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just that movement was enough to silence him—at least for now.
    Richard Daxus, the Vice-Cardinal, was only forty-eight, but he had made a good name and position for himself. He carried himself well, dressed well, exuded the confidence of a wealthy and successful executive. He was an out-of-the-ashes kind of man who’d parlayed his humble beginnings as a young veterinarian first into marketing, then marketing medicine, then eventually into medical management. It had been a long highway—or at least it had seemed like it at the time—from obtaining his animal husbandry license to Chief of Staff at Chicago’s foremost teaching hospital and then, finally, to his position here at the ArchMinistry, but he’d made it.
    Daxus brought up his other hand and held it next to the first; his fingers wavered in the air for only a moment before a pair of attendants, themselves wearing protective gear, hurried out of the sliding glass and metal entrance and quickly stripped off the pair of rings Daxus had slipped over the surgical gloves covering his skin. The first set of attendants were followed by a second pair whose job it was to peel away the gloves themselves and reveal the second set of gloves beneath, these hermetically sealed to the cuff of his suit in the same fashion as his shoes. With their hands contaminated by the dirty gloves, the four attendants stepped back respectfully as the third and final pair arrived with a pair of fresh gloves and snapped these over the Vice-Cardinal’s already surgically gloved hands. In this day and age, layers did more than just keep a person warm.
    It took another five minutes to get through the pre-sanitization and pre-identification areas, but finally the two men were walking rapidly down the hallway that led to Daxus’s office deep in the heart of the building. Actually, walking didn’t quite cover it—Daxus was striding, and the Chief of Staff was struggling to keep his pudgy body from falling more than three steps behind. Daxus had neither patience nor sympathy for the other man; he had a public image to maintain and it was necessary that he look good and radiate health. Everything in his daily life was engineered to ensure that he did just that; he needed to look sleek and fashionable and so he had his hair done at the same salon that handled the Mayor’s family and visiting Washington dignitaries. He was a model for the people, the embodiment of everything that American life should be, of everything
they
wanted to be.
    His Chief of Staff was outright puffing now, and his face was turning purple at the edges from exertion. That would teach him to overindulge in the bagels, lox, and cream cheese in the mornings. From the looks of the gut around his middle, the man had probably been following his daily breakfasts with a coffee and double Danish. “Doctor, sir—” The man coughed, then managed to make his legs move faster so he could at least be at Daxus’s side. “What I’m trying to say is that these circumstances leave us with no choice but to destroy all standing blood supplies.” He paused and Daxus wasn’t sure if it was for effect or just because it was a little amazing that the situation had actually come to this. “And anyone who may have been transfused or come in contact with it.”
    Daxus stopped in midstride and turned to stare at his Chief of Staff. He sucked in his breath, then let it out. His mind tried to do the calculation but the numbers didn’t want to display in his brain. All he came up with was a mental image of blackness with way too many zeros added. “So how many deaths are we looking at?” he finally asked.
    The plump man’s mouth thinned out as he ground his teeth. The muscles in his jaw ticked. “We don’t have a final number yet,” he admitted. “In the thousands . . . at least.”
    Daxus shook his head in disgust, then pulled off the heavy ring he always wore on the outside of his gloves. It was a black and yellow diamond rendition of the