ViraVax Page 19

  A lot of good it did last time, he thought, but he kept it to himself.

  A young woman waved at Yolanda from across the room and gave her the thumbs-up sign.

  “Satellite’s hot,” Yolanda said. “I’ll have a report for you in just a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Rico said. “I feel so . . . useless. . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “There will be too much to do very soon. You could rest. . . .”

  “No, I couldn’t,” he said. “Not until I get my boy.”

  She hugged him in silence, and left. The smell of the sweat in her hair lingered after her, and Rico felt a rush of desire. Just as suddenly, he felt the upswelling of rage.

  “My son is snatched, my ex-wife unaccounted for, I’m blamed for an embassy bombing and there is nothing I can do about it. . . .”

  The Colonel caught himself pounding on the desk. El Indio, the technicians in the room, their two teenage guards, all stared at him, stock-still. To most of these people he had been one of the enemy for years, and an Agency man, at that. He was a Catholic in name only and he had installed the Children of Eden in this region and in this government. Only El Indio knew how many times he had acted on behalf of the Peace and Freedom Party.

  “I’m sorry,” Rico said, breaking the tension. “I’m sorry, but I have to do something.”

  El Indio shook his head. “It’s better that you don’t,” he said. “We don’t want anyone out there on your trail to find us here. Don’t worry, we have everything here, everything. You have underestimated us all along, as was our desire, but now you will see what we can really do.”

  Rico Toledo settled in to wait, but he had never waited well and didn’t intend to start now. He was angry and hyper so he had a few rum and sugars. Then he wanted Yolanda. He tried to write it off to their bonding under fire, to cabin fever, but his body wouldn’t listen. He concentrated on the important things.

  Why weren’t there any reports about Grace, or Nancy Bartlett? he wondered. Not a word about them from the press or the network.

  Rico well knew the penchant the press had for interviewing grieving family members at uncomfortable times.

  The bomb was really in my car, he thought. Who was the target? Who wanted everybody to think it was me?

  Rico couldn’t think of any time that his car had been out of range of his Watchdog, the alarm adjunct to his Sidekick. Whoever had got to him had been good, or simply inside.

  The corporal, he thought. The one who parked my car. . . .

  So far, the only pronouncements coming across the newslines were from the Garcia government, and they clearly used the incident to discredit him. Anyone up-and-coming in the Garcia government was going to do it through the military. Anyone up-and-coming in the military would be a Gardener, trained in the Night School, founded by Colonel Rico Toledo.

  The U.S. wasn’t talking and the Agency was out of touch. Rico couldn’t be completely sure about the Peace and Freedom people except that they saved his skin, and were now amassing their resources to help him find Harry and Sonja.

  Maybe they planted the bomb so that they could get me here, get me on their side.

  He didn’t think that was likely. Bombs were too nonspecific, too messy. Their own people would have been at risk.

  If not Garcia, and not Peace and Freedom, then who?

  One of the guerrillas brought a pot of coffee and set it between El Indio and Rico on the desk. He was the truck driver, Tío, about Rico’s age, potbellied. His jeans rode low in the back, and his T-shirt said: “So What If That Horse Was Blessed by the Pope. Can He Plow?”

  Out of the back pocket of the jeans Tío pulled an envelope, folded many times. He nodded at Rico, his eyes cold, then unfolded the envelope and handed it to El Indio. He passed the list of numbers over reverently, clearly honored to be in the presence of such a legendary pair as the Colonel and El Indio.

  Rico tossed back his rum and sugar. El Indio’s attention was wrapped up in the headphones he wore and the peel he studied.

  “Jabalí,” Tío said with a respectful nod. “Jabalí.”

  Rico’s skin cooled at the sound of that name, the one he hadn’t heard except in his sleep for the past twenty years. Yes, he had been Jabalí, Wild Boar, but that was two decades ago in a country that, like so many, no longer existed.

  Again, he looked the fuzzy-haired guerrilla over and tried to place him.

  “Belice?” he asked.

  “No, señor, not so far as the ghost of Belice. The networks. I followed your strategies on the webs. We have used them here, as you know.”

  “I know,” Rico said. “You’ve used them against me.”

  Tío covered his mouth when he laughed, a custom of the mountain folk.

  “Not until now did I know that you were also the North American Colonel Toledo. But you know, we used your strategies against your government, not against your esteemed self.”

  “I was representing my government, and it was my butt out there getting itself kicked and looking bad.”

  Rico tried to calm himself down. He was looking for a fight, he could feel that now, and this man was not.

  This man is not the enemy, Rico reminded himself. Back off.

  Tío straightened, his expression hardened.

  “Yes, your country was distracted then, as it is now,” Tío said. “They forgot you down here. That was when you learned to live here, and quit coming after us.”

  Rico did not want trouble with this man, or these people. He fought the unreasonable urge to rip Tío’s throat out. He practiced being casual and measured out his voice.

  “What do you do here?” Rico asked him.

  “I break codes and access the webs,” Tío said. “Getting us onto the networks is easy. Covering the trail is another matter. Tell me, señor, why did you not go back to your country?”

  “I’ve lived here most of my life, I know this country,” Rico muttered. “I don’t know the United States anymore. It’s a jungle.”

  “A jungle, yes,” Tío said. “They are animals up there, it is true. And in Costa Brava, of course, we are civilized.”

  Both men laughed.

  “Welcome,” Tío offered, and shook Rico’s hand. “I have five children myself, and three grandchildren. We will find your son.”

  Tío stepped back, snapped a half-salute towards El Indio and left.

  Rico’s hands shook just a bit.

  Booze? he wondered.

  Hubbub in the room picked up once again as everyone turned to their chores.

  “Have you heard of Project Labor?” El Indio asked.

  He twisted one of the earphones aside so he could hear Rico’s answer.

  “I have,” Rico said. “It’s no longer viable.”

  “What is it?”

  Rico sighed, then said, “I can’t tell you.”

  “You won’t tell me, you mean. Remember, you yourself taught me the subtleties between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ in English.”

  “Why can’t you be grateful for all of the things I did tell you, instead of harping on what I didn’t?”

  The Colonel’s dander was up again, and his head throbbed.

  “Grateful?” El Indio’s face flushed, and he stood. “Grateful?”

  “Yes,” Rico said. “That’s been our relationship. Grateful for what we got, no pressure elsewhere. It was not an Agency operation. It was Costa Brava, direct from Minister of the Interior. Where did you hear the term?”

  “Something from the networks,” El Indio said. “Mariposa and Tío got us into a Night School system. I have a memo here that says you registered a protest over Project Labor. I gather that it was implemented behind your back, and that it was something vital. Your embassy job began the next week. You never mentioned it.”

  Well, El Indio’s people were better than he thought if they could crack even one box on the Night School web. True, with Project Labor they had gone around him. Also true, he had elected to keep quiet once he found ou
t. The inoculation had been done with an appropriate sense of blasphemy—through communion wafers. The outcry, even now if it became public, might turn ViraVax, the Costa Bravan government, the United States government and the Children of Eden into political rubble.

  The Colonel did not feel the violation or the guilt that he usually felt when faced with the fact of Project Labor. Right now he felt only anger, even though he himself had commanded similar operations once they had saddled him with ViraVax.

  Project Labor had meant he was marked as a rabbit. They had thought he might run, defect, turn rogue. They knew he was Catholic, and they did not trust him to oversee an operation aimed at Catholics. He would not have supported this program aimed at any human being. He had been an old-fashioned soldier even when he was young, one who gave and valued loyalty.

  Would they have done it if I’d fought them, or if I’d gone public?

  It scalded him that they had been right about him. He was a good soldier, he kept his mouth shut. The results overburdened his loyalty.

  Yolanda and El Indio’s youngest child, La Fey, was retarded. Many more retarded children born in Costa Brava these days, all trisomy twenty-one, Down syndrome. Project Labor did it, and even after he saw it implemented, the Colonel had kept quiet.

  But now, how could he tell El Indio, or Yolanda? Easier to load the story anonymously onto the networks, addressed to the Church. That way he wouldn’t have to face anyone.

  But now he had to face El Indio.

  “I can’t tell you about that operation right now,” Rico said. “I wish I could. It does not threaten us here. I promise you that I will give you every detail when this is over.”

  Rico swept his hand around the room, indicating the dozens of electronic communications devices that the guerrillas had moved into the room during the past hour. Other rooms and other condos were equally full.

  “I guarantee you, if we get my boy and that girl out, I will give you enough information to keep all of this equipment busy for a long time to come. . . .”

  “So,” El Indio challenged, “you would use your son as the hostage now. We lost eight good men to that drone. Now, you say, if we get your son back. . . .”

  “Dammit,” Rico snapped, “you know what I mean. Whether we find him or not, whether we get him back or not, I will still load your system. I owe you that. I owe a lot of people that. But that is then and this is now.”

  “You are not my enemy, Jabalí,” El Indio reassured him. “You are overtaxed, and in pain. You know I will help you in this, no matter what.”

  Rico squeezed the bridge of his nose and rested his eyes for a moment. He breathed slowly, deeply, and relaxed himself. He wanted another drink but poured himself a coffee instead. He knew that he was headed into one of his hair-trigger moods, and it wouldn’t take much to detonate him.

  “I know that,” Rico said with a sigh. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 24

  Each time Marte Chang left her quarters, a pair, then six, then a dozen round-faced, Asian-eyed, pear-shaped people pressed around her. They approached cautiously, patting one another and jabbering up their courage to touch her. The Innocents lived for touch, and their stubby fingers explored her hair and her skin. Only one of them, David, had noticed her Asian eyes, so similar to his own.

  “Look!” David said when she climbed aboard his cart.

  He pointed to her eyes, then to his own, and laughed.

  “We’re almost the same,” he said.

  “What do you mean ‘almost’?” Marte asked. “We’re both human, aren’t we?”

  Marte had been curious for some time to see how the Innocents viewed themselves. Innocents were divided into classes, based on relative ability or disability, and David was definitely upper-class. He read maps and memorized all the topside routes. He exhibited no rocking behavior, no self-destructive tics that many of the Innocents suffered.

  “We’re both human, aren’t we?” Marte repeated.

  David contemplated her question for a moment, staring at a knot of workers gathering at their lockers. Then he smiled.

  “Tongue?” he asked, and stuck his own out for inspection.

  “What?” Marte said.

  Her ear wasn’t tuned yet. Shirley had told her it would take time, but that had been nearly two months ago. Even when she heard a keyword from one of them, she had trouble unless it was in context.

  “Don’t respond to the keyword unless it’s an emergency,” Shirley had told her. “We’re all supposed to encourage them to speak the whole idea out.”

  “See your tongue?” David asked.

  He grabbed his own by the tip and pulled it out of a big grin to show her.

  Marte was taller than any of the Innocents, and when they looked up to her, their faces eager, hugging one another, she wanted to gather them up in her arms. She did not think about what was happening to them in Practical Medicine on Level Three, or in Mishwe’s lab on Level Five.

  She stuck out her tongue and David squealed at the sight, at once amused at the spectacle and aware that there was a difference.

  That was what the group pressed around her now was doing, laughing and sticking out their tongues. They pushed one another to get closer, but none of them clung to her, as they sometimes did. That was the hardest for her: she hated to let them go.

  Marte shut her door against the gentle press of their bodies. She leaned her forehead against the cool steel and listened. They went about their version of small talk, which took a moment, no more, and they left.

  Marte remembered the morning, after her glimpse at Level Five, when she had shouted at the Innocents around her. She had frightened them terribly, and they fell over one another, howling and crying, in a stampede of soft flesh and sobs.

  Marte Chang let her own tears roll, now that her door latched behind her and she had tissues in hand. She knew it had been coming, tears for all those hundreds of thousands of betrayals perpetrated against innocent humans. Tears for herself, trapped here in something way over her head.

  Destroying this facility won’t even be enough, she thought. In fact, we may need the facility to stop the spread of damage already done.

  Dajaj Mishwe, the worst of the worst, probably would be spared just for access to his brain. She had done what Mariposa had asked: she had stirred things up, challenged Casey, siphoned off huge gulps of data. Casey seemed completely unintimidated by her queries, her accusations, and he went so far as to volunteer further information supporting her charges. The implication was clear.

  He does not intend for me to leave.

  Marte wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and saw that the wait-state display on her Sidekick had changed from a tiny holographic rainbow to a butterfly.

  Mariposa!

  Marte felt relief and a rush. Contact with the outside world had become her drug, as Shirley had warned. Now Marte readied her packet on Project Labor, a long tale of involuntary sterilization and insidious conception. Marte hated this part of the burst—the wait, the final two-minute countdown to transfer. Marte wanted it to be time for the Agency download the minute she found something new, and she was finding something new every minute.

  “Go ahead,” Mariposa would say, “wish your life away.”

  The butterfly began to wink off and on.

  Yes!

  Marte set her hands into the glove-like controls of her system. She keyed the protocols and waited.

  Mariposa had set Marte up for her position inside ViraVax, which had been the black hole of information. Not only did nothing come out, but probes that went in were followed to their source. That source and its operator were destroyed, physically and completely.

  From Mariposa’s coded instructions and protocols, Marte helped her weave a carrier resonance pathway into the dispatches between the Agency and Casey. During that time, Mariposa and Marte could converse in bursts, as the data was fed, or they could load and unload prepackaged cargo. Either way, their messages piggybacked on the data bursts flung betwe
en the Agency and ViraVax.

  Marte prepared a packet of files and synopsis of her meeting with Casey to transmit to Mariposa, and did so when the butterfly’s wings began to flap. Simultaneously, her instruments indicated that she was receiving a similar load from Mariposa.

  The load was a return on her inquiry about Mishwe. It did nothing to set her at ease.

  Mishwe was born in Jerusalem twenty years sooner than she would have guessed. He saw four countries razed around him as a child. His father was an interpreter and middleman, and his mother a terrorist. Both died young. They left him in care of an uncle, who figured out how to get Mishwe’s inheritance without having Mishwe. The uncle signed him on with a Children of Eden boarding school.

  “Though this was a politically and environmentally correct choice,” the load narrated, “certain cousins labeled it a contravention of their religion and beat the uncle to death with tire irons.”

  The Children of Eden already had Mishwe, and his money.

  Here the story ended with images of that painfully beautiful, dark-eyed boy. Marte knew all too well the peculiarities of the Gardeners’ beliefs. Photographs constituted graven images to the Children of Eden. Having a graven image made for oneself transgressed vanity and precipitated self-worship. One mirror was allowed per household, solely for grooming purposes, above the bathroom sink.

  Mariposa had one of her best people inside the Records Department of the Children of Eden. Awards for Mishwe, certificates of intelligence, scholarships abounded, but no more pictures.

  “Dajaj had always been a bright, intense child,” the load went on. Her screen displayed a file dramatization of a schoolroom among the Children of Eden. “He blossomed intellectually under their various testings and placements, but he never opened up as a person.”

  It was obvious to Marte that Children of Eden became his parents. They nourished and purified his body, Temple of the Lord, and showed deep respect for his mind. This respect, by all appearances, was genuine.