The two agents trade a quick glance, then look back to her. “We spec his current location at your facility,” the green agent says.
“Well, the information you have is wrong.” Anthea wets her lips, hopes they misinterpret her nervousness as fear of Ibrahim and the danger he allegedly presents.
The green agent flips down his eyescreens, shakes his head, flips one of the screens back up. “I don’t understand. He should be there.”
Anthea swallows. “If you don’t believe me, come look for yourself.”
The furrows on the yellow agents forehead deepen, sallow as a wrinkled peach. “How long has he been missing?”
“I’m not sure.” Anthea resists the urge to wipe her sweaty palms on her pants. “I found out only a few minutes ago, just before you called.”
The green agent purses his lips in distress. “He can’t have been gone very long. Can’t have gotten far.”
“All right,” the yellow agent says. “We’ll take it from here. Thank you for your cooperation. If you hear anything, let us know.”
“I will,” Anthea promises.
“We’ll be in touch,” the green agent says. The two bureaucrats wink out, replaced by a wall-size mural of Ibrahim’s sketch, courtesy of Doug.
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” the IA says, affecting a vintage Western drawl, à la John Wayne. “You’re in a heap of trouble, little lady.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Anthea counters. She hurries from her office in the direction of the clinic.
“Now hold on just a doggoned minute,” Doug says. “I don’t know exactly what you have in mind. But if you think they’re gonna buy that cockamamie story . . .”
Anthea tunes the IA out, thinks about what the BEAN agents told her. The whole terrorist angle seems shaky. Why smuggle in a kid who might die before he’s had a chance to spread the pherions he’s supposedly doped with? The strategy seems pretty hit-and-miss. Random. On the other hand, arranging it so he dies makes perfect sense. What better way to keep him quiet—cover their tracks? Still, Anthea doesn’t believe for a second that he’s an active member of a terrorist org. Maybe an unwilling victim or pawn. She has a feeling there’s a lot BEAN’s not telling her. The bottom line is that they want him, and not so they can help him recover. Ergo, he’ll be better off somewhere else. Clearly, he can’t stay where he is. It’s only a matter of time before the two agents show up to check out her story. They might already be on the way. She has to act fast if she’s going to make this work.
“Is there anyone with Ibrahim?” she asks Doug.
“Not right this moment.”
“Good. Let me know if it looks like anybody is going to show up in the next five minutes.”
“There’s nothin’ but heartache on the road you’re headed down,” Doug says to her.
The IA’s right. Once she sneaks Ibrahim out there’s no turning back. Especially if BEAN figures out she’s responsible for his disappearance.
So why do it? she asks herself. She’s lost kids before, what’s different about this one? Why can’t she let go of him, move on?
And what if the two BEAN goons are right? What if Ibrahim really is doped with dangerous pherions? What if by delaying or preventing them from examining him, a lot of innocent people get hurt?
No. The sketch and the information Doug’s mined don’t point to a terrorist org.
She’ll know more after she talks to Beto. He should be able to give her some idea of what’s going on, where the truth lies. If it turns out the agents are right, she can hand him over.
Meanwhile if Ibrahim’s going to die, no way it’s going to be in a BEAN detention center.
TWELVE
The RiboGen reclade clinic is located in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Rigo LOHops down from Seattle with ten other members of the implementation team.
Puntarenas is an old port city on a narrow spit of land. A ten-meter-high seawall, like the one along the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, only longer and more patchwork, keeps the ocean at bay. Westward, across a broad harbor, lies a hazy peninsula that helps calm the now temperamental Pacific. Damped by a variety of kelp that spreads gas-filled balloons across the surface of the water, the waves that stagger into the seawall are barely half a meter high. They hit with a weary, defeated lassitude.
The buildings perch on steel-girder stilts, built in the frantic days before the seawall was completed and the ocean was rising up like some mythical beast to devour civilization. The town’s workspace begins at the level of the seawall. At that height the facades are white stucco echoes of the Spanish-style haciendas and cathedrals erected by Conquistadors and priests flushed with exuberance at the prospect of saving souls and subjugating the masses to the word of God. It has the look of fervor, of missionary zeal fueled by divine mandate.
Below, interspersed between the girders, is the living space—plazas, courtyards, barrio-style shacks and cafés percolating with scratchy conversation, stained with rust and the briny patina of ennui. The ground level exudes the bored capitulation of drowsy music and desiccated paint flaking off aged wood. The feeling of spiritual dry rot leaves Rigo with the same metallic taste in his mouth as his old South San Jose hood in the middle of the afternoon when everyone is lying low, waiting for the cover of night and the energizing rhythms of salsa and samba.
“You think we’ll have time to get in any sight-seeing?” Luis asks just before they land.
“Not the kind of sights you’re interested in,” Antoine quips. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
“Yeah,” Rana says. “We can’t hang around for days, waiting for you to maybe get lucky.”
“Or weeks,” Naguib says. “Shit, man, we could be here forever with your batting average. Nothing but strike-outs.”
“Besides,” Hsi-Tang says, “what makes you think the love goddesses here will be interested in you, dude?”
“Cultural fascination,” Luis says. “Back home, I’m just another Puerto-Cubano. Here, I’m exotic. I have a revolutionary mystique.”
“I got news for you,” TomE says. “Exotic is not necessarily a selling point with the ladies. They see unusual, and the first thing they think is freak. You should have left your matching Che necktie and pocket watch at home.”
“They’re collector’s items,” Luis says. “Antiques. I have this feeling my luck is about to change.”
“Undoubtedly for the worse,” Rana says.
“Though at the rate you’re going, I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Okay,” Luis admits, placing a hand over his heart. “So I’m a tragic figure. That doesn’t make me a loser.”
“Just comedic,” Rigo wisecracks.
“Very funny,” Luis says, all wounded.
A couple of minutes later they’re on the ground, air hissing through the cabin as pressure seals pop and doors swing open.
“I thought it would be hotter,” Rigo comments to Whipplebaum, hanging back as the rest of his team jostles ahead, elbowing one another.
The climate in the upper level is surprisingly temperate. Whipplebaum explains that the local microclime is cooled by endothermic plants that suck warmth out of the surrounding atmosphere and transfer the thermal energy to heat sinks where it’s made available for any number of commercial, residential, and industrial processes.
“Most of this is experimental ecotecture,” Whipplebaum says as they pod from the LOHop pad direct to the RiboGen clinic. “It’s one of several beta test zones maintained by RiboGen.”
“Where are the others?” Rigo asks.
“Various locations around the globe.” Whipplebaum waves a vague, desultory hand.
Rigo studies the exotic foliage growing in the spaces between the causeways and buildings. Much of the ecotecture appears to be composed of epiphytes, orchidlike plants that draw all their nourishment from the air and—suspended by a cobweb grid of wires—seem to float in space.
“So, this is stuff that Noogenics will end up manufacturing?” Rigo asks Whipplebaum. As a systech, he has a professional interest in what might be down the road.
“Eventually,” Whipplebaum says. “It won’t be ready to go into production for another year or two.”
“Is this where the warm-blooded plants were first grown?”
“No.” Whipplebaum fingers his bolo tie. “They were designed here. But the first test plants were seeded in Antarctica.”
Their pod slows to a stop at a building that resembles a Roman bathhouse, with dildo-stolid colonnades and vaulted ceilings that remind Rigo of the ribbed cup of a wire bra.
“Here we are,” Whipplebaum announces. Rigo hops out of the pod with the rest of the ITs. The reclade clinic isn’t what he expected. Instead of the usual hospital atmosphere of hushed halls and squeaky surfaces, this place feels more like a resort. It smells of jasmine, almonds, and overripe oranges. Birds dart among the suspended vines and leaves. Parakeets, hummingbirds, toucans. There’s a central atrium with a big geodesic dome of stained photovoltaic cellulose.
Rigo glances around for Dorit. He doesn’t spot her or any of the other colonists. Unlike Rigo, who gets to go home after a couple of hours, Dorit will remain overnight to undergo more radical acclimatization processes that will prep her for her permanent stay on the comet.
“How Pasteural,” Varda rhapsodizes as the group approaches a series of bowers and vine-laced trellises.
The IA’s flitcam hops from the stud in Rigo’s ear to a nearby leaf, where it crawls around on the glossy nap. “Feel this for me?” Varda says.
Why not? Rigo’s curious about the texture of the leaf himself. He reaches out, trails a finger along the surface as he saunters by. It’s soft as chenille. He withdraws his hand, presses his finger and thumb together, rubs the fuzzy residue of the plant into his skin so Varda can sequence the pherion signature.
While Rigo’s wiping his fingers clean on his pants, Claribel comes up to him. She leans close and says, “I’m worried,” in a whisper that’s almost drowned out by the loud banter of the others.
“About what?” Rigo says, dropping his voice to match hers.
“This is an experimental clade. What if something goes wrong with the reclading process?”
“I’m sure it’s been fully modeled,” Rigo says. “Debugged.”
“Yeah, but has it been tested live? If it hasn’t, I’m not sure I want to be the first. You know?”
“They wouldn’t take any chances at this point,” Rigo says, “jeopardize the entire project if it wasn’t completely safe.”
“I just get the feeling there’s a lot of stuff they’re not telling us . . . that we’re being kept in the dark.”
“I know how you feel. But if there was a problem, do you think an upper exec like Whipplebaum would be here?”
“Probably not.” This seems to mollify her. She drifts away from him, and rejoins the others as they enter the atrium.
Beneath the dome, they’re met by white-coated clade techs, one for each person, who whisk them away to separate examination rooms. The room is small and looks out on an open-air terrace crowded with grottolike pools and ecotectural bamboo that appears to filter or recirculate water. Rigo’s CT is an efficient middle-aged cauc, bald on top with a carefully coifed tonsure that resembles a silver-gray crown. He speaks in stunted monosyllabic sentences—“Sit. Good. Open”—as if he’s been lobotomized by cultural inbreeding.
While Rigo reclines in a gel-padded examination chair, the cauc scrapes a tissue sample from his tongue, runs a pherion scan to establish a base clade profile.
“Odd.” The cauc frowns, squinting at the results in the flip-down screens of his glasses. Specked with black pixels, they resemble little squares of newsprint attached to wire frames.
Rigo isn’t exactly sure what to make of the cauc’s comment. The antisense blockers he dosed himself with before visiting his mother should be out of his system by now. Other than that, he doesn’t know what he could have picked up that would register as out of the ordinary. Unless some of the drug Beto cooked up for Mama got into his system . . .
“Irregular,” the cauc mumbles, half under his breath.
The words seem to carry the weight of a biblical pronouncement. Rigo—armpits slippery—has the feeling judgment has been passed.
“Wait,” the cauc tells him. He exits the examination room, leaving Rigo in limbo.
“What’s going on?” Rigo asks Varda, unable to shake the feeling that he’s been convicted and condemned. Sentenced to purgatory.
“I’m trying to diagnose that now,” Varda says. Its flitcam flits about the room in the frantic, scatter-brained way it always does when the IA is stressing.
What’s going on?
The question ricochets off long-dormant synapses. . . .
Hush, Mama told him. He looked around the
room. It was filled with blue plastic chairs, all of
which were taken. The people who weren’t sitting
were standing in lines at a long window. There was a
round clock on the wall over the window.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
What is this place? he asked. How come we’re
here?
Because we have to go someplace else. His
mother’s voice was stretched tight and hard. We can’t
stay here. We have to find another place to live.
How come?
Because the population relocation says we do.
Do all these other people have to find another
place to live, too, Mama?
Sí, mijo.
They got in one of the lines. His mother’s fingers
were tight around his. She held him on one side, and
Beto on the other. Keeping them close. Not so they
wouldn’t run away but so she could protect them.
I’m scared, Mama.
Not me, Beto boasted.
I don’t want to move, Rigo said.
That’s enough, their mother said. Both of you.
Now, be quiet. We don’t have a choice.
“Rigo?” Varda says.
The retrograde moment passes. His mother’s voice fades to an echo and he syncs back to the present. “What have you scoped?” he says. “Anything?”
“Yes. The scan registered an uncatalogued pherion sequence.”
A.k.a., illegal.
It comes to him, then. “Salmon Ella’s,” Rigo says. The drug he delivered to Dorit for Beto. It’s got to be. He must have been exposed at some point. Fucking Beto. He should never have agreed to do the job. He knew it was a mistake, one that would come back to bite him in the ass.
“That’s not it,” Varda says.
Rigo blinks. “It isn’t?” He doesn’t know whether to be relieved, or what.
“No,” Varda says. “You dodged that slug.”
“Then what is it?”
“A pherion composed of several subsections,” Varda tells him. “Nucleotide sequences that a number of recently released sniffers are looking for.”
“So the pherion is a concatenated series of smaller subpherions,” Rigo says. “Stuck together to form a single string.”
“Four, to be exact. For some reason, the sniffers are only searching for three. I’m unsure why. Judging by the structure, it looks like the fourth component may be an antisense lock that disables the pherion.”
“So I’m not being affected by it,” Rigo says. “At least not yet.”
“I wouldn’t jump that far,” Varda says.
Still, he hasn’t felt any different from normal, noticed any obvious ill-effects. Which could also explain why the IA didn’t pick it up as part of his regular biomed scan. “Who manufactured it?”
It takes a second for the IA to respond. “Each subsequence appears to have been grown on a different pharm. Firms that do independent contract work for corps.”
“How do the subpherions link up and work together? Shouldn’t they be incompatible?” Normally, pharms build in protections that prevent the molecular code they generate from being contaminated or co-opted.
“Random recombination is a possibility,” Varda says. “A more probable scenario is that each sequence was designed to work with the others prior to outsourcing.”
“Outsourced by who?”
“I can’t answer that right now.”
“Any idea what the sequences do?” Rigo says. “Individually, or when they’re linked together?”
“Not yet. It would be helpful if we could determine when and where you picked them up.”
Rigo fidgets, antsy. “Who released the sniffers?”
“The Bureau of Ecotectural Assignment and Naturalization.”
BEAN. Great. “Any idea who they’re looking for?” he asks. “Or why?”
“No. That information is in the classifieds.”
No wonder the stodgy cauc got all uptight and fled the room. In addition to the results of the pherion scan, he’s probably got preconceptions about Rigo out the wazoo—resentments; fears; cultural, social, and economic ideas that have been passed down for generations.
“What are my options?” Rigo says. He’s at a loss. Can’t think of a single course of action to mitigate his probable fuckedoverness.
Before Varda can answer, the door swings open and the cauc enters, lips puckered, tight as a hairless asshole. He doesn’t look happy—seems to have retreated into a sort of aloof, Puritanical fastidiousness from which he draws strength and purpose.
“Strip,” the cauc orders.
Rigo plays it cool, does as he’s told. The cauc pulls out an inhaler—“Sniff”—and doses Rigo with a spray that smells like crushed geraniums.
“What’s that for?” Rigo says.
“Pool,” the cauc says, pointing to a white black-framed screen on the other side of the room.
It’s a directive as much as an explanation. Rigo pads across the room. Behind the screen is an open doorway that leads down a short corridor to a steamy, glassed-in room with a recessed hot tub set in Moorish-patterned floor tile among terraced planters. Plants and flowers overhang the water, mimicking some exotic pre-ecocaust paradise from the twentieth century. Rigo slips into the pool. Body-temperature water closes over him, soothing, embryonic. In a few minutes he’s feeling the effects of the reclade virus; his head spins. He leans his head against the edge of the pool, closes his eyes. . . .