Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) (26 page)

Stu
nodded. “What about several working in tandem with access to extra fuel tanks?”

“They
still wouldn’t penetrate the atmosphere or have much range. I did everything
possible to make sure that no one could put more weapons platforms into space.”

“What
about space-to-space combat.”

“That
might still be possible, but everyone knows about their capabilities. We
mandate that all space devices post their specifications on the web so that
other craft can avoid them.”

Stu
tapped his fingers. “What about people from other planets? You fried the entire
crew of
Ascension
before starting in on the rest of us. I still hear my
brother’s screams at night.” Metaphorically, Snowflake was his half-brother.
His mother had been the mote of dust that his mental and moral structure had
crystallized around. They both shared Mercy’s skill with Icarus fields and
gravity.

Eowyn
slipped out of her chair in the throes of a seizure.

“Get
Dr. Maurier in here!” Stu shouted, propping up the convulsing woman. “Either
she just bit a suicide tablet, or she’s hearing about the deaths for the first
time.” He used his room card to depress her tongue. “Get her sister, too.”

****

Security transported
Eowyn to the infirmary. When asked what might have triggered the violent
reaction, Kelly said, “Her formatting gives her grand mals, especially when she
tries to discuss the Moris. They screwed her over bad.”

“Can
you be more specific?” Stu asked.

Kelly
glanced toward Mo, who nodded. “She didn’t agree with the management on the
project she worked on for Mori, but she couldn’t tell the authorities anything.
That’s why Eleanor has been trying to gather independent evidence. The bastards
are always one step ahead of her. What happened on the moon wasn’t an accident.
The nano outbreak happened because she got too close. Maybe it was a safety
feature of the AI.”

“Artificial
intelligence? That’s what she did for Mori Electronics?”

Kelly
nodded. “All I know is that the AI likes closed systems and zero-sum games. It
wants to see everything. Ellie hinted that was why the Amish were being herded
toward the uninhabitable zones.”

“So
she was trying to warn Grant but couldn’t use direct references?” Stu asked.

“You’d
have to ask Ellie, but it sounds like her.”

“Why
did she come to Rio with you?”

“I
had to see poor Mo, and she was worried for my safety. She also wanted to warn
you before the Devil’s granddaughter sank her fangs into you.”

“I
can assure you that Laura is the victim in this scenario.”

Kelly
snorted. “Men. You’re not the first one she’s fucked stupid, you know. I’ve
read her Nyx files.”

“All
the evidence points to your sister for espionage and murder.”

Mo’s
fiancée glared at him. Since she was an empath, Stu could actually feel the
temperature of his forehead rise from her anger. “Ellie is the most honest
person on this planet. She risked everything to help you.”

Stu
excused himself. “I have a team meeting to attend, and the succubus in question
is the presenter.”

Kieran Llewellyn knew
that there were several types of genies. Mira Hollis had been the sort from an
X-rated fantasy—rub her the right way and gold coins fell from the sky. Tetsuo
Mori was the other kind, the one from cautionary tales. This black djinn hated
all mankind and had been sealed in an urn for killing his last master. Kieran
opened the jar, knowing that one wrong word while making his wish could doom
him. However, a man dying of thirst in the desert had little choice. He made
the call. “I apologize for interrupting you at home, sir, but I have a business
opportunity for you that hinges on a delicate personal question.”

Mori
replied, “I am always looking for worthwhile investments, old friend. You may
speak without fear of offending me.”

Translation: the line is secure, get to the point.
“Are you really feuding with your
granddaughter?”

“She
is a willful and duplicitous child.”

Kieran
took the plunge. “So you wouldn’t hold me accountable if something happened to
her on my campus?”

“Are
you offering to remove the family shame?”

“I’d
like to make a deal. I’ll trade you a pint of my nephew’s blood, freely given,
for an assurance that no one can ever collect that particular bounty again. If
the ambassador and his wife happen to be making the beast with two backs when
you put a bullet through them, so much the better.”

The
old man on the other end wheezed with laughter. “You sound like one of the
English kings. Why do you want Ambassador Llewellyn dead?”

“He’s
nominating Salome for
my
board position. It’s an embarrassment to have a
member of my own family turned against me by his dick.”

“She
can be quite persuasive. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to arrange the accident
yourself? I can double the price.”

“I
tried. He won’t leave the honeymoon suite. I even offered to pay for a luxury
resort,” Kieran complained. “And it needs to be done soon. Luca Maurier just
arrived.”

“Hmm.
The Golden Goose won’t be far behind, and her guards will complicate matters.
I’ll have to contract out. The layers of security around your establishment are
still formidable.”

“The
party tomorrow night will cause confusion. We’ll have to surge troops so much
for the event that we’ll be weak afterward. I can have my men turn a blind eye,
and you can control the corporate types,” Kieran suggested.

“Won’t
you be blamed?”

“I
was in the military for a while. Things like this happen all the time in joint
operations. We’ll both concentrate our people on the lower floors, assuming the
other is responsible for the upper. Correct instructions will go into effect on
separate shifts so it looks like a simple mistake. A small strike team can land
on the roof—in and out in minutes.”

Mori
asked, “Who could we blame? Where should the evidence I plant lead?

“The
Sanctuary
folks have a Chinese prisoner in the infirmary, and the group
recently ran afoul of Chinese Intelligence in Arabia. It won’t take much to
convince the local police.”

“The
boy’s inheritance goes to you and the girl’s to me,” offered Mori.

“Done.”
After a pause, Kieran added, “You’ll need to kill the huntress Freya, too, on
the way down. She might suspect our alliance. I can make certain she’s in my
office during the incursion.”

“Our
ideal window is between midnight and four in the morning. Signal us when the
couple is distracted.”

“I’ll
flip the Do Not Disturb indicator on my office line.”

“A
pleasure doing business with a member of the nobility,” Mori said,
disconnecting.

Next,
Kieran called Freya. “What are you doing tomorrow night, beautiful?”

“A
stupid damn party for that spoiled bitch.”

“After?”

“By
eleven thirty, I’ll be exhausted,” Freya complained.

“Please?
All of this has convinced me I need to retire from this circus. I want you with
me to celebrate.” He targeted her feminine romantic reflexes. “Stay the night
with me. I don’t care who knows about us anymore.”

She
agreed.

He
made an internal list of things he would have her do to earn her new status in
the time before the killers tied up her loose end.

****

Laura paced in the
conference room on the embassy level. She had presided at countless meetings as
an expert in various subjects. However, now she was entering a new realm.
Insecure and worried about heckling, she considered calling it off altogether.
A minute before the scheduled start time, Stu strode in. “You’re back already?”
she asked.

He
put an arm around her and gave her a peck on the cheek … in front of everybody!
“I wanted to be here to support my favorite member of the security team.”

“Sexual
harassment,” shouted Artemis, jokingly.

Fiona
stage-whispered, “Don’t bring anything to class that you’re not willing to
share.”

Even
Joan laughed. Suddenly, Laura felt at home in this collection of misfits. She
wanted to hug the stuffing out of Stu, but that would bring more catcalls and
heckling. “Grab a seat,” she told him.

The
crowd went, “Whoa” at the innuendo.

“Get
a room,” said Hans with a smile. “But move all the breakables out first.”

When
the comments died down, Stu explained, “Your mom graciously took the
construction project for me. She just signed with Eliezer Protection Services.”

“Don’t
they make bomb shelters?” asked Artemis.

Oleander
nodded. “And panic rooms. They’re doing this project as a favor. Their
daughter, Rachael, was a member of the
Sanctuary
crew who died in the
line of duty. They want to make sure the rest of the crew doesn’t follow.”

Stu
changed the subject. “My uncle also wants to know if you’ll be taking classes
at the university. Now that you’re in a committed relationship, maybe you could
take some math.”

Laura
felt warm all over.
Committed
. “Later.” She dimmed the lights and
pointed her stylus at the wall. The slide said, Purpose.

“Since
Stu asked me to spearhead recruiting, I researched both astronauts and actives.
I like graphs, so you’ll be seeing a lot of them. We need about sixty more
experts to round out the next mission for
Sanctuary
.” She clicked a
button to show a graph that resembled a downward ski slope. “The number of
astronauts dropped by almost half during the war. Although Icarus drives made
space travel more accessible to non-experts, the number of people in space has
never reached the old peak levels. In fact, current astronauts have been employed
for an average of ten years. Very few new people get hired by the big five
aerospace businesses. Most public training programs have closed over the last
decade because of this. All existing programs are run by the companies
themselves.”

Oleander
seemed confused. “Why?”

“To
maintain a monopoly. The big five enforce ridiculous non-compete clauses. I’m
not sure we could hire astronauts away. In any case, most of them are outside
the ideal childbearing range for colonists.” Laura skipped to the slide showing
the gender and race breakdown. “A miniscule 1 percent of current astronauts are
of African descent. A third are women.”

The
crowd booed, not her but the numbers.

The
next slide said, Collective Unconscious. “This is by far the most common Magi
talent. Most countries don’t even require registration. It’s the only talent
that Iran allows because it allows them to spot Actives that try to enter their
country illegally.”

Evangeline
said, “I saw an article that likened CU to the Human Papaloma Virus, a form of
VD that’s so mild and common that some people aren’t even aware they’re
carriers.”

Laura
nodded. “It spreads a lot like VD. I studied cancer-causing HPV for a while
when modeling CU contagion. I even invented something I called the Chastity
Vaccine that caused penile cancer, but was harmless to the girls.”

Several
of the women at the table perked up at this. Evangeline translated. “So you
could inject a young girl with this tailored virus and any man who raped her
basically had his dick fall off? Honey, I like how you think. Great deterrent.
Just treat the girl and eliminate the disease before she wanted to have sex.”

Laura
winced. “We had to scrap the program. Women who forgot about the treatment could
infect innocent men. Worse, the disease would carry to any female sex partners
or children.”

“You
dabbled in biological warfare?” asked Stu.

I toyed with untraceable revenge a few times
. “I stopped our company’s research after a few
weeks because the side effects were always horrible. Most of these ideas came
from the Fortune Enterprises double-aught files we received ten years after
Nena Horvath died—all cloning references removed.”

Stu
took notes. “Dr. Wannaker’s experiments. That’s where Dr. Baatjies got the
clues to solve Male Multiple Syndrome, so we probably have the only copies of
that data on
Sanctuary
. Why would Nena share that with the Moris?”

“Mother
helped her survive for a few years after Daniel Fortune passed away.”
As
part of her NERO planning.
Looking at the slide on the projector, Laura
said, “Enough rabbit holes. Back to talents. The CU transmission rate is about
14 percent through unprotected intercourse. There are ways to increase or
decrease these odds. Although, the contagion could be shared in something as
innocuous as food or drink.”

Beside
her, Hans screwed the cap back onto his open water bottle.

Smiling,
Laura said, “This virus is somewhat intelligent. You have to accept it from the
giver on some level. CU is about sharing. In fact, theorists at the CDC claim
that the talent
wants
to be spread. One woman in South Africa infected
320 men.”

She
advanced to another graph. “Forty years ago, Fortune Enterprises had about four
thousand CU people because they used it as a gateway test for the candidate’s
suitability for other Pages. By the time of the war, this had increased to
about fifty thousand. Now we have an estimated 520 thousand, based on diffusion
and genetic selection rates.”

“How
did you get these numbers?” Stu asked, frantically scribbling notes.

“Memory.
I hold several patents on CU,” Laura replied.

“Damn
you’re smart,” Stu said.

Her
cheeks colored a little. “If no active measures are taken, pardon the pun, CUs
become the majority on the planet in about eighty years. The CDC speculates
that this may have been what the Magi really intended when they brought the
Pages. CU alters our cultural and psychological ecosystem.”

Sif
asked, “Why aren’t the governments fighting the spread?”

“If
the person stays sane, violent crime goes down 30 percent. Crime against other
Actives drops 77 percent. Environmental abuse among deep CUs decreases by 90
percent.”

Stu
whistled. “So awareness is a virus that could eventually save Earth.”

“If
we don’t destroy the planet first,” Artemis grumbled. “If it lowers the
occurrence of rape, we should have vaccination drives.”

“I
offered to give the mutation away for free in prisons in exchange for reduced
sentences, but my grandfather said this would cost us billions in lost
intellectual property.” Frowning, Laura advanced to the next slide, The Other
Twenty-Eight Talents.

“Due
to the secrecy of various programs, we’ll never know the exact number, but I
estimate five thousand other types of Actives before the war. Over half were
killed. Biological rates of expansion are slow because of medical issues.”

Stu
looked excited that he knew an answer. “Families with talents have to get
expensive insurance.”

“Yes.
In this case, the genetic selection rate for child customization is actually
higher than natural inheritance or pair-bond infection. The count of other
talents is up to about six thousand now. What does this mean for our
recruitment search? Outside the countries where they’re banned, about one
person in ten thousand is Active. That rate is slightly higher for women.” She
paused for the brief cheer.

Oleander
nodded. “Makes sense. Women are more receptive to CU, and female multiples
survive. If our goal is to increase the number of Actives globally, we could
release the technique to save male multiples before the UN vote. That way,
whether the UN accepts us or not, we win in the end.”

“I
could help you write that press release,” Laura offered. “I’ve done recent
papers for nearly every major bioengineering publication. It needs to happen
without warning, or the big medical companies will try to suppress it.”

“Under
advisement,” Stu said. “Details later. For now we just wanted to share the big
picture for recruitment.”

“Right.
Given the population at this school, we can statistically expect three
Actives—maybe one in the faculty and a few more among visiting alumni,” Laura
guessed.