ViraVax (24 page)

The slipup was a sign that his retirement had been timely. The Colonel was sure that whatever else lurked outside the perimeter probably was not known to the residents, either. Rico was one of three people who knew what Casey did to dissatisfied employees.

Now it looks like I’ll find out firsthand.

He heard the corporal shedding his hazard suit nearby, let himself be lulled by the respirator and the exchanger fans.

The Colonel heard voices and laughter a few meters away. He couldn’t make out details of the conversation and cursed the tape over his eyelids. Then he heard the
clink
of silverware against plates, smelled the unmistakable aroma of processed soy food. It didn’t make him hungry at all, but he discovered that he could twitch his nose, then his lip. His headache persisted.

Good Friday, 2015,
he thought.
I’m still alive.

He knew, in spite of everything, that he was thankful.

Chapter 32

Marte Chang watched a pair of security guards trudge up from the fence line across the compound. They struggled out of the perimeter twilight and into the relative glare of the exterior illumination. Both wore hazard suits and carried something blue between them, something that looked a lot like a limp human body.

That
is
a person they’re carrying,
she thought. He didn’t look alive, and the security team wasn’t hurrying him to the dispensary. They disappeared into one of the barns behind the lab, but by the time she raced down the hallway to a closer window, they were gone. A knot of Innocents gathered behind her to jabber and stare.

“Why you run?” Magdalena asked her. “Why you run?”
 

“It’s all right,” Marte reassured them. “I needed the exercise.”
 

“I can essise,” Magdalena said, and hopped in place, clapping her hands over her head. “Angel Mishwe taught me.”
 

“Angel
Mishwe!” Marte muttered.

She glanced down the hallway and noted a line of Innocents pushing stainless-steel carts laden with heavy pots. The pots glistened with condensation.

“What’s that?” she asked. “What are they doing?”
 

“Water,” several Innocents blurted at once. “Sabbath water.”
 

The facility was in an uproar over something. Shirley had told her that the Master was arriving today, and at first Marte thought that was what caused all the commotion. Then she heard the emergency claxons sound outside, and watched emergency crews rushing about, some of them in hazard suits.

The yellow caution light winked above her door all afternoon, telling her to stay inside until the all-clear was sounded. No one answered her calls through intercom or the webs.

If a contamination situation was developing, she wanted to be as far away as possible. She also wanted to find out as much as she could to take with her. She wished David were here.

I
want out, contamination or not!

The maintenance crews wore blue coveralls, but security took the limp person into the ag area, where the workers all wore brown. Both security men struggled with the heavy body and with their clumsy hazard suits.

Marte had received a burst from Mariposa that said simply, “Help coming. Locate and verify two possible captives arrived today. Harry Toledo and Sonja Bartlett. Remain topside. Prepare to move.”

Marte sincerely hoped that the limp figure in building A-3 was not her rescue party. She also hoped it was not one of the captives.

She had been restless since the weekly shutting-down began for the Sabbath, so checking for Harry and Sonja had been a release for that energy. She had found them, but not through the ViraVax records. She had found them through David, her indispensable David, just before all hell broke loose.

“David,” she asked, “have you unloaded anyone from the lift pad today?”

He had looked troubled earlier, but when she’d asked him if he wanted to talk, he shook his head. Now he shut his mouth firmly, breathed hard through his nose a couple of times and said, “Two of them. In those black bags.”

“In bags?” she asked, and feared the worst. “Were they dead?”

David shook his head. “No, but they were naked.”

“You saw them? Where?”

“In my cart. I took them to decon. They gave the girl a shot but dumped the boy on the floor.”

Sabbath procedures had started early, and now there was a Code Yellow. She hoped the Code Yellow was a diversion, and not the real thing. If they went into full shutdown, no telling how long she’d be here.

Months,
she thought.
Maybe years.

Marte suspected that Casey was taking no chances. If Harry and Sonja were as important as Mariposa implied, Casey didn’t want anyone to stumble onto these children. Marte had hopped the cart next to David and had him race to the elevators, but the readout at the elevator gate said, “Level Five Decon in Progress.” Level Five was Mishwe’s domain, and very bad news, indeed.

Now she worried about David, and hoped that they considered him too ignorant to threaten anyone with what he’d seen. He had been beeped away, and left her at her doorstep like a suitor.

“When I get back, let’s walk out in the artichokes,” he’d told her. “They’re beautiful.”

Her restlessness burned, and the yellow light above her door continued its incessant warnings. Darkness slid over the mountains two hours ago, but Marte stared out her only window, wishing for sun. Because of the precipitous mountains, Marte would not see the sun again from this window until tomorrow, halfway to noon.

She turned to her terminal and added a note to her morning burst, awaiting the outgoing bureaucratic rushes to the embassy.

“Sentries carried in limp male, dressed in blue, from perimeter at 1855, to bldg A-3, no alarm.”

Her burst already informed Mariposa that the captives were out of reach in the confines below. The only thing she had seen crawl out of Level Five was Dajaj Mishwe, and he was hardly a good omen.

If the rebels or the Agency were going to rescue her before the Sabbath ended, they’d better get moving. She wished that her quarters afforded her a better view.

Why don’t I just wish myself out of here?

Her window faced east, into the canyon wall less than a kilometer away. The landing pad, the only lifeline to the outside, was directly behind her.

What if they come and go and I miss my chance?
she worried.
How much time would they spend looking for me?

Casey had told her that the elevators were the only access down below Level Two, yet she’d seen Mishwe beat the elevator’s mandatory four-hour grind by over three and a half hours. He had a back way, or a trick to override the elevators. Still, if whoever was coming in here wanted the two hostages, they would have to bring them up an elevator, of this she was certain.

But which one?
 

The newcomers had gone down the usual decon route directly from receiving, right out of the hangar bay beneath the landing pad. Marte was not allowed to loiter in that area, but on the Sabbath movement was much easier. Access topside and deepside was sealed off in sensitive areas, but still Sabbath was the only day she felt free to take a walk and actually feel the sun.

The “transmit” light on her console winked on, and she reacted promptly, flurrying her fingers inside her gloveware.

“I’ll be near the pad” was all she had time to add at the end of her burst.

Marte put in a call on David’s box, but he didn’t reply. She thought that he might be at the Level Two lounge across from her labs, where he often had tea with her in the afternoons. She stepped off the elevator in time to see his cart at the far end of the corridor, racing full tilt towards her.

Marte and David were the only two in the passageway; already the rest of the crew had quit for the Sabbath. As the cart got closer, it began weaving from side to side without slowing down. Marte recognized the expression on David’s pale face as complete terror, and she was not sure that he even saw her.

“David!” she called. “David, slow down!”

He didn’t slow down. “Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

David slumped in the seat, pulling the steering handle as he went. The cart slammed against the wall and Marte slipped into a doorway to keep it from hitting her. It whined past her and wedged itself into the next doorway, its hot wheels squealing on the waxed floor and its flashers blinking.

“David, what happened?”

Just as quickly as she touched his shoulder, she jerked away. His face was slack in unconsciousness or death, and his skin had already begun to sag and split under the weight of the contents underneath.

“Help me!” Marte screamed, looking both ways down the corridor. “Help!”

No one responded. She yanked a firebox handle beside the doorway, then pulled David by his overalls to get him off the cart. He left a trail of tissue behind that flickered with the trace of a blue flame as it melted into the rubber mat. She decided not to wait for help, and she did two things that she vowed she would never do if faced with a contamination situation: she had already touched the victim, and now she was going to flee the facility to save herself.

She jumped aboard the cart, backed it out of the doorway and raced for an elevator.

Chapter 33

Joshua Casey washed his father’s feet in the old ceramic bowl that his mother had made. Calvin Casey was sweating, in spite of the air-conditioning, and his breathing was wet and labored. His feet and ankles were so swollen that the tops of his socks left an impression that would not rub out. Joshua finished his ritual, then pressed a thumb into the swollen tissue. The thumbprint stayed, and it was white.

“Are you feeling all right, Father?” he asked.

“Can’t sleep,” the Master wheezed. “Too restless.”

“How many pillows are you using?”

“Five or six. Why?”

The Master sprinkled water on the tops of Joshua’s feet, then swiped them once with the linen towel. Joshua didn’t care for this shorthand version of their ritual, but he saw his father struggling greatly to bend down or to kneel, and this worried him. Joshua replaced his father’s socks and shoes, tied up his laces and disposed of the water and towels.

“Your ankles are swollen, you can barely breathe sitting up, much less lying flat on your back.”

To Joshua’s surprise, his father smiled.

“You’re a smart one, Joshua,” he said. “I know you dislike the
medicos,
but you’ve got the touch.”

Joshua poured out their ice water and broke the small loaf of dark bread between them.

“Don’t worry, Father, it’s salt-free,” he said.

“Salt’s not the problem,” Calvin said. “You know me better than that. Anyone who’s read my books knows—”

“——So we know it’s congestive heart failure,” Joshua interrupted. “What happened that you haven’t told me?”

His father chewed the dense bread, washed it down and poured himself another glass of water.

“Haven’t told anybody,” Calvin said. “Heart attack, I think. Just after I left here last time.”

“You
think?
You mean, you didn’t check it out?”

“Didn’t have to,” Calvin said. “I’m prepared to meet our Lord, and the Children of Eden are prepared to go on without me. So are you.”

Joshua Casey had not given much thought to his father’s mortality. Until this visit, his father had never looked older than fifty or fifty-five. In two months he had aged twenty years. Today every minute of his seventy-five years showed in his gray, puffy face, his bent posture and trembling hands. This old man before him appeared a very sick old man, and Joshua knew that he would not live much longer.

Too bad he can’t know what we’ve done for him,
Casey thought.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’ve had problems here. The country is blowing up again.”

“I know,” his father said, a hand on Joshua’s knee, “I know when you’re preoccupied. And my people keep me abreast of the news in this region. Terrible thing about that Toledo fellow, going south as he did. Would you care to tell me about it?”

He knows!
Joshua thought.
As usual, he knows everything but he wants me to tell him.

Mishwe had gone too far, and if Calvin Casey got wind of trouble inside ViraVax, trouble that related to the political situation, then it wouldn’t be long before everybody else got wind of it, too. Joshua Casey trusted his father completely, and valued his judgment, but he did not want to endanger the Master’s health any further. He finished his ritual water and bread before speaking.

“One of our best people is insane,” he said. “He has endangered our security here. He has visited a scrutiny upon us that we may not survive.”

“Dajaj Mishwe?”

Joshua sighed. His father was, truly, an insightful man.

“Yes.”

“He has performed well for you in the past,” Calvin said. “Has he begun that business with the young women again?”

“No,” Joshua said. “It’s more serious than that.”

Calvin’s bushy eyebrows jumped once, twice, then his lips set in a gray line.

“It’s hard to get more serious than murder,” Calvin wheezed. “You know that I prefer not to nose into your business here. But give me the details, perhaps I can help.”

Joshua told his father what he knew of Mishwe’s private agenda.

“Our goal is to make humanity better, just as we are making the earth better,” Joshua said. “Mishwe talked about starting over with the Garden of Eden. He wasn’t happy improving humans. He wants to start over with the perfect couple—a new, handcrafted Adam and Eve.”

“And how would he manage that?” Calvin asked.

“Cloning,” Joshua said. “Using our artificial viral agents with sperm as the vector.”

Calvin Casey waved an impatient hand at his son.

“I don’t follow your shoptalk,” the Master said. “I know what a clone is, start from there.”

“A clone is a copy of a person,” Joshua said. “That’s the basics. But as long as you’re mucking about in there and cloning, you might as well take care of other business, too. Even viable clones from petri dishes have a lot of defects—basically, from overhandling, exposure to ultraviolet, crude tools or clumsy technique. But our AVAs take away all that hardware and provide a way to get inside the cell, manipulate its map and send it on its way.”

“I thought it was illegal to clone humans.”

“It’s not illegal, it’s unethical,” Joshua said. “Besides, very little is illegal in Costa Brava these days. I’ll hand it to Mishwe, he even kept it from me for years.”

Calvin Casey pinched the bridge of his nose, ran his hand over his bald head and asked, “He has done this?”

Joshua swallowed hard.

“He has done it,” he admitted. “Sixteen years ago. He informed me well after the fact. Toledo’s son, Red Bartlett’s daughter.”

“The
daughter!”

Calvin Casey looked perplexed.

“How could it be the daughter?” he asked. “You said cloning made a copy from the
sperm”

“Yes,” Joshua said. “The mechanism was delivered through Red Bartlett’s sperm. It did not deliver Bartlett’s genetic material, only the appropriate messages to trigger duplication of the ovum. Parthenogenesis.”

“Doesn’t sound like any part of Genesis to me,” Calvin muttered.

If the matter hadn’t been so serious, Joshua would have laughed long and hard at this.

“Go on,” his father urged.

“You were present for the incident with Bartlett a couple of months ago. Well, Bartlett and Colonel Toledo were longtime friends. He thought that Bartlett’s murder might have something to do with his work here.”

“And was he correct?”

Joshua shook his head, sorry that he had to lie to his father, the only man in the world that he truly respected.

“No,” he said. “It was a break-in of some kind. The man was executed. Toledo had family problems, got a divorce, got drummed out of the service. But Toledo kept drinking and he kept digging. Somebody began accessing our system. Mishwe suspected Toledo and wanted to stop him. Also, Dajaj was afraid that the mothers would take Harry and Sonja out of the country, out of his reach. They are his Adam and Eve, and they are teenagers. He wanted to get control of them before they were. . . contaminated.”

“Before they lost their virginity, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

“So Mishwe engineered all of this political bungling?”

“To draw Toledo into a trap and destroy him,” Joshua said. “And to get possession of his two clones.”

“Then the two young people are here? With both governments after them?”

Calvin Casey’s face had gone from gray to purple, and he was very short of breath. Joshua did not get the chance to answer.

“Security,” Shirley announced over his console. “Your package is outside.”

“Mishwe?” Calvin asked.

Joshua nodded.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this right now,” he promised.

Joshua buzzed the doorlocks open, but before security could usher Mishwe inside, Joshua Casey saw his father jerk in his chair as though struck by a fist. A look of complete surprise washed over his face and he pitched forward onto the carpet with a grunt.

Joshua Casey heard a high-pitched, disorienting whine that seemed to come from inside his own head. He tried to rise, but could not make his legs or arms work. A guard walked through the door and Casey tried to speak, but the whine had changed to a very loud rushing sound and he couldn’t be sure he was heard over the racket. Eyes wide open and hand over his mouth, the guard backed into Mishwe.

The last thing Joshua Casey saw was Dajaj Mishwe, smiling over the crumpled body of the Master. Faint screams and the rushing of feet came to him from Shirley’s office and from the hallway. A small blue flame flickered from his dead father’s ear, and Casey knew that it was not the Holy Spirit.