by Nancy Kress
“It’s time, Lord,” she said aloud. The folks inside, they won’t wake up for hours, but it’s time now. Please, Lord. Do it now.
“Call me on home.”
Nine
We’re all mutants. Everybody is genetically defective.
—Geneticist Michael M. Kaback, University of San Diego, quoted in Scientific American, 1994
* * *
“Mel,” Joe Krovetz said on the phone, “unlock your door; I’m coming over.”
Melanie glanced sleepily at her watch. “Christ, Krovetz, it’s six-fifteen!”
“I know. Get up.” The phone went dead.
Melanie groped for her robe and then stumbled toward the door. What the hell did Krovetz have for her at six-fifteen in the goddamn morning? It had better be good or his young ass was dead meat. It had better be at least some genetic clue that Plasmodium reading had been deliberately engineered after all. … Suddenly she felt more awake. On her way from the bedroom, she turned on the burner under her teakettle.
When she slipped the chain off the motel door and unshot the bolt, Krovetz was already there, carrying a newspaper. He marched wordlessly to the kitchen, checked the water kettle, and then held her firmly by both shoulders.
“Listen to me, Mel. The FBI has a suspect. I’m telling you now so you don’t go off the deep end when Farlow makes his announcement at the meeting this morning.”
She shook her shoulders free. “Why would I go off the deep end? That’s pretty insulting, Krovetz. Unless you think the suspect is just a cover-up, a phony fingering to hide the—”
“How would I know that? I’m not in law enforcement, thank God. But I was with Farlow, just shooting the breeze, when they called him late last night. Maybe you’d better read the story first.”
Melanie read the front page he thrust at her. The headlines were nearly two inches high.
FBI PUTS POSSIBLE PLAGUE SUSPECT
UNDER HEAVY SURVEILLANCE
Libby Turner had written the article, which was short. Like Joe, Melanie couldn’t tell if the suspect was genuine or a sop to the public. Nor could she tell why Joe looked at her as if she were a bomb about to go off.
“So? They’ve got somebody. That’s good, isn’t it? And it doesn’t mean they’ll stop investigating other suspects until this one is at least charged with something?”
“No. Yes. I mean, there’s something more.” He ran a hand through his rumpled straight hair.
Melanie had never seen Joe nervous. She would have said it wasn’t possible. Her throat tightened.
“What is it, Joe? Spit it out. You said you were with Farlow when ‘they’ called late last night. Who’re ‘they’? The FBI?”
“No. The Baltimore Sun.”
“Who said what? What’s Farlow going to announce at the meeting?”
“A reporter called to ask if the CDC had any comment on the surveillance, which Farlow didn’t because that was the first he’d heard of it. But, you know, the CDC maintains a hiring file, with both résumés and interview reports. On a hunch, Farlow accessed the CDC computer to see if this Donohue had applied for a job after he terminated at Genemod in Virginia. And he had.” Again the gesture with the hair.
“Go on.”
“Someone in Personnel did the preliminary interview. His—or her—report said that Donohue seemed both defensive and superior. He justified having been terminated by three different corporations since college on the grounds of bosses, quote, out to make trouble for me, unquote. When the interviewer asked why they’d want to do that, Donohue said it was because even though he doesn’t look it, he’s of racially mixed background. His father’s people were Irish, but on his mother’s side one of his great-grandparents was black.”
Melanie couldn’t breathe. “Black?”
“Yeah. The FBI must know that, but this reporter, Libby Turner, probably hasn’t had time yet to—”
“Black? You’re saying a black man is committing genocide against his own people?”
“I’m not saying anything. But Donohue himself says—”
“Are you crazy? Or just corrupted?”
Krovetz drew a deep breath.
“Do you even realize what you’re spouting? Do you? You—or Farlow, or the FBI, or the press, I don’t give a goddamn who—are trying to blame this evil on us! Killing off our own! So it’s just a civil war, nothing to threaten the white folks, just those crazy niggers killing themselves again. What’s a little more black-on-black murder, hey, hey—”
“Stop it, Mel.”
“Stop it? Don’t you dare tell me what to do! You stand there and repeat to me the most evil lie in the world like you believe it’s true and I’m not supposed to—”
“It’s not the most evil lie in the world.”
“How the hell would you know? How would you know anything? How would you know what it feels like to … to …” She couldn’t go on. This was Joe, one of the most decent human beings she’d ever known. She was wrong to blame Joe, wrong wrong wrong … and yet she wasn’t. Something coalesced inside her, crystallized, something so old it wasn’t even hers. … She’d inherited it from her parents, and they’d gotten it from their parents and so on back to the lash, the auction block, the slave ship, the casual tossing away of lives just because those lives were black. … The crystallized something pierced her, sharp and hot as burning brands, and she gasped.
“All right, Mel,” Joe said. “All right.”
“It’s not true. It’s not true.”
“Maybe not.”
“‘Maybe?’ For you to say—for them to say … to say …”
The teakettle whistled. Joe walked into the kitchenette and made instant coffee. When be handed her a cup, she gulped it black, not even feeling the burn in her mouth. Krovetz waited.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she whispered, when she could talk. “I just …” Just what? Just can’t take much more of this.
“That’s why I wanted to tell you first, alone. So you could get over the initial shock. Because, Mel, if you act like this at the meeting, Farlow’s going to remove you from the project. You know he is. He doesn’t like researchers who he thinks can’t be objective. And if you’re removed, you can’t help anybody at all.”
It was true. Melanie grasped onto this like a lifeline: If she so much as looked distraught or dysfunctional, Farlow would remove her from the project. And then she couldn’t help anybody at all. Joe was right.
She took a sip of the coffee.
“That’s better,” Joe said quietly. “You’d better get dressed. Farlow’s going to phone about the meeting any minute now, before anybody leaves for the field or goes on-line.”
“Okay.” After a moment she was able to add, “Thanks.”
“We need you, Mel,” Krovetz said. “Be sure to lock the door tight behind me.”
The meeting at the Baltimore Field Office contained three surprises. To Cavanaugh, all three were shockers.
First, Dunbar stated clearly that no one in the FBI had leaked news of the surveillance to Libby Turner at the Sun. “We’ve checked this out already this morning. Turner learned about the surveillance just the way she said she had, by staking out the FBI agents on the stakeout. Unfortunate, but there it is.”
No surprise there. Dunbar the Book Man was peeved but not angry. Reporters were reporters.
“Also, I want to make perfectly plain that Bureau surveillance of Michael Donohue in no way means a slacking off on all other aspects of the investigation. International, national security, hate groups, genetic-engineering companies—all the angles are still going to be covered just as thoroughly. Everybody clear on this?”
Apparently everybody was; nobody protested. And nobody looked surprised. The men and women around the conference table hunched blearily over their coffee. Some team members were missing. Investigating, Cavanaugh presumed, except for the media representatives, who were probably frantically trying to keep up with calls from press, radio, and TV.
“Third—and this
comes straight from the director—nobody talks about this case to anyone outside the Bureau. Nobody, about anything. Not even about how committed the Bureau is to solving it. The only permitted comment is ‘No comment.’ The director has personally asked me to remind you all that under the new guidelines issued last year, unauthorized disclosure is grounds for censure, suspension, or dismissal from the FBI.”
Hardball. But not surprising. Libby Turner was only the tip of the media combat about to be staged outside the Hoover Building. Let the games begin.
Then came the first of the lions.
“The document I’m passing out now,” Dunbar said, “is what we know at this point about Michael Sean Donohue. Everything in the Turner article was true. But in addition, there are two other major facts the press doesn’t have so far. One, we have a file on Donohue in connection with the Irish Republican Army going back to 1984, when Donohue worked in Boston. The evidence is scanty and no charges were ever brought, but at the time the SACs in Boston deemed there to be enough to open a file.”
The agents around the table lost their bleary looks and sat up straighter, including Cavanaugh. The IRA. But that made no sense. The Irish had never had a strong quarrel with blacks, American or otherwise. If they had somehow developed, or gotten hold of, something like an engineered parasite for a mosquito, half of London would now be down with sleeping sickness. Or dengue fever. Or whatever else they could make the dank British climate support.
Only the Division Five agents looked unsurprised; they apparently already had counterintelligence on the connection. A young female agent Cavanaugh didn’t recognize blurted, “But why would the IRA want to—”
“We don’t know that they did,” Dunbar snapped, the first break in his aloof formality. “Please remember, Agent McDougal, that what you’re holding is a preliminary information sheet on a suspect, not a final investigative report.”
Agent McDougal reddened and raised her coffee. Cavanaugh wondered how many meetings would go by until she said anything again. Dunbar didn’t really like rookies on his cases, although he must know they had to learn someplace. Felders had welcomed rookies, for their fresh perspectives. Cavanaugh missed Felders all over again.
“Finally,” Dunbar said, “if you’ll turn to the last page of the document you’ll see another key point about the suspect. This one is potentially very explosive. Michael Sean Donohue’s blood heritage is three-quarters Irish, one-eighth German, and one-eighth African American.”
Cavanaugh drew in his breath. There it was, on the last page: maternal great-grandmother Fleur D’Orsay, born 1874 of freed slaves, married in 1903 to Hans Pfeiffer in New Orleans, Louisiana, after ten years of common-law cohabitation.
“How available is this information to the press?” Agent McDougal asked, showing to Cavanaugh that he’d underestimated her. It just proved how little he knew about women.
Women. Marcy. Judy.
Dunbar said, “The family background is in the public records, so they might have it as early as the six o’clock news. The IRA connection, to the best of our data, is known only to the FBI and the CIA. Probably the—Agent Cavanaugh, do you have something to add?”
“No,” Cavanaugh said, trying to wipe his face clean of whatever expression had prompted Dunbar’s notice—Marcy, Judy—“no, I … no.”
“Well, that’s too bad, because I’m moving you from South Maryland hate groups to surveillance of Michael Donohue.”
That was the second surprise. And not only to Cavanaugh. Glances were exchanged among agents, all of whom quickly returned to studying the profile of Donohue. Then Cavanaugh got it.
Dunbar wanted him someplace where he wouldn’t stir up questions nobody wanted to hash out openly. What better place than on the surveillance team? Cavanaugh would be continually in the company of one-track, unimaginative agents with high testosterone and low doubt factors, which was what surveillance agents tended to be like. They would surround Cavanaugh, neutralize him. And since the press would be tailing the tails, the gag order on talking to them would be uppermost in everyone’s mind, thereby keeping Cavanaugh from pretty much asking anything inflammatory of anybody. Plus, he would be the junior agent on surveillance. He wouldn’t be writing any official reports. He’d just be along for the ride.
“I think maybe—”
“That’s it, people,” Dunbar said crisply, and the scraping of chairs and murmuring of voices drowned out whatever Cavanaugh was going to say.
Not that he knew what that would have been. A challenge to Dunbar the Book Man was equivalent to a challenge to the cosmic order. Nonetheless, Cavanaugh tried.
“Jerry, I appreciate you moving me closer to the center of the case. What with it having started in my jurisdiction and—”
“Seton’s jurisdiction,” Dunbar said, pointedly.
“Yes. Of course. But even though I do appreciate it, there are a few more leads I’d really like to follow through on, so if the surveillance assignment—”
“Turn the leads over to McDougal. They haven’t turned up anything remotely useful yet, according to your own reports, so it’ll be a good place for her to learn technique.”
“But—”
“They haven’t turned up anything, have they?” Dunbar asked. His gray eyes fixed on Cavanaugh like a tractor beam. “And you yourself were the one who said the domestic hate groups were just red herrings anyway.”
Hoist with his own petard.
“Didn’t you say that, Agent Cavanaugh?”
“Yes,” Cavanaugh said resignedly.
“Well, then, there it is. Report to Pilozzi in Surveillance, ASAP.”
Cavanaugh didn’t answer. No point. He was assigned to Surveillance.
On his way to Pilozzi’s office, he called Marcy at work. Her secretary said she was in a meeting. He couldn’t face the call to Judy just yet. It was going to be awful. Judy would cry, and he would apologize, and if he weren’t such a worm, he’d go see her in person instead of making a lousy phone call. But when he thought of Marcy, of another unstrained, easy dinner on the coffee table and another sweet reunion romp in bed, he knew he just couldn’t do a personal scene with Judy. No matter how much she deserved her say. He just wouldn’t be able to stand there and meet her eyes.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.
He went downstairs to Pilozzi’s office.
The reporter caught Melanie as she left the house of an interviewee, mother of a six-year-old who’d died of malaria reading the day before. “I’m Shakita Franklin, Dr. Anderson, from radio station KQLN.”
Melanie stopped resignedly, sweating in the black dress and stockings she always wore to survivor interviews. Mourning clothes. It was little enough to do to show respect.
“I know this is a hard time for me to be asking you questions, but KQLN would appreciate a comment from one of us who’s close to the investigation.”
“One of us.” The young corn-rowed sister didn’t say it as if to claim privilege, but merely as fact. Melanie said, “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, Dr. Anderson. May I record?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’ve heard, of course, that the Baltimore Sun has identified a suspect in malaria reading and has him under heavy surveillance.”
“The whole world’s heard that by now.”
Shakita watched her closely. “Yes. And you know that the suspect is part black.”
Melanie didn’t ask how the girl knew this even before it had appeared on the six o’clock news. The world of reporters had just as many weblike bonds of favors, family, markers, and friendship as any other. Undoubtedly Shakita had some sort of deal that said she couldn’t run her interview until after the six o’clock news. But being young and ambitious, she was out here digging.
“You don’t look surprised, Dr. Anderson. Did the CDC already know that?”
“I can’t speak for the CDC, Ms. Franklin. You’d need to ask Dr. James Farlow, head of the epidemiology team.”
“I unde
rstand. Can you tell us, please, what effect this new information will have on the CDC investigation?”
“None. A Special Pathogens Branch investigation is concerned with identifying an epidemic, tracking it, and devising ways to end it.”
“And is it ending?”
“It’s too soon to tell,” Melanie said. Sweat trickled down her neck and between her breasts. “The death rate, as you undoubtedly know, is falling. But the drop coordinates with the breeding cycle of A. quadrimaculatus, so it could just mean that there’s a temporary lull while the next generation of larvae mature and hatch.”
“I see. The press has included much speculation about whether malaria reading could have evolved naturally, without human engineering. The CDC must be investigating that possibility—from a scientific point of view, I mean. How is that search going?”
“Again, you’d have to speak with Dr. Farlow for the most current information. I can tell you only that we’ve identified a list of amino-acid-level differences between P. falciparum and P. reading. The list implies heavy genetic linkages among at least three major mutations, possibly more.”
“That’s a lot of mutating to happen by coincidence all at once.”
You know it, girl. But all Melanie said aloud was, “Yes, it is.”
“Thank you, Dr. Anderson. This is Shakita Franklin of Radio KQLN in Washington.”
SUBJ: OUTRAGE
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SO THE FBI HAS DECIDED THAT A BLACK MAN CREATED MALARIA READING. THIS IS A
