by Steve Shear
“This doesn’t mean anything. He’s been up and down all morning,” Elana said. “We’ll have him stabilized shortly.”
As she made that promise, Barnaby walked in, trying to make himself presentable, and looked around. “Where’s Ringthaller?” He looked at Elana, then Hitch.
“That’s a long story for later. For now, I don’t believe we have to worry about our enemies on the river. We’ve got to get that fucking virus out of me so Elana can get on with her antidote.” Hitch turned back to Kathy, who tried to smile through the tears.
Minutes later, Meta rushed in. “I just got off with Yennie at the White House. The verification team is on the way. We have to convince all of them and we have to do it quickly. They can’t hold off the smotec or the UN much longer.”
Hitch groaned. The others just stared at her, as if her news was anticlimactic.
“What?” she responded. Hitch chortled. He would tell her later about his latest escapades.
****
High Minister McGivney stood before the Supreme Minister, listening on his scud. “I see. Thank you for the update.” He clicked off and looked at the smotec.
“Well?”
As you requested, Your Sacredness, I let Rosewall and Rousseau go rogue, and I’m afraid they failed. You must insist the whole fleet go in.”
“I don’t think that’s possible now. The UN appears to be breaking from the Cūtocracy and demands that we wait.” The smotec looked at his watch and grumbled. “Let’s hope the American president is bluffing.”
****
The cold room kept everyone alert. The whiteness of the walls and cabinets made that much more effective for the magnetic triadic arcs under translucent domes that filled the ceiling. Hitch could almost feel his own clicking in unison with Christopher’s, with Edna’s…with OJ’s, and they hadn’t started the procedure yet. Technicians in light yellow surgical gowns stood over him. He followed the tube taped to his left arm. It hung down and into an empty glass container that spun at high speed. A second tube dropped down from a container filled with a violet liquid into his right arm. The way he was oriented, he could see a heart monitor and a monitor displaying brain waves. Nigel Quicksilver watched both as he stood behind Elana. Nigel was Meta’s first cousin and closest confidant, Hitch knew from conversations he had with Meta. Behind them, Hitch saw Kathy peering through a viewing window.
He looked up at Barnaby, who smiled from behind his mask, then to Elana, who winked above hers. He felt her fingers squeeze his hand as Nigel injected a sedative in the second line.
Seconds later, or so he thought, Hitch heard a voice, hollow, strange, call out.
“Grandpa, Grandpa.”
He opened his eyes and saw OJ standing over him, smiling. “We won, Grandpa. We won, three to two.”
Hitch smiled back, then closed his eyes. He hadn’t recalled being this relaxed. He took in the euphoria, not recalling why he was there or who had just called out to him.
Again, seconds later, it seemed, his eyes opened. He watched Kathy jump up from his bedside. Barnaby stood behind her.
Kathy took his hand. “Hi.” She smiled. “You did it!”
“How’s OJ?”
Kathy turned to Barnaby, then back to her father.
“I mean Christopher.”
“We gave him a nap around the same time you went down,” Barnaby said.
“I want to see him when he wakes up. Can I see what I look like?”
“You look the same, Dad,” Kathy was quick to say, followed by Barnaby’s words of caution.
“Oliver, the process is slow. We won’t know for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, or even longer, whether…”
“That’s okay, Barnaby.” Hitch held up his hand and stopped him. “It’s enough to know you got what you needed. Did you?”
“More than enough. We’re meeting with the verification team tomorrow and Elana is busy preparing.”
****
Long before going through the gruesome process they had just completed, Elana discovered something VAMA learned early on when they began vaccinating people with the ERAM-V vaccine containing the Click. It appeared in a single footnote somewhere in the middle of an old textbook written by the Nobel Laureate Sivle Melasurej right after the ERAM plague. The footnote took up many pages and for all but truly sophisticated immunology experts willing to spend weeks and possibly months analyzing it, the words and equations amounted to nothing more than gibberish hallucinations intended to hide their true meaning. Otherwise, the Cūtocracy would never have allowed it to reach the light of day.
Dr. An Wu, Elana’s father, was a physical chemistry professor at the University of Beijing. He gave Elana that old text book and dared her to read that footnote. The dare was enough for her to do more than just read it. She was determined to make sense of all the gibberish and wound up spending a good part of her adult life to that end. During all that time, she hadn’t realized how important the footnote would be to her and quite possibly to humanity until the moment she fully understood it. That moment happened to coincide with her introduction into the Cause.
As she explained to Barnaby at the time, all that gibberish including made up equations, processes, and theorems camouflaged what Nobel Laureate Sivle Melasurej was attempting to disclose. When a person who had already contracted the ERAM virus was immunized with the vaccine containing the Click, according to the hidden meaning in the Melasurej footnote, their V-Mark appeared unchanged at first, but then turned black within minutes. Their viral symptoms were exacerbated, in most instances causing death. As a result, during the initial introduction of the ERAM-V vaccine, at the tail end of the ERAM plague, there were many black V-Marks, all of which remained purposely undisclosed and undocumented. The science was lost to future generations of vaccine research scientists.
A vaccine free of the Click had no adverse effect on the same person, or so the footnote postulated. All that gibberish also explained how the Click was made “invisible” within the vaccine and exactly what it was chemically speaking. All that eventually made it possible for Elana to make a Clickless vaccine. Unfortunately, the gibberish did not provide an analytical technique or even a clue to actually determine the presence of the Click within the vaccine. That had to be done clinically—that is, by injecting the vaccine into a person or some poor guinea pig with the virus, and observing his or her or its V-Mark. That was the reason Elana desperately needed the real virus to begin with.
Most of Elana’s secret research after joining Barnaby Bloom’s Cause was devoted to fully understanding the Melasurej footnote. She spent the time working to confirm the basic difference between the ERAM-V vaccine containing the Click and the Clickless vaccine. Unfortunately, the two vaccines appeared identical down to their genetic makeup. Their DNA lined up as if they were twins split from the same egg. And yet she knew from the footnote and all her subsequent research that the thing responsible for geriatric euthanasia was present in the vaccine containing the Click. Even if the difference was invisible under the most powerful microscope and most sophisticated spectrometer.
The problem Elana had to solve was how to prove to three hopefully brilliant scientists that the ERAM-V vaccine contained the Click. Obviously, she couldn’t purposely inject one of the villagers with Oliver Hitchcock’s virus and then the vaccine she knew contained the Click. They began testing different animals, a true guinea pig. The only animal they had access to that replicated the human reaction was a white tail rhesus monkey. They were not rare but not readily available either. She used one of the three she had to test a current “official” vial of ERAM-V vaccine supplied by the UN, one she knew contained the Click, before the verification team arrived. Elana injected the monkey with the virus collected from Oliver and then vaccinated it with the UN supplied vaccine. Sure enough, the monkey’s V-Mark turned black, and it got deathly ill and died. She only had two monkeys left, along with several vials of vaccine she was saving for the verification team. Once she knew the clinical t
est worked, she made sure each member of the team received the Melasurej footnote, along with her thirty-page white paper on it and the results she achieved with the first rhesus monkey.
All three members arrived on schedule and Elana was prepared. She already knew something about the team thanks to Yennie Tawahada. Elizabeth Hightower, the American, was from Boston and member of the Ecclesian Church there. Elana had met her once at a conference. They had a drink together, but that was all. Rudolph Holtorf was from Berlin, and a Dr. Zedong—his first name hadn’t been listed—was from Beijing. Apparently, he was the most conservative of the three, or so she was told. All three had prepared for this meeting and could follow Elana’s white paper and the Melasurej footnote. Whether that was true Elana didn’t know, but they more or less blessed her interpretation of the footnote if for no other reason than pride. Elana also provided them with a video of their experiment on the first rhesus monkey.
The next morning, Elana found herself holding up a hypodermic needle filled with another sample of the ERAM vaccine supplied by the UN and authenticated by the three members of the team. Each of the members had also authenticated the virus taken from Oliver after they arrived the day before. The two remaining rhesus monkeys were injected with it. Now it was time to inject one of the monkeys, a female, with the vaccine.
“As you well know, she will react the same way as a human who has contracted the virus and is subsequently vaccinated according to the Melasurej footnote. If the vaccine contains the Click the monkeys will develop V-Marks, which will eventually turn black. Then within hours each will more than likely die. If the vaccine does not contain the Click, the V-Marks will not turn black and the monkeys will be fine.” Elana repeated what the three team members already knew but she was taking no chances.
All three nodded and Elana injected the female monkey now tied down on the table. All four of them plus Barnaby and Meta, who were also in the room, watched the monkey squeal in pain then relax.
Elana repeated the process on the other monkey, a male this time, and when she had finished, she placed both monkeys in separate cages and suggested they have lunch in the cafeteria while the vaccine took effect.
“No!” Dr. Zedong blurted out. “I will stay and watch.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Elana said. “Two of our technicians will stand guard and tell us as soon as the V-Marks appear.”
“No! I am not hungry. I will stay and watch,” Zedong persisted.
Elana shrugged. “Suit yourself. You are welcome to keep our technicians company. In the meantime, I will have some lunch sent over.”
During lunch, both Drs. Hightower and Holtorf were quite engaging and inquisitive. However, neither of them made any reference to the reason they were there, either because they still didn’t believe the Click was a fraud or because they did. In either case, Elana and the others knew not to raise the issue.
Just as Dr. Hightower began talking about her beloved Boston baseball team, Elana’s scud rang. “Yes. Thank you.” She clicked off and turned to the others. “The female is showing. By the time we get there, my guess is the male will also be showing.”
All five of them marched back to the lab—Elana taking the lead, Barnaby walking with the American, and Meta trailing behind with the German.
The first thing Elana noticed was Dr. Zedong’s lunch, untouched. Each of the monkeys sat in its cage looking somewhat docile. Their hair had been shaved where Elana had expected the V-Marks to appear, and there they were, a light Indian red.
Within minutes, both V-Marks turned black and both monkeys began to squeal. It took Dr. Zedong time to respond. “Two monkeys prove nothing. I need more.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Zedong but those were the last two we have,” Elana said. “Besides, you saw the video of the first one.
Zedong kept shaking his head. “No! Two tests are not enough.”
****
Yennie stood in front of a large TV at his apartment watching a series of split screens. He had muted the TV and was on his scud with Meta when she asked him to hold on. He stared at the screens. Pro-Cūtocracy rallies were taking place in Rome, Beijing, and Berlin. The screens went black just as Meta returned, then they turned dark green with bluish strings running through them.
“Yennie…”
“One moment Meta.” Yennie stared in disbelief as the image zoomed in. What he saw was an aerial view of the Jungle east of Mumbai. He observed strings of rivers, like interconnecting veins, and a flotilla snaking slowly toward DanSheba. He quickly unmuted the TV.
“Meta, one more second.”
“And so fellow Ecclesians around the world, and Cūtocrats, we are told that the UN has not made a decision but plans to be ready to inoculate that tiny village in the Jungles of India. Our sources tell us they are just waiting for further information from…from the United States is what we are being told. Stay tuned.”
Yennie turned the TV off and returned to Meta. “Have you been watching TV?”
“Yes, I’m afraid what you were watching was a recording. We saw it earlier.”
“So, where are you with the verification team?
“Close.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Chinese expert. He’s a problem. You were right.”
“Meta, the president needs all three to agree. And she needs it in writing by this evening your time.”
“Or what?”
“She has a meeting at the Ecclesian Embassy, finally. We show up empty handed, or don’t show, the invasion goes forward and the Smotecal Decretum goes up in smoke.”
****
Hitch caught Elana pacing in her lab talking to herself in Chinese while Meta and Barnaby looked on worried. Meta had just finished telling Elana and Barnaby about her discussion with Yennie.
“What’s the problem?” Hitch asked.
“That…that jerk from Beijing. He insists on a third test,” Barnaby volunteered.
“And?”
“We don’t have another damn monkey and he knows it. I’ve spent the last hour trying to find a way around this. We need another rhesus monkey or we need to wring that little bastard’s Chinese neck,” Elana shouted.
“He won’t budge, Oliver. We tried everything short of a three-million-dollar bag of Ethiopian diamonds,” Barnaby added.
Hitch stiffened. “Meta, get me the documents.”
“What?”
“Your copies of the Decretum and Diary. Now! Then find Zedong and drag his ass into the conference room.”
Within minutes Hitch found himself sitting across from the Chinese holdout, disheveled and sleepy-eyed, but as defiant as he was earlier.
“Kid, you look like shit. Seriously, a good night’s rest would go a long way.”
“I demand to know why I was brought here by force.”
Hitch leaned across the table and got into Zedong’s face. “Really? Problem is, you see, I do the demanding around here. And I’m really tired of you holding up the show. Time for you to accept the idea that the scheduled death of a human being might have been incorporated into the vaccine.”
“We don’t deal with ideas. We deal with science. You might as well ask me to accept Darwin’s theory of Evolution based on the first chapter.”
“Oh, in that case, let me show you the entire book, ours.” Hitch slid the documents over to him along with the verification form signed by the others. “This is all the proof you need. Study them, and then sign this fucking form, and you aren’t leaving this room until you do.”
Zedong, still defiant, slid the documents and verification form back to Hitch. “I will do no such thing. I am not afraid of you, old man.”
Old man! Hitch reached up and touched his cheek, saw wrinkles beginning to form on his arm. That and Zedong were more than he could take. He reached across the table and grabbed the bastard by the collar. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, you little shit. If my grandson dies…”
Zedong held his ground. “I am not responsible f
or the death of anyone. I do the work of God and the Ecclesian Church. God is great. The church is honorable.”
“Great? Honorable? Good for you. Now, read these and you’ll find out what’s so fucking wonderful about your church. I’ll be right outside that door.” He let go and marched through the door, slammed it behind him, then stomped into the lobby where Elana, Barnaby, and Meta waited.
“He’ll come around,” he barked to their awaiting ears.
“From what I’ve just learned, there is a Tarsusian connection between Zedong and Julian,” Meta barked back, as if to question Hitch’s optimism. “Apparently Tarsusians would rather lose their lives than their faith.”
That bit of information did not make Hitch happy. Just as he was about to say something, Meta’s scud rang and she listened.
“Of course I know what time it is there, Yennie. Twenty more minutes, maybe. I’ll call you.”
Minutes after Meta clicked off and began pacing, they all heard a zing from inside the conference room. Hitch was the first to reach the conference room door. He grabbed the doorknob. The door was locked. Elana fumbled for her keys but couldn’t find the right one fast enough. Hitch kicked the door in. The smell of burned flesh filled the conference room but there was no Zedong.
“Here, under the table,” Meta yelled.
The gun was still in his hand, his head and the floor covered with blood. The verification form sat on the table, his signature added to those of the American and the German. Meta grabbed it and rushed out. Hitch fell to his knees and watched Zedong’s stillness. First Julian, now this shit, he thought. What ever happened to the old adage that the truth will free you?
****
The president’s limo moved slowly out of the White House onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Yennie sat next to President Wainwright. He was nervous, she was agitated. It took less than fifteen minutes to reach the Ecclesian embassy.
“I can’t wait much longer, Yennie.”
Yennie was holding his breath. It had already been twenty minutes since he last talked to Meta. Suddenly, he felt his scud vibrate. He reached for it and saw Meta’s text and attachment. “It’s here.”