Deep Storm by Lincoln Child Read Free Book Online Page B

disease.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he went on more slowly. “I guess I don’t understand why, exactly, you people asked for me.”
    â€œHoward Asher asked for you,” Bishop said. And for the first time, she smiled. A brief silence fell over the conference room.
    â€œHave you been able to isolate any commonalities?” Crane asked. “Do the patients all work on the same level or in the same general area of the Facility?”
    Bishop shook her head. “We’ve received patients from most of the decks and from all general work areas.”
    â€œSo there’s no common vector. And no common complaint. It all seems like coincidence to me. Just how many patients, total, have you received?”
    â€œRoger and I figured that out while we were waiting for you.” Bishop took a sheet of paper from her lab coat pocket and glanced at it. “The Facility has been operational almost five months. On average, between mental health services and medical, we see perhaps fifteen patients a week. In the past, nothing worse than a case of strep. But since this thing started, we’ve seen one hundred and three.”
    Crane was stunned. “One hundred and three? My God, that’s—”
    â€œA quarter of the population, Dr. Crane. And far,
far
too large a number to be coincidence.”
    And she stuffed the paper back into her pocket with something almost like triumph.

7
    Crane stood in the silence of his quarters on deck 10, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. The room was small, and—like the rest of the Facility—softly lit. There was a narrow bed, two chairs, a walk-in dressing alcove, and a desk with a terminal that was linked to the Facility’s central network. Beside the desk, a comm unit set into the wall allowed Crane to dial the Medical suite, reserve a lane at the bowling alley, even order a pizza delivery from Times Square. Save for a large flat-panel television, the light-blue walls were devoid of prints or decoration.
    There were two doors of the same strange platinum-hued metal he’d seen elsewhere, but here they were tastefully edged in blond wood. One led to the outside corridor, the other to the bath he shared with Roger Corbett. The mental health officer had offered to take him to lunch at Top, the prosaically named mess on deck 11. Crane said he’d meet him there. He wanted a few minutes alone first.
    A sealed folder lay on the desk, his name and a bar code imprinted along one edge. Crane picked up the folder, broke the seal with a fingernail, and dumped the contents onto the desk. Out fell a bulky name tag with a magnetic stripe and pocket clip; another copy of
Code of Classified Naval Conduct
; a two-page bibliography of books on Atlantis, all available in the library or for download to his terminal; and an envelope that contained a list of temporary passwords for the general and medical computer networks.
    He clipped the ID to his pocket. Then he sat down at the desk and stared a moment at the blank screen. At last, with a sigh, he booted up the terminal and logged on with his temporary password, pausing to massage the spot on his upper arm where the radio tag had been inserted a few minutes earlier. Opening the text editor, he began to type.

    Non-specific symptomology:
    physiological—& neurological??—deficits
    & psychological—detachment / dissociation
    Check clinical presentations
    Look for index case?
    Atmospheric / environmental?
    Poisoning: systemic or general?
    Preexisting condition(s)?

    He pushed back from the desk and glanced at the screen.
Caisson disease? Nitrogen narcosis?
he’d asked Asher from the Storm King oil platform.
More the former than the latter,
had been the reply. Crane was only now beginning to understand just how evasive that answer had been. In fact, Dr. Asher—as affable and open as he appeared to be—had so far told him next to nothing.
    This was annoying, maybe even a little alarming. But in