Rainbow Six (1997) (67 page)

The last of the winos had outlasted all predictions, but it had only prolonged the inevitable. This one was named Henry, a black man of forty-six years who only appeared to be twenty years older. A veteran, he’d told everyone who’d listen, and a man with a considerable thirst, which had not, miraculously, done a great deal of liver damage. And his immune system had done a valiant job of fighting off Shiva. He was probably from the deep part of the gene pool, Dr. Killgore thought, for what little good it had done him. It would have been useful to take a history from him, to find out how long his parents had lived, but he was too far gone by the time they’d realized it. But now, the printout of his blood work said, he was surely doomed. His liver had finally succumbed to the Shiva strands, and his blood chemistry was off the chart in every category that mattered. In a way, it was too bad. The doctor still living in Killgore somehow wanted patients to survive. Maybe it was sportsmanship, he thought, heading down to the patient’s room.

“How are we doing, Henry?” the doctor asked.

“Shitty, Doc, just shitty. Feels like my belly is coming apart inside out.”

“You can feel it?” Killgore asked. That was a surprise. He was getting nearly twelve milligrams of morphine a day now—a lethal dose for a healthy man, but the really sick ones could somehow take a lot more of the drug.

“Some,” Henry replied, grimacing.

“Well, let me fix that for you, okay?” The physician extracted a 50cc needle from his pocket, along with a vial of Dilaudid. Two to four milligrams was a strong dose for a normal person. He decided to go to forty, just to be sure. Henry had suffered enough. He filled the syringe, flicked the plastic body with a fingernail to take care of the little air bubble, then inserted it in the IV line, and pushed the plunger down quickly.

“Ah,” Henry had time to say as the dazzling rush hit him. And just that fast, his face went still, eyes wide open, pupils dilated in the last pleasure he would ever know. Ten seconds later, Killgore touched the right carotid artery. There was nothing happening there, and Henry’s breathing had stopped at once. Just to be completely sure, Killgore took his stethoscope from his pocket and touched it to Henry’s chest. Sure enough, the heart had stopped.

“Nice fight, partner,” the doctor told the body. Then he unhooked the IV line, switched off the electronic drug monitor system, and tossed the sheet over the face. So, that was the end of the winos. Most of them had checked out early, except for Henry. The bastard was a fighter to the end, defying all predictions. Killgore wondered if they might have tried one of the vaccines on him—“B” would almost certainly have saved him, but then they’d just have a healthy wino on their hands, and the Project wasn’t aimed at saving that sort of person. What use was he to anyone, really? Except maybe a liquor-store owner. Killgore left the room, waving to an orderly as he did so. In fifteen minutes, Henry would be ashes floating in the air, his chemicals useful to some grass and trees as fertilizer when they fell back to earth, which was about as much a contribution as a person like that could hope to make.

Then it was time to see Mary, F4, in her room.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Fine,” she replied sleepily. Whatever discomfort she ought to be feeling was well submerged in the morphine drip.

“You took a little walk last night?” Killgore asked, checking her pulse. It was 92, strong and regular still. Well, she wasn’t really into serious symptoms yet, though she’d never last as long as Henry had.

“Wanted to tell Daddy that I was okay,” she explained.

“Think he’s worried?”

“I haven’t talked to him since I got here, and, I thought . . .” She dozed off.

“Yeah, sure, you thought,” Dr. Killgore said to the unconscious form, “and we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.” He changed the programming on the IV monitor, increasing the morphine drip by 50 percent. That should keep her in the bed.

Ten minutes later he was outside, walking north to where . . . there it was, and he saw Ben Farmer’s pickup truck parked in the usual place. The inside of the building smelled of birds, as well it might, though it looked more like a horse barn. Every door was barred too closely for an arm to reach in—or for a bird to get out. He walked down the row of doors until he found Farmer in with one of his favorites.

“Working overtime?” Killgore asked.

“A little,” the security man agreed. “Come on, Festus,” he said next. The barn owl flapped its wings angrily then lifted off for the six-foot trip to Farmer’s gloved arm. “I think you’re all fixed, my friend.”

“Doesn’t look very friendly,” the physician observed.

“Owls are hard to work with sometimes, and Festus has a mean side,” the former Marine told him, walking the owl back to its perch and leaving him there. Then he slipped out of the door. “Not the smartest raptors, owls. Hard as hell to train. Not even going to try with him.”

“Just release him?”

“Yeah. End of the week, I think.” Farmer nodded. “It’s been two months, but his wing’s all healed now. I ’spect he’s ready to go back out and find hisself a barn full o’ mice to eat.”

“Was that the one hit by the car?”

“No, that’s Niccolo, the great horned owl. No, Festus, I think he probably flew into a power line. Wasn’t looking the right way, I guess. Both his eyes seem to work just fine. But birds screw up, too, just like people. Anyway, I fixed his broke wing—did a good job of it, if I do say so myself.” Farmer allowed himself a satisfied smile. “But ol’ Festus ain’t very grateful about it.”

“Ben, you ought to be a doctor, you’re so good at this. Were you a medic in the Marines?”

“Just a grunt. Marines get their medics from the Navy, Doc.” Farmer took off his thick leather gauntlet and flexed his fingers before putting it back on. “You here about Mary?”

“What happened?”

“Truth? I was off taking a leak, sat back down reading my magazine, and when I looked up, she wasn’t there. I figure she was loose for, oh, ten minutes before I put the call out. I screwed up, Doc, and that’s a fact,” he admitted.

“No real harm done, I think.”

“Yeah, well, how about me moving that computer to a room with a lock on the door, eh?” He walked to the end of the room, opened another door. “Hey, Baron,” the man said next. A moment later, the Harris hawk jumped onto the offered leather arm. “Yeah, that’s my buddy. You’re ready to go back outside, too, ain’t you? Find yourself some juicy rabbits, maybe?”

There was a real nobility to these birds, Killgore thought. Their eyes were sharp and clear, their motions powerful and redolent of purpose, and while that purpose might seem cruel to their prey, that was Nature at work, wasn’t it? These raptors kept the balance in place, winnowing out the slow, the crippled, and the stupid—but more than that, the birds of prey were just plain noble in the way they soared upward and looked down on the world that lay beneath them and decided who would live and who would die. Much as he and his fellow team members were doing, Killgore thought, though human eyes lacked the hardness he saw here. He had to smile at Baron, who was soon to be released into the wild, soon to soar on the thermals above Kansas. . . .

“Will I be able to do this when we’re out in the Project?” Farmer asked, setting Baron back on his wooden perch.

“What do you mean, Ben?”

“Well, Doc, some people say that I won’t be able to keep birds once we’re out there, ’cuz it interferes, like. Hell, I take good care of my birds—you know, captive raptors live two, three times as long as the ones in the wild, and, yeah, I know that upsets things a little bit, but, damn it—”

“Ben, it’s not big enough to worry about. I understand you and the hawks, okay? I like ’em, too.”

“Nature’s own smart bomb, Doc. I love to watch ’em work. And when they get hurt, I know how to fix ’em.”

“You’re very good at that. All your birds look healthy.”

“Oughta be. I feed ’em good. I live-trap mice for ’em. They like their meals warm, y’know?” He walked back to his worktable, took his gauntlet off, and hung it on the hook. “Anyway, that’s my work for the morning.”

“Okay, get on home, Ben. I’ll see that the computer room is secured. Let’s not have any more subjects taking any walks.”

“Yes, sir. How’s Henry doing?” Farmer asked, fishing in his pocket for his car keys.

“Henry checked out.”

“I didn’t figure he had much time left. So, no more of the winos, eh?” He saw the shake of Killgore’s head. “Well, too bad for him. Tough bastard, wasn’t he?”

“Sure was, Ben, but that’s the way it goes.”

“Sure ’nuff, Doc. Shame we can’t just lay the body out for the buzzards. They have to eat, too, but it is kinda gross to watch how they do it.” He opened the door. “See you tonight, Doc.”

Killgore followed him out, killing the lights. No, they couldn’t deny Ben Farmer the right to keep his birds. Falconry was the real sport of kings, and from it you could learn so much about birds, how they hunted, how they lived. They’d fit into Nature’s Great Plan. The problem was that the Project had some really radical people in it, like the ones who objected to having physicians, because they interfered with Nature—curing
people
of disease was interference, allowed them to multiply too fast and upset the balance again. Yeah, sure. Maybe in a hundred years, more like two hundred, they might have Kansas fully re-populated—but not all of them would remain in Kansas, would they? No, they’d spread out to study the mountains, the wetlands, the rain forests, the African savanna, and then they’d return to Kansas to report what they’d learned, to show their videotapes of Nature in action. Killgore looked forward to that. Like most Project members he devoured the Discovery Channel on his cable system. There was so
much
to learn, so
much
to understand, because he, like many, wanted to get the whole thing, to understand Nature in Her entirety. That was a tall order, of course, maybe an unrealistic one, but if he didn’t make it, then his children would. Or their children, who’d be raised and educated to appreciate Nature in all her glory. They’d travel about, field scientists all. He wondered what the ones who went to the dead cities would think. . . . It’d probably be a good idea to make them go, so that they’d understand how many mistakes man had made and learn not to repeat them. Maybe he’d lead some of those field trips himself. New York would be the big one, the really impressive don’t-do-this lesson. It would take a thousand years, maybe more, before the buildings collapsed from rusting structural steel and lack of maintenance. . . . The stone parts would never go away, but relatively soon, maybe ten years or so, deer would return to Central Park.

The vultures would do just fine for some time. Lots of bodies to eat . . . or maybe not. At first the corpses would be buried in the normal civilized way, but in a few weeks those systems would be overwhelmed, and then people would die, probably in their own beds and then—rats, of course. The coming year would be a banner one for rats. The only thing was: Rats depended on people to thrive. They lived on garbage and the output of civilization, a fairly specialized parasite, and this coming year they’d have a gut-filling worldwide feast and then—what? What would happen to the rat population? Dogs and cats would live off them, probably, gradually reaching a balance of some sort, but without millions of people to produce garbage for the rats to eat, their numbers would decline over the next five or ten years. That would be an interesting study for one of the field teams. How quickly would the rat population trend down, and how far down might it go?

Too many of the people in the Project concerned themselves with the great animals. Everyone loved wolves and cougars, noble beautiful animals so harshly slaughtered by men because of their depredation of domestic animals. And they’d do just fine once the trapping and poisoning stopped. But what of the lesser predators? What about the rats? Nobody seemed to care about them, but they were part of the system, too. You couldn’t apply aesthetics to the study of Nature, could you? If you did, then how could you justify killing Mary Bannister, Subject F4? She was an attractive, bright, pleasant woman, after all, not very like Chester, or Pete, or Henry, not offensive to behold as they had been . . . but like them, a person who didn’t understand Nature, didn’t appreciate her beauty, didn’t see her place in the great system of life, and was therefore unworthy to participate. Too bad for her. Too bad for all the test subjects, but the planet was dying, and had to be saved, and there was only one way to do it, because too many others had no more understanding of the system than the lower animals who were an unknowing part of the system itself. Only man could hope to understand the great balance. Only man had the responsibility to sustain that balance, and if that meant the reduction of his own species, well, everything had its price. The greatest and finest irony of all was that it required a huge sacrifice, and that the sacrifice came from man’s own scientific advances. Without the instrumentalities that threatened to kill the planet, the ability to save it would not have existed. Well, of such irony was reality made, the epidemiologist told himself.

The Project would save Nature Herself, and the Project was made of relatively few people, less than a thousand, plus those who had been selected to survive and continue the effort, the unknowing ones whose lives would not be forfeit to the crimes committed in their names. Most would never understand the cause for their survival—that they were the wife or child or close relative of a Project member, or had skills that the Project needed: airplane pilots, mechanics, farmers, communication specialists, and the like. Someday they might figure it out—that was inevitable, of course. Some people talked, and others listened. When the listeners figured it out, they would probably be horrified, but then it would be far too late for them to do anything about it. There was a wonderful inevitability to it all. Oh, there would be some things he’d miss. The theater, the good restaurants in New York, for example, but surely there would be some good cooks in the Project—certainly there would be wonderful raw materials for them to work with. The Project’s installation in Kansas would grow all the grain they needed, and there would be cattle as well, until the buffalo spread out.