TWENTY-FIVE
The storm turns out to be a herd of synchronized dust devils, minitornadoes that hit with the force of a category-five hurricane. A whirlwind of sand engulfs the sedan, scratches the windows, rocks the suspension, and threatens to strip the paint from the bulky sheet metal. Visibility is zero. The airport has disappeared, swallowed in a drab, featureless blur.
The BEAN agent slows, pulls off the side of the road, and comes to a complete stop. Adjusts his eyescreens, then bangs the GPS screen mounted on the dashboard.
Liz screams.
Rigo jerks his head sideways to look at her. A face looms in the swirling dust, pressed against the bullet-proof glass, hood whipping in the gale, eyes and nose hidden behind infrared goggles and a camo-tan filter mask.
More faces appear, leaning close to peer into the sedan.
The door next to Jeraldo pops open, swings outward, followed by the door next to Liz. Last is the driver’s door.
Gloved hands—biosuit clad, robed—reach in. Grasp Liz, then Jeraldo, and yank them out. Liz squawks, kicks, nails Rigo in the chin with the stiletto heel of one designer cardboard pump, lacquered in corporate black. Rigo and the BEAN agent are next. Rigo decides not to put up a fight. Allows himself to be half dragged, half helped out of the car.
“You can’t do this!” Liz protests. “Do you know who we are?”
The roar of wind and sand carry her voice away. Rigo stands next to her, each of his arms held in a bone-crushing grip. Motherfuckers are humping industrial-strength military bodyware.
A hooded figure detaches from the group and steps up to Rigo. The way the person moves, quickly but with a slight stoop, is vaguely familiar.
“You with RiboGen?” Robo voce words mechanically distorted by the micropore filter mask. Voice-print encrypted.
Rigo licks grit from his teeth behind closed lips. Before he can respond, the dude punches him in the stomach. Rigo grunts. Doubles over. Drops to his knees on the sand-scoured concrete. When he recovers his breath and looks up, Liz and Jeraldo are staring at him in wide-eyed horror. As if he’s just had one ear cut off or a molar twisted out with a socket wrench.
“Get them inside,” his assailant orders.
Two men pick Rigo up by the armpits, hustle him in the direction of a Quonset-style building etched in the whirlwind of thinning dun-colored fog. He can’t breathe. Actinic flashes detonate behind his eyes, bright as stars twinkling on a moonless night. Just before lights out, Rigo catches a brief glimpse of a protective cage, antennae, and balloon wheels on spring-loaded suspension. An old Mars buggy left over from NASA’s early desert-test days.
Rigo wakes in subterranean cool. Concrete walls with no windows. Low-budget biolum panels glued to a prefab concrete ceiling. Some of the panels have fallen off in infirmity while others have gone dead. He’s on a rickety carbyne-frame gurney with a gel mattress so old it’s begun to stiffen and go brittle. The door across from the bed is scratched gray metal, the cuts in the surface scabbed with rust. It has a tiny square wire-mesh window that looks out on a featureless concrete corridor, painted white. The enamel has started to yellow and flake.
Shadows expand in the corridor. The door swings inward, and the BEAN agent steps inside.
Rigo sits up, wincing as his bruised stomach threatens to cramp. “What’s going on?”
The BEAN agent regards him with existential, Buddha-like complacency. “Think of it as a slight detour.”
“You’re not with BEAN, are you?” Rigo swivels his legs over the edge of the gel mattress.
“I am, and I’m not.”
Great, a metaphysician. Just what he needs in lieu of a doctor. “Mind telling me where I am?”
The BEAN agent shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Or won’t. “Why not?”
The BEAN agent smiles. “Because then I would have to kill you, and neither of us wants that.”
He says this casually, with the blasé detachment of someone who’s been in this position before and knows whereof he speaks. “In other words, I should just kick back and enjoy the visit,” Rigo says.
The BEAN agent’s smile widens, revealing back teeth that have been sculpted to resemble miniature dice or dominoes. “Just be happy.”
“Varda?” Rigo says.
“I can’t pinprick our location,” the IA says. “All infrared, microwave, and radio transmissions are being jellied.”
Rigo shifts his attention back to his captor. “Where are Liz and Jeraldo?”
“On the path to enlightenment,” the BEAN agent says, laying on more of his Dalai Lama rhetoric. “They’re no longer your concern . . . just as you are no longer a concern of theirs.”
Translation: They’ve got other problems to worry about. From this point forward he’s flying solo. “What do you want from me?”
“Your help.”
“With what?”
As if on cue, the door opens and a second man enters. He’s waring flitcam-studded ear beads, pentagonal wire-frame eyescreens, and a dun-colored Jodhpuri-influenced suit woven out of smart fabric, a hemp-rayon blend threaded with amyloid protein wires that smell of yeast. This is complemented by a fashionable Nehru hat, white with gold circuit-board resham work.
“I’m sorry I punched you in the stomach,” says the ICLU agent who approached Anthea about Ibrahim in the VRcade. “But it was necessary, to keep up appearances. No hard feelings, I hope.” He extends a diplomatic hand.
Out of habit, Rigo takes it. Incredible. He’s been beaten up and kidnapped by a human rights org. At least he didn’t get snow-coned.
“You have a name?” Rigo asks.
“Yes.”
But the dude’s not going to divulge it—not even a nom de guerre to underscore his status as a militant.
The BEAN agent adjusts his powder blue tie. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggests, “shall we?”
They lead him out of the room, into a maze of corridors. Every so often, Rigo catches a whiff of negative ions percolating through overhead vents. Tastes scent-free surfactants in the air cooling on his fingertips. They pass through the purple glow and drip-line trickle of a hydroponics garden. Low-light fruits and vegetables flourishing in long troughs glued to the walls. The air is humid. The tunnel ceiling sweats condensation. Beyond this, intermittent laughter bounces off the peeling walls, a bright cheery sound that lightens his mood. Soon they come to a playroom filled with kids and all different kinds of toys. Rigo stops, amazed. The kids actually look as if they’re having fun, enjoying themselves. There are a couple of adult supervisors, psychological counselor types. But, by and large, the kids appear free to do what they want.
Rigo turns to his escorts. “Is Ibrahim here?”
The ICLU agent shakes his head. “I wish.”
“Where is he?”
“Good question. We’re still in the process of trying to reacquire him.”
They move on to the hospital wing. No laughter here. It’s quiet as a tomb and reminds Rigo a little of the nonprofit clinic where he met Beto before podding down to Salmon Ella’s to meet Dorit. Clear plastic quarantine tents and clade-isolation cubes crowd the rooms. Secondhand Japanese hotel cylinders rise three-high in the corridor, connected by flexible PVC to exposed waste and water pipes snaking along the ceiling. Faces glare at him as he passes, dull pain-glazed eyes vivid with hatred and condemnation. It’s hard to meet their gaze. Harder still to look at the motionless shapes huddled in corners or sprawled on gel mattresses.
They’re showing him this for a reason. Rigo’s willing to bet Liz and Jeraldo got the same guided tour and sell job. They want something from him. “So how come you grabbed me?” Rigo says. “Brought me here?”
The ICLU agent slips his hands into his jacket. The kind of subtle-ass move that sets Rigo on edge, has him wondering what’s about to materialize out of a concealed pocket. “You could have handed Ibrahim over to BEAN, but didn’t. Instead you went out of your way to help him.”
Rigo considers this. “I didn’t do all that much. Just chilled with him for a while. That’s it.”
“That’s more than most people would have done. Plus, you could have reported me after our initial contact, and chose not to.”
And that makes him a sympathizer, a partisan. It suddenly dawns on him what’s being proposed. “You want me to join the ICLU?”
The ICLU agent shrugs. “Why not? You have nothing to lose. Nothing to go back to now that you’ve been sacked. It would give you a chance to help out kids who are in the same situation as Ibrahim.”
“What would I do?” It’s not like he has a degree in volunteer work, or any direct experience. As a recruit, he leaves a lot to be desired.
“Hospital work,” the ICLU agent says, launching into a prepared litany. “Reconnaissance and data analysis. Pharm work.” A euphemism, no doubt, for covert action. “It’s entirely up to you. Be all you can be.”
“You’ll be trained, of course,” the BEAN agent adds. “The pay’s not great, but the rewards are incalculable.”
“You’d receive a per diem,” the ICLU agent tells him, “based on the requirements of your assignment. That’s all we can afford.”
Rigo doesn’t know what to say. He’s stunned, flabbergasted. “I can’t,” he says at last.
“Why not?” the ICLU agent asks.
“Anthea.” No way he can leave her.
“We’ll contact her, if you like. Make her the same offer. She already has extensive experience working with kids for a nonprofit. The move would be more or less lateral.”
“You didn’t really want to go to Siberia anyway, did you?” the BEAN agent says to twist his arm.
“I don’t know,” Rigo says.
“You don’t have to decide now,” the BEAN agent says. “Take your time. Think it over. Talk to your
jeva
when you get back.”
“You’re going to let me go?”
The ICLU agent offers a placid nod. “In economic terms, you’re of high use but little exchange value. Unlike your former compatriots.”
Which means, Rigo surmises, that Liz and Jeraldo did not take the ICLU up on its offer. “What’s going to happen to them?”
“We’ll try to negotiate a swap.”
“For Ibrahim?”
“If we can.” The ICLU agent puckers his brow. “It all depends on how much RiboGen values them.”
“If they’re worth half as much as they believe they are,” the BEAN agent says to Rigo, “we’ll be lucky to get an even trade.”
“If that doesn’t work out,” the ICLU agent says, “we’ll request compensation for their safe return.”
Rigo nods. “I didn’t realize the ICLU got involved in this kind of covert-op shit.”
“We’re a splinter faction,” the BEAN agent admits. “Not officially sponsored or recognized by the parent org.”
“I see.” A shadow arm.
“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” the ICLU agent asks. It doesn’t sound like a threat—not quite.
It’s exactly the same kind of pressure Whipplebaum put on him to go to Tiresias. No different. If he doesn’t go along, he’s going to end up disappointing himself or someone else. That’s the implication, along with the idea that others know what’s best for him. Easier to do what his friends, family, and co-workers think than it is to think for himself. It’s what he’s been doing his entire life: caving in to the wishes of others, trying to be the person everybody wants him to be. As a result, he’s a no one. A total blank. If he joins the ICLU he’ll just end up in the same identical situation he was in at Noogenics. Ditto OAsys or Ecotrope.
“Maybe some other time,” Rigo ventures.
“There is one other contribution we’d like you to consider.” The ICLU agent is nothing if not persistent.
Rigo hesitates. “What’s that?”
“A blood donation. It’ll give us a head start on counteracting the slave pherion Ibrahim was dosed with.”
“You want to develop an antipher?”
“The pherion won’t go away just because Tiresias did,” the BEAN agent says. “The warm-blooded plants are here to stay. Almost certainly, the pherion will be used for biodependency crimes here. Which means we will need an antipher to counteract it. The sooner, the better.”
“Okay,” Rigo agrees, “on one condition. I want to be taken back to the city right now, and after I donate I’m on the first flight to San Jose.”
“Agreed,” the ICLU agent says.
“In that case”—the BEAN agent loosens, then removes his powder blue tie—“I have to ask you to put this on.”
The tie doubles as a blindfold. As the BEAN agent cinches the silk in place, images of an execution-style killing cling to Rigo’s mind like scraps of paper to barbed wire.
TWENTY-SIX
Two hours after getting back from Hong Kong, Anthea is in her ap, decompressing on Cajun-spiced kelp chips and a grainy black-and-white rerun of Some Like It Hot, when Rigo calls. Her throat constricts, a mixture of relief and trepidation, at the sight of him grinning at her from the octagons of her eyescreens.
“Hey, baby,” he says, all cheerful. “I’m home.” She blinks. “You are?” For some reason, she expected him to call before he was released. Give her some advance warning so she could prepare herself.
“I just got back a few minutes ago. I’m at San Jose International.”
“That’s great.” She swallows at the ache in her throat. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me, neither. I thought they’d never let me go. You wouldn’t believe what I had to do.”
She adjusts her eyescreens. “You look thin,” she says. “Tired.”
“It’s been stressful,” he admits. “Plus the food they were dishing out wasn’t topnotch.”
She takes a deep breath, plunges ahead before she has second thoughts. “We need to talk.”
“Have you found Ibrahim?”
“Not yet.” The lump of fear hardens. “But something else has come up.”
His forehead puckers. “What?”
“It’s better if I tell you in person.” There, she’s committed. No turning back, no running away.
He nods, strangely sober. Could be it’s just weariness. “Can I visit my moms in the hospital first?” he asks. “I want to check up on her. See how she’s doing.”
“She’ll like that.” Relieved that she’s been given a brief reprieve, a chance to steady her nerves, figure out the best way to unburden herself. “I can meet you there in half an hour, if that’s okay.” Hopefully, having Rigo’s mother around will help. Make it easier for her to spill her guts.
“Sounds good,” he says. “I can’t wait to see you,
mami
. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Is that a promise?”
His frown deepens, perplexed. “What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know. I guess with you getting recladed, and then being gone for so long, it feels like we’ve started to grow apart. Like maybe we’re not a couple anymore.” God. She can’t believe how insecure she sounds.
His grin returns, big enough to wipe all doubt from her mind. “Sounds to me like maybe we need to do more than talk.”
By the time Anthea arrives at the clinic, Rigo is already there. She pauses in the hallway outside his mother’s room, listens to the rise and fall of his voice under biolums that stain the walls soft, sedative blue.
“How you feeling, Mama?” His voice is soft, earnest. “You don’t look too good. You seem a little pale.”
“I’m worn down. Exhausted. It’s hard work lying here, having people around all the time.”
“You taking your medication?”
“Can’t not take it. If you don’t, they know right away. Come back and force-feed you. Like you’re a baby.”
“What’s going on with your leg? It getting any better?”
“There’s nothing they can do. Problem is, they haven’t figured that out yet. I tell them, but they’re stubborn. Refuse to listen.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“A little privacy would be nice.”
“You want me to leave?”
“I’m not talking right now.” A heavy sigh. “To be honest I just want to go home. But they won’t let me. Say they still need to run more tests. I feel like a prisoner here.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll discover a cure.” He says this lightly. Only half joking. “You never know. It could happen.”
“Government won’t let them. Even if they did, they wouldn’t let me have it. Save it for any upper-clade folks who accidentally get infected.”
“What are you talking about?” Rigo says. “You’re not making any sense.”
“That’s because you’re not listening. You’d think after what just happened, losing your job, your hearing would be better.”
“What’s that have to do with my hearing?”
“Stone deaf,” the old woman says, like she’s talking to someone else in the room. “You’re the one who should be in this bed. Not me.”
This seems like a good time to interrupt. Anthea steps into the doorway, making a lot of noise to announce her presence. Rigo’s seated in a chair by the bed, holding one of his mother’s stiff gnarled hands in both of his. It’s just the two of them. Rigo glances up and the old woman turns her head, offers a smile that warms and encourages Anthea. Gives her strength.
“There you are,” the old woman says. “Come in.”
Rigo stands. Eases around the bed. “Hey, baby.” He starts toward her, arms out, then stops short.
“It’s okay,” she says, moving into his arms. “I’m not allergic to you right now.”
“Beto?” he says, just to confirm that she’s dosed herself with an antipher. Isn’t going to break out in a rash.
“Yeah. I figure we’ve got an hour before it wears off.”
He embraces her. Picks her up off the floor so she’s hanging like a rag doll. It takes her a moment to relax into the hug. Let the tension ease from her limbs. He puts her down.
“Now I want some privacy,” the old woman says.
“But I just got here,” Rigo says.
“Shoo,” she says, motioning for them to leave with her one good hand. “Go. Get out.”
“You sure?” Rigo says.
“You want me to call a nurse?”
“We’ll stop by later,” Anthea promises.
“Later is good,” the old woman says. “Just don’t hurry on account of me. I’m not going anywhere.”
They go to the cafeteria. Sit on a bench in a tiny attached courtyard/garden, boxed in on all sides by photovoltaic ribbon windows, and shaded by the parasol leaves of a low umbrella palm.
“So . . .” Anthea says. She clutches her hands in her lap, traces a vein on the back of one knuckle.
Rigo takes one hand, stills her restless fingers. With his other hand, he smoothes the hair from one side of her face, cups her cheek so her face tilts to one side, like she’s resting on a pillow. “I almost forgot how beautiful the sun and the moon are,
mami
.”
She nuzzles her face in his palm and kisses it, meets his gaze. “You couldn’t see the sky where you were,
papi
?”
“Not from the room I was locked up in. All I could see was the city. The window was like a tunnel.”
“It sounds awful.”
“It was no picnic. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the landing or the comet breaking apart.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
He nods. “I thought it was all over. I was sure I was going to die and I’d never get back to you. Never get a chance to tell you again how much I love you. How much you mean to me.”
She lifts her head. “Really? That’s what you were worried about?”
“All I could think of was you.”
Her stomach constricts, tight as a boa, squeezing the breath from her lungs. “Even if we can’t have children?
He shrugs. “We have Josué. He’s a good kid. I can pretend.”
“Serious? You could think of him like a son?”
“Sure. I don’t know how he feels about it, or Malina. But I’d be there for him if he wants.”
Anthea sits up and straightens her shoulders, steeling herself. Now is the time, she decides. Before things go too far and she loses her nerve. But she can’t seem to get enough air to speak. Then the tears come. Slow at first, fat drops clinging to lower eyelids, blurring her vision before the dam breaks and they finally spill over, flooding her cheeks.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Sobs shake her. He tries to pull her close, but she fends him off. Doesn’t want to be comforted.
“Did I say something wrong?”
She manages to shake her head. Can’t look at him.
“What is it, then?”
It takes a half minute to recover. For the trembling and the gasps to subside to the point where she can put two words together.
“What if I told you that Malina’s not really my sister? Or that Josué isn’t really my nephew?”
“He’s not?”
She shakes her head. Rubs her nose with the side of one hand. “Malina’s a friend. I met her while I was living on the street, before I got involved with Global Upreach.” The words are coming easier. Flowing of their own volition, like the tears. Beyond her control. “That’s how we know each other.”
“How come you told me she’s your sister?”
“Because I needed a past different from my real one, and that seemed the easiest one to invent.”
Rigo touches his fingertips to his bowed forehead. “Is this a quiz? Some sort of relationship test you read about in a netzine?”
“No.”
“Then I’m confused.” He shakes his head. “How come you needed to invent a different past?”
“Because I didn’t want to lose you. I was afraid if you knew where I came from, who I was, you’d leave.”
Rigo stands, paces in front of the bench. “You mean all that stuff about being a street kid, delivering STDs, was bullshit? A story you made up?”
“No. That’s all true. What’s not true is the part about Malina, and where I grew up.”
He stops. Doesn’t say a word. Waits for her to fill in the silence.
“I was born in HK, not LA. My mother’s upper-clade English. I never really knew my father. The reason I ran away from home was because my mother and I, we didn’t get along. I couldn’t live with her anymore, not the way she wanted me to. She dosed me with a slave pherion, an early military prototype. Kept me locked up, a prisoner in our aplex for over a year. That’s why I can’t have kids. I still need to take an antipher to counteract the pherion.” It comes out in a jumble, scattered, like chipped and scuffed children’s blocks on a playroom floor.
“I feel like I’m in a soap opera,” he says. “One of those old
telenovelas
my moms watches late at night when she can’t sleep.”
“I’m sorry.” She wants to stand, or reach out to him, but is afraid of scaring him off. “I should have told you a long time ago, right from the beginning. But I was embarrassed by who I was. I didn’t want it to get in the way of things, to come between us,
papi
.”
“Sounds like you didn’t trust me.”
“That wasn’t it at all.”
“Well, that’s what I’m hearing.” He starts to pace again, agitated. “You didn’t think I’d understand. You were afraid to confide in me. Like I’d hold your past against you.”
“Would you have?”
“No.” A single shake of the head. Emphatic.
“You’re just saying that.”
He stops. Glares. “So now it’s my fault that you lied to me?”
It’s all coming out wrong. The words are getting all twisted. “I just wanted us to be together. I was confused. Messed up.”
“No different than now.” He runs a hand over the top of his head. “Shit. Makes me think maybe I should have been serious about being recladed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” He removes his hand from his head. “So why are you telling me this now? After two years?”
“I couldn’t live with myself any longer, knowing that I hadn’t been totally honest with you.” She leans forward and cradles her head in her hands.
“At least you feel guilty,” he says. “I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better.”
“I made a mistake,” she tells him. “Everybody makes mistakes.” Her face feels swollen, bloated with despair.
“I have to think,” he says. “How do I know the future won’t be more of the same? You didn’t trust me once. What’s to say it won’t happen again? I mean, what’s with the skeleton doll in your dresser? And the binder full of preserved plants? Is that another deep dark secret I’m going to find out about the next time you have an attack of conscience?”
Anthea blinks. Straightens up. “You were in my apartment?”
“After I got back from Puntarenas. You’d dropped offline. So I knew you were in trouble . . . that something was wrong. No one knew where you were, so I went to find you. That seemed like the first place to look for clues.”
Anthea stiffens. “And that gave you free license to search my ap? Go through my private things?”
“If you’d bothered to tell me what the fuck was going on I wouldn’t have had to. I didn’t have a choice.”
“When were you going to tell me you’d gone through my stuff?” she demands, her cheeks flushed. “Or were you just going to keep it to yourself? Like that
chucha cuerera
you were with.”
“What are you talking about? What slut?”
“The woman you went to see the night you visited your mom. After you called to tell me you had to stop by work.”
“How did you? . . .” His voice trails off.
“I’m not stupid.” Anthea cinches her hands into fists and crosses her arms tight over her chest. It’s all she can do not to hit him, to hold herself together. “If you were unhappy—”
“It’s not what you think,” he says. “I swear.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
He throws up his hands in exasperation. Goes all indignant on her. “
Chingalo!
” he says. Fuck it. “I don’t need this bullshit.”
And heads out. Leaves her sitting on the bench, throat aching, spine taut, eyes gritty as rain-washed bone.
This is it, Anthea thinks. It’s all over between them. Not even the beginning of the end.