Little Deadly Things (21 page)

Eva continued, as if Marta had not spoken. “Okay, here’s where we are. Out of the 141 plants in your catalog, there are three or four that hold promise for nanoassembly—”

Marta took in a deep breath and let it out. She repeated the cycle and then pinched her ear to stimulate the acupressure points that would lower her blood pressure. She said nothing more about Eva’s intrusion. It was time to compartmentalize in order to focus on her work.

The baby cried and Eva cooed. “Would you like to hold him?” Marta offered. “I could use a minute to stretch my back. If I push too hard, my JRA pushes back.”

Marta unslung Dana, checked his diaper, and then held him out to Eva. “Here—take him for a minute, will you?”

“Me? The maternal type?” But Marta could see something in Eva’s eyes. Curiosity? Admiration? She handed Dana to Eva who examined him at arm’s length. “He’s not going to pee on me or something?”

Marta chuckled.
Don’t I just wish.
“Don’t worry. He’s wearing diapers.”

“Great,” said Eva, “I really want to smell like a dirty baby bottom.”

But Eva’s gaze at Dana belied her words. Marta watched as her colleague crooned one of Gergana’s lullabies. Something wistful, then sorrowful, passed across Eva’s face. She cocked her head as if she’d heard something, and then turned back to the baby. Whatever memory had been evoked passed, and she embraced Dana. She held him and closed her eyes. Her face relaxed and for that moment, Marta thought that she saw another Eva, childlike, innocent.
Which is the real Eva?
she wondered, and thought for a moment about bibijagua. Was Eva the biting ant, destroyer of crops? Or was she the nurturer of the soil? Abuela said that both qualities live within a person. Marta could imagine both within Eva, but it was hard to imagine both coexisting in her.

Eva passed the infant back to his mother. The two scientists shared a pot of mint tea and reminisced about Marta’s fast delivery. They chuckled over Eva’s mobilization of the medical personnel. It had been classic Rozen. Then they turned to their project.

Eva was organized and driven. “Our goal is to isolate two medications. With any luck, we can build them by nanoassembly, and be ready for clinical trials by graduation.”

The work exhilarated them. They were flush with the excitement of starting something new, something that had once been a dream. They grabbed quick meals at their workbenches. There were breaks for Dana’s feedings and diaper changes. Smart fabrics meant fewer diaper changes, but even science could not keep pace with the inexorable digestive production of a seven-week old infant.

Dana was as much a focus of their interactions as was the science. Eva surprised Marta by picking Dana up when he cried and walking him to soothe him. She held him carefully, supporting his head.
How did she know to do that?
Marta wondered. She even volunteered to change his diaper and held her tongue and temper when the infant, released from the confines of his diaper, chose that moment to pee. “I’ve just been baptised,” she said.

Jim came to their lab to take Dana for the afternoon. “Shall we go outside and sit in the sun?” Marta asked Jim. She packed diapers, wipes, and a privacy blanket for nursing and placed Dana into his carrier. Eva double-checked Dana’s diapers, his placement in the carrier and made certain that Marta was set before the family left the lab. Jim’s brows knotted in amazement at Eva’s mothering and then again when Marta rolled up Jim’s dataslate and took it with her. Jim looked confused, but followed. He was a dutiful husband.

When they exited the lab, Marta held a finger up to silence Jim’s questions. Once in the elevator, Marta powered off Jim’s slate and her own. She touched a finger to her lips.

“What’s with the slates?” Jim asked, once they exited the elevator.

“I came in this morning and found that Eva had jacked my dataslate. I’m pretty angry and I’m not sure what to do.”

“What’s the big deal?” asked Jim. “It’s a joint project.”

“That’s just it. I’m happy to share my data. Why would she jack my slate? I don’t like it and I feel, well, violated.”

“Is it possible that you’re overreacting?” Jim smiled. “Postpartum blues, maybe?”

“Very funny. No, other than sleep deprivation, I feel great. And you’re the world’s best father.” She gave him a quick kiss.

“Marta, this is going to be difficult for us both, but especially for you. Are you sure you’re going to be able to manage an infant and a full-time project? With Eva?”

“I’ve got no choice, and the fact that you arranged your hours at Haven Memorial to help me is a godsend. I don’t know what I’d do without you. But Eva worries me. We’ve known her, what, eight years? All through high school and college? There’s still a side of her I don’t trust.”

“Then why do this project with her?” he asked.

“She’s the smartest scientist I’ve ever met. She sees things that I’d never figure out in a million years. The opportunity to create medicine through nanoassembly is too important to dismiss. That’s the Eva I want to work with. But I’ve seen her do some nasty things to people. Do you remember the time in high school when she tried to put hair remover in someone’s shampoo? The odor of the depilatory gave it away so there was no damage, but Eva just shrugged off what would have happened. And that homemade pepper spray she carries? I’ve seen her tag people with it because she thought that they looked at her funny or when she was mad about something. You remember when I went into labor? I was glad that she was there, but she tried to kick one of the EMTs. That’s the Eva I worry about.”

Dana started to struggle and Marta drew in three slow breaths. She continued, “I don’t know much about her past but something must have happened to her. She never talks much about her childhood. When we first met her, she’d tell these wild stories. Hunting down a pimp at age thirteen? What kind of person makes up something like that? All we know is that she grew up in Bulgaria. Maybe she got, I don’t know, abused. Bottom line is that I don’t want to give up the research opportunity, but now with Dana, I want to be careful.”

“What if the stories are true?”

“Are you kidding? Tell me how a thirteen-year-old does those things.” When Jim had no reply she pressed on. “Suppose her stories are true. Is that the kind of person you want around your son?”

“I hear you, but I still think you’re overreacting about Eva.”

“You’re always sticking up for her! I don’t trust that woman and I don’t trust her with you. And now with Dana? Will you listen to me for a change?” Marta went quiet. She turned her face up to the sun and breathed deeply again. They walked a bit and she said, “She crossed a line when she jacked my slate.”

“Okay, I get that. But why did you just turn off our slates? You think she’d, what, bug us? Put in some super secret listening device? Come on, Marta, this is a little paranoid.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

“Okay. Suppose Eva is monitoring our slates. Then we turned them off. Won’t that tip her off that we suspect her?”

“No. I turned them off at the same time and we’ll turn them back on at the same time. She’ll think that the problem was on her end.”

“You’re assuming she
is
monitoring our slates.”

“I’m not taking any chances. Maybe you can look at your slate and see if there’s any code that doesn’t belong,” said Marta. “Let’s just be careful, okay?”

“Okay. But what do you think she’s going to do that’s so bad?” Jim asked.

“I don’t think that there’s anything bad. I just want to keep our private affairs private. Now turn your slate back on, and let’s not say anymore about it. And I do have to change Dana.”

When Marta returned to the lab, Eva surprised her. “I’m sorry I jacked your slate. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and I still don’t, but I can see that you do.” Then she took Dana from Marta’s unprotesting arms. A few moments later, Marta looked up to see Eva, holding Dana to her breast. Her eyes were closed and she looked transformed: a short Madonna with slightly misshapen features, but a Madonna, nonetheless.

It was close to Thanksgiving when Jim welcomed Marta home from ‘a day at the salt mine’ as she called her ten- and twelve-hour stints at the lab, gave Jim a peck on the cheek and reached for Dana. At six months, he was starting to sleep through the night, but mother and father had a sleep deficit from which they would not emerge for weeks. Jim arranged his schedule at Haven Memorial to care for Dana in the afternoons and took him to both of their worksites. Dana became as accustomed to nanoscale microscopes for medical research and clicker devices for dog training as he was with plush toys and teething rings.

When the family reunited, the rest of the world disappeared. Marta nursed, cleaned, and murmured. She read him stories, sang songs and walked him through the neighborhood. She introduced him to every plant along their walks. Her symptoms diminished and Marta stood a bit straighter. Jim might accompany his wife and newborn on these walks, but in some ways he was simply an extension of Marta. The universe shrank to mother and child, and it was enough.

That evening when the family had eaten, Jim took his dataslate, held it up with one finger on the power button and nodded to Marta. They turned off the devices. Then he picked up Dana and led Marta out of their small Cambridge apartment. They left their slates behind.

Outside, the grass was starting to brown and the leaves on the trees had a rainbow display of fall colors—yellow and orange hues on the oaks and the maples painted a brilliant red. Jim and Marta sat on a stone bench. As the autumn days braced for the inevitable descent into winter, the winds were picking up. Marta pulled her sweater tight around her shoulders. For a few minutes neither said anything. Dana was restless and Marta draped a privacy blanket over her shoulder to nurse. Jim saw a look of stillness smooth the lines of her tired face and knew that mother and child were engaged in a ritual that he would never understand. Jim wondered, not for the first time, what it might be like to have a child suckle, to provide life directly to this tiny wonderful baby.

Marta emerged from her reverie and broke Jim’s. “What’s up?” she asked. “Did you find something?”

“Unfortunately, yes. There’s copycat code in my slate. I didn’t see it when I first looked, but she can see everything I’m doing.”

“Wait a minute,” Marta said. Her brows were knitted in concern and confusion. “I don’t get it. I came back to the lab weeks ago. How come you didn’t find it earlier?”

“She’s good, Marta, very good. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s actually pretty cool how she did it. If she stored lines of code on my slate’s memory, I’d have found it right away. But she used heat. Heat, Marta! This woman is amazing. She’s got nanoparticles that appear inert but when they’re hot enough, during a databurst, they scan my slate and then transmit to her on the next databurst.”

“You sound pretty impressed,” said Marta. “So she jacks our slates, but she gets your approval because she’s so clever.”

Jim looked at his wife. He said nothing for several seconds.

“Never mind,” Marta said. “Go on. Tell me about her wonderful technique for stealing our privacy.”

Jim was silent for another long moment. “Stop it, Marta. She’s my friend. That’s never going to change. I will always be her friend but you and Dana come first. You know that. So, do you want me to go on or not?”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I am. Please, go ahead.”

Jim took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Marta, she’s got a nanoscale laser. It fires a burst that polarizes the element gadolinium to store data. It takes her less than a
trillionth
of a second to copy any changes to the slate. Then when I communicate with the slate, or do a handshake with someone, there’s another equally brief burst to transmit the information. I don’t know how she picks up the data, but she has it set up to transmit only during databursts. It was only a matter of luck that I found it.”

“How did you find it?”

“I was playing a game,” Jim said. He shrugged sheepishly. “I couldn’t get past a certain obstacle so I recorded everything the sleeve processed and played it back at a very slow speed.”

“You? Jim Ecco? Mr. Natural? Jacking a game? Querido, you are full of surprises.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll tell you about it sometime. Anyway, when I was in playback mode there was a heat spike that I almost missed. If I hadn’t slowed the playback, I would never have seen what she’s doing. And by the way, that’s where she planted the copycat—in the game. I guess she figured I didn’t play games either.”