“Good, good… Listen, Ellen, I’m in the middle of something here-”
“Jack? Julia called from the hospital a few minutes ago. She was looking for you.”
“Uh-huh…”
“When I said you’d gone to Nevada, she got pretty upset.”
“Is that right?”
“She said you didn’t understand. And you were going to make it worse. Something like that. I think you better call her. She sounded agitated.”
“Okay. I’ll call.”
“How are things going out there? You be back tonight?”
“Not tonight,” I said. “Sometime tomorrow morning. Ellen, I have to go now-”
“Call the kids at dinnertime, if you can. They’d like to hear from you. Auntie Ellen is fine, but she’s not Dad. You know what I mean.”
“Okay. You’ll eat at six?”
“About.”
I told her I’d try to call, and I hung up.
…
Mae and I were standing by the double glass walls of the outer airlock, just inside the building entrance. Beyond the glass, I could see the solid-steel fire door that led outside. Ricky was standing beside us, gloomy and nervous, watching as we made our final preparations. “You sure this is necessary? To go outside?”
“It’s essential.”
“Why don’t you and Mae wait until nightfall, and go out then?”
“Because the rabbit won’t be there,” I said. “By nightfall, coyotes or hawks will have come and taken the carcass away.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ricky said. “We haven’t seen any coyotes around here for a while.”
“Oh hell,” I said impatiently, turning on my radio headset. “In the time we’ve spent arguing about this, we could have been out and back already. See you, Ricky.” I went through the glass door, and stood in the airlock. The door hissed shut behind me. The air handlers whooshed briefly in the now-familiar pattern, and then the far glass slid open. I walked toward the steel fire door. Looking back, I saw Mae stepping into the airlock. I opened the fire door a crack. Harsh, glaring sunlight laid a burning strip on the floor. I felt hot air on my face. Over the intercom, Ricky said, “Good luck, guys.” I took a breath, pushed the door wider, and stepped out into the desert. The wind had dropped, and the midmorning heat was stifling. Somewhere a bird chittered; otherwise it was silent. Standing by the door, I squinted in the glare of the sunlight. A shiver ran down my back. I took another deep breath.
I was certain that the swarms were not dangerous. But now that I was outside, my theoretical inferences seemed to lose force. I must have caught Ricky’s tension, because I was feeling distinctly uneasy. Now that I was outside, the rabbit carcass looked much farther away than I had imagined. It was perhaps fifty yards from the door, half the length of a football field. The surrounding desert seemed barren and exposed. I scanned the shimmering horizon, looking for black shapes. I saw none.
The fire door opened behind me, and Mae said, “Ready when you are, Jack.”
“Then let’s do it.”
We set off toward the rabbit, feet crunching on the desert sand. We moved away from the building. Almost immediately, my heart began to pound, and I started to sweat. I forced myself to breathe deeply and slowly, working to stay calm. The sun was hot on my face. I knew I had let Ricky spook me, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I kept glancing toward the horizon. Mae was a couple of steps behind me. I said, “How’re you doing?”
“I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
We were moving through a field of knee-high yellow cholla cactus. Their spines caught the sun. Here and there, a large barrel cactus stuck up from the floor like a bristling green thumb. Some small, silent birds hopped on the ground, beneath the cholla. As we approached, they took to the air, wheeling specks against the blue. They landed a hundred yards away. At last we came to the rabbit, surrounded by a buzzing black cloud. Startled, I hesitated a step.
“It’s just flies,” Mae said. She moved forward and crouched down beside the carcass, ignoring the flies. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and handed me a pair to put on. She placed a square sheet of plastic on the ground, securing it with a rock at each corner. She lifted the rabbit and set it down in the center of the plastic. She unzipped a little dissection kit and laid it open. I saw steel instruments glinting in sunlight: forceps, scalpel, several kinds of scissors. She also laid out a syringe and several rubber-topped test tubes in a row. Her movements were quick, practiced. She had done this before.
I crouched down beside her. The carcass had no odor. Externally I could see no sign of what had caused the death. The staring eye looked pink and healthy. Mae said, “Bobby? Are you recording me?”
Over the headset, I heard Bobby Lembeck say, “Move your camera down.”
Mae touched the camera mounted on her sunglasses.
“Little more… little more… Good. That’s enough.”
“Okay,” Mae said. She turned the rabbit’s body over in her hands, inspecting it from all sides. She dictated swiftly: “On external examination the animal appears entirely normal. There is no sign of congenital anomaly or disease, the fur is thick and healthy in appearance. The nasal passages appear partially or entirely blocked. I note some fecal material excreted at the anus but presume that is normal evacuation at the time of death.” She flipped the animal onto its back and held the forepaws apart with her hands. “I need you, Jack.” She wanted me to hold the paws for her. The carcass was still warm and had not begun to stiffen.
She took the scalpel and swiftly cut down the exposed midsection. A red gash opened; blood flowed. I saw bones of the rib cage, and pinkish coils of intestine. Mae spoke continuously as she cut, noting the tissue color and texture. She said to me “Hold here,” and I moved my one hand down, to hold aside the slick intestine. With a single stroke of the scalpel she sliced opened the stomach. Muddy green liquid spilled out, and some pulpy material that seemed to be undigested fiber. The inner wall of the stomach appeared roughened, but Mae said that was normal. She ran her finger expertly around the stomach wall, then paused. “Umm. Look there,” she said.
“What?”
“There.” She pointed. In several places the stomach was reddish, bleeding slightly as if it had been rubbed raw. I saw black patches in the midst of the bleeding. “That’s not normal,” Mae said. “That’s pathology.” She took a magnifying glass and peered closer, then dictated: “I observe dark areas approximately four to eight millimeters in diameter, which I presume to be clusters of nanoparticles present in the stomach lining,” she said. “These clusters are found in association with mild bleeding of the villous wall.”
“There are nanoparticles in the stomach?” I said. “How did they get there? Did the rabbit eat them? Swallow them involuntarily?”
“I doubt it. I would assume they entered actively.”
I frowned. “You mean they crawled down the-”
“Esophagus. Yes. At least, I think so.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”
She never paused in her swift dissection. She took scissors and cut upward through the breastbone, then pushed the rib cage open with her fingers. “Hold here.” I moved my hands to hold the ribs open as she had done. The edges of bone were sharp. With my other hand, I held the hind legs open. Mae worked between my hands.
“The lungs are bright pink and firm, normal appearance.” She cut one lobe with the scalpel, then again, and again. Finally she exposed the bronchial tube, and cut it open. It was dark black on the inside.
“Bronchi show heavy infestation with nanoparticles consistent with inhalation of swarm elements,” she said, dictating. “You getting this, Bobby?”
“Getting it all. Video resolution is good.”
She continued to cut upward. “Following the bronchial tree toward the throat…” And she continued cutting, into the throat, and then from the nose back across the cheek, then opening the mouth… I had to turn away for a moment. But she continued calmly to dictate. “I am observing heavy infiltration of all the nasal passages and pharynx. This is suggestive of partial or full airway obstruction, which in turn may indicate the cause of death.” I looked back. “What?”
The rabbit’s head was hardly recognizable any longer, she had cut the jaw free and was now peering down the throat. “Have a look for yourself,” she said, “there seems to be dense particles closing the pharynx, and a response that looks something like an allergic reaction or-” Then Ricky: “Say, are you guys going to stay out much longer?”
“As long as it takes,” I said. I turned to Mae. “What kind of allergic reaction?”
“Well,” she said, “you see this area of tissue, and how swollen it is, and you see how it’s turned gray, which is suggestive-”
“You realize,” Ricky said, “that you’ve been out there four minutes already.”
“We’re only out here because we can’t bring the rabbit back,” I said.
“That’s right, you can’t.”
Mae was shaking her head as she listened to this. “Ricky, you’re not helping here…”
Bobby said, “Don’t shake your head, Mae. You’re moving the camera back and forth.”
“Sorry.”
But I saw her raise her head, as if she was looking toward the horizon, and while she did so, she uncorked a test tube and slipped a slice of stomach lining into the glass. She put it in her pocket. Then looked back down. No one watching the video would have seen what she did. She said, “All right, we’ll take blood samples now.”
“Blood’s all you’re bringing in here, guys,” Ricky said.
“Yes, Ricky. We know.”
Mae reached for the syringe, stuck the needle into an artery, drew a blood sample, expelled it into a plastic tube, popped the needle off one-handed, put on another, and drew a second sample from a vein. Her pace never slowed.
I said, “I have the feeling you’ve done this before.”
“This is nothing. In Sichuan, we were always working in heavy snowstorms, you can’t see what you’re doing, your hands are freezing, the animal’s frozen solid, can’t get a needle in…” She set the tubes of blood aside. “Now we will just take a few cultures, and we’re done…” She flipped over her case, looked. “Oh, bad luck.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“The culture swabs aren’t here.”
“But you had them inside?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it.”
I said, “Ricky, you see the swabs anywhere?”
“Yes. They’re right here by the airlock.”
“You want to bring them out to us?”
“Oh sure, guys.” He laughed harshly. “No way I’m going out there in daylight. You want ’em, you come get ’em.”
Mae said to me, “You want to go?”
“No,” I said. I was already holding the animal open; my hands were in position. “I’ll wait here. You go.”
“Okay.” She got to her feet. “Try and keep the flies off. We don’t want any more contamination than necessary. I’ll be back in a moment.” She moved off at a light jog toward the door. I heard her footsteps fade, then the clang of the metal door shutting behind her. Then silence. Attracted by the slit-open carcass, the flies came back in force, buzzing around my head, trying to land on the exposed guts. I released the rabbit’s hind legs and swatted the flies away with one hand. I kept myself busy with the flies, so I wouldn’t think about the fact that I was alone out here.
I kept glancing off in the distance, but I never saw anything. I kept brushing away the flies, and occasionally my hand touched against the rabbit’s fur, and that was when I noticed that beneath the fur, the skin was bright red.
Bright red-exactly like a bad sunburn. Just seeing it made me shiver.
I spoke into my headset. “Bobby?”
Crackle. “Yes, Jack.”
“Can you see the rabbit?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“You see the redness of the skin? Are you picking that up?”
“Uh, just a minute.”
I heard a soft whirr by my temple. Bobby was controlling the camera remotely, zooming in. The whirring stopped.
I said, “Can you see this? Through my camera?”
There was no answer.
“Bobby?”
I heard murmurs, whispers. Or maybe it was static.
“Bobby, are you there?”
Silence. I heard breathing.
“Uh, Jack?” Now it was the voice of David Brooks. “You better go in.”
“Mae hasn’t come back yet. Where is she?”
“Mae’s inside.”
“Well, I have to wait, she’s going to do cultures-”
“No. Come in now, Jack.”
I let go of the rabbit, and got to my feet. I looked around, scanned the horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
“They’re on the other side of the building, Jack.”
His voice was calm, but I felt a chill. “They are?”
“Come inside now, Jack.”
I bent over, picked up Mae’s samples, her dissection kit lying beside the rabbit carcass. The black leather of the kit was hot from the sun.
“Jack?”