“You sound like your dad.”
“Go to hell.”
“You know what’s keeping Azicort on the market?”
“Is there any way I can keep you from telling me?”
“Doubt. As long as people are still in doubt about how dangerous Azicort is, it means no one has to do anything. Kimball-Geier gets to make another couple hundred million for the year, your dad gets a bonus, and everyone waits until next year to decide. As long as there’s doubt, we can always wait until next year.”
“Maybe there’s legitimate doubt, though! Just because you want someone to blame doesn’t mean you’re right.”
“I told myself that for a little while.” Moses laughed. “But people like your dad have been doing this for the last hundred years. If you dig back, you can see the playbook getting built. First, it’s DuPont and some chemical dye that’s killing workers in the nineteen thirties. Then it’s Big Tobacco fighting to keep their cigarettes from being blamed for lung cancer, and you’ve got asbestos fighting to keep themselves from being blamed for asbestosis, and then it’s the lead industry, trying to keep lead in paint from being blamed for screwing with kids’ brains. There’s a whole kitchen cabinet full of household drugs that are using the same tricks. You know the aspirin industry tried to stop aspirin from being labeled for Reye’s syndrome? Hell, even Tylenol used some of these plays. And then there’s the chemicals. Look up diacetyl sometime. It makes microwave popcorn taste like butter, and it literally obliterates people’s lungs when they breathe it.”
“I don’t understand—” Alix tried to interrupt, but Moses was rolling now. He held up his hand and didn’t stop talking.
“At first, you think all these things are different, but then you start to see a pattern. The same scientific experts show up on different witness stands. The same tactics get used in different industries. At first, you think you’re just obsessed because you’re pissed about losing your mom and dad, and this is looking like a conspiracy. But you’re a sane person, so you know conspiracies don’t really exist, and, anyway, conspiracies are for crazy people, right? And you definitely don’t want to think you’re going crazy, because that means not only did you lose your parents, but you’re also developing paranoid delusions.
“But still, it’s right there in front of you like a neon sign. Every time a company gets in trouble, that company hires someone like Simon Banks, of Banks Strategy Partners. And you finally see it. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just business. As long as they can keep the people confused, they can keep selling. Doesn’t matter what it is. Microwave popcorn, Azicort, aspirin to little kids…”
“You really do sound like a conspiracy theorist.”
“Theory, hell. It’s just basic product defense. Exxon Mobil spent a lot of money to try to make people doubt whether global warming was real.” He shrugged. “That’s documented. It’s not an accident people in the U.S. still can’t make up their minds about whether it exists or not. An oil company mounted a straight-up propaganda campaign to keep them confused. They gave six hundred thousand dollars to the Heartland Institute and two million dollars to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and if you’re a regular person, that sounds like a lot of money. But if you’re Exxon Mobil, you make between fifteen and forty-five billion dollars in profit every year, so keeping people confused about global warming was actually dirt cheap to them.”
He gave her a speculative look. “What would you be willing to do if you could make another forty-five billion in just one year? This is just an accounting problem for them.” He shrugged. “Anyway, you don’t need to believe me. It’s just the truth.”
“The truth.”
“There actually is such a thing as unimpeachable truth, Alix. Not ‘he said, she said.’ Not ‘in my opinion.’ Just facts. Documented facts.”
“Documented on the Internet, you mean. Mostly by crazies.”
“No. Real truth. Unimpeachable truth. I like to think of it as Information 2.0.”
“Is that what your 2.0 symbol is all about?”
“Sure. Right now, all we have is Information 1.0, right? And it makes it easy to obscure the truth about things. It makes it easy for your dad to make a living. But maybe there’s a way to make information more solid. Make it more trustworthy, you know? A way to cut through the lies to something so solid and true and real that people like your dad can’t undermine it. Real truth. Information 2.0. If you had that, it would change everything. You’d have a world where you could actually trust what people say.”
“Sounds utopian.”
“No. It’s not utopian. Truth exists, Alix. We just have to hunt for it more right now. Some of it’s sitting right in front of us. If you really believe your dad’s clients are so innocent, then you just have to help us crack the Doubt Factory to confirm it.” Moses jerked his head toward where Tank was sitting on his skateboard, resting. “Let’s take a peek at Kimball-Geier Pharmaceuticals. Let’s see if they really think Azicort is as safe as they say it is.”
Alix stared down at the floor.
Moses touched her arm, gently. “My dad’s death isn’t on you. The next kid who goes into a coma from Azicort, though?” He nodded down at Tank, who was taking a hit off his inhaler. “The next one who dies? That is on you. Because now you know something is wrong, and you’re not doing anything about it.”
Alix swallowed. Don’t believe him. He’s manipulating you. He’s just screwing with your mind.
“This is my family,” she said. “You’re asking me to hurt my family.”
“It was my family, too,” Moses said. “And Cyn’s and Adam’s and Kook’s and Tank’s, and lots more besides.”
“What if there’s nothing in those files?” Alix asked. “What then?”
Moses grinned abruptly. “Well, then you’re off the hook, aren’t you? That’s the beauty of the truth, right? Then we’re just a bunch of crazy kids with our heads full of conspiracy theories.” He looked at her seriously. “There really is truth, Alix. We don’t have to guess. If we can see those files, we’ll know. We’ll know the truth. And that’s all we want. Truth.”
Truth. He was saying there was truth, but all Alix could feel was that she was surrounded by lies. How can you know who to trust? How can you know who’s trustworthy? Alix felt sick. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
Moses straightened, looking surprised. “Really?”
Alix closed her eyes, feeling wretched. “Don’t look so shocked. Yeah. Really. Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do it.”
“Look at me and say that again,” Moses said. “Tell me you’re okay doing this.”
Alix looked him in the eye and told him what he wanted to hear. It was easy to do.
He’d made a good case.
22
MOSES WAS STRUCK BY HOW vulnerable Alix looked. Standing before him in her borrowed clothes, just at the edge of the warehouse, she looked isolated and adrift, and he was surprised at how much pity he felt for her—for the situation that he’d put her in, for the fact that her world was going to be forever different… for everything, really.
Beyond the factory doors, Adam was waiting in the Dodge Dart, the engine already running. Moses held up the USB stick. It was tiny. Little more than the metal USB plug itself along with the barest bump of extra plastic. Kook and Tank had constructed it so that a person would hardly notice that something had been plugged into the computer. When it was inserted, it would hardly stick out at all.