Shell, you can’t, you can’t do that!”

I glanced at her, smiling
slightly. “Sure I can.”

“
But that’s... too awful,
too cruel—he might die!”

“
Yeah,” I said, “I suppose
he might. With any luck.”

Then Hank began nodding
briskly, knifelike nose slicing the air. “It is possible, I think.
At least, since I am a doctor, the medical parts can be consummated
perhaps...probably. The rest, that will be up to you
mostly.”

“
Will be? Does that mean
you think it could work.”

“
Si. At least, is possible.
If successful, most of our problems might be solved, partly, maybe,
mostly.”

“
Then you’ll give it a
shot?”

Hank stopped frowning
fiercely. His face smoothed, the bright blue eyes became brighter,
almost glowing. At last, he smiled.

“
Si!”

And I said, grinning,
“Bueno!”

The game was
afoot.

Some of it excited me,
some worried me, and some of it plain scared the hell out of
me.

But I knew how we were
really going to do it. God help us.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

It had taken us six hours,
but everything looked so good I was beginning to think we might
actually pull it off.

I was inside the Omega
Medical Research Center again, more specifically, inside the
private laboratory next to Dr. Wintersong’s office, where this
afternoon—no, yesterday afternoon now—I’d found the severed heads
of Rusty, Guenther, Helga: two living, one dead. And I wasn’t
alone, all five of us were here. With me were Henry Hernandez,
M.D., and Dane Smith; and here with the three of us were Dr.
William Wintersong and Hobart “Hobie” Belking. At least, their
heads were here.

Unquestionably, we had
been breaking all kinds of laws, probably including some we’d never
heard of. But I, at least, had been doing it joyously and without
the least reserve or regret. Hank, too, I’m pretty sure, had taken
some pleasure in performing his complicated tasks. It was difficult
to be certain about Dane. Since we’d arrived at Omega she’d said
little, for the most part just silently, smiling, or frowning,
often appearing to be doing both at the same time.

We’d arrived here shortly
before dawn. Dawn, on Sunday morning. Soon lots of people would be
going to church; we might be going to services in the slam. There
had been no guards in evidence here this early a.m., but I’d had to
ignore a plastic DO NOT CROSS banner at the entrance gate and break
a police seal on the front door of Omega’s main building to get us
all inside. For which crime alone, I feared the penalty could be
humongous; but, under the circumstances that was the least of my
humongous concerns.

Now, inside the small
cluttered laboratory, brightly illumined by overhead fluorescent
lamps, I looked around, one more time. Wintersong and Belking were
still unconscious, but the drug that had put them under should be
wearing off in a few minutes more, according to Hank. He’d sedated
each of them a couple of hours ago, before we’d chopped off their
heads.

Actually, we hadn’t really
cut their lousy heads off. It only looked that way. But it sure as
hell did look that way. We’d even shaved Wintersong’s scalp slick
as a whistle. Hank insisted on that, saying when the doc came to,
if he saw his reflection in a mirror—which he would; we’d made sure
of that—he’d know something was amiss if his scalp wasn’t slick as
a whistle. Or words to that effect. So everything was done except
for the “finishing touches” which Hank would be taking care of any
minute now. He’d been standing near Wintersong, checking him with a
stethoscope, listening to his breathing, doing doctor-type
things.

There hadn’t been any
words exchanged among the three of us for a while.

Dane said in a small
voice, “I am beginning to have serious misgivings.”

“
No kidding?” I said,
smiling stiffly. “That’s odd.”

She smiled back at me,
frowning, brows knitted over the luminous green eyes; her folded
arms clutching a compact camcorder against her breasts. Since both
Hank and I were expected to be occupied with other things, that had
become Dane’s job, to videotape the sights and sounds of the next
hour or minute, or whatever it turned out to be when it happened,
if anything significant did happen.

But her initial
enthusiasm, apparently, had diminished somewhat during recent
hours. She went from “Marvelous! Incredible!” and “What a fantastic
final chapter for my book,” to “serious misgivings.”

That was the problem: all
those misgivings. After Dane’s last comment, she’d fallen silent,
hugging her camcorder, gazing fixedly at the chops of William
Wintersong, M.D.

I took another gaze at the
chops myself, thinking: Man, that head sure does look dead. I stood
only a couple of feet from where it rested, exactly where Rusty’s
head had been yesterday, and it truly did look like the McCoy, the
real thing, a severed human head—alive, fed by tubes and monitored
by thin electrical wires rising from the shaved skull. Those wires
ran over beams above, and then down to the banks of gauges and
dials, wide paper tape unrolling silently over there. The two
lengths of plastic tubing ended at the squat barrel-shaped pump
meant to recirculate nutrient solution to and from the brain, the
pump making its whispery chshh-chshh sound.

Getting Wintersong muscled
into place, sitting erect so his head would be at the level where
we wanted it, had been our most difficult and time-consuming job,
but both Hank and I were pleased with the result. I thought it was
an almost-beautiful work of gruesome art. The doctor’s limp, bare
form—he was naked as a new nudist—was seated on a heavy box and
held erect by crude-looking but effective straps secured to the
four-sided wooden frame around him. A few of those straps were
heavy Velcro, the rest twisted strips from sheets supplied by Mrs.
Hernandez.