"Well?" she asked.
Brandon rubbed his forehead. "There's a word for what you're doing, and people are going to use it. Genocide. Mass murder."
Clara gasped caught between outrage and irony. A laugh escaped her. "You don't mince words, do you?"
He sighed. "If you're going to go through with this, you'd better get used to that label, Clara. I've seen what the legal system, and the media, can do to people." She started to speak, but he lifted a finger. "Yes, I know your intentions are good. And I hate the wild card as much as you do. I'm not prepared to wage a frontal war against Rudo. But I simply can't support you in this."
"But why?" Clara's fists clenched. "Why won't you support me?"
Brandon shook his head. "It's going too far. I can't condone it. Your heart is in the right place, Clara, but this Black Trump scheme is deeply misguided. There are plenty of actions we can take against the wild card without spreading killer diseases."
"Papa - "
"As I've told Rudo, if he wanted to do this he should have used someone else. Left you out of it."
At her look of distress he took her hand, and his expression softened. "I'm very concerned about what will become of you."
She jerked her hand loose. "How can you say that? You lost your wife to the wild card - I lost my mother! How many more people have to suffer the way we have - the way she did - before something is done?"
"Your voice is carrying," he said.
She lowered her voice. "Papa, you have to help."
His look was piercing. "Who says so? Rudo? Has he been pressuring you to get to me?"
She felt her color rise. At her expression, his lips went thin. "Thought so. That's just his style. It's my own damned fault; I should have removed you from his influence years ago, before he got his hooks into you. They're in you so deep now I don't know if they can ever be extracted."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, I'm afraid I do. Rudo has turned you into a tool of mass destruction ... he's twisted your brilliance into something dreadful.... My God, look at you! Look at what you're doing! Look at your main collaborator - a man who spreads disease for the pleasure he gets from it. Doesn't that tell you anything?"
Clara dropped her napkin on the table.
"I didn't choose to work with Etienne Faneuil." She said it calmly, but she felt as if she were going to explode.
"No? Tell me, how is what you're doing different from what he's done?"
"I don't experiment on human subjects! I don't enjoy this the way he does. I'm putting an end to the suffering, and preventing the spread of a terrible disease. There's no other way!"
"Drop your work on the virus, Clara." He said it softly. "There are other ways to deal with the wild card, without resorting to genocide. Don't let Rudo manipulate you. You can walk away from it - there's still time. I'll protect you from any Shark fallout. Rudo doesn't dare attack me directly."
"Papa ..." She struggled with tears, won the struggle, stood. "Your support would have meant a lot to me. But I'll go on without you if I must."
He merely stared at her with deep sadness. She stood there for a moment, speechless. Then she turned and walked out.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Clara van Renssaeler, Journal Entry, 27 Apr 94
Just got back from dinner with Papa. Still shaking. It was horrid. He all but accused me of being a carbon copy of Faneuil. How can he say that? How can he not understand? How dare he accuse me of genocide when it was he who inducted me into the organization to begin with? I'm furious.
I knew, I just knew it would end up this way. Damn him. Uncle Pan will have to find some other way to win Eric over. I've done all I can.
I wish things were like before. I want to talk to Papa about my research. And about Maman. With all this exposure to victims of the wild card, she's on my mind a lot. I want to ask him what she was like. I wish I'd known her. I barely remember her.
I saw two people draw the Black Queen at the clinic yesterday. When I think of how she must have suffered, it's like a great hand squeezing my heart.
The Black Trump is the only way to stop the anguish the wild card causes. If there were another way I'd take it, but there's not. How can he wish what we've suffered - what she suffered - on the rest of the human race?
Damn you, Papa. I won't stop for you or for anyone. I know I'm right in this.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"I'm gonna ask her out."
Cody dropped onto a bench in the scrub room. Her green surgical gown was splattered with yellow gore. Finn stripped the scrubs off his torso, and bent double trying to reach back to unwrap the horse body from its sterile wrap. Cody gestured with a finger, and he allowed her to catch the velcro edge, and strip him.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"It's not a date date. She's hearing all the problems of Jokertown, I thought it might be nice for her to see the up side."
"Is there one?"
For the first time in all the years Finn had known the surgeon she sounded old. And sad. And tired. He trotted to her, the rubber booties on his four hooves making squeaking sounds on the linoleum floor, put his arms around her neck. They rested their foreheads against each other.
"Yes, Cody, there is one. No, many. People still fall in love, and children play, and old men squabble over their chess boards in the park, and people trade books out of the back of the Worm's station wagon."
Cody straightened, smiled, pushed back a lock of his white-blond hair. "How old are you, Bradley?"
"Thirty-eight, why?"
"How did you keep cynicism at bay?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. Too dumb to be depressed?"
She stood. "If an older, more experienced woman might give you some advice...."
"Any time."
"I would couch this request as if it is a date." She turned that single, all seeing, all knowing eye on him. "Because, of course, that's what you want. And if you phrase it like an educational tour she's going to turn you down, convinced that you're condescending to her again. And, of course, she'd be right."
"She'll turn me down faster if she thinks this is a date," Finn said glumly.
"I don't think so."
She started out of the scrub room. Finn made a leap after her, and ended up tangling three of his four feet. "What do you know?" he demanded when he finally regained his equilibrium.
"Everything ... you know that, Bradley." She winked at him, and left.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Clara can Renssaeler, Journal Entry, 28 Apr 94
Well, the analytical results are back and I've had a chance to study them. I think I may have figured out the problem with virus 94-15-04-24LQ. The situation is not as bad as I'd feared; this is still a viable Black Trump virus. But it's not ideal.
To make sure the virus doesn't die out due to lack of disease vectors, I hid the Black Trump gene inside a more benign virus that affects both wild cards and nats - like a Trojan horse. The benign virus is a linear, single-stranded DNA virus, which contains a "negative" of my Black Trump as part of its gene sequence, and a locator for the wild card receptor. I packaged all this with a reverse transcriptase for the Black Trump gene and a transposon to encourage mutations.
When the viral package enters a cell and the benign carrier virus starts to reproduce, the reverse transcriptase is synthesized. The Black Trump m-RNA is split out and converted to a proper, double-stranded Black Trump DNA sequence by the reverse transcriptase. All as planned.