FSF, January-February 2010

by Spilogale Authors

  Okay, only the potholes were the same, but he had managed to drive Mr. Graeber around the block that first time without making any mistakes. A day later Mr. Graeber had handed him a very official driver's license, complete with his picture beside his new name: Carlos Lopez. For two hundred dollars a week, cash, plus room and board, with two Sundays off a month, Arturo was willing to wear the silly uniform and drive Mr. Graeber anywhere he wanted whenever he wanted. For that kind of money, he would happily answer to Carlos.

  Blue lights flashed up ahead in the breakdown lane. A chill squeezed Arturo's heart. He slowed even more. But it wasn't an INS roadblock. A cop had stopped the turbaned cabbie and was giving him a ticket. Arturo smiled and flashed the cabbie the finger as they rolled by.

  * * * *

  The research center was a gleaming, walled block of brick and glass sprouting incongruously from a grubby patch of crestfallen housing projects. Graeber was proud of the location. The price had been fire-sale right and the taxes were low. Cheap, and it took a good photo from the right angle. It had been one of his first major decisions, and it helped solidify his position in the company: a tight fist in a satin glove (with a stiletto up the sleeve).

  The security guard recognized the limo and opened the gate with a salute. They drove up the winding, landscaped drive, past the product line—a marble frieze of pills, capsules, and suppositories—to the porticoed foyer.

  Graeber let Carlos scurry around to open the door, then strode through the airlock into the controlled environment of pharmaceutical research. He breathed deeply the cool, filtered air, enjoying the crisp scent of antiseptic, solvent, and stainless steel. It was the scent of profit. A hint of perfume wafting from the receptionist provided a pleasing accent reminiscent of cherries ready to be plucked. Graeber smiled. Ah, business and sex. The good things in life.

  The lab was quiet but busy. White-coated technicians of many colors drew up sharply when they recognized him, greeting him, speaking his name respectfully. He was, after all, the Director of Research, ultimate Dispenser of Funds, Top Doc. They were his dedicated servants. And they knew it. He'd hired them and he could fire them. His second major decision: hire offshore. They worked cheap, and they knew drugs. He nodded acknowledgment as he made his way down the polished corridors to the lab shared by Doctors Wang and Sprachmaus, of China and Angola, respectively.

  They were both waiting for him. Wang beamed, shattering all stereotypes of the inscrutable oriental. Sprachmaus's milk-chocolate face veritably glowed. These were young men, not gray-haired senior researchers, yellow-fingered from a lifetime of stirring noxious compounds into lifesaving solvents. They were half engineer, half chemist, and half electron microscope, able to envision machinery so tiny it would fit inside a medium-sized corpuscle. Even better, able to build it, and not from prickly rain-forest weeds or sticky slimeballs dredged from coral seas. From soot, from sand, from cheap, common elements you could scrape off the sole of your shoe. Graeber loved the concept: cheap resources for expensive medicines. CR=EM2. What a formula.

  “Wang, Sprachmaus.” He nodded to each of them. “What have you got to show me?”

  “Great success!” Wang crowed. He had a face like an Asian choirboy, all cheeks and dimples. Graeber was certain he'd lied about his age to get his visa.

  “Ja! Ja!” Sprachmaus agreed. “Da animal trials are done, and first rate!” Sprachmaus was from Angola by way of the University of Heidelberg, which was where he'd learned English. The mocha skin and surname revealed a mixed parentage; the tribal scars and accent made him a living oxymoron.

  “Mice cured, cancer gone, hair glow back,” Wang enthused. “All symptoms hunky-dolly!”

  “All of them?” Graeber asked. They nodded in unison, a pair of ecstatic ethnic bobble-heads. Graeber suspected they'd been celebrating with some of the lab's pure grain alcohol. “What about side effects?”

  They looked at each other. Their grins grew wider, if that was possible.

  “Onry two,” Wang said.

  “Only vun dat matters,” Sprachmaus put in quickly. “Come dis vay.”

  They led him deeper into their sanctum, through a bench-lined lab quietly busy with a team of technicians of color, into the animal farm. The sudden fug of cedar, mouse musk, and dung made Graeber's eyes water. Racks of cages filled the room in ranks. More of them ringed the walls. Generations of little white mice—and gray and black and spotted ones—went about their mousely business. The room...echoed wasn't the word. It rustled. It skritched. It skittered with the pitter-patter of tiny, tiny feet.

  Wang and Sprachmaus each pulled a cage from a rack and carried it to a stainless steel counter at the very center of the maze. They set the cages on opposite ends of the counter.

  “Vatch dis,” Sprachmaus said. He removed the lid and lifted the mouse from the cage by its tail. It hung stiffly, legs extended, nose whiskers bristling. Its beady little eyes regarded Graeber with a look of reproach.

  Wang took out his mouse, which assumed the same stiff position. The two scientists waved their mice gently back and forth. Graeber considered buzzing the security guard. Celebration was one thing; this was looking downright schizo.

  “Watch now,” Wang said.

  Suddenly, Sprachmaus's mouse took notice. Its head came up. Its whiskers twitched in all directions, then pointed straight at Wang. The mouse lifted itself on the end of its tail and tried to run through the air.

  Wang's mouse responded with a single, coquettish squeak. Wang set it on the table, and it scurried across the stainless steel, nose working, like a tiny breed of terrier. It centered itself under Sprachmaus's mouse, stood up on its hind legs, and reached with open arms.

  Sprachmaus's mouse writhed. Sprachmaus pointed between its hind legs. “You zee?”

  Graeber saw.

  Sprachmaus dropped his mouse. There was a flurry of fur, a squeal of squeaks, a few love nips, and a chorus of micely panting. Five seconds later, the two rolled apart and began washing up, paying special attention to their privates.

  Graeber looked at the two scientists. They were staring at him expectantly.

  Dark disappointment began to swell in his chest, the harbinger of fiscal foreboding. “It makes mice horny?”

  Wang looked alarmed. “Oh, no, no, no. Not just horny. Capable.”

  “So? Viagra will do that.” Graeber felt in his pocket for a cell phone to squeeze.

  “You are missing da point, Mr. Graeber,” Sprachmaus said. “Wiagra is fine for dirty old men. Dese mice aren't chust old, dey're ancient.”

  “Ancient?” Graeber asked. He glanced at the mice. The male was sniffing the female again. She was playing coy. “How ancient?”

  “Two year old!” Wang exclaimed. “Back from grave!”

  “That doesn't seem very ol—”

  “Dis strain of mice lif only for one year, Mr. Graeber,” Sprachmaus explained. “Dese mice vere at death's door vhen ve shtarted treatment. Now look: dey are two hundred human years old! And dey are chust like children!”

  Graeber regarded the mice with new respect. They were already through a second round and back into the grooming stage.

  “More like randy teenagers,” he said.

  “Yes, yes!” Wang said. “You would be dead after that, yes?” He began to laugh.

  Graeber glared at him. “I'm a long way from two hundred, Doctor.”

  Wang's face fell. “Of course. I onry meant—”

  “Forget it,” Graeber said. He waved at the mice. “This is great stuff. Great potential. It cured the cancer? And the hair loss? And reversed the aging?”

  “Ja, ja, and ja,” Sprachmaus replied.

  “And this is the side effect?”

  “Yes and ja!” Wang said, all smiles and nods.

  “Damn. And right on schedule.” Bonuses, he thought. For the director on down. “You've hired the nurse for the human trials?” They nodded. “You've started writing the analysis?” They nodded. “We've scheduled two weeks; can you cut it to one?” />
  The two scientists gave each other high fives across the table.

  “Ve haf already shtarted!” Sprachmaus cried.

  “What?” Graeber exclaimed. “When?”

  “Today,” Wang said. “We have ourselves injected two hour ago.”

  “That's crazy!” Graeber said. “You could be committing suicide!”

  “Maybe mit drugs, yes,” Sprachmaus said, “but dese are not drugs. Dese are little machines.”

  “And we design them,” Wang said.

  “Ve know exactly vhat dey vill do. Come, ve vill show you.”

  Mice in hand, they led Graeber to a dimly lit room. There, they handed over the randy rodents to a young woman in a lab coat. Graeber was astounded. She was white.

  And not a healthy, glowing, caucasian pink, or any other First-World shade. She was plain white. Pale to the point of translucence, her face unmarked by a single freckle or mole. A hue made all the more white by a hood of coal-black hair swept back from the center of her forehead into a waterfall of night at the nape of her neck. Her eyes and eyebrows were as black as her hair. Her lips were somewhere in between, a grayish tone leeched of color, as though Disney had filmed Snow White in black-and-white.

  Not that the woman looked anything like Disney's simpering stereotype of budding womanhood. But she wasn't the evil stepmother, either, despite the hair. She was, like her lips, somewhere in between. Beyond pretty. Ageless. Not quite of this world.

  He glanced at her name badge. Liliac Sångera. Norwegian? Not with that hair. Greek? Too pale. Some Balkan tribe perhaps.

  “Liliac,” Sprachmaus said, “dis is Mr. Graeber.”

  “Nurse plactitioner for human trials,” Wang said. “Vely good with needle. Painress.”

  Liliac dropped the mice into a cage, pulled off her surgical gloves, and extended her hand. “Dr. Graeber,” she said. “It is an honor.”

  “Yes,” Graeber replied, enjoying the sound of his title voiced in her rich, old-world alto. He took her slender, bone-white hand. Her fingers were long and supple. Her grip was firm, and she held it a moment longer than the usual business greeting. Her eyes held his, too, but he couldn't tell if she was being familiar or testing his pulse. Maybe it was a custom from her homeland, an ethnic thing. He cleared his throat, nonplused. “Hem. Very good.”

  She released his hand, indicated the mice, copulating yet again. “Excuse me, but I'd best deal with these two. Such a drive for life, yes? So universal. The normal extraction, Doctors?”

  “Ja,” Sprachmaus replied. “For da scope.”

  Graeber watched, fascinated, while she separated the sated rodents, neatly slid a slender hypodermic needle into each tiny neck, and drained them of their blood. She dropped the limp corpses back into the cage and emptied the syringe into a vial, which she handed to Wang. With a slight sidewise smile at Graeber, she turned back to her lab bench. Graeber stared. He could have sworn he saw something flash at the corners of her mouth.

  “Over here, Mr. Graeber,” Sprachmaus said.

  Graeber glanced back for a final look, just in time to see her drop the needle into a special box marked with the biohazard emblem and then raise her finger to her lips, as if offering a prayer for their mousely souls. Or testing a flavor. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away.

  A tall, gleaming cylinder stood in the middle of the room. Wang centered the vial on a platform inside. Sprachmaus fired up a console and began tapping little boxes on a touch-screen control. Motors hummed. A golden glow emanated from the interior of the cylinder, bathing the bloody vial in an eerie aura. A wide monitor flickered to life on the wall. Unearthly globules swirled into view, riding the eddies of a dark liquid.

  “Das blut,” Sprachmaus whispered. “And dere! Look!”

  Something else appeared. Something with edges and fins and what appeared for all the world to be jaws.

  “Hemobot,” Wang intoned.

  “Say what?” Graeber muttered, eyes glued to the monitor.

  “Hemobot,” Wang repeated. “Nano device.”

  And, as Graeber watched, the man-made cell snuck up on the globule and ate it.

  There were other hemobots, many, many of them. They ate some cells, stroked others. They protected. They repaired. They created replicas. They even cleaned up their own mess, smiling like little Pac-Men. Graeber watched, mesmerized.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. “Wang? Sprachmaus?”

  “Chust fine.”

  “Hunky-dolly!”

  “Good. I'll be back in twenty-four hours. If you're still alive, I want some.”

  He glanced at the bench by the wall, but Liliac Sångera was gone. Stifling a surprising surge of disappointment, he strode from the lab. He would see her again soon. Meanwhile....

  “Carlos,” he said, climbing back into the limo, “let's take a side trip to the spa.”

  * * * *

  “Yes, sir,” Arturo replied. That was another reason he got the job: no questions asked.

  There was a real spa; Mr. Graeber and his wife were both members. There was a yacht club and a country club, too, and Mr. Graeber actually went to them. The spa, no. Spa was code; Arturo learned that on his first day. Mr. Graeber was in good shape, but he got his exercise in other ways.

  Mr. Graeber was already on the cell phone. “Vanessa? Glad I caught you in, I'm on my way. No, not a long one, I'm afraid. Just dropping in to say hi and bye. I'll be there in....”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Arturo said.

  “Fifteen minutes. What? Oh, nothing special. Surprise me.”

  He put down the phone. “Fifteen minutes, that's just right.”

  Arturo was already slipping the pill case out of his coat pocket. He passed it over the back of the seat. Mr. Graeber poured two of the pink knob-headed pills onto his palm and handed back the case. Another condition of the job: Arturo carried the Vaunturplex.

  “Good old Vitamin V,” Graeber said, as usual. He downed them with a gulp from a bottle of tonic water, always on hand in the limo's mini bar. “What would we do without it, eh, Carlos? There's a big market for this stuff in Mexico, you know?”

  “Yes, sir.” Arturo had learned all this on day one also.

  “Goes with that Latino machismo, I suppose. Aycarumba, I wish we'd announced Vaunturplex first.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Arturo pulled the limo up to the curb in front of a row of brownstone town houses on an upscale tree-lined street. He hopped out quickly to open the door for Mr. Graeber.

  “We're going to be late for dinner, Carlos,” Graeber said. “Pick up the usual for the wife.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Arturo waited while Mr. Graeber rang the bell and the door opened. Vanessa, Mr. Graeber's gringa, greeted him this time in a fireman's hat and nothing else. No, wait, she had some kind of hose in her hand. No, wait, it was strapped to her waist. She waggled it at Graeber, then grabbed his tie and pulled him through the doorway. As she closed the door, she waved to Arturo and gave him a friendly waggle, too.

  Ay, Arturo thought. To be rich in America!

  Half an hour later, he was back at the curb. A bouquet of cut flowers lay on the back seat, ready for Mr. Graeber to present to his wife. A single rose lay hidden beneath the front seat, carefully slipped from the bouquet. For Esperanza, Arturo's wife. Not to make up for peeking at Vanessa. Not at all. He loved Esperanza with all his heart. Vanessa was nothing to him. Although he did feel a little guilty about enjoying the peek so much.

  Mr. Graeber came out, still adjusting his comb-over. “Let's get moving, Carlos,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” Carlos shut the door and hurried around to get behind the wheel.

  “Right in the middle of the big moment,” Graeber complained, as Carlos steered the big car away from the curb. “Wham-bam and dee-dee-dee-dee-deedley-dee.” His ring tone was Stayin’ Alive. “Don't you hate it when that happens, Carlos? It breaks your rhythm. I should have let it go to voicemail, but it was Proctor. Business before pleasure, Carlos, you kn
ow what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir,” Arturo replied, because Mr. Graeber appreciated replies. He expected you to be listening. Arturo wondered how Vanessa felt about it.

  * * * *

  Diana Graeber sipped her second martini and watched her husband arrive home. He came bearing flowers, a sure sign he'd been to see his doxie. She relaxed and downed her martini. Good. He would fall asleep early, without a single mention of conjugal rights.

  “For me?” she said, accepting the flowers and offering her cheek for the usual peck.

  Instead, he took her by the chin, turned her face toward him, and gave her a healthy kiss. She was so startled she almost started to kiss him back.

  “My, aren't we romantic tonight,” she said, with some trepidation. “Did you buy someone today?”

  “Pfizer,” he said, loosening his tie and heading for the bar.

  “Pfiz—? You're kidding.” More likely they'd buy you, she thought, very careful not to think it aloud.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but only by half.”

  He poured himself two fingers of his most expensive single malt, toasted his reflection in the crystal tumbler, and took what was obviously a celebratory sip.

  “All right,” she said, as he meandered smugly around the perimeter of the room, “I'll ask. What went right?”

  “Hemobots,” he murmured. “Hemobots.” He rolled it around his tongue like he did the whiskey. It reminded her of a seagull swallowing fish innards. She squelched a rising gorge.

  “Some sort of new drug, I take it?”

  “Better,” he replied. “A completely engineered and man-made medical device that acts like a drug. A cross between medication and surgery. We can patent it in so many ways they'll have to erase the word ‘generic’ from the dictionary.” He took another sip. “Hemobots,” he murmured again. “Nanomeds.” A pause. “Roboglobin?”