Stark stood with his hands on his hips. She wasn’t making this any clearer. He watched Jarum typing furiously and pretended to listen to Isabel.
“It’s like a digital drawing of sunlight,” Isabel tried again. “An artist can’t predict the natural nuances of how light will fall on every fluttering leaf. The shadows. The shades of green. It will always look wrong to the human eye.”
Isabel rarely spoke this way, usually never had patience for the poetry of her work. Stark imagined it was a reflection of her despair.
“It’s the same with recoding a whole immune system to recognize even two simple viruses. We can’t account for all the subtle processes at work in an immunity response. We can try, but the first immune system will always see the second for what it truly is—an invader. A foreign body,” Isabel said. “Simple wetcodes, like recoding eye color or Jarum’s rewriting a tropism code, work better. Easy. One sequence, and you can turn any human being into a mestizo. One sequence and the virus can attack the pilone wetware and the immune system—”
Isabel paused.
Her pupils dilated as if something had caught her eye, then she let out a little sigh of a laugh, astounded.
“What?” asked Stark.
Jarum’s chair squeaked slowly as he turned to Isabel.
The two doctors stared at one another in a frieze of marvel.
“How could we not have seen it?” Jarum breathed.
“Seen what?” Stark asked.
Isabel closed her eyes, shook her head. “Oh my God.”
“What? What?” shouted Stark.
“The pilone,” Jarum and Isabel said together.
Silence bloated in the room as Stark waited for an explanation.
Jarum turned to Stark and his face seemed to spread apart in a horrified expression. “The matrix will destroy pilone wetware. We’re differentiating a T cell that will be tropic for the same sequences the virus is.”
“But the matrix,” Stark said, “won’t it—?”
“Any successful matrix we create will destroy the virus and the pilone wetware,” Isabel said, “because they share the same DNA.”
“If we want the matrix, we have to forfeit the pilone network?” Stark asked.
Isabel nodded.
Panicking, Stark recalled how quickly omnivalent vaccine had been put into production during his phone call with El Mono. “What about a vaccine?”
Jarum shook his head, frowning in dismissal. “Same thing. Vaccine? Re-coding matrix? Same thing.”
“Joaquin must have known from the beginning,” Isabel said. “We’ve been playing right into his initial strategy with the recoding project.”
Stark shook his head in reluctant appreciation. Even shot, captured, and jailed, the man still controlled the battlefield. Would Mexico ever agree to such a drastic measure to stop the outbreak? Stark’s mind was filled with the image of Joaquin, lying on his back in a spotlight of his own blood, and he suddenly understood what Joaquin had said in Domenica’s cell.
I win either way.
“We have to tell the Holy Renaissance what’s at stake,” Jarum said. “Cazador will be here soon.”
“We can’t do that, Jarum,” Isabel said.
Stark looked at Isabel, surprised. “We can’t?”
Isabel’s voice was flat and her eyes were hard, half-closed. “How much time do we have?”
“Less than eight hours,” said Stark, checking his tanks again.
“Then we absolutely cannot tell anyone,” Isabel said with a derisive shake of her head. “This is our one and only shot.”
“But it would be unethical to spring this on them,” Jarum said. “All the people who will die as a result of this—?”
“No, no,” Isabel said, “pilone users won’t die. Dengue-6 destroys the Self status of the wetware, and that’s what causes immediate death in pilonistas. The recoded immune system will simply disable the wetware. It won’t try to expel it from the body. When we run the sim, we’ll see if I’m right. But Jarum,” Isabel said, grabbing the arm of his chair and turning him to face her. She raised an index finger. “Before Cazador arrives, we must agree to say nothing.”
“But the chaos and social upheaval? All over again?”
Isabel shook her head. “Compared to a cure for Big Bonebreaker, the pilone is an expendable toy.”
Jarum said, “But who are we to decide that for a country?”
Stark watched Domenica lie back against her pillows, with Sister Evangelista offering her juice from a cup. He said, “Jarum?”
He looked over at Stark.
“Four words,” Stark said. “Grandmother Muñoz’s Tripe Soup.”
Jarum nodded once, understanding. Then closed his eyes and nodded vigorously, with enthusiasm. “Absolutely. Absolutely right, Henry David.” He turned back to his computer and began creating a new sim, titling it Domenica2. “I suppose it’s the nature of this epidemic that we should have to perform an evil to undo a greater evil,” Jarum said.
Isabel lifted her head and looked into Domenica’s room. Someone was entering. Someone with an entourage. “Look. It’s Cazador.”
Stark turned to the window again. The Chief of State’s ponderous belly was unmistakable, even in a Racal suit, as he crossed himself, approached Domenica’s bed, and crossed himself again.
“Well, well,” Stark said. “Someone’s had a change of heart about La Patrona de los Plagos.”
“Cazador’s no idiot,” Isabel said. “He knows an opportunity when he sees one. He told me so himself.”
“What do you mean?” Stark asked.
Cazador knelt and prayed as Domenica put one hand on his shoulder, praying with him.
“He’s about to create a Mexican icon out of Domenica—and the Holy Renaissance will take all the credit for it,” Isabel said. “He’s already scheming for power in a postplague Mexico.”
The Majority Holding Cell was filled to suffocation levels. No windows. One door. People in white Racal suits stood on chairs, on waiting benches, on plastic-covered couches, and on any piece of furniture or object that might give a foothold.
At the center of the crush was an ojo, feeding live to Rosangelica, who fed the signal straight to her media satellites.
All of Mexico was watching.
Rosangelica sat outside the crowded room. Three soldiers armed with Sangre de Cristo class rifles stood beside her and Carriego. They were waiting for her to give the order to clear the room. Rosangelica was watching the ojo’s feed as it flickered across her optic nerve’s screen, waiting for just the right moment.
She cued the ojo inside the holding facility.
>ojo< Get in close. Interview him. Get him to talk.< She told him.
The ojo pressed between people packed into the little room, inching toward the bars. “Hello? Dr. Delgado? Hello?”
Joaquin sat stiff-backed in the one occupied cell, right leg stretched out in front of him. He looked out at the crowd through vertical bars that hummed with a charge. The room was so quiet that the ojo was picking up the sound of electricity coursing through the bars. Rosangelica waited for the tension to mount.
The gathering was silent in its fury. Would Joaquin address them? Attempt to explain himself? Hurl vituperative insults through the bars at his captors?
Rosangelica hoped so.
From her node, she fed a series of reports through the Holy Renaissance propaganda engine. She began with historical documents from twenty-five years ago, spewing them across the pilone network:
Student Joaquin Delgado Defies Mayor Emil Orbegón of Monterrey.
Joaquin Delgado Casts Aspersions on Rising Holy Renaissance.
Joaquin Delgado Joins US Centers for Disease Control.
Then she moved on to more current events. All Signs Point to Joaquin
Delgado as Big Bonebreaker Terrorist. Joaquin Delgado Murders Three Mexican Sabihondos. Joaquin Delgado Captured Attempting to Murder Santa Domenica.
That last report was from the Chief of State�
�s office and had Roberto’s air about it. He was making a play for Domenica, taking her into his fold and creating a Holy Renaissance saint out of her. Let him. Let Roberto Cazador reinstate Stark, too, and let him take credit for a cure. It was ultimately too abstract. Humans are fearful beasts, Rosangelica thought. They need security more than they want hope. And they wanted to see villains slain more than they wanted heroes exalted.
“Besides, the nun’s an insurgent,” Carriego had said to Rosangelica. “That one will blow up in Cazador’s face.”
Outside the holding facility, beyond the plasceron-glass barrier that the three guards had locked in place, was another wall of white moon suits. Three hundred people, Carriego had warned her, were spilling out into the esplanade outside.
“Dr. Delgado,” the ojo was saying. “Dr. Delgado, were you trying to kill Emil Orbegón? Is that why you did it? Did you want to kill Cardinal de Veras, too?”
The feeds streaming through her wetware fell away as Rosangelica’s full attention bored in on Joaquin Delgado.
“Are you a racist, Doctor? Do you hate Mexicans?”
Joaquin said nothing. He sat with his palms flat on his thighs, staring at the floor in front of him.
Rosangelica feared the lack of response would kill the moment. But no, it fueled it. The people in the holding facility wanted answers. The three hundred people outside wanted inside, wanted answers. Aggregate figures comprised of pilone-user ratio, reaction/approval ratings, and pilone market shares were scaling toward 85 percent, Rosangelica noted, tapping her marketing sats.
All of Mexico was watching, listening, and hating.
The guards looked back and forth between the two groups on either side of them and gripped the barrels of their rifles. Their one exit was a door behind Rosangelica, guarded by Carriego. She’d made certain it was open after allowing that crowd into the holding facility.
The ojo edged ever closer to the bars. He still had a couple helmets blocking his view of Joaquin. “Can’t you tell us why?” The ojo was getting frustrated with Joaquin’s silence. “Tell us why, Doctor!”
Rosangelica urged him on. >ojo< You’ve got him now. Now’s your chance! He can’t ignore you!<
“You used to live in Ascensión!” the ojo shouted. “You spent your childhood here! How could you do this to your pueblo?”
Good, Rosangelica thought, watching the aggregates—87%. Good.
“You invented the pilone!” someone near the ojo shouted. “You invented wetware!”
“You gave Mexico our prosperity and place in the world!” someone else shouted.
“Why would you betray Emil the Damned after he fed you in Monterrey?”
Eighty-nine percent. A saturated market with barely a single passive viewer in the audience. Rosangelica crossed herself.
Someone outside the holding facility’s plasceron barrier shouted, “You gave birth to the Holy Renaissance! Why would you turn around and destroy us?”
Inside the holding facility, the room had built to a roar of Racal-suit speakers, crackling with invectives.
“¡Hijo de puta!”
“¡Diablo! ¡Cabrón!”
“¡Diablo!”
The ojo reached the bars.
The aggregate number in the corner of Rosangelica’s eye reached 92 percent.
Joaquin looked up, right at the ojo.
Right at Mexico.
“There it is. Come on. Follow me,” Carriego said.
Rosangelica led the three guards after Carriego, out through the side door. In her optic nerve she saw Joaquin shake his head in magnificent sadness.
When they were safely in the director’s office, Carriego locked the door, then Rosangelica fed the code into the holding facility security node, causing the plasceron barrier to slide aside.
The room Rosangelica had just vacated filled immediately with shouting and shoving as three hundred people pushed their way in.
Ninety-six percent.
Joaquin’s eyes were full of hatred for the list of accomplishments and epithets being shouted at him, Rosangelica imagined. But staring into the eyes of the ojo as Joaquin was, it looked like hatred for Mexico.
Allí está, Rosangelica thought.
Then she popped the bolts on the door of his cell, and the crowd poured in, past the ojo, and Joaquin disappeared in a swarm of Racal suits.
TUESDAY, MAY 24. 10:02 P.M.
THE CATHEDRAL DE SAN CUAUHTÉMOC had chambers above, built right into the crimson and gold ceiling, not for balconies or choirs, but for light. Alabaster statues gazed over the giant space below, like angels peering down from the vaults of heaven, shafts of milky sunlight fell on their faces, on the human beings below. These weren’t statues of white-gowned angels, Stark realized, looking more closely from beside the altar. They were bloody saints, wounded in their martyrdom. San Felipe by spears. San Esteban by arrows. San Bartolome and San Xipe, flayed. They hovered above in their chambers of light as the Cathedral of La Alta filled beyond its two-thousand-person capacity with the political court of Ascensión, and seemed to watch with the resignation of the mortally wounded.
Hope you folks up there got some sway, Stark thought. A cordon of soldiers, wearing gloves and masks, marched suited members of the Orbegón presidential family into the cathedral, and all those present stood. We about to let loose some more chaos down here.
Infrared cameras flashed from the meager international media corps, as Lady Stephanie Orbegón, the president’s wife, walked in front, leading her grown children and toddling grandchildren, all in Racal suits of red and black. Behind them strode Emil the Damned, an imposing ranchero of a man, wearing the simple clear plastic clamp mask and rubber gloves of a hot-zone relief worker. He walked in slow meditative steps, his folded hands leading the way.
Stark stepped aside as the president approached the altar. Orbegón crossed himself, kissed his fingertips, crossed himself again, then one last time. He ascended the altar steps and walked toward Stark with his hand out. Stark felt like a teenage boy next to the towering Orbegón. “Thanks to God for making this possible, Dr. Stark,” said Emil Orbegón.
Stark shook his hand, looking up into the famous face with its moustache and chevron eyebrows, unable to decide if Orbegón were thanking him or God. Stark kept quiet.
A squad of septic troops in full Racal suits took up position between the Orbegóns and the crowd, and next came a parade of men in red capes and red skullcaps. The Holy Renaissance, Stark figured, the real Holy Renaissance—not the political party, but Cardinal de Veras and his band of rebel bishops and cardinals who had split from the Vatican. Preceded by lit incense, their capes swirled through the smoke as they walked to the altar.
Stark looked down at his air-tank timepiece. Quite a show the nun and the Jefe put together on such short notice.
“You name it,” Roberto Cazador had said, after the Task Force had confirmed that the matrix was ready with a 78 percent chance of success. “You tell me how you want it done, Sor Domenica, and I will make it happen.”
Domenica, mouth pustules cracking around the margins of her lips, smiled. Her fever made her eyes bloodshot, but they gleamed with desire. “I want it with the Holy Renaissance there to watch me go. I want the Orbegóns there. I want every ojo and camera in the city there.”
“Of course,” Cazador said. Such trifles were obvious, and under way.
Stark watched the actress buried in the nun reemerge. “Mexico needs this ritual, and we want it to be fabulous.”
The cathedral doors opened a third time, and a procession of flickering red candles in silver candlesticks entered. “The train of the Mexican saint,” Domenica had called it, describing the details to Cazador. Thirty girls in white coveralls, carrying votive candles. “Not one over the age of thirteen. The essence of virginity. Mexico expects purity now.”
Stark was disgusted by Domenica and Cazador, feeding on each other’s enthusiasm in the sim lab, devising this spectacular sacrifice. Domenica had wanted the Basilica for th
e site of her death. Cazador did one better and gave her the La Alta Cathedral San Cuauhtémoc. Domenica asked for the political elite to attend; Cazador gave her the very nucleus of the Holy Renaissance. Domenica had wanted a display that would resonate for her insurgent allies, Stark figured, and Cazador obviously wanted Orbegón to seize control of this symbolism after she was dead. So they used one another, each to their own extravagant, Machiavellian ends. From the altar, Stark could see by the expectant faces of those in attendance that the symbolism of the event was working on everyone in the cathedral.
After the thirty girls took their places along the steps of the altar, Sister Domenica finally appeared. The crowd, which had swelled to perhaps three thousand, surged toward the central aisle to see her entrance. The nun lay in a crystal coffin bordered by gold, wearing a black mantle embroidered with a red cross. Eight men in red-and-black antiviral suits carried the coffin on a bier.
“Is she dead?” a woman shouted, and people throughout the crowd repeated the question.
As Domenica passed into the cathedral, Stark could see that a white veil and wimple adorned the nun’s head. Holding the cross of a rosary, her hands were folded on her chest. Lilies and roses covered the glass case, and a small cross of red paper lay close to her head. Sitting up against red-and-black pillows, Domenica stared straight at Orbegón as she approached him. She didn’t look like an insurgent nun or a radical street actress. She was now a sixteenth-century Madonna straight out of the Black Plague.
The soldiers pushed the crowd back and the Orbegóns separated to allow the processional to ascend the altar. Behind her bier, two men carried a great crucifix, the wooden Christ sprawled across it in cruel detail. Thorns bit into His brow. Fingers clutched the nails in His palms. His side spilled painted blood like an open faucet and His legs were mangled. What Mexico does to their saviors, Stark thought.
As coffin and cross were positioned on the altar, the cathedral fell silent. Three priests stepped forward and lifted the lid from the glass coffin, dumping the flowers aside. Sister Domenica struggled to sit up and a great cheer exploded in the square. The thirty girls set down their small candles and stepped forward with large spools of red ribbon. They handed the ends to Sister Domenica and the girls unreeled the ribbons out into the crowd. The crowd took the spools and passed them to the back of the cathedral, connecting crowd to nun.
The Patron Saint of Plagues Page 41