The Twins waited. They knew this, but interrupting Cyrus was not a path toward obtaining his cooperation. Cyrus chewed on it for a while, his eyes narrowed and focused inward.
“What steps have you taken?” he asked.
“Nothing yet,” Hecate said. “The Somalia test was just last night completed and our people are still crunching the numbers.”
Paris nodded. “We’ve been playing with some ideas, though. A time-release dopamine dampener that would kick in just as the mission started. By the time the Berserkers were in full attack we’re hoping to cause a down-spike in the dopamine to start a cool-off.”
Cyrus made a face. “That’s a Band-Aid, not a cure. Besides, none of the dopamine dampeners we could use are reliable. Nothing has been field tested on anything remotely like a Berserker. Plus there’s adrenaline rush and other factors. You’d burn through six months of chemistry trying to get the dose right, and then another six working out how to make the dose appropriate to each individual Berserker.” He shook his head. “Nice theory, but impractical. Medication isn’t your answer.”
Paris made a disgusted face. “We know, Alpha… that’s why we’re here. We have fifty ideas, but none of them are practical in the time we have left. We have contracts with hard delivery dates. We burned through our swing time early this year when we had unexpected effects of cognitive dissonance. The buyers want their products now.”
“Fuck the buyers!” snapped Cyrus. Both of the tiger-hounds stiffened at his sides. “And fuck your salespeople if they can’t figure out how to put positive spin on this.”
“Our people can—”
“Your people are idiots, Paris!” When Cyrus was angry his carefully acquired American accent slipped and the more staccato German accent emerged. “Otto could sell that product for single use and get nearly the money you two are getting for extended use and ownership.” The Twins flinched and Paris looked away. “What’s your current guarantee?”
“Eighteen to twenty-four months at ninety percent operational efficiency,” Hecate said quietly.
Cyrus stared for a moment, then smiled. “You gave a two-year window on a transgenic soldier? I’m crazy, my young gods, but I think you two are crazier by an order of magnitude.”
Despite their best efforts, the Twins flushed with shame.
In a small voice Paris said, “We needed a buyer who could finance—”
“Don’t!” growled Cyrus. “Don’t embarrass yourselves with an excuse. You’re supposed to be above that sort of thing and you should at least try and act the part.”
Isis let out a low growl that was eloquent in its meaning, but this time it was directed only at Paris. Hecate noted the shift.
Cyrus steepled his fingers. “When you made that deal you were cash poor. Is that still the case?”
“Well,” Hecate said, “… no. The hunting business alone has brought in over two hundred million and the—”
“Then, as I said, fuck the customers. You tell them what the product will and will not do. Don’t discuss it with them. Tell them.”
“Yes, Alpha,” said Paris.
“Yes, Alpha,” said Hecate.
Cyrus gave them a broad fatherly smile. “Now, my young gods, let’s see what we can do to solve all your problems.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I leaned forward in my chair and watched as Hu pressed the play button and the forest came alive on the video screen.
“The sound cuts in and out — mostly out.”
“Can you clean it up? Run it through some filters or something?”
“This is the enhanced version,” Hu said. “From the angle and the image jump we figure it to be a cheap lapel camera. No lavaliere mike to extend the pickup. The rustle of clothes and the breathing of the cameraman kill most of the sound anyway.”
The camera image changed as the person with the lapel camera began to move forward through intensely dense tropical foliage. Occasionally we’d get snatches of sound, mostly of the cameraman’s labored breathing or the whisk of big leaves as they brushed across his chest. We heard a few muffled snatches of conversation. Not enough to make out words, but enough to get a sense that there were several people with the cameraman. After a minute or two of this the image changed as several people passed by the cameraman to lead the way through the jungle. I counted five white men, all of them in their forties or early fifties. All of them fit but not hard. Except the man leading the pack, a stern-faced guy who looked like he was carved from granite. The rest looked like they had muscles courtesy of LA Fitness. Good dentists, expensive tans. Everyone carried expensive hunting rifles, top-of-the-line, with all sorts of doodads. The stern guy’s rifle was of the same quality, but all he had on it was a good scope. His gun looked worn but immaculate.
“Big-game hunters,” I observed.
Hu just smiled.
The group of men burst through the wall of foliage into a wider trail that paid out into a broad clearing that had a barren slash-and-burn quality to it. The blackened stumps of vegetation barely reached to the ankles of the men’s boots.
There was a few minutes of them walking, and then they stopped to drink from canteens. The sound was off for most of this, though I caught snatches of a few words. “Africa,” a couple of racial invectives, and then what sounded like “Extinction Wave,” but they were both joking and I lost both ends of that sentence as the sound cut out.
“This sure as hell isn’t Denver,” I said. “Looks like the Brazilian rain forest. Clear-cut land for cattle farming, probably owned by a fast-food chain.”
“McMoo,” agreed Hu. “We identified two of the bird species in the video.” He froze the picture and touched the screen. “That parrot there is an Amazona aestiva—or Blue-fronted Amazon — which is definitely indigenous to Brazil.”
He restarted the video and we watched as the men fanned out in a line facing a point far across the clearing and off-camera.
“Right over there!” one of them said, and it took me a half second to process that he’d said, “Gleich da drüben!” The others shouted and then the sound cut out again.
“That’s German,” Hu said.
“I know. But one of the other guys — the one with the Australian bush hat — rattled off something in Afrikaans… though it sounds like he has an accent under the South African. Might also be a German.”
The five men and our unseen cameraman were still focused on the spot way off across the field. Suddenly one of them pointed.
“There it is!” he said in English. A British accent. “We found it!”
“Gelukwensing!” cried the South African. Congratulations.
They all gaped, staring in stupid shock at whatever they saw. A couple of them actually had their mouths hanging open.
“Guns!” the Brit hissed, and everyone raised their weapons.
“Not yet, not yet!” growled the South African in thickly accented English. “Wait until they flush it this way.”
“Good God A’mighty,” drawled one of the men in a thick Cajun accent. “Will you look at that!”
“Hou jy daarvan, meneer?” murmured the South African, then said it in English: “Do you like it, gentlemen?”
“It’s beautiful,” murmured the fifth man. His accent was pure West Texas.