Eternal Life Inc.

by James Burkard

  Diana let Jericho have his moment and then said, “Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. After three years of research, Isis published her findings in a monograph that was viciously attacked and ridiculed by the scientific community. It destroyed her credibility, her standing, and her career in the medical establishment.

  Jericho shook his head sadly. “I think I may have been one of the very few outside of the Nevada Quarantine who realized the true, explosive potential of what she discovered,” he said. “I contacted her and encouraged her to continue her research. I even promised to finance any future research into this field, but she politely declined.”

  “In reality, Isis wasn’t interested in Quantum Field Theory, dark energy or repeller-fields,” Diana said. “The research paper that so inspired Doctor Jericho was just a by-product, an interesting tangent…perhaps a laying to rest of old demons,” she added, pointedly looking at Jericho.

  The old man cleared his throat as if to say something then instead looked away.

  “In the end,” Diana continued, “all this was marginal to my sister’s chief concerns.”

  “In fact, she opened a whole Pandora’s box of interesting concerns,” Jericho growled testily.

  “That’s true,” Diana conceded. “But you don’t shoot the messenger just because you don’t like the message.”

  Harry wondered what that was all about. He was doing a lot of that lately.

  24

  The Nevada Quarantine Blues

  “As I said before, my sister was first and foremost a doctor, a healer,” Diana said. “She was interested in dark energy, quantum field theory, and the spirit realm only in so far as they had medical applications. That was also part of the reason she was so interested in the stories coming out of the Nevada Quarantine about a new messiah who not only cured the Norma-gene syndrome but “re-made” the victims, giving them new and perfect bodies.”

  “Rielly Logan,” Harry said.

  Diana nodded. “I suspect she was fascinated with Rielly Logan long before she wrote that monograph, maybe even before she began interviewing Norma-genes. Maybe he was even the reason she got interested in the Norma-gene paradox in the first place.”

  “Do you have any reason for believing that?”

  Diana shrugged. “She’s my twin,” she said, as if that explained everything. “I know for a fact, though, that at least two years before she published her famous monograph she applied for a research grant from the Imperial Quarantine Research Office to mount a medical expedition into the Nevada Quarantine, specifically sighting Rielly Logan and the possibility of finding a solution to the Norma-gene paradox.”

  “And…?” Harry asked.

  “And nothing. They refused her request citing that there was absolutely no evidence that Rielly Logan could, in fact, cure the Norma-gene syndrome. All these stories were, and I quote, “apocryphal myths and urban legends with no basis in scientific fact”. They added that due to extensive tribal warfare all medical and research expeditions into the Nevada Quarantine had been suspended indefinitely. Shortly after this, the Nevada Quarantine was declared out of bounds for all citizens of the Empire.”

  “Out of bounds, why?” Harry asked. As far as he knew, nowhere in the Continental Quarantine was out of bounds to citizens of the Empire. A citizen was free to go anywhere in the Quarantine as long as he was willing to take complete personal responsibly for the consequences of his decision. He could not depend on the Empire to pull his chestnuts out of the fire if they got radiation burned, plague infected, ambushed by hostile mutie tribes, or shot up by pre-Crash war-bots hiding powered down and waiting in some god-forsaken wasteland.

  Jericho regarded him with a kind of benign exasperation. “Harry, how much do you know about what’s been going on in the Nevada Quarantine in the last five or six years?”

  Harry squirmed inside. It reminded him too much of Chueh’s parting shot, “And, Harry, you might want to keep up on the news better.” He probably should have, he thought; but for the last five or six years he’d gotten most of his “news” from the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and when he finally stopped drinking, he was too interested in exploring the inner world of his ka to pay much attention to the news of the world outside.

  “Okay,” he sighed resignedly. “Since we’re assuming my total ignorance in so many other areas, why stop now. Why was the Nevada Quarantine out of bounds?”

  Jericho looked at Diana. “We’re going off on another tangent,” he said.

  Diana shrugged. “He’s got to know what he’s getting into.”

  “What I’m getting into?” Harry said. “As far as I know I’m not getting into anything!”

  “Should I do this or do you want to?” Doc said to Diana.

  She waved her hand in mild indifference. “Why don’t you,” she said and looked down at her notebook again.

  Jericho gave Harry a conspiratorial wink and then said, “The Nevada Quarantine is out of bounds because Rielly Logan declared it out of bounds,” he said. “He started with the jungles around Las Vegas ten or fifteen years ago and gradually extended his control over the whole southern quarter of the Nevada Quarantine. Then about four or five years ago, he claimed the whole Nevada Quarantine and started a war of racial cleansing, exterminating and enslaving anything not Norma-gene.”

  “And no one tried to stop him?” Harry asked. “What about the Empire?”

  “The first thing you’ve got to realize is that no one in the Empire cares about what happens in the Quarantine,” Jericho said. “The Empire’s got enough problems of its own. It’s been over fifty years since we inherited those eastern provinces from the Caliphate, and they’re still a hotbed of barely suppressed Seraphim rebellion. A major part of the Empire’s military and economic power goes to trying to keep that powder keg from exploding again.

  “On top of that, we have the remnants of the Seraphim Jihad at our back in the Sinks. If recent reports are true, they’ve been making aggressive alliances and uniting Slavers, renegade Tongs, Jackers, and everyone else under a new Seraphim banner.”

  Diana coughed and cleared her throat demonstratively. Doc looked at her and sighed. “Okay, the point is that no one in the Empire gives diddley-squat for what happens anywhere in the Quarantine. “On the map it’s just this big empty space with meaningless old United States state borders dotted in. Officially, no one in the Empire goes there except for an occasional medical research team. Unofficially, Slavers, gun-runners, smugglers, and traders move in and out of there, trading with the tribes for scavenged ancient technology, old books, and works of art that can be sold on the black market at an enormous profit. Otherwise, no one cares.”

  “The Church cares,” Diana said, looking up from her notebook.

  “Only because the Holy See lies at New Omaha, smack in the middle of the Continental Quarantine,” Jericho said.

  “The Church cares because the Great Mother cares and maintains over five hundred missions of mercy all over the Quarantine, including the Nevada Quarantine,” Diana said in mild rebuke. “Let’s not get into this again, Doctor Jericho.”

  Get into what? Harry wondered. It sounded like the tail-end of an old family feud.

  Jericho deftly shifted gears. “In fact, the Church has always been our best source of intelligence concerning the Quarantine. News of Rielly’s long march from Old Chicago to Las Vegas first reached the Empire two years after it happened and came via the Church.

  “The Empire dismissed the news as just another routine outbreak of religious fanaticism. It happens all the time in the Quarantine. Rielly, like all the other fanatics before him, would disappear in a few years and his movement would be swallowed up by inner divisions and tribal conflicts. The Church disagreed. Right from the beginning, they realized that Rielly was not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill bible thumper.

  “It wasn’t until a few years ago that people began to notice that almost all the Norma-genes had left the Empire. In fact, they had been leaving f
or the last ten years or more. On the other hand, who cares? After all, they were only Norma-genes. If they wanted to go back to where they came from, that was just fine. It left one less social problem to deal with.

  “Even when rumors of genocidal wars began leaking out of the Nevada Quarantine, people just looked the other way. The muties were always fighting among themselves, what else was new? As it turned out, a lot. Rielly had built an army of Norma-gene re-made cavalry, supported by cadres of weirdings, warlocks, and any other Norma-genes with exceptional talents.”

  “Like fire starters, shape-shifters, telepaths,” Harry suggested, remembering the old horror stories from his childhood.

  “You got it,” Jericho said. “They were also conventionally well-armed and organized and swept through the Nevada Quarantine in less than four years, slaughtering and enslaving anything not Norma-gene.” Jericho eyed Diana. “We know this only because the Church has missions there.”

  Diana shook her head. “Not anymore.”

  “No, not anymore,” Jericho said. “One of the first things Rielly did when he took over was to expel the Church. Jaganmatri were personae non grata in the new world he was building for Norma-genes.

  “It didn’t matter, though. The Church had its hands full, caring for the flood of refugees created by the war. Most fled north and east into the Continental Quarantine. Rielly’s kingdom in the south prevented them from getting out that way, and the Sierras to the west blocked that route, so not many made it into the Empire. The Norma-gene army didn’t pursue them once they crossed the old state borders of Nevada that were now the borders of the Norma-gene homeland. Muties, smugglers, Slavers, and anyone else who tried to cross that border never came back and pretty soon everyone got the message.

  “Once again, the attitude in New Hollywood was, who cares. Everyone knows the Nevada Quarantine is nothing but jungle and wasteland anyway. If the Norma-genes want it, let them have it and good riddance. Not everyone had that attitude though,” Jericho said and looked at Diana.

  “The Church was concerned by what was happening and sent in a mission of Jaganmatri,” she said.

  “Valkyrie Jaganmatri,” Jericho amended, “not the compassionate ones.”

  Diana eyed him coolly. “The Church had received alarming reports coming out of Las Vegas and sent in a Valkyrie reconnaissance team,” she said and turned away. She looked out the window at the rain-drenched Ryoanji Garden. The fifteen stones lay like stark, solitary islands in a sea of rain pitted gravel. She shook her head. “They were never heard from again,” she added.

  “Jesus Christ!” Harry said.

  “I doubt if Jesus Christ had anything to do with it, Mr. Neuman,” Diana replied dryly.

  “And you never found them?” he asked in shocked disbelief. The Church just did not lose Valkyrie. They weren’t superwomen but they came close. During the Caliphate War a handful of Valkyrie held a mountain pass against ten thousand Seraphim warriors for over three weeks before being wiped out. The Church renamed the pass Thermopile.

  Diana looked down at her notebook and shook her head. “No, we never found them,” she said.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Harry wanted to ask about what the Valkyrie were looking for in Las Vegas but let it go. If she was going to tell him, she would have already.

  Jericho coughed and cleared his throat. “It turns out the Empire was also getting interested in the Nevada Quarantine about that time,” he said. “What finally caught public attention, though, was a medical research team that went missing in the southern Nevada jungles. It seems they’d been working in Arizona, up along the border, and inadvertently strayed into Nevada and were not heard from again.”

  “According to Church sources, that medical team didn’t “inadvertently stray” over the border,” Diana said with a wry a smile. “And it wasn’t a medical research team.”

  Jericho shrugged. “The Empire, like the Church, lost a number of operatives trying to find out what was going on over there. This one just happened to get more publicity, and it forced the Empire to send in a much publicized search and rescue mission, accompanied by a heavily armed military escort, to find them. The Empire made it clear, though, that this was a purely humanitarian mission.

  “When they went in, they were supposed to hang data spheres, floating at max three hundred feet all along their back-trail to keep in constant communication. Less than four hours later, the data spheres stopped working and all contact with the rescue party was lost. As far as we know, they made it almost to the outskirts of Las Vegas before going down in the jungle.

  “I managed to get hold of a copy of their last transmission,” Jericho paused and glanced at Diana.

  She cocked her head and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  Jericho shrugged and opened his hands in a palms-up gesture. “So I’ve got friends in high places, is that a crime?”

  Diana laughed. “I heard a copy of the same transmission.”

  Jericho’s face split into a wide grin. “It’s so nice working with professionals,” he said and suddenly, they were both laughing like a couple of kids who caught each other with their hands in the cookie jar.

  Harry looked from one to the other and wondered at their relationship that could be filled with so many sharp edges one moment and then something akin to real affection the next. Like family, he thought and felt a twinge of old loss.

  “Well, since we both know,” Jericho chuckled, “perhaps one of us should let poor, innocent Harry in on the secret. Would you mind doing the honors my dear?” he asked with a chivalrous sweep of his arm.

  Diana eyed him archly and laughed. “Why not?”

  She turned to Harry. “According to their last transmission, it all started out routine,” she said and then her voice deepened to a macho, military mockery, “foxtrot leader two this is alpha eagle one, over…” She tossed her head and gave him a street-wise, gamin grin. “You know, all that military bullshit they copy from the old movies. Then someone starts yelling that the grav-units are cutting out and they’re going down. After that, all you heard were garbled static bursts of screaming interspersed with gunfire and explosions. Then, right at the end, clear as a bell, someone crying. After that everything went dead.”

  She glanced at Jericho. “Isn’t that the gist of it?”

  Jericho nodded and added, “As you can imagine, the government didn’t want any of this getting out. They put a tight security lid on the Quarantine and began preparing for a major military incursion. The only problem was, they didn’t know what they were up against, and Rielly wasn’t telling them.

  “Grav-units don’t just cut out all altogether and all at once. It’s impossible. On top of that, the force they sent in to “escort” the search and rescue mission had enough firepower to level Las Vegas and take out every Norma-gene clan in the Quarantine. Instead, it disappeared without a trace.

  “An air of panic gripped the government. Everything from using some of the old nuclear weapons still lying around to a major ground invasion were suggested, but they all stranded on the fact that they didn’t know what they were up against or even if it was worth going up against it. They needed more information.

  “Spies were sent in and never came out. Norma-genes all over the Empire were quietly rounded up, interrogated, and released. A few were even sent into the Nevada Quarantine to attempt to make contact with the messiah. They never came back.

  “The government adopted a wait and see attitude and tried to strengthen security and surveillance along the border…”

  “Doctor Jericho,” Diana interrupted. “I think he gets the idea.”

  Jericho nodded. “Right,” he said and looked slightly embarrassed. “One tangent too many, information overload, running off at the mouth again. Is that it?”

  Diana smiled and nodded. She turned to Harry. “A month after they lost contact with that search and rescue team, my sister received a personal invitation from Rielly Logan to visit Las Vegas.”

  25
>
  A Beast of Burden

  “What did you say?” Harry asked in disbelief. He’d heard what she said, it was just it didn’t make any sense.

  Diana nodded. “I know,” she said with a tight, sympathetic smile. “It hit me like that too. As crazy as it sounds, Rielly Logan sent her a personal invitation. It was hand-delivered by her old Norma-gene contact, the one who inspired her famous monogram. He’d gone to the New Jerusalem of Las Vegas to be re-made, but Rielly sent him back for Isis along with a promise that if she came, he would remake the old man in front of her eyes.

  “She had two days to decide and put her affairs in order. She also had to agree to stay in Las Vegas for a minimum six months. After that, she could leave whenever she wished.

  “Isis had no doubts. She was bubbling over with excitement when she told me. It was the chance of a lifetime. No scientist had ever seen a re-making first hand and, to top it off, Rielly promised her complete access as his personal guest. That was the real deal maker. She was like a school girl going on her first date.

  “I tried to talk some sense into her. Didn’t she know what was going on in the Nevada Quarantine? Did she realize Rielly had just carried out a war of extermination and was building something on the outskirts of Las Vegas that scared even the Church? I shouldn’t have told her that or about the Valkyrie we lost trying to find out what it was, but I did. She was my sister, my twin, and I wasn’t about to let her walk into that without trying to stop her. I could have been talking to a wall.”

  “Why Isis?” Harry asked.

  “I asked the same question,” Diana said. “Apparently, Rielly read her monogram and thought that she was the only scientist who could appreciate what he was doing and explain it to the world.”