“And what does it do?”
“Everything, my dear. Maybe. We're not sure yet...Nanogra. Na-noh-gra. That has a catchy ring.”
Diana didn't like the sound of it. She waved the flowers. “Well, congratulations. I'll have Maria warm up dinner so we can celebrate.” She pressed the button behind the bar. “Speaking of which,” she continued, rummaging in the breakfront for a vase, “we have a little problem.”
“Nublood. No, sounds like a shoe. Hmm? What?”
“We have a problem, dear. I'm afraid we're going to have to find a new Maria.”
“What for? I thought you adored her.”
“Well, I do, but I'm afraid she may have gotten herself pregnant.”
“Kee-rist. That Carlos!”
“Exactly. You know it won't do to have a maid serving at table with a loaded oven. Oh, there it is.” She spotted the Stuben vase, already on the mantle, filled with the drying remains of the last post-dalliance offering. She swapped the bouquets, wished briefly that Hugh would think to include some roses in the arrangement, and dumped the old ones into the bin behind the bar. “Besides, who knows how long she'll be able to vacuum and carry groceries and all that once the little zygote starts to swell?” She had been a bio major when they met in college. Pre-med, just like him. And got better grades. She liked to remind him of that from time to time. “She's already starting to show.”
“Really?”
“I'm surprised you haven't noticed.”
“Hardly my type, my dear.”
They smiled at each other. Both knew his type: human, female, young, willing, pretty, in that order. This Maria was pretty enough, but not at all willing; Diana had no doubt of that.
“You know,” Graeber said, “these farm girls are pretty sturdy. Give birth right in the field. We don't have to shop for a replacement tonight.”
“Of course not. Let's just not wait too long, all right?”
He downed a slug of whisky. “Damn. She and Carlos were a package deal. I was just getting him broken in.”
“Maybe he'll stay. Give him a little raise, enough to support her while she's preggers.”
He snorted. “Now there's a concept. Next you'll be offering health insurance.”
“Don't be silly. But if you like him.... They don't need much to get by, these people.” She grabbed the whiskey bottle and filled his glass. “Come on, let's go in to dinner, and you can tell me all about this hemonano stuff.”
I'll even listen, she thought. As long as it takes to fill you up with whiskey and put you to sleep. And then a little call to Vanessa, the slacker. I thought we had an understanding.
* * * *
Arturo waited until they were alone to present the rose to Esperanza. It was very late. Señora Graeber kept talking and talking, long after the usual bedtime. Arturo helped Esperanza in the kitchen, then waited while she went upstairs to fold back the bedspread and turn on the electric blanket. He was not allowed upstairs, only her. And then they waited in the kitchen together until they could clean up. But finally they were able to go to their little room in the basement, and he gave her the rose. She kissed him and they hugged for a long time. She took the old one out of the bottle and put it with the others in the paper bag, where the petals dried and she could put them in the drawer with her underthings to make them smell so nice when she put them on. He liked better how they smelled when he took them off.
They lay in the bed together, too tired to make love, but not ready to sleep. Esperanza held him tightly, and he realized something worried her.
“What is it, my heart?” he asked.
She took a long time to answer. “I spoke to the midwife today on the phone,” she said finally.
“About the baby?”
“About our baby.” Again she hesitated.
“What did she say, dear heart?” he asked, though he was already afraid of the answer.
“I told her we still didn't feel it moving. I told her there had been blood on my panties.” Her voice broke, and he held her more tightly. “She said there were many things that could cause that. She said not to worry. I should come see her.”
“But you are worried.” He was worried.
“She said not to worry, but she was worried. I heard it in her voice. I felt it here.” She took his hand and pulled it between her beautiful breasts. He could feel her heart beating under his palm. He could feel her tears on his chest.
He kissed the top of her head, rubbed his cheek on her thick, smooth hair. “We will go see her together.”
“You will come?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow night, then. I will call her and explain. She will understand. She is a true healer, even if she isn't Maya. A good woman. And you are a good man. Thank you, dear heart.”
Arturo kissed her again and held her till she fell asleep in his arms. His arms fell asleep, too, but his mind would not. Already he dreaded the meeting with the midwife. For one thing, he feared for Esperanza and the baby. For another, the midwife unsettled him. Not only was she not Mayan, she wasn't even Mexican. Her skin was white as a lily at a funeral, her eyes dark as the sockets in a skull. She appeared too young, except for those eyes. There she was wise. Ageless. Frightening. And also appealing in a way even more forbidden than Señor Graeber's gringa. But she was a real midwife, this Dr. Sångera, a licensed practitioner, an herbalist, and who knew what else. Other Latinos had recommended her. Esperanza trusted her. And so they would go to her, as soon as she and they were free of their daytime jobs. No matter how she unnerved him.
Arturo lay there and prayed, when he wasn't cursing. He was awake to see the first gray light of dawn seep through the single small window high in the cinderblock wall.
* * * *
Graeber called the lab precisely at 4:00 the next afternoon. Dr. Wang answered. He sounded lucid—Chinese, but lucid—a good sign. He didn't even sound hung over, which was better than Graeber could say. Diana had drunk him under the table after dinner, a fact that he wasn't about to admit to anyone, not even himself. He refused aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen. He rejected B vitamins as outright chicanery, the worst kind of tree-hugging, yoga-bugga snake oil. He even turned up his nose at hair of the dog. He dealt with the throbbing headache the way he always dealt with adversity: he laid a few people off. But Wang was alive and well, and said the same was true of Sprachmaus. Graeber started to feel better. He left the office and had Carlos drive him straight to the research center.
He gave Wang and Sprachmaus both a searching glance as he walked through the door of their lab. They were still smiling, still glowing with an energy that Graeber could summon only under the influence of pink pills and Vanessa's most imaginative sleight of hand. As if to dispel any doubts, Wang performed a perfect handspring onto a lab bench, then nailed the dismount with Olympian ease.
“Nine-eight!” Sprachmaus called. “You zee, Mr. Graeber, dere haf been no ill effects. My vife can testify to my own, shall ve say, wigor.” He grinned with the smug air that only an alpha male can achieve.
“Excellent,” Graeber said, eyeing their thick hair and smooth skin with a blend of avarice and lust. “Inject me, infuse me, whatever.”
“Chust a simple injection,” Sprachmaus said.
“Three times,” Wang added. “We have two now.”
“To build up da wolume more quickly,” Sprachmaus explained.
“Otherwise, build up take weeks.”
“And vhy vait, ja?”
“Eat dessert first!”
“Just get on with it,” Graeber ordered.
The two doctors led him through the lab again, past the mouse room, past the microscope room, to a narrow, windowless afterthought in the farthest corner. A single technician sat at a bench there, watching cloudy, yellow liquid drip into a bulbous beaker from a complex assemblage of tubes, gauges, and blinking digital boxes, to the accompaniment of ticks, clicks, and the occasional staccato zap. The technician was Liliac Sångera.
Graeber s
tifled a growl of pleasure. She had been on his mind all day, a spectral visage intruding on phone calls, meetings, Proctor's laments. He had come for the nano stuff, but also to see her. Why? He couldn't say, so he squelched the question and simply enjoyed her presence.
“Good evening, Dr. Graeber,” she said. “You are a brave man to volunteer for the trials.”
“All in the interest of human health,” he replied. He had rehearsed the line for just this occasion.
She indicated a cushioned chair beside her lab stool. “Have a seat, please. The preparation will be ready in a minute or two.”
He sat, and she turned back to her dripping liquid. Wang and Sprachmaus hovered in the doorway, like vultures on a tree limb.
“Don't you two have some mice to diddle with?” Graeber snapped.
“Yes, please,” Liliac said. “We must respect the subject's privacy.”
“Ah, yes,” Wang said.
“Ja, off course,” Sprachmaus agreed.
Bobbing and grinning, they backed through the narrow doorway and out of sight.
Liliac turned to Graeber. “They are not physicians, Dr. Graeber, merely Pee-Aitch-Dees. Glorified mechanics. They lack the sensitivity of a healer.” She smiled, revealing strong white teeth that gleamed under the fluorescent lab lights. And sparkled at the corners of her gray lips.
“Well, they know their work,” Graeber stammered, charmed by her faintly slavic accent, fascinated by the glint in her smile.
“There is no denying that.” Liliac held up the beaker. “The potential here is almost beyond belief.”
He nodded. “The profits will be enormous.”
She regarded him closely. He was mesmerized by her black eyes. Definitely not a Disney girl. Oh, that smooth, white skin. He suspected it was just as white all the way down to—
“Yes,” she said. “The profits. Of course, to support the research. But also what it means for humankind. A true panacea, from what the mice reveal.”
“Oh, yeah, that too. A veritable Fountain of Youth. Aphrodisiac. Spa in a bottle. There's dozens of ways to market it. I'm glad to see you understand the importance of that. You're a sharp woman.” He smiled, hoping she'd smile back. He really wanted to make her smile.
She left him longing. “So, we are ready.” She set down the beaker and snapped another pair of surgical gloves out of a box on the counter. “Are you bothered by the sight of needles, Dr. Graeber?”
“Needles? Oh, no.” He waved a hand. “Not at all.”
“Good.” She reached into a drawer and pulled out a syringe the size of one of Vanessa's sex toys, armed with a four-inch-long needle.
“Kee-rist!” Graeber exclaimed. “You could knit sweaters with that thing!”
“Don't worry. I shall use a local anesthetic.”
“Oh, well, as long as it's part of the protocol.” Graeber squared his jaw and hoped his comb-over was intact. “Don't go out of your way.”
“Of course not,” Liliac replied. She pulled another object out of the drawer. It looked something like a small pistol. Graeber wondered if she'd had a full background check. “Do you have any drug allergies?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good. Are you a vegetarian?”
“No.”
“Good. Have you had sex in the last twelve hours?”
“What?”
“Hormone residues,” she said. “They affect the dosage.”
“Oh. Uh, no, not that recently. Last night, though,” he added quickly.
“Hm. Good for you. Do you know your blood type?”
“O negative.”
“Ah, my favorite!” Finally she smiled.
“I beg your pardon?” Graeber could have sworn he spotted tiny gems set into the teeth at the sides of her smile. He stared at her mouth as she answered.
“O negative,” she said. “The universal donor. There is something so ineluctably generous in that, do you not think? Even if it is not by choice.”
Yes. Tiny diamonds. Glinting at the tips of her canines. Set right into the enamel. Graeber's own teeth tingled. He wondered what other little surprises she might reveal. “Uh, that's an interesting idea,” he replied, trying to remember what she had just said.
“Is it not? Remove your jacket and roll up your sleeve, please.”
After you, my pale little lily. Graeber held that thought as he complied. Didn't want to rush things. Women were funny that way, and he suspected Miss Liliac was more particular than most. She was obviously a bit of a thinker, a broody mystic type. And with that faint, Old World accent...A Gypsy? That could be it: Gypsy. What did they call themselves these days? Roman? No, Romney? God, no. Romanian? Maybe that was it: Romanian.
He draped his jacket on the back of the chair, sat back down, and suddenly she had his arm in a firm grip. Before he could react, she pressed the pistol to the inside of his elbow and fired. Whap!
“Ow!” He jerked his arm, but she held it quite still, her supple fingers now a tight band around his forearm. “What was that for?”
“Merely the anesthetic,” she said. “Let me know if you feel anything odd.”
“Just an armful of pain! Kee-rist, you might have warned me.”
“It hurts worse when you expect it.” She let go, set down the gun thingy, and began to fill the huge syringe from the beaker. The yellow liquid looked a little sinister in there.
“That's quite a lot,” he remarked, eyeing the needle as it moved toward his arm.
“Yes, you will want to stay near a bathroom this evening. How does the arm feel? Numb?” She touched it with the tip of her finger.
“I suppose. How long does it usually take?”
“It depends on how numb you are to begin with,” she murmured. “Let me know if you feel any discomfort, hm?”
And she slid the tip of the thick needle under his skin.
Wang had been right; it was painress. Graeber watched in fascination as she continued to slide the needle forward. His skin bulged, a bulge that advanced toward the vein in his elbow. Bulge met vein, a tiny prod, and it was in. She began to press the plunger. He could feel a chill as the glob of yellow liquid flowed up his arm. He glanced at her face. She was staring intently at the spot where the needle went into his arm, where a tiny dot of blood seeped from the seam between flesh and surgical steel. One dark eyebrow arched. The tip of her tongue slid slowly along the edge of her upper teeth, from diamond to diamond. He felt a little heat in his groin. A little stirring, like a creature rising from long hibernation. He remembered that feeling.
And no Vaunturplex! he realized. Surely it's much too soon for the hemobots to take effect? But look how Wang and Sprachmaus had acted the night before. He watched Liliac Sångera's tongue caressing the tips of her canines. Maybe it wasn't the nano stuff at all. Maybe it was her.
Her eyes rose and met his. Black, deep, gleaming pits beneath the dark arches of her brows, a glimpse of midnight, of dark, forbidden acts—
“Do you feel all right?” she asked. “You look somewhat queasy.”
“Ah. Uh, no. I'm fine. Maybe just a little, I don't know, the anesthetic probably, it'll pass, Lily. Is it all right if I call you Lily?”
“Aren't they a competitor?”
“What? Oh, yes, Lilly. Of course. How could I forget?” He laughed weakly. How could he forget? Kee-rist, what was it about this woman? “I'll just stick to Liliac.”
“Hm. All done.” She slid the needle out, pressed a gauze pad to the bleeding wound, told him to hold it there, and started tidying up.
* * * *
The next evening went much the same, including the visit to Vanessa afterward. He felt like a new man. He even drank Diana under the table the first night, which turned out to be a disappointment. She passed out while he was tugging her pants off. The second night he stopped when she was just hitting the slurred stage, and suggested she take a soak in the Jacuzzi. The warm water massage finished what the liquor had begun, and he took her by surprise as she sighed into bed afterwar
d. He hadn't been this...capable, to use Wang's term...since his twenties. Even Vanessa had been hard put to stay the course. And, come morning, he was ready to go again. Diana, on the other hand, moved like she'd been through a week-long Pilates marathon. It occurred to Graeber that she could benefit from an injection or three herself. Or maybe not. He'd outlasted her, a very rare feat. Charge her up too much, and he wouldn't put it past her to seek out an alternative, some steroidal Aryan “personal trainer” in tight sweats. No, better that he wait till they went public with the hemobots and she had to know.
The only thing that dimmed his good mood was the attitude of Liliac Sångera. She wasn't cool to his advances, she simply ignored them. Aloof, that was the word. All business. Which would have been fine in a lab tech if she hadn't been so damned...intriguing. The whole time he was there he couldn't take his eyes off her white neck, her dark lips, her sparkling teeth. He imagined nibbling those lips. Being nibbled by those teeth. Exploring the unmarked terrain of—
Dee-dee-dee-dee-diddley-dee! It was Proctor.
“Hugh, I'm looking at last month's figures. I tell you we're dying out there! I need something more to report on the new project, the nanomed stuff. But only if it's good. And if it isn't, make it up! I have to have something positive to tell the board or we're both going to be on the carpet.”
“You can relax, Proctor,” Graeber replied. “The human trials are already underway.”
“Really? You're not just trying to make me feel better?”
“Proctor, have I ever cared how you feel?”
“Okay, okay. No need to rub it in. Look, can't you just give me a more definite idea how soon we can go to market?”
Graeber ran his hand through his comb-over. He was pretty sure he could feel a little fuzz coming up under the sideways strands. “Normally a year, what with the FDA and all, but I have an idea we can dance right past them. I tell you, we're going to win big with this one, Proctor. Three injections and you're done.”
“What do you mean ‘done'?” Proctor demanded. “How done? Done for? Done is not a good adjective when you're marketing meds, Hugh.”
“Done as in Done Over. Re-done. Done good. Done the dirty dance of the two-headed beast. You want marketing? Think Fountain of Youth. Think Eternal Life, without the boring harps. Think reborn, remade, recharged, revitalized. That's it! ReVitalyze®. With Roboglobin™.” Graeber loved it. It sang to him.
FSF, January-February 2010 Page 24