Saturday it was Martin Anderson's turn to see to the rhesus monkeys. A rather nasty task to draw a man out of his apartment on a weekend, but this particular day found Martin uncharacteristically enthused. For he believed he had intuited Dr. Lundstrom's computer password. It had come to him on the public bus, as these things often did. He'd been seated behind a transient who stank of flat beer and feces. For some reason, Martin thought of Lundstrom -- full of shit, and full of himself. Ego like some Hollywood asshole with an Oscar in hand, thought Martin, and then he knew.

    His position at the lab was precarious. As senior tech, he should have held the title of lead. That honor, however, had gone to a suck-ass named Blake Etheridge, a walking mannequin who favored polo shirts and Dockers. Both Martin and Theresa Gonzales had been passed over in favor of an idiot who actually caddied for the boss. Martin had payback in mind. If he could access the Doctor's password-protected files, perhaps he could print out some material that GenePath had classified as sensitive. And maybe some of that material would find its way into the print media. Martin knew that they were working on some kind of weapons technology; he'd seen an invoice from the Pentagon among Lundstrom's papers. Once revealed, such information could be very damaging to GenePath, purportedly a medical research corporation. Martin would likely lose his job, but he was on probation for attendance and close to being fired anyway. And there were plenty of other underpaid lab tech positions in Los Angeles. Plus, he might get a fee for doing an interview or two. He entered the lab's outer room with a smile on his thin lips and an ebullience in his step.

   Al Dutcher, the grizzled security guard, looked up from his metal desk. "You're looking chipper this morning," he told Martin. "You get some last night?"

   "Oh, you betcha," Martin lied. He hadn't realized his exuberance would be so obvious.

    You young guys," said Al. At fifty-five, he was stuck in a six day a week security job with no retirement in sight. He wore bottle-glass bifocals and walked with a limp. Martin figured the guy would be better off dead. Los Angeles was far too crowded as it was.

   Martin believed that most older people were extraneous. They had done with reproduction and the raising of offspring. Now they hung on, kept alive by medication, squandering resources, choking the freeways, and generally getting in the way. Darwin must spin in his crypt, Martin thought. The best thing that could happen to the human race would be a massive die-back.

   "You gonna feed the monkeys?" Al asked.

   Martin nodded at the poor old fool. He walked into the suit room and shrugged off his street clothes. After a quick body shower under the water jets he pulled on some fresh green scrubs. Then he grabbed one of the hanging plastic suits he always thought of as space suits, and he slid into it from the back. He closed it up and walked through the Lysol shower room, checking the chemical tanks on the way through. Finally he entered the inner lab and hooked an overhead air hose to the helmet section of his suit. Cool air whooshed into the suit.

   He walked over to the wire rhesus cages along the left wall, and he checked the water bottles. A couple of them had to be filled. Also, he topped off all of the food dispensers, so the animals would have enough to last until Monday. One of the test monkeys was flopping and twitching on the floor of its cage; it looked as though it had lost control of its limbs. Another test monkey shrieked. It sat in the back of its cage, shaking its head violently. When it saw Martin, it screamed.

   "Shut up," Martin yelled, smacking at the cage door with a clenched fist.

   The monkey lunged forward and bit Martin's middle knuckle. He looked at the glove of his suit and saw a puncture hole and a spot of blood.

   "Shit," he said. And to the monkey, "you fucker." He got a roll of gauze from the meds bench and rolled some around the punctured glove. He was supposed to report such an incident immediately, but he had other things on his mind.

   He sat down in front of the monitor at Dr. Lundstrom's work station and began to enter commands. Suddenly, he had an uncontrollable itching on his arms. He stopped to rub at the suit. The itch was persistent, and he had to keep rubbing at it for several minutes. He hated how that sometimes happened just when you'd got suited up. It was the devil to scratch with the thing on.

   Lundstrom's computer wanted a password. Martin smiled. He entered "Nobel" and clicked on the OK bar. Password accepted, the program told him. He had a choice of several files -- GOVT AUTHORIZATION, PATHOGEN CONCEPT, NOTES, DAILY RECORDS. He clicked on the concept file and read:
     "Create a pathogen that is disruptive to higher reasoning faculties. Start with ergot fungus and mutate it to a bacteria-like microorganism for ease of transmission."

   Martin knew that LSD was a derivative of ergot. It appeared that the team was working on some kind of hallucinogenic disease that could be used as a military weapon. He went back to the file titles and clicked the mouse on NOTES:
   "Test subjects show a pattern of symptoms almost at the moment of exposure. Initially, the subjects experience intense itching and scratch at themselves for long periods. These episodes are soon followed by sporadic hallucinating. Some of the hallucinogenic states produce psychotic behavior. The itching seems to indicate poor circulation, as, eventually, necrosis of the limbs sets in. The debilitation is permanent and finally fatal. The pathogen can be spread by any bodily fluid: blood, urine, semen, and even saliva. The infection rate is >95%."

   Martin looked at his wounded hand. Tears welled in his eyes, and his vision blurred. I'm going to kill that fucking monkey, he thought. We're going down together. I'll put sulfuric acid in his Goddamn water bottle. A poem he'd heard at the college lab popped into his thoughts:
   "Little Johnny had a thirst
   Now Johnny is no more
   For what he thought was H2O
   Was H2SO4"
   The latter being sulfuric acid.

   Martin heard the Lysol shower hissing. Someone was coming in. He turned off the computer. No time to properly exit the program. The door opened, and Blake Etheridge entered, suited and grabbing for an overhead air hose.

   "How's it going, Marty?" he said. Martin had told him not to call him that.

   "I wouldn't have come in today," said Martin. "If I'd known you were."

   "I didn't plan it," said Blake. "But Dr. Lundstrom asked me to fetch some papers from his desk. He wants to show them to someone at the country club.

   Ass kisser, thought Martin.

   "Join me for a cup of coffee with Al?" Blake asked.

   Martin shook his head but heard himself saying yes. He had a new idea that was better than leaking secrets. "Meet you in the front room," he told Blake. He hid his bandaged hand and went back to the Lysol shower. After putting on his street clothing, Martin went from the suit room to the outer office, where Al sat with his feet up on the desk. He ignored the two security monitors next to his leather shoes.

   "Got some coffee?" Martin asked

   "I haven't made it yet," said Al, pulling his feet off the desk.

   "Don't get up," said Martin, waving him back. "I'll get it." He took the coffee pot off the credenza and filled it with water from the tap in the suit room. He shook out some grounds into the filter cup and poured the water into the top of the brewing machine. "These mugs clean?" he asked, holding up a couple with his fingers looped through the handles.

   "Sure," said Al.

   "Good, because you don't know what kind of diseases..." Martin turned his back to Al. He set the mugs on the credenza and held his wounded hand over one. He squeezed the afflicted knuckle, and blood dripped into the mug. Then he did the other mug, and hoped the pathogen would survive the hot liquid. Just to make sure, he rubbed a little blood around the rim of each mug before filling them with the fresh coffee.

   Blake came out of the suit room. Martin handed him a mug and set the other one in front of Al.

   Then he poured one for himself.

   "You seen Theresa?" Blake asked Martin.

   "Why would I?" Martin answered.

   Blake looked at Al. They both grinned. "She gave you her phone number, didn't she?"

   "Oh, I get it," said Martin, watching as Al took a sip of coffee. "This is a conspiracy."

   They all laughed. Actually, Theresa had asked him to call her. She was obviously attracted to him, but he hadn't been interested. She was a bit on the large side, and he preferred petite women, not that he had one in his life. It wasn't like she weighed a ton or anything, he thought.

   "I think she's a nice girl," said Al. "I mean, it's not like she's going to give you cooties."

   Blake laughed, and Martin had an idea. "You know," he said. "I think I'm going to call her tonight."

   "Well, I gotta go," said Blake. "The master awaits." He held up a stack of papers he had.

   Don't wear out the knees of your pants, Martin thought.

   "See you," said Al. He scratched at his thigh as though troubled by itching.

   "I guess I'm out of here, too," said Martin.

   "Then I'll also see you later," said Al.

   "Perhaps," said Martin, and he turned and walked out through the front door. He knew that Al would be watching him with a puzzled look on his face. The poor, worn out old man, thought Martin. And Blake, the sucker. We're all going down together.

   He itched like hell during the bus ride home. He scratched at his legs, his neck, and his arms. The bus lumbered along like a ship. It swung wide on corners, rocking Martin into a kind of seasickness. He felt queasy, and everything seemed to be floating somehow. He wanted to be somewhere else. Fear flashed over him with the late sunlight slanting through the bus windows. He felt as though made of some strange liquid, unstable and subject to tidal forces.

   At one point during the bus ride, Martin looked down at his arm and saw the flesh crawling and rippling. The tiny hairs on his forearm seemed to be animated. He looked closer, and it was as if his eyes had become telescopic, so small was the visible detail. He could see each individual pore. In each pore he could see an almost microscopic insect, head protruding from his skin, wriggling. The insects looked up at him and snapped their tiny mandibles.

   Martin shuddered and looked away from his arm. A middle-aged woman clutching a shopping bag was watching him. She seemed disturbed by his presence, as if she thought he was crazy.

   Her face was a porcelain doll face with staring blue eyes. The lidless eyes didn't blink as they stared, and he had to look away. If he looked at any one thing for too long, it would change. Everything was melting. So he just kept looking around, this way and that, until the bus pulled up at his stop.

   He jumped out of the bus and hit the sidewalk with a jolt. He watched his feet as he walked, and it seemed they were miles below him, moving almost of their own accord. There were pieces of newsprint and soft drink cups everywhere on the sidewalk and in the gutters. The sky was far too bright, and people were walking around with dopey baby heads on them. The day felt like a bubble that had expanded full to bursting. Martin ran to his apartment, taking the outside staircase two steps at a time, unlocking and pushing through his front door as quickly as possible.

   The hallucinations subsided once he was inside. He went to his fridge and got some orange juice. After a glass of the sour liquid he felt much better, so he flopped on the couch and thumbed the remote control. The channel ten news had a piece about the local country club. It seemed a young man had had a psychotic episode on the grounds. Martin leaned forward and turned up the volume just as a microphone was shoved up to Dr. Lundstrom's face.

   "I don't know what happened," Lundstrom whined. "Etheridge went crazy and bit my arm." He held up his arm to show the bloodstained bandage.

   Martin laughed as the interview concluded. Everything was finally going his way. All together, he thought, we are all together. He decided he could use some diversion; he would call Theresa. She would come over, and they'd have some small talk, maybe a few laughs. She would be wearing something flattering, and her makeup would be judiciously applied. That was how it would go, Martin told himself. He would notice that she was really kind of pretty, and they would enjoy a bottle of white wine together. What kind of music do you have, she would ask. Martin would put something sweet in the disc player, and they would look into each other's eyes. Then, without discussing it, they'd walk together to the bedroom. There they would make love, and Theresa would call out his name over and over. He hadn't planned the part where he turned her over on her belly and slapped her open handed across the back of her head, calling her a fucking whore, and he was surprised when she cried but kept moving under him.

   Afterward he stood, head tilted slightly downward so he could see the whites under his irises, in front of the bathroom mirror. At the top of his forehead, right in the middle, was a point where his short hair grew down like a little v. His mother had called it his widow's peak. He watched as a thin line dropped down from the peak. The line bisected his forehead and ran down the bridge of his nose. From there the line continued, intersecting with his narrow lips, and the down the middle of his chin.

   Very slowly the line became a crack, and his face began to open along the vertical fissure. As the sides of his face parted, he could see into his head. There were drops of amber oil clinging to the sides of the hollow cavity within. Some of the drops stretched and reached from top to bottom like long sticky strands of a spider web. The inside resembled a scooped out squash.

   As the sides of his face pulled farther apart, his eyeballs bulged and goggled to see around the opening to his reflection in the mirror. His ears turned back like a feral cat's, listening to a noise from the bedroom. Scritch, scritch, went the noise.

   "I itch," he heard Theresa say from the bed.

   The left half of his face smiled, and the right half smiled. "All together now," said the sides of his mouth.