ViraVax

by Bill Ransom

  “In bags?” she asked, and feared the worst. “Were they dead?”

  David shook his head. “No, but they were naked.”

  “You saw them? Where?”

  “In my cart. I took them to decon. They gave the girl a shot but dumped the boy on the floor.”

  Sabbath procedures had started early, and now there was a Code Yellow. She hoped the Code Yellow was a diversion, and not the real thing. If they went into full shutdown, no telling how long she’d be here.

  Months, she thought. Maybe years.

  Marte suspected that Casey was taking no chances. If Harry and Sonja were as important as Mariposa implied, Casey didn’t want anyone to stumble onto these children. Marte had hopped the cart next to David and had him race to the elevators, but the readout at the elevator gate said, “Level Five Decon in Progress.” Level Five was Mishwe’s domain, and very bad news, indeed.

  Now she worried about David, and hoped that they considered him too ignorant to threaten anyone with what he’d seen. He had been beeped away, and left her at her doorstep like a suitor.

  “When I get back, let’s walk out in the artichokes,” he’d told her. “They’re beautiful.”

  Her restlessness burned, and the yellow light above her door continued its incessant warnings. Darkness slid over the mountains two hours ago, but Marte stared out her only window, wishing for sun. Because of the precipitous mountains, Marte would not see the sun again from this window until tomorrow, halfway to noon.

  She turned to her terminal and added a note to her morning burst, awaiting the outgoing bureaucratic rushes to the embassy.

  “Sentries carried in limp male, dressed in blue, from perimeter at 1855, to bldg A-3, no alarm.”

  Her burst already informed Mariposa that the captives were out of reach in the confines below. The only thing she had seen crawl out of Level Five was Dajaj Mishwe, and he was hardly a good omen.

  If the rebels or the Agency were going to rescue her before the Sabbath ended, they’d better get moving. She wished that her quarters afforded her a better view.

  Why don’t I just wish myself out of here?

  Her window faced east, into the canyon wall less than a kilometer away. The landing pad, the only lifeline to the outside, was directly behind her.

  What if they come and go and I miss my chance? she worried. How much time would they spend looking for me?

  Casey had told her that the elevators were the only access down below Level Two, yet she’d seen Mishwe beat the elevator’s mandatory four-hour grind by over three and a half hours. He had a back way, or a trick to override the elevators. Still, if whoever was coming in here wanted the two hostages, they would have to bring them up an elevator, of this she was certain.

  But which one?

  The newcomers had gone down the usual decon route directly from receiving, right out of the hangar bay beneath the landing pad. Marte was not allowed to loiter in that area, but on the Sabbath movement was much easier. Access topside and deepside was sealed off in sensitive areas, but still Sabbath was the only day she felt free to take a walk and actually feel the sun.

  The “transmit” light on her console winked on, and she reacted promptly, flurrying her fingers inside her gloveware.

  “I’ll be near the pad” was all she had time to add at the end of her burst.

  Marte put in a call on David’s box, but he didn’t reply. She thought that he might be at the Level Two lounge across from her labs, where he often had tea with her in the afternoons. She stepped off the elevator in time to see his cart at the far end of the corridor, racing full tilt towards her.

  Marte and David were the only two in the passageway; already the rest of the crew had quit for the Sabbath. As the cart got closer, it began weaving from side to side without slowing down. Marte recognized the expression on David’s pale face as complete terror, and she was not sure that he even saw her.

  “David!” she called. “David, slow down!”

  He didn’t slow down. “Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

  David slumped in the seat, pulling the steering handle as he went. The cart slammed against the wall and Marte slipped into a doorway to keep it from hitting her. It whined past her and wedged itself into the next doorway, its hot wheels squealing on the waxed floor and its flashers blinking.

  “David, what happened?”

  Just as quickly as she touched his shoulder, she jerked away. His face was slack in unconsciousness or death, and his skin had already begun to sag and split under the weight of the contents underneath.

  “Help me!” Marte screamed, looking both ways down the corridor. “Help!”

  No one responded. She yanked a firebox handle beside the doorway, then pulled David by his overalls to get him off the cart. He left a trail of tissue behind that flickered with the trace of a blue flame as it melted into the rubber mat. She decided not to wait for help, and she did two things that she vowed she would never do if faced with a contamination situation: she had already touched the victim, and now she was going to flee the facility to save herself.

  She jumped aboard the cart, backed it out of the doorway and raced for an elevator.

  Chapter 33

  Joshua Casey washed his father’s feet in the old ceramic bowl that his mother had made. Calvin Casey was sweating, in spite of the air-conditioning, and his breathing was wet and labored. His feet and ankles were so swollen that the tops of his socks left an impression that would not rub out. Joshua finished his ritual, then pressed a thumb into the swollen tissue. The thumbprint stayed, and it was white.

  “Are you feeling all right, Father?” he asked.

  “Can’t sleep,” the Master wheezed. “Too restless.”

  “How many pillows are you using?”

  “Five or six. Why?”

  The Master sprinkled water on the tops of Joshua’s feet, then swiped them once with the linen towel. Joshua didn’t care for this shorthand version of their ritual, but he saw his father struggling greatly to bend down or to kneel, and this worried him. Joshua replaced his father’s socks and shoes, tied up his laces and disposed of the water and towels.

  “Your ankles are swollen, you can barely breathe sitting up, much less lying flat on your back.”

  To Joshua’s surprise, his father smiled.

  “You’re a smart one, Joshua,” he said. “I know you dislike the medicos, but you’ve got the touch.”

  Joshua poured out their ice water and broke the small loaf of dark bread between them.

  “Don’t worry, Father, it’s salt-free,” he said.

  “Salt’s not the problem,” Calvin said. “You know me better than that. Anyone who’s read my books knows—”

  “——So we know it’s congestive heart failure,” Joshua interrupted. “What happened that you haven’t told me?”

  His father chewed the dense bread, washed it down and poured himself another glass of water.

  “Haven’t told anybody,” Calvin said. “Heart attack, I think. Just after I left here last time.”

  “You think? You mean, you didn’t check it out?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Calvin said. “I’m prepared to meet our Lord, and the Children of Eden are prepared to go on without me. So are you.”

  Joshua Casey had not given much thought to his father’s mortality. Until this visit, his father had never looked older than fifty or fifty-five. In two months he had aged twenty years. Today every minute of his seventy-five years showed in his gray, puffy face, his bent posture and trembling hands. This old man before him appeared a very sick old man, and Joshua knew that he would not live much longer.

  Too bad he can’t know what we’ve done for him, Casey thought.

  “I’m sorry, Father. I’ve had problems here. The country is blowing up again.”

  “I know,” his father said, a hand on Joshua’s knee, “I know when you’re preoccupied. And my people keep me abreast of the news in this region. Terrible thing about that Toledo fellow, going south as he
did. Would you care to tell me about it?”

  He knows! Joshua thought. As usual, he knows everything but he wants me to tell him.

  Mishwe had gone too far, and if Calvin Casey got wind of trouble inside ViraVax, trouble that related to the political situation, then it wouldn’t be long before everybody else got wind of it, too. Joshua Casey trusted his father completely, and valued his judgment, but he did not want to endanger the Master’s health any further. He finished his ritual water and bread before speaking.

  “One of our best people is insane,” he said. “He has endangered our security here. He has visited a scrutiny upon us that we may not survive.”

  “Dajaj Mishwe?”

  Joshua sighed. His father was, truly, an insightful man.

  “Yes.”

  “He has performed well for you in the past,” Calvin said. “Has he begun that business with the young women again?”

  “No,” Joshua said. “It’s more serious than that.”

  Calvin’s bushy eyebrows jumped once, twice, then his lips set in a gray line.

  “It’s hard to get more serious than murder,” Calvin wheezed. “You know that I prefer not to nose into your business here. But give me the details, perhaps I can help.”

  Joshua told his father what he knew of Mishwe’s private agenda.

  “Our goal is to make humanity better, just as we are making the earth better,” Joshua said. “Mishwe talked about starting over with the Garden of Eden. He wasn’t happy improving humans. He wants to start over with the perfect couple—a new, handcrafted Adam and Eve.”

  “And how would he manage that?” Calvin asked.

  “Cloning,” Joshua said. “Using our artificial viral agents with sperm as the vector.”

  Calvin Casey waved an impatient hand at his son.

  “I don’t follow your shoptalk,” the Master said. “I know what a clone is, start from there.”

  “A clone is a copy of a person,” Joshua said. “That’s the basics. But as long as you’re mucking about in there and cloning, you might as well take care of other business, too. Even viable clones from petri dishes have a lot of defects—basically, from overhandling, exposure to ultraviolet, crude tools or clumsy technique. But our AVAs take away all that hardware and provide a way to get inside the cell, manipulate its map and send it on its way.”

  “I thought it was illegal to clone humans.”

  “It’s not illegal, it’s unethical,” Joshua said. “Besides, very little is illegal in Costa Brava these days. I’ll hand it to Mishwe, he even kept it from me for years.”

  Calvin Casey pinched the bridge of his nose, ran his hand over his bald head and asked, “He has done this?”

  Joshua swallowed hard.

  “He has done it,” he admitted. “Sixteen years ago. He informed me well after the fact. Toledo’s son, Red Bartlett’s daughter.”

  “The daughter!”

  Calvin Casey looked perplexed.

  “How could it be the daughter?” he asked. “You said cloning made a copy from the sperm”

  “Yes,” Joshua said. “The mechanism was delivered through Red Bartlett’s sperm. It did not deliver Bartlett’s genetic material, only the appropriate messages to trigger duplication of the ovum. Parthenogenesis.”

  “Doesn’t sound like any part of Genesis to me,” Calvin muttered.

  If the matter hadn’t been so serious, Joshua would have laughed long and hard at this.

  “Go on,” his father urged.

  “You were present for the incident with Bartlett a couple of months ago. Well, Bartlett and Colonel Toledo were longtime friends. He thought that Bartlett’s murder might have something to do with his work here.”

  “And was he correct?”

  Joshua shook his head, sorry that he had to lie to his father, the only man in the world that he truly respected.

  “No,” he said. “It was a break-in of some kind. The man was executed. Toledo had family problems, got a divorce, got drummed out of the service. But Toledo kept drinking and he kept digging. Somebody began accessing our system. Mishwe suspected Toledo and wanted to stop him. Also, Dajaj was afraid that the mothers would take Harry and Sonja out of the country, out of his reach. They are his Adam and Eve, and they are teenagers. He wanted to get control of them before they were. . . contaminated.”

  “Before they lost their virginity, you mean.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Mishwe engineered all of this political bungling?”

  “To draw Toledo into a trap and destroy him,” Joshua said. “And to get possession of his two clones.”

  “Then the two young people are here? With both governments after them?”

  Calvin Casey’s face had gone from gray to purple, and he was very short of breath. Joshua did not get the chance to answer.

  “Security,” Shirley announced over his console. “Your package is outside.”

  “Mishwe?” Calvin asked.

  Joshua nodded.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this right now,” he promised.

  Joshua buzzed the doorlocks open, but before security could usher Mishwe inside, Joshua Casey saw his father jerk in his chair as though struck by a fist. A look of complete surprise washed over his face and he pitched forward onto the carpet with a grunt.

  Joshua Casey heard a high-pitched, disorienting whine that seemed to come from inside his own head. He tried to rise, but could not make his legs or arms work. A guard walked through the door and Casey tried to speak, but the whine had changed to a very loud rushing sound and he couldn’t be sure he was heard over the racket. Eyes wide open and hand over his mouth, the guard backed into Mishwe.

  The last thing Joshua Casey saw was Dajaj Mishwe, smiling over the crumpled body of the Master. Faint screams and the rushing of feet came to him from Shirley’s office and from the hallway. A small blue flame flickered from his dead father’s ear, and Casey knew that it was not the Holy Spirit.

  Chapter 34

  Harry looked behind their peel-and-peek and used the handle of his spoon to unscrew the bases of their light fixtures. He tapped and poked every square meter of ceiling. He wanted to find a way out before they were moved to a real room in another part of the facility. The machinery sounds around them had died down.

  “They’re shutting down for Sabbath,” Sonja told him. “We’ll probably be stuck here until Monday morning.”

  The elevator shaft is a straight shot, he reasoned. If they take us anywhere else, well get lost in the maze and never get topside.

  Sonja paced, trying to draw the attention of any observers away from Harry.

  “What are you looking for?” she whispered.

  “The service hatch,” he whispered back. “There’s got to be one.”

  When Harry was five his father stopped an elevator between floors. The two of them were the only passengers, and his father had said, “Let me show you something,” then he pushed a red button on the number panel. The numbers went all the way to number 10. Number 5 was lit.

  A sudden stop had pitched Harry to his knees, and a loud, clanging bell hurt his ears. Harry had clapped his hands over his ears and did not try to get up. The Colonel had silenced the bell with a screwdriver from his back pocket.

  “Now,” he’d said to Harry, “look here.”

  The Colonel had reached up to the top of the elevator, lifted the big, square light fixture up and set it aside with a clunk onto the top of the car.

  “The elevator is just a box,” he explained, “and that’s the top. I’ll lift you up, and then come up after.”

  Before Harry could protest, his father had him under the armpits, over his shoulders and through the hole. It was a high, dusty shaft, cool, and it smelled of oil. Besides the light that lay beside him, Harry saw light spilling from around the sides of elevator doors all the way up the shaft.

  “Move over,” his father said.

  Harry scrambled aside as his father heaved himself up, then through the hole. The Colon
el picked up the light fixture, replaced it, then squatted at a dusty control panel atop the elevator.

  “Sit here in the middle,” his father warned him. “Things coming up and down the walls will take your arm off. Stay away from that cable, it’s greasy. Your mother would kill me if you got grease all over you.”

  A cable as thick as Harry’s wrist looped over a framework atop the car. The Colonel pushed a button, and the bell came on again. He pushed another, and it went off. The next button he pushed started the car going up, and Harry saw why it was important to stay away from the walls. A huge concrete weight whooshed down its track in the wall and he jerked back, falling against his father.

  “Now watch this,” his father said. “Look through the light.”

  Harry knelt over the light fixture. The bright light hurt his eyes after the contrast of the darkened shaft, but he could see the whole inside of the car. His father stopped it, opened the doors, and a young, long-haired couple stepped inside.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” the girl asked, looking the car up and down.

  “It’s running,” the boy answered. “The alarm stopped. It must be okay. Probably some kid.”

  He pressed a button and the door closed. The elevator rose one floor, two floors.

  The Colonel did something on the rooftop control panel, and the elevator eased to a stop. The couple stepped forward as the doors opened, then stepped back in shock. The elevator had stopped about a meter short of the next floor.

  “Shit!” the girl said, pressing herself against the back of the car.

  “Yeah, well,” the boy said, grabbing her hand, “let’s go. Let’s get out of here before the doors close.”

  He boosted her up to the next floor, then jumped up himself, limber as a cat.

  The Colonel and Harry laughed behind their hands as noiselessly as they could. The Colonel closed the doors in the faces of the curious bystanders, and they proceeded to the top of the tenth floor. The Colonel threw a switch that shut the machinery down. He pulled out a pocket flashlight and showed Harry the pulleys and counterweights and explained that he could ride the top of the elevator without getting smashed against the ceiling.