“They throw waste at you,” the guard said as we walked on. “Same thing their animal rights activists do. Kinda fits, don’t you think?”

My anxiety was getting stronger.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Where the good doctor told me to bring you, ma’am,” he said, and we were on another level of catwalk now, heading into another part of the building.

We passed through a door, where Revco ultra low temperature freezers looked like computers the size of large copying machines. They were locked and out of place in this corridor, where a heavy man in a lab coat was waiting for me. He had baby-fine blond hair, and was perspiring.

“I’m Bret Martin,” he said, offering me his hand. “Thanks.” He nodded at the guard, indicating he was dismissed.

I handed Martin my cardboard box.

“This is where we keep our smallpox stock,” he said, nodding at the freezers as he set my box on top of one of them. “Locked up at seventy degrees centigrade below zero. What can I say?” He shrugged. “These freezers are out in the hall because we have no room anyplace else in maximum containment. Rather coincidental you should give this to me. Not that I’m expecting your disease to be the same.”

“All of this is smallpox?” I asked, amazed as I looked around.

“Not all, and not for long, though, since for the first time ever on this planet we’ve made a conscious decision to eliminate a species.”

“The irony,” I said. “When the species you’re talking about has eliminated millions.”

“So you think we should just take all this source disease and autoclave it.”

His expression said what I was used to hearing. Life was much more complicated than I presented it, and only people like him recognized the subtler shades.

“I’m not saying we should destroy anything,” I replied. “Not at all. Actually, probably we shouldn’t. Because of this.” I looked at the box I had just given him. “Our autoclaving smallpox certainly won’t mean it’s gone. I guess it’s like any other weapon.”

“You and me both. I’d sure like to know where the Russians are hiding their variola stock virus these days, and if they’ve sold any of it to the Middle East, North Korea.”

“You’ll do PCR on this?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Right away?”

“As fast as we can.”

“Please,” I said. “This is an emergency.”

“That’s why I’m standing here now,” he said. “The government considers me nonessential. I should be at home.”

“I’ve got photographs that USAMRIID was kind enough to develop while I was in the Slammer,” I said with a trace of irony.

“I want to see them.”

We took the elevator back up, getting off on the fourth floor. He led me into a conference room where staff met to devise strategies against terrible scourges they couldn’t always identify. Usually bacteriologists, epidemiologists, people in charge of quarantines, communications, special pathogens and PCR assembled in the room. But it was quiet, no one was here but us.