But family ties are strong. Chakra’s aunt worked as a cleaning woman for an agency that provided servants for tourists and business visitors. One English couple required a guide for their travels through the region. His aunt told his mother, and his mother bathed scrawny young Chakra and dressed him in the best western clothes she could borrow. He was presented to the English couple as their guide: old enough to know the area, young enough to be a tenth the price of a regular guide.
The man was Sir Walter Brock, the woman was Lady Elizabeth Smythe. They were quite wealthy and, Chakra could see, given to occasional bleedings of the heart. As they toured the countryside, he regaled them with the knowledge he had squirreled away during his last year of schooling—science, art, the history of this corner of the Commonwealth.
It was Lady Elizabeth who suggested that they bring this marvelous, forlorn boy back to England. Sir Walter wondered whether that was proper; they had their son Derek’s feelings to consider. Nonsense, said Lady Elizabeth, Derek and Chakra would get along swimmingly.
Ramsanjawi pulled the empty sac of the grape skin from his mouth. How sweet, how naive Lady Elizabeth, his English mumsy, had been.
27 AUGUST 1998
NEW YORK
What attracted me was the ritual of the drug, not the drug itself. I’d buy half a gram, planning that it would last me the weekend doing a blow here and a blow there. On Friday night, after my shower, I would flip on the ballgame, take a picture frame off the wall, tap a small pile onto the glass, and chop it extra fine with a single-edge razor. I’d shape the lines, long thin ones that curved like the branches of willow trees. And each time a different batter stepped into the box, I’d trail my straw down another line.
By the time I left to pick up Stacey, the stuff would be gone. I’d be on the prowl again, not so much because I wanted to stay high, but because I craved the ritual. The tap tap tap of the bottle on the glass, the crunch of the fine grain beneath the edge of the blade, the pinch of the straw inside my nostril.
That’s how I got fucked.
Fabio Bianco convened a teleconference of the directorates of the three arms of Trikon International before leaving Lausanne. There was little resistance to his proposal to take personal charge of the research operation on Trikon Station. The vote was nearly unanimous.
Bianco thought wryly that they were probably hoping he would stay on the space station and out of their way.
He then leaned on the European Space Agency to use its good offices to obtain him a pass on one of the American aerospace planes. Although the space-plane fleet was slated to begin regular commercial flights to orbiting installations later in the year, passes were available to space agency employees, government officials, politicians seeking reelection, and well-connected members of the media.
Within twenty-four hours, every aspect of Bianco’s trip to Trikon Station was arranged. His only problem was with his nephew Ugo, who told him upon boarding the Venice-bound train in Ouchy that flying into orbit with his ailments was suicidal.
“Nonsense,” said Bianco, “Micro-gee will cure me.”
He waved until the train went out of sight.
The aerospace plane was scheduled to depart from Edwards Space Center in California. Bianco decided to fly to New York, where he would receive final clearance for the flight and spend the intervening two days at Trikon International’s offices near the United Nations.
He rose from the galley proofs spread across his desk and shuffled to the office window. Smoke from a New Jersey waterfront fire combined with a temperature inversion to paint the sky a flat gray. A tugboat chugged up the East River, its sluggish wake barely disturbing the purple oil slick that extended from shore to shore. Directly below, traffic on First Avenue was snarled by a bus-and-truck accident. Shirtless cabbies stood on the hoods of their taxis and yelled curses at the emergency workers trying to pry the vehicles apart.
The long, awkward galleys were for an article due to be published in an obscure Canadian scientific journal the following January. Bianco had heard rumors of the article while he was still in Lausanne, and upon his arrival in New York had ordered the Trikon staff to fetch him a copy. The article was as interesting as it was frightening. The media had been full of stories about a mysterious series of whale beachings a week or so ago. Now a research scientist had come up with a theory about the cause of the whale deaths. Bianco shuddered at the implications.
“Jonathan Eldredge is on the line,” a female voice announced over the intercom.
Bianco turned away from the window just as Eldredge’s image snapped onto the telephone monitor. Eldredge was a youthful-looking man with stylishly coiffed blond hair and an eternal tan. He was an expert in international finance rather than a scientist, and had been wooed away from the economics department of Stanford University shortly after Trikon International’s founding to serve as president of Trikon’s North American arm.
“I received a memo from Thora Skillen,” said Bianco after the two men had exchanged pleasantries. “She complains about a man named Hugh O’Donnell. She says that he is uncooperative and disregards established laboratory procedures. She also says that her lab module is too small to accommodate two separate projects. Two separate projects? What does that mean? Someone is using Trikon facilities and is not contributing to our toxic-waste microbe project?”
Eldredge’s normal smile faded from his tanned face. “Hugh O’Donnell is an independent scientist using the American/Canadian module by special arrangement with Trikon NA,” he said. “The arrangement is similar to that of Trikon International with the Mars Project.”
“It is not similar to the Mars Project if he is using Trikon facilities,” said Bianco.
“It is part of the arrangement.”
“Who is this arrangement with?”
“Fabio, it’s a bona fide—”
“Who is it with?!”
Eldredge’s beach-boy features darkened.
“If you want to know, I’ll have to patch in someone else,” he said. “Hold the line.”
The screen went blank, although the subtle hum meant the connection still held. Goddamn these Americans, thought Bianco. How can they lease away precious lab space?
A split image formed on the monitor. Eldredge occupied one side; the other showed a man seated in a room with a blank white wall behind him. Eldredge introduced the man simply as Mr. Welch. The man nodded in acknowledgement. He had a bulldog’s chin beneath a thin nose and narrowed eyes. His dark business suit was tight on his shoulders.
“You want to know about Hugh O’Donnell,” said Welch. “He was specially selected by us to work on an extremely sensitive project. Trikon NA agreed to cooperate.”
“Who are you?” said Bianco. “Besides being Mr. Welch.”
“An employee of the United States government. That is all you need to know.”
“Jonathan—”
“It doesn’t matter who they are,” said Eldredge. There was a strained tone in his voice that implied Trikon NA’s cooperation was not completely voluntary.
“What is the nature of this project?” said Bianco.
“That is none of your concern,” said Welch.
“It is my concern when my project suffers for his presence. And it is my concern when my space station is being misused.”
Welch rolled his eyes as if mugging for a television camera.
“Another prima donna scientist who thinks he owns Trikon Station,” he said. He focused his attention squarely on Bianco. Even in the tiny telephone screen his eyes looked ruthless, dangerous. “I don’t know where you come from, but we have a saying here that possession is nine-tenths of the law.”