She told them about the memory chip, where she'd found it, and how she had to contact a friend to help her access the data.
"You have this chip, but you can't read it, and you don't have the data your friend converted? So what's your plan?" Allen looked as though he'd been hit with a bat.
"I'm going to get the data, Allen, all right?" She wanted to smack him. In his smug expression she saw someone used to predictability, someone who didn't just prefer order over chaos but required it. She saw . . . She saw someone who was frightened and wanted everything to go back to normal. She realized they were all on edge. His frustration came from the same well as hers.
"Look, I don't have all the answers. I don't have any answers, really. All I know is we have to keep moving, keep looking for reasons why this is happening and how we can put an end to it. We just don't know enough at this point."
She plugged her laptop into a cigarette lighter receptacle, then connected the other cell phone she'd purchased to the laptop. Allen watched her.
"While we're moving," she explained, "I can't use the device that connects me to Wi-Fi, and I don't want to stay in one place long enough to get the file transfer. So I got a third clone-phone. Bonsai gave me a direct number to his server. It'll be slow, but it's secure and we can do it while we're heading back to Atlanta."
"That's what I don't understand," Stephen said from the driver's seat. They were traveling south on I-75, which would take them through Chattanooga and on to Atlanta. "Why there?"
"Atlanta? It's where all this started, for Goody and me anyway. And it's my home turf; I may be able to tap some resources I couldn't somewhere else."
"Like what?" Allen asked.
"I don't know, Allen. Maybe it's just a comfort factor."
Consulting a notepad, she punched a number into the cell phone. A moment later, the laptop indicated that it was connected to a server. She called up Bonsai's web site and started the transfer of Vero's data.
"This is going to take awhile."
"What's awhile?" Allen asked.
Julia shrugged. "I'll know in a minute." She waited for the program to receive enough data to extrapolate an estimated completion time. "I'm hoping we can view it before reaching Atlanta."
"That's about three, three and a half hours," Stephen informed her.
Three digits appeared on the screen. She stared at them numbly, then reported, "Six hours and twenty-three minutes."
When you start marking time by the number of attempts on your life you've survived, six hours seems an eternity.
She cleared her throat.
On the way to meet the clone-phoner, they'd stopped by a grocery store for a supply of food and drinks. Now Allen reached into a small Styrofoam ice bucket in the foot well and pulled out a Pepsi. He handed it to Julia.
She nodded her thanks and took a swig.
They rode in silence. Stephen clutched the wheel in both hands and checked the side mirrors with obsessive frequency. Allen rolled an unopened Dr Pepper between his palms and stared out the windshield. Julia leaned back, hiked a shoeless foot up onto the chair, and thought about the events since Goody's phone call yesterday morning. She carefully considered every word she could remember, every move she'd made or seen, searching for a question that needed answering, a clue that needed exploring. They were there, waiting for discovery. They always were.
fifty-four
Jorge Prieto watched his blood drop a dozen feet and disappear into the rich, dark soil below. He had long stopped trying to snort back the constant flow that poured from his nostrils, or blot it with the thin cotton sleeves of his khaki coveralls. Cradled in the fork of two limbs in a thirty-meter copaiba tree, he painfully sucked in air through clenched teeth, trying to relieve his burning lungs without making a sound. It had taken all his energy to break away from his captors and make it this far.
Not far enough! Gotta move! Move . . .
But his aching body urged him to wait, just a few more minutes of rest.
Brought in blindfolded five weeks ago, he had no idea how much farther to the compound's perimeter. A kilometer? Twenty? No matter, he had to make it, had to.
Before he could suppress the urge, he coughed, hawking up something from deep inside. Stifling a groan, he listened for pursuers. He heard nothing but the ghostly howl of wind flitting through the tree-tops. He planted his sweaty face on a forearm and waited for the feeling that his organs were shifting freely within his body to pass.
What had they done to him? What?
When the pain had come, cramping his stomach, raising the temperature of his skin, he'd cursed Karai-pyhare, the evil troll whose invisible caress left victims shaken and sick. A silly superstition, he knew, but childhood beliefs die hard. His adult mind recognized the symptoms of influenza. Then the headaches, dizziness, nausea, and perspiration spiraled higher like a brewing storm, and he realized something far more serious had hold of him. Dysentery, he thought when blood showed up in the toilet, maybe jungle fever—malaria.
He thought of how his captors had seemed obsessively concerned over his condition, attaching a million confusing machines to him and running all sorts of tests. He'd asked about chloramphenicol for dysentery or chloroquine for jungle fever—medicines you learned about growing up poor on the Tropic of Capricorn. They had shook their heads dismissively.
That's when I knew you'd done something to me, you devils, you monstruos! I saw it in your faces, and knew I had to get away . . . had to warn others . . .
Most everyone, it seemed—his fellow "prisoners," the guards, himself—had cold symptoms to greater or lesser degrees. The ones who had complained of cramps or bloody noses disappeared within a few days. If he was going to make a move, it had to be quick.
The crack of a twig startled him. His face made a sticky suction sound when he raised it to glare into the dense subtropical forest. Pitch-black shadows made darker by irregular spots of bright sunlight—nothing more. Even the contraptions hidden in the trees—the tiny cameras and monstrous machines that defied imagination—were invisible to him now. He turned to face the ground, and a ribbon of blood spiraled down like an eel escaping into the deep.
In his mind's eye, he saw Juanita floating up to him as if through water: her cashew-colored skin, mahogany eyes, soft lips . . .
No! He must not let his thoughts scurry away; but they were becoming so slippery, so rebellious.
Concentrate! Escape! You don't belong here. You are not a prisoner.
And that was true. He had done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve imprisonment. Jorge Prieto had always accepted personal responsibility, had always tried to do the right thing. When he slipped, he worked hard to make amends. Had he fled when Juanita said she was with child? No. Casper Merez had even pushed a half million guaranis into his hand—a month's wages!—and told him, "Go, Jorge. Such a burden is not for a seventeen-year-old boy. Go find the man inside first." But the man was already there, and he had married the girl instead. Now, twelve years later, he and Juanita had not just one but four ninos, three girls darkly pretty like their mother, and a boy strong and forthright like his father.
And did his family starve when their mouths became too many for their backwater town of Piribebuy to feed? No, he had moved them to Itaipu, where construction on the world's largest hydroelectric plant paid him for as many hours as his back could bear.
Always food on the table, shelter from the elements. The minimum a man provides his family.
Maybe he should have worried more about the many people who vanished from Itaipu. Some said it was the demon Kurupi, who came in the night to feast on human flesh. Others thought those gone had tired of the bone-breaking work and fled back to their poorer but happier villages. He had not known what to think, had not really thought about it at all. Feed his family, be a man—only these things mattered.