ViraVax (16 page)

Daniel poured two glasses of ice water and unwrapped Casey’s tiny loaf of hot bread while Louisa emptied his wastebasket of its one crumpled page.

“She’s naked,” Daniel said, giggling, and Casey looked up.

“Who’s naked?”

“The girl.” He pointed towards the decon elevators. “Naked, naked.”

Louisa chimed in, hard to understand around her thick tongue.

“Naked boy, too,” she said. “Bad boy.”

Her expression, like Daniel’s, was all smiles. “Bad boy” was merely rhetorical, what they expected him to think of it. They were right.

What the hell is security doing? Showing them off to the whole world?

Perhaps this was Mishwe’s idea of insurance—not everyone who saw them could be disappeared, and neither could the children.

“You will not speak of what you have seen to anyone,” he ordered. “Forget the boy and girl. I want both of you to set up the Master’s quarters immediately. Repeat.”

Daniel repeated the orders, counting on his fingers. “Forget the boy and girl. Set up for the Master.”

Daniel’s expression showed that he was very pleased with himself, and Louisa looked equally pleased, though all she had done was dust the same spot on his desk over and over.

“Very good,” Casey said, and dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

He hoped that these two were the only ones to have contact with the children. It would make the inevitable unpleasantness to come much, much cleaner.

Mishwe put the children into decon without consulting Casey. This infuriated Casey at first, but he saw the wisdom and the inevitability of it now. At least there would be minimal chance of cross-contamination.

All traffic took place topside, from the lift pad. Limited as that traffic was, it still provided an exposure, and any glimpse of those kids would be the end of ViraVax.

Yes,
Casey nodded to himself,
we’re committed.

Mishwe would pay, one way or another.

Mishwe knew he’d never let them go,
he thought.
He knows that I can’t let them go, either.

Mishwe had his indiscretions, but in his fifteen years at ViraVax they had always occurred down below, threatening no one.

He must feel strongly about these children,
Casey admitted.

Mishwe felt strongly about the Innocents, too. He treated them like his own children, and they flocked to him wherever he walked in the facility. Casey was surprised at this revelation, surprised to the point of alarm. Mishwe seldom showed interest in anything beyond his science.

Dear God,
he prayed,
make the solution to this problem clear and quick so that Your work can proceed unhindered. . . .

“Dr. Casey. . . .”

Casey started at the woman’s voice behind him, then flushed as he hurriedly donned his cap to protect his scabby scalp from view.

“What is it?” he snapped.

He projected his voice, already louder than most, and paralyzed Marte Chang in his doorway. Casey produced a reassuring smile and motioned her inside. He noted her glance at the holographics and dismissed them with the flick of a key. He cleared a stack of enlargements from the only other chair. His outer office was small, meant for clutter. Clutter said you were busy, took up space, kept people from staying long. Level One was the only place that Casey was concerned about appearances.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed here. . . .”

“I
refuse
to be disturbed here,” he corrected. “Therefore, you are not disturbing me, you are merely interrupting my work.”

Casey manufactured another smile and waved her towards the chair. She had the potential of being his most talented viral engineer, and he did not want to alienate her. Her power project was nearly finished; he’d strung that one out long enough to get a good feel for her work. She could make a satisfactory replacement for Red Bartlett, should she be persuaded to stay. When he was convinced of her loyalties, he would introduce her to some of their more interesting projects.

“Sit,” he insisted. “As long as you’re here, let’s both be comfortable.”

Again, the complete smile.

Marte Chang crossed to the chair, and Casey watched with undisguised pleasure. Two years ago Shirley had snared Chang’s transmission of her paper “The Virus as Industrial Robot” on its way to a network presentation. The paper had been precipitated by, and quoted heavily from, the seminal work of Dr. Joshua Casey on manipulations of viral architecture. He had received the paper closed-circuit, bypassing the webs, through an expensive but valuable arrangement that he had with several carriers around the world. He was out of country, but not out of touch.

Marte’s paper had proceeded in the direction of Casey’s own research, and its practical applications could well surpass it.

How convenient that I own the means to practical application,
Casey thought.

In six months Marte had made up ground that had taken Casey six years to cover. And he thought she was beautiful, in a reptilian sort of way.

Casey was lustful of her beauty, cautious of her intellect, and he had yet to sound out her motives.

Why us?
he wondered.

Hundreds of facilities and a dozen small countries would have paid lavishly and treated her like royalty if they’d had the chance to produce her Sunspots.

But she chose us.

He would like to believe it was divine providence, but something in his spine said otherwise.

Of course, she had received her bachelor’s and her master’s at the University of Montangel, built by his father and owned by the Children of Eden. She had been young, brilliant, graced with more scholarships than she could use, but she had never accepted the Children of Eden as her faith. This he could not understand. She did everything alone. Some saw this as a sign of fear. Casey thought she must have great courage.

It was not public knowledge that the university had been built by Casey’s donation of his annual royalties from HI VAX, his AIDS vaccine. Let the world’s eye be on his father and the university—Casey preferred the comfortable anonymity he had built for himself in Costa Brava.

Though much less important than his breakthrough with oncogenes and the subsequent control of several cancers, the AIDS vaccine carried with it a suitable drama. His work with oncogenes handed the medical boys their breakthrough on a platter—the AIDS vaccine he accomplished on his own. But the Costa Brava installation of ViraVax and its employees, for all practical purposes, did not exist.

When Joshua Casey realized the implications of his first artificial viral agent, he turned to the Agency for a multilayered security package. He wanted to disappear before he could ever be discovered, and it had been the wisest move of his life.

If Marte Chang found out about half of the operations at ViraVax, she might be trouble. But if push came to shove, he would use the national security argument to get what he needed. It was an unassailable argument, since it was nominally true.

And Casey’s ultimate plans far exceeded the petty concerns of national security.

He would need to test her out, sooner or later.

So far, it appeared that she thrived on her project to convert the facility from their hydroelectric source to her Sunspots. He’d thrown small problems at her, too, and found her both curious and quick to solution. Winning her over would require a certain delicacy, a delicacy which Casey knew all too well was not a part of his natural makeup.

He had made her wait while he pretended to examine one of the transparencies.

“What is it?” he asked, and noted her undiminished agitation.

He steepled his pale fingers and frowned in an approximation of concern.

“You have experimented on Costa Bravan citizens without their knowledge or consent,” she said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Casey felt the tiger in him preparing to spring and relaxed. He opened his posture and rested his hands on the arms of his chair. Aggression was what she expected, what she prepared for. He would give her something of the tar baby.

“I have done nothing of the sort. . . .”

“ViraVax has,” she said, “and you are ViraVax.”

As usual, his first inclination was to lie. He suppressed it. Taking her into confidence would bring her closer. Besides, he had nothing to fear and she had nowhere to go.

“Where did you get your information?”

“It’s all around me,” she said, pointing out the window at a group of retarded youngsters returning from the gardens. “This country went from the highest birthrate in the world to the lowest within the last ten years. All since you came to town. Coincidence?”

“All individuals who have been recipients of any program here were duly represented by their government,” Casey said. “We developed the biology, but it was their choice to administer it. Bear with me one minute.” Casey put up a hand to stop her protest. “You were not here for the longest-running civil war in the Western Hemisphere.
That
was their means of birth control, along with bad water and infant dysentery. It makes what’s going on in the U.S. right now look like a picnic. There’s an old saying in population control: ‘You’ve got to shut off the faucet before you reach for the mop.’ We enabled anyone who wishes it to shut off that faucet.”

“But how . . . ?”

“Simple and elegant,” he said, and smiled. “We added a vector to the routine inoculations, a vector that renders the membrane of the ovum impenetrable by the sperm.”

“No, I mean
how could you?”

Once again, Casey silenced her protest with a gesture.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “I have feelings about this sort of thing, too. But we are
toolmakers.
If we manufactured pipe wrenches and some plumber bludgeoned his wife to death with one, would we be obligated to stop manufacturing our wrenches? Should we throw all of our resources into the development of a softer wrench? I think not.”

“But this is
terrible. . . .
”

“Well,” Casey said, and leaned forward, capturing her gaze, “we can’t think about that. Regrettable, perhaps. Terrible, perhaps. But that is the past. It is out of our control, and we must go on. We must continue to provide humans with the best possible tools to improve their quality of life. You are here because you have the skills to do that. I guess I must ask you now, are you willing to go forward with us and help us with things we can control? Or will you leave us, dwelling on the past and on things over which we have no control?”

“There is more.”

Casey sucked in a breath and blew it out in a display of great impatience. He waved her on.

“Does the term ‘trisomy twenty-one’ mean anything to you?”

His gaze did not waver, but he was beginning to have doubts about the efficacy of hiring Marte Chang. The prospect of marrying her, he could see, had been an adolescent fantasy. If he was not fully satisfied of her loyalties by the end of this interview, he would have to find another suitable use for her.

“This country also has the highest incidence of trisomy births in the world,” she added. “Does that mean you’ve decided what
kind
of children people will have?”

“Yes,” he said flatly, “and it means that, once again, you are dwelling on the past. Psychologists will tell you that it is not a healthy habit to pursue.”

The hint of threat appeared to be lost on her. She went on.

“The children that these people are allowed to have. . . an extremely high proportion are high-functioning Down syndrome children. With a side effect like this . . . ”

“It’s not a side effect,” Casey said. “It’s a whole different matter.”

“You mean . . . the Garcia government
wants
this? But why?”

Casey shrugged, and sighed his best frustrated sigh.

“Again, they’ve misused one of our tools,” he said. “They attempted to create for themselves a manageable labor force. . . .”

“They’re just biological industrial robots, that’s what you’ve done here!” Marte snapped.

Casey put all of his conscious effort into maintaining his calm.

“Once again, Dr. Chang, I assure you that
I
have not done this.
We
have not done this. But, yes, it has been done. And it is in the past. And in the future we shall do our best to see to it that this kind of technology cannot be misused. But to do that, we need responsible personnel. It was no accident that we chose to implement your own technology to power this facility. You are exhibiting right now the very forthrightness and honesty that we hope to cultivate here. That is our investment in the future. Do you want to be a part of that future?”

Her gaze wavered, and it was her turn to sigh. She twisted and untwisted a strand of her long black hair around her finger.

“I’m not. . . I mean. . . I think so. I had to talk to you about this. I couldn’t just go on as though I didn’t know.”

“Of course not.”

Then Joshua smoothed his tone.

“The truth is,” he cooed, “I’ve been expressly forbidden to pursue any follow-up that would interfere with this program.”

“But if you’re not concerned about the welfare of the test subjects, surely you don’t want to endanger others, maybe ourselves. . . .”

“That’s why we take precautions here, Dr. Chang. We have been in business for more than fifteen years, and not one of us has come down with so much as the sniffles.”

This was a lie, and the reason he spent as much time as possible in his private bunker. But he knew that there was no way she could prove otherwise. He had taken care of that. This time it was Marte who put up her hand.

“This is not an attack,” she said. “I came to you with something important when it came to my attention. I will continue to do that so that we can continue an excellent working relationship. What you do about it is your concern.”

Casey leaned back in his chair. His instinct had been right when he hadn’t told her that most of the Agency’s field subjects were not in Costa Brava, nor were they inmates and prisoners.

Is she with us?
he wondered.

He didn’t like having to wonder. If she deduced two of their projects, she might deduce more. This one didn’t seem to bother her, which was a plus in her favor. He would like very much to replace Mishwe, whose psychosis had finally placed them all in jeopardy. But to replace Mishwe, she would have to be loyal and without conscience. Still, she had come to
him
with her suspicions, not to the outside world.