ViraVax Read online

  “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 he
r. 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.

  Maybe that’s the sign, he thought. Maybe she’s the right one, after all.

  Regarding other matters, Casey was confident that the security squad had covered their tracks too thoroughly for even the Agency to follow, much less a wet-behind-the-ears graduate.

  He smiled his most winning smile.

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “I am embarking on a new project that is most fascinating. I could use your expertise. How about discussing it over dinner?”

  “It’s a dangerous policy to date the boss.”

  He hung on to the smile.

  “This isn’t a date,” he said. “It’s a meeting. Trust me.”

  At last, the smile that he’d angled for crossed her lips.

  “Promise it won’t be the cafeteria?”

  He promised.

  Chapter 23

  Colonel Toledo rode inside a special compartment in the back of a refrigerated van, heading further into the Jaguar Mountains. Tio wrestled the wheel around the usual washouts, chuckholes and debris. Rico eavesdropped on Tio’s steady stream of innovative profanity through the earpiece connected to his Sidekick. Yolanda rode shotgun in the cab.

  The Colonel wanted Yolanda and he wanted a drink, but he wanted to find Harry even more. He stuffed the unflattering cravings of his body as far down into the dark as he could, and concentrated only on those things that worked towards his son’s release.

  Eight men had died when the drone dropped on their command center. The precision of the strike was rare in Costa Brava. It indicated that someone had good data, and the guerrillas speculated that that someone was higher-placed than the Garcia boys, perhaps someone in the embassy itself. Some said that they were striking at the guerrillas out of frustration, using product from Agency files compiled by Rico himself. Rico didn’t tell them about the Parasite, and he hoped that the unit he cracked was the only one they’d planted.

  “They really don’t want you,” Yolanda had reminded him. “They only want what you can bring them. You are the bait for a great fish. Who would come to help you, Colonel, if you were trapped and alone? Who would be held hostage if you were held hostage?”

  He had the dark ride in the truck to think it out, and he was sure she was wrong. They already had what they wanted—the kids.

  Peace and Freedom is far bigger than anybody guessed, he thought. Even if I told everything I knew, it wouldn’t destroy them.

  Within a half hour of the strike, guerrillas assembled new equipment at a rendezvous twenty klicks up the road. There seemed to be no end to their supply lines, and their equipment was the best. All brand names had been removed, but Rico recognized the satlink modules and Litespeeds as Japanese—superior to the embassy’s equipment, and the embassy had a trade embargo to blame for that.

  Rico had no disagreement with the guerrillas. He had monitored them, infiltrated them and occasionally fought them over the past twenty years. Now stronger than ever, they clearly didn’t see him as a threat. The guerrilla movement that he had been fighting had been a sham, street theater set up to keep the Agency and its cousins busy while the real work went on uninterrupted.

  Japan needed land, and obviously the Peace and Freedom people had struck a deal.

  But Colonel Toledo’s secrets could fill many a grave and empty a lot of pockets. ViraVax, for sure, would go down. The Agency, like Peace and Freedom, would be nicked but not out. Different butts would polish different chairs in a few governments, but the Children of Eden would remain the wealthiest single entity in the world, with or without the two Caseys.

  The Colonel reflected on Project Labor, the trisomy twenty-one project, and the fact that the process was a ViraVax patent that his protection made possible. He should have known that a paranoid like Casey would cover all bases. Everything kept coming back to Joshua Casey.

  Those goddamned Gardeners are going to own the world!

  Catholics believed unbelievers to be unsaved, but Children of Eden believed them to be unhuman. Cattle. Tools or chaff.

  The Colonel, like many Agency personnel in Costa Brava, was a lip-service Catholic, in it for family and the network. Rico thought of himself as an Old Testament Catholic. The New Testament didn’t allow the flexibility of expression of the Old Testament. He empathized with someone who would turn water into wine at a party, but from a soldier’s point of view, eye for an eye made much more sense than turn the other cheek.

  Good guys carried swords in the Old Testament, he thought.

  In the New Testament, only bad guys used their swords. Rico Toledo was not ready to offer up his sword upon anyone’s altar. The Colonel smiled. He was a good guy who carried a sword, like the archangels Gabriel and Michael, and it was high time he used it. Rico had a gut feeling that he would heft it against either El Presidente Rigoberto Garcia or Joshua Casey.

  Within an hour of the Colonel’s arrival, a condo four-plex outside a sleepy highland village
became Command Central, a duplicate of their bombed-out quarters down-valley. Reports of the kidnappings varied wildly, and for the first time Colonel Rico Toledo felt blind, deaf and dumb in the heart of a crisis. Yolanda and El Indio brought in twenty people and a vanful of electronics. So far all the Colonel had been able to muster was a whopping headache.

  The government hadn’t bothered to send troops to mop up after the drone. That told Rico that they were confident of their strike or scared shitless of a face-to-face with the guerrillas. His money was on the latter.

  El Indio assured him that all of their new equipment was shielded and transmissions double-scrambled, but some hungry villager could pop them for a favor or a job.

  “Still, you do not understand how black their hearts are,” El Indio lectured him, as though Rico were a greenhorn. “You are like me, more interested in the network, the information, the game. I respected you, your work. I respect you now. I do not respect your government’s complicity in my country’s misery.”

  The four techs who were setting up were very good, and very fast. Rico and El Indio stood in the middle of a living room snarled with cables, gloveware, terminals, printers, satboxes and Litespeeds.

  “Blaming the bombing on me, that’s to be expected,” Rico said. “I’m suspended, a wild man, so even the U.S. can speculate on this one and come out a winner. But the kids . . . I don’t get the connection.”

  “Perhaps there is no connection,” Yolanda said. “Maybe whoever did the bombing didn’t know about the kidnapping plan. Somebody saw the opportunity to get some press out of linking the two, perhaps even a third party. You have made such deliberate misconnections to the press yourself in the past, no?”

  Rico nodded, and felt his shoulders sag in spite of himself.

  “Yes,” he sighed, “more than once. But we usually knew the reality even if what we released was fiction. Somebody, somewhere, knows what’s going on. I sure wish I had access to the Agency.”

  “We’re getting our eyes and ears connected now,” Yolanda said. “This place is secure, but we will jump all of our electronics through at least three steps as a precaution. . . .”