Limit of Vision (39 page)

Virgil
’s forehead itched madly as the outer shells of his
L
ov
s flaked away one by one. He didn’t want to call attention to it. He didn’t want to give anything away. So he refused to scratch. Instead he sat hunched in a hard steel chair at one end of a small table in an equally small room, his hands tucked under his armpits and tears of agony standing in his eyes, trying to follow the endless questions of the two IBC officers assigned to interview him. They kept asking him about the
L
ov
s: how he controlled them (if he did control them); what his long-term plans had been; what potential he saw in the
L
ov
s; how he felt now. It always came back to that: How do you feel?

I’m frightened and angry. Why did you murder Ky?

How do you feel?

I’m tired. I want to sleep.

He was hungry too, but then he was used to being hungry, so he didn’t bother to mention it.

How do you feel?

I’m tired. I don’t want to talk anymore.

After a while he lost the thread of the conversation. His focus shifted inward. He searched his mind, looking for blank spaces, for some sign that the
L
ov
asterids were dying along with their outer shells. He had lived with the
L
ov
s so long, he thought he would know if even one failed. But he could find no blank spaces. Calmness continued to flow on command and when he returned his attention to his interrogators, he could discern in their faces the subtle telltales that let him see through to the emotions behind their professionally expressionless pose.

How do you feel?

The
door of the conference room slammed open with criminal force. Summer jumped. Then she tapped her fingers to clear her farsights, before turning an angry gaze on Daniel Simkin.

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “You fucked up. Their
L
ov
s are dying.” His farsights were opaque silver. His face was stony.

Summer could remember when seeing the
L
ov
s die had been his goal. When had that changed? And why? “It’s not my doing.”

“Like hell it’s not. We introduce your viruses, and within hours their symbiotic
L
ov
s are dead. That’s a pretty clear cause and effect.”

She stood up. She had persuaded a crew member to bring her a large plastic box with tall, smooth sides. She’d set it on the table, and released the live specimen into it. Now she gazed down at the gray rat as it shivered in a corner, its helmet of
L
ov
s gleaming healthy blue-green. “Why aren’t you worried about the rats, Daniel? And the parasitized fish? None of my viruses did any harm to them.”

He glanced into the box. Then he looked back at her. “Where did you get that?”

“Someone with the UN sent it to me. You haven’t controlled these wild
L
ov
s, Daniel.”

He smiled. But it was a reptilian smile, without a hint of warmth. “We didn’t know
L
ov
s were living symbiotically with wildlife until this morning.”

She gestured at the rat. “These
L
ov
s weren’t harmed by my viruses.”

He snorted. “So the rat-symbionts are safe. Congratulations. But it was the humans I wanted to protect.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “My viruses did not do this. I suggest you look elsewhere for a cause.”

“Elsewhere? What are you implying? The UN . . . ?”

“No, of course not. What does the UN know? But have you bothered to ask Copeland what’s going on?”

Virgil
was escorted to a conference room, one big enough to hold an oval table and six chairs. A twilight illumination came from a trough of indirect lights around the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he was startled to discover Summer Goforth present, seated beneath a wall clock identifying the time in Hanoi as just past midnight. He was less surprised to see Daniel Simkin.

The rest of the chairs were empty, but on the table itself was a large plastic box. “Go ahead,” Simkin said, gesturing him forward. “Have a look inside.”

A rat scuttled around the bottom of the box. In the dusky light its head glowed bright with a blue-green skullcap of
L
ov
s. Virgil looked from Summer, to Simkin, then back again to the rat, fascinated by the creature. “Is it supposed to simulate one of us?”

Simkin shrugged. “Not exactly.”

“How long ago did you implant the
L
ov
s?”

“We didn’t implant them. This specimen was found on the reservation this morning. You’re not familiar with the phenomenon?”

“No.”

“Its
L
ov
s are healthy,” Summer said.

Virgil felt the hard clutch of fear. The deck lifted and rolled beneath his feet, swayed by typhoon winds as he turned to meet her gaze. No professional mask of detachment hid
her
emotions. The suspicion in her eyes was easy to read. “Your
L
ov
s are dying,” she went on. “We’d like to know why.”

He forced himself to look away. Had she guessed? No. How could she? He closed his eyes, calling on a state of calm. “You ask me why? When the poisons you released this morning—”

“No,” Simkin said. “We didn’t want to expose any of you to unknown risks, so we made sure that nothing we dropped could harm any
L
ov
protected by a mammalian immune system.”

They waited on his answer, the only sound the scrabbling of the rat. Virgil touched his flaking
L
ov
s. “I don’t think your testing was adequate.” He said it calmly, softly. So it startled him when Summer reacted in alarm. Her eyes widened. She sat up a little straighter, while the telltales of astonishment bloomed across her face. It was like reading one of those downtown neon church signs, flashing in postmidnight darkness:
Repent, for the end is near
.

She knew. He could not doubt it now. Somehow she had guessed about his
L
ov
s. Despite their dead white color, she knew what was hiding inside him. Virgil thought back over the last minute. He must have made a mistake, done something to give himself away. But what? But what?

He breathed deeply, willing away the panic that wanted to flood his brain . . .

But that was it, wasn’t it? That was what she had seen. He did not have the bearing of a broken man.

Simkin asked, “How did you destroy your
L
ov
s?”

It was a wholly unexpected question. Virgil stared at him in mute surprise. Then his gaze cut to Summer, and he caught an almost imperceptible nod. So Simkin did not know. But Summer did . . . and she hadn’t told him. Not yet. Why not? “I didn’t destroy them,” Virgil said. It was so easy to speak the truth. “That’s something I would never do.”

Ela
had been let out of her cell twice to use the bathroom and once to shower. The female guards who escorted her to the toilet refused to answer any questions and would not respond at all to Ela’s repeated demands for a lawyer. Maybe she didn’t have a right to a lawyer. The IBC was not constrained to operate under American law when it was not in America, after all.

She had been dozing, but she came immediately awake when her cell door swung open for a fourth time on its silent hinges. She had no way to know the time, but some inner sense told her it was close to 2 A.M. Summer Goforth looked in on her. Ela recognized her from news accounts. She sat up, rubbing at her forehead, feeling the tiny pockmark scars where her
L
ov
s had been. “Where’s Virgil?”

“Asleep,” Summer said. “His cell is watched more closely than yours. Come out here, away from the cameras.”

Ela’s eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder, then she stepped out of the cell. Summer closed the door.

The brig was dimly lit and wrapped up in silence. No one was in sight: not guards, or prisoners. No windows looked into the other cells. Ela surveyed the blank doors, wondering which one hid Oanh and Ninh and all the other
Roi Nuoc
.

Summer said, “The IBC is corrupt. I don’t believe Daniel Simkin is interested any longer in destroying the
L
ov
s. I believe that he and his allies—whoever they might be—have moved on to exploiting them.”

Ela answered experimentally. “Our
L
ov
s are dead.”

No smile softened Summer’s stern gaze as she spoke in a fast, low voice. “You decoupled the asterids from their shells, didn’t you? You thought they could live in your brain tissue and we would never know the difference—but that’s how I originally designed them to live. It wasn’t hard to guess. So far, I’m the only one who knows, but that can’t last. Look at me. You can tell I’m not lying . . . can’t you?”

Ela nodded, seeing a hard-edged honesty in Summer’s face. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Because Daniel has no intention of destroying the symbiotic
L
ov
s. Maybe he never did. I would do it myself if I could, but it’s too late. His people have had weeks with all those children who were evacuated before you. So much knowledge must have escaped by now that it will never be possible to put the genie back in the bottle.”

“I don’t understand. The other
Roi Nuoc
, their
L
ov
s were removed—”

“Do you know that?”

“It’s what they told us.”

“It’s what they told me, but I don’t believe it anymore.”

A creeping dread came over Ela. “You think they’re dead.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“We trusted your humanity,” Ela whispered.

“There is too much money involved. I think—I’m just guessing—what’s been found inside the brain tissue of those kids is going to make a lot of people very, very rich and long-lived.”

“Medical applications?”

“Try an on-ramp to nanotech.”

“Oh God.”

“I think they’re being farmed,” Summer concluded.

Ela leaned against the wall, forcing herself to be calm, to think. “We have to get out of here.”

“That would be nice,” Summer agreed. “But how? We’re at sea. There’s a typhoon outside and cameras in every cell. I might be able to get one or two of you to the deck, but—”

“No. We all go together, or not at all.”

Summer shook her head. “Then I don’t think it’s possible to escape.”

Ela froze, hearing a resonance in these words. She nodded slowly. “Of course you’re right. We can’t escape. We have to arrange for them to let us go.”

“Uh-huh. And how will you do that?”

“I don’t know yet! Let me think. Let me—” The answer came while she was still protesting. “They would have to take us out if the ship was sinking, don’t you think?”

“It’s not sinking.”

“Then I’ll sink it.”

“Will you?”

Ela smiled. It was easy to see that Summer had begun to suspect her sanity. “I did an article once on the disappearance of a merchant ship. It was sunk by pirates. Speculation said the owners hired them to do it, so they could collect the insurance.”

“You want to hire pirates? How would you pay them?”

“That won’t be a problem.” Ela’s account had grown to over $250 million the last time she’d checked.

“But how will you broker a deal? You need an ally on the outside.”

“I have an ally. May I use your farsights?”

Summer hesitated, but only for a moment. She had already committed herself, just by talking to Ela. There was no going back now. Her focus shifted to the screen of her farsights. She ran through a quick sequence of finger taps, then she slipped them off and handed them to Ela. “They’ll work for you now.”

It took a few minutes to contact Mother Tiger because Ela did not know the codes, and had to use a search engine to establish a link. But moments later the tiger goddess’s great luminous eyes were gazing from the screen. Her growl trembled with restrained fury. “Where have my
Roi Nuoc
gone?”

Summer
returned to the conference room after the scheme was set in motion. No one was there. Even the rat had been removed.

She sat in one of the bolted-down chairs, clutching at the table every time the ship plunged in heavy seas. The storm was growing worse. It seemed almost enough to sink the ship without help from outside agents.

She had little doubt that Ela’s
R
osa
would find a willing mercenary. The master of an old Soviet vessel, perhaps, or a decommissioned American frigate. The route between Hong Kong and Singapore had been notorious for centuries, its endless islands and inlets and desperate governments offering haven to enterprising pirates. But even if an agreement was made, could any ship find them in such weather? Could the children safely transfer?

Did it matter?

For these children, the alternative was too grim to contemplate.

Near dawn she heard a muffled explosion. The deck shivered, and a fire alarm kicked in. A second explosion followed, this one louder, closer. Summer rose and went to the door. The corridor outside was empty, but she could hear running footsteps on the deck overhead. She sent a link to Daniel Simkin, but he did not pick up. She sent a link with an emergency tag. Still he did not answer. Then, somewhere overhead, she heard a door slam shut, followed by the steel shot of a closing lock. Terror lanced through her. “Daniel?”

She remembered seeing stairs on her tour of the ship. She ran for them.

The engines had stopped. The ship rolled freely in the waves, tossing her from wall to wall as she made her way forward. She found the stairs and hauled herself up. She tried the door. It would not open. It was locked, from the outside. She pounded on it, but no one came. Was this the only way out?

Think!

Maybe this was some kind of emergency procedure. Seal the doors, contain the damage. So there had to be another way out. Right?

No
. It didn’t make sense. The brig was on this deck, but no one had come to evacuate the kids . . .

Because they were useless now, weren’t they? With their
L
ov
s gone. Or so Daniel would believe. It would be more convenient to let them drown, and Summer with them. Already the deck was beginning to tilt, the stern descending. “Daniel!” she screamed, clutching at the railing to keep her balance.

No.
Don’t panic.
Think!

He was letting them drown because he thought they had no value. But he was mistaken in that. The
Roi Nuoc
had lost only their
L
ov
shells. They still had their
L
ov
asterids twining through their brains. Daniel could still find some use for them. Summer composed a brief text message explaining this fact, then she sent it to Simkin with an emergency tag.