Limit of Vision (18 page)

Despite
the name, Miki’s Haven was a restaurant designed for business: well lit, with widely spaced tables, and live music from a trio featuring oboe, cello, and a keyboard programmed to harpsichord—just enough noise to obscure conversation, but not to inhibit it.

Simkin was engaged in a link when Summer arrived at the table. He gestured for her to sit down, then turned half-away to finish the conversation.

Summer ordered a glass of chardonnay. Then she watched Simkin over tented fingers, wondering how long it would be before her turn came. The wine arrived. She sipped at it a while. Then, finally, Daniel tapped his thumb and finger, ending the link. “Sorry about that.”

She shrugged. “Tell me about the case.”

“Copeland is stirring.” In a curiously intimate gesture, he slipped his farsights off and laid them on the table. “He’s put in an order for a nopaline-octopine compound from his usual source.”

“Surely not under his own name?”

“Anonymous.”

“Then how do you know—?”

“It’s the only anonymous order for no-oct the company has ever received.”

“You’re sure it’s no-oct?” she asked, “and not just nopaline?”

“Quite sure.”

“Nopaline will keep his
L
ov
s alive, but nopaline with octopine will let them reproduce.”

Simkin nodded. “You see our problem.” He leaned forward. “Why do you look surprised?”

Her answer was delayed by a waiter arriving with menus. When he had gone again she said, “This isn’t making sense to me. Remember that Copeland’s two partners, quite likely his two closest friends in the world, are dead because of the
L
ov
s. Shouldn’t a reasonable person be entertaining second thoughts, instead of preparing the
L
ov
s to reproduce?”

As Simkin considered this a slow, hungry smile spread across his face—a disturbingly familiar smile that seemed to have slipped up some temporal wormhole straight from their mutual past. A flush touched her cheeks. “Summer,” he asked, “are you implying something significant about Copeland’s state of mind?”

She forced herself to focus on the question. “I don’t know. I don’t have enough information to
know
, but the
L
ov
s do affect his emotions.”

“So he could be irrational?”

“He could be driven in a way that doesn’t make sense to us. Is that irrational?”

“As far as I’m concerned.”

Summer wasn’t so sure. “Rational behavior depends on one’s frame of reference, doesn’t it? If his values have shifted from what we might view as normal, his behavior could become quite unpredictable.”

Simkin shrugged. “He values the
L
ov
s.”

The waiter returned to take orders, coolly efficient, and soon gone.

Simkin resumed his argument: “Copeland’s
L
ov
s are the key. With his buddies gone, the
L
ov
s might be the only thing left he does value. I think that’s all we need to know to successfully predict his behavior. He’ll do what he needs to do to keep his
L
ov
s alive . . . which means he
will
eventually claim his order of no-oct. We’ve tagged it, of course. When he picks it up, we’ll have him.”

“Unless it’s a ruse?”

“Our eyes are open.”

She acknowledged this with a nod. “So what happened to the diver? The one who reached the impact site?”

Apparently that was the wrong question. Simkin’s eyes narrowed. His long fingers rapped the table. “You know what I hate? I hate politics. I hate bribes. I hate anonymous bigwigs, and I hate nationalist sentiment.”

“I take it you haven’t found the diver?”

He snorted. “How could we? We’re working with our hands cuffed. For the first twenty-four hours the Vietnamese government did everything they could to help, but yesterday that changed. Now they’re demanding a withdrawal of our surveillance drones from civilian areas. They’ve pulled their military and police units off the search. And they’re insisting IBC operations be limited to the impact site.” He raised an eyebrow. “One could easily get the impression they’ve found something worth hiding.”

“It might be something as mundane as a drug operation.”

“I’d like to know that. I’d like to talk to Ela Suvanatat too—the diver,” he explained.

“Then there’s reason to think this person really does have a sample of
L
ov
s?”

“I need you to help me answer that—and I’ll need your help to contain them if she does.”

Summer nodded, gazing thoughtfully at the musicians as they followed their music through a complicated passage. “My skills don’t lie in blockades and interdiction. So I’ll guess you’re talking about me developing a biocontrol to use against the
L
ov
s?”

“You’re the expert.”

“Copeland’s the expert.”

“But you’re on my side.”

She nodded. Unlike the ambivalent members of the ethics committee, Simkin knew what must be done.

16

A black-
plastic
water bag had hung all afternoon in the sun; now, with the fall of night, Ela stood beneath a silken spray, washing a film of soap and dirt and sweat from her skin. Stars stared down. Outside the garden she could hear clashing strains of canned music and the voices of drunken tourists on the street, trying to explain to themselves why they had come so far south as Ca Mau. Closer, she could hear the chirping of frogs and crickets, and closer still the whine of mosquitoes hunting her in the tight confines of the palm-thatch shower stall; she felt the soft nudge of their wings. Only the water kept them away, so it was with some reluctance that she turned the shower off.

She dressed with her skin still wet, acutely aware of the blue-green glow of the
L
ov
s, just visible from the corner of her eye. For two days now, no more had died. The
Cannabis
crown galls had made the difference, providing the nutrients the
L
ov
s required to survive. Ela still hoarded a few of the infected stalks in a sealed plastic bag, but in the tropical heat they were rotting fast. They couldn’t last much longer.

“Ela?” a soft child’s voice asked.

“I’m done.” Slipping on her farsights, she emerged from the thatch to find Tran and Cu, two young
Roi Nuoc
boys—eight or nine years old—waiting on a turn in the shower. They looked at her through their farsights and smiled, eager to practice their novice English: “Our turn now?” “The water is warm?”

Ela stopped a minute to chat.

She had come south by truck from Soc Trang province with the
Roi Nuoc
girl, Oanh, and two older boys. Tran and Cu had joined their party here in Ca Mau. She had come to think of these
Roi Nuoc
as her “English contingent” because they all spoke the language with varying skill, and all wanted to practice constantly. Apparently there was something in the spontaneity, the irrationality of true human conversation that surpassed the simulations and drills prepared for them by Mother Tiger. Or perhaps they just liked to show off? Tran and Cu earned money translating for tourists, most of whom only wanted to know the cheapest bar or the fastest way back to Saigon.

Leaving the boys to their shower, Ela made her way back through the papaya grove, using nightvision to place her steps, always wary of snakes. The
Roi Nuoc
had rented a corner of the little backyard grove to string their hammocks. The papaya trees were old, their tall, unbranching trunks averaging eight inches across. The fruits dripped like fat, swollen tears from beneath crowns of rustling leaves.

Oanh lay in her hammock, her face glowing green from the illumination of her farsights while the rest of her body faded into shadow. The smell of mosquito repellant drifted on the night air, sweet and cloying as jasmine. Oanh said: “Ninh and Thu went to the street to listen.”

Ninh was seventeen and Thu fifteen. The two boys had escorted Oanh and Ela south after the police search grew too intense to evade. They spent most of their time exploring the town, searching for any hint of official interest, but so far as they could tell, Ela’s identity had gone undiscovered. This was their fourth night in the south, camped out on the edge of the Ca Mau swamps.

“I want to go back tomorrow.”

Oanh shook her head. “It’s too soon.”

“I can’t wait. The crown gall is rotting, while my no-oct shipment waits for me in Soc Trang.” She sat down in her hammock. Then she slipped off her farsights and held them to the side of her head so their button cameras could record the cluster of
L
ov
s. “Kathang,” she whispered. “Take an image.”

Oanh sat up, always fascinated by this process. Her
Roi Nuoc
farsights would not show her an image of herself. It was one of the peculiarities of the Mother Tiger
R
osa
: according to its script, she should not be focused too closely inward.

Ela kept her own
Roi
Nuoc
farsights in the waist pouch Ninh had given her, though she had found herself using them more and more every day. There was something addicting in the persona of Mother Tiger. It did not act like a typical
R
osa
at all. A
R
osa
was supposed to be a servant, a secretary, an interpreter, an intermediary, a researcher: in short, an
aide
. Quiet, unobtrusive . . . and inferior.

By contrast Mother Tiger was imperial—a wise, ancient, and often stern teacher, as well as a counselor, a psychologist, and a strategist devoted to keeping the
Roi Nuoc
safe in a perilous world. All of that, with none of the failings of a human parent.

Ela put her farsights back on, studying the new image of the
L
ov
cluster. It showed a thriving colony, glowing with the blue-green light of the
L
ov
’s inexplicable communication. She had talked to Virgil many times in the days since their first contact, and he had explained about the microsecond flashes of
L
ov
code; while Kathang could perceive them, she could not. It did not seem quite fair.

“Magnify,” she said. The blue-green patch exploded in size, inflating from the scale of an earring stud to that of a wall map. Tapping her fingers, Ela scrolled across the image, examining the congealed disks, the faint outlines of interlinked limbs, the dark windows of porous membranes.

There
.

She stared at an irregularity on the edge of the cluster, where the rim of a disk pushed out from beneath the neat surface layer of
L
ov
s. A new disk? It must be. Ela was quite sure it had not been there in the morning. “They’re reproducing.”

She heard a rustle as Oanh drew near. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. I see a bud.”

Virgil had warned her:
If the bacteria in the crown galls produce octopine instead of nopaline, expect the
Lovs
to reproduce
.

Ela felt Oanh’s breath against her cheek as she bent to examine the
L
ov
cluster. Oanh had studied the literature. She knew as much about
L
ov
s as Ela . . . except how it felt to have them as part of her mind. “Ela,” she reminded, “you said you would let any buds be transplanted.”

“I have seen only this one so far.”

“Look for more.”

It wasn’t long before she found them. Her heart ran faster with every new discovery. After a few minutes, Ela counted twelve. It gave her the creeps to think of the
L
ov
s reproducing on her. They were like a cancer she had volunteered for. Why had she done it?

To make money, okay.

That wasn’t why she’d kept them though, nurturing them for four days with a repulsive brew of rotting crown galls.

During the long truck ride south from Soc Trang province Ela had felt something change inside her. It had begun as a state of preternatural alertness, her thoughts flowing with an unhindered intensity that she had felt only two or three times before in her life, in those moments when a fiery creativity had burned away all doubt and all distractions from her mind. Details sprang into her awareness, only to submerge again in the seamless whole of her surroundings. It felt like magic, to perceive at once the particulars and the breadth of the world, and to be fiercely aware of her own place in it: an intricate component in a natural machine of beautiful, unfathomable complexity.

Oanh stirred, anxious to have an answer. “Will you share them, Ela?”

If taken this night, before their axonal root began to grow, the budding
L
ov
s could be transplanted to another host. Ela eyed Oanh’s anxious face. “Are you sure you want—?”

“
Yes!
”

“I can’t see to do it myself.”

“I’ll do it,” Oanh said, a slight tremor in her voice. Ela didn’t remark on it. Oanh had waited three days for this.

They worked quietly, as if they’d sworn themselves to a conspiracy of two. Neither said it, but Ela knew they both wanted to be done before Ninh and Thu returned.

“Sit down over here,” Oanh whispered, pointing to a low rung on a ladder left leaning against a nearby papaya tree. A sharp insect buzz ignited as Ela took her new seat, while beyond the checkered canopy of papaya leaves a meteor drew a microsecond trail of light across the sky.

Holding a tiny knife, Oanh rested the heel of her hand against Ela’s forehead.

“Only take the new ones,” Ela warned. “Don’t damage the others.”

“Don’t worry. Mother Tiger moves my hand.”

That was not literally true, though Ela did not doubt the
R
osa
was directing Oanh’s every move down to the assignment of a whispered mantra to keep her calm. She would be seeing the
L
ov
colony under nightvision, the image magnified and enhanced so that no distracting detail remained to confuse her. Ela felt the pressure of the flat side of the knife against her skin. “Hold your breath,” Oanh whispered.

Ela closed her eyes, plagued by dark thoughts. It would be so easy for Oanh to lop off the whole cluster, leaving her with nothing.

Why do I imagine these things?

It wasn’t something Oanh would do, out of honor, but even more because if this transplant failed Ela remained the only reserve of
L
ov
s . . .

Maybe.

Before leaving Soc Trang province she had returned to the pond where the
L
ov
s had escaped. Wading in, still carrying the collection of
Cannabis
crown galls in the belly of her T-shirt, she pretended to search for some possession lost underwater. And then, quite deliberately, she slipped. She had plunged underwater, taking the gall-infested stems with her, shoving as many into the mud as she could before Oanh waded in to help her back to her feet.

A tiny prick of pressure; a soft, short gasp from Oanh. “
It’s off!
”

Ela did not dare turn her head for fear of spoiling the delicate operation. “Don’t drop it,” she whispered. “Don’t breathe on it. Don’t even touch it. Set it against your forehead.”

From the corner of her eye she could see Oanh gripping the knife, her knuckles shining with the tautness of her skin. Instead of lifting the knife to her forehead, she bent over the blade, pressing the flat side against her skin just above her right eyebrow. She held it there a full minute, giving the
L
ov
time to grip her skin with its slow, tiny limbs. Tran and Cu returned from their shower to watch with puzzled eyes, but they did not ask questions. Perhaps Mother Tiger had warned them to be silent.

At last Oanh lowered the little blade. Then, slowly, she raised her head. On her brow Ela could just make out the blue-green glint of a single
L
ov
fixed to her dark skin. “Next one,” Oanh whispered, the light of an explorer’s passion shining in her eyes.