The Doubt Factory

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “I know where you’re going,” Jonah said. “I know what you’re hiding from Mom and Dad.”

  Deny deny deny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do.” Jonah held up his phone and grinned. “I tracked you.”

  “You… what?” Alix spluttered.

  “I put a tracker app on my phone. See?” He showed her the screen. “It wasn’t even hard. Just left my phone in your car a couple times.” He started fiddling with the screen, tapping.

  “At first, it was weird because you kept going to the river, and that didn’t make any sense because you never used to do that, but then I got you on the weekend, and I had you in Jersey.”

  He held up the screen again for her, an aerial view of industrial buildings, train tracks, and roads. “It’s your factory, right? The one where 2.0 put you in that cage.”

  Alix almost drove off the road. “No! That’s not what that is!”

  “Watch the road, will you?” Jonah braced himself as Alix got the car straightened out.

  “Get out of my private life!” She was trying not to panic, but she could feel herself starting to hyperventilate.

  I need to warn Moses.

  She tried to force herself to be calm. “That’s not what you think—”

  “Oh, come on, Alix! I know what you’re doing. You’re not going over to Sophie’s every weekend, and you’re not doing college-application prep or whatever the heck it is that you tell Mom and Dad you’re doing after school.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “This is me we’re talking about! I’ve been recording you. I’ll bet if I go through this last track a little, I’ll have you and your boyfriend sucking face.” He started fiddling with the screen. “Here, let’s try this.…”

  Moses’s voice crackled from the phone’s speaker. “—here, just lean the seat back—”

  “Who’s this talking, Alix? Sure doesn’t sound like Sophie.”

  Alix stared straight ahead, keeping her eyes on the road, trying to keep her voice steady. “This isn’t any of your business.”

  “Not even when the guy you’re hooking up with is wanted by the FBI?”

  Alix tried not to show her panic, but inside, she was furiously working the angles, trying to figure out how she could warn Moses. Trying to figure out how quickly she could pack.

  “It’s more complicated than that, Jonah.”

  I’m leaving, she suddenly realized.

  Alix was surprised at how certain she felt. Moses was going to have to leave, and she was going to run with him. There wasn’t any question.

  Jonah intruded on her thoughts. “How is being wanted by the FBI complicated, exactly? I’m just trying to get this straight in my head.”

  Alix glared at him. “They only want him because he kidnapped me.”

  “Whoa.” Jonah shook his head pityingly. “You don’t make it sound any better when you admit you’re hooking up with your kidnapper.”

  “You know what, Jonah? My love life isn’t your business. And he’s not my kidnapper. I stalked him this last time.”

  “Aaaand still sounding crazypants.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you!”

  “What about when you get arrested?”

  Alix tried to keep her voice controlled. “Who did you tell about him?”

  “I just don’t get it. What is it with this guy? He was totally stalking you, and then he kidnapped you, and now… what? You just decide you’ve got to hook up with him?”

  “Who did you tell?” Alix pressed. Her heart was pounding with fear. “This is important.”

  “I’m just saying you never used to lie. Now you do. All the time—”

  “Who knows about this, Jonah?”

  Jonah continued prattling, undeterred. “Not that you’re any good at it. You’re a total amateur. Actually, amateur’s too kind. I mean, it’s like, how can such a smart girl be such a dumb liar?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Jonah gave her a self-satisfied smile. “Mom and Dad would’ve already caught you if I hadn’t been covering for you.”

  Alix almost slammed on the brakes. “What?”

  “I told you. You’re an amateur. They’ve been asking where you were, what you were up to. I promised I’d keep an eye on you. They were worried you were doing some kind of PTSD thing,” he said. “I’ve been covering for you for weeks. They still think you’re their good girl.” He looked over at her. “I’m not a rat.”

  Alix didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was so relieved to hear that Jonah had kept the information to himself that she felt like she’d been given a death-sentence reprieve.

  She pulled over to the curb and turned off the car, giving Jonah her full attention. He was smiling at her, like he knew just how much leverage he had. “Okay,” she said. “You got me. So why are you pushing on me now?”

  Jonah’s smile disappeared. “I want to know what you’re doing.”

  “And I already told you it’s none of your business what I do with my boyfriend.”

  “Not that!” Jonah waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve got, like, hours of audio already.”

  “You little—”

  “I want to know about the other stuff. You’re giving him something. I heard it on my recordings.”

  “No.” Alix shook her head. “Just. No. This isn’t up for discussion.”

  “You think you can Mom-voice me?” Jonah laughed. “I could call Williams and Crowe, you know. Your friend Death Barbie would be inside that factory of your boyfriend’s like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Williams and Crowe SWAT goons looked superbadass the last time. I bet they’d do a whole lot better if they were hitting the right place.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  Jonah shrugged. “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. I want to know. It’s something to do with all that stuff you were obsessed about before, isn’t it? All the work Dad does. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  Alix cast about, trying to find another solution, any other solution than trusting Jonah. “You really want to know?”

  “I already said I did.”

  So much for secrets.

  “Okay,” Alix relented, “but not now. Tonight. After Mom and Dad go to sleep, we’ll talk.”

  By the time Alix finished explaining everything that she’d been researching, and describing her hunt for Moses, Jonah was staring at her, wide-eyed.

  “This is so nuts.”

  They were both sitting on his bed. Jonah’s iPod clock read 2:00 AM. Alix’s mouth was dry and sticky, and her throat was hoarse. “It’s the truth. Real truth. Not the back-and-forth smoke and mirrors Dad does. Facts.”

  “Yeah, but…” Jonah shook his head, frowning. “Alix…” He shook his head again. “I covered for you because I thought it was kind of hilarious that you were rebelling. But this is serious. You can’t just go mess everything up for Dad. This is our life. You can’t mess all that up.”

  “Not even if we’re getting our money from hurting other people? Killing them, even?”

  “That’s an exaggeration.”

  Alix climbed off the bed. “Come on, then, I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “You want proof, don’t you?”

  She peeked out Jonah’s bedroom door and motioned him to follow. “Come on, daredevil. And be quiet. I don’t want us caught.”

  To Alix, Jonah sounded horribly noisy as they stole down the stairs to Dad’s study. Even his breathing was loud.

  “Would you be quiet?” she whispered fiercely.

  “I am!” Jonah whispered back. “When did you become such an expert at sneaking around?”

  The question gave Alix pause. When did that happen, exactly? At some point, she’d become a spy in her own family’s house. Some kind of screwed-up mole, planted in deep cover. Alix couldn’t help but be reminded of Cynthia—the perfect friend whom Moses had planted right beside her. Sh
e remembered how betrayed she’d felt when she found out.

  And now you’re doing the same thing to Dad.

  It hadn’t felt so clear-cut as that before. But with Jonah trailing right behind her as she found Dad’s keys on the kitchen island and then began opening his filing cabinets in his study, she suddenly felt weirdly exposed. With Jonah watching her do this, it wasn’t just a game anymore. It was real.

  Alix forced down her rising anxiety. “Here. Check this out. This is a whole file on how Dad has a rapid-response group for negative articles about his clients on the Internet. They’ve got searches that help them catch bad news, and then they pay people to swarm the comments using sock-puppet names.” She rifled through more files. “This one is all about a plan to put news releases into small-town newspapers. Ones that don’t have good editorial controls. Cost estimates. Number of readers.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t evil, Alix.”

  “Read it,” Alix said. “Wait till you get to the part where he and George are practically salivating over the weak fact-checking. They keep saying it. It’s a pitch they’re putting together for their clients. Weak fact-checking is a plus for them.”

  “Still…”

  Alix kept rifling through the familiar files. She’d been through all of them before. “These are just some of the things they work on. I’ve done searches on client names—” She broke off, frowning.

  “Kimball-Geier…”

  She pulled the sheet. It was a legal opinion. She went back into the files looking for more, but all she had was the single sheet. She checked the date. It was recent, but there wasn’t anything else.

  “See if you can find any more sheets like this,” she whispered to Jonah, then she went and checked Dad’s briefcase as well. Nothing. She went back and studied the paper again.

  “What is it?” Jonah asked.

  “Azicort. It’s an asthma drug. I heard Dad and George and Mr. Geier talking about it on that yacht a while back.”

  “You were spying on Dad all the way back then? You’re like that Russian spy.… What’s her name? The superhot one who grew up pretending to be an American and then got caught?”

  “I just got tired of people lying to me, okay?”

  Jonah held up his hands. “I’m not judging.”

  Alix went back to the memo. “It looks like they’re going to settle another lawsuit. They’ve got this asthma drug, Azicort. Moses told me it was killing people.… The kid… Tank. It puts people into comas. Sometimes it kills them if a doctor doesn’t figure it out fast enough.” She read over the letter again.

  “Dad wants them to settle this case.…” She frowned. “The people who were suing are giving up.” She remembered the members of 2.0 comparing monetary settlements.

  “Geier was the guy with the fancy yacht, right?”

  “The CEO,” Alix said absently, as she read more. The papers were dense with legal jargon. “It looks like they’re talking about studies they did on rats, and that they knew there were dangers. Coma. Death. Dosages.” She shuffled through her dad’s files, frustrated. “There should be more, but I’m not finding it. I think Dad’s advising them to settle because there’s a new, more definitive study about to come out, and it’s bad for Azicort. He thinks it’s better for them to settle and then get the FDA to reapprove them for a different respiratory use. They’ve gotten friendly hearings at the FDA.…” She looked up from the paper, frowning. “I wish I could see what he keeps on his computer. If I could get on his client files, this would be clear.”

  “You don’t already know?” Jonah snarked.

  “We don’t have the girl, Kook. The hacker,” Alix explained. “She wrote a program to break Dad’s laptop open. If we could get on that…”

  “You wouldn’t get anything at all,” Jonah said.

  “How would you know?”

  Jonah smirked. “Because I happen to know that Dad doesn’t keep anything valuable on it. All his important files are stored on servers at his offices down in DC. They’ve got it completely hived off from the Internet for security. Even his laptop doesn’t connect to that other network.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious! Lisa was making Dad and George game out different ways that 2.0 might try to hurt them and their clients. I was right there. I heard them talking.”

  “So how do you know about Dad’s laptop?”

  “Lisa got worried once they figured out that 2.0 had hackers working for them, and she started asking about data theft. Dad and George said they keep all their sensitive client data off the Internet, so it can’t be accessed by anyone who doesn’t work inside the actual BSP offices. Maybe they’ve got a couple files with them on their laptops, but mostly it’s at BSP, and there’s all kinds of check-in, check-out trackers. Dad and George kept saying you’d have to be inside the actual offices to get anything.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Not much. Lisa got paranoid that 2.0 would try to hold you hostage, maybe make Dad release his client files that way. She was real uptight about the client files.”

  “What did Dad say?”

  “Beats me. They closed the door on me when they started talking about”—Jonah lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“hostage scenarios.” He made a face. “Lisa was freaking about that idea, though. She didn’t want any of Dad’s clients getting exposed.”

  “I’ll bet she didn’t.” Alix stared at the legal memo, thinking about the strange crew that Moses had once assembled. “The kid’s name was Tank,” she said. “The one who took Azicort.”

  “You told me that already.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s just…” Alix trailed off. “It was kind of a joke name, right? Like the kid was big and tough, even though he wasn’t. I think Azicort maybe did something to him. I never got a chance to ask, though.” She frowned, tapping the file on the table thoughtfully. “Moses would know.” She snapped a pic of the memo with her phone and then carefully put the paper back where she’d found it. “I’ll bet the lawyers in this class action would give a lot to know what’s in Dad’s files.”

  “You’d seriously sabotage Dad like that?” Jonah asked.

  Alix didn’t know how to respond.

  Jonah looked pained. “Come on. You can’t be serious.”

  “What would you do if you were walking past someone on the sidewalk who was bleeding and you were the only person in the world with a bandage? Would you let them bleed out?”

  “What kind of a screwed-up question is that?”

  Abruptly, Alix realized she’d said too much. Don’t get him more involved. Get him out. Make him forget about all this. She made herself smile. “It’s nothing. I was just thinking.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. You’re planning something, aren’t you?”

  “I think we’re done for the night. It’s three AM.”

  “I’m your brother.”

  “You’re my little brother.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Seriously. Let it go, Jonah.”

  “I could still tell Dad,” he threatened.

  “You could,” she admitted. “But you won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Alix smiled. “Because if you do, I’ll let everyone know that you’re the one who called in the bomb threat last fall.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Shhhh.” She put her fingers to her lips. “I’ve got some things I need to do, that’s all. It’s probably better if you don’t know what they are. It’s no big deal. I promise. Just be good for a while, until I get back.”

  Jonah was frowning, his brow knitted. “You’re going down to DC,” he said. “You’re going down to DC, and you’re not going to take me.”

  38

  A WEEK LATER ALIX WAS on the Acela with Moses, cruising south. The Acela ran smooth and fast, down through Connecticut countryside before plunging into the heart of New York City. Minutes later the train emerged, rushing for Philadelphia, Baltimore, and, as Jonah had guessed, Washington, DC. />
  “Are you sure Jonah isn’t going to rat us out?”

  “Will you calm down about that? I know him. He’s mostly just pissed I’m not bringing him along.”

  “How did you persuade him to stay?”

  “I told him that if he kept his mouth shut, I wouldn’t turn him in for his bomb-threat prank on Seitz last fall.”

  Moses warned, “You know this is just a scouting trip, right? We aren’t going to try anything this time.”

  “I know.”

  “It probably won’t work,” Moses said. “A lot of these things, they’re just about trying different approaches. Learning about the people involved. Learning how their systems work.”

  “I know.”

  “We tried this before, you know. We never got past the front desks.”

  Alix smiled. “I know.”

  “You act like you’re listening to me, but I don’t think a word I’ve said has actually stuck inside that head of yours.”

  Alix leaned back in her seat, watching the greenery and buildings rush past. “I heard you.”

  “What did I say?”

  “The program you’ve got isn’t as good as the one Kook wanted to use before. This is only a keystroke logger. We need to get it installed on Dad’s computer, which is basically impossible, because it’s inside all these layers of security that you can’t get past without someone like Kook doing the hacking, and even if she was she wouldn’t have access to their main servers, and blah blah blah…”

  “I’m serious, Alix.”

  Alix patted his hand reassuringly. “I know you are. But we’ve got Dad’s swipe card already, and I’ve got the key to his corner office. I think that counts for something.”

  “Yeah, well, just because you can grab his wallet off the kitchen counter—”

  “And clone his key card. I did that, too.”

  “Only because I gave you the machine to do it! Don’t get cocky, Alix. Sneaking around and snooping through your dad’s stuff at home isn’t the same as this. This is real. We’re talking about real—” He broke off, leaned close, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’re talking about real breaking and entering.”