Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) (20 page)

“I’ve been in a RESCO,” I say. “I know the women in there aren’t all volunteers. How can you defend that?”

“It’s a matter of national survival,” she says, almost as if relieved to have something to talk about besides Alexander. “Our population dropped to dangerously low levels and the situation was further complicated by the teratogenic effects of the insecticides used against the locusts. Too many people’s DNA was corrupted, too many women were unable to carry a child to term. You know all this.” She sounds like a proctor disappointed by a student’s inability to remember an easy lesson. “We had no choice. We needed to ensure that the babies being carried in the few available wombs had the abilities necessary to save Amerada. Don’t you see that? ‘Average’ wouldn’t do, never mind below average. Imagine the drain on our very limited resources, our already strained food production facilities, if citizens went on having babies with health issues, learning difficulties, sub-par IQs? Who would take care of them?

“We tried surrogacy on a strictly voluntary basis first—of course we did! But it wasn’t enough. Women were sometimes willing to carry one geneborn child, but not two or three. And too many of them wanted to keep and raise the baby they bore. It wasn’t viable. More people were still dying than being born. We were headed for national extinction. We—the first Pragmatists—decided that individual rights had to give way in time of national emergency. There’s precedent for that. Think of the Patriot Act in the early part of the century, the quarantines during the pandemic, and the like. The RESCOs are a natural extension of that, nothing more. They’re a temporary, but necessary, solution.”

“Alexander clearly didn’t think so.” I’m not sure what I think.

Sadness weighs her face down, dragging at the corners of her mouth. “Some of the others began to see him as a threat. I was viewed with suspicion, too, because of my association with him.”

“Is that why you left him?”

“I didn’t leave,” she says with an intensity that would bore through granite. The aide knocks on the partition separating us, clearly worried, and Minister Alden makes a calming motion. “I would never have left him,” she says. “Never. He left. He left me. I know it was both to allow me to play a role in the new government and to keep himself safe, but he should have discussed it with me, not just disappeared. I was back from a six month temporary assignment less than a week, when I found a note one morning. He was gone. With our son.”

It dawns on me that Idris is her son. I visualize his face, trying to see any similarities.  Around the eyes, maybe, now that I’m thinking about it. Something in the way the upper eyelids slope ever so slightly down at the corners. Should I mention him?

“I searched for them, using all the assets at my disposal. I got sporadic reports of sightings, but nothing definitive.” She squares her shoulders. “I went on with my life. I went on with our work. I’ve made a difference, and I don’t know why the hell I’m telling you all this.” Her expression sours.

“Because I know him and I can see why you loved him so much.” I feel sorry for her and I admire her. She’s given up everything to serve Amerada.

“You are wise beyond your years, J—Ealy,” she says.  Tell me how—No, don’t.” Holding a hand in front of her face, she shields herself. “He’s chosen his path and I’ve chosen mine, and our paths won’t cross again. Let’s not ever speak of this. In fact, forget this conversation ever happened.”

She delivers the last sentence crisply; it’s an order. She’s recovered herself and, I can tell, is regretting revealing so much. Part of me wants to tell her where he is, facilitate a reunion, but my pragmatic side insists there’s too much water under the bridge and that I can’t endanger him and Idris by telling her about the
Belle
. Idris would kill me, even if she is his mother.

Minister Alden lowers the partition and motions to the aide who casts me a viperous look as she takes my place beside the minister. I ignore her and resettle opposite them. Maybe I can get word to Alexander that she still pines for him, and let him take the initiative?

I’m pondering this when the ACV suddenly rocks. My head snaps forward. What—? Four single-seat ACVs mounted with weapons swarm around our vehicle. As I duck, I catch sight of a swathe of red hair streaming from beneath one attacker’s helmet. The hairs on my arms prickle up. Rhedyn? Surely not.

The driver’s voice comes through the intercom, tinny and terse. “We’re under attack, ma’am. I’m taking evasive maneuvers. Heads down.”

I raise my head long enough to see our outriders flash by on their ACVs. Bullets pepper the polyglass. We serpentine and pick up speed. A larger caliber weapon explodes nearby, jolting us sideways. The aide squeals and curls into a ball on the floor, hands over her head. Minister Alden maintains her calm, straightening after a few munitions-free seconds to peer out the rear window.

“The lieutenant has them on the run,” she announces, smoothing her tunic over her thighs. “Sit up and stop moaning, Eunice,” she tells the aide.

The woman slumps on the seat, still keeping a low profile. “Who do you think they were, ma’am?”

“Outlaws or opposition. If the lieutenant and his men capture them, we may discover whether it was a random attack or if I was targeted. The selection’s only weeks away. It would be convenient for some people if I were no longer in the running for the premiership.” Her lips thin to the width of a knife’s edge. “Oh, yes, Ealy,” she says, correctly interpreting my appalled look. “There are factions who would stoop to assassination to control the premiership. Your old friend Oliver Fonner . . . well, I don’t know that he would kill me, but he’s been aiming for the top job since we were in our twenties. And there are plenty of people who feel geneborns are the only ones qualified to hold any ministerial level office or above now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dr. Usher was of their number. Although, he’d probably get my job if I were elevated, so I don’t suspect him personally. Politics is a dirty business. Always has been, always will be.”

I make mental notes, thinking this is just the kind of political intelligence Idris wants.

We continue on without further incident, taking an alternate route to the MSFP. My thoughts are dark. All in all, I hope the attackers were outlaws taking potshots at a random government ACV. My next choice would be opposition members. As awful as it is to think that someone might have tried to assassinate Minister Alden so she won’t be premier, it’s worse for me to think that it might have been a Defiance attack, that Idris might have—unknowingly—targeted his mother for death. Of course, I don’t know for sure that it was Rhedyn I saw. Red hair is not all
that
uncommon.

I could find a way to tell Idris . . . but, no. Alexander knows. If he wanted Idris to know, he wouldn’t have told him his mother was dead. I can’t begin to fathom his motivation for that. Trying to figure it out, I almost trip getting out of the ACV, bumping into the minister. I redden and mumble my apologies, thanking her profusely for inviting me, and then jog toward the lab, putting the dome, Minister Alden’s revelations, and the attack out of my mind. The locusts await.

Chapter Twenty Five

Torina is still alone in the lab when I arrive. She’s hunched over a microscope, but looks up and smiles when I enter.

“Where’s Dr. Usher?” I ask. It’s a relief to have him gone, but I feel safer when I know where he is, like I would feel safer knowing a cobra’s whereabouts if there were one around.

“Traveling for two days,” she says, her smile suggesting she’s as happy as I am at his absence. “Not sure where. He might’ve gone up to see his mother—he does that a couple of times a year. I’m in charge while he’s away. Was there something you needed him for?”

Shaking my head, I stop by my work station briefly and then let myself into the locust room. I realize I’ve crossed my fingers, and I untwine them. Going immediately to the cage with the genetically manipulated batch of locusts, I stand in front of it, eyes closed for a moment.
Show me no pointy abdomens, no ovipositors.
The egg-laying organ at the end of the females’ abdomens develops jaws she uses to dig a hole in dirt and lay eggs. It’s a strange organ, a cross between a digging apparatus and an egg delivery tube, unique to grasshopper species, although some bees and wasps have ovipositors that can slice into a tree trunk or host to lay eggs. Our viral time-bomb is attached to the development of that organ. Instead of completing its ovipositor development, every female should just die instead, from an autoimmune attack on its own DNA.

Let me see rounded abdomens only. No jaws. No points. I open my eyes. It takes a moment for my brain to process what I’m seeing. Half of the population dead, the ends of their abdomens dark, stunted nubs. And of the live ones, no pointy abdomens. I check the next, and the next. No egg-laying jaws. I tease each one apart from its neighbor, bracing for the telltale sharp protrusions. But there are none.
It works
. The solution to eradication of the entire locust population—we’ve found it. This is a very small sample, and it will take years to spread the virus to every last enclave of locusts in Amerada, but we can start. There’s hope. I realize I’m shaking and grip the table to steady my hands. The table is solid under my hands, real. This is
real
. A wave of dizziness makes me sway, but then fierce exultation rises in me, making my chest swell so much it hurts. We did it. It’s within the realm of possibility to talk about eradicating locusts worldwide.

Reaching into the enclosure to pick up a dead locust, I burst out of the locust lab, babbling about the experiment’s success. Torina gives me an astonished look and motions for me to calm down. “Slowly,” she directs. “Coherently.”

I hear echoes of Dr. Ronan in her request and take a deep breath. Succinctly and coherently, but with increasing speed, I tell her. I display the dead locust on my palm.

Her first reaction is disbelief. “Are you sure? One dead locust isn’t proof of concept.”

I drag her into the locust lab and let her examine the evidence for herself. Her skepticism turns to amazement. “Ealy, you did it.”

“
We
did it. I built on the work you’d already done, and some ideas I’d discussed with Dr. Ronan at the Kube, and it was Dr. Allaway in Australia who pointed me in the right direction, finally. We all did it.”

“You realize Dr. Usher will say he did it?” Torina says dryly.

I shrug. “Let him. I don’t care.”

She eyes me curiously. “You’re an odd one, you know that?”

“Why? Because I don’t care who gets the credit?” I laugh. “We’re on the verge of being locust-free . . . Do you realize what that means? We can farm outside again, without domes. We can hugely—vastly—increase the acreage being cultivated. We can feed everyone, Torina! Everyone. Better yet, people can feed themselves. We can try new crops and return to raising livestock. We can—” The amazing implications are too much for me and I stutter to silence.

“We can celebrate,” Torina says with a jubilant smile, finally catching my mood.

Before I can stop her, she’s bustling out of the lab. I’m not sure where she’s going, but she returns fifteen minutes later, trailed by half the scientists and technicians on our floor. They’re chattering and smiling and carrying cups and beakers filled with beverages. Torina lifts a flask of Wexl, pours some into a beaker, and hands it to me. I take it cautiously, overwhelmed by the attention, and want to sink into the floor when they begin to cheer, “Hip, hip, hooray!”

For an hour, we relax and celebrate and I explain my methodology roughly twenty-eight times to the interested scientists and technicians. We all conjecture about the changes in store for the country once the last locusts die off. One woman wants to plant pansies in a window box, a young technician gets excited about repopulating bees from captive-bred stock and keeping a hive to harvest honey, and a meteorologist wonders what the re-growth of trees will do to the weather patterns.

“This’ll undermine the Prags, won’t it?” one scientist observes, pulling at the ends of his mustache. “We won’t need ’em anymore. Won’t need ’em to grow our food, or run procreation programs. It’s revolutionary.”

He speaks quietly, speculatively, but his words fall into one of those lulls that sometimes happen in group conversations. A sense of unease filters through the room, like a bad smell. I don’t understand the reaction; we’ll still need a government, after all. No one is talking about overthrowing the Prags. Conversation resumes, but people begin to drift away in ones and twos. Soon, Torina and I are the only ones left and she tells me to prepare a presentation for the Premier and her staff.

“You’ll be briefing them tomorrow at nine o’clock,” she says triumphantly. “Too bad Dr. Usher is out of town.” Her sly look says she deliberately set up the briefing while Keegan is still gone so he can’t be involved. I demur about the timing, not wanting to heap logs onto the pyre of Keegan’s hatred, but she counters with, “We can’t delay in informing the Premier. She can’t hear about it through back-channel chit-chat. This is the most important scientific breakthrough of the decade; hell, it’s one of the century’s top ten discoveries. Dr. Usher left  me in charge—this is on me, not you, Ealy.”

I understand her logic, and I hope Keegan sees it the same way. Somehow, I doubt he will.

I arrive at my billet several hours later, tired and hungry, to find Saben and Marizat chatting in the lobby. He’s back! I feel lighter, less tired, and immeasurably happier at the sight of him. My smile reveals my feelings, I’m sure, judging by Marizat’s “oh-hoh” expression. Saben’s looking tired, but his smile takes away some of his weariness and he leans down to kiss my cheek.

“You’re back,” I say unnecessarily. “How was your trip?”

“I missed you.” His gold eyes smile into mine, but there’s warning in them. “I came by hoping you might want to have dinner with me.”

“Don’t mind me,” Marizat says. “I’ll eat by my lonely self.”

She’s only teasing and I wave goodbye as she enters the elevator. “I’m not much of a cook,” I warn Saben.

“We’re going out,” he says, and I sense something behind the words.

With a slight frown, I nod, tell him I need to change and will be back in five minutes, and take the stairs two at a time. Splashing water on my face and brushing my hair, I notice my eyes seem bluer, the charcoal ring around them more pronounced.  I take my last two eye color changing tablets and wonder how I’ll get more. Can I risk going to the warehouse by the train station where I met Griselda? She had stocks of the pills. I brush my teeth quickly and rejoin Saben.

“Where to?” I ask. “I’m starving.”

“The baseball stadium. I brought a picnic. We need to be private.”

Again, I sense an undertone that suggests more than wanting to be alone with me for romantic reasons. He shoulders a long duffel cinched at the neck I hadn’t noticed before, takes my hand, and leads me outside again. It’s downright cool this evening now that we’re into November, but the chill refreshes me. Since Saben doesn’t seem to want to talk about his trip yet, I tell him about my breakthrough, everyone’s congratulations, and tomorrow’s presentation for the Premier.

“That’s fantastic,” he says, his face lighting up. “I knew you’d do it. How long until all the locusts are gone?”

I take him through the science and the difficulties that still remain, until we arrive at the stadium fence.  The sight of it seems to bring whatever’s on Saben’s mind to the forefront again and he goes silent as he opens the locks and we walk through the tunnel.

We exit the tunnel and face the empty field. “Maybe there’ll be baseball again,” he says, “once the locusts are gone and grass can grow. We might have time for having fun, playing games.”

It’s interesting to me how the destruction of the locusts means different things to different people. Everyone is excited about the prospect of more food, more easily grown, but beyond that, people’s hopes are different: flowers, honey, governmental changes, baseball. Maybe those wishes aren’t so different, after all, I think, climbing the steep steps beside Saben. They’re all about hope, after all, about hope that things will be more beautiful, easier, different.

We settle into the same seats we occupied before and Saben digs through his duffel and comes up with IPF-issue compressed food pods, water bladders, and a bunch of carrots, greens still attached. “Not gourmet,” he apologizes.

“That’s okay.” I bite the end off a carrot, starving, and relish the crisp sweetness. “What happened on the trip?” I ask after I’ve swallowed. “Something did. I can tell you’re upset or worried.”

He surprises me with a kiss. “I missed you. I mean, I
really
missed you.” He kisses me again and suddenly I’m not so hungry.

When we come up for air, I say, “I missed you, too, but there’s more, isn’t there?”

He nods, looking out over the field, and says, “I’m not sure I should tell you. It might put you in danger.”

I give him an astonished look and burst out laughing. “Right. Because I’m not in any danger now.” I stretch a lock of my dyed hair to the side. “I’m a convicted murderer living under a fake identity and working under the nose of the government that sentenced me to death. No danger in that, nosiree.”

He smiles ruefully. “You’ve got a point. Okay. This wasn’t a normal mission. I’ve pulled prisoner escort duty before, but this wasn’t like that. For one thing, it was all very hush-hush. We had no official orders, nothing on record. My commander gave me and one other guy the assignment verbally and told us we couldn’t tell anyone where we were going or what we were doing. Said we’d be charged with treason if we talked.

“We traveled at night. First, we stopped at three different detention centers—the one you were at and a couple not far outside the city—and picked up prisoners at each one. We ended up with seventeen, fourteen men and three women. Then, we proceeded to our destination. At first, I thought our navigation systems were busted, because there was nothing there, nothing but an electrified fence, tall enough you wouldn’t want to tackle it without rappelling gear.”

I give him a skeptical look and he amends, “Well, practically. The place felt creepy. We were out in the middle of nowhere with no one around for miles, it felt like. Guards popped up as soon as we approached the gate and offloaded the prisoners. I asked where they were going to house them, and basically got told it was none of my business. One of them winked at me, though, and pointed down.

“‘Hell?’ I asked, just being a smart-ass. ‘Might as well be,’ he said. It took me a bit to figure out that he meant the prisoners would be living underground.”

A violent shiver shakes me and I drop the carrot. Saben bends to pick it up, giving me a concerned look. “You all right?”

“Were there biohazard signs posted on the fence or anywhere?”

Saben squinches his eyes, thinking. “Yes,” he says. “How did you know?”

I flash back to the underground laboratory Halla and Wyck and I stumbled on during our journey to Atlanta. I see Anton, scratching at the boils erupting all over his body, and his crazed wife Alaura, ready to incinerate me and Wyck. They were both victims, in different ways, of vaccine research experiments gone horribly awry. “Where was this site?” I ask. “Southeast of here?”

“No, due north.”

Not the same facility, then. Another one. The implications make my chest ache with the effort of breathing. The government—it has to be the government if IPF soldiers like Saben are involved, doesn’t it?—is using prisoners as research guinea pigs again. Or maybe they never stopped. I feel sick. Leaping up, I run down two rows and throw up. I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth and stay bent over, hands on my knees. Tremors shake my limbs.

Saben puts a hand on my back. “What’s wrong? What is it? Are you ill?”

“The facility,” I say, straightening. “I know what it’s for.”

We climb back up to our seats and I tell him about stumbling across the abandoned underground laboratory hidden out in the woods. “We met a former lab technician who said the site had been used for vaccine research that didn’t pan out, and that all the test subjects were criminals. When the government decided to close the site, they euthanized all the subjects—victims. Incinerated them.” I can still feel the metal rivets digging into my back where I had pressed hard against the vent, desperate to climb to the surface before Anton and Alaura fired up the incinerator. I wiggle my shoulder blades to dispel the feeling.