“There isn’t one available,” Dombey said. “All the others are full of test animals in the middle of one experiment or another.”
“Then we’ll have to move the animals. The kid’s a lot more important than they are. There’s more data to be gotten from him.”
He’s more important because he’s a human being, not because he’s a source of data, Dombey thought angrily, but he didn’t voice the thought because it would have identified him as a dissident and as a potential security risk.
Instead, Dombey said, “We won’t have to move him. The cold spell won’t last.” He squinted into the smaller room, where the boy lay motionless on a hospital bed, under a white sheet and yellow blanket, trailing monitor wires. Dombey’s concern for the kid was greater than his fear of being trapped underground and buried alive, and finally his attack of claustrophobia diminished. “At least it’s never lasted long. The temperature drops abruptly, stays down for two or three minutes, never longer than five, and then it rises to normal again.”
“What the devil is wrong with the engineers? Why can’t they correct the problem?” Dombey said, “They insist the system checks out perfectly.”
“Bullshit.”
“There’s no malfunction. So they say.”
“Like hell there isn’t!” Zachariah turned away from the video displays, went to the window, and found his own spot of clear glass. “When this started a month ago, it wasn’t that bad. A few degrees of change. Once a night. Never during the day. Never enough of a variation to threaten the boy’s health. But the last few days it’s gotten completely out of hand. Again and again, we’re getting these thirty- and forty-degree plunges in the air temperature in there. No malfunction, my ass!”
“I hear they’re bringing in the original design team,” Dombey said. “Those guys’ll spot the problem in a minute.”
“Bozos,” Zachariah said.
“Anyway, I don’t see what you’re so riled up about. We’re supposed to be testing the boy to destruction, aren’t we? Then why fret about his health?”
“Surely you can’t mean that,” Zachariah said. “When he finally dies, we’ll want to know for sure it was the injections that killed him. If he’s subjected to many more of these sudden temperature fluctuations, we’ll never be certain they didn’t contribute to his death. It won’t be clean research.”
A thin, humorless laugh escaped Carlton Dombey, and he looked away from the window. Risky as it might be to express doubt to any colleague on the project, Dombey could not control himself: “Clean? This whole thing was never clean. It was a dirty piece of business right from the start.”
Zachariah faced him. “You know I’m not talking about the morality of it.” “But I am.”
“I’m talking about clinical standards.”
“I really don’t think I want to hear your opinions on either subject,” Dombey said. “I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“I’m just trying to be conscientious,” Zachariah said, almost pouting. “You can’t blame me because the work is dirty. I don’t have much to say about research policy around here.”
“You don’t have anything to say about it,” Dombey told him bluntly. “And neither do I. We’re low men on the totem pole. That’s why we’re stuck with night-shift, baby-sitting duty like this.”
“Even if I were in charge of making policy,” Zachariah said, “I’d take the same course Dr. Tamaguchi has. Hell, he had to pursue this research. He didn’t have any choice but to commit the installation to it once we found out the damn Chinese were deeply into it. And the Russians giving them a hand to earn some foreign currency. Our new friends the Russians. What a joke. Welcome to the new Cold War. It’s China’s nasty little project, remember. All we’re doing is just playing catch-up. If you have to blame someone because you’re feeling guilty about what we’re doing here, then blame the Chinese, not me.”
“I know. I know,” Dombey said wearily, pushing one hand through his bush of curly hair. Zachariah would report their conversation in detail, and Dombey needed to assume a more balanced position for the record. “They scare me sure enough. If there’s any government on earth capable of using a weapon like this, it’s them—or the North Koreans or the Iraqis. Never a shortage of lunatic regimes. We don’t have any choice but to maintain a strong defense. I really believe that. But sometimes . . . I wonder. While we’re working so hard to keep ahead of our enemies, aren’t we perhaps becoming more like them? Aren’t we becoming a totalitarian state, the-very thing we say we despise?” “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Dombey said, though he was sure of it. “What choice do I have?”
“None, I guess.” “Look,” Zachariah said. “What?”
“The window’s clearing up. It must be getting warm in there already.”
The two scientists turned to the glass again and peered into the isolation chamber.
The emaciated boy stirred. He turned his head toward them and stared at them through the railed sides of the hospital bed in which he lay.
Zachariah said, “Those damn eyes.” “Penetrating, aren’t they?”
“The way he stares . . . he gives me the creeps sometimes. There’s something haunting about his eyes.”
“You’re just feeling guilty,” Dombey said.
“No. It’s more than that. His eyes are strange. They aren’t the same as they were when he first came in here a year ago.”
“There’s pain in them now,” Dombey said sadly. “A lot of pain and loneliness.”
“More than that,” Zachariah said. “There’s something in those eyes . . . something there isn’t any word for.”
Zachariah walked away from the window. He went back to the computers, with which he felt comfortable and safe.
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