“Yes Sir, I understand.”
“Rusty, I want you to know something. You did the job that I hired you to do as perfectly as any human being could possibly have done it. If this turns out as Miss Withers fears, none of this is on you. You were simply carrying out orders. Now, understand this. I cannot just pull the plug on everything that has been accomplished based on the theory of one twenty something year-old woman, genius or not. I’m going to have to ask a lot of questions and get a lot of answers, then second opinions, third opinions and probably fourth opinions before I even make up my mind what to do about all of this. In the meantime, you and this daughter of yours brainstorm this in any way you see as helpful to the future of mankind. You will be assigned protection from the moment you leave this office, until… until further notice. All external communication will have to be monitored and recorded for your own protection, so just be aware of that in advance.”
“So, basically we’re under house arrest then, Sir?”
“NO, damn-it!” the President said, loudly enough to startle Rusty. “I’m covering MY ass, until I know what I’m going to do! Count on me being in touch daily while we figure this out.”
32
Washington, DC
Monday Afternoon
Rusty’s Home
“Hannah?” she heard Rusty call out anxiously, as he entered the townhouse.
“Mhmm?” she answered, coming out of the bathroom brushing her teeth, her mouth full of toothpaste.
“Oh, sorry, go ahead. When you’re finished and ready, join me in my office. I have news to share.”
Hannah went back to what she had been doing. This place was sure a change from where she lived, and what she was used to. Obvious luxury here, with real granite counter tops, beautiful stained wood cabinets, Jacuzzi tub in the guest bath, marble floors… While she enjoyed the heated floor on her bare feet after her shower and the full length mirrors with perfect lighting for makeup and hair, she was also aware that this was what she considered excess for a secondary residence. Our tax dollars at work. There are far better places to spend our money, than like this.
She didn’t have any of her personal items with her, so she made do without any makeup and just used the built-in blow dryer on the wall and an available brush on her hair. Then she dressed in some of the men’s lounging type clothes that Rusty had laid out for her, for now, and joined him in his office. “Hey,” she said, entering the room to announce her presence. Rusty had his face buried in a laptop, looking at something over his glasses.
“Hi,” he replied, without looking up at all.
“Whatcha looking at?” she asked, as she curled up on the overstuffed brown leather love seat off to the side of his desk, drawing her bare feet up under her. It seemed that the floors were heated in all of the rooms in this place, so she decided to take advantage of that.
“Well, it seems that I may have caught President James off-guard just about as much, maybe even more than you did me over the weekend. He’s pretty upset by what I told him, so I was just looking at a few things to kind of grasp just how widespread this thing is going to be. Right now, I was looking at old articles about the kidnapping of the Grymsanto people.
“He wants you and I to stay here and brainstorm the implications of this, as it applies to the future of mankind, whatever that means.”
“Whatcha mean, ‘stay here’? Am I in more trouble now, just for you telling him that?”
“He says not. I took it that way too, but with myself included. He said he just wants us to stay here, where he can protect us, while he thinks about what he needs to do. He actually said; ‘Covering his ass’,” Rusty told her.
“Wow,” Hannah said, looking around the room at all of the shelves of books, “it seems like that’s the first thing politicians do. If something good happens, ‘How can I take credit for this’, if its shit, ‘Who can I blame’ or ‘How can I cover this up’.”
“There is a lot of that in politics, unfortunately,” he told her, “but Calvin James isn’t really that kind of President. I think he really loves this country, and is trying his best to do what’s right for it.”
“By championing a program that does this kind of thing?” Hannah asked.
“Hannah, there’s a lot you don’t know, but if you give me your word that you’ll keep things that I tell you between just us, at least for now, I think you’ll be able to help me figure this out better. Can you do that?”
“Of course, not knowing that this crap was some kind of national secret is what got me arrested in the first place. I’m smart. If people would just be honest, instead of playing all of these frikkin’ games, we’d all be a lot better off.”
“Alright then, I doubt that I’m supposed to, but I’m going to fill you in on everything I know, and what I think I know. Just don’t let my boss know that I did,” he said with a wink. “I was a kind of angry when he told me to go home and stay there, and that there would be a guard on us from now on—“
“Wait,” Hannah interrupted, “you mean to tell me that we’re under arrest again?”
“Yeah well, that’s how it felt at first, but I think I just figured out why the terrorists kidnapped the Grymsanto people, after thinking about what you told me, about how this particular genetic process works.
“Do you remember hearing on the news that the shooters had weird gray/green skin?” Rusty asked.
“Oh yeah. How could anyone possibly forget that?” she answered.
“Suppose the terrorists already had the knowledge of the bamboo and the algae genes somehow, but their process to get them in there wasn’t as good as Grymsanto’s,” Rusty said. “Grabbing the person that knew how it worked at Grymsanto and making him talk would probably be their reason for doing it.”
“Why would they have needed that spokesman guy then?” Hannah wondered out loud.
“Maybe they didn’t,” Rusty said. “Maybe the spokesman was the mole to begin with.”
“Oh, yes!” Hannah squealed, startling Rusty. “Real effing spy stuff! Awesome. Just like on TV!”
“Maybe,” Rusty said, settling back down in his chair. “Hey, are your feet cold? Do you want some of my socks or slippers?”
“Negatory Rusty, I’m enjoying your waste of energy to heat all of the floors in this place.”
“That’s what heats the house genius,” he teased.
“Oh,” Hannah said, “I guess I’ve never seen this in person. I’m sorry. Is it efficient?”
“Well, I dunno. I don’t pay the bills. The place is just provided for me so I have a local residence while I’m working in DC,” he answered, “but I understand that it really is efficient. It heats where the people are, instead of the ceiling. Hey, no more chasing squirrels. Let’s stay on track!” he scolded.
“Alright,” she said. “I tend to do that a lot. Sorry.”
“So, I would guess that the Chinese beat the information that they needed out of that research guy a long time ago. He’s probably toast by now, since he’s never turned up anywhere. I figure that us having a guard detail now, may just be a good thing, so we don’t wind up the same way.”
“Do you s’pose the President knows that?” she asked.
“I doubt it,” he answered, “but I’d better tell him before long. Hey, do you suppose that the Chinese are breeding a whole army of those super-soldiers like the ones on the news?”
“That depends Rusty. Is there any way that you can find out if all three genes were added at the same time, or one at a time?”
“I don’t have to ask, I already know that answer,” Rusty said, “but I didn’t realize that it was important. At a meeting I was in not long ago, Michael Lawson, CEO of Walsanto Seeds told us that Charles Blayton, the then Secretary of Agriculture ordered the terminator gene added secretly after the kidnapping. The other two genes were added earlier. Why does that matter?”
“Because that means the Chinese don’t have the terminator gene,” Hannah answered.
“And
that means..?” Rusty asked.
“It means that they will have to create every super-soldier in a test tube at least. They won’t reproduce. They can’t breed whole generations of them.”
“And why is that?”
“Because the bamboo and algae genes are happy to go where they’re put, but don’t know how to add themselves to the cell’s genome which resides in its nucleus. Think of them as stationary. The terminator gene is taught to add itself the cell’s genome, so to speak, and it just takes the other cells along for the ride, since it’s going. It ‘leaves the door open’ you could say. That way, they are in the ‘reproductive recipe’ too. Understand?”
“Ah,” Rusty said. “I get it now. You should be a teacher, you’re a natural.”
“Derr… Like, that’s what got me arrested? Explaining it to the other students on the protected server. I’m kinda freaked that the High Command might be listening in right now, and swoop in here and grab me again. I’m kidding mostly, but still, kinda.”
Rusty was writing notes to himself furiously as they talked. “I’ve got to remember to tell the President about this too. I’m not sure what to think of it yet, but it feels important. What does this mean Hannah? Think about it. How is it an advantage that we know about it, and they don’t?”
“Well, advantage, I’m not sure,” she said, “but when all of our people start turning gray and theirs don’t, it’ll be pretty obvious that something’s different.”
“Oh, c’mon! Do you really think something that drastic will happen?”
“Think? No. I know it is going to happen now that you told me how widespread this stuff is. That’s all I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been trying to figure out an easy way to test for the presence of the terminator gene in like everything and everyone. I think it just hit me while I was explaining that to you. Testing for the presence of the algae is easy. This strain of algae produces a unique oil that’s almost like pure vegetable oil. That’s where all of the world’s crude oil comes from, by the way. Ancient algae. Testing for that oil is way easier than testing for the terminator gene, but if one is there, they’re both there! Oh my God, I gotta remember to mention this when I call Dr. Greene.”
“Well, before you do that, whenever you do, you need to know that all communications out of here are being monitored,” Rusty warned, as he was scribbling away on his note pad.
“Great,” Hannah said. “No such thing as privacy either, huh?”
“Not a chance. Count on every word spoken, every mouse click or keystroke being recorded, just to be on the safe side.”
“Ok.” Hannah said. “I’ll watch myself. I need to think about this for a minute.” With that, she curled up on the couch and covered her feet with a lap blanket and stared off into somewhere else…
33
Washington, DC
Tues, Jan 12, 2021
Rusty’s Home
With Hannah in his home, Rusty was beginning to feel a little more confident that the first-hand information he was getting from her, coupled with her highly educated opinion as to where this would go, might actually give him a shot at getting a handle on this. However, it was also scaring the crap out of him, because he was beginning to realize that neither he nor anyone else was going to be able to stop what had already been unleashed.
The antacids that he had been eating like candy no longer had any effect, and, to be honest, the bourbon really didn’t do anything for him either. The two together were likely contributing to developing him an ulcer, but right now, that was the least of his worries.
He was extremely impressed by Hannah’s intelligence, but he knew that he still had a lot to learn about how to talk to her. Since the situation was very new to him, he was extremely sensitive about it. He’d started studying up on autism not long after he had met her the first time, and that information had served him very well. He understood just enough about her condition now to be helpful to him, but he discovered that there would be some surprises as well. One of those surprises came in the form of a very sudden and very direct question, out of the blue as she sat thinking on the couch.
“So, why did you abandon my mom and I?” Hannah asked.
“That’s complicated,” he said. The line bought him a little bit of time to come up with a better answer, he hoped.
“That’s okay, I’m supposed to be a genius, remember? I’ll understand. Lay it on me.”
Crap. Time was up. He had to come up with something.
“I actually didn’t even know that I had a daughter until I met you.”
That’s not entirely true, he thought. I just chose to ignore the rumors that I heard way back when. I haven’t been honest with myself about this for years, maybe it’s time that I was.
“You know what, wait. That isn’t entirely true,” Rusty added. “Let me start from the beginning.”
He hesitated a moment as he allowed his mind to return to the days before he had gotten on the fast track to the corporate world and had had much simpler plans for his life.
“Your mother and I were out to try and ‘save the world’ back then. Well, she was mostly; I was more or less along for the ride because I didn’t know what else to do with my life. We met on a Peace Corps mission in Central America. It seemed like we had common goals, and developed quite a chemistry between us.”
Rusty thought back to how they had spent nearly every moment together; awake or asleep. Their passion had burned red hot and they made love like starving animals devour their prey.
“We spent every waking hour together. In fact,” he chuckled softly, “a lot of people believed that we were joined at the hip, and we took a good deal of kidding for that. It was a simpler time and a simpler place.”
With the pressure of the world resting on his shoulders, he began to wonder if he’d made the wrong choice. Leaving Catherine had been the right thing to do. Their passion had been equal to the thrust of a rocket, but it had also done what all rockets do, it flamed out rather quickly. All of his relationships had been that way. Perhaps he simply wasn’t built to sustain a long-term relationship. Yet, he longed for a simpler time, a simpler life and a family and life like his parents and their parents had enjoyed.
“So, what happened?” she interrupted his thoughts.
What had happened? He’d changed. He’d wanted more. They’d flamed out.
“We suddenly discovered that we both wanted different things and we started down different paths. She held onto the idea of saving the world and I wanted to become something. She went her way, and I headed off to college.”
“So, you never spoke to her again? Why would you do that? If she meant so much to you, how could you simply turn your back and walk away?”
It had hurt a great deal to walk away, but mostly he had been scared. He was on a fast track to starting a family that lived in a shack and struggled to put food on the table. He saw himself growing old with nothing to show for what he’d done with his life.
“It hurt too much to look back, and I was afraid that I might not have the courage to pursue what I wanted if I did. If I had stopped to think about it, I might never have gone on to college and become what I’ve become.”
Hannah had a frown on her face that was worse than any words of judgment might have been. The sadness in her eyes were exactly as Catherine’s had been the day that he turned and walked away. They tore holes into his chest and stabbed at his heart. What have I become?
“Did you know when I was born? Didn’t anyone tell you? Surely someone that you knew told you.” He could see pools of tears forming at the rims of her eyes.
He’d heard rumors, but he’d never bothered to check them out. Why had he never bothered? He had been afraid that he would be trapped in that world that he was trying to avoid. He’d turned away. He’d abandoned Catherine, but worse yet, he’d abandoned Hannah as well. Should he tell her the truth? He stood on a precipice above a deep canyon. The truth would hurt her, but he doubted that lying would serve either of them we
ll. He decided to take the plunge. It might cost him dearly, but he was tired of lying; there’d been too much of that lately.
“I’d heard rumors that Catherine was pregnant and later that she’d had a baby, but…” The hard part was before him. “Look, I was afraid. I didn’t want to be tied down. I wasn’t ready for a family. I was scared.” He sighed. “I never checked into them. I really didn’t know…”
“So, you did know. You just chose to ignore us. Then she died in that car accident when I was thirteen and I had no one. Just school.”
There it was. It couldn’t have been said any more plainly. He watched the tears spill over the rims and trickle down her cheeks as her eyes gripped his soul and squeezed the life out of him. Without an explosion of any sort, or any other words at all, she stood and strode out of the room closing the door softly behind her.
Screaming and yelling might have made him feel better; however, he doubted that any reaction could assuage the guilt and pain that completely overwhelmed him. I thought I was scared before? Now, I’m terrified. He rubbed his chest and understood how a person could actually die from a broken heart.
He’d been somewhat cold and aloof as he’d climbed his way to the top of corporate America. As the President’s Food Czar, he had initially taken on the role with the same hardnosed, mechanical precision.
When he first began to realize that Walsanto’s GM corn might be doing a great deal of harm however, his humanity had begun to awaken, and the realization that his actions had an effect on the world hurt him. He had never felt the kind of pain that had suddenly gripped him as he realized that he’d hurt his daughter.
His rescue came from a very unlikely place; the ringing of his cell phone. For a moment, he considered letting it ring, but decided that it might be President James and he’d catch all kinds of hell for not answering it. He looked at the caller ID. Gerald. If there was anyone that he wanted to talk to at that moment, it was Gerald Davies. He’d felt a deep connection to the man. He pressed the button to connect the call.
The Rise of Walsanto (Genetic Apocalypse Book 3) Page 19