Vicki said, more gently than Lizzie had ever heard her be with anyone beside Dirk or Lizzie herself, “You should sleep, Jackson.”
He laughed shortly. “Oh, yes. That would solve everything. Come on, Lizzie, Thurmond Rogers is waiting.”
Lizzie said, before she knew she was going to say anything, “Not until I have a bath. And Dirk, too.”
“You can’t—”
“Oh, yes, I can. And I will, me.”
Vicki smiled at her. It took Lizzie a moment to figure out why. Vicki thought she was having a bath to give Dr. Aranow time for the sleep he needed. Fuck that. She wanted a bath before she faced Thurmond Rogers and his snooty corporation. She and Dirk both. Vicki could show up looking like a piece of the woods, but that was different. Vicki was a donkey.
It seemed to Lizzie that she’d never before realized everything that meant.
“All right, all right,” Dr. Aranow said. “Have a bath. Just be quick about it.”
“I will,” Lizzie promised. She would, too. She was as worried about Annie and Billy as anyone. She would wash herself and Dirk as fast as she could.
And maybe she could dip whatever parts of the system were on-line in the bathing room.
Interlude
TRANSMISSION DATE: April 3, 2121
TO: Selene Bose, Moon
VIA: Chicago Ground Station #2, GEO Satellite 342 [Old Charter] (USA)
MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted
MESSAGE CLASS: Class D, Public Service Access, in accordance with Congressional Bill 4892-18, May 2118
ORIGINATING GROUP: American Medical Association
MESSAGE:
An Open Letter to Miranda Sharifi—
We, the physicians of the American Medical Association, would like to once more collectively request that, as a humanitarian act, you make available to the peoples of the world your proprietary medical substance, Cell Cleaner™. As doctors, all of us witness weekly the personal suffering and social disorder caused by the abrupt lack of this pharmaceutical. It is nothing short of tragic. The long-term consequences for our country—which is also yours—are the gravest possible.
Please reconsider your decision to withhold the means of alleviating such great suffering.
Margaret Ruth Streibel,
President, AMA
Ryan Arthur Anderson,
Vice President, AMA
Theodore George Milgate,
Secretary, AMA
… and the 114,822 members of the American Medical Association
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received
Thirteen
The drone came in low over the trees, no faster than a bird and with no greater mass. The tiny camcorder on its front showed the enclave below, leisurely growing larger. Jennifer Sharifi, alone in her office on Sanctuary, leaned toward the screen.
She had opaqued the office wall facing deep space. For this moment, she wanted no competition from the stars. Just as she wanted no company, not even her husband Will. Especially not Will. The rest of the project team was watching the test from the Sharifi Labs. It seemed to Jennifer that she had earned this personal indulgence.
The California enclave came in closer and closer. Sixteen Liver camps so far, but those had been only trials. This was the first donkey enclave to be penetrated with Strukov’s virus, and the first to test the correspondingly more sophisticated delivery drone created by Jennifer’s Peruvian contractor. To infect Livers, all one needed to do was puncture a plastic tent. Y-shielded enclaves were a much different matter. The California enclave was a comparatively easy first step.
“Fifty-eight minutes,” said an uninflected voice from a different terminal wedged into a corner across the room. Jennifer didn’t turn around.
The north California enclave was small, originally a vacation colony clinging to the Pacific coast. Four hundred seventy donkeys lived under a Y-shield that extended a quarter mile over the ocean and well into the ground beneath it. Under the invisible dome were lush genemod gardens, a dazzling and artificial beach, nanobuilt houses of fantastic dimensions and luxuries, and only minor weaponry. During the Change Wars, security had been augmented, but not defense. Why would there ever be any heavy-duty attack on a small vacation enclave of mostly retired people? Thieves couldn’t penetrate the Y-shield. Nothing else was necessary.
But the enclave liked birds. Gulls, condors, woodpeckers, swallows, more exotic engineered seabirds. And there was no reason to fear birds—Livers didn’t have the technology for biological warfare, and weren’t capable of stealing it, or of understanding it if they did. Everybody knew that. Sixty feet above ground the shield admitted birds.
The drone flew slowly through the shield, as slowly as a bird. None of the inhabitants noticed it. Slowly the drone descended, its zoom camera displaying increasingly more detail. The last picture transmitted came from forty feet above a fashionably purple garden: violet-watered swimming pool, masses of violet flowers, even the stems and leaves subtly blending shades of lavender, mauve, lilac, orchid, heliotrope. A genemod plum-colored rabbit turned its violet eyes upward to the sky. The lens showed the dark soft pupils of its eyes, like ink on tinted satin.
The drone exploded soundlessly. A fine mist blanketed a much larger area than would have seemed possible. At the same moment, all remnants of the probe itself dissolved into its component atoms. Artificial breezes inside the enclave, joined by natural ones from the ocean, spread the mist farther. The enclave was always seventy-two degrees; windows in the luxurious homes were open to the flower-scented air. On a screen to Jennifer’s right, a chime sounded.
“Ms. Sharifi, you have a call from Dr. Strukov.”
Jennifer turned toward the screen. Before she could say she would accept the call, Strukov’s holo was there, wordlessly proving the superiority of his overrides. Jennifer let no reaction show on her face.
“Good morning, Ms. Sharifi. Of course you watched the transmission?”
“Yes.”
“Without flaw, isn’t it? I trust the payment has wired itself to Singapore.”
“It has.”
“Good, good. And the schedule of delivery remains unaltered?”
“Yes.” More test enclaves, better shielded, working up to military and government targets. Those, of course, would be the hardest to penetrate, and the most crucial. If Strukov could infect the federal enclaves of Brookhaven, Cold Harbor, Bethesda, New York, and the Washington Mall, and the military bases in California, Colorado, Texas, and Florida, he could infect anything.
The door to her office opened, closed. Against her express wishes. Will said to Strukov’s image, “Very good, so far. But of course there’s no proof yet that this version of your virus will work.”
She never could teach Will the tactical advantage to not revealing rivalry.
Strukov said, “But yes, it will work.” His smile showed perfect teeth. “Or perhaps you doubt the mechanisms of the delivery. Of course, that responsibility belongs not to me, but to your Peruvian engineers. Perhaps you should discuss your concerns about that technology with your so brilliant granddaughter, Miranda Sharifi?”
Jennifer said, “That’s all, Dr. Strukov.”
“À bientôt, madame.”
“I don’t trust him,” Will said after the comlink broke.
“There is no reason not to,” Jennifer said calmly. She was going to have to think again about Will Sandaleros as partner and husband. If he could not contain his dislike and jealousy…
“He still won’t release a virus sample to Sharifi Labs for analysis. And our geneticists can’t come up with a congruent speculative model. The biochemistry is so damn indirect…”