“He was a fool,” Swain said now, hanging the cloth on its hook. “Did not read—except the Bible, of course. Did not think! Heaven forbid he should ever seriously and thoughtfully entertain a concept that challenged his belief system! My mother was even worse. Anything they didn’t understand—which was almost everything—they ascribed to the devil.”
And the devil, in Swain’s view, was nothing but an invention of religion, a nonexistent bogeyman used by one group of men to control another.
He sighed at Cam’s side. “Faith is for fools, boy.”
“So you’ve said.” In the distance something flashed, and shortly a new dust cloud arose. There must have been another vehicle out there, hidden behind the foliage.
After a moment, Swain sighed again and chided, “Are you just going to let me say that, when we both know you disagree?”
“If we both know I disagree, why do I need to express it?”
“Because I want to hear your refutation. Give me a good reason to change my mind.”
“There’ll never be a good enough reason for you, sir. You don’t want to change your mind.”
“Are you saying I’m close-minded?”
“Your words, sir, not mine.”
“Humor me, then. I want to hear your reasoning.”
Cameron sighed. “Faith is for everyone, sir. You have faith yourself every time you get in your helicopter and take off—faith that it’s been properly maintained and that the pilot is not going to make any mistakes.”
“That’s not faith, boy. That’s certainty. I make it my business to know what the maintenance schedules are, and I see that they are followed. As for my pilot, he is a personal friend who has served me for years and proven his capability over and over.”
“So it is with my God.”
“A personal friend?” Swain turned to him with cocked brow, skepticism raising the pitch of his voice. “Proven His competence over and over, has He? Which is why you were all but fired from Stanford? Accused of doing something you did not do and never would?”
Cam met his employer’s gaze with an arched brow of his own. “But that all led to my coming here, did it not? And in the end, my position was vastly improved.”
Swain met his gaze silently, and Cam could sense his irritation warring with his pleasure at the compliment. Finally he smiled and stepped back with a nod. “Very well, I’ll give you that one. For now.”
He headed back to his desk. “It is dangerous out there, though,” he said over his shoulder as Cam followed. “You never know what you’re going to meet on the trail.”
Swain sat in his captain’s chair and gestured Cam into one of the two facing chairs across the sea of wood. On its flat surface, a five-inch cube of black glass balanced on end atop a stand of three curved silver prongs—the Institute’s iconic Black Box. Beside it sat a silver tray bearing a matching pitcher, two empty glasses, and a folded cloth napkin.
As Cam settled into the thickly upholstered chair, the director touched a spot on the desk’s flat, until now invisible control panel, and the window-wall behind him darkened. Then, folding his hands on the desk, Swain fixed his gaze on Cam and said, “Frederick is convinced you’re a spy, you know.”
“A spy?!”
Swain’s eyes stayed upon him. “You didn’t exchange your coat for McHenry’s on purpose?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So someone else could pick it up?”
Cam regarded him dubiously. “Frederick thinks I’m in league with the night janitor, then? Who is also a spy?”
“He’s not sure.”
“He’s paranoid, is what he is. And he’s never liked me.”
“True. He’s jealous of you. But his concerns are valid. We’re pretty sure the last hack job was done by someone inside. And our security has been picking up encrypted transmissions lately from somewhere on-site. . . .”
The director turned his attention to the Black Box on his desk, reaching out to stroke it gently, his fingertips leaving ripples of fading color in their wake. Watching him do so filled Cam with an inexplicable restless discomfort, and he worried another flashback might be about to seize him.
“Why did you throw the coat away?” Swain asked quietly.
An image of the bloodied handprint flashed before Cam’s eyes as the light flickered at the edges of his world and dizziness swooped upon him. He swallowed and focused on the silhouette of the Egyptian frieze looming at Swain’s right shoulder. “I . . . guess I thought it was unsalvageable.” He explained about the handprint but did not mention the flashback, nor his sudden irrational fear of the coat.
When he finished, Swain looked genuinely puzzled. “But to leave a bloody handprint on her lab coat would mean his hand was bloody before he shoved her. And wasn’t it the shove that was supposed to have caused Ms. McHenry’s cut?”
Cam frowned at him. “Perhaps he had a preexisting injury.”
“You’re sure it was a handprint you saw, and not just random blood spatters?”
The question immediately recalled the bloody image to Cam’s mind and, lurking behind it, others he was certain he did not want to recall. He was trembling again, his chest tightening, prickles of adrenaline washing over him. Swain’s blue eyes bored into his own. He swallowed, tore them from the other man, and focused on the mountains outside the smoky windows. “It’s what I thought at the time. . . .”
“And at the time you were somewhat rattled, I understand. Frederick said you were white as a sheet and unusually distracted, even for you. He thought you might pass out.” Swain paused. “You’re not one of those who faints at the sight of blood, are you?”
Cam slammed shut the incipient breach in the wall that kept him safe from unremembered horrors and drew himself together. The trembling and wooziness subsided. “I could hardly have cleaned and taped up Ms. McHenry’s cut if I was, now could I? And my recollection of that, at least, is very clear, so don’t think you’re going to convince me it was all in her mind. Or mine.”
Swain smiled at him, the expression odd for the sense it gave him that he’ d just walked into the trap.
“Of course I know it wasn’t in your mind. And I wouldn’t dream of trying to convince you otherwise.”
“Then, why are you trying to convince her? More than that, why would you risk using ATR on her when you’ve already set her up as a fragile, stressed-out nut case?”
“I would hardly call her a nut case.” Using the folded napkin, Swain picked up the pitcher. “Lemonade?”
“No, thank you.”
Cam watched as the director poured himself a glass, the gurgle of liquid and clink of the ice cubes stark in the silence. Swain replaced the pitcher carefully onto its tray, then sipped his lemonade. Presently he said, “If we acknowledge the break-in, our insurance and reviewers will wonder why we didn’t call the police, as we should. If we call them, they’d have to investigate, and we’d have people poking into things that don’t need poking into. There’d be interviews; there’d be technicians crawling about. There’d be reporters and their cockamamie stories, which are never an accurate rendition of the truth. It’s the last thing we need with our open house next week.” He sipped his lemonade.
Cam cut to the chase: “I’m not going to lie for you, sir.”
“I’m not asking you to lie, just that you keep some information to yourself.” Swain studied his glass, tipping it slightly this way and that. “I understand you did so routinely in one of your previous employments, with no angst of conscience.”
He knows about Afghanistan? No. Impossible. The mission was expunged from all records. . . . “You mean when I was in the army? I was a bean counter.”
“And some beans you let pass uncounted, I’m sure.”
“Letting a few beans pass uncounted for the sake of mission safety is hardly the same as standing by while someone ruins the life of an innocent young woman. I—”
“This incident will in no way ‘ruin’ Ms. McHenry’s life,” Swain inte
rrupted firmly. “She’s a bright, adaptable young lady who will be a tremendous asset to our community. We used the ATR process primarily to persuade her to let go of the incident as quickly as possible without rousing undue suspicion with the others.”
“You falsified her records.”
“Only in regards to the actual incident that gave her the scar.” He paused. “What did you say when she showed it to you down there on the path?”
Cam frowned at him. “I said it couldn’t have healed in a night.”
“And that’s all?”
“If you saw her approach me, you must have seen Slattery intruding upon us. I hardly had time to say anything.” A lame excuse. He could have said more. Could have shaken Slattery off. Could have phrased his first statement better. More truthfully.
“And did you point out her family history of mental instability?”
As Swain chuckled, Cam felt his face warm. “Do you have this entire facility bugged?” he demanded.
Swain’s brows flew up in surprise. “I didn’t hear you, Cameron. I simply know you. Those are just the sorts of things you’d blurt out, for I’m sure you were as shocked as she was.”
“Maybe not quite as shocked. But definitely disappointed.”
“See? There you go. Blurting your first thought again.” He shook his head, smiling. “Cameron, you know ATR is safe. You know it’s in process even now, and I’m told it’ll likely get the go-ahead in the next week or so. We’ve jumped the gun by a measly two weeks, and for that you’re willing to sacrifice eleven years of your life’s work?”
He let the question hang and sipped his lemonade, ice cubes clinking in the glass.
And sacrifice it would be should Cam resign. Coming on the heels of that mess at Stanford, it wouldn’t matter what excuse anyone gave. The community would view him as a rogue. A difficult loner no one would fund.
The same things Swain’s contemporaries had once said of him.
Cam stared at his employer, chilled to the core, but the director avoided eye contact, letting the moment of distress draw itself out as he drank his lemonade. When he finished, he carefully wiped the outside of the glass with the napkin before placing it on the silver tray beside the condensation-fogged pitcher, and finally looked again at Cam.
“Consider carefully what you do here, son. You have incredible potential, and I am looking forward to the day when I can bring you safely into the fold. Stay with us on this, and you’ll be rewarded beyond your wildest imaginings. Abandon us and . . .” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head sadly. “Assets must be guarded. Much as it would tear me up to see it happen, if you leave us, your future in genetics is over.”
Cam took his time responding. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally.
“And if she asks you point-blank what you know?”
Cam met his gaze unflinchingly. “I won’t lie to her, sir.”
Swain leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on its leather-covered arm, eyes narrowed. For several long moments he regarded Cam. Finally he stilled his hands and his face went bland and blank. “Then you’d better make sure she doesn’t ask you.”
Chapter Six
New Eden
At 1100 hours on the same day that Andros had refused to say the morning Affirmation, Zowan stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the bowl-shaped Justorium located at the heart of the Enclave’s central complex, awaiting the start of his friend’s trial and punishment. As one who had only recently become old enough to participate, Zowan stood on the eleventh row of the small, steeply circular chamber where New Eden’s trials were conducted and sentences pronounced and carried out.
Below him, ten rows descended in concentric circles of decreasing size to a central stage where stood the offender with two bald, black-robed Enforcers. Each row was partitioned off from the row below it by a continuous console that paralleled the row’s curvature. On the consoles were numerous red levers, before which the audience parceled themselves out according to rank and seniority, one person to a lever.
If the judgment was reached that Andros was guilty—and there was little doubt that it would—he would be placed into the Justorium’s Cube of Discipline, where the pain he endured would be directly controlled by how far down each member of the audience pulled his lever. Zowan had come with the determination not to pull it at all. How could he punish his friend for doing something he himself had not only contemplated but suggested?
Warm, stifling air, heavy with the odor of sweat, pressed upon him. An undercurrent of restlessness buzzed at the base of his skull, and his stomach churned with tension. Around him, the various colors of their tunics lost in the Justorium’s red light, his friends and fellow Enclavers chattered nervously about the coming trial.
It had been over a year since the New Edenites had put someone in the Cube. Zowan’s and Gaias’s elder brother, Neos, had been the last, and it had killed him. Of course, he’ d been a regular victim of the Cube’s torment, a rebel to the end, and all those sessions he’ d spent screaming between its electrified plates had weakened him. Or so said the Elders. Neos had refused to say the Affirmation, as well.
Andros had never been in the Cube. He was a shy, quiet kid, prone to contemplation and asking questions the Elders didn’t like. Even now Zowan heard snatches of conversation around him as people marveled that Andros could have done such a thing. Zowan had always believed if anyone among the first generation followed in Neos’s footsteps it would be himself. Not his quiet friend Andros.
Yet there he stood, his tall, thin form pinioned between a pair of black-robed Enforcers, awaiting the start of the trial as the last few attendees arrived. Finally a low tone sounded and a progression of Elders, robed and hooded, descended in parallel lines down the single rail-less stairway that led from the entrance on the top tier to all those below. They filed down in silence to fill up the lower two rows, each one taking his place, only the Father’s central seat left vacant. Father was on the other side of the world visiting Babylon Enclave and could not possibly make it back in time.
From among them one arose and spoke the History, his amplified voice booming through the chamber as he droned through a narrative all present today knew by heart: the tale of how the enclaves came to be.
Over a quarter of a century ago, the Earth stood on the threshold of total destruction, all the result of man’s ignorance, greed, and excess. Addressed far too late to stop it, the threat of global warming had disintegrated the ozone, melting the polar ice and triggering a catastrophic rise in sea level. Weather patterns were thrown into turmoil, and the ever-increasing heat evaporated the seas off into space, until all that remained were a few steaming, brackish lakes nestled amidst peaks that had once been covered by miles of seawater. Millions of people had died. Only those with the courage to understand—and accept—what was happening had lived.
Father had been one such man, the brilliant scientist and visionary leader who had saved them all. With extraordinary insight he had foreseen the disaster and devised a plan for the enclaves, which he’ d begun building long before the disasters had occurred, despite the mockery and ridicule of the world around him.
But rising waters silenced the laughter, and he and his followers, along with a carefully selected portion of Earth’s plant and animal life, had entered the enclaves. Thus, life had survived and, by the Father’s pronouncement, would rise again. The twelve enclaves scattered about the Earth were now the seedbeds of that vision. Initially protecting and stabilizing a remnant of the human population in the safety of their underground facilities, eventually they would resurface to spread the life they’d preserved across the Earth’s barren, battered face.
Each Enclaver knew the debt he owed to the One who had saved him, and every morning in every Enclave each member affirmed that debt and gave thanks to the One he owed. To refuse was unthinkable.
As the first Elder came to the end of the History and fell silent, a second stood to read off the charges against An
dros: “Rebellion, defiance, blasphemy. Refusal to say the Affirmation of the Father . . .
“Do you deny these charges?” the second Elder thundered.
“No.” Andros’s voice threaded, small and trembling, through the diminishing echoes of the Elder’s.
“He created you, and this is your thanks?” the Elder sneered. “He has cared for you, protected you, nurtured you, and this is your gratitude?”
Andros trembled visibly in the hands of the Enforcers, his shoulders shuddering with terror. “I’m sorry!” he wailed, his voice a weak warble after the power of the Elder’s baritone. “I’m sorry! Please, Father—” He gazed wildly about the Justorium, searching for the Father who was not there. “Forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Please, forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. . . .”
His voice shattered into desolate sobs, and he fell to his knees. As the Enforcers hauled him upright, Zowan gritted his teeth, wanting nothing so much as to flee this place, wishing he’ d never come at all, despite the penalty for refusing.
“Will you say it now?” boomed a third Elder, standing now beside the others.
And to Zowan’s chagrin, Andros did.
Silence followed his words. Then, “Father has heard you,” intoned Elder Three. “He has forgiven you. Yet your crime demands a punishment.”
Andros had known it would come to this. He’ d said as much to Zowan last night. Claimed he was ready for it. But who was ever ready for this? Even Neos had wailed and pled and recanted.
“You must enter the Cube.”
As Andros flinched and mewed with horror, Zowan clenched his teeth ever harder, hating this more than he had ever hated anything.
“May the Body have mercy in accordance with your crime.”
The prisoner slumped between the two Enforcers, resigned now, but still trembling. They jerked him toward the opening at the side of the stage and disappeared into the bowels of the Justorium. The lights dimmed. The Elders burst into a song about the glories of the Father, and his unfailingly righteous judgments.
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