ViraVax Read online

The Colonel glanced around the bare office: fan, desk, three windows with blinds, the inevitable mold that bled through a fresh coat of government-issue pastel lime; two olive-drab file cabinets, one cabinet of electronic wizardry capped with two telephones. It was just as he had entered it nearly twenty years ago, except for the holos, the Litespeeds and Sidekicks. He couldn’t bring himself to focus on Hodge.

  “Conversation. . . okay.” The Colonel glanced at his watch. “Conversation.”

  Easily said, not so easily begun.

  Another glance at the embassy and he felt his testicles sucked towards his abdomen—he had nearly lost them out there, seventeen years ago. They took over a month to heal and still gave him trouble. And every Wednesday that they kept him in this office overlooking the embassy, he had remembered. Even though it was a punishment assignment, Rico knew he would feel better facing the weekly demonstrators from the front.

  “Adhesions,” the embassy physician had told him. “Take a week off so that you can just lie around and we’ll take care of that for you. If you wait, it’s just going to get worse.”

  Maybe that’s my problem, he thought.

  The Colonel preferred to think that his problem was anything but pressure. If it were pressure, he’d have to retire, just when his organization was in place and its position in this country secure.

  The Colonel had taken some licks in his time, but that series of kicks to the groin had been so quick and so hard that he couldn’t remember it. He remembered gagging on his own vomit, and a crushing, stunning pain that even morphine didn’t cure.

  Then, in the hospital, he got infected with some tropical bug that didn’t even have a name and he nearly sweat to death.

  “Fever of Unknown Origin,” he said.

  “Colonel?”

  “What I had, in the hospital. Fever of Unknown Origin.”

  Rico saw the shade of fear cross the assistant’s eyes. There was a vaccine against almost everything these days, but plenty of things left that a vaccine couldn’t help.

  Plenty of things new.

  AIDS had been the first breakthrough, a real money-maker. Now everyone got a multivax the same way the Colonel got one of the last smallpox scratches as a child.

  The Colonel had worked with ViraVax, the developer of the multivax, setting up their compound only a half hour away from the capital by chopper. No one had yet come up with a cure for everything. But someone had come up with a few other viruses, every bit as nasty.

  Of course, there were always a few who succumbed to the vaccine itself.

  The Colonel had been immersed in the world of viruses and vaccines for years now, much against his will. ViraVax had been his cover job here while he infiltrated the local rebels. Then the Colonel had been plucked out of field intelligence just when his networks were humming and his sources secure.

  Maybe they know my opinion of which side we’re taking, he mused.

  He thought it unlikely. Colonel Toledo shared his opinions with no one, not even Rachel.

  He had some scores to settle in the intelligence community, and now his government was making that impossible. He had been around too long to think that it was an accident, a toss of the die.

  In Costa Brava bullets outnumbered beans by three to one, and the most valuable commodity was information. Colonel Rico Toledo’s boss in the Agency back home called it “the product.” Costa Bravans, living closer to poetry, spoke of a “little sigh,” or “the whisper,” but very few real whispers bent hairs in real ears.

  Lots of high-tech tricks had sprung up in the last twenty years. By the time Colonel Toledo had engineered the Costa Brava confederation in 1998, modems and faxes winked their tireless semaphore from pocket Sidekick to satellite to desktop. Colonel Rico Toledo was as old-fashioned as his posture—when it came to information, he preferred to stick with lips.

  Real names were as rare as prime rib in the information business, but they were particularly rare in the Central American republics. Colonel Toledo’s last assistant had had three informants feeding him reliable product for a year.

  “Messy execution will get you a messy execution,” Spook had warned in the academy.

  As usual, he’d been right.

  Now Bartlett and another contact were dead and the three informants had turned out to be one person, also dead. Hodge, the greenhorn, cooled the hot seat and the Colonel was fielding a backhand slap.

  The Colonel saw no streetwise, predatory luster in Hodge’s clear, blue eyes, just the vapid gaze of a bored statistician.

  He won’t make it, the Colonel thought, but he’ll probably outrank me in a year.

  Nobody had ever pulled in more product than Rico Toledo, though there had been some cost, some personal cost. The Colonel’s marriage, for years exemplary in embassy circles, imploded. He had always been a reasonable man, but lately an unreasonable violence and an unreasonable lust had overtaken him.

  Midlife crisis, he told himself.

  But in the back of his mind the final report on Red Bartlett nagged at him and betrayed the monster that Red had become.

  I knew him longer than I’ve known my son, he thought. We had Thanksgiving dinner last year with his family.

  Rico tried not to think about how he’d spoiled the day by getting drunk before dinner, then he’d hurried out for a hot-sheet date with Rachel. And it had been nearly impossible for Red to get away from the Double-Vee for the day—the Gardeners didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, only their Sabbath, which started each Friday at sundown.

  The Colonel thought perhaps he’d seen just one too many bodies, an opportunity that Costa Brava presented every morning to anyone who drove the streets. And in twenty years he had done a lot more than just drive the streets. Confederation was supposed to change all that—eliminate the death squads, distribute land and wealth more satisfactorily—but all it had accomplished was arrested development, and a few palms greased with a lot more money.

  Recent reports of the plummeting birthrate had been received with relief, at first. Even Catholics agreed that overpopulation was a fundamental problem, so when it began to solve itself there was talk of a miracle, even in the evangelical President’s palace. If there were no starving masses, there would be no need for revolution. But if there were no starving masses, who would cook, clean, kill and die for the rich?

  Every miracle has its curse.

  But in recent months some troubling figures had come across the Colonel’s desk. Very few children had been born this year, fewer than the record few of the year before and, of course, the year before that. It was true. But other figures were also true: nearly fifty percent of these births were Down syndrome, trisomy twenty-one. Rico had made himself familiar with terms like “mongolism,” “trisomy” and “chromosome 21.” With very few exceptions, these were births to Catholic families.

  The Colonel had done his research. Down syndrome used to be called mongolism. One form of Down was a congenital condition related to the twenty-first chromosome. Genetic aberrations brought one thing to Rico Toledo’s mind, and that was ViraVax.

  The Colonel did not like being duped, especially by the likes of that sweaty-palm Casey. He did not want to be pulled out of the field and off this project before he had a chance to complete his own investigation.

  “This ViraVax thing is the chance of a lifetime,” he’d told his wife, Grace, when they were young and beginning the foreign service life. “It’s embassy placement, a government corporation with profit sharing—we get the best of both worlds.”

  Rico had nurtured a monster, and now it threatened to swallow him whole.

  The Colonel had cultivated a lot of rebel contacts through a number of aliases and gathered more viable product than any Agency operative in Central America. He thought it was time to call in some favors.

  Hodge rearranged his desktop for the third time in ten minutes. He’d been briefed on Colonel Toledo and probably thought it was dangerous to listen. The Colonel would have to straighten him out, because if so
mebody didn’t tell this maggot how things really were, he wasn’t going to be worth the toilet paper it would take to keep him here.

  “You told me you could imagine how it will be, but you can’t,” the Colonel told Hodge. “You saw what they did to that girl Sheffield was seeing in Quezaltenango, I hear. . . and what, a few others? If you stay at this desk—if you stay one week I will promise you that you’ll know your limit. . . .”

  The Colonel caught himself fisting the desktop, took a deep breath and let it out with a slow whistle.

  What’s happening to me?

  Hodge had scooted his chair back to get some running room.

  A rabbit, the Colonel thought. A goddamn chickenshit.

  Another slow, deep breath.

  “Sorry, Major,” the Colonel said, and tugged at his jacket. He wouldn’t have to wear his monkey suit for a few months, that would be a relief. “I really don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  “You’re checking your watch, Hodge, how very polite. Well, I won’t make you listen to my story. Your briefings are set up for your Sidekick, review them at your leisure. Call me anytime, if you can find me. The desk is yours. The rest is product, and you won’t find that in the files.”

  Chapter 13

  With Marte Chang’s employment came her “eyes only” access to certain spurs on the ViraVax networks. A few of these spurs led to the webs, the outside world. If Shirley Good were to be believed, an entire satellite went to orbit for the exclusive benefit of ViraVax, and Marte Chang was lonely enough to take full advantage of it. Since she could not explore the beaches and bistros of Costa Brava, she threw herself into the geography of the web, the ViraVax files and her dreams.

  The one person to whom she felt connected was Mariposa, on the Agency’s burst line. Her social life on site was Shirley Good, known in her New Age days as “Phoenix Rising” before her conversion by the Children of Eden, God’s Gardeners. Of the hundreds of people living at ViraVax, fewer than a dozen were normal females. For ViraVax, Shirley was extremely normal.

  Shirley Good had been the records clerk for ViraVax since the opening of the Jaguar Mountains facility nearly twenty years ago. Marte guessed her age at forty-five, about the same as Casey’s. Shirley was taller than Marte, who was taller than Casey, and her hair was a shock of red wool mushrooming to her shoulders. The top of her head was shaved clean to about three fingers above her ears. A rose tattoo curled over her right ear, its stem and buds trailing down the back of her neck.

  Shirley bit her fingernails down to ragged nubs, which she’d tried to dress up with a little clear polish. Even that, for a Gardener, would require a serious meditation on vanity. Shirley’s hands, like her face, reflected the death-like pallor of someone who had been out of the sun’s light for a very long time.

  Marte suffered a sudden, frightening vision of herself trapped, as Shirley had been trapped, by the heady magnitude of their projects and their isolation. Sunspot production was ahead of schedule, and Marte Chang wasn’t the least bit sorry.

  “Some people call Dr. Casey ‘the Mountain,’” Shirley explained. “Since he won’t come to anybody, everybody has to come to him.”

  Something’s happening between those two, Marte thought.

  The lift of Shirley’s jaw at the end telegraphed her pride. Marte found herself rooting for them, for whatever scrap of a relationship they salvaged out of their severity and their work. Marte had never sustained a sexual relationship beyond a weekend. No man had ever excited her as much as her work.

  Marte Chang had been summoned with her idea, and ViraVax converted that idea to reality. Marte’s was a new twist on solar technology, a viral process that would make her extremely rich.

  Being rich isn’t much good if I can’t get out to spend it, she thought.

  From the moment her chopper touched down on the lift pad, Marte counted the thousands of moments to go in her contract. She was a viral engineer, not a spy. Marte was beginning to think she wouldn’t make it.

  It’s been the most productive month of my life, she reminded herself.

  She still felt a chill in her belly, a chill that told her over and over, “Get out. Get out now.” But Casey provided the only way out, and she was bound to her contract, which stated that failure to fulfill meant she would forfeit her profit share of any of her patents or developments. She told herself she was just being a baby.

  Besides, she thought, living in the U.S. isn’t pretty either, these days.

  Thanks to the dedication of the ViraVax staff, Marte had full setup for production completed in less than two weeks. Her first installation of her Sunspots would empower ViraVax itself within a month, and they could anticipate freedom from the hydroelectric system by Easter. Marte would go ahead and let them believe that she wanted ViraVax to handle commercial production.

  Marte had underestimated the enthusiasm of the missionaries and the Innocents alike. ViraVax had leased the rights already, and in two more months some Costa Bravan corporation would start commercial production.

  Marte had tailored, then colonized, a very prolific, very sturdy virus. The excellent organic growth medium provided by Dajaj Mishwe had trebled her experimental outputs. Once she had initiated her changes, the rest was growth and production, a lot of time for research, and snooping.

  Marte coaxed the protein shell of the virus to take on silicon, at first, then certain metallic structures. Marte directed her mutation into a suitable architecture of capillaries and tubules, then killed and fixed the viral colony in position.

  This task proved simple, since she grew the colony within a durable, nontoxic medium that hardened into interlocking amber hexagons. The annual solar yield of electricity from one acre of Sunspots had a projected worth on the U.S. market of a half million dollars.

  Marte thanked the fates that she did not have to face Dajaj Mishwe once during the entire process. His preparation of her various media was brilliant, however twisted his mind, and she posted him a formal thank-you note on the lab’s interior net. She thought that it was the Christian thing to do, though she was growing more disenchanted daily with the Christians around her.

  She had witnessed several further incidents of sexual contact between the young male missionaries and the young female Innocents. She reported these incidents to Casey, in three cases documenting a positive ID of both parties. Via memo, Casey thanked her for her concern and reassured her that punishment would follow.

  She never saw any of the perpetrators or their victims again, and presumed them transferred to another sector.

  They’ll just keep it up wherever they go, she thought. They’ll just keep getting moved around.

  She was vulnerable now, this she knew. She would have to be strong to keep from turning to someone for security, protection. Even Casey could look attractive if she were scared enough; that was something Mariposa had warned her about. Mariposa, who was so good with computers, seemed to know so much about confinement.

  Marte saw very little of Casey during her first month, but the signs of his approval began appearing in her bank account within a week. Casey was strange, and strict, but his profit-sharing system and bonuses were generous beyond her imagination. All researchers received a monthly stipend from ViraVax, but anything that turned a profit for Casey turned a profit for the principals involved as well. A ten percent tithe was automatically deducted as a donation to the Children of Eden, per a clause in her original contract.

  Marte realized that it was likely she would never want for money again, no matter how things turned out with the Agency. Now that her financial worries were gone, she was discovering her real wants.

  She wanted what was forbidden.

  “What do you want, girl?” Shirley asked her over lunch.

  They sat at a table in one of the facility’s teahouses, under some well-cultivated vines. Beside them, a fractal splashed electronic water over real rocks.

  “I want walks in the jungle,�
� Marte said, “sun on the beach, a lover who can’t spell ‘acetylcholine.’ “

  “Futures on your Sunspots swept the market today,” Shirley told her. “The Star says, ‘For the first time, scientists guarantee liberation from the oil barons.’ You’re hot property, baby. Just hang on. Stay here awhile, till the flash fades, then go out there and buy your beach, snag you a man.”

  Shirley repeated Casey’s scenario for her: the energy giants would try to block production, they would be squelched by the Agency, then they would scramble to get aboard.

  This very smooth choreography made Marte realize that these partners had danced together before. The Agency’s name rolled off Casey’s lips all too easily for her comfort.

  All of this buzzed through her mind as she shared a huge salad with Shirley Good.

  “Y’know what I did before this?” Shirley asked.

  “What?”

  “Phone sex,” Shirley whispered. Then she giggled. “It paid okay, and I didn’t ever have to let them touch me.”

  Marte was stunned, then amused. She couldn’t suppress either blush or giggle.

  “But why . . . ?”

  “That’s what everybody asks.” Shirley bit off a chunk of celery and crunched it unselfconsciously. “I’m agoraphobic. I’ve always looked for jobs that I could do indoors. Preferably at home, on the webs. That’s why this job is perfect. I get all the outside world I need via nets, webs and sats.”

  “But, Shirley, what about. . . you know, meeting someone. . . .”

  “Falling in love? Having babies? Honey, I got raped at thirteen by the baddest man in town, and that was enough of that for me. These hands might be ugly, but they suit me just fine.”

  Marte felt her traitor skin blush again, and Shirley patted her shoulder.

  “Don’t feel bad, honey. I’m happy as can be in this job. This is the perfect place for me. You’ll see, it might grow on you, too.”

  Marte Chang loved her work, too, but she was not in love with this place or its people. She was young enough at twenty-six to love bright lights and company, uncomplicated male company. The Children of Eden had put her through school, but she liked a drink now and then and she considered their observance of the Sabbath to be an obsession and an obstruction to responsible science.