Little Deadly Things

by Harry Steinman

  Eva was at her most exciting when she was ghosting—I think that the old term was hacking. She travelled through private cloud data like a hungry barracuda swims through a school of minnows and she was just as dangerous. I’d seen her track people she thought had insulted her and play havoc with their pillar or sleeve. I was a willing pupil and occasional accomplice—I enjoyed mischief as much as any kid does—but she could be mean. I didn’t like being with her then. The ways she got even were amazing, but if you were the target, you wouldn’t like it one bit.

  Eva also taught me to keep a journal of what I learned. She kept one and told me that every good scientist keeps a journal. If you found her journal, you could read it—if you had good jacking skills. But you would have to know about advanced chemistry and nanotechnology just to understand it. And you would need a great deal of imagination to visualize one of her plans, and even more courage to contemplate it.

  15

  ___________________________________________

  COUNTERPOINT

  FROM THE MEMORIES

  OF DANA ECCO

  Late one summer afternoon, Eva surprised us when she displayed a genuine smile and announced, “I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

  My mother’s hair was drawn back in a loose ponytail. I could see her face register mild surprise and then incomprehension. Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched to a peak well above the midline of her broad Taíno forehead.

  “Why?” my mother asked.

  Eva did the unthinkable. She smiled again. “No agenda,” she said quietly. “Hungry, maybe?”

  “Oh, boy,” my father grinned and rubbed his hands together like a child rolling strands of clay spaghetti. “Merci, Dr. Rozen, mon amie,” he said with a contrived French accent. “Where are we going?” He sounded like a cross between a poodle and a Chihuahua with phlegm in its throat.

  “North Shore. Company car and driver’s waiting. Come on, Marta, relax. When was the last time we had a friendly outing?”

  “Not in a long time,” my mother conceded. “If ever,” she added under her breath.

  If I heard her, then Eva did, too.

  Eva snorted. “Oh, you kidder,” she deadpanned though her smile remained. “How about you let down your hair tonight?”

  My mother looked startled and was about to reply when my father stepped between them, turned to Eva, and said, “Sounds great. You buying?” Eva nodded, with a brief roll of her eyes. “Then let’s go,” my father said. He turned to my mother with a smile, offered his arm, and said, “Mademoiselle?” This act of exaggerated gallantry defused the tension. Or maybe it was the ludicrous attempt at dialect. My mother took his arm and smiled at Eva. Her arched eyebrows settled first into the facial equivalent of parade rest, then, at ease. Eva’s face returned to expressionlessness. The strain that normally bound the two abated. She took Eva’s hand.

  They were warily rebuilding their friendship. There were clumsy moments, like a musician stumbling over a difficult passage in a work that had lain unpracticed and the muscle memory lost. They were still friends when they moved from Los Angeles to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study at Harvard University. Maternity and a crushing pre-med courseload demanded all of my mother’s strength. Eva seemed to skate through her courses, a facility that likely nettled my mother. Perhaps it contributed to their falling out.

  The driver opened the door for us and we piled in. My father got in the car and bounced on the resilient car seat a few times after the driver closed the door. He rubbed the seat covering and murmured, “Ooh. Could this be this real leather?” Then to the driver, “Are we sitting on cows?”

  “No, Mr. Ecco, nanofabrics.”

  “I wonder how many atoms had to die for us to have this luxurious ride.”

  “And I wonder how many times I have to hear that tired old joke,” my mother said. She smiled and accepted the festive character of the day.

  My father played with the various passenger controls. The air flow stuttered on and off, while the music alternated among disparate genres.

  “Jim, will you please sit still? You’re worse than a child.” She looked at me and said, “Tell me you’re not going to grow up like that.”

  He just smiled and continued to play. The many gizmos he now had at his disposal at NMech seemed to help him compensate for the rigors of New England life. He had been raised in Southern California shirtsleeves and never adjusted to the extended cold of northern winters. He complained every time he offered a friendly greeting to a passerby and was met by downturned eyes. A hidebound Puritan legacy had gripped Boston for four hundred years: “Keep your eyes down, mouth shut, and thoughts hidden.”

  “Where are we going?” my father asked, as he settled down.

  “Fine dining,” Eva said. “Nothing but the best.”

  “I’m not dressed for anything fancy,” my mother complained mildly.

  Eva bit off a retort. Instead, she replied, “I mean, fine dining as in good food.”

  That evening her eyes afforded me an intimacy she seldom shared. The vulnerability was ephemeral and genuine. I could see a panorama of torment and joy—her madding fight for survival and the orderly structure of science in which she took refuge. My father, despite his uncanny abilities of observation, never seemed to notice, nor did my compassionate mother respond to this damaged woman’s concealed disquiet.

  Decades later, at the funeral, one that was shunned by all except a few members of the media, her eulogy included a quote from an earlier century’s actress, Audrey Hepburn. Eva, the officiant said, “was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”

  It was an odd comment, given the context, but accurate. My birth gave Eva an outlet to express herself in a way that would have otherwise been impossible for the driven woman. We forged a curious bond. She was both playmate and mentor. My father told me that when I was an infant, she and I relished endless rounds of peek-a-boo. “Hello, Baby!” she’d call out, a bit too loud, and startle, then delight me. Otherwise, Eva never spoke to me except as she would to another adult. When we made up songs together—that was not her strong suit, it was too much like made-up stories—we were never quite able to work ‘graphene’ or ‘quantum particle’ into the lyrics and rhyme scheme of a child’s song. We didn’t care. We had fun.

  As I grew, we competed. Our favorite contests were insults and math games and by the time I was ten or eleven, I seemed to hold my own with both. It’s hard to imagine a juvenile matching wits with one of the great minds of the time, but it’s equally hard to imagine Eva choosing to forfeit any competition.

  There was one off-key note in those wonderful years. I think that my mother sometimes felt eclipsed. Eva held a role something like a grandmother and a grandmother figure evoked the pain and the loss my mother felt when her own mother died. Her eyes might glisten just before she issued an edict to end whatever game Eva and I had invented. “Dana, time for your bath”—or dinner, lunch, snack, homework, chores, or an errand for which my help was suddenly indispensible. Eva would give me a sly smile, as if to confirm the temporary nature of the interruption and then she would turn back to granite.

  The car glided silently to a stop at a roadside stand in Revere, a seaside town just north of Boston. The eatery was famous for its fried clams and the aroma of fresh oil and the sea drew a hungry mob. They milled about the same service windows that greeted customers for close to a century. People pushed their way up to the front of the throng to order and then drifted back to wait for their food, and then returned when their dinners were ready. They were like geese in flight, a few birds flying at the point to carve a path in the atmosphere, and then moving back to rest and draft behind the skein before pulling forward again.

  We took our food and walked across a pedestrian walkway to sit on the sea wall. The broad ribbon of concrete unrolled along the three-mile length of the beach. We relaxed, ate, and watched people strolling past. My mother seemed engrossed in the ocean, lit now by low-an
gled rays as the sun set behind us. The colors that dappled the ocean’s surface changed with the trajectory of the setting sun, violet and blue streaks giving way to yellow and orange, and finally blood red, the last wavelengths of the sun’s declension.

  After the sun set, an onshore breeze chilled us. As soon as we were back in the NMech car I kicked off my sandals and stretched out along the bottom segment of the sofa-like seating area. My mother and Eva bracketed me, each sitting on opposite banquettes, uprights of the U-shaped passenger area. My father was next to my mother, engrossed in a holographic depiction that only he could see.

  Eva selected some music, Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The simple aria that begins and ends the composition stands out in my memory. Even today, Bach’s melodies take me to a place of peace, and the counterpoint takes me to one of balance. My mother stroked my forehead with idle affection. I looked up at her face. It was framed by her sable hair and a slight smile caused her eyes to sparkle.

  I felt another hand. Eva gently tickled my feet. Twin caresses bracketed me, like the music’s counterpoint. I floated in the music and the satisfied exhaustion of a day well-lived and hard-played. Then both sets of hands froze. I looked up and saw that my mother’s and Eva’s eyes were locked, one on the other, each with a gaze that held equal measures of compassion and possession.

  My father must have noticed. He collapsed his heads-up display, reached out, and took Eva’s hand. He gently pulled her across the car to sit next to him and placed his other arm around my mother’s shoulders. All three looked contented—even Eva. I nearly laughed at their chained embrace, eyes closed and heads tilting back, resting on the car’s soft headrests. They were three dolls posed on a shelf for sleep by a child taking good care of her playthings.

  The only sounds in the car were Bach and the slow, synchronized breathing of three friends, who were at peace. Anything seemed possible except failure.

  16

  ___________________________________________

  ZVI

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  2042

  NMech’s first foray into desalinization was a success. In a few short months, output skyrocketed at the retrofitted Paraguaná desalinization plant. Now Eva, Marta, and Jim were back in the boardroom, and once again vying to choose a color for the drapes. This time, Eva and Marta’s debate was relaxed, even diplomatic. This time Jim prevailed and the drapes showed a peaceful view: a bloom of jellyfish drifting in an endless ocean.

  “Well, we’re heroes,” Eva began. “We got water to the masses and kept several nations from civil disorder, not that those countries would have even noticed a regime change.”

  “Are they safe now?” asked Jim.

  “Long as the plant keeps operating. But shut the spigot and I guarantee you’ll see some big time civil unrest down there.”

  Marta said, “I’m proud of this one. I think we did well. Eva—thank you.”

  “You’re happy, Marta, I’m happy.” Eva nodded slightly and with gravity, as an empress to a countess. “Now we can take this further. There are several commercial applications we can focus on.”

  “What do you have in mind? I admit I had my doubts, but you pulled this off. What’s next?” Jim asked.

  “Kidney dialysis for one. The Holy Grail of dialysis is an internal device instead of patients being hooked up to an inefficient dialysis machine for several hours per week. I think what we learned at Paraguaná can be applied to build an implantable dialysis device.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Marta said. “How do we fund the public health part?”

  “Fund it? We’re not going to fund anything. If people want to live without spending time in dialysis, then they become customers. The manufacturing costs are low enough that most people will be able to afford the gizmos. There are surgeons’ fees, but that’s not our concern.”

  Marta spoke up. “I’d like to make that our concern. Paraguaná was supposed to be a public health project, but we’re going to recoup our costs with the commercial applications we’re licensing for desalinization. There’s money left in the pool we created from EasyMilk profits. Let’s take some of that cash and use it on dialysis for the hardest hit populations. I don’t mean we have to pay the bill for everybody, but I’d like to donate enough so that we can help, say, the poorest ten percent of renal failure patients.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Eva. “You wanted public health, I gave you Paraguaná. The fact that we parlayed that into profit is irrelevant. We can give away some of the devices but I’m not paying any surgeon’s fee. I’ll put my own grandchildren through college, not some rich doctor’s.”

  “Give me a break. You don’t have any grandchildren. You organized the desal plant and you did a great job. But you also found a way to get massive publicity and public good will. You made the good deed profitable,” Marta said.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing,” admitted Marta. “And I’m sure you’ll find a way to make this profitable too. All I’m saying is my charter is public health. I want to work with the poor.”

  “Why them?”

  “Because they’ll die if we don’t.”

  “Why is that my problem?”

  Marta glared. The pacific mood in the conference room turned stormy. “Well, look at it this way, Little Miss Charity. Say you keep an extra 10,000 people alive. They’re tied to NMech through dialysis. Wouldn’t most of them become NMech customers for all their medications? Then you can turn a profit on them.”

  “Good point.” Eva missed or ignored the sarcasm. “Let’s see if the numbers back you up.” She invoked a heads-up display and peered into it. “It’ll take about two to three years for a charity customer to generate enough revenue with other purchases to recover the cost of implantation. That’s a bit long for break-even, but there’s the increased life expectancy from the dialysis. That should cover it. Okay, Marta, bring on the masses.”

  “Just like that?” Marta asked. “What’s the catch?”

  “There’s no catch. The numbers add up. If this is what it takes to keep you happy and continuing to find cures in the jungle, then that’s what it takes.”

  “They’re not jungles, they’re rainforests.” Even conceding to Marta, Eva managed to provoke her.

  “By the way, Marta, your thinking is good but your math is off. Helping 10,000 people is on the low side. Think of the recipients as an investment. Couple years to hit break-even, and then each one is profitable. Think big.”

  Marta stiffened, but Jim broke in. “Wait! Aren’t you two forgetting something?”

  “What?” demanded Eva.

  “Uh, don’t we have to develop this little invention first? I mean, nephrologists have tried for decades. Shouldn’t we set aside a couple days next week to invent a device that’s eluded science for the last half century?”

  “Why Jim, now you’re starting to sound like your wife. Anyway, I think this is a bit closer to her expertise. You want to organize a research team?” Marta agreed after reconfirming that the project would include a public health component. The three reviewed the basics of what they would need to start and agreed to meet again to discuss strategy further.

  The tension had evaporated in the boardroom and the three colleagues enjoyed a respite from quarrelling. EasyMilk and Free-Skin were stunning successes. The simplicity of the desalinization project, coupled with the scope of its potential benefit, had won even Marta’s trust.

  Almost as a lazy afterthought, Jim asked, “Well, Eva, once we conquer every known disease, what’s next?”

  Eva said, “I’ve got a bigger plan.”

  “What’s that?” asked Marta. Flush with the success of Paraguaná, Eva could have suggested a time machine, immortality pills, even a cure for the common cold, and Marta and Jim would have taken up the cause. But her next brain child caught them by surprise.

  “Ready? One word: remediation.”

  “What the heck do we know about environmental cleanup?” ask
ed Marta.

  “What difference does it make?” said Eva

  Marta stared and raised her eyebrows. She lifted her hands, palms up, in a ‘What do you mean?’ gesture.

  Eva said, “Relax. We develop a good plan and we go to work.”

  “But we don’t know anything about cleaning up toxic waste. I don’t even know what we don’t know,” said Marta.

  Eva waved off Marta’s objection. “It’s just basic chemistry. I found the perfect project we can start with. It’s huge, and when we pull it off, we’ll be the leader in remediation. Ever heard of the Nuovo River? In Rockford, Virginia?”

  “No.”

  “Well, pretty soon the whole world will know about it. This one project could establish us as the hands-down leader in nanotechnology and put us into the remediation game—big time. Think about it. It fits right in with public health.”

  “I agree with you, Eva,” said Jim, “but I also agree with Marta. We don’t know anything about remediation. I’m not sure anyone will take us seriously.”

  “That is the major challenge,” Eva admitted. “But we can sell it. And if we can get our hats in the ring, we can do it.”

  “Well,” Jim said, “your track record is pretty darned good, Eva. It’s hard to argue with success. Right now, I bet you could sell lies to a politician.” He and Marta chuckled.

  Eva did not so much as smile. She had already dismissed the bucolic splendor of the Nuovo River, which many considered to be among the most beautiful in the world. She dismissed Rockford’s plight, a town wedged between environmental woes and economic concerns. Rather, she was impatient to see a stinking, nine-mile toxic stretch of water in southern Virginia where the river hugs the Rockford Munitions Plant. Into this aquatic embrace, the plant spews out pollutants and turns the watercourse from pastoral to poisonous.

  The gunk had built up for close to a century, increasing and abating with arrival and departure of war. Eva’s attention was fixed on the Pentagon’s budget not the river’s despoiled beauty. When the military bowed to public pressure and announced that it would seek proposals for cleaning the site, Eva began to plan. Military business was big business. The textiles division sold armored uniforms to the military, but its profits were marginal. Rockford would be huge.