It was what Stone had predicted from the start. He had pointed out that mankind had, over centuries of exposure, developed a carefully regulated immunity to most organisms. On his skin, in the air, in his lungs, gut, and even bloodstream were hundreds of different viruses and bacteria. They were potentially deadly, but man had adapted to them over the years, and only a few could still cause disease.
All this represented a carefully balanced state of affairs. If you introduced a new drug that killed all bacteria, you upset the balance and undid the evolutionary work of centuries. And you opened the way to superinfection, the problem of new organisms, bearing new diseases.
Stone was right: the forty volunteers each had died of obscure and horrible diseases no one had ever seen before. One man experienced swelling of his body, from head to foot, a hot, bloated swelling until he suffocated from pulmonary edema. Another man fell prey to an organism that ate away his stomach in a matter of hours. A third was hit by a virus that dissolved his brain to a jelly.
And so it went.
Jensen reluctantly took the drug out of further study. The government, sensing that Stone had somehow understood what was happening, agreed to his earlier proposals, and viciously suppressed all knowledge and experimentation with the drug Kalocin.
And that was where the matter had rested for two years.
Now Burton wanted to be given the drug.
"No," Stone said. "Not a chance. It might cure you for a while, but you'd never survive later, when you were taken off."
"That's easy for you to say, from where you are."
"It's not easy for me to say. Believe me, it's not. He put his hand over the microphone again. To Hall: "We know that oxygen inhibits growth of the Andromeda Strain. That's what we'll give Burton. It will be good for him-- make him a little giddy, a little relaxed, and slow his breathing down. Poor fellow is scared to death."
Hall nodded. Somehow, Stone's phrase stuck in his mind: scared to death. He thought about it, and then began to see that Stone had hit upon something important. That phrase was a clue. It was the answer.
He started to walk away.
"Where are you going?"
"I've got some thinking to do."
"About what?"
"About being scared to death."
27. Scared to Death
HALL WALKED BACK TO HIS LAB AND STARED through the glass at the old man and the infant. He looked at the two of them and tried to think, but his brain was running in frantic circles. He found it difficult to think logically, and his earlier sensation of being on the verge of a discovery was lost.
For several minutes, he stared at the old man while brief images passed before him: Burton dying, his hand clutched to his chest. Los Angeles in panic, bodies everywhere, cars going haywire, out of control...
It was then that he realized that he, too, was Scared. Scared to death. The words came back to him.
Scared to death.
Somehow, that was the answer.
Slowly, forcing his brain to be methodical, he went over it again.
A cop with diabetes. A cop who didn't take his insulin and had a habit of going into ketoacidosis.
An old man who drank Sterno, which gave him methanolism, and acidosis.
A baby, who did ... what? What gave him acidosis?
Hall shook his head. Always, he came back to the baby, who was normal, not acidotic. He sighed.
Take it from the beginning, he told himself. Be logical. If a man has metabolic acidosis-- any kind of acidosis-- what does he do?
He has too much acid in his body. He can die from too much acid, just as if he had injected hydrochloric acid into his veins.
Too much acid meant death.
But the body could compensate. By breathing rapidly. Because in that manner, the lungs blew off carbon dioxide, and the body's supply of carbonic acid, which was what carbon dioxide formed in the blood, decreased.
A way to get rid of acid.
Rapid breathing.
And Andromeda? What happened to the organism, when you were acidotic and breathing fast?
Perhaps fast breathing kept the organism from getting into your lungs long enough to penetrate to blood vessels. Maybe that was the answer. But as soon as he thought of it, he shook his head. No: something else. Some simple, direct fact. Something they had always known, but somehow never recognized.
The organism attacked through the lungs.
It entered the bloodstream.
It localized in the walls of arteries and veins, particularly of the brain.
It produced damage.
This led to coagulation. Which was dispersed throughout the body, or else led to bleeding, insanity, and death.
But in order to produce such rapid, severe damage, it would take many organisms. Millions upon millions, collecting in the arteries and veins. Probably you did not breathe in so many.
So they must multiply in the bloodstream.
At a great rate. A fantastic rate.
And if you were acidotic? Did that halt multiplication?
Perhaps.
Again, he shook his head. Because a person with acidosis like Willis or Jackson was one thing. But what about the baby?
The baby was normal. If it breathed rapidly, it would become alkalotic-basic, too little acid-- not acidotic. The baby would go to the opposite extreme.
Hall looked through the glass, and as he did, the baby awoke. Almost immediately it began to scream, its face turning purple, the little eyes wrinkling, the mouth, toothless and smooth-gummed, shrieking.
Scared to death.
And then the birds, with the fast metabolic rate, the fast heart rates, the fast breathing rates. The birds, who did everything fast. They, too, survived.
Breathing fast?
Was it as simple as that?
He shook his head. It couldn't be.
He sat down and rubbed his eyes. He had a headache, and he felt tired. He kept thinking of Burton, who might die at any minute. Burton, sitting there in the sealed room.