JAMES CAMBIAS

Train of Events

SINCE THE HISTORY BOOKS all agreed that he was going to kill six hundred people on June 25, 2038, Jeremy Calder was careful to get up early that day. He had bought a new suit and gotten a haircut the day before, so he was looking pretty sharp when he left his house. The suit was a handsome dark blue wool, appropriate for funerals or causing disasters. Jeremy wore it as an act of defiance: all the pictures from the future showed him wearing a T-shirt and khakis on the big day.

When he went out to his car the little crowd in the parking lot began chanting slogans and waving signs at him. They'd started trickling in during the night, a motley collection of temporazzi, present-day gawkers, protesters, and a couple of religious types. The cops had barriers up to hold them back, but Jeremy was still startled and a little shaken at how angry some of them were. A man wearing a FUTURE CALDER VICTIM T-shirt spat on him.

The cops cleared a lane for him, but he heard a bottle thud on the roof as he started backing out. Once on the road he flipped on the radio out of habit. The Morning Crew on WRDU were talking about him. "In case you don't know, today's the day that Jerry Calder's going to let loose the HNE-2038 virus which makes a couple of million people sick and kills -- what, a thousand?"

"Six hundred fifteen."

"Okay, so six hundred people. The question we have for our listeners is, what would you do if you were him? If you knew you were going to cause something like that? The number is RDU-CREW, or email us at amcrew@rdu.com. Let's hear what you think. Mike in Hillsborough, go ahead."

"Hey, Greg, Linda, I listen to y'all every morning. Listen, if this guy knows he's gonna cause all those deaths, why doesn't he just call in sick this morning, you know? Stay home, don't do it, man."

"Doesn't work that way," said Linda. "Isn't that what all the scientists say? You can't change the future any more than you can change the past."

"Julie on the Beltline: talk to me, babe."

"Hi, Greg! Thanks for taking my call. I guess it makes a difference if it's an accident or if he does it on purpose, right? I mean, anyone can make a mistake, right?"

"Even if six hundred people die from it?"

"Well, I'm not saying he shouldn't be punished for it, but, you know, there is a difference, right?"

"You're saying it's a question of intent," put in Linda.

"Yeah."

"Okay. Wayne in Garner, you're talking to the Crew. Wayne?"

"Hello? This guy knows what's about to happen, so if he doesn't try to avoid it, he's guilty, period. Like if you're driving on manual and somebody walks in front of your car -- if you don't turn the wheel or hit the brakes, it's just like murder. I don't see why the cops can't just stop this guy, and the hell with the Supreme Court and the ACLU and everyone who says you can't arrest people before they do anything. He's guilty, put him in jail."

"Thanks, Wayne. We've got time for one more. Ali in Durham, go ahead."

"Thank you Greg and Linda for taking my call. What you have to understand is this man cannot change anything so he cannot be blamed. When people from the future come back to our time they are not changing things because their visit is already part of their history. I have written a book which explains how --"

"Okay, thanks, Ali. Now let's hear from Bonnie with Triangle Traffic."

Jeremy thought about calling in himself, if only to tell them he hated being called Jerry. But he decided against it; they'd probably go on to something else after the commercial, so there was no sense in drawing attention to himself. He switched over to the public radio station and turned up the volume so that he'd have a chance of understanding the mumbly announcer reading the morning news.

"...death toll of approximately six hundred twenty during the next five years, according to the Center for Disease Control. Most of the victims will be elderly. Both the North Carolina Department of Health and the U.S. Public Health Service have been conducting vaccination programs since 2026, but to date only forty percent of the people in North Carolina and less than thirty percent in neighboring states have received inoculations. According to a spokesman for the state Department of Health, the low rates are due to public apathy, since individuals who know they are not going to die from the disease are reluctant to get the shots. However, the CDC has released future records indicating a surge in vaccinations after the release of the virus, so health authorities are making sure a large supply is on hand."

Jeremy himself had gotten the shots as soon as they became available; in his more Darwinian moods he sometimes thought HNE was a good way to weed out people too damned lazy to get a free injection. They were giving them out at the malls, for crying out loud! He usually felt that way after some future victim sent him hate mail.

The car pulled off the expressway at the proper exit, and Jeremy flipped it back onto manual control for the last three blocks. Getting into the parking lot was always tricky, and today there were likely to be some extra hazards.

The Viverta Laboratories building in Research Triangle Park had once been a big expensive showpiece structure, designed by an award-winning architect and full of features that looked really nifty in all the trade journals even though they made life hell for the tenants. The front of the building swept around in a dramatic crescent of mirrored glass, enclosing a pond with tall fountain jets. Lawns as smooth and obsessively tended as a golf course stretched down to the edge of the highway, and a line of live oaks brought in at hideous expense marked the edges of the lot. Of course, everyone who worked at Viverta parked on the vast asphalt griddle hidden behind the building, and came and went through the loading dock. The front doors behind the fountain were opened a total of six times during the entire history of the place.

Now the place was obsolete: all basic research was being farmed out to little scientific sweatshops in Eastern Europe and Latin America, where barely-literate techs and burned-out ABDs performed ground-breaking experiments by slavishly following instructions in the papers they themselves would write. The RTP site had been sold to a company in the mushrooming interstellar industry. The future people wanted knowledge of the universe and contact with alien civilizations, so they were willing to pay big bucks to get them launched as early as possible. Drug companies like Viverta no longer needed to spend a dime on developing new products, but simply manufactured futuretech medicines under license, sometimes paying royalties to their own corporate descendants.

The prize-winning building was slated for demolition, and the contractors had already torn up half of the parking lot while the cleanup crews closed down Viverta's labs and disposed of any biohazards. Normally there were only half a dozen cars in what remained of the lot, but today it was packed with news vans, police cars, and people on foot.

The cops had prudently put up sawhorses to keep the crowd away from the door. Demonstrators were on the left, spectators and media on the right. It was hard to tell which group was more excited. The demonstrators waved signs saying things like FUTURE HNE VICTIMS and STOP CALDER Now. One old crank with a densely-lettered sign reading "massmurdererCalderwillBURNat10000000degreesFOREVER" reached into his ratty overcoat when Jeremy came in sight, but the cops had already watched the video being recorded at that moment by the media people, and were ready to grab his gun before he could take aim.

Mr. Pettigrew met Jeremy at the loading dock. He had a serious clean fetish, which was perhaps understandable in someone who disposed of infectious material for a living. Pettigrew Associates had the contract to clean out the lab and make sure nothing dangerous was left before demolition, and Mr. Pettigrew had a team of thirty people on the job -- mostly ex-postdocs like Jeremy eager to turn their suddenly obsolete training into gainful employment. Today he was particularly obsessive, wearing a futuretech cleansuit over his polyester knit gym teacher shirt and beltless slacks.

"I've put you on cleaning out the water samples. There's nothing contagious there."

"So are you trying to keep me from releasing the virus, or is this just a way to cover your own tail?"

"I'd send you home if I could."

"Can't do that without cause. Future knowledge doesn't matter," said Jeremy. "Chronological discrimination. Now, if you give me a day off with pay, I promise I won't sue."

Pettigrew was too cheap to do that, and both of them knew it. "Why don't you just go home?"

"I thought about it, but --" he stopped, unsure of the reason himself. Finally he laughed. "I guess I didn't want to disappoint everyone." "Well, then I want you to do everything properly today. Full sterile procedure, full documentation, everything. And if you find anything strange, don't touch it. You're doing the Class I labs up on the third floor. Stay away from the others. I'm going to watch you all day."

"You can't stop it from happening, you know."

"I know, but it won't be my fault when it does."

They were using part of the old changing room for Viverta's clean-room techs. Jeremy hung up his new jacket, but left the tie on. He liked wearing grown-up clothes, and was quietly fascinated by things like neckties, cufflinks and suspenders. Back in grad school he had started dressing like a banker after noticing one day that everyone except the university president dressed in exactly the same outfit of jeans and T-shirts, as if some academic Taliban would stone them otherwise.

He put on his cleansuit. It was futuretech, of course -- no sense risking your health on primitive twenty-first century gear. The suit was as thin and filmy as plastic wrap, but it was proof against all pathogens that would ever be known. The hood and gloves automatically sealed themselves onto the suit, merging to form a single, seamless unit. A tiny shoulder pack filtered the air, giving him a pure mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor.

The day's work assignments were taped to the wall next to the door. Jeremy had rooms 315 through 319 today. Mr. Pettigrew was waiting outside, and the two of them went upstairs together in silence.

Viverta had been hit particularly hard by the arrival of futuretech medicine. One morning in 2024, about a week after the Geneva team got their second timegate up and running (following instructions sent back through the first timegate), a present came through from the deep future -- three dozen optical disks holding everything about medicine that would ever be known. The next day the doors at the Viverta labs were locked and the lights were off. They stayed that way for fourteen years while the world economy adjusted and investors stopped driving their BMWs off cliffs.

All of which meant the cleanup job was especially nasty, since some of the freezers had tissue samples or even whole fetal pigs in them. Fourteen years in a sealed freezer that wasn't running turned them into a horrible anaerobic soup, with a smell that nothing short of a futuretech cleansuit could keep out.

Happily for Jeremy, room 315 didn't have any liquid pigs to deal with. The refrigerators were full of water samples from rivers contaminated with waste from hog farms; the project running when the lab closed down had been to identify specific pathogens and devise ways to reliably sterilize the waste so that farmers didn't have to accidentally dump millions of gallons of pig sewage into the watershed every time their waste lagoons got full. (Nowadays people simply fed any kind of waste into a futuretech matter processor, which reduced everything to basic molecules and rearranged them to suit.)

According to the future histories, one of the water samples Jeremy was to dispose of contained a mutant airborne strain of swine encephalitis capable of infecting humans. With Mr. Pettigrew watching him, Jeremy pulled each tray of test tubes from the refrigerator, checked the faded label stickers against the company logs, then loaded them into the portable autoclave to be heat sterilized at 200 degrees Centigrade.

Having Pettigrew around was a real nuisance, Jeremy decided. Normally he could read a book or play games on his pad while one load was cooking, but with the boss watching he actually had to keep working. So he took out a second tray to begin checking labels. He slid it out of the refrigerator, turned, and ran smack into Pettigrew. The tray fell to the floor and several of the vials shattered.

"Damn!" Pettigrew backed away, brushing at the droplets on his suit.

"Will you relax already?" said Jeremy. "It's not going to happen till after lunch! Quit hovering!"

"Check it out anyway. Is it infectious?"

"I don't know! What did you think you were doing?"

"You looked like you were going to drop them!" Pettigrew kept backing up as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the mess. "What do the labels say?"

Jeremy squinted at the numbers on the stickers and compared them with the list on his pad. "It's okay. These are all control samples from Kerr Lake."

"You're sure? Could they be mislabeled?"

"Well, yes, I guess they could. You want to declare a biohazard and seal the place up? We'll have to stay in quarantine together."

"You're sure it doesn't happen this morning?"

"I read my own book! The accident's after lunch."

"Well, then, just autoclave the glass and wash down the floor with the antibiotic spray. Don't waste it -- just spray where it spilled. I'm going to change."

As soon as Pettigrew was out of the room, Jeremy got out the antibiotic spray and began lavishly squirting it all over the room. It was pricey futuretech stuff, and anything he could do to cost Pettigrew money was always a plus. He used up the whole bottle. The spray was essentially an instant immune system, full of nanomachines programmed to recognize and destroy a couple of million different varieties of harmful organisms.

As he worked a cheerful thought struck him. He'd always been clumsy, always dropping things and bumping into furniture. Today's little incident with the water samples was certainly not his first on the job. Maybe the virus spill really would be just an accident.

His phone chirped. The screen showed his mother's number. "Hi, Ma."

"Jeremy, are you at work?"

"Yes, Ma." She had that weepy note in her voice that he'd been hearing a lot lately.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Ma. Don't worry about me. Has anyone been bothering you today?"

"A man from the radio station called me this morning, and after that I turned off the phone. Did you get your shots?"

"Months ago. Don't worry."

"I got a copy of your book but I just couldn't bring myself to read it. I don't see how you can stand it, knowing what's going to happen."

"It bothers me too, Ma."

"What I don't understand is how all these people seem to think it's your fault. If they all know what's going to happen, why don't they do something, then?"

"Well, they are. Some of them, anyway. The health service is giving out the shots, the CDC has all the future info about how the virus spreads, and I think they're going to notify every victim directly. If it wasn't for people knowing about it in advance, I'm sure the virus would be a lot worse. It's just like a hurricane -- they can warn people and evacuate the coast, but there's always a few idiots who get killed."

"I guess I'm just too old to understand it. Is there anything I can do for you? Are they going to take you to jail afterwards, or something like that?"

"I know I'm going to be in quarantine for a few days; I gave Miguel my house key so he can feed the cats. And then I think the FBI or someone will have me in protective custody because of all the loonies. I'll keep in touch; don't worry. The trial won't be for a year or so."

She was starting to cry again. "It's just not fair! You were always such a good boy."

"I'll be okay, Ma. I have to go now, someone's coming. Everything will be all right. I love you. Bye."

He was unloading the broken glass from the autoclave when Simon came in, all suited up. "Pettigrew said to come up and help you. Today's your big day, right?"

"Right."

Simon got uncomfortably close and put an arm around Jeremy. "Ever think about fighting back?" he asked quietly.

"What?"

"Fighting back. Against railroading."

For a second Jeremy wondered if Simon was referring to some obscure labor dispute, and then he placed the phrase. "You're one of those Schrödinger Front guys, aren't you?"

"That's right. You know about us? That's good."

"I got a whole bunch of email from some Schrödinger people a while back, but I didn't really read most of it." He tried to ease away from Simon as politely as he could, but Simon was bigger and wasn't letting go.

"We're trying to preserve free will. Everyone knows what's going to happen, right? Only they don't. All they know is what future history says. History can be wrong."

"But, I mean, I'm going to write a book about all this. It really is going to happen to me."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You change your story, don't you?"

"Yeah. Twice, actually. At the trial and in my book I say it's an accident. Then, when I'm fifty, I say in an interview that it's all my fault and I'm responsible. But a few years after that I go back to blaming fate."

"That's good. The more uncertainty the better. Our goal in the Front is to change the way things happen and not tell anyone. Make all recorded history a lie. Jump the tracks. Then we'll be free."

Jeremy finally wriggled out of Simon's grip by spinning around and getting the autoclave between them. "You've been working here for three months just for this? You can't keep it from happening."

"I don't want to. I want to take your place."

"What? But you can't."

"Sure I can. Go wait in another room. Or sit here and keep me company. But I'll be the one to dump the sample."

"What on Earth will that accomplish?"

"You still don't see? It changes everything! If you do it, you're just riding the railroad. I'll be a free agent. History will be wrong."

"But what difference does it make? The virus still gets out, and people will still get sick. Just because you do it instead of me doesn't change anything."

"It means people can still choose."

"Look, Simon, if it's that important to you, go ahead. I don't mind taking a break." Privately, Jeremy thought Simon was completely cracked, but if a crazy man wanted to do his work for him, that was cool.

So for the next half hour Jeremy played Zeppelin Commando on his pad while Simon autoclaved tray after tray of samples. By eleven o'clock all of Room 315 was sterilized, and the two of them moved down the hall to 317. By eleven-thirty he was on the final level of his game, evading British fighters and flak over London, going for the big prize of capturing George V, when his phone chirped again.

He checked the display, expecting to see his mother's number again. But it wasn't any phone number he recognized. That was weird -- he'd been extremely careful about only giving out his pocket phone number to close friends and family. Had someone gotten greedy and passed it on to a reporter?

It peeped for the third time and Jeremy reluctantly hit the talk button. "Hello?"

"Hi, Jeremy!" It was a young woman's voice, and he needed a second to place it.

"Vera?" His expression changed from suspicion and irritation to that of a boy on Christmas morning who finds everything he asked for plus a puppy under the tree. "How've you been?"

"I'm okay. You want to get together? I'm right outside in the parking lot."

"Sure! I'm free right now. Um -- can you get around to the front of the building without being noticed? Over by the fountains?"

"I think so."

"Good. I'll let you in." He turned off the phone and looked over at Simon, who was studiously ignoring him. "Will you be okay here?"

"Of course! Go ahead. Have fun."

Even covered with a decade of dust the old lobby was grand and expensive-looking. The floors and walls were greenish-white travertine with burnished stainless steel fittings. The receptionist's desk was a stone slab on steel legs in the exact center of the big room. It reminded Jeremy of a morgue table.

Vera was waiting outside alone, so he unlocked the doors. As soon as they were open she flung herself at him, holding him and giving him a long hard kiss with plenty of tongue action.

"Wow! I'm glad to see you, too," he said when they finally came up for air.

"Did you miss me?"

"Sure. What happened to you? I called and called but kept getting a message about your phone not being available, and after a while I figured you didn't want to talk to me."

"My grandmother got sick and I had to go out to Oregon to help take care of her."

"Oregon? I thought you were from Greensboro."

"Oh, I am. But my grandmother lives in Oregon."

"She all right?"

"Yeah. It was some kind of heart thing, but she's okay now." She gave him another devouring kiss, and he breathed in the scent of her perfume.

"How long can you stay? We could have lunch, or something."

"I'm free all afternoon," she said, and gave him a squeeze. "As long as you want. I thought you might want to be with someone who loves you today."

"I just wish this was a better time. It's been pretty rough this past week, and I'm afraid it's just going to get worse after today. After the accident I'm going into quarantine, and I don't think they'll let me have visitors."

"Wanna sneak away somewhere right now?" she whispered in his ear.

For a moment Jeremy felt like a teenager again, realizing for the first time that a girl actually wanted to have sex with him. His mouth was dry and he could hear his heart beating. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he just kissed her again, savoring the way her body felt pressed against his. His hands slipped down her back to rest on her hips.

Jeremy didn't know how long he could resist the urge to start ripping off her clothes then and there. He disengaged himself and stepped back. "Well, you're looking great. Is that the same dress you wore at the Halloween party?" It was a little frock of futuretech cloth that hugged her figure like a coat of paint and swirled with slow hypnotic patterns of color that borrowed from the surroundings. Right now it was all pale green and gray, with occasional streaks of bright yellow from the sunlight on the lawn outside.

"You liked it so much I made sure to wear it again."

"Even your perfume is the same." His gaze moved down to her hands, and then he saw the smudgy little orange pumpkin on the back of her left wrist. "How long has it been?" he asked, keeping his voice casual.

"Eight months."

"No. How long has it been for you? A day? You didn't even have time to wash off the hand stamp from the party."

She tried to cover the pumpkin with her other hand. "I --"

"You left the next morning, didn't you? Right after I dropped you off at UNC. You went over to the gate and jumped straight to today."

She was silent for just a moment, then smiled at him. "Okay, yes. I traveled through time to see you again."

"When are you from? You're not my great-granddaughter or something, are you?"

"No, no," she laughed. "I'm not into grandfucking. I'm near-future; my parents are probably hooking up about now. I read your book and wanted to meet you."

"So you could brag about having fucked Jeremy Calder the day he spilled the virus? Do you guys have some kind of league? How many points am I worth?"

"No, it's not like that at all! You sounded like such a fascinating person that I wanted to know you."

"If I'm such a goddamned fascinating person why didn't you bother hanging around for the past eight months? You could get to know me really well in all that time."

"I couldn't stay."

"Bullshit. If you can afford to time-hop you could buy a house, or stay in a hotel for eight months. Hell, you could've stayed at my place for free!"

"You're right. I've been completely selfish. I'm sorry. Let me make it up to you." She reached for the unseal strip on the front of his suit.

"Stop that, dammit!" He backed away. Any feelings of arousal had long since been wiped away by anger and humiliation.

"Don't you want me?" She touched a hidden seam on her dress and opened it down to her navel. "I'll do anything you want. Anything at all."

"Go away. Go home. Go fuck some serial killer or seduce a future president. I'm not going to be stuffed and mounted on your wall."

He was halfway across the room when she spoke again, in a very different tone. "Jeremy? What you said about me living at your place -- is that true? Did you really like me that much?"

Jeremy stopped but didn't turn around. "Yes. I thought I did, but I guess I was wrong. Goodbye, Vera." He stabbed the elevator button and stood there silently. Behind him he heard the door to the outside swing shut. In the elevator he stood a little numbly, trying to think of what to do next. Screw it, he decided. I'm going home.

He opened the door to 317 and stuck his head in. "Simon?"

Simon was in the middle of unloading the autoclave. He gave a start at the sound and accidentally touched the still-hot inside wall with one arm. He jerked it back quickly, but there was an awful smell of melting plastic and even from the door Jeremy could see a big red mark on Simon's arm.

"Here, quick!" He shoved Simon over to the safety shower and pulled the handle, washing his arm with tepid water and peeling away bits of melted cleansuit. The burn was pretty bad, covering the whole top of Simon's right forearm from elbow to wrist.

"I think this one is more than a first-aid kit job, Simon. You're going to need an emergency room."

"No! Not yet. Let me finish the day."

"Look, it's already starting to blister. And besides, your cleansuit's wrecked anyway."

"But -- " Simon was almost in tears, and Jeremy didn't think it was just from the pain of the burn.

"There's no point in arguing. You can't work with a burn like that. Even Pettigrew would agree." He half-led, half-shoved Simon through the door and down the hall to the elevator. They found Mr. Pettigrew in his office next to the changing room. Pettigrew overruled Simon's protests and called an ambulance.

The sirens drove the crowd outside into a near panic. Both the demonstrators and the media pushed through the barricades when the paramedics hurried in, and the police were hard-pressed to keep them back.

"It's getting ugly out there," Pettigrew observed, looking through the little window in the back door while the medics squirted anaesthetic onto Simon's burn. "You think maybe you could go out and tell them nothing's happened?"

"Me? They'd tear me apart!"

"You're the only one they'd pay any attention to. I'll go ask the police lieutenant if he'd be willing to clear a space."

While Mr. Pettigrew and the policeman talked it over, Jeremy went to the changing room and shed his cleansuit. He put on his new coat and tie again, and made sure his hair was neatly combed. He was just finishing up when Pettigrew came back looking cheerful.

"I talked him into it," he said.

"I knew you would," said Jeremy. He had seen the tape.

The police lieutenant, whose nametag read BYNUM, wanted to keep Jeremy in the loading dock, so that it would be easy to hold the crowd back. But the TV crews complained that the contrast between the bright sunlight out in the parking lot and the shadowed loading dock made it like shooting into a cave. There was some more arguing, with Mr. Pettigrew, Lieutenant Bynum, and a couple of the TV cameramen gathered in a little knot at the bottom of the steps while Jeremy sat on top of a biohazard container in the loading dock and tried to keep his suit clean.

"Okay," said Pettigrew. "I think we've got a plan here. The police are going to set up a line down at the end of the building, between the corner and that bulldozer. The light angle's good there for the TV people, and when they're all ready then you come out of the fire exit on that end. Sound good?"

"It's fine." Jeremy had to smile at Pettigrew's sudden transformation into a stage manager.

He took up his position at the fire exit with Pettigrew and Lieutenant Bynum while the media people got ready, then the three of them opened the door and stepped out. After the air-conditioned chill of the building and the ultra-pure air of his cleansuit, the atmosphere in the parking lot was like soup. He had to pick his way carefully from the fire door to the little roped-off area, because that end of the parking lot was liberally coated with red mud from the demolition equipment.

Some of the protestors who had accumulated on the fringes of the press conference started moving to intercept him. Lieutenant Bynum saw what was happening and muttered into his radio microphone. "Get back!" he said to Jeremy and Pettigrew, then advanced on the protestors with his arms extended in a traffic-stopping gesture.

Mr. Pettigrew turned and broke into a trot, heading for the fire door. Jeremy followed. He tried to keep from getting his good shoes all muddy, but the broken edge of the parking lot had few clean places to step. He tried to hop over a puddle, slipped, and landed sitting down in orange mud.

Jeremy got up and looked around. The cops had halted the demonstrators, and Pettigrew was already inside. He looked down. His suit was a total loss; the pants were soaked and the jacket was spattered with Carolina clay. Even his tie had mud on it. Trying to keep a little dignity, Jeremy squelched to the fire door.

"You okay?" Pettigrew pulled the door shut behind him. "I thought those crazy people were going to attack us or something."

"The cops headed them off. I fell in a puddle."

"You sure are a mess. Can't go on TV looking like that. Got any clean clothes?"

"Not here."

"I'll see what I can find for you. You can wash up in one of the empty labs."

So Jeremy peeled off his muddy suit and had an improvised bath under the safety shower in Room 160. When he finished drying himself off with paper towels, Pettigrew tapped at the door.

"Here. They're Antonio's, but he said you could borrow them." He handed Jeremy a bundle of folded clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of khakis, just like in the pictures.

"Isn't there anything else?" Jeremy asked, trying not to sound desperate.

"This is all I could find. The only other person with spare clothes is Diana. Come on, the reporters are waiting."

Moving very slowly, as if underwater, Jeremy started to put on the clothes...the awful clothes he remembered seeing in the videos from the future. The T-shirt said NICE PEOPLE SWALLOW on it in big letters.

It hit him then. There was no avoiding it. He was riding Simon's railroad now, strapped in and hurtling along. Until he put on the T-shirt, he had somehow hoped it might come out differently. But now it was plain: Fate wasn't even going to let him pick his clothes.

There was a solid line of cops from the fire door to the press area when he went out again, but Jeremy barely noticed. He got through the press conference by dully repeating the answers he remembered from watching the tapes. He started out by assuring everyone that the spill hadn't happened yet, urged everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible, and expressed sympathy for all the future victims of the virus and their families.

When the cameras finally were switched off and the crowd started to disperse, Jeremy let Pettigrew and Lieutenant Bynum lead him back inside.

"You look awful," Pettigrew told him when they got back inside. "You want to go home?"

"No. There's no point in asking, is there? We know I won't."

"Well, you can if you want to. Take the afternoon off."

"If I say yes my car won't start or something. I can't afford some big garage bill."

Pettigrew followed him to the changing room and watched Jeremy put on his cleansuit, but didn't say anything more.

The crew sent out an order for lunch to the Jamaican place, and the delivery guy managed to fight his way through the crowd with their jerk chicken sandwiches and meat pies. For once Jeremy didn't join the others in the cafeteria, but ate his lunch standing up in the ultra-posh executive meeting room on the fifth floor. There was no furniture there anymore, but it had a great view across the Research Triangle Park toward Raleigh.

He wished he was one of the deep-future people. From everything he'd heard, this kind of thing didn't bother them. They got a complete set of memories the day they were born, lasting until the end of time. They switched bodies and traded memories as easily as clothing, jumping around through their own and other people's lives as nothing but disembodied viewpoints, sometimes crowding together a dozen at a time in one head for a particularly interesting experience, and skimming through unpleasant patches on autopilot. Their lives were like books, and they could skip ahead to the good parts.

After lunch he finished up the work Simon had left in 317 and moved on to 319. The fridge in 319 was full of groundwater samples taken at various depths in hog-farming areas. There were only three racks of vials, and Jeremy was able to destroy the first one without any trouble, logging the specimen numbers and making sure the autoclave was working properly.

By the time he finished the second rack, Jeremy was almost worried. There was only one rack of vials left, and so far he hadn't broken or spilled anything. He carefully slid the third rack of samples out of the refrigerator and carried it over to the autoclave. He logged the specimen numbers and switched the machine on. It started up without a hitch. Instead of reading or playing a game, he stood over the autoclave while it ran through the entire twenty-minute cycle.

When the timer peeped, Jeremy felt a thrilling mix of exhilaration and fear. That was the last of the samples. He was done! Somehow he had dodged the bullet! He pulled out the tray and emptied it triumphantly into the waste bin. All sterile and clean. Whistling happily he went back to the fridge for the final check.

His good mood lasted only two seconds more, for on the bottom of the refrigerator Jeremy could see a lonely little vial. He had already picked it up when he realized what it must be. The vial was unlabeled. On the fridge floor he saw a little square of yellowed paper, with some numbers scrawled on it in green pen. This was it. HNE-2038. All he had to do was put it in the autoclave and cook the little bastards to death.

The floor between him and the autoclave looked suddenly full of traps --the sloppy coil of the extension cord, a peeled-up patch of tile, a dropped pencil. Something was going to make him trip or stumble.

His cleansuit gloves were already damp and slippery with condensed steam after loading and unloading the autoclave. He took one unsteady step -- it was almost as if he'd forgotten how to walk. Was his hand trembling?

Suddenly it all seemed so unfair. He'd been careful. He'd done everything properly. Now fate, or whatever it was, was going to make him fall down and break the vial no matter how hard he tried to avoid it.

"The hell with it." Jeremy threw the sample across the room as hard as he could. It bounced on the countertop, hit the steel rim of a sink, and shattered. Droplets scattered everywhere.

"You see?" he shouted at nobody in particular. "I did that! You didn't make me. I did it on purpose." He waited for a moment, as if expecting an answer. Then he took a deep breath and flipped on his phone.

"Mr. Pettigrew?" Jeremy's voice was calm again. "We have a biohazard emergency in room 319. I just broke the vial." He switched it off and put it back in his pocket. Then he sat down and waited. Now it was somebody else's problem.