ViraVax (6 page)

The Colonel kept two households, the one in Colonia Escalon and an apartment across from the embassy. Grace Toledo, young and lonely, lately had outmaneuvered the advances of a half dozen junior officers who paid casual visits, but seldom when the Colonel was home. To her, and to Harry, this was a sign that his father’s affair with the red-haired embassy staffer was more than rumor.

Finally, the Colonel’s increasingly bizarre and violent behavior brought her to an ultimatum: they would live together as a family or split up for good. Grace Toledo, like her husband, was a Catholic, and this was a decision that she had not made lightly.

Costa Brava seethed with secrets, with codes within codes. Harry’s movement within the country had been tightly restricted all his life, which was true of all dependents of embassy personnel. Still, he had versed himself in the hot fluidity of the politics and he had learned a decent Spanish, though only English was permitted at the private American School on the embassy grounds. Harry had just graduated at fifteen and looked forward to never going back.

Grace Toledo told Harry everything she knew because Harry was her most constant companion. Still, a black hole of secrecy ruled Costa Brava with Colonel Toledo as choreographer. Neither Harry nor his mother had been able to penetrate its veil. She briefed him on the usual security precautions as they were passed to her.

“See how our cannibals dance” meant that all personnel were restricted to embassy grounds or to quarters, due to an undisguisable incident involving the internal law of the country. Action against Americans was imminent. Harry was sure that this message had already flashed among embassy personnel due to the incident between his parents.

According to the official embassy releases, no guerrilla activity penetrated within fifty klicks of the capital, yet the power substation on the block behind them blew up with chilling regularity. Harry had stopped believing the embassy, and his father, long ago.

Williams pulled up behind a bunker-like building fronted by a row of shabby garages on the Avenue of the Martyrs. Harry recognized the structure immediately as a “hot-sheet” motel. He understood now the meaning of the word “guesthouse.”

This particular motel was a singularly unremarkable place on a narrow street that offered plenty of cover behind burned-out cars but few options for escape. His father had taught him to observe these things, and he did so now out of habit. Much of the embassy’s intelligence was gathered electronically, but the Costa Bravans still relied on real eyes staring out real windows, on real ears against the right doors.

Grace Toledo dismissed Williams in the street across from the motel garages. Three of the roll-up doors stood open for business. After the Archbishop’s car disappeared around the corner, Grace hurried Harry through the leftmost of the three.

Hot-sheet motels provided the ultimate accommodations for the clandestine affairs of a traditionally Catholic nation. Designed to meet the illicit playtime needs of diplomats, politicians and the occasional priest or nun, the hot-sheet motels also hid guerrillas, political refugees and bandits.

They made perfect temporary isolation units for “hot ones,” the unvaccinated infected, or “cold ones,” the vaccinated but infected. The unvaccinated and the uninfected, like Harry, they simply called “lucky.” The latest vaccine, one that his father’s Agency helped the World Health Organization to distribute, was supposed to end the need for vaccination once and for all. His parents’ last argument had exploded over the subject of vaccinations.

A hot-sheet motel had no office. The client drove into one of the open double garages. A locked door led from garage to accommodations. To the left of the driver’s door a large drawer jutted from the wall. This drawer held a tray for cash and a rate schedule that boasted the convenience of a one-hour minimum fee.

Harry’s mother counted out some bills into the tray and closed the drawer. She drummed her fingernails on the handle and Harry heard someone rustling on the other side of the wall. A small red light winked on and the sign next to it said “Listo.” She slid it open and took out a stack of towels with a key on top. She handed the towels to Harry and opened the door.

Harry had seen a lot of motels during their vacations around the region, but this one was different. A single window high on the courtyard wall admitted sunlight but prevented casual snooping—or sniping. A huge bed with a thick red bedspread took up most of the space. Weavings of Maya design hung on the walls, resplendent in ancient sexual practices. A peek into the bathroom revealed a condom dispenser next to their complimentary champagne. The bottom of the condom dispenser rested atop the ice in the champagne bucket. Harry thought that they wouldn’t be very comfortable chilled like that.

He set the towels down and picked up a brochure that listed certain personal appliances that could be rented from the management, and an accompanying illustration showed three large penis-like devices. His Spanish wasn’t good enough to decipher all of the instructions.

“Put that down,” his mother said. “You might be as smart as an adult, but you’re still just fifteen.”

He sat down gingerly on the bed, more aches and pains reducing his movement to a series of cartoon-like jerks.

“Now,” she said, “we’ll see. . . .”

His mother opened a bedside drawer, where most motels kept their Bibles. She pulled the drawer completely from the cabinet. Taped to the back was a fat brown envelope.

Harry heard a car pull into the garage. The door rumbled closed and footsteps walked away. His mother, who had been holding her breath, relaxed. She shook out the envelope’s contents onto the bed: car keys, Canadian passports, Canadian and Costa Bravan currency, some note cards and databacks. The passport with Harry’s picture was registered to James McCarron, a fifteen-year-old from Coquitlam, British Columbia.

The bedspread smelled of cigarettes and chocolate. Chocolate reminded Harry that he’d been too wound up to eat, and his stomach growled. His mother heard it, too, and dug out a candy bar from the bottom of her purse.

His face hurt to chew, so Harry just let it melt in his mouth. His mother scooped everything into the envelope except the car keys and led him back into the garage.

“I paid for the night,” she said. “That might buy us some time.”

Their car was a beat-up, pre-millennium Lada taxicab. Harry’s mother picked up a Tigers baseball cap from the backseat and tucked her blonde hair inside. No passenger seat in front, so Harry got in back.

“Where to, young fellow?” she asked.

“To the airport,” Harry said, “and step on it.” He tried a smile, but it hurt too much.

“We’ll take the scenic route,” she said. “I think you’ll appreciate it.”

She hopped out quickly and closed the garage door behind them. A couple of kilometers later, two embassy staff cars swept past them, accompanied by a jeep with a pair of MPs, led by a Costa Bravan Special Security van.

“Looks like Gil didn’t believe we had guesthouse privileges,” she muttered. “It’ll take them a while to get into that room—the President or the mayor could be in there with one of their wives, for all they know.”

She drove them south, out of the city, through the lowland farms and into the hills. This coffee country was protected from guerrilla attack by the private security forces hired by the growers, and by small monthly payoffs. Harry believed that many of the security forces worked both sides of the fence, a notion not all that uncommon in embassy circles.

His mother turned onto a well-kept side road and stopped the taxi at a huge iron gate decorated with a giant maple leaf and the words “Casa Canada.”

On other plantations the workers lived in cardboard appliance cartons or under makeshift plastic tents. Here at Casa Canada each family was provided a two-room cabin with cement floor, a water spigot and a garden plot. Single men and women occupied two bunkhouses that flanked the cabins. Someone had fashioned play equipment for children out of a few dozen old tractor tires.

A long concrete trough under a thatched roof made up the laundry. All of the able-bodied men were in the fields, in the army or with the guerrillas.

“This isn’t the road to the airport,” Harry said.

“You didn’t say
which
airport.”

They swept past the huge drying area with its mounds of coffee beans, the aroma so thick that it even penetrated Harry’s swollen, blood-encrusted nostrils. Three long sheds abutted this area, and past the sheds stretched a concrete runway. A yellow biplane touched down, then climbed back up to come around again.

A red-faced blonde woman walked up from the middle shed to meet them, and only when she stepped out of shadow did Harry recognize Sonja Bartlett’s mother, Nancy.

“Hello, Grace,” Nancy said, extending a hand that lately had seen a lot of physical work. “I guess it’s ‘Patricia,’ now that we’ve made you a Canadian.”

“Hello, Nancy. I haven’t told Harry . . .”

“‘James,’” Nancy corrected. “At least, for a few days he’s my Canadian nephew, James.”

Nancy shook Harry’s hand, then stepped back to look at what his father had done to him. Harry didn’t like the darkness that crossed her face, nor the blaze in her eyes.

“The sonofabitch,” Nancy muttered.

She shook her head as though to wake herself and smiled. Her moment of fury and disorientation was not lost on Harry.

She’s been through a lot worse than I have,
Harry reminded himself.

People still talked about the break-in and the murder. Harry heard from one of the junior officers that she’d been raped as well. Her father, the U.S. Speaker of the House, vowed annihilation of the group responsible. No one took this threat seriously. The U.S. had all it could handle right at home.

Harry resolved to stay quiet, wait and watch what his mother and Nancy Bartlett had in mind.

Nancy quizzed him briefly on the information on his new passport and Harry answered her in Spanish.

“Remember,” she said, “don’t let them—”

“—know how much Spanish I speak. I know.”

“He’ll be fine,” Nancy told Grace. “If you two have to run, your papers are in order, including inoculation cards. Family and coffee-buyers fly in and out of here, and the Marcoes are always on the up-and-up. You can stay here, then fly out later if that’s what you have to do. The customs inspector comes here when they fly the coffee out. He’ll sign off your cards, if it comes to that. The coffee’s going to Mexico City.

“If worse comes to worst and you have to run, tickets will be waiting for you at Pan Am in Mexico City. Then to Vancouver, Canada, with a change of planes in Los Angeles. Canadian money isn’t tagged, so it won’t be traced until you change into dollars. My sister will meet you in Vancouver. Don’t worry. It’s all covered, you can relax now.”

Harry’s mother had fooled him, too.

She must have arranged this . . . weeks ago. Maybe months.

Nancy and Sonja Bartlett hadn’t lived out here all that long. Still, he’d always believed his mother’s thoughts and motives to be transparent. Harry was both amused and relieved to find out otherwise.

That yellow biplane drew a lazy figure-eight against the bright blue sky over the airstrip. It pretended to be a falling leaf, then swooped into a slow, spiraling climb.

The three of them began their dusty walk up to the house. Nancy was asking his mother how the fight started.

“This time it was so ridiculous. . . .” His mother faltered, something Harry had seldom seen. “Vaccination. It was time for Harry to get his vaccinations. You’ve seen the hot ones in that compound at La Ceiba? They’re all over this country and it’s nothing to fool with. The Colonel refused, and the Garcia government said, ‘No shots, no visa.’ Rico went into one of his rages. This time he got after Harry, too, and there was no stopping him. . . .”

Harry’s mother couldn’t finish and Nancy patted her shoulder, her expression grim.

“The rest I suppose you’ve heard,” Grace said.

Nancy nodded, then took Grace’s arm and guided them through the screened porch and into the house.

“Shouldn’t you handle this back home?” Nancy asked. “Down here, it’s his country and anything could happen.”

“My life is here, too,” Grace said. “Harry’s lived here all his life, and I’ve spent my whole adulthood here. I’m not going to let anyone run me off. Isn’t that what you decided, too?”

Nancy poured Harry a cup of the finest coffee that he had ever tasted.

“To freedom,” Nancy toasted.

“And to standing up for yourself,” Grace added.

Harry took his cup out to the porch and squinted into the sky. The little yellow biplane tipped its wings in a salute, and Harry caught a glimpse of long blonde hair streaming back from the cockpit.

Sonja!

For the first time all day, things were looking up.

Chapter 11

Marte Chang watched the pink wash of dawn highlight a lush hillside that she was forbidden to explore. The triple-fenced perimeter glistened with razor wire, angled both inward and outward. ViraVax looked more like a prison than a lab. She knew now why she had thought of submarines when she answered Casey’s questionnaire, and why he had scrambled their communication both ways when it passed through the web.

At least with a submarine you’re spared the temptation of the view,
Marte thought.

She shortened her focus to her reflection in the glass, lifted a strand of her straight black hair and let it fall. She hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to curl it for a week. Marte hadn’t touched her makeup in a week, either. She was surprised at her reflection. She had used eye shadow and eyeliner to make her eyes bigger, wider, more . . .
 

 
. . .
Caucasian?

Yes,
she admitted,
more Caucasian.

The pressure of all those . . .
round
faces, smiling at her in the passageways, serving her meals, plucking at her sleeve and fetching her clipboard . . . .

What am I afraid of?
she wondered.
That people will think I’m one of them?

Marte Chang’s intellect had always been her pride. She was embarrassed now because she hated bigots and snobs and she had just caught herself thinking like both.

She took a closer look at herself.

The reflected Marte Chang had a pair of wide, dark eyes separated by a slender nose that punctuated her full lips. She was surprised to find that she liked her eyes without the makeup.

I
must be slipping,
she thought.
It’s the isolation pressure.

She wondered whether the men in Costa Brava would like her eyes or not. Marte Chang wondered whether there were men in Costa Brava at all. The selections at the lab were completely unacceptable, including Joshua Casey. His ability to second-guess engineering opportunities with the genetic code bordered on the psychic, but his social skills and his sex appeal were zero. The missionaries were worked to the edge of exhaustion and took out their frustrations on the Innocents. Marte had witnessed many verbal attacks, and stumbled on at least one sexual encounter between a
deficiente
woman and a very embarrassed security guard.

Marte had turned her back and exited the room. The glare from the missionary turned her initial anger into fear.

Like everyone at ViraVax, Marte had been choppered directly into the security complex in the Jaguar Mountains, so she did not have a firsthand familiarity with the political or geographic terrain. She had studied the Agency’s briefing packet carefully, and Costa Brava came up in an occasional newsline, but both emphasized the squalor and desperation. Marte’s glimpse of one jungle hillside made her ache for more.

“You will be here for a six-month tenure,” Casey had said. “All regular staff live on the grounds. Our missionaries rotate through in two-year increments. We pay the highest royalties on developments, our profit-sharing benefits are unequaled. You might consider staying on.”

“I might,” Marte had lied. “On the other hand, I’ve been in school a long time. When this job is done, I’ll have some money for a change. I want to travel a little before settling down.”

Marte had hoped he would take the hint and release her for a weekend, but the Bartlett incident made everyone at ViraVax tighter than usual.

By the shift of Casey’s eyes Marte knew he had expected her to jump at his offer. Six months ago, she might have. That was before Sunspots, and that was before the call from Solaris, the briefing by Mariposa. Yes, it would be a good idea to travel.

“This field moves too fast for you to be gone from it very long,” Casey pointed out. “You’ll get bored, worried. Look us up, we’ll consider you for a two-year hitch. We insist on two things: you have no leave during that time, for any reason; you do not investigate other employment opportunities while you are here.”

Marte’s head buzzed with the complexity of this thing. She had come here for an installation that might take as little as four months. The extra two months guaranteed that she would have plenty of time to snoop around for the Agency as well.

Casey’s voice became louder with his increased enthusiasm.

“Your personal affairs can be settled through the webs,” he said. “Like everyone who comes here, you have neither lover nor family. . . .”

This matter-of-fact statement stung her, but she did not let it show. He was right. She had nothing to go back to and everything to stay for, so she might as well stay.

How did he know all that?

Some things weren’t covered in the preliminary hiring, yet Casey tossed off the intimate details of her life casually, as though they’d spoken of them many times.

“You know, I indicated on my questionnaire that I did not want to do any weapons work.”

“Yes?”

“I might be naive, Dr. Casey, but I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t employ this level of security unless. . . ”

“You graduated from a Children of Eden school, did you not?”

“Why, yes, but. . . ”

“And what made you choose that particular school?”

Casey’s loud voice rattled her thoughts.

“I’m a vegetarian, I like the health aspects of that. . . preference. The Children of Eden believe that earth itself is the Garden of Eden, fallen into disrepair. I wanted to be a part of restoring the earth. . . .”

“And you received full scholarships, true?”

“True.”

Marte felt her cheeks flush.

“You said,
that preference,
Dr. Chang, not
our religion.
You are a tithing member of our faith, are you not?”

“Well. . . not exactly. I pay tithes because I wanted to give something back, pass on the favor. I have read every book your father has written, and seen his webworks. Of course, they’re with my things back home. . . .”

“Ah, Dr. Chang, this is your home now. We Gardeners comprise a great family, and the nucleus of that family is here, in Costa Brava. We undertake many projects worldwide for many reasons. All ultimately must benefit the goals of the Children of Eden or we do not accept them. By that token, neither would we ask you to accept any project that you feel compromises your personal principles. Fair?”

Marte Chang felt that her personal principles had not been adequately spoken to, but she did not relish continuing this conversation at such close quarters with such a loud-voiced little man, so she dropped it.

“Fair,” she said.

“Good.”

Casey smiled, caught himself scratching at his scalp and brushed imaginary lint off his lapel instead.

“Shirley will continue your orientation. She’s been with us from the start and is best prepared to answer your questions. She will provide your upgraded access cards within the hour. My office is open if you need me.”

Marte breathed a lot easier when he was gone.

Six months locked up with this man,
she thought.
The Agency bonus had better be sainthood.

The thought was a throwback to her Catholic childhood with her parents. She dismissed it, but not without a smile.

Marte Chang waited a half hour for Shirley, then decided to explore the outdoors on her own. She already knew that this building, “A-Lab, Level One,” housed her apartment, office, lab and technical-support staff. Her walk down the main hallway did not deviate into the facility, however. Her gaze was on the back door, and every step led her closer to the fresh air that she craved. She stumbled out of A-Lab into one of the sudden tropical downpours that swept through nearly every afternoon.

Marte Chang looked up to see a bald man, stripped to the waist, running full tilt between two parallel rows of tires. He made incredible speed, stepping lightly inside each tire, in spite of the fact that he held a glass of water in each outstretched hand.

He turned for the run back, and his dark eyes flashed as he sprinted towards her.

Dajaj Mishwe!

Marte Chang stood her ground, though every muscle of her body screamed at her to flee. His expressionless face betrayed a thrill at the last-instant widening of her eyes.

He flung both glasses of water at her, glasses and all. She parried them both reflexively and prepared for attack, but he simply sprinted past her into the lab. The glare from his eyes was as infuriating to her as his actions. He was everything that the Agency briefing had warned her about.

The cocky bastard was already dripping rainwater on Casey’s office floor when Marte stalked right in. She trembled in her attempts to keep her indignation from fanning into rage. She vowed that she would not cry. Marte Chang sensed that rage was like a perfume to this man, and hysteria a fine wine.

Casey dismissed Mishwe with a jerk of his head. Though it was a small office, and crowded, Marte gave him plenty of room to pass without touching her. Perhaps it was the presence of the boss that restrained the man.

Casey explained in his usual boom of a voice: “He is a survivor of the messianic wars and quite a treasure, in his way. You will work with him sometimes, we all do. He spends most of his time at Level Five.”

Casey handed her a towel and she mopped her face dry.

“What do you mean ‘work with him’?” she said. “I don’t want to be in the same city as that madman, much less the same building.”

“He is a magician with genes, particularly the
access
to genes. Besides, all culture media are provided by his people at Level Five, and your project requires more medium than the rest put together, does it not? You will find Mishwe an invaluable tool when it comes to implementation. . . .”

“No,” Marte said, her lips pressed into a firm, pale line. “I do not want that man near me, or near my work.”

“Well, my dear, that’s simply unnecessary. Dajaj despises people, especially women, and bears our infrequent encounters under great duress. The Innocents adore him, however, and what patience he has, he has for them. If you stay away from his little playground back there, then you will likely never run into him by chance. I promise you, he will not seek you out. He seeks out no one.”

“He scares me,” she said, and dropped uninvited into Casey’s easy chair. “Eccentric is one thing, abuse is another. He
assaulted
me. . . .

“We are different people here, different from the outside world,” Casey said. He swept a hand about him in a gesture that Marte was sure he considered dramatic. “Here in our isolation we must develop a tolerance that surpasses what we find on the outside. It is in our best interests. May I show you some of his work?”

“I’m not sure I have the stomach for it,” she snapped.

“Calm down,” Casey said. It was as close as he had come to giving her an order. “You are not leaving, you have too much at stake. He is not leaving. You share the same roof. You don’t have to get along, so you must coexist. He will not harm you, that is not allowed. With information comes understanding, so you need more information.”

Marte rubbed her face with the towel, an opportunity to escape Casey’s blue-eyed gaze. Something in her body screamed at her to leave, to run, to get as far away from their shared roof as money could get her. But her intellect reminded her that this was not practical. She would find the tools to practice her intricate, expensive art nowhere else in the world, so she must make do here. Hers was the dilemma of the composer/conductor whose instrument is a symphony orchestra.

And there was the matter of the Agency.

“Okay,” she said, “show me.”

“It’s a long cycle through decontamination,” Casey said. “Several hours down to Level Five, several hours back. We could do it another time. . . ?”

Marte chilled at the thought of seeing Dajaj Mishwe again, but she could not expect too many offers for a look at Level Five, so she accepted, with what she hoped was a convincing eagerness.

Casey led her to a large apartment.

“It’s an elevator,” he explained. “Everything cycles automatically, illustrated for you by the orientation materials. We are most fussy about procedure on your first cycle. You may nap if you like, or access your system through the console provided. I’ll take an express later. You may be thinking, ‘Rank has its privilege,’ and you would be right. However, I assure you I still have to submit to the basic unpleasantries.”

The apartment was boring, the orientation’s talking head was boring, so, in spite of her nervousness, Marte Chang napped through the three-hour cycle to Level Five.

Dajaj Mishwe’s lab was meticulously kept. To Marte’s relief, Casey had called ahead, and Mishwe was gone. Marte was sure that he watched them from behind one of the two-way mirrors that separated each lab from its living quarters and electronics studio. Three thick ropes hung from the high ceiling, about five meters apart. Free wall space was studded with tiny pieces of rock— movable rock.

“Dajaj likes to climb,” Casey said. “It relieves his tension, like the tires. We all have our releases, correct? These are more innocuous than many.”

Marte answered with a grunt as she took in the detail of Mishwe’s workspace.

Like her temporary setup topside, it was as spacious as a well-lit barn. The decontamination/suit-up room and refrigeration facility were identical to her own. There the resemblance ended. Marte’s experiments focused on the placement of metals within retroviral structures during replication. She seldom worked with anything larger than single-cell cultures, but Dajaj Mishwe obviously preferred larger animals, animals of all types. There was no doubt that his favorite was the standard white rat.

Thousands of rat cubicles formed a great rat city around the lab. Hundreds of other rodents were confined to expensive isolettes.

Like Mishwe,
she thought.

Dozens of white-suited trisomy helpers shuffled the byways, feeding and watering and cleaning the animals.

“Lab rats,” Casey mused. “He does love them, doesn’t he?”

Marte understood that Casey meant the trisomies as well. She found it difficult to imagine Mishwe loving anything, so she kept quiet.