“A carrier is a person who is infected with the disease—and capable of passing it on—but does not become particularly sick herself. You, for example.”

Carlyle sat up straight. “Me?”

“Imagine that we didn’t know about your exposure to your dad, and you were at home right now with a minor sore throat. You might inadvertently spread your infection to someone who then develops an overwhelming pneumonia or flesh-eating disease because he or she happens to be susceptible to invasive G.A.S.”

“Dear God!” Carlyle’s eyes went wide with recognition. “And, in the meantime, I could pass it on to ten others who also would become carriers of the bug.”

Carlyle’s logic hit Lopez like one of her cousin’s childhood stomach punches.

What if this outbreak can’t be contained?

20 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

20

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Horton sat at her desk with the door closed and her head buried in her hands. The pile of memos in her in-box threatened to topple over. She had 264 unread e-mails. Her voicemail was full, and would not accept new messages. Horton didn’t want to hear from the outside world. Especially not another congratulatory message. Those had become unbearable.

Two days earlier she had heard that a third lab chimp on long-term Oraloxin therapy had died of bone marrow failure. And she had hardly slept an hour since.

Perhaps the bone marrow response was—as Martineau had assured her while she lay naked for the first time under his thick, fragrant down comforter—simply an idiosyncratic reaction specific to chimpanzees. Or possibly—as Martineau pointed out between the first and second time he clouded her thoughts with the most intense sex of her life—it would happen only to animals that took the drug for months rather than the maximum ten days it was intended.

Maybe Oraloxin posed no risk to humans in the appropriate doses for short courses, but if the FDA review panel saw the chimp data, they would immediately stop the human trials and reject the drug.

But Horton didn’t report the findings. Instead, she shrank from her ethical duty like the coward and fraud she now saw herself to be. She couldn’t sleep anymore. Nor eat. However, her vague fleeting fantasies had crystallized into a plan. She pictured herself drifting into oblivion in the garage with her favorite piece of music, Grieg’s piano concerto, playing over the rumble of her car’s engine. The thought of suffocation no longer evoked anxiety. Quite the opposite: The idea of her death, accompanied by the explanatory note she would leave behind, appealed to her scientific side as the only reasonable option.

She was pulled away from the fantasy when her door opened a crack. Her heavyset secretary, Sally, stuck her face through. “Dr. Horton, I know you said you weren’t accepting calls …,” she said timidly.

“It’s okay, Sally,” Horton said gently.