ViraVax by Bill Ransom Page B

tired, that’s all. And worried about you, of course. No need to press this subject further, you know how I stand. As for the lab, I presume that you are taking proper precautions and caring for yourself. Your mother would be proud, bless her soul. But there is one thing that would worry her.”
    Joshua Casey smiled. “I know, Father. You want me married.”
    “It’s not that I want you. . . well, perhaps it is. Your mother and I were one organism, if I may speak your language for a moment. I know that now, because I am half a being without her. It is something that I can’t explain, because you’ve never had the experience.”
    “It’s unlikely that I’ll meet the perfect woman here, Father.” Casey smiled again. “Isolation is a must, you know that. I’m married to my work. . . .”
    “Hogwash. Besides, you’re the sole surviving Casey. Do you want everything that we’ve worked for to fall into the hands of strangers?”
    “I’ll work on it, Father. I promise.”
    “Commit to it,” his father ordered. “Your assistant, Shirley Good, has demonstrated promise, I believe, and uncommon loyalty. There has been talk. You, of all people, must be above talk. Take care of it.”
    “We’ll see,” Joshua Casey said, reassuring his father with his best smile. “We’ll soon see.”
    Joshua Casey excused himself, then returned to his overcluttered study and the complicated problem of Red Bartlett’s death.
    Mosquito bites.
    That had been in the report. Mosquito bites, scratched up and still inflamed, probably five or six days old. Red Bartlett hadn’t been topside in nearly two weeks, so he had to get them inside the facility, somewhere between his labs at Level Two and Mishwe’s supply labs at Level Five.
    Now, how could a mosquito get in here? Casey wondered.
    Everyone below the topside level was fumigated, stripped, cleansed, clothed in sterile jumpsuits. Every molecule of air and water was filtered, cleansed and sterilized in a four-hour ritual. The lab complex was just that, complex, and most of it lay underground, bunkered against an uncasual glance or a neutron bomb.
    Now Casey held the histology report on what was left of Red Bartlett: “Tissue rejection reaction/purulence; complete cellular breakdown.”
    Bartlett had never had a transplant of any kind, nor transfusion, yet his body had disintegrated, burned with a blue flame, just like several Innocents from Mishwe’s section. Red Bartlett melted and stank and so did the whole damned scene.
    If a mosquito transmitted this from one of Mishwe’s experimental subjects to Bartlett, then all of us could be in danger.
    The only other answer was equally frightening—Bartlett had been deliberately infected with an experimental AVA, one with which Mishwe had taken other liberties, of late.
    If Red had worked at the brassiere factory in La Libertad, Major Scholz would be content to read about it tomorrow on the web. But Bartlett was her boss’s best friend, and he worked for ViraVax, and Casey knew that she knew that spontaneous human combustion was impossible no matter what the tabloids said.
    Rico Toledo’s situation was another reason for Agency involvement. Falling so swiftly on the Colonel’s sudden decline, his best friend’s suspicious death would look even more suspicious.
    As it looks now to me, Casey thought.
    Suspension, suspicion and more drinking took Rico Toledo down. . . or did it? The Agency chief, Solaris, claimed Toledo was better than that, and the albino was never wrong.
    Toledo’s conduct towards his family had been unconscionable, and a formal censure had been in the works for a month when Grace Toledo cut him. Catholics were such barbarians. Something like this would be unthinkable in a Gardener family.
    It worked out quite to Casey’s satisfaction, however. Now Toledo would be far too busy with his personal battles to snoop into corners at ViraVax.
    Too bad she didn’t kill him, he thought.
    Casey took a deep breath and let it