ViraVax (21 page)

Chapter 28

David left his cart at the Level One elevators, as instructed, and led the others through the maze that bypassed decon. The Angel Dajaj had a mission for them, and David had to deliver the team safely to the Angel.

“I go back now,” Mark said. “Steve be mad, I go back now.”

“Dajaj is boss, not Steve,” David said. “Dajaj says ‘Come,’ so we come.”

“I work hard,” Annie said. “Strong back, good back.”

David, too, was restless. He liked adventure and he liked secrets, but this secret scared him and he didn’t like to be scared. On his cart, he knew what he was doing. A red tag on the package meant follow the red line to deliver it. Brown overalls on passengers meant that he followed the brown line to deliver them to the brown area. Always he got home using the white line. Today the five of them were all different colors, and where he was taking them had no color.

“Pic-nic, pic-nic, pic-nic,” Tomasina chanted.

She shut her eyes tight the whole way down, letting David lead her by the hand when they changed cars. Dajaj had promised a picnic, but they had to hurry to beat the Sabbath.

The Angel Dajaj did not go to the big room on the Sabbath like the others. He taught David and some Innocents how to pray to God every Sabbath, and he gave them a picnic. Dajaj was their friend. He helped the great God to love them and to remember them when nobody else would.

The doors slid back at Level Five, and the Angel Dajaj awaited them. A pile of small green backpacks buried his feet, but he threw open his arms in welcome.

“My children,” he said, “are you ready to meet the Lord?”

“Yes!” David said.

Heads bobbed all around him.

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

“Pic-nic. Pic-nic.”

“We will have our picnic,” the Angel told them. “First, we’ll go for a walk. Everybody pick up one of these packs and put it on. Here, David, let’s show them.”

Dajaj fixed the pack on his back and snugged up the straps for him. It was not heavy at all. The pack that Dajaj picked up for himself looked very heavy, and David was glad he didn’t have to carry that one.

David helped the others amidst the grunts and wet breathing. The hallway was empty except for their little group, quiet except for some distant barking and the occasional screech of an animal. Topside was always noisy, people jostled people everywhere, so only occasionally did David hear the birdsong and animal cries from outside the perimeter.

Catherine, the youngest, perked up.

“Puppy dogs?” she asked. “See puppy dogs?”

“Not this time,” Dajaj answered. “This time we’re going outside.”

Outside!

David couldn’t remember Outside. He knew that if he got Outside alone he would die, he would walk around and get lost and he would die. The missionaries warned them all about it almost every day. Even the missionaries didn’t go Outside. His heart jumped at the thought, and his fingers absently stroked the surgical scar down the center of his chest.

The Angel Dajaj led them through a room full of noisy fans, into a crawl space and through another hatch. They packed together inside a dark, narrow passage full of cables and pipes. David’s nose was very sensitive and Catherine didn’t smell very good when she pressed against him. Dajaj switched on a hand lamp so they could see, and it was just in time because Annie was already crying.

“Picnic,” Dajaj reminded them. “This way.”

They balanced on the pipes and put their hands on the walls to keep from falling. As it was, everyone except the Angel Dajaj fell more than once. David himself slipped twice, wedging himself between the pipe and the wall. Catherine wouldn’t help him and Dajaj couldn’t get past everybody else, so both times it took him a while to get up.

The passageway was steep, too. Topside, everything was flat and David rode his cart everywhere. Now his thighs burned, he was thirsty, and if Annie wasn’t crying enough for all of them, he would have done it himself. He never wanted the Angel Dajaj to see him cry.

Dajaj stopped them all with a palm up and a finger to his lips. He stood on tiptoe and unfastened another hatch overhead. A bright blast of sunlight watered David’s eyes.

“Outside!” Mark cried.

“Shh!” the Angel whispered. “It’s a surprise.”

Chapter 29

Joshua Casey ran his hand over his head without mussing his tender scalp. The conference had excited him, though Marte’s performance had not. For a moment he had been transported out of ViraVax and the political mess that Mishwe had made of it and into the world he loved best—hustling biological gadgets, making the world a more perfect place, making money for God.

“She’s dangerous,” Shirley said.

He became aware of her hand on his thigh only when she spoke. She gave it a squeeze.

“She’s marginally acceptable,” Casey boomed. “Everyone here has to be ready to sell any portion of their projects at any moment. We’ve always made that clear.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “She’s dangerous because she has secrets.”

Casey chilled.

“What secrets? How do you know?”

Shirley’s hand worked its way higher on his thigh.

“Remember I said I’ve monitored everything that comes across her screen?”

“Go on.”

“Everything relates to her work,” Shirley said. “Her only detectable network contacts are the usual library and data searches related to her projects.”

“What do you mean ‘detectable’?”

Casey could tell by Shirley’s smile that she was quite full of herself. He wished she’d just spit it out instead of dangling it out of his reach. He refused to sit up and beg. He would let her take her time. One day soon, Shirley and her manipulations would be out of his life forever.

“Sometimes a symbol appears on her screen, a butterfly,” she said.

Her hand squeezed again. Casey reached down and removed it.

“Get to it,” he growled. “I’ve got the Master and Mishwe to deal with before sundown.”

“It’s a signal,” she said. “Someone is contacting her, bypassing everything we have. Her responses are also blocked. I think she’s a spy.”

Casey was sure that it was true.

Who?

She arrived the day that Bartlett died, could that be it? And who was Bartlett’s best friend in the outside world?

“Colonel Toledo,” he whispered.

“It’s possible,” Shirley said. “The butterflies always appear just before or after your embassy dump.”

“Then they’re bursting, using our own system and transmissions. . . .”

Casey stood, ran his hand through his hair, sat.

“That new tall guy in Micro, Dwayne, get him on this. If we can’t tap her, maybe we can trap her.”

“I don’t think we can make it by sundown.”

“Then stop thinking and start moving,” he said. “Tell him we want an intercept, and we want to be able to generate that butterfly on her screen ourselves. Then I want a security shakedown of everybody in this facility.”

“Marte Chang’s an exception,” Shirley said. “An outsider. Mishwe is another exception, he’s crazy.”

“It wasn’t timidity,” Casey growled, speaking more to himself than to Shirley, “and it wasn’t cultural. She
hesitated.
She was
thinking.
She was
weighing, moralizing. . .
.”

These last he pronounced with a fist to his desktop.

“A morality different from ours is a luxury she can’t afford.”

“Well, she has impressed you,” Shirley said. “In spite of her. . . hesitation, she has produced for you. Produced quickly, elegantly. And so have her assistants. Before she arrived they were nothing more than overpaid dishwashers.”

Casey smiled, in equal measures charmed by the economic promise of the new projects, by Marte’s naiveté and by the heady prospect of sheer power. Shirley was right. In spite of her moral struggle, her questionable loyalties, Marte was producing. He stroked Shirley’s firm thigh absently. Nothing disgusted Casey more than disloyalty, and Marte Chang was proving herself to be quite disgusting, indeed.

The Sunspots were Toledo’s Trojan horse,
he thought.
Now I have to question everything, details of her mitochondrial project. .
. .

She had not applied to remain on at the completion of her project, and she had not warmed to him, to Shirley, not to anyone. She had appeared loyal, true, but she hadn’t ever
felt
loyal to him, even in their lunches on the patio. She was not staying, which meant that the knot was tied and the noose slipped. He caught his hand investigating the tender skin above his collar. He moved it back to Shirley’s thigh.

Not even Mishwe is a traitor.

Mishwe, yes, was another matter, a much more pressing matter.

“Are you thinking of Mishwe?” Shirley asked.

She repositioned herself under his hand, then repositioned his hand, then guided his unconscious strokes more to her liking.

Casey dampened his fingers and broadened his field of exploration.

“Why?” he asked.

Her pelvis reached up for his fingers, sucked them in.

“Every time you deal with Mishwe these days you look like you’re having a seizure,” she said. “Wait now. . . oh, shit, oh Jesus. . . . ”

“No bad talk,” he reminded her.

“No,” she said, and pulled his belt buckle free of its clasp.

Casey’s security channel beeped its “urgent” notice, and his chief announced in his clipped manner, “We have a Meltdown situation, sir. Three Innocents. One in the ag shop, another on the lift pad and a third in the field. All went up at once. Details on-screen . . . now.”

Casey stepped out of Shirley’s grip and switched the comdeck from “console” to “council.” His wall lit up and a perimeter pickup bracketed, focused, then zoomed in on a brown mass dripping from its skeleton, fouling a forklift. Casey touched a key and the screen split, bracketing two other lumps of flesh. The one at the lift pad shimmered under a blue flame.

“Oh, God,” Shirley said. “God help them.”

“God help
us,”
Casey muttered, “if the Master finds out.”

The second figure had already blended into shadow, becoming nothing more than a stain on the tilled earth. The burned stub of a hoe handle and charred clothing punctuated his death.

“Command?” he snapped.

“Yes, sir.”

“What do we have?”

“Three individuals in Meltdown, sir. We began Sabbath shutdown, so teams are just now sealing off.”

“Nobody goes near them without full gear,” Casey ordered. “I want all residue impounded and sealed, including the concrete from the lift pad, that forklift, the dirt around the field worker. I want to know what set them—”

“Sir,” the chief interrupted, “we have two more cooking in Maintenance right now.”

“Shut down topside operations,” Casey said. “I want their crews in isolation, including missionaries.”

“Sir, shouldn’t we seal off—”

“
I’ll
decide that,” Casey snapped. “A full seal-off would cost us weeks of production and it would mean notifying Garcia and the embassy that we’ve got a problem. I presume you don’t want an army holding us in here any more than I do. Proceed as I’ve ordered.”

He slapped the “off” key, but not before he noted how pale the chief looked, and how freely he could sweat.

Already Casey had the feeling he had lost, that something had exploded and swept past him and the shock wave came next.

He reopened one screen to see two spacesuited men give a thumbs-up sign, run a final check on their Colts and armor, then trudge towards the ag shop.

Casey was sure where this investigation would lead.

To Dajaj Mishwe,
he thought.
One way or another. Mishwe, Meltdown and a migraine.

Casey didn’t like that combination, particularly with his father in tow.

“Command?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the status of Mishwe’s two newcomers?”

“Decon in progress,” the voice announced. “They’re Level Five property, sir. You authorized—”

“Put them on hold,” Casey ordered. “Bring Mishwe to me.”

Chapter 30

The three Meltdowns topside performed perfectly for Mishwe, exactly thirty minutes after their inoculation.

Ice water is the best yet,
Mishwe thought.

His other vehicles of infection had proven wildly imprecise for this particular animal, which was why Red Bartlett got all the way to the city before it hit him. The three Innocents disintegrating in the ViraVax compound offered Dajaj Mishwe the cover he needed, exactly as planned. He signaled his helpers topside and shushed them as they blinked into the bright sunlight at the top of the dam.

Mishwe checked his watch.

1739.

The ultraviolet trigger should release in fifteen minutes. Two of these five Innocents should begin Meltdown at 1754, just before sundown. They surfaced behind the sentry’s box, a two-story affair that afforded them cover as long as they stayed close to its base. Next to the sentry box stood his goal: the entryway into the turbines.

Mishwe pressed two keys on his Sidekick and triggered a series of impulses from the communications control bunker to the security blockhouse. A pressurized canister released its contents into the guard’s air-conditioning. At 1740 a green light on his Sidekick signaled Mishwe that this guard was no longer a problem. The other guard, on the far side of the dam, couldn’t see them and, with luck, would never know what hit him.

“Pic-nic. Pic-nic.” Tomasina rocked back and forth in time with her chant.

“Okay,” Mishwe said. “It’s time for our picnic. Let’s find a good spot.”

He disarmed the sensor on the doorway to the turbines and led his group inside. The size of the turbines and their noise frightened the Innocents at first, but he hurried them along, placing each of their packs at the top of a spillway.

“What are we doing, Dajaj?” David asked, shouting to be heard above the wind and the howl of the turbines.

Like the others, David was out of breath from the unaccustomed rush across the dam and back.

“Getting ready for a surprise,” Mishwe said.

Dajaj checked his watch, then spread a blanket from his pack over the concrete floor. He took out a handful of sandwiches, paper cups and a large insulated jug of ice water.

“Here’s our picnic,” he announced. “Eat fast, we have to get back down before the Sabbath.”

The Innocents dug in hungrily and drank up all the ice water right away. The exertion, the heat and humidity, the salt in their sandwiches, all made them terribly thirsty.

Mishwe didn’t have to check his watch again to know that it was 1754. The two Innocents inoculated with the UV trigger both let out a grunt and slumped to the floor.

“Dajaj! Dajaj, help them!” David cried.

“Don’t touch them!” Mishwe warned. “We can’t help them now. We have to get back. Follow me. Hurry.”

Simple orders during a crisis was the best way to handle the Innocents. They looked back once, from the top of the dam, and saw the skin beginning to slump from their dead fellows. Once he had the remaining Innocents back inside the tunnel, Mishwe allowed himself a moment of praise for Marte Chang.

Great idea, that UV trigger,
he thought.
I’ll have to try her mitochondria trick next.

While two of the Innocents clung to Mishwe out of fear, the other one, David, hung back, his eyes widening in distrust.

In a half hour it won’t matter, anyway,
he thought.
The final trial on the ice water should work by then.

Each of the Meltdown subjects that security discovered would require full hazard suit-up and decontamination of the site. Mishwe knew he was leaving a trail, but by the time it was discovered to be a trail, neither it nor the security teams would exist.

He thought it too bad, too. Now that he’d tested the UV trigger, he found it infinitely more satisfactory than binding the triggering agent in ice. Inoculation had been performed a few days ago, also via the ice cubes in their daily communion.

Now no one who enters Level Five will dare leave,
he thought.
The sun itself will eliminate all witnesses.

He smiled at the poetry of it all—his new arsenal consisted of the two things necessary for life, sunlight and water. Soon Casey and the Master would see that Dajaj Mishwe was not merely a tool, but an architect as well. Of course, they would only have moments to recognize his genius before it overwhelmed them, once and for all.

Next he would teach an important lesson to that know-it-all, Marte Chang.

If I am a tool at all, I am the sword, flaming in the hand of the Archangel.

This Dajaj Mishwe firmly believed.