ViraVax (9 page)

“I thought you weren’t interested.”

“I’ve had my daydreams. Like you, everybody’s so involved in their projects. Besides, Dr. Casey’s rules are so strict—no fraternizing, all women in the lab must be on birth control, as if there were enough free time that you might need it.”

Marte swallowed hard, then asked the hard question.

“Has there ever been a contamination situation?”

“No.” Shirley laughed, but her expression hardened. “No, never.” Her glance flicked to one of the ever-present security monitors in the back corner of the room, and she repeated, “Never.”

“If there were a contamination, would you know about it?”

Shirley blushed all the way to the rim of her red hair.

“Probably. . . I don’t know.”

She picked up her tray and inclined her head towards the door.

“C’mon,” Shirley said, “I’ll show you some special tricks on that computer.”

Shirley introduced Marte to some of the social features of Jaguar Mountains’ computer system. With the proper set of codes, access to the outside world was unlimited. It was access
in
that was the problem. Shirley herself carried on an active correspondence, much of it frankly sexual.

“You just have to remember that everything coming in or going out is monitored,” she said. “But if you want to visit with a real person in the outside world, with a human who doesn’t know the first thing about viruses or Costa Brava. . . well, there are millions of them out there.”

Marte showed herself to brighten a little.

“I used a couple of networks when I was in school,” Marte said. “I wouldn’t mind visiting with some of those people again.”

“Well, it’s not all that easy. You have to be sure they don’t know who you are or where you are or what your work is.”

Marte laughed. “You’re kidding—isn’t that what most people talk about? Themselves, their work, their community.”

“We aren’t most people,” Shirley warned. “I just make up a person, a job and a place. Then for an hour a day I become that person. It’s like. . . like being in a movie, or something. Try it. I bet it’ll help.”

Chapter 14

Harry Toledo jockied the beat-up Lada taxicab across La Libertad’s industrial zone towards his father’s girlfriend’s place. Heavy rain made the going slick across the metal-deck bridges. Night closed in hard, and the army was setting up the evening checkpoints. He had to be back at Casa Canada before curfew. In Costa Brava, anybody on the streets after curfew was a target, and the shooting, pretty good. Each morning the bodies on the streets proved that point, though the lesson behind the point was never clear.

Harry had only driven a few times by himself on the back roads of Casa Canada, and he had never driven at night. The one wiper smeared mud a little thinner on his side of the windshield, and he counted on rain gusts to clear it.

The evening traffic bore him along in an increasingly frantic pace. Some people, including Harry, had a long way to go to beat the curfew home. Besides, if driving took too long, Harry knew that his father would be passed out drunk and this ride to a showdown would be for nothing.

He had picked up a Maya family, hitchhiking to the bus depot. The two youngest children were
deficientes,
carried in backpacks by their parents. The two older children carried large carved crucifixes over their shoulders for the coming Holy Week ceremonies. Since dropping them off a few minutes ago, Harry felt very much alone. Now he had to think about his father.

Harry had been afraid of his father for as long as he could remember, but in the past two years the fear had congealed into terror. This weakness humiliated him, even though he kept the weakness and the humiliation well hidden. Now his anger overrode that fear, and he wanted to face down his father before he lost the edge.

“Someday you’ll understand,” he tells me,
Harry thought.
Like I don’t understand already that a home with him in it is more dangerous than the goddamn streets.

The driver behind him hit the horn and nudged him. The light was red but there were no police, so it was merely a suggestion. Harry held his breath and dashed on through.

Less than a kilometer to go and the traffic didn’t let up, not even in the stretch along Central America Park. Harry felt the first fingers of fear scratching at his anger.

Even if he kills me now,
Harry reminded himself,
it’s better than waiting for him to do it later.

The Colonel had made it clear from the start that they couldn’t hide from him. Today’s visit was just a punctuation mark on an old message.

This morning the Colonel hadn’t beaten anyone up, but he had punched out all of their kitchen cabinets and ripped a door off its hinges in his fury. Their divorce was nearly final, expedited by the embassy and an eager stateside lawyer. Divorces in Costa Brava were rare and far from easy.

I
don’t see why he was so pissed-off,
Harry thought.
He’s already moved in with Rachel.

Rachel Lear, a receptionist at the embassy’s Civilian Services desk, wasn’t even ten years older than Harry. Rachel was easy to spot anywhere in a crowd with her red mane of hair, and Harry had spotted her a number of times, always with a different man.

Now the Colonel was on “extended leave” from the Agency and Harry could tell he was getting bored and restless. The Colonel drank a lot—anybody connected with the embassy seemed to do that—but he drank prodigiously when he was bored.

Boredom would frustrate his father, and Harry hoped that Rachel Lear knew what she was up against, living with his father when he was frustrated.

I
guess she’s got the frustration cure,
Harry thought.

Harry wished he could cure his frustration of living so close to Sonja, who stayed so far out of reach.

She lives in that airplane,
he thought.
That, or on the webs.

The Colonel had found Harry as soon as he signed onto the information networks, and followed him no matter how often he changed his password. The message was always the same: “Someday; understand.”

Harry didn’t understand yet. He saw a counselor three times a week at University of Central America in the city. He spent his days on the university network, through his machine at Casa Canada, accumulating as many credits as quickly as he could. Life was pleasant at Casa Canada, and it was made more pleasant by his daily contact with Sonja Bartlett. But he could not hide at home, doing nothing, and wait for his father to destroy them again.

“What do you want to do with your life?” his counselor asked him yesterday.

“I want to erase every border from the map of the world,” Harry had answered.

“Well, you’re young,” the counselor said, “you have plenty of time.”

This morning, the Colonel had intercepted Harry on his way up the front steps of the university. At eight-thirty in the morning, in the middle of the sidewalk, the Colonel stood, unshaven, drunk and very loud.

“You listen to me!” he shouted, but then he didn’t say anything. When Harry turned to go, the Colonel shouted again.

“You listen to
me!”

Again, Harry waited. Again, his father said nothing. A knot of curious students lounged on the steps instead of going inside. A pair of Hacienda Police began to swagger down the sidewalk towards them.

“You’re embarrassing me.” Harry said.

He felt his cheeks blaze red when his father mimicked his words silently, then spat at his feet.

“Someday you’ll understand,” he slurred.

“You said that before.”

“Your mom thinks I’m crazy,” he said. “Well, I’ve had people trying to kill me all my life. That changes your perspective. That’s a word you’d like, ‘perspective.’ I just don’t want you to hate me.”

Harry didn’t answer.

It’s too late,
he thought.

Harry looked past his father to the heavy metal doors where some of the students had stalled on their way to class. A few of them glanced at Harry and his father, whispering. Harry didn’t know anyone on campus except his counselor, Jesus, and Cesar, one of the librarians. He’d learned to take his mind off his father by diving into the terminals. “Putting on the right blinders,” his mother called it.

“Do you hate me?”

His father weaved a bit, his boilermaker breath too close for comfort.

“Yes.”

It came out with a croak.

The Colonel blinked, pulled his shoulders back and sneered.

“Well, you go ahead and hate me. What you hate isn’t even me. It’s you. You’ll understand that when you get older.”

The Colonel’s voice had risen again and more students gathered around to see what would happen. The
guardias
had recognized the Colonel and now they whispered between themselves at a distance.

“I think that the problem is,
you
hate
me”
Harry said.

“You get this from your counselor?”

“I’ve got to go,” Harry said, and started up the steps.

“Got a pressing engagement?” his father sneered again. “Or turning your little yellow tail to run?”

Harry pulled free and turned his back again. His father gave him a shove between the shoulder blades that sent him on a tuck-and-roll across the stone steps. As Harry gathered his books and fought down the stinging leap of tears, Cesar rushed out the security doors and hollered, “Hey, you! What’s going on here?”

The Colonel simply flipped him the finger and walked away.

Harry had caught the late afternoon bus to the gate at Casa Canada. When he got home he found his mother in the wreckage of their kitchen, sitting at the table, sobbing.

The sonofabitch did it again!

For Harry, it was as though he’d been asleep for the past few weeks. Now he woke up, and he woke up swinging. He wanted to ride his anger this time, ride it right down his father’s throat. He jumped into the taxi and raced back to town, not caring for once whether curfew caught him in the streets.

Harry was sweating heavily when he knocked at his father’s girlfriend’s gate in Zone Three. A wall of cinder blocks protected Rachel’s little house, but it was too close to the door so Harry stood in the street. Rachel’s was an inelegant door in an inelegant neighborhood.

A heavy mist laced with charcoal clung to him outside and a rivulet of sweat traced a shudder down the back of his shirt. Harry knocked again, louder, and Rachel opened it. Behind her, the opening theme of
Jaguar
blared from the TV. Somewhere further back, his father shouted “Shut up!” at a yapping dog.

“Come in,” she said.

Her smile, though timid, seemed genuine. Her small, round face was pale and her blue eyes framed in dark circles. Her nipples were a distraction against the thin yellow fabric of her low-slung blouse.

“No, thanks,” Harry said.

Harry’s throat was tight and his message came out in a rush.

“Tell Colonel Toledo I want to see him outside.”

“He’s not a colonel anymore.”

“Tell him his son wants to see him outside.” Harry turned from the doorway and walked to the taxi parked in a slew of garbage. He felt safer with more room and some darkness to run to.

Colonel Toledo filled the doorway and didn’t say a word. He wore a fatigue T-shirt with a tear just below the neckline. His gray eyes drilled that famous cold stare into Harry’s. The Colonel was most deadly when he was quiet, a lesson Harry had learned young. The glare from the living room light accentuated the jagged scissors scar that Harry’s mother had carved into Harry’s father’s neck that night nearly two months back. Harry took a deep breath.

“Don’t try to look us up anymore,” Harry said. “You scare Mom so bad she cries for days. It would be better for everybody if you didn’t come over.”

This was the most Harry remembered saying to his father on a single occasion in years. The last of it came out in a rush because he was trembling so bad that he felt his voice tightening up, ready to crack.

Colonel Toledo shut the girlfriend’s door and stepped outside into the yard.

“Who’s going to stop me?”

This was the question Harry knew he would ask. Harry’s heart beat so hard he could barely catch his breath.

His father’s fists scrunched down in their pants pockets, sagging the cuffs around the tops of his bare feet. Harry had seen the lightning-quickness of those feet when his father took him to the base for workouts.

The Colonel’s shoulders hunched against the post-rain mist in the slouch of the army boxing champ, ex-totterer of nations, ex-husband, spoiler. He was drunk again, and unshaven, waiting.

There was only one thing Harry could tell him.

“I will.”

The Colonel’s right shoulder leaned towards him and Harry expected the snake’s head of its fist to snap out and sting him right to sleep. He expected the usual beating, but this time he meant to give some of it back before he saw stars.

Harry’s father looked him up and down, then cleared his throat and spat.

“Right, then,” his father said, and pursed his lips that way that always meant trouble. “All right.”

The Colonel stared Harry straight in the eye for a moment, two moments. Those were the eyes that looked back at Harry from the mirror each morning. His father’s face had an alcohol bloat, a scraggle of beard, and his hair was thinning. Still, their resemblance was stunning.

“Curfew?” his father asked.

“I’ll make it.”

Colonel Toledo then turned to his girlfriend’s door. He fumbled the latch twice before it opened, lit up a yellow rectangle of street, then he slammed the door behind him without a look back.

Harry breathed so fast that he got dizzy. He listened at the door, but no one moved inside. Their television chattered in the background. The tremble in Harry’s body quit when his hands got a grip on the wheel. He raced the old cab the whole way across town, zigzagged back streets to avoid roadblocks and floored it when he hit the highway. The mist thinned out to nothing and by the time he got home he saw stars.

Chapter 15

Dajaj Mishwe washed Joshua Casey’s feet carefully in the large ceramic bowl and toweled them dry. This was a time of daily humility and reflection for all of the Children of Eden, a time when Mishwe felt closest to God. Still, he wished that Casey would do something about the suppurating ingrown nail on his left great toe. It distracted Mishwe from his meditations and further reminded him of the societal pus that he was committed to excising from the world.

Mishwe hung up the small white towel and sat at his own low stool. He removed his shoes in the customary silence and accepted the cursory foot-washing that passed for Casey’s ritual. The son of the Master was not a patient man, not a holy man, but he was instrumental in the rightful restoration of the Garden of Eden.

“Amen,” Casey muttered.

He placed both towels into the laundry as Mishwe emptied the bowl and washed it out. This, too, was a meditation for him.

“I’m worried about Toledo,” Casey said.

“I’d put a hunt on him,” Mishwe said.

Casey laughed as he pulled on his smelly black socks.

“You are so eager, my friend,” Casey said. “This one got to you, did he?”

Dajaj Mishwe bristled, not at the mention of the unmentionable Colonel, but at being called “friend” by a blasphemy of a powermonger like Joshua Casey.

Beware the kiss,
Mishwe warned himself.

“It’s not a ‘he,’ it’s an ‘it,’” Mishwe said.

“How unkind.”

Casey massaged his scalp with his thumb and forefinger.

“You grace your primates with gender, don’t you?” he asked.

When Mishwe didn’t answer, Casey affected a shrug.

“Call Toledo whatever you want,” he conceded, “but he presents us with a problem that his death would only complicate.”

Mishwe disagreed, but he did not argue. He did not want to give his strongest reasons for the death of Colonel Toledo. The lives of Adam and Eve, their reinstatement in the Garden of Eden, depended on a close control of Colonel Toledo. His death could be made very useful.

“What is this problem that a good death cannot solve?”

“He’s well connected to us,” Casey warned, “as was Red Bartlett. You have set us into a trap, there. If Toledo dies, a second arrow on an Agency map points here. I will not be able to keep them off. Besides,” Casey added, “better the evil we know than a new one.”

Mishwe was not really interested. What interested him most was the stimulating daydream of pushing all of Colonel Toledo’s buttons and launching him to the breaking point. Red Bartlett’s inoculation didn’t hit until he got topside, so Mishwe had revealed the Meltdown solution. But, thanks to his foresight years ago, Colonel Toledo was infinitely more susceptible to rage.

“The Agency’s dropping it,” Casey said. He tugged on his favorite white tennis shoes and laced them up. “They suspended Toledo and sent him out of sight. His replacement shows no signs of interest in anything outside the embassy compound. It’s quiet, things are in our favor. I won’t tolerate any loss of this advantage.”

Mishwe grunted his acknowledgment. He dwelt on the rage-and-aggression unit, one of several that he had added to Toledo’s little cocktail. This twist on the nausea bug he’d crafted years back—the “vomit virus”—disabled on demand. Once triggered, it produced beaucoup casualties.

Very messy,
Mishwe thought.
Very messy, indeed.

Casey was enamored of viral solutions. Mishwe was a virologist but he was also a practical man. He believed that many problems responded best to some old-fashioned solutions.

“Another problem,” Mishwe announced. “The Bartlett woman.

“She’s wiped,” Casey said. “Not a problem.”

“She’s not wiped, she’s conditioned,” Mishwe said. “Conditioning breaks down, and we can’t afford—”

“Do you want me to throw you a bone?” Casey snapped.

He jabbed his forefinger into Mishwe’s chest.

“You want somebody to kill and you won’t leave it alone until you get one, is that right?”

Mishwe pushed the finger away. He did not blink.

“You know I’m right,” Mishwe said. “Just like 1 was right that the Toledo woman would take her kid out there. We have both kids in reach, no feathers ruffled. That’s an advantage that we don’t want to lose.”

“So, if the Bartlett woman is killed, they’ll move the daughter back to the States. The daughter’s family will send for her and the Toledo woman will lose her last tie here and she’ll pull up stakes. . . .”

“They’re too smart for that,” Mishwe said. “Nobody who plucks the webs would go back to the States right now. There are only two sides, in Costa Brava, and our side owns the President and his Cabinet. Besides,” he added, “she and Toledo are the only outsiders to leave here alive. We need to tidy up.”

Mishwe had already begun his own edge-trimming, but he chose to continue to keep quiet about it.

“Do you see any alternatives other than those you have suggested?” Casey asked.

Mishwe paused, accepted a deep, cleansing breath.

“Yes,” he said. “Bring the children here, to Level Five.”

“That kind of thing gets messy. It has a way of getting out.”

“Nothing gets out of Level Five,” Mishwe said.

“You get out,” Casey snapped. “Bartlett got out.”

“Bartlett wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place,” Mishwe hissed. “You assured me. . . .”

Casey waved the argument moot. He sat at his desk and addressed his console.

“Intercom, Shirley.”

“Connecting,” it replied.

Shirley clicked on the line.

“Sir?”

“Get Mishwe all that we have on the Toledos,” he ordered, “particularly any upcoming appointments we’ve intercepted. He’s vacationing somewhere—let’s make sure it’s not in our backyard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Bartlett woman, too,” he added.

“Their network accesses, too?” she asked. “I could route all traceable entries directly into his console.”

Mishwe nodded his approval.

“Fine,” Casey said. “Thank you—”

“One other thing, sir,” she interrupted.

“Yes?”

“Marte Chang. I think we should have a talk about her.”

Casey scratched his head, pursed his lips, and Mishwe caught the hint of a flush rise out of Casey’s collar.

Well, well
, he thought.
The boss is human, after all.

Mishwe knew as well as everyone else at ViraVax that Joshua Casey and Shirley Good met for a private lunch and hydrotherapy twenty-one days out of every month. It was not the kind of thing one called to the boss’s attention, nor was it the kind of thing one ignored.

“Very well,” Casey said, “we can talk at lunch.”

“I suggest we talk sooner,” she said. “Chang’s on the webs with an agent of the Catholic underground, and somehow she’s accessed some Level Five logs. She asked Files for records on all lab fires, and recharge schedules for all fire suppressors. She might be on to Meltdown.”

Good move,
Mishwe thought, with genuine respect.

Mishwe’s labs, both at Level Five and topside, used more fire-suppressant than the entire facility. Still, anyone inoculated with Meltdown presented serious problems during routine lab studies. A simple blood draw could be spectacular. Mishwe had infected many of his coworkers as part of his personal fail-safe measures. He’d caught Red Bartlett entering Level Five by his own secret tunnel. Red Bartlett hadn’t had time to be an experiment, he was a simple elimination.

“I see,” Casey said. His complexion went from blush to white. “My office, ten minutes. Off, now.”

The line went dead. Casey turned to Mishwe and his big voice got bigger.

“Nothing fancy here,” he said, “like your trick in La Libertad with those communion wafers. Whatever you do, see to it that the idolator guerrillas get the credit.”

“My pleasure,” Mishwe said, exiting with a bow, and he meant it.