The Immortality Virus

by Christine Amsden

  Her mother went on after a short silence. “But maybe I shouldn’t talk like that. At least she keeps giving love a try. When are you going to find a nice man to settle down with? You mention a bit here and there, but the only one you’ve ever been crazy about was that one you met in college…the one who broke your heart so bad you won’t give it to anyone else.”

  “Sam,” Grace said dully.

  “I remember his name. I didn’t see fit to remind you. It’s been decades, Grace. You could still find love. It’s just too bad you never had children. It really is. Charity’s got a legacy, and what do you have?”

  “I have to go,” Grace said. “I’ve got a big case to work on.”

  Her mother’s face fell a little. “You’re pushing me off again, aren’t you? It’s because of what I said about the kids. I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have said that. It was always your decision and I respect that. One of these days my mouth is really going to get me into trouble…”

  “Good-bye, Mom, I love you,” Grace said.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Vidphone off,” Grace said.

  She stared blankly at the news report on the holo. Her mother had the most uncanny way of making her feel even worse about precisely what had been bothering her that day. Did she have some kind of mother radar to know today was the worst day in the world to bring up Sam and children?

  Think about the case. Maybe Jordan’s grandkids would know where he was. Grace knew where her mom’s mom was, anyway. She had no idea where either her father or his parents were. He had left her before she had a clear memory of him. For all she knew, he was dead. Part of her thought “good riddance,” but another part of her longed for the days when fathers used to stay with their children and help raise them.

  “A bombing in Independence, Missouri killed at least two hundred people this morning,” the news anchor was saying. “No word, yet, on who was responsible. Authorities suspect pro-death activists. Now over to Larry for our traffic report.”

  Grace stared at her terminal for a long while, but she just couldn’t finish this tonight. She couldn’t exactly do anything about Alexander or the other grandkids until morning anyway. She may as well get a good night’s sleep.

  “Save search.” She stood and headed to bed.

  Chapter 9

  No sooner did Grace’s head hit the pillow then someone turned on the sun. She groaned and buried her head under the pillow to block out the light and the noise that had woken her–a persistent buzzing that reminded her of her mother.

  Finally, the buzzing stopped, and she heard her mom’s voice leaving a message. “Grace, are you there? Pick up. I know you’re there. I’m sorry for what I said to you last night. Will you please talk to me? All right, I’ll call back later.”

  Grace didn’t even consider calling her mom back. With her head buried squarely under the pillow, she fell back to sleep.

  Buzz.

  She tried to hang on to the last tendrils of her dream. It had something to do with Sam, but back when things were good between them. She was happy and full of hope about what the world could be.

  Buzz.

  If that’s my mom calling again… She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and rolled out of bed. “Answer!”

  Sam’s face smiled at her from the other side of the vidphone, making her suddenly aware of her wild morning hair and sleep-reddened eyes.

  “What?” Grace asked.

  “Good morning to you, too. You left in kind of a hurry last night.”

  “I had work to do.”

  “So it wasn’t because I made you uncomfortable or anything?” Sam asked.

  “You flatter yourself. Don’t you remember the job I’m being paid a farm load of money to do?”

  “Yeah. I told you last night, Matt wants me to check on your progress.”

  “So you did.”

  “So, how are you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Just fine before you called.”

  “It looked like I woke you up.”

  “You sure did,” Grace said.

  Sam shook his head. “Fine, I understand. You want to do things in your own time, but Matt’s paying you a lot of money for results and he just wants to make sure you’re working on it. What have you found out so far?”

  “So far?” Grace tried to think. “Well, so far I’ve found out that if people stop asking me how far I’ve gotten all the time, I get much more done.”

  “Please, Grace, throw me a bone.”

  “Fine. I found out that Ethan, Jordan’s younger son, is very actively pro-life. I don’t know if he knows anything about his father or what he did, but we don’t want to get close to him if we can avoid it.”

  “That’s it?” Sam asked.

  “I’m trying to learn who Jordan was. You know how research goes, Sam. A nudge here, a leap there. You can’t force it.”

  Which made her suddenly wonder how Jordan had finished his research and released the virus in less than two days. But she pushed the thought from her mind. She didn’t need all the answers–she just needed to figure out where Jordan might be hiding now.

  “You’re right, of course,” Sam said. “I’ll tell Matt you’re on track.” He paused for a moment. “So, did you hear about the troop buildup outside Kansas City?”

  “I thought it was just raiders,” Grace said.

  “Yeah, this time, but people are nervous, especially the local Establishment.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Grace asked.

  “Because you may need to be careful, especially if you need to leave town to, say, talk to Alexander Lacklin.”

  Grace closed her eyes and nodded once. “Fine.” Then, before Sam could try to linger more, she said, “Vidphone off.”

  Sam’s face disappeared from the screen in a flash. She stared at the place where it had been for a long time, breathing deeply to still her racing heart.

  Then she thought about the security guard at the grocery store. Maybe that’s what she needed–a distraction. There was no way she needed a new relationship. There was no way for one of those to end except badly.

  Grace took a quick shower and dressed for the day, then she grabbed a nutri-bar from the cabinet. She hated nutri-bars. She had eaten them nearly every day of her life since she was a small child, and in that time they had managed to get worse instead of better. All that could be said about a nutri-bar was it would sustain life–barely. No one questioned that real food was nutritionally better. Too bad most other foods were so cost prohibitive. She thought about the check she had deposited and wondered if she could spring for another good lunch, but decided today probably wasn’t the day to celebrate. She’d best wait until she had something more concrete.

  “Sam, display list of Jordan Lacklin’s surviving grandchildren.”

  The screen flickered to life, and in front of Grace was a list of names. The surviving child, Ethan, had one child, Carl. She found a picture of him–a surly looking black-haired man whose green eyes were all he had inherited from his handsome father.

  Jordan’s other son, Kevin, had two children: Alexander and Margaret. Alexander looked a bit like his uncle and, presumably (though she had not bothered to look at the dead man’s picture), his father. He had light brown hair, green eyes, and a charming smile. His sister was a female version of Alex, with a thinner face and smaller nose.

  The grandchildren all had current addresses listed.

  “This might not be as hard as I thought,” Grace said, allowing herself a small smile. The smile faded instantly when she saw the addresses: All three grandchildren lived and worked as paid employees on a farm.

  Grace licked her lips and stared at the address. She had purposely avoided going to a farm her entire life. All she really knew about them were from pictures she had seen on the holoset, when the few reporters who still cared decided to report about the harsh conditions there. The farms rang in her mind like some kind of nightmare her mom had told her to frighten her as a child, “Be good or you�
�ll get shipped to the farms.” Indeed, criminals were shipped to the farms, convicted or not.

  Grace gave herself a light slap on the cheek. She didn’t have to go to a farm; all she had to do was call the farm. There was a vidphone channel listed on the screen right in front of her. Breathing a sigh of relief, Grace began to tell the vidphone to dial, canceled, spent a few minutes thinking up a convincing story, and then tried again.

  A tiny Asian woman peered at her through the screen. “Cooper Farm,” she said. “How may I direct your call?”

  “I’d like to speak with Margaret Lacklin, please.” She wanted to talk to Alexander eventually, but she felt her cover story might work better on a woman. If she could win over Margaret, then hopefully she could win over Alexander as well.

  “One moment, please, I’ll see if Ms. Lacklin is in.”

  The screen switched to a picture of horses grazing on a field for a few minutes, then a familiar face appeared on the screen–that of the woman whose photo she had recently studied. She wasn’t an old-timer by looks, though she had been alive at the time of The Change. According to her birth date, she had been in her early twenties during The Change.

  “My name is Grace Harper. You don’t know me, but I was hoping you could help me out a bit. You see, my mom died recently and she was the only member of my family I ever knew, but before she died she gave me some information on her father’s family, and I was hoping to find them. My grandfather’s name was apparently Jordan Lacklin, and the only thing my mom ever said about him was he was an old timer. I looked him up and—”

  “I didn’t even know he was still alive!” Margaret said, her smiling face bursting into one of joyful surprise. “He was such a sweet old man, but I haven’t seen him in ages. His wife died, and he was so torn up by it. It was so sad–not his wife dying, but his reaction to it. He just didn’t know how to cope without her.”

  Grace bit back relief that Margaret had bought the story. There was every possibility the woman would refuse to believe her grandfather had fathered another child, even though men had been known to father children for centuries. “I’m not even sure if this is the same Jordan Lacklin we’re talking about,” Grace interrupted. “I found a few when I was searching. Mom didn’t give me much to go on, but I was hoping maybe you could help narrow it down for me.”

  “Certainly, if I can,” Margaret said. “You need to come up here to the farm so we can talk properly, though. All this nonsense over the vidphone. Where do you live?”

  “Kansas City.” Grace’s heart was beating faster now. She didn’t want to go to the farm, but didn’t see a way out of it.

  “That’s not far at all. The train could get you here in an hour. Why don’t you come up?”

  Why didn’t she go up? It was just an hour away. She could sit down, pull a fast one over all three Lacklin grandchildren, and see if any of them knew anything that could help her. Why not?

  “Are you all right?” Margaret asked.

  “Fine, yes. Fine.” Then the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “I can come up this afternoon, if you can see me.”

  “That sounds great. I love meeting new relatives. It’s so much fun to share history together. I’ll have tea ready for you. Vidphone off.”

  Grace stared at the blank vidphone screen for a long time.

  The farmers kidnapped people who wandered out to the country. They put them in chains and set them to work on the farm. The farmers killed anyone who wouldn’t work. The farmers killed anyone they didn’t like. The farmers ate the slaves for dinner and ground up others into nutri-bars.

  “Sam,” Grace said so quietly the computer did not respond. “Sam,” she said again. “Purchase a ticket on the next train to Coopersfield, Iowa.”

  “Finished,” Sam said. “Printing ticket.”

  Grace made her way to the hall closet where she took out an old-fashioned wooden box handed down to her from her great-uncle when he learned she was going into private investigation. She opened it and removed a fully operational, four hundred-year-old Colt .45 projectile weapon, complete with holster.

  It was supposed to be lucky. She could use some luck today. She fingered it and then sadly, shook her head and put it back. She needed luck, not paranoia and superstitions.

  A few minutes later, Grace was ready to leave. She looked around, hoping to find something she had forgotten, something she still had left to do, but she could not find anything. The apartment was peaceful and empty.

  Except for that loud crash from next door. Lissy and Roy were fighting again, not that Grace could do anything about it. Grace sighed, slung her coat on her back, and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Grace did not hurry through the crowd as she made her way to the rail station. She let three trains go by and tried to tell herself the crowds were just that bad–but a part of her knew the truth. She was hoping she would miss her train to Iowa.

  The crowds at the rail station ebbed and flowed in their usual manner. Grace kept a close eye out for anything unusual, even as she let another train go by. She always kept her eye out–you never knew when someone might start shooting at random–but today the stakes were higher. She had a feeling that she would have at least one tail as she went about her business. She memorized everyone’s face so she could tell if anyone followed her.

  She spotted the man with the disruptor a second before he drew it and began firing. She was ducking behind a nearby bench even as the first shot reverberated through the crowd, and her own sidearm was out before he fired the second shot. She did not rush her aim. She needed to get this right the first shot, so she carefully sighted the man’s chest before firing. One shot, and he was on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

  Grace holstered the weapon before anyone decided to mark her next. It did not seem many people knew where her shot had come from, anyway; they had been too busy running from the original gunman. One other person aside from the gunman lay bleeding on the sidewalk, a woman with a gut shot. That would hurt, Grace thought with some sympathy. She fought back the emotion, one she had no time for right now, by telling herself the woman should have been paying more attention. Then Grace spotted the cane by the woman’s side.

  She had been blind. Damn it. Why couldn’t they ever just be stupid and careless so she didn’t have to care?

  Grace approached the woman, shooing away some eager vultures already zeroing in on her. She breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted an emergency button hung around the woman’s neck. She had not been a fool, after all. Grace pressed the button, wondering if the woman had the money for medical treatment. Probably, if she bothered with the button and the yearly fee for services. Grace wadded up some cloth from the woman’s clothing and held it against the wound to stop the bleeding.

  “Who...who’s there?”

  Grace gave the woman a startled look. She was conscious, if barely. “I’m trying to help. You got shot.”

  “Damn Sewer Rats,” she muttered.

  Maybe. The underground made up of the underprivileged who had nothing better to do often ended up being behind random shootings at rail stations. But there were others: Pro-death, rebels, anarchists, and many more. Grace couldn’t always keep them straight.

  Grace waited with the woman until the ambulance came, letting three more trains go by. When two men in white came to attend to the woman, Grace left her with them and finally boarded the next train headed to the inter-city train station.

  Even with the shooting, the trip had taken too little time. Unless the train was early, and it never was, she would arrive at the train station on time.

  * * *

  Despite Sam’s warning, no one gave Grace any pause when she showed them her ticket and let them scan her ID chip. Many people trying to leave town were searched or held back, but they only gave her a brief nod and sent her on her way.

  Captain Flint must have made sure she could travel. It was the only explanation. After she settled herself on the train, s
he looked back to see who else seemed to have no trouble getting through those gates. She had a feeling that they would be her tails. The ride to Iowa took a little over an hour. Grace chose a spot near the back of her chosen car and let her mind wander, careful to keep one eye on the other passengers. Who were they and where were they going? This train went up to Minnesota, into St. Paul and Minneapolis, then swung over to Detroit, Michigan. The clothing gave nothing away. No one was foolish enough to wear expensive clothing out in public. Were they on business or holiday? Perhaps they were visiting family or friends. Grace always found herself wondering, wherever she went, where everyone else was going, these lucky few who had escaped the hardships of the street and the farms.

  No, Grace did not want to think about the farms. She did not want to think about the vast expanses of countryside ruled by a few overlords in a manner at once exactly like and completely unlike medieval feudalism.

  Or maybe it wasn’t as bad as the news made it out to be. The news had always been noted for exaggerating to get the best story. They weren’t there to tell people the truth, but rather to get ratings–and to get ratings they needed people to watch. People loved misery, whatever they said to one another about how horrible it was. Misery and suffering made them sit up and watch. They might complain about the lack of happy news or happy stories, but when news stations tried to present those stories, people almost never paid attention.

  The train station in the small town of Coopersfield, Iowa pulled up alongside the train before Grace knew it. Hardly a station, more like a platform. And with so few people! Why, these people politely waited for passengers to disembark before crowding on. She thought she even heard a person say “excuse me,” to a woman he elbowed. Had the elbowing really been an accident? She felt as if she were in some strange, foreign land.

  The streets did not move with a rhythm or current as Grace walked into the small downtown area. She felt rather like she was treading through still water, forced to use her own momentum to get from place to place. There were people, certainly, but few enough that they did not always touch one another.