by Kira Peikoff
“He what?”
“He wants you dead.”
She was too shocked to respond. Too disarmed by the sudden vision of herself lifeless and limp in a coffin. Underground. Like the elevator in the tunnel, but forever. Forever meant long after anyone had ever heard of her, after the Earth stopped turning and the sun exploded and life went on somewhere else in the universe, she would still be dead. Just another piece of galactic debris.
“Because of—my condition?”
“Unfortunately, yes. There are drug companies right now fighting each other tooth and nail to make deals with him and try to get a piece of your DNA, if he ever tracks you down. But he thinks if they mass-produce some drug that mimics what you have, it will wreck the world with overpopulation.”
Like a plague, she thought, staring out the windshield. Theo drops me, Natalie uses me, Gramps is missing, and now I’m a danger to the whole freaking world.
Anguished words spilled out of her mouth, the admission of a worry almost too horrifying to voice. “What if he’s right? Maybe we’d all be better off if I was dead.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“I’m serious! What Natalie’s doing back there might help science, but what about the outside?” She swept her arm toward the expanse of ruddy desert around them. “Here, in real life?”
“Think about this,” he said. “You take any past era in history, and propose that one day the Earth will sustain seven billion people. They’d never believe you. They’d think everyone would starve and die. And yet the industrial revolution proved that a growing population could thrive. In a scientific world, there’s no limitation to how many people can live in it. We’d be able to cultivate it. Look at this empty desert! There are so many unused spaces, vast oceans, mountain ranges, other planets, if we can figure out how to live there. Time and again, people have created solutions to the most challenging problems and generated wealth in the process.”
She frowned. “Okay, so maybe more people could find a way to coexist. But that doesn’t mean life would be better.”
“People aren’t irrational. If they get to a point where there’s too many, they’d adjust to have fewer offspring. You could offer the same argument against curing any disease that kills off a large number of people, but you won’t find anyone against cancer research. You know why?”
“Because aging is natural,” she replied, thinking of her parents’ view. “Aging is part of the cycle of life.”
“That’s right. That’s what people are taught. But just because something is natural doesn’t necessarily make it desirable. Aging is natural just as living outside in the freezing cold or dying of an infection without antibiotics is natural. One great legacy of our species is the ability to shape nature to make our lives safer and happier. Aging is the leading cause of death in the civilized world, responsible for the equivalent of six Holocausts every year. But if science could stop it, if we could all stay young like you, think of the possibilities: Whatever values you have or want, there would be almost no limitation on your ability to go after them. You could have unlimited goals, multiple careers, travel everywhere, listen to all the world’s music, and read a billion books, cherish countless years with your family across generations. Think of all the wisdom and joy to be gained. Time is the essential commodity of life—and you have it in spades, Zoe. The world is yours to win.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “I never thought of it like that. So why don’t you tell that to the guy who wants me dead?” she asked, only half joking. “Maybe he’ll change his mind?”
“I don’t think he really cares about overpopulation. Or even about you. I think you’ve just become a symbol for something deeper he hates, and so have I.”
“For what?”
“I think it has to do with his contempt for humanity, and probably also his contempt for himself.”
“I wonder why.” Zoe gazed out the windshield at the arid landscape. “I wonder what terrible thing would have to happen to someone to make them so mean.”
“I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that life is precious. Life is good. And you can never have too much of a good thing. Which boils down to the bottom line—we’re lucky to be alive. And the world is lucky to have you in it, not just because of your DNA. You’re much more than your genes.”
“Am I?”
“We all are. It’s what you do with them that counts. You’ve chosen to be brave and strong and curious and caring. You enrich the lives of everyone around you.”
She gave a snort. “Tell that to Theo and Natalie.”
He seemed taken aback. “They’re your biggest fans.”
She shook her head, and in a few words filled him in on the current state of those relationships. He listened without appearing to judge, and when she finished, he switched hands on the steering wheel and glanced at her.
“First of all, I think you should cut Natalie a break. She owes you an apology, but more for a misunderstanding than any real offense. One thing I know about her is that she thinks of herself as a mother first and a scientist second. And to her, you’re family.”
“Come on,” she groaned, but felt a prick of hope.
“Seriously. After one of the drills this week, she came up to talk to me about contingency plans for you and her and Theo. She’s watching out for you, even when you don’t know it. When you went to the lab, I’m sure she was just excited and thought you would be, too.”
Well, aren’t you pulling for her, she thought, but said nothing. It was one thing to share her personal life with him, as to a trusted mentor, but vice versa was quite another. She watched a gas station and a cluster of fast-food chains whiz by next to the side of the empty highway. Every few miles they passed a modest one-story home with acres of barren desert surrounding it.
“As for Theo,” he said, “I think you know he’s not the real problem.”
“No kidding. If I could just be normal—”
“No,” he interrupted. “If you could just believe you’re worth it. If you push people away, you miss out on life’s greatest gift.”
She pretended to gag. “That’s so corny.”
“I know, but it’s true. You and Theo need to stop ignoring each other and start communicating. He’s a nice kid. I can see why you like each other.”
A flush heated her cheeks. It was time to change the subject, stat.
“Whatever,” she said. “What are you doing to find my grandfather?”
They were pulling into a trailer park. It was filled with RVs lined up neatly in rows along the sand. No one was outside, and she wondered if they were all empty or if people were still sleeping in them.
“I’ve put the word out to the Network,” he said. “We’ve got lots of people keeping their eyes and ears open for him. The second we find out anything, you’ll know.”
“What about calling hotels? He probably couldn’t have gone far.”
“We’re already working that angle. But can’t you see it’s too dangerous for you to be wandering around by yourself? If you still want to go home, I’ll arrange for someone to personally escort you. We also have to prepare you for the media firestorm that will hit when you get there. It will be a big undertaking, both emotionally and logistically, so make sure you’re ready for it.”
She sighed as her vision of single-handedly finding Gramps and reuniting her family dissipated.
“Let me repeat it,” he said. “You’ll be in grave danger if Les Mahler finds out where you are. I think you would do best not to take any chances, at least until he gets caught up in another case. Right now, getting rid of you is his top priority—you and me both.”
She cringed at the callousness of the words. You got rid of useless things like trash—not human beings.
“What about all the hype with your drills? Is it really safer to go back?”
“Nowhere is completely safe. But at least there, our security plans are in place. We can never be too careful.”
“Where a
re we right now?”
“This is the Turquoise Trail. See that manhole over there? That’s the opening to the evacuation tunnel. We can get in through there instead of going back to the casino. Or I can drop you at a safe house until we make proper travel arrangements for you to go home—but remember any travel for you is risky.”
She thought of Gramps’s unsentimental rationality. For him, the decision would be easy. No amount of longing was worth endangering her life, especially if nothing but chaos awaited her at home. Plus, maybe she wasn’t quite ready to leave a certain handsome boy or his mother after all.
“Up to you,” Galileo said. “But I can’t stick around much longer. I’ve got to head out on business this afternoon.”
“When will you come back?”
“I don’t know exactly. A few weeks, maybe more.”
“If I go home, will I ever see you again?”
“Maybe if we both live long enough,” he joked, but his playful tone barely masked his sadness.
“Let’s go back,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER 36
The newest postcard was more baffling than Les could have anticipated. The President’s doctor had not vanished. He was alive and well, tending to patients in his office, and could offer no explanation for why the Network had chosen to send the card to him. Was it a threat? A warning? Some kind of coded message?
Only when Les returned in frustration to the committee’s headquarters did he begin to understand. Calls were pouring in with panicked reports of the identical postcard arriving all over the country, from Virginia to New York to Illinois. Each postcard just contained Galileo’s cheeky catchphrase: “And yet it moves,” plus his signature. No one had gone missing. Les’s bewilderment turned to fury when he deduced the common thread among the recipients. It wasn’t that they were all men or women, black or white, old or young. It was that they all worked for the FDA.
Les imagined that somewhere in his hideout, Galileo was laughing.
The Network was perpetrating a hoax to mock government regulators—and it wasn’t funny. Already the media had broken the story and the committee’s PR team was struggling to handle the press inquiries. An emergency press conference was arranged for later that afternoon to mollify an anxious public.
But the stunt that happened next, Les didn’t foresee. In retrospect, he realized it was the cherry on top of a psychopath’s pie—a madman’s sense of poetic justice—and it aroused a nasty and primal urge within him that was always lurking just beneath the surface—the urge to inflict pain.
It started with a knock on his door that interrupted his preparations for the press conference. Benjamin Barrow walked in without a word, his silent rage apparent in his pink face—a strange contrast to his mane of white hair. Through his wire-rimmed spectacles, he blinked at Les.
“Have you gotten yours yet?”
“Gotten what?”
“This.”
He held up the iconic postcard for Les to see, pinching it between two fingers as though it might contaminate him. Then he flipped it over and read aloud in a tone of sarcastic disgust.
Hey, Ben, Cool if I call you that? Or might it offend your mock dignity? Don’t think for a second that just because you’re so senior, you’ve got what it takes to find me. All you approval-craving, power-lusting, science-fearing committee cows have the same problem, a blindness to your own faults. But I’ll give you a hint. What drives you forward is exactly what drives me away.
Ever yours,
Galileo
Les snorted. “Who does this bastard think he is?”
“The master of the universe, apparently.” Barrow tossed the postcard onto the desk. “I bet he has a small dick.”
“Cowards usually do.”
“When was the last time you checked your mail?”
Les stared down at the paper piled high on his desk—reports, speeches, meeting minutes, case files, several days of mail. None of it had seemed like a priority before, but now he riffled through the stack, spreading it into a disorganized mess, until he spotted the innocuous-looking sun postcard wedged between two envelopes.
The date was August 24. Today. The postmark, Washington, D.C. The return address—333 Prospect Street NW. Les felt the hair on his arms bristle: That was his own address.
“What does it say?” Barrow asked.
He read the neat handwriting aloud:
So, Chief. Did you get what you wanted yet? All the power and the glory? You disgust me, but probably not as much as you disgust yourself. At least when you were poor and bullied, your struggle was honest. Don’t spew your ‘science as dehumanizing’ garbage when you don’t give a damn about humanity. You don’t really want to protect anyone. You just want to destroy whoever reminds you of your own self-hatred. You think I’m the bad guy, but what does that say about you?
Ever yours,
Galileo
Barrow whistled. “Talk about below the belt.”
Les’s fists ached to punch something. If it weren’t for his colleague’s presence, he might have stuck it to the nearest wall. How could this faraway psycho have known about his childhood? And his address? Les was supposed to be stalking him, not the other way around.
The stiff paper crumpled under the force of his fingers.
“This,” he said, tearing it into shreds, “never happened. Got it?”
“But it’s evidence!” Barrow cried, making a grab for it. “It has to be analyzed—”
He jumped away, his reflexes quicker. “No way. You know none of these stupid postcards make a difference.”
Barrow crossed his arms. “You’re letting him provoke you.”
His condescending tone was further incitement. Les wiped his hands of the torn bits and dug his nails into his palms, itching to take his anger and humiliation out on someone—anyone. “That’s it,” he snapped. “We’re done here.”
When Les finally left the office around midnight, his fury had congealed into hatred. Too worked up to take the Metro home, he walked. The streets grew darker and emptier as he left the tourist center of the city and headed west toward his own residential neighborhood. In stark contrast to his air-conditioned office, the late summer heat was merciless—a thick, muggy heat that seemed to multiply gravity. Mustering the energy to plow through it left him with pooled sweat under his arms, behind his knees, on his upper lip. His suit and pants clung to the wet spots, stifling his movements.
He was cursing August, cursing the whole goddamn city, but cursing Galileo most of all, when he heard coins clinking in a cup nearby.
“Spare some change?” asked a disembodied voice in the shadows.
“Get a job,” Les muttered, without slowing. He noticed he was in a deserted alley between two blocks, a shortcut he’d taken many times, but also a popular spot for vandalism and drug deals because it was so well shielded from the major streets. Graffiti covered the walls on either side, the strange symbols and codes like hieroglyphics to the uninitiated, but Les recognized them as signs of a turf war.
The gravelly voice edged up right behind him. “Bet you wouldn’t keep walking if I had a gun.”
He turned around and stared down the skinny, vacant-eyed oaf still shaking his pathetic cup. The handle of a revolver was poking out from the waistband of his ill-fitting jeans. Les was not afraid. The sight of it only piqued his fury.
“Back off, asshole. You don’t want to mess with me.”
“Oh no? You a big bad white boy?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m going to keep walking and you’re going to get lost.”
The man cackled, the whites of his eyes glistening with scorn. “G’luck with that.”
He was so close that Les could smell the foul odor of urine emanating from his body.
“I’ll give you one last chance. Step back.”
“Whatchoo gonna do about it?” he taunted, lifting his foot to come closer. But Les was faster. Before the man’s foot hit the pavement, Les’s fist smashed into the brid
ge of his nose with an obscene crunch. The man stumbled backward, groping for his gun, dark blood spilling over his lips. Les knocked his hand away and punched him again, this time in the eye, his quickness sharpened by adrenaline and rage, compounded by the man’s grunts and groans.
The pathetic whimpers were like a siren song, luring him to greater energy, greater strength, as he pummeled the man’s face, neck, stomach, imagining Galileo receiving the blows. The urge to dispense suffering grew so powerful that he craved the bruising of soft human flesh beneath his knuckles, feeling no pain himself, nothing but the craving to split skin and intensify the agony. He didn’t know how long he continued to pound his would-be assailant, but before long he noticed that the man was sagging against the wall, no longer attempting to recoil. His mouth was gaping open, dribbling saliva and blood. His eyes were two swollen mounds.
Les grabbed his wrist. There was no pulse.
He jumped back in surprise and stared down at his hands. His knuckles were bloodied and throbbing. The fog of his rage evaporated and a cool pragmatism swept in. He glanced around and was relieved to see that the alley was still deserted.
He had to act fast. Any minute, someone could come walking through, spot them, and call the cops. Thinking quickly, he pulled out a fat black Sharpie from his briefcase, which had fallen a few feet away. After taking a moment to scrutinize the nearby graffiti, he traced a line around the body and drew a giant MS-13 above it on the wall in thick block text, mimicking the font of similar markings. MS-13, he knew from the news, was the name of a violent transnational gang that had recently expanded to D.C.
Next from the briefcase he withdrew a cigarette and a matchbox emblazoned with the name of a fancy restaurant he’d eaten at the week before. His hands shook as he dragged the match head along the strip, slipping the first few times, but succeeding when a yellow flame bloomed. Its heat jabbed at his fingertips as he lit the cigarette and took a long drag.