Transhuman (33 page)

“We all get it,” Pappagannis repeated. “Once a guy realizes what this base is all about, what he's in for, it's like being condemned to hell.”

Luke scoffed. “That's pretty dramatic.”

“Yeah, I know. But look at us. We all signed an employment agreement, a security agreement, all kinds of paperwork. Signed our lives away. So now we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere—for years on end.”

His brows knitting, Luke asked, “You mean you can't leave this base?”

“Not for the length of our employment agreement. For me, that's five years.”

“That's not eternity.”

“Seems like it. The only way I can talk to my mother back in Chicago is through one of the secure phones, with some Army officer listening to every word we say. Listening, and recording!”

“Security,” Luke mumbled.

“And we can't leave the base. We're locked in here, unless Colonel Dennis gives permission to leave. The only way out of here is on one of those damned helicopters. And even then we have to provide a detailed itinerary and stick to it. If you're half an hour late getting back, they send out the MPs to track you down.”

“Like prisoners.”

“Like prisoners,” Pappagannis agreed. “They say it's for security. Antiterrorism and all that shit. I say it's just to keep us here under their thumbs, and make sure we're working hard for them.”

“You mean everybody here?” Luke asked. “Even the Army personnel?”

“All buttoned up like a high-security prison.”

Luke stared at the man. He was totally serious.

Suddenly angry, Luke shot to his feet and stormed out of the mess hall, heading back to Colonel Dennis's office.

And he saw Novack coming the other way, heading for him.

“Where you going?” Novack asked, pulling up alongside Luke.

“To see the colonel.”

“You been talking to the Greek, huh?”

Luke stopped in midstride. “You people have been watching me?”

“Sort of.”

“Is it true that I can't leave this base if I want to?”

Novack hunched his shoulders slightly. “This is a very secure area. People can't just come and go as they please.”

“I can't leave?”

“Not without permission.”

“And who gives permission? Dennis?”

Novack almost laughed. “The colonel's a career Army man. He takes orders.”

“Who gives the goddamned orders?”

“In your case, it's that slicker from the White House.”

“Rossov? Not Fisk?”

“Rossov.”

“So where's Fisk come into this?”

“He made a deal with Rossov. You're working for Fisk, but you work where Rossov wants you to be.”

“And my daughter and her family?”

“Same deal. They all stay here.”

Luke started for the colonel's office again. “I'm not putting up with this bullshit.”

Novack stopped him by placing a hand on Luke's chest. “Yes you are. You and me both, we work for Fisk. And Fisk wants us right here, same as Rossov does. We're stuck here until they're ready to let us go.”

“You mean we're prisoners,” Luke growled.

Novack almost smiled. “Welcome to the gulag, buddy.”

 

Plan of Inaction

L
UKE STOOD THERE
in the crisp, clear morning, the sky above him a cloudless blue, the wooden buildings on every side looking new yet somehow already drab, dreary. Men and women walked along the dirt streets, some in uniform, others not, each of them bundled in a heavy coat or windbreaker. A jeep puttered by. And out at the perimeter of the base was that ten-foot-high wire fence. Bet it's electrified, he thought.

Welcome to the gulag.

Novack was eying him, a sardonic grin on his bony face.

“For what's worth,” Novack said, “I'm stuck here, too. And I don't like it any better than you do.”

Luke said, “Yeah.” Then he turned and headed back toward his own laboratory.

Got to think this through, he told himself. I've gotten myself into this pickle, I'll have to figure out how to get out of it. And get Norrie and Angie out of it. And Tamara.

*   *   *

O
NCE BACK IN
his lab, Luke allowed the familiar routine of his work to fill the rest of his day. But even as he examined the latest scans of Angela's brain and the results of her most recent physical exam, he was thinking, thinking, trying to figure out what to do and how to do it.

Fisk and Rossov both want to keep me here. Novack's here to watch me, and the whole freaking base is designed to keep people in, not let them out.

Fisk wants the results of my work. That's why he's tied me up with that privacy agreement. But what's Rossov after? Is he working for Fisk? He said he's a special assistant to the President. Has Fisk bought him out?

By the end of the day, he had come to no conclusions. One thing seemed clear, though: In another week or two there'll be no reason to keep Angela here. She'll be back to normal, just about. She can go home, with Norrie and Del.

But Luke wondered if Colonel Dennis, or Fisk, or Rossov, was going to allow that.

*   *   *

A
S THE DINNER
hour approached, and most of his staff left for the day, Luke climbed the stairs from his laboratory to the living quarters on the second floor. Briefly he looked in on Lenore and Del and Angela. They seemed happy enough, gathered around a television set that was showing a DVD of a children's movie.

He tapped on Tamara's door, across the hall. After a moment's wait, she opened it.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” said Luke. “May I come in?”

“The room's a mess, but yes, sure.” She swung the door wide.

Luke stepped in and saw that the bed was neatly made, although there was a stack of freshly laundered clothes atop it. Through the half-open door to the lavatory he saw a pair of pantyhose draped over the shower stall door.

“This is a mess?” he asked, smiling at her.

“Sort of.”

“You hungry? Want to go to dinner?”

“It's a little early,” she said. “I thought we'd wait for Angie and her parents.”

“They can find the mess hall on their own.” He extended his hand to her. “Come on.”

Looking pleased but slightly puzzled, Tamara went to the closet and pulled out her long winter coat. “Only thing I've got,” she half-apologized.

Luke grabbed his windbreaker from his closet, then went across the hall and stuck his head through the half-open door of his daughter's room. “We're going to dinner,” he announced. Before they could reply he added, “See you in the mess hall.”

And he led Tamara down the stairs, through the now-deserted lab, and out into the lengthening shadows of the chilly evening.

Once they had gone a dozen paces along the street, Tamara asked, “What's going on?”

Luke glanced at her. “Going on?”

“You've got the same look on your face as you did back at Nottaway, when you wanted to talk without being overheard.”

He nodded. “Same reason.”

“So what's going on, Luke?”

“We're being kept prisoners here.”

“I told you that before we ever arrived,” Tamara said.

“They won't even let me send a query to
ACB
.”

Tamara said nothing.

“I don't think they intend to let Norrie and her family leave this base.”

Her brows knitting, Tamara said, “They can't do that. It's illegal.” Then she added, “Isn't it?”

“It's only illegal if you can get somebody to pay attention to it. As long as they have us bottled up here in this camp, there's not much we can do.”

“But why are they doing this to us?” Tamara wondered.

Luke shook his head. “Must be something big. Big enough for the White House to get involved. Big enough to get Fisk to go along with it.”

She thought that over for a few strides. Then, “Maybe it's all Fisk's idea.”

Luke shook his head. “Nah. If Fisk had his way, we'd be at one of his labs.”

“You think so?”

“I'm pretty sure.”

They turned the corner, and there was the mess hall standing halfway down the block. A few early birds were already going in.

“So what do we do about it?” Tamara asked.

Luke shrugged. “Nothing much we can do. They hold all the cards. For now.”

“What do you mean?”

“We just wait and watch. And learn.”

“Learn? Learn what?”

For the first time that day Luke smiled. “Learn what we need to know,” he said.

 

Learning Curve

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Luke phoned Colonel Dennis's office and asked to see him. The female sergeant who answered the phone checked the colonel's schedule and told him that four o'clock was the earliest available time.

“Four o'clock,” said Luke amiably. “Fine.”

He spent most of the morning working on the report that Fisk wanted, thinking of it as the draft of a paper he would submit to
American Cellular Biology
. Using telomere inhibitors to cure cancer: That ought to get some attention, he thought.

Angela, her mother, and Tamara came down the stairs from their quarters upstairs, heading for the front door. Luke got up from his desk and threaded his way through the lab benches toward them.

“Going out?”

“We're going to play softball!” Angela announced, her face alight with excitement.

Luke looked at Tamara, who said, “She's up to it.”

He returned his gaze to Angela. The child looked eager, happy. With her winter cap on, it was impossible to see if her hair was fuller, but her face looked smoother, her eyes brighter, than just a few days earlier.

Lenore seemed just as happy, a huge smile on her face.

“Where's Del?” Luke asked.

“He's over at the communications center, talking to his office back in Boston,” Norrie told him.

They let Del get through, Luke thought. But I'll bet there's an Army guy listening to every word he says.

“Go have fun,” he said to Angie.

The three of them trooped out the front door. Luke noticed Novack sitting in a jeep out by the sidewalk. He hopped out and spoke briefly to Tamara, gesturing toward the jeep. Tamara shook her head, and the three females started walking up the street. Novack returned to the jeep, watched them for a few moments, then gunned the engine and peeled off in the same direction.

Luke headed back toward his desk, unhappy with the expression on Novack's face. The man looked grim, almost angry.

Maybe I should go out to the playground with them, he thought. Then he shook his head and returned to his desk. Tamara can take care of herself, he told himself. Still, he felt uneasy.

*   *   *

“
B
ASE SECURITY IS
very important,” Colonel Dennis was saying. “Extremely important.”

Sitting in front of the colonel's gray steel desk, Luke replied, “But I don't understand why it has to be so tight. I mean, I can't even phone a scientific journal about my work.”

Leaning forward earnestly, both his chubby hands flat on his desktop, Dennis said, “It's got to be this way, Professor. There are dozens of possible biological threats that terrorists might try against us. Hundreds. We don't have the manpower to work on all of them, so we have to prioritize our research. If a terrorist organization got wind of which threats we're working on, and which we've put on the back burner, what do you think they'd do?”

Luke straightened in his chair. “They'd concentrate on the threats you're not actively working on.”

“Exactly,” said the colonel, a pleased smile breaking across his round face.

“And that's why you have to maintain such rigid security.”

“Precisely.” Dennis seemed very satisfied.

With a puzzled frown, Luke said, “But I don't understand how this all works. Why won't my cell phone work?”

“To begin with,” the colonel said, “there isn't a cell phone tower within a hundred miles of here.”

“But satellite reception? My laptop can't connect to the Internet.”

“We have some rather sophisticated jamming equipment at work 24/7. That's why you can't get any television reception here, except for the local Missoula stations. We had to run a cable all the way out to Missoula; that's nearly seventy miles away!”

“So that's why I can't send my research report to Mr. Fisk.”

“Fisk is very anxious to hear from you,” Dennis said. “But anything you send to him has to go through Army security clearance first.”

“And that Rossov fellow, in the White House?”

The colonel shrugged. “I'm pretty sure that somebody in the White House chain of command gets into the act, in your case. But my orders are to route your communications requests through Army security.”

“I see,” Luke said. “I understand what's involved now.”

Colonel Dennis put on a more serious face. “I'm hoping that, now that you understand what's involved, you'll cooperate with us.”

“Oh, sure. Of course.” Silently, Luke added, Up to a point.

*   *   *

T
HAT EVENING, LUKE
took Tamara for an after-dinner stroll.

“I saw Novack offer you girls a ride this morning,” he said.

“He's a pest,” said Tamara.

“You don't like him?”

“No. Not at all.”

With a grin, Luke said, “That's good.”

She grinned back at him. “I'm glad you approve.”

“Stay away from him.” Thinking of what he did to Del, Luke added, “He can be dangerous.”

Tamara said nothing, but they were passing a lamppost and Luke saw a curious expression on her face. He felt an urge to take her in his arms and kiss her, but he fought it down. Not now, he told himself. Not here. Later, when we get out of this place. If we get out of this place.