The Click

by Steve Shear

  That was enough for one day. He turned the TV off altogether and began to think. At that moment he would have preferred more than anything else to be in DanSheba with his family and friends, with Meta and the others. Just as that yearning seemed to build, Dillon strolled in as if he had all the time in the world, as if the world weren’t coming to an end.

  “We’re still waiting to hear from his Eminence, the ambassador, I’m afraid,” Dillon said sarcastically. “Have we got the verification team lined up?”

  “Yes, believe it or not. My contact at the UN told me they have selected three so-called experts that were blessed by the Secretary General himself, secretly.”

  “Do we know anything about them?”

  “A young woman from Boston, no doubt tied to the Church there. From what I’ve been told she’s about the same age as Elana Wu and may in fact know her. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. The second expert is from Frankfurt, in his late sixties, quite possibly a friend of Herr Flum, and that surely isn’t good.”

  “And the third member?”

  “The most problematic one if I had to guess. A Chinese man, also around Elana Wu’s age, said to be brilliant, and highly conservative religiously, whatever that means in China.”

  Dillon shrugged. “Let’s hope it all works out, and tell your people it has to be unanimous.” He disappeared before Yennie could process that last comment or ask him anything else about the meeting with the ambassador.

  ****

  General Rosewall arrived in Mumbai and convened a meeting in Rousseau’s hotel room. He brought with him two of his trusted lieutenants, Grozier and Reebert, both younger than Rousseau and both highly unappealing. The four of them sat around the table in her suite. Grozier, sporting a beard without a mustache and dangling earrings in both ears, constantly chewed enough gum to glue an elephant to the floor. Reebert, who was cross-eyed and clearly didn’t realize his fly was down, started to relight up a black-market cigar butt. That’s when Rousseau put her foot down.

  “You want to smoke that fucking phallus hang yourself out the balcony. And for Christ’s sake zip up your fly. What you want to show off is probably smaller than your cigar butt.”

  “Enough,” Rosewall snapped. “We have work to do.”

  He then proceeded to describe how they, a small band of carefully selected warriors, were to take a battle-ready barge and a small flatbed carrier to DanSheba in order to preempt McGivney and the UN. Grozier stopped chewing long enough to ask whether they had anyone inside in DanSheba. Rosewall nodded toward Rousseau, who smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Rose Garden cottage, where everything that was spiritual in DanSheba took place, sat up the hill at the foot of the mountain. It was surrounded by a fence so thick with red, white, and yellow roses one had to pass through the gate to see the front door. The cottage itself, constructed of shiny stone chipped away from the mountainside, seemed to pop out of a fairytale. Meta remembered thinking that when she saw it the first time she arrived in DanSheba with her mother. On Friday nights the cottage and backyard filled up with villagers who wanted to light Shabbat candles together. How she always loved the Rose Garden cottage, Meta said to herself as she and Oliver Hitchcock walked up the hill toward the large crowd gathering out front.

  “How are they doing?” Meta asked.

  “Christopher’s in a coma but Elana says that’s good. It slows down the progression.” Hitch shrugged.

  “And Kathy?”

  “Ringthaller gave her a sedative and she’s sleeping, finally.”

  “In that case, why don’t you take a deep breath and relax. I think you need it. Hopefully your president will disclose the Smotecal Decretum to the world, DanSheba will live to see another day, and Christopher will grow older than we all could have imagined.”

  Hitch shrugged again. Then he stopped and looked at Meta. “But how does this Decretum thing fit into the Click? I never did understand that from what you gave me.”

  “It both condemns and exonerates the Ecclesian Church. Once the Cūtocracy understood how bad the ERAM plague was, it spent months creating and producing a vaccine. As the plague intensified, Smotec Innocent urged the Cūtocracy to dispense the vaccine they had stored up—thanks in large part to my great, great granduncle Jonathan. The Cūtocracy wanted to wait until the Click was ready so they could incorporate it into the vaccine, apparently months and millions of deaths later. A vote by the Council was taken and everyone except Innocent’s representative voted to wait. Innocent’s Decretum instructed him to vote No, to dispense the Clickless serum immediately.”

  “So the Church was against geriatric euthanasia. How does that condemn it?”

  Meta stopped, picked up a wildflower and smelled it, then turned back to Oliver. “Because Innocent knew about the Click from the beginning and the Cūtocracy’s plan to delay the Clickless vaccine until they could incorporate the time bomb, knowing that millions would die needlessly. He and the Church chose to keep everything secret in the name of population control, and to weaken the arguments for birth control. After so many people died in the ERAM plague, the church needed more babies to shore up its following and the Cūtocracy needed to make sure the church coffers overflowed.”

  “And these Tarsusian extremists like Julian, were, are still part of the Church?”

  Meta blew the petals from the wildflower as she walked on toward the crowd waiting at the cottage, and Hitch followed her lead. “Yes, but apparently they were not aware of the conspiracy of silence between the Church and the Cūtocracy and tolerated the Cūtocrats only because they believed the Click was truly the work of God.”

  As they approached the cottage, a DanSheban videographer greeted them. “We’re ready to go, if you are,” she said to Meta.

  Meta nodded then turned to Oliver. “In the end, because of your president the world will know the truth. And with God’s help, ironically, both the Cūtocracy and the Church will be expunged from the Earth along with the Click.”

  Hitch stood there speechless. Meta recognized the look. He hadn’t expected such vitriol. He’ll get over it, she thought. After all he hasn’t lived nearly as long as she knowing what the Church perpetuated in the name of their extreme dogma. With that, she allowed the videographer to escort her to the camera set up in front of the cottage and took a deep breath, taking in the mixed aroma of all the roses of different colors—reds and whites and yellows.

  ****

  Rouseau watched Rosewall guide one of the barges and a small carrier from East Mumbai into the jungle thicket. They were going to survey the area he told the other fleet commanders. Once they were far enough away he had Rousseau turn on her Blue Cube, and the HS-Screen appeared. She was caught off guard when she realized that Elana Wu was no longer transmitting. “Damn. She probably flushed the bug down the toilet.”

  Rosewall laughed as he stepped up to the Blue Cube and tapped away. “Not a problem. It automatically saved her location.”

  Sure enough, a dot over DanSheba began pulsating. They plugged that information into the navigation system on the carrier and it did all the work, that is, until it steered them into turbulent waters toward a magnificent waterfall.

  “Holy shit!” Rousseau stood at the bow and gawked at God’s creation in front of her.

  Rosewall stood next to her and growled out orders into his ship phone to stop. He and Rousseau then ran below deck and gathered around a navigation screen with members of his crew.

  “If we’re going to get to DanSheba without circling around all of India we have to go through the falls,” one of the crewmembers said. “According to this, it’s hiding the entrance to a cavern of sorts which leads out here.” He pointed to the river on the other side of the mountain.

  After they double- and triple-checked that conclusion, Rosewall gave the orders to plunge through the center of the falls since they weren’t sure how wide the opening was. First, they had to tie down and waterproof everything on deck that couldn’t be carried bel
ow. That took them several hours.

  Finally, they made the plunge and swiftly found themselves on the other side, in a cavern and water as calm as the waterfall was turbulent. By the time the sun set, they approached the DanSheban wharf and made no attempt to hide that fact. Twenty minutes later, Rousseau found herself looking down on the village from her seat in a VAMA helicopter chuckling. “This has to be a joke,” she radioed back to Rosewall, then scurried over all parts of the village to make sure she was seen. She hoped that Hitchcock would get a glimpse of her. While she fondled the controls of a pair of stingray laser guns on opposite sides of the helicopter as if they were Oliver’s private parts, she also hoped her bravado would wake up the Israelis. No such luck. Their fleet was sound asleep on a makeshift landing pad.

  She returned to the carrier, jumped out, and strolled to Rosewall who stood on deck talking on his scud. As she approached, Rosewall turned it to speaker mode.

  “It’s smaller than a gnat’s ass. We can level it in ten minutes,” Rousseau insisted.

  “No. Not until I say. The U.S. president has a meeting scheduled at the Ecclesian Embassy. Let her make a fool of herself, then I’ll give you the go-ahead,” High Minister McGivney demanded.

  Rosewall clicked off and turned to Rousseau. “We’ll see,” he said as both gazed out into a void of blackness, in the direction of DanSheba. Not a flicker of light from the village could be seen, or from where Rousseau was sure the Israeli and Indian troops, and Hitchcock, stared back.

  She had to laugh to herself. McGivney didn’t seem surprised at all that they stole off to DanSheba and yet said he was. Something told her that she and Rosewall were doing his bidding whether they knew it or not. Christ! The fucking games that people play!

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hitch, Elana, Barnaby, and Meta sat together in front of an oversized hologram screen projecting up from a computation shell in the hospital conference room directly across from Christopher’s room. Hitch purposely placed himself in clear view of his grandson’s bed. Kathy sat next to Christopher, and Dr. Ringthaller seemed to come and go.

  A conference with President Wainwright and Yennie, both in the Oval Office, was in progress. At that moment the president spoke directly to Hitch, who knew her quite well from her early days as head of the NSA before her reign as Governor of Florida.

  “I have to admit, Oliver, I always worried someday you might start a world war.”

  “Now, Madam President, back then we were coconspirators most of the time. This time around you’re the Queen Bee of this hornets’ nest.”

  “Maybe so. But you need to know that this Queen Bee is looking at twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours, before she has no control over the soldier bees that will swarm over DanSheba faster than you can open a jar of honey.”

  “Not much of a window. And let’s hope that the VAMA contingency sitting within rock throwing distance from the wharf here in DanSheba doesn’t go rogue. In the meantime, you better talk with Elana, Dr. Wu,” Hitch said. He moved to the next chair, allowing Elana to take his seat.”

  “Now then, Dr. Wu, the UN is flying in a team of experts to verify your results. It must be unanimous. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, unanimous. I welcome their input, Madam President.”

  “How confident are you that the Click is in fact part of the ERAM-V vaccine? More important, can you prove it within the time frame you have?”

  Elana hesitated and looked over at Barnaby, who gave her a questioning expression and then a nod. “I am one hundred percent confident. We will prove it. I would stake my life on it.”

  “Well, it may be your life and everyone there if you don’t. Not only will DanSheba be invaded, but I will not go public with the Smotecal Decretum.”

  With that overt threat, the Oval Office closed communication. Elana glanced over at the other three in the room and insisted they follow her into the hall around the corner from Christopher’s room. At the same time, Hitch noticed Dr. Ringthaller step into the hall but gave that little thought at the time.

  As soon as Hitch, Meta, and Barnaby huddled around Elana, she started to speak but struggled to get the words out.

  “What?” Hitch asked.

  “I just lied to the president,” she said, causing Meta to flinch.

  “Lied? What do you…”

  “We need the real thing. The synthetic version will work with unvaccinated blood to make a Click-free vaccine but will not prove the Click is part of the ERAM vaccine. I was sure it would work but it doesn’t.”

  Elana’s pronouncement was lost on Hitch. “What do you mean the real thing? What the hell is she talking about, Barnaby?”

  “She means the virus itself.”

  Elana was adamant. “Without the actual virus we can’t prove a thing. We need it to infect some poor guinea pigs before we vaccinate them.”

  “Unless we find a carrier,” Barnaby added.

  “Of what?” Meta asked.

  “Of the plague,” Elana answered. “Someone who carries it but was not infected. But even if there are people like that, they would never know it. Besides, we don’t have the time to find such a person and then extract the virus.”

  It was as if she dropped a bomb that exploded at Hitch’s feet and blew him back to Ralph Delahunt’s office. “Two Preemies in one family does not appear to be coincidental,” Ralph said. “Are you saying it’s because of…” Edna started to say but never finished her question. Hitch finished it. “Because I’m a carrier, carrier, carrier.”

  Hitch turned away from Elana, Meta, and Barnaby. He was the reason Christopher was dying. He was the reason OJ died. He was, was, was, was…

  He heard Meta between the self-incriminating voices he knew so well. She asked if he was all right.

  All right! No, damn it, I’m all wrong, he wanted to scream.

  “I’m a carrier,” he finally declared. He went weak at the knees but held himself up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Christopher’s doctor, Ringthaller, run down the hall and out of the hospital, but again didn’t give that a thought.

  An hour or so later, Hitch stood with Elana, Barnaby, and Kathy in Elana’s lab staring at vials of blood. Elana and Barnaby explained exactly how they planned to extract the ERAM virus from his body. They were not talking about a normal blood donation. Elana made it clear that it was more akin to a chemically induced bilateral transfusion that sometimes causes the body’s DNA to creep up or down its chain. That caused both Hitch and Kathy to recoil.

  “We will inject you with a substance that isolates the virus without harming…” Elana started to explain but Barnaby interrupted.

  “Enough! We will monitor all your critical organs, I promise, but we must move on.”

  “He needs to know the risk,” Elana snapped. For a moment the room went silent, as if Barnaby didn’t want to say what the risk was, as if Kathy didn’t want to know. But Hitch wanted to know.

  Elana finally spoke up. “It could trigger the onset of the Click.”

  “Jesus!” That wasn’t something Hitch had expected. “What are the odds?”

  “There’s a twenty-five percent chance…”

  “A pretty good bet then,” Hitch said.

  “That the Click won’t trigger, but of course most of this is speculation since there’s really no data to support any real prediction.”

  “There’s something else,” Barnaby said, almost in a whisper. “We suspect you may have a rare DNA mutation that somehow coupled itself with the virus you carry. Probably helped make you a Beater and pass it on. For sure it explains why you look decades younger than your actual age, and that could…”

  “Kill me.”

  This time Elana recoiled. Hitch turned to her. “So, the odds of living through this at all are stacked against me. But if I make it, what? I’ll look like I’m your grandfather?”

  That was enough. Elana put a stop to the discussion. Hitch could only imagine how somber he looked. Elana reached for his hand. He sighed. El
ana and Barnaby shared a look of concern. Kathy turned away from them, edged to the window.

  “My God!”

  Hitch walked out leaving all three to wallow in the wake of all the dire possibilities. He wasn’t going to show weakness. He was after all Oliver Hitchcock, a Beater, a man with a body and mind of a much younger man. He kept repeating that as he marched down the hall, passing lab workers who greeted him kindly. He acknowledged them with a nod but his eyes never wavered from a blank straight-ahead stare.

  He entered the restroom, where he was greeted by lines of white porcelain sinks under one continuous mirror and immediately lost his bravado. A DanSheban around sixty in a lab coat was washing his hands. Hitch slinked away to the furthest sink and bent over to grip the porcelain, as if its cold surface would somehow chill the anxiety that held captive all the muscles in his body.

  The DanSheban looked over. “Are you okay, Mr. Hitchcock?”

  Hitch started to nod when Kathy burst through the door.

  “Dad?” She gestured for the DanSheban to go, and he quickly complied.

  Hitch remained at the sink trying to ignore her. She approached and stood next to him. From the corner of one eye he could see her gaze fixed on his image in the mirror.

  “My God! You’re not going through with it!”

  She might as well have been speaking in a language he was only slightly familiar with. He understood the tone of her accusations but couldn’t quite process the words.

  “I’m… I don’t know…”

  He felt her swing him around. Slap, across the face. He heard it. He saw it. But at that moment he felt nothing.

  “How can you even look at yourself?”

  Again, he couldn’t process the accusation and didn’t respond, causing her to stomp toward the door. She stopped and turned. “The invincible CIA spy and lady’s man, adulterer I might add, too damn scared to save his daughter’s son.”