Devoted(73)
In Shacket’s eyes of light, blue irises floated like gentian petals in moonlit pools.
Carson Conroy believed he was in the presence of something profoundly alien. He could not prove it, but he knew it.
In a voice astringent with contempt, Shacket said, “You say contaminated, I say coronated.”
“Coronated? Crowned? Made king of what?”
“Of all that will come to be.”
Those seven words were spoken with quiet confidence that either confirmed Shacket’s insanity or belied it. Carson was disturbed to find that he could not be sure which.
“Whatever happened to you,” Carson said, “whatever you’ve been coronated with—are you communicable?”
“So this is why you’re here. Ready to inflame the population with fear of a plague.” Shacket shook his head and looked again at the window. “You’re getting tiresome, Doctor.”
“No bacteria, no viruses?”
“When a king coughs, does he then infect those around him with royalty?”
“The ninety-two killed in the fire—they were contaminated?”
“Coronated. Try not to be dense, Doctor. No bacteria, no virus. Just . . . an agent of change programmed to invade every cell.”
“What agent?”
“Archaea. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. It won’t do you any good to know. In my becoming, archaea isn’t kryptonite to me. I have no fear of it.”
“Your ‘becoming’?”
“Before your eyes, I am changing. But you haven’t the capacity to see.”
“They were burned to death—why? Because they were liable to undergo . . . changes, genetic changes?”
“Precisely.”
Carson thought about that. “Uncontrolled changes. So they were a publicity disaster. And the source of potentially hundreds of millions in lawsuits.”
“Ah.” Shacket smiled at him. “Associating with the deceased has not left you entirely brain dead.”
“Did those people know when they signed employment contracts that they were essentially working atop a bomb, that they were all expendable in a crisis if this altered archaea somehow escaped whatever isolation lab it was confined to?”
“If they didn’t know, they suspected. They all signed off on the risk. Scientists can be true believers, too. In fact, perhaps more easily than others if they haven’t yet found something they can call true and worth believing. Dorian pursued and signed up only those with a passion for the transhuman future, who wanted to be there when the ultimate breakthrough occurred—who wanted to be among the first to be guaranteed centuries of vigorous life free of disease, with new capabilities. We all live for the fulfillment of one promise or another—love, wealth, fame. But what could be a promise more worth pursuing than the promise of physical immortality?”
Of all that Shacket had said, this speech was the first that, to Carson, had the unmistakable flavor of insanity.
To Carson’s best knowledge, archaea could horizontally transfer genes between species but were not known to be carriers of disease.
He assumed that altered archaea programmed to deliver a genetic package into the cells of a test animal would die after fulfilling that function or would resort to a preprogrammed natural condition and would become agents of only natural processes.
His concern about a plague receded to the back of his mind.
“Becoming what?” he asked.
Again the wind drew Shacket’s attention to the casement window, where the glass vibrated and the metal frames of the two tall panes rattled against each other.
When the wind subsided slightly, Shacket brought his radiant gaze back to his visitor. “I am becoming the king of beasts.”
Here was the more obvious evidence of insanity that Carson had expected when he’d first entered the room. “King of what beasts?”
“This is a world of beasts, Doctor. Human beings are just one of the many in the zoo. I’m becoming king of them all.”
Delusions of grandeur. Megalomania. The eerily articulate and considered Lee Shacket, with whom he’d been speaking, now seemed to be revealing a more recognizable madness heretofore concealed.
The scent that Carson had never smelled until entering this room was less subtle than previously. For a moment he was reminded of raw onion, but then wasn’t, and for an instant he thought of the vapors from rubbing alcohol, but only for an instant, nor was this the astringency of the urine in the collection bottle.
It was evidence of his dread that he wondered what the smell would be like in a warren of raw earth where a snake curled among the wriggling lengths of its recent offspring. Maybe like this?
“Considering your circumstances,” Carson told Shacket, “you were deposed from the throne before you could occupy it.”
The prisoner didn’t rise to an argument. He only smiled.
Carson turned to the door, where Deputy Thad Fenton’s face was pressed to the view window.
In the hallway, as the deputy relocked the door, he said, “So how crazy is he, Doc?”
“Crazy enough. If he were to get out of that room—”
“No way he can,” Fenton interrupted. “He can’t even get out of bed to piss.”
“But if he were to get out of there,” Carson said, writing his phone number on a hot-rod magazine, “shoot him dead, stay away from the corpse, and call my cell at once.”