Aftermath (17 page)

"Mm." With warmth came mental ease, and a desire for sleep. Art, who only a few minutes ago had expected to be awake all night, could feel himself beginning to lose focus, moving into the state where thoughts lose their sharp edges.

How much of human communication was done without words? He and Dana talked of making a decision, but he knew that their decision was already made: they would do whatever they had to do, within (and perhaps beyond) reason. They would seek out Oliver Guest.

And after that?

How much do you want to live?

A lot.

Maybe, in their own ways, he and Dana were no different from Seth Parsigian.

9

From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.

I have observed a characteristic pattern in those whose ways wander far from socially acceptable behavior. It applies equally to bigamists, confidence tricksters, thieves, and murderers. Thus:

At first, extreme caution is practiced. Every record is deleted, every step is double-checked, no trace of physical evidence is allowed to remain.

With continued success comes a change in attitude.
Since I have not been caught, I am smarter than judicial control; therefore, I will not be caught.
So runs the false logic. Contempt for law increases. Behavior becomes more and more sloppy. The trail is no longer erased, physical evidence is left behind, the fruits of crime are introduced into the household. At last—often, it is true, after an amazingly long time—a final and fatal error is made; the authorities descend.

Having noticed such behavior patterns I was careful to avoid them. I took nothing from my victims that anyone would ever be able to measure. No physical evidence of my avocation was permitted in my house. I never used the same collection procedure twice, since repetitive actions can lead to the development of a psychological profile.

Even so, I allowed for the possibility that I might one day become a suspect. In such a situation it was then predictable that my property would be searched. I made special provisions to insulate and isolate the subbasement level of my house, but even if that other lab were discovered, the work going on there had no apparent relevance to crime. It would seem to be an independent, if unconventional, research activity.

How, then, was I caught?

Attend, those of you with urges that you are powerless to resist. We are, every one of us, slaves to chance and the compulsions of our own natures.

My would-be nineteenth victim was a beautiful girl, just fourteen, with lustrous dark hair and skin, and startling blue eyes. LaRona lived in a filthy apartment, sharing it with five noisy siblings by different fathers and with a blank-eyed mother whose intelligence barely was able to correlate intercourse with subsequent birth.

I saw LaRona during one of my scouting visits to the poorest districts. I never went twice to the same area, unless of course I spotted a candidate there. After observing LaRona on a dozen separate occasions, twice walking past the open door of the apartment where she lived—empty boxes in the hallway, smells of grease and mildew and human excrement—I knew that I must act. I had in my collection nothing remotely like LaRona, no one with her coloring, her walk, or the lapidary quality of her jeweled eyes. It would be a kindness to remove such a perfect creation from so awful a setting. Foul play would probably never be suspected. Any rational investigator, examining the circumstances of LaRona's life in the apartment and her disappearance, would conclude that she had wisely run away from the intolerable.

I made my preparations.

Luring LaRona directly away from the apartment complex would be impossible. Mere survival there required wariness, and during my visits I had been careful to adopt clothing that fitted the setting. No one in her right mind would trust such a man with anything. However, the mother was once more pregnant by yet another transient father. And LaRona, the only remotely responsible member of the family, had taken it upon herself to make sure that her mother visited the nearest clinic for periodic examination and remedial medications.

My medical reputation was, if I say so myself, outstanding. An offer of pro bono services, which I explained to the clinic I did for one month each year, was welcomed. On my first day I examined the records for LaRona's mother. They were disgusting. I offered to take responsibility for all nonstandard clinical tests, and for the preparation and administration of tailored antibodies.

LaRona and her mother came in as scheduled. I explained to them—or rather to LaRona, since her mother appeared to understand nothing—that we had a problem with incipient Paget's disease. It would not affect her mother now, but if left untreated it would lead to chronic inflammation of the bones and their eventual softening. My diagnosis, prognosis, and proposed treatment were all completely accurate. I did not mention that Paget's disease is a problem for the elderly, and that the symptoms would not manifest themselves for many years. Nor did I offer my opinion that in view of the mother's lifestyle, her survival until she became elderly was highly unlikely.

LaRona listened to me with total attention and understanding. She was eye-achingly, mouth-wateringly beautiful. I longed to possess her forever.

Patience,
I said to myself,
patience.

LaRona and her mother would come to the clinic for six consecutive days. Her mother would be partially sedated for two hours. During those two hours I would administer the designed organism that would cure the disease. And in those same two hours, although it was not described in any treatment record or agreed to in advance, I intended that LaRona and I would sit and talk to each other.

We did. Slowly and awkwardly at first, but by the third day she was telling me of her dreams and hopes and aspirations. Shyly, she admitted to me that she wanted to become a physician. Just like you, she said. I doubted that. But incredibly, in that hellhole where she lived, she was observing diseases and attempting to make her own diagnoses.

While her mother lay snoring we wandered through the clinic together. I tested her. What did she think was wrong with that man's hand? Why did that woman's neck bulge so oddly? How would you treat it? She answered, I lectured, she questioned, I explained. Hours of bliss, and not only for me. She swooped on facts and theories and drained every drop of blood from them. It reminded me of my own youth, when new knowledge filled the world.

Our golden time had to end. On the sixth and final day of her mother's treatment, I went down to the basement lab of my home and prepared my collection kit. I emptied the back of my car. The next few hours were my unavoidable period of vulnerability, when a sharp judicial officer seeing LaRona and the collection kit together could correlate means and crime.

Mother was sedated for her treatment. Instead of ranging through the clinic, today I took LaRona into the little office allocated to me. She brought with her, faint but unmistakable, a delicate odor of gardenias. There was a medical research conference going on north of the city, I said. I was heading there as soon as her mother's treatment ended. Would LaRona possibly be interested in going with me? I could have her back by nine o'clock. I was careful to say, "back at the clinic." Dr. Oliver Guest, of course, had no idea where she lived.

She hesitated. "What about Mother?"

"She'll be all right. She knows her own way home, doesn't she?"

Neither of us suggested that her mother might like to go with us. Nor was I about to offer to drive Mother home. I had always been careful to take public transportation when visiting LaRona's district. There was no way that I would risk my car being seen there.

It was a foregone conclusion, as I had known it would be. To visit a medical research conference, LaRona would have agreed to send her mother home by parcel post.

Treatment ended. Mother was informed by LaRona that she wanted to do some shopping and would come home later. I was not mentioned. It was a dull day in February. As we drove away from the clinic it was already close to dusk.

Earlier in the day I had set our destination in the car's AVC system. Someone older and more sophisticated would have been suspicious of the place to which the vehicle took us, a parking lot for an entertainment center open only during the summer months. LaRona was too happy and excited to notice. She babbled on about what she had seen earlier in the day. While I had been busy providing Mother with final—and, I suspect, futile—instructions for monitoring her own condition, LaRona had seen a human clone enter the clinic.

I listened with half an ear, and looked around carefully to make sure that the place was deserted. It was a popular venue for illicit sexual liaisons, but today no other car was present. I surreptitiously reached into the door compartment on my left-hand side, where the killing spray was ready and waiting.

At that crucial moment she asked, "Why is it more difficult to clone an organism from an adult than a fetal cell?"

Every rational brain cell told me to proceed, to use the spray, to perform the collection process. I needed only ten clear minutes and all evidence would be hidden away. But she was touching on twin passions of mine, clones and telomeres. I could not resist. With the spray can sitting in my left hand, I explained. A clone developed from adult cells would be born with its telomeres already shortened. It would have a reduced life expectancy. But telomeres are rebuilt in an organism's germ cells. Thus fetal cell clones are provided with long telomeres and gain a "fresh start."

She asked me two questions, both intelligent and searching. As I concluded my second answer, a police car drew up beside us. An officer appeared. He was black, very young. He politely asked me what we were doing in a deserted parking lot. I gave an honest answer. I was Dr. Oliver Guest, and I and my passenger were discussing problems of genetics. He nodded, but he said to LaRona, "How old are you, miss?"

"I'm fourteen." She was wearing the skimpy top and short skirt favored in her district.

"Thank you."

He moved back to his car. Even then, for the briefest moment, I thought they might leave. They were just cruising, and I was respectably dressed. But I heard his words to his woman partner: "Disgusting old fucker. Even if she is a hooker, she's still only a kid. People like him oughta have their balls cut off." And, returning to me, "I'm afraid that I must ask you to come with me."

"My car—"

"Your vehicle will not be moved or damaged." He glanced down, wary for possible weapons, and saw the spray. "What is that in your hand, sir?"

Use it on him, LaRona, and his partner? Impossible. I would botch any attempt. Unplanned violent action is alien to my nature.

It was over, then and there. I knew it, even though I had told the exact truth and nothing was farther from my mind than sex with LaRona. But policemen are creatures of habit. They would inspect my car, from sheer routine. They would find everything, my whole collection kit.

It was a tragedy. LaRona would have been a star, one of the crown jewels of my collection. It was not to be.

* * *

She is presumably still alive. Thinking about her now, I wonder if she has achieved her ambition. She is almost twenty. Has that keen mind and fiery desire for knowledge lifted her from awful family circumstances, into formal medical studies?

I am curious, but only mildly so. As I say, she is now close to twenty. Much too old. Even were we to meet, she would no longer be of interest to me.

10

The snowfall had dwindled to a few random flakes. A cold night breeze blew from the north, and the curious odor that it carried made the waiting woman wrinkle her nose in disgust.

Muffled in a long black coat and with a black woolen scarf covering her face, she was sitting on the lower level of the great memorial. At the sound of footsteps she rose to place her back against the stone wall. Her gloved right hand slipped into her pocket.

The man approached confidently and quickly, saying when he was still ten steps away, "It's all right, Sarah. Don't put a bullet through me."

She relaxed as soon as she heard his voice, and removed her hand from her pocket to show a wicked ten-inch blade. "Knife, not gun."

"Very wise. Most of the guns don't work anyway." Nick Lopez made a careful survey of their surroundings. As the woman had done, he sniffed the air. "Pretty rank up here. This is the first time I've been outside the Federal Enclave in over a week. Now I can see why."

The air carried multiple odors, burning wood and paper and plastic mingled with the sweet reek of animal putrefaction and decay.

"It's coming in from the north. I gather it's much worse up there." Sarah Mander moved forward and turned to ascend the steps. "Apparently martial law isn't working worth a damn outside the Beltway. Good thing there are no media outlets. They'd be having a field day with the bodies and the burning."

"Still plenty of media types around, itching to do what they've always done. That's one reason I felt I had to see you in a place without eyes and ears."

"I wondered why you dragged me out here." Sarah Mander paused in the shadow of the great seated figure and stood staring up at it. "What you have to say had better be good. I didn't enjoy the walk over, and I don't like the idea of walking back. And this place is freezing."

"Then I'd better get right down to business." Lopez moved closer. With his tall pompadour hairstyle he towered over the woman by nearly two feet. "You must be getting the same briefings on the House side as I hear in the Senate. How's it look?"

It was a question rather than the information that she wanted, but after a moment she nodded and said, "Four days ago I'd have sworn that this country was down and out. Power grid dead, information network destroyed, data bases vanished, no working infrastructure. Looting and rioting along the eastern seaboard, thousands freezing to death in Chicago and Minneapolis. Nothing much of Florida south of Orlando after the second hurricane, and lots of California wiped out by mud slides. Horrible. For a while I worried about outside attack, because all our weapons had turned to junk. Then I said to myself, who could possibly want our problems?"