TC04

Doctor Judith Margolies was  flown to the  United States  in an empty C-141 transport plane with nothing but a cold box lunch, a cold box dinner, and orange juice to sustain her.

Her passport  remained back  at  Yad  Mordechai, as  she  never expected to go  abroad, but  that  was all  smoothed over  with immigration officials by Dr. Ian  Trochmann when he met  her at Andrews  Air Force  Base outside  of Washingon,  DC. Judith had caught a few short catnaps on the flight but it had been a long day and she was anxious to  clean herself up and  and a night's rest, even if it was a community  shower and a cot in a cell. To her great surprise she  was checked  into a  hotel room  at the Watergate complex and to her even greater surprise the door was not locked.

Curiosity kept her from wandering off into the chilly DC night, except to have supper at  a diner across the  street. Trochmann had given her a  little money  in advance of  her salary. On a television at the  diner  she  caught up  on  events back  home through the evening broadcast news. The high tide of the Syrian advance reached nearly to  Nafah in the  southern Golan  by the second day of the war. The first wave of reserve forces, which would have included Judith before she was so rudely placed under arrest, began  to  walk  the  Syrians  back  north,  inflicting heavy losses  on  them  as  they went. The only  moment  that was touch-and-go was  a Syrian  counterattack at  Quneitra with helicopter-borne troops but it was repulsed. Israel reached the line from which Syria launched their attack on the first day of the war.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan wanted to halt right there, thirty miles from Damascus, to avoid drawing the Soviet Union into the war. General Elazar, by  contrast, wanted  to advance  another twenty miles into Syria to set  up a strong defensive  line and stabilize the northern  front. Prime Minister Golda Meir  was assured by the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Nixon had her back, and the aid shipments proved it, so she sided with Elazar.

Judith was jet-lagged to hell  and gone,  so she made  an early evening of it. She looked forward to fulfilling her obligation of hearing the Americans out so she could give them her emphatic refusal and cash  in  their  promise to  let  her return  home, hopefully before the war was over.

Tolson's obsession with the B'nei Elohim lived on in Trochmann. Every day for a half-hour or more he he silently contemplated a glass  case  displaying  the  dessicated  white  shapes  of  the modified brain of Gabriel, still unchanged from 1947. The amount of science DECON had been able to obtain by studying the brains of the once-living subject was maddeningly limited. Images made with an electron  microscope  revealed that  every molecule  in every organelle in  brain cell had been replaced with  a kind of articulated plastic that did not  degrade like the components of living protoplasm. Once he entertained the idea that it could be revived by being bathed in  a nutrient  soup, but that  came to nothing. It remained entirely beyond analysis.

Dr. Trochmann brought Judith to see the remains in the morning. He said, "You might think these are sculptures of some sort, or perhaps casts made  in plastic of a mold taken  after the demise of a living person. But what you have in your hands in an actual brain, Dr. Margolies.

Judith eyed Trochmann with a quick flash  of indignation, which he fully expected. She said, "I've been  in combat,  I've seen brains.  The color  is all  wrong, no  matter what  solution you used  to  preserve  them.  This  should  be  an  unsightly  dark yellowish-brown. And softer."

Roland said, "If you look more  closely, you will see  where we cut tissue  strips as  samples. We  have examined  these samples under extreme  magnification, and  there is always  more detail. Tolson came up with the analogy  of a bridge across a stream. He said that  nature, with all  the time  in the world,  still only made bridges by  mindlessly rolling boulders into  a rough line, or  maybe  having a  log  drift  downstream  and get  caught  by boulders, and  that is what we  see with how evolution  made our nervous system.  But this is  like someone poured  concrete over the  boulders,  then cut  up  the  log  for  timber to  build  a functional and efficient truss."

"So you think this is artificial," mused Judith.

Roland said, "That is something I'd  like to find out.  And if so, who did it, how they did it, and why."

Judith wanted to laugh out loud, but a rising fury cut that off. Instead she said, "This must be some kind of joke. I'm not that kind of  doctor! I have a  PhD in Biblical Archaeology  from the B'nei Elohim Historical  Institute. I can date a  clay tablet by the style of  cuniform it bears, but other  than rendering first aid in combat I know very little about anatomy."

"The B'nei Elohim Institute,"  said Dr. Trochmann. "Precisely. This was the brain of  your fellow  alumnus, a young  man named Gabriel Shybear. Does that name sound familiar?"

"Of course. Be-Hi is fully  accredited, but it is  much smaller than you might imagine."

"I'm taking you to  meet his  wife. The  B'nei Elohim  call her Robyn. Do you know her?"

"Only by reputation. We call her the Seer."

"The Seer?"

"Think of a prognosticator with a perfect track record."

It took from late morning through most of the  afternoon to fly from one  Washington to  another. Ian wasn't willing  to  say anything more about the destination while he could be overheard. At one point  somewhat  more than  halfway  through the  flight Judith looked down and saw what looked to be a giant tree stump. It was Devil's Tower in Wyoming.

Upon landing Judith signed into a hotel room once more, but this time she was  also  given  a rental  car  and an  international driver's license. Trochmann had thought of  everything. Before it got  dark she  went  driving  around  what they  called  the "Tri-Cities" just to  test the  limits of  her freedom. It was arid, but there were irrigated  farms, and much of  it reminded her of Israel, or perhaps more specifically, Egypt, as the three towns were perched on banks of a big river.

She dined out once more, and back in her room she again took in the progress of the war from television news. The Israeli thrust east from the Golan Heights into Syria began pushed the Syrians back after fierce fighting. Judith’s brigade was already six miles over the border into Syria. Moshe Dayan went on television to remind the Syrians that the road from Damascus to Israel was also the road from Israel to Damascus.

The Hanford site in Washington State was where  the Trinity and Nagasaki "Fat Boy" bombs had been manufactured. It was the size of a full county in most other states and still had one working reactor generating power. Thirty years after the War there was still a lot of useful infrastructure: a rail net  work, a power grid, old "Levittown" housing and a number of empty structures.

Dr. Judith Margolies  didn't understand  why she  had to  leave her rented  car parked  at  the  checkpoint called  Rattlesnake Barricade.

"Government or   Pharmadigm  vehicles   only,"  said   Dr.  Ian Trochmann, her sponsor, as he drove  her to the lab. "I didn't make the rules, Dr. Margolies."

"And my visitors' badge?"

"You'll upgrade if you decide to  stay with us. But  first, Dr. Margolies, tell me what you know,  or rather, what you think you know about a company called Pharmadigm."

"Pharmadigm? Is it agricultural? I know nothing about it."

"Pharmadigm is a pharmaceutical,  but it's not  one of  the big ones. It's been  around for about thirty years. It  began, so it is  said,  when  government insiders  privy  to  taxpayer-funded research met with venture capitalists to monetize it."

"So it is said. Do you think it is true?"

"Thirty years  is  a  long   time.  Things  change.  There  are prestigious organizations with much shadier pasts. Did you know, Dr. Margolies, that many ballet  schools in Europe centuries ago were really just fronts for cathouses?"

Judith decided to let  that go  without comment. Dr. Trochmann continued to drive east. The installation was vast.

"Now that I think  about it,"  Judith said,  "I think  I recall something about a potential  anti-anxiety drug that actually had a reverse effect. It caused a very intense anxiety."

"Oh, that compound has proved beneficial after all. Suppose you wanted to  ask questions but you  have a tough customer,  so you bring out the standard toolkit for asking questions. Without the drug, you  have to use  the tools. With  the drug, you  can just show the tools."

That seemed to set Judith back a little.

Trochmann said, "The  company called  Pharmadigm is  in fact  a shell  corporation, a  front,  managed by  the Special  Projects section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Deputy Director, Clyde Tolson always insisted that we call it DECON, for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization, but Hoover was more in  tune with the political niceties and  never let him make  that  official, and  now  that  the  Bureau is  under  new management DECON  is on the  list of banned words.  During World War II  there was a...well,  we treated  it as a  contagion. The details are so  bizarre that you will imagine we  are having you along for a  massive joke, but it is most  certainly not a joke. Certainly during your time at the Academy you must of seen them, some of them tall, some of them very tall, folk with white horns that curved in such  a way as to form what  looks very much like how cartoons depict an angel's halo?"

"Yes, but I always assumed that was decorative.  Like some kind of hat."

"So you were never curious enough to give one a tug?"

She shook her head.

"I've had   Robyn  under  observation  before.   Her  name  was originally Kim Zinter. She had  a friend name Sophia Krause with the same condition. But for months we learned maddeningly little about them. The white horns emerging from their scalp were bone, not merely  skin tumors.  They refused to  speak, and  they grew quite stubborn, so  I brought in Clyde Tolson, who  told them it was time for a heart-to-heart.

* * * * *

“Fine,” said Sofie. “Start by telling us who you are.”

“I am FBI Special Agent-in- Charge Clyde Tolson. You and Kim are under the jurisdiction of a branch of the  US Department of Justice called DECON, which I head up."

"I never heard of it."

"DECON is short for Domestic Enemies  Containment, Observation, and Neutralization.”

Kim grew angry at that. "Domestic enemies? You must be joking. My  father lost  an arm  fighting the  Hun in  the last  war. My mother was a Red Cross nurse Over There. Every Wednesday morning after Temple I lead the White Wing of my church in a rip-roaring rendition of God Bless America.”

“You and Sofie have contracted an unknown contagion in a time before there is a  proper federal response  for that,  which is bad  luck for  you  and bad  luck for  everyone. But there are Presidential executive orders which could be read, very loosely, and for a very brief time, as offering such a response.”

“You don’t seem afraid to  talk to us  face-to-face,” Kim pointed out. “For a contagion,  Doc Troch  and Nurse  Ramsey ain’t so scared either.”

Tolson said, “If  it was  transmitted by  sneezing you  girls would be totally isolated. But revealing something about how you got sick would do much toward getting you back home.”

Kim and  Sofie both  suspected  they  got the  condition  after sleeping with their Kuwapi friends but they  said nothing about that. Instead, Sofie said, “Okay,  we know  why you  won’t unlock the door, but we don’t even know where we are.”

“You’re not very far from Headwater,” Tolson said. “Just one state over, in fact,  near Cody. This is called the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.”

Sofie said, “I don’t understand. Who is being relocated, and why?”

“It’s very easy to  understand, Sofie. Last December after Pearl Harbor FDR authorized the incarceration of Nips living on the West Coast. Last February the first camps were built.”

Kim said, “By Nips I presume you really mean American citizens with a Japanese ethnic background.”

When Tolson had no answer Sofie said, "Hey Kimmie, I think I’m in the wrong camp. My great-great-granddaddy was a German.”

Tolson wagged a finger. “This camp is the third biggest city in Wyoming but  only seven  undesirables out  of every  ten are Nips. The President’s executive  order was  the kind  of gift that comes around only once  in a generation, but  strike while the iron is hot, they always say.”

Sofie said, “So I’m one of your undesirables  but I don’t even feel sick.”

Tolson said, “Sofie, your brain isn’t even alive anymore.”

“Then how could we be having this conversation?”

Tolson turned to Dr. Trochmann and asked him to  tell the young ladies what they’ve learned so far.

“It spreads like a virus,”  the doctor said,  “but I’ve never seen anything like it before. It literally remodels nerve and brain  cells. No more  potassium  and sodium  ions  pumped through a membrane. Your neurons are  now little  gadgets with sliding levers and the like. Both of you girls have been hooked up to a Dynograph and it shows nothing. You’re literally brain dead. Maybe you are victims of a secret Nazi weapon.”

“I don’t like you very  much,” Sofie said,  directing her glance at both men in turn, “But I can see you want something. Well, we want something first. We want the windows disguised as mirrors removed from our living space.”

Dr. Trochmann tried to play dumb. “Mirrors?”

“Come now, Doctor,” said  Sofie, “you must  think we’re just stupid  girls. But we’ve  had  a  lot  of time  on  our hands locked up  in here. Naturally we found your  two filthy peeping-Tom mirrors and people looking in on us.”

Tolson sighed and said, “I can see there is no fooling you.”

“Sometimes I call Sofie  a scrub,”  Kim said. “She knows I’m only kidding. But Agent Tolson, I’ll match a  scrub at Green  Dome  High  against  any  B  student  among  the  publics anywhere.”

Sofie said, in a rueful  aside, “It  better be that  way, the amount of money my daddy shells out for tuition.”

Tolson tried to  defend  the arrangement  he  had made. “The mirrors are not  used for  what you  think. This is a  medical facility. No one is overly interested to watch you in a state of undress.”

Kim said, “And what we're talking about is not what you think. Look, maybe we’re infected and you have some  order that says you can hold us in this quarantine of yours, fine, but we still have one fundamental Constitutional right:  plain old-fashioned privacy!”

For the first time Tolson  and Trochmann became aware  that Kim and Sofie were holding hands. The doctor blushed intensely.

Sofie saw the opening and moved tighter up against Kim. “What did you expect, gentlemen? We’re seventeen and cooped  up in here together. I hope you get what we’re trying to say here. I hope we don’t have to spell it out."

Tolson said, "I want to apologize for starting out on the wrong foot." And it even sounded sincere.

“Then let’s begin once more,” offered Kim. "Perhaps if you were to address our privacy concerns, we'd feel obliogated to be more forthcoming on answering the concerns that you have."

Sofie and Kim could both see how the mood of the men brightened visibly at this breakthrough.

Tolson said, “I'll  need  to  tighten up  security  a bit  to compensate but  I’ll let  you have  your privacy. Curtains on your side of the mirrors.”

* * * * *

"In retrospect I see that Tolson and I were deceived. They used their privacy to contrive their escape, and to this day we still don't  know how  they did  it. Robyn  promised to  tell the  new Deputy Director  how she managed to  do it, but in  the meantime we've brought her here. I'm sure it  feels to her like less of a prison but it remains one nevertheless."

After driving many miles over a  flat desert they arrived  at a desolate location where  the town of White  Bluffs once existed, before all the  townspeople were  ordered to  move away  in the spring of 1943. Only three structures  existed here,  Robyn's house, the DECON lab, and a shack for the guards who watched the area overnight.

Before she got  out  of  the doctor's  car  Judith said,  "What puzzles me is  the usual non-disclosure agreement  seems to have been omit ted.  Or perhaps it was just  forgotten? Certainly you must know that I'm not going  to join your project, and you have already told me many things that must be classified."

Dr. Trochmann turned off the engine and smiled. "Think back to the anxiety-inducing drug, Dr. Margolies, and the use we finally found for it. Somehow, the section once known as DECON has never seen the  need to  get  a  formal non-disclosure  agreement  in writing.  Somehow a  informal understanding  by all  parties has always been sufficient."

Judith frowned and stepped out of the car, but  the doctor made no move to follow. Puzzled, she asked, "What shall I do?"

"Go up to the house and meet Robyn. Talk to her a bit. I'll wait here in case you decide not  to join our project  and I'll take you  back to  your own  car. But  somehow I  think by  this time tomorrow you'll have a different badge and a different car."

Judith didn't need to knock. Robyn opened the door just before she could, which was a hallmark of hers. "Hello Doctor J," she said, "it's nice to finally meet you. I'm so glad you came, and you should be too. We just saved your life."

"What do you mean?"

"You embody a significant investment to Hamon," she said. "It'd be a terrible thing to lose you at the very end to something as stupid as a nuclear war."