by Greg Bear
"Staged?" Kunsler asked.
"Completely," William said. "Green Idaho is all over the scene. They want me out of here—tar and feathers would be too good for me."
"Nabokov sent a short message. He has the goods. But we haven't heard anything more. Get back to the Q."
"I'm on a plane out of Boise at midnight."
"No need. There'll be a jet waiting for you. Something big is in the air, so we're getting an extra drip of cash. Sounds like none of us is going to be getting much sleep. What do you know about Little Jamey?"
"Enough," William said. Everyone in law enforcement knew about Little Jamey. It had been injury on top of insult for the Bureau—and one of several events that had focused attention on Talos. "Is that a leading question?"
"Very. You'll get a full briefing at the Q."
William took a deep breath.
"Ah—my little bitty inbox is filling up with messages," Kunsler said. "Complaints from the locals. Pull out gracefully. Don't ruffle any feathers."
"Too late," William said. "There's one old buzzard I'd love to strangle."
"Tsk. See you bright and early tomorrow—I'll bring coffee. Come home safe, Agent Griffin."
Chapter Sixteen
Los Angeles, California
Nathaniel strolled along the indoor length of train track, then stopped and rose up on tiptoes to peer through the windows of a dining car. If he closed his eyes and listened to the recorded sounds, he could almost complete the illusion of a 1930s train station.
Steam puffed from under the sleek silvery locomotive, cut in half and butted up against a mural on the far wall.
He hadn't felt so much pure delight since childhood.
Everything was delightful and vivid. He made it more so, savoring the surreal illusion of a streamliner waiting for passengers, complete with red-capped conductors, leading guests through the waiting area—a Pullman lounge—to three dining cars.
At any moment, Nathaniel could play back something he had just experienced with complete fidelity. His memory was an open book through which he could page at will—making himself his own toy, his own diversion.
At the same time, he heard all the real sounds—people talking, dressed out of character, he thought—cell phones, restaurant pagers dinging, boisterous children talking about the latest games.
Nathaniel was caught between fascination with the children—so like him, unfettered, bold—and the illusion he was finding almost dangerously fascinating.
The colors around the train intensified until he rubbed his eyes and blinked them back. Bee vision, he called that—but he was pretty sure he couldn't actually see UV or infrared. Just a trick of the optical processors, like an LSD trip without the drug. Neon intensity, etched detail, a vibrant fringing around objects of particular interest; followed by sharp disappointment and an acute awareness, almost painful, of the inaccuracies in the restaurant's design.
Gas lanterns, for example. Not at all right.
For a moment, Nathaniel subdued the urge to count everything: people (too late), boards, beams, wheels on the dining car, windows, people again . . . Pushed it back as if swallowing a lump in his brain.
A hand tapped his shoulder. "Hey, Trace."
Pleasant tenor, sweet North Carolina accent—Nathaniel swung around with a toothy smile, looking up to the red, puffy, bristle-beard features of Humphrey Camp. Camp was taller than Nathaniel by four inches and heavier by more than fifty pounds, broad-shouldered and pepper-bearded. He did not look happy or healthy.
Camp coughed into his fist. "This shit seems to be agreeing with you. Not so much for me. Where's Plover?"
"Not here yet," Nathaniel said.
"This place seems a little obvious." Camp scuffed his feet. "Did you look inside? Maybe he's already seated."
"Plover told me to meet him here. That's all I know."
Camp squeezed his nose, then sneezed. "Maybe he can tell me why I feel like shit."
"Do you? I feel excellent." The downturn of the morning seemed less than a dream. Nathaniel didn't actually care how Camp felt, though they had once been good friends—had met at Stanford. He studied the big man closely, as he would an animal in a zoo.
"Fucking hurray," Camp said, then glanced over Nathaniel's shoulder. "Here's Lee."
Jerry Lee was the youngest of the Turing Seven, a dapper-looking man of thirty-one, dressed in his signature black coat, black T-shirt, black jeans. To the other members Lee had always been an enigma. He had come out of the Arabia Deserta attack with the worst physical scars—a divot down the side of his head and his cheek, burns and shrapnel marks down his left torso and rear shoulder.
He had never said much and said even less during their two weeks of treatment in Baltimore.
Lee nodded at Nathaniel but ignored Camp. His coolness and poise contrasted sharply with Camp's bulky fidgets. Lee had been the first to finish his work in Dubai and return to Los Angeles. He was also the only member of the Turing group—besides Nathaniel—who had actually visited the inner recesses of Mind Design in La Jolla and met the Quiet Man in person.
Lee pointed. "Here's our savior," he said.
Carrying a small box, the old head poker himself stepped delicately down the entrance ramp to the siding—Dr. Terence Plover, architect of their exodus from the psychological wounds of war, designer of the Mariposa treatment and now, apparently, a man who did not want to be recognized. He had dyed his hair to silver-gray and looked more like a sixty-something retiree than a well-to-do middle-aged researcher and entrepreneur.
At the sight of three of his former patients—rather than just Nathaniel—Plover looked as if he might turn and flee. But he squared his shoulders, nervously approached, and exchanged quick, formal greetings, looking each in the face with a curt nod, but did not shake—kept his free hand in his pocket.
"Only three?" he asked ironically. He looked up and down the mock station. "Where's Bork? Where's Nick Elder?"
He seemed to assume, as always, that he was in charge, and now behaved as if Nathaniel had violated both his authority and his trust.
Mariposa had been run with a firm hand, Dr. Plover always the sad, gentle tyrant awaiting their arrival to his island of calm and freedom from fear.
"Nick's in Texas," Camp said.
"We don't know that," Lee said.
Plover stroked his chin like a would-be wise man. All he lacked was a goatee and a pipe. Nathaniel subdued an urge to laugh, but a small chuckle escaped.
Plover frowned. "I think we should avoid attracting attention," he said. "Can we please do that, gentlemen?"
"This place was your choice," Nathaniel reminded him.
Plover gave him a pained look. "I did not ask all of you to come."
"And now we are four," Camp said.
Harry Bork strode onto the platform and joined them, tipping his hand to his forehead. Bork's role in the Turing Seven had always been mediation and negotiation. He had close-set blue eyes and a monkish fringe of blond hair embracing a noble, Nordic square skull, darker brows hovering over a squib of nose and a belligerent jaw.
"Great restaurant," he said. "Best prime rib in LA. Food tastes wonderful, Doc. Better than ever."
"Let's get on with it," Plover said. "We shouldn't be together any longer than necessary."
He unexpectedly leaned into Camp, who held up his arms in support. Plover's eyes fluttered. Catching himself, he straightened and waved them away.
"Apologies. Sleepless for two days," he murmured.
"Let's find our table and order drinks," Bork suggested. "I'm famished."
The waiter—a tall, slouched man with a thick hood of black hair and a long nose, more concerned about their appearance and demeanor than their number—escorted them away from the windows to a room in the back, paneled with dark wood.
A sparkling white cloth lay over a long, narrow table, set with stamped silver and peacock-fold napkins. Above the table hung two antique gas lamps, orange flames surrounded by hot pink auras—at le
ast, in Nathaniel's bee vision.
"We all look daft," Bork said when they had settled in. It was apparent they could feel the awkwardness. They had worked together for months at a time in luxury but also in primitive conditions, had survived hell together—subcontractors for Axel Price and Talos Corporation for six years—yet none of them knew how to react to a reunion, and this caused Camp distress.
"Fuck this shit," he growled.
The four took up their menus and studied them.
Plover sat silent.
"How about the rest of you?" Bork asked. "Don't you feel it? Isn't food terrific?"
"My stomach's killing me," Camp said. "I'm losing weight and I pee purple." He thumped down his menu, winced, and blinked at the lanterns. "Ugly light," he said. "Hurts my eyes."
"Please!" Plover shouted.
Lee scowled.
Camp leaned in. "Quiet, Doc. Like you said, no cops. And no security guards, for Christ's sake."
Plover seemed to shrink in his chair, then rose again to a level of assertion—but kept his voice down. "I invited Mr. Trace to meet with me, exclusively, but now that we're here, I owe all of you an apology. Can you bring yourselves to some place of . . . cooperation, of agreement, so that we can talk sensibly?"
They nodded, all but Camp, and he continued.
"I've canceled my talk at the convention. I'll be leaving Los Angeles this afternoon. Things could hardly get any worse. I've been traveling . . ." He covered his mouth with one hand, cheeks working behind his fingers, as if trying to refit loose dentures.
Then he started to sob.
After a moment, Camp was the first to speak up. "All right. We're your bright boys, Doc, and we've gone wrong," he said. "Why is that?"
Plover managed to recover and straighten as the waiter brought in a tray with their drinks, then took their food orders. That went surprisingly well.
Plover's distress had had an impact. All of them made their choices like properly trained children. Then Bork told the waiter what the final tab would be, to the penny, with a stingy tip.
The waiter gave him a tight look, thanked them all, slouched out, and closed the sliding panel door.
The anachronistic gas lamps flickered and threw long shadows.
"We look like poker playing dogs," Lee said, and touched his forehead as if to adjust a green eyeshade.
"To Mariposa." Nathaniel lifted his red wine in toast. "How many did you cure, Doc? How many are we?" The colors even in this subdued room—even in the flickering, totally wrong gaslight—were amazing.
Plover looked around the table. He dabbed his eyes with his napkin and fixed his gaze on Lee. "You seem the best adapted," he murmured.
Lee lifted the corners of his lips. "I doubt it," he said. "That would be Bork, I think."
"Don't put that load on me," Bork said. "We're all pretty spooky. I hardly recognize some of you. We all move different now, did you notice that?"
"I see it," Lee said.
"Finish your drink and tell us something useful, Doc," Camp said.
"None of you should drink," Plover said, his voice shaky.
"Well hell, then, cheers," Camp said, hoisting his mug of Budweiser and swallowing half. He slammed the heavy glass on the table. "I'm a mess. You're a mess. We're all freaks. What the fuck have you done to us, Doc?"
Plover's hand shook as he drank his water. "I've had a terrible week. I left Maryland . . . moved my wife to a secret location. Now I can't reach her. I'm very worried about her."
"Let's be honest," Bork said. "We were a mess when you took us in. We couldn't get our work done. Two weeks later, we went back to work. You cured us."
"Too good to be true," Camp said.
Plover steeled himself. "I would like to know what you gentlemen were doing, to cause me and my wife so many difficulties."
They all sat quiet. Camp fidgeted with a knife, tapping the tablecloth.
"You don't want to know," Bork said.
"I knew you were important," Plover persisted dryly. "I'm just now beginning to understand how important."
"What about the Quiet Man?" Camp asked. "What does he know?"
They all looked at Lee.
"A secret international project with a huge bankroll," Lee said. "The Turing Seven were crucial. Then—we were injured. Our wounds healed. Our heads did not. Dr. Plover came to Price with interesting research. He gave you full financing, plus a large bonus, and promised that all his soldiers and personnel who suffered from post-traumatic stress would be funneled through Mariposa. You could have become a rich man."
"What changed that?" Bork asked. "What changed us?"
"Not boozing, I'm going to bet," Camp said, and finished his beer.
"You're all reacting differently," Plover said. "There may be similarities . . . I can't know for sure. I could do blood work, but I no longer have a clinic." He swallowed and shook his head, getting the words out with difficulty. "Harvey Belton called my private line last week. I don't know how he got the number . . . it's new. He was hysterical. I heard a shot. The call ended. Stanley Parker called the same number and said he was flying to Fiji, so that he could be in a place where it was quiet. The world was too loud and too bright. Nick Elder . . . I do not know what happened to Nick."
"He's in Texas," Bork said. "At least, he was a few days ago."
The waiter and a busboy brought their food: plates clacking, maneuvering in the narrow space, the waiter's nervous reappraisal of who ordered what.
He backed out and closed the door.
Camp thumped the table once more. "Question not answered!" he said in a harsh voice. "What did you do to us? What the hell is Mariposa?"
Lee frowned and put his hands over his ears.
Plover touched the rim of his water glass with a finger. "I was working with my wife at the National Cancer Institute in Atlanta," he said. "We had what looked like an effective treatment for astrocytomas. Brain tumors. We were in clinical trials—very promising—when I noticed that our test patients often experienced a significant change in affect. In mood.
"One was a veteran from the first Gulf War. He had suffered from PTSD since his late twenties. That suffering stopped. Crime victims, those who had survived rape or domestic abuse—even patients with unrelated psychological disorders—responded positively as well. I altered the focus and expanded the program."
"So you fix cancer and make people happy, at the same time. How?" Bork asked.
"The body—the brain—relies on the genome not only for form but for broad patterns of behavior. But genes are not expressed continually. They are controlled by a marvelous system of checks and balances—including overlays to the actual genetic sequences, epigenetic tags or stops that regulate and even prevent certain genes from being expressed. As in a music box, an activated gene sticks up and plays a note, an inactivated gene falls into a gap and is silent.
"In our childhood and adolescence, tunes emerge and become more or less fixed—the working versions of you and me, better prepared for our environment. However, throughout our lives, our bodies still make changes. As we live, we acquire a few more notes. Our tunes become richer. Little pathways—personality, habits—are worn into our behaviors."
"What's that got to do with cancer?" Lee asked.
"Cells too are educated and trained. If they are continually stressed or traumatized—bathed in toxic chemicals, for example—they reach a crisis and a point of decision. Life isn't good. The bargain they made long ago to be part of a larger body isn't working out. So they may try to become independent, paying no attention to the body's needs. Usually the stubbornly independent cells are killed by the immune system. In some cases, they evade destruction, and tumors grow."
"You're saying we're tumors?" Camp seemed perversely amused.
"No. Perhaps. I don't know . . . These matters are complicated."
"What's Mariposa doing to us now?" Bork asked.
Lee laid his hand on Plover's arm—not in reassurance.
Plover looke
d down at the tightening fingers. His brow furrowed. "Stress," he said. "Long-term pressure and pain wear deep, dysfunctional ruts, which become fixed by epigenetic tags in our brains—perhaps in astrocytic cells themselves. We respond with heightened sensitivity to less and less stimulus. Brain and body, working in unison, acquire hair triggers. Our behaviors become inappropriate, erratic. Deep down, we think we are still in whatever situation caused our pain to begin with.
"Our tune changes for the worse, sometimes drastically. Sour notes, screeches—anxiety, fear. Panic."
"We weren't in combat for more than a few hours," Nathaniel said.
"A single major traumatic event—pain, destruction, friends killed, imminent threat to life—mere minutes can cause tremendous stress. The persistent drips and trickles of stress that ordinarily shape our lives and thoughts become a sudden flood. Old patterns are swept away. New channels form, deep and devious. Mariposa works by removing the stops we acquire during traumatic events. The genes are set free from the bad habits they acquired under duress. The world seems less threatening. A kind of balance is restored."
Plover's face took on that messianic light Nathaniel remembered from his two weeks in Baltimore, in the clinic—when Plover had been the one who had made them feel human again.
"Balance?" Camp said. "Shit. I'm not in any sort of balance."
"Your pain went away," Plover asserted, defiant. "You all agreed . . . back then."
"Not now," Bork said. "I feel like Proteus in his cave—scary. Maybe we can be anything."
"I have no idea what I want to be," Lee said.
"The drug is removing too many controls," Plover said. "We did not see that in animal trials."
"And that means . . .?" Camp asked.
"Our talents and abilities are patterned to fit the needs of a larger group. Best for human society . . . But perhaps more control is now being returned to you as individuals. You have become like newborns, in a way. If too many controls are removed—then you either won't feel the need to serve society at all, or you will do so purely on your own terms."