Vitals

by Greg Bear

  Cousins nodded. He didn’t seem to find any of this very funny, or even unusual. I had to put a shine on this shit and make it pretty. “You vaccinated me against mind control. Is that it?”

  “Mostly,” Cousins said. “It still needs work.”

  “And that stopped me from shooting you?”

  “It was a little dicey,” Banning said with a sniff. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “You did set me up. I was a guinea pig.”

  “We’re all guinea pigs,” Cousins said. “It was for your own protection, and ours, too. We don’t know what Silk is capable of, the size of their operations now, but at one time they had thousands of agents around the world.”

  I rubbed the door handle, seriously considering just getting out and walking away. But Cousins threw his arm over the back of the seat. His eyes tracked my arm to the door, and he looked straight at me and shook his head.

  I released my grip on the handle. “Tell me again, what we’re doing here,” I said.

  “Let’s wait till we get to the house,” Cousins said. “Tammy’s laying out dinner. Clean food.”

  “It’s quite a story,” Banning said.

  The gate swung open. In the road ahead, a spiked caltrops rolled into its iron sheath.

  “All clear,” Cousins said with a sigh.

  Up the long drive, over a cattle barricade with big green transformer boxes on either side, past video cameras mounted on tall steel poles, through a no-man’s-land surrounded by barbed wire, Banning drove the old Plymouth as if it were a limousine carrying heads of state.

  A dark, tubby, cheerful-looking fellow met us at the Spanish-style double door, under the deep overhang of the front porch. Cousins introduced me to Joseph Marquez, our host. He wore silk pajama bottoms over a tight potbelly, had a thick-pelted chest and arms, a flowing Maharishi beard, and long, curly, jet-black hair topped by a little embroidered yarmulke. He looked a lot like Jerry Garcia. His eyes were small, amber, and shrewd, and he had expressive lips and perfect teeth.

  Marquez circled suspiciously. “You check him over?”

  “He’s okay,” Cousins said. Marquez scowled and repeated my name, enunciating every syllable, until I wanted to curse. Then he lifted his arms in the air and shook them like a preacher getting his daily revelation.

  “Damn, I know you. I’ve read your books. Uncommon Graves, right? Shit, a veteran! The final member of the team. Munitions, all right! Cambodia? Special Forces?”

  I stared around the room with a new sense of dread.

  “Welcome to the inner sanctum! Everyone’s safe here. Tammy’s laying out a feast.”

  Marquez was a director and producer who hadn’t made a movie in over fifteen years. Still, he had invested wisely. His beautiful house covered three acres of leveled ridgeline above Mulholland and looked out over Laurel Canyon.

  I gathered quickly that Marquez had given Cousins some money and let him set up a laboratory in the basement. But there was something else in the mix. A squib in my éclair, as it were.

  Tammy joined us in the limestone-walled foyer. She was young, in her late teens or early twenties, with chocolate skin, high forehead, pulled-back Titian hair, broad hips, a slight tummy, and ample breasts. I hadn’t seen her like outside of Playboy. She wore silk pajama bottoms and a bikini top that hid nada, and she hugged us all with childlike innocence and asked if we preferred basmati or wild rice.

  “We’re having a curry,” she explained, favoring Cousins with a smile. “Joe loves curry.”

  “Kills germs,” Marquez said with a little-boy grin.

  He enjoyed my expression as I watched Tammy depart.

  “No movies in development,” he said, “but there’s a son and heir tucked inside that amazing incubator.”

  “Stop it,” Tammy called back.

  “She’s half-French and half-Brazilian. I’m half-Irish and half-Spanish, a marrano. Wow, huh? A month and a half along. How about a tour?”

  “Maybe they’d like to clean up first,” Tammy suggested from two rooms away.

  “That’d be good,” Cousins said.

  I washed off the grime of our trip in a marble-walled shower bigger than my whole bathroom in El Cajon. Two rows of adjustable nozzles switched on as I turned, stinging hot needles of water causing such a good pain I had to groan out loud. I could have stayed in there for days.

  As I switched off the water, I heard a knock on the bathroom door. Cousins tossed a small plastic bottle of pinkish cream over the top of the cloudy glass enclosure. I caught it after a slippery fumble.

  “Rub this on your skin when you’re done,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Part of being immunized,” he said. “Lanolin and my own special brew.”

  I sniffed the cream as I dried myself. Smelled like fresh bread. I rubbed it on my arms and calves, then on the back of my neck, wherever my skin felt dry and stretched. I got dressed and joined Cousins, Banning, and Marquez in the living room.

  Tammy took our drink orders as we walked through the stainless-steel, copper, and granite kitchen. Overflowing flagons of India Pale Ale were recommended. I did not disagree. I walked around in a daze, clutching my glass, shoulders slumped and wearing a stupid grin. A tornado had whisked me straight to Oz.

  “You did special ops, right?” Marquez asked. He put his arm around my shoulders. I don’t like being touched. My comfort zone is about two meters for anyone but Janie. “So tell me,” he said. “How would you get through all my defenses, you know, just to take me out?”

  I clenched my jaw muscles and told him I’d think it over.

  The house was a split-level ranch design with sweeping views on all sides—through bulletproof glass. In the den—bigger than my whole lot in El Cajon—Marquez dragged the sheet off a model of his estate and swore me to secrecy, not that it mattered, he said—he was adding stuff every month. “Need to keep a jump ahead.”

  Marquez was a certified California paranoid.

  The only entrance from the front was through a narrow defile blocked by the steel gate and protected by three razor-wire fences, a staked moat, and a ten-foot-wide electrified barrier of ankle-breaking rolling pipes. Down the cliff behind the main lot, he had laid in steel beams and sprayed concrete to protect against landslides, then studded the concrete with trip wires and motion sensors. Later, he had dug an emergency elevator shaft to the bottom of the cliff, with its own power supply and an exit in the house below, which he also owned. “Having just one exit bugged me,” he said. “What if they mounted a full-scale assault from the west? Couldn’t sleep nights. So I purchased the lower house and made an escape route. I store my memorabilia down there.”

  Video cameras swept the grounds. Two full-time bodyguards patrolled, armed with Beretta semiautomatic weapons.

  Marquez took us outside to show us his garden and the dogs. He bred Rottweilers as a sideline. Some of his favorites waited their chance in kennels in the backyard. We met them near the end of the tour. With Marquez present, they were happy puppies. “If I’m not here, they go for the throat,” he said, grinning like a boy with a train set. “But they respect Tammy. They roll over for her, show their tummies. Smart dogs, right?”

  Marquez turned shy as he took us back into the house and led us through his hobby room. His manly center was Tammy, he explained, but this was his “boyish heartwood,” the place where he buried a million regrets and found true peace. I have never seen so many plastic models in all my life. Walls and ceiling were covered with glittering steel-and-plastic cases. Airplanes everywhere, armor, aircraft carriers, dioramas of land and sea battles. And they were accurate, too. Among the aircraft I recognized Shithooks, Spads, Thuds, and Willy Fudds with all the right markings and colors, none of them bigger than my fist.

  A few spaces were left open between the cases for framed posters, lobby cards, and photos from his movies. He had written and directed three: White Lion, about a software engineer who imagines he’s Tarzan; Garbage Master
s, a nasty suburban comedy; and his epic, The Big Stick, a historical fantasy about early German U-boats challenging Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet.

  “Not one of them was a smash hit,” he said proudly. “I kept my place in this fucking town by force of will alone. And all it ever gave me back was Tammy. All right.” He smiled wickedly. “Fair exchange.”

  Seemed to me he had made a lot of money as well as Tammy. We sat down to dinner at a rosewood table as big as my kitchen, covered with heaping bowls of sumptuous food. Marquez passed around a lamb vindaloo that easily explained all the hair on his chest. Tammy carried a tray stacked with chutneys and sauces. I hadn’t eaten so well in months.

  “Rob says there have been adventures,” Marquez said. “Tell me. We don’t get out of the house often.”

  Cousins began. “First, I’d like to apologize to Ben. I didn’t think they’d get to him so fast.”

  “Silk?” Marquez asked eagerly.

  “Mr. Bridger spent some time in jail,” Banning said.

  “Jail!” Marquez crowed. “Wow. A setup?”

  Cousins nodded. “Joe knows everything,” Cousins said to me. “And so does Tammy.” Tammy looked down at the table. From the way he said it, I suspected we would eventually focus on her, and I could see she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “But Dr. Cousins turned the tables and immunized Mr. Bridger ahead of time,” Banning said.

  “As a precaution,” Cousins added. “And, of course, to protect Mr. Bridger. He knows his history, and that’s important.”

  “You didn’t trust me,” Banning said, eyes darting around the table. “You wanted confirmation from another source.”

  “Because you’re a fucking wacko,” Marquez said. Banning looked resigned and settled into his chair. He had been hit with this particular bladder many times.

  “We needed confirmation,” Cousins agreed. “Ben had the expertise.”

  “But that isn’t all of it, right?” Marquez said, eyes glittering. “He understands deadly force. Explosives. He’s our power guy.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “I know little or nothing about the rest of you.”

  “There’s nothing fair about any of this,” Cousins said.

  Tammy nodded as if with special knowledge. Marquez reached over and put his arm around her. “Rudy could have used some immunizing ten years ago,” he said. “Silk turned him into a bigoted Nazi.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that phrase.” Banning’s lips worked as if trying to clean a scrap of food from his front teeth.

  “They didn’t really change you,” Marquez said. “They just brought your hatred of Jews out in the open. If Jews are so inferior, how do you explain Golokhov?” The two men stared at each other, Marquez with the wide-eyed triumph of having scored a point.

  Banning’s face emptied.

  “Back up a bit,” I said. “Who in hell was Golokhov? How did he manage to do all this?”

  “He was the most brilliant biologist of the twentieth century,” Cousins said.

  “The Svengali of germs,” Marquez said. “That’s how I’d pitch it.” He stood up from the table. “Everybody eat their fill? Wonderful curry.”

  Tammy looked nervous, as if her performance were about to begin.

  “Time for some videos,” Marquez said. “I’ll bring a tray of drinks.”

  “I’m a pig, and I know it,” Marquez said. We sat in his lavish theater, four rows of plush seats flanked by dark red velvet curtains. A video projector hung from the ceiling, its cooling fan a soft whisper in the hush. In the wall behind us, slits opened for the peering rodent eyes of three film projectors. Marquez pushed a button, and a short length of front curtain pulled aside, revealing racked towers of expensive electronics. He slipped a disk into a player. “Banning’s a loon, but I’m a platinum-plated swine. I got where I am all by myself, with no help from anybody. I locked myself up in this paranoid’s castle, and . . . lo and behold!” He made a biblical sweep with one hand, as if unveiling a new Golden Calf. “I’m just what the poor girl needs.”

  Banning marched across the front before taking his seat. He waved his arms like a professor giving a lecture. “In 1948,” he said, “Stalin and Golokhov seemed to have had a massive falling-out. Stalin may have felt that Golokhov was trying to control everyone around him. Stalin gave orders to purge Golokhov and all the specialists involved in Silk. He instructed Beria to deport all”—his lips worked—“the Jewish medical researchers who might have been associated with Silk. The so-called Doctors’ Plot of 1952. Ultimately, millions of Jews were banished to Siberia. You must agree, there was a measure of poetic justice.”

  Marquez sat straight up in his seat. “You are a guest,” he muttered. “But you will not provoke me.”

  Banning’s eyes seemed to glaze. He sat.

  “Rudy, we aren’t concerned here with who was Jewish and who wasn’t,” Cousins said calmly.

  “No, of course not,” Banning said, and looked away.

  “Golokhov escaped and went to New York,” Cousins continued. “He, and what remained of Silk, kept a low profile. Beyond that, it’s sketchy. We’re going to New York to fit in the final pieces and look at the whole puzzle. Then . . . we’re off to Florida and Exuma Cays.”

  Marquez leaned forward. “That’s where Tammy comes in.”

  “Tammy?” I asked. “She’s part of this?”

  “Tangentially,” Cousins said, and looked to Marquez.

  Marquez raised his hands. “What can I say? It’s all amazing.”

  I was getting punchy with too much information and too many gaps. The silence lengthened.

  “So?” I said.

  “Tammy flew to LA from the Bahamas with her boyfriend,” Marquez said. “They were at an awards ceremony for Themed Entertainment at the Beverly Wilshire. You know, Disneyland, Sea World, casino shows, that sort of thing. Have you ever heard of Cirque Fantôme?” Marquez punched a button and another curtain parted. The projector threw a gorgeous, sharp picture of an amphitheater onto the screen. People were filing down the rows to reach their seats. Long, filmy, white drapes obscured several layered stages at the center. Lights inside the drapes played like butterflies.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” I said. “Some sort of Vegas show, isn’t it?”

  “Mostly European,” Marquez said. “Best circus in the world, really. Incredible acts, staging, unbelievable stunts.” Marquez gazed at Tammy with little-boy worship, marked by a small eyebrow twitch of concern.

  “It is my story, I will tell it,” she said, drawing her shoulders up. “Fantôme is more than a circus. They send recruiters into the city, the slums. When they found me, I was orphaned, a slum girl in Rio. What did I know? I was fourteen. If I did not leave, I would end up selling my body, taking drugs, and soon I would die. Tending bar or working dates was the best I could hope for. My guardian—he would have been my pimp, maybe—signed me over and the recruiters got me a visa, a work permit. They took me to Lee Stocking Island.”

  “Exuma Cays,” Marquez said. “In the Bahamas.”

  Titles played over the screen: “Cirque Fantôme, Fin de Siècle, L’Ombre et la Lumière.” The translucent drapes drew back to show three empty platforms. Steel columns rose on all sides, six in all, supporting lights and ropes, platforms and wires.

  “Fantôme taught me English and Russian and French and high wire, juggling, and dance. I try with the boleadoras. You become part of a family. Everybody contributes, everybody works together. They train you day in, day out. The food is wonderful. You eat all you want but you don’t get heavy. You work it off. I had never known fresh sheets, soft bed, people caring. It was heaven.”

  A male clown at least twelve feet high from toe to crown, with very long legs, walked onto the largest platform. Though he must have been wearing stilts, they were like nothing I had seen before. One half of his face was painted white, the other black, and he wore a formal suit of charcoal gray. He bowed at the waist, then got down on his knees, if they were knees
. Eerie music rose in the background, and above the platforms, another drape lifted to reveal a rock band of men and women wearing what looked like concentration-camp uniforms.

  “I was sixteen, youngest in our group, the child,” Tammy continued, her eyes fixed on the screen. “I was a pretty good juggler, but not good on the wire. I lacked concentration. So my family took me to visit Dr. Goncourt at his house on the beach. There, I met Philippe Cabal. Philippe is top performer, close to Dr. Goncourt. He liked me.”

  The tall clown spread wide his arms and spun about. Old-fashioned bicyclists in turn-of-the-century clothes wheeled around all the stages, juggling armloads of small antiques—clocks, jewelry, lamps. On the next turn, they were tossing pistols and rifles. How they switched, I could not tell. The music became cockeyed martial.

  Tammy turned her golden brown eyes on me. “At sixteen, I became Philippe’s mistress. He was both lover and father. My master.”

  Marquez held his hands behind his head and stared up at the screen. “You’re leaving out the ship,” he gently reminded her. He touched a button on a large remote control. The picture sped up, clowns and bicyclists racing, music rushing past at a cheerful jog.

  “Oh, yes. They have built it for five years now. They call it Lemuria. Big.”

  “The floating skyscraper—condominiums?” I asked. “I read about it in the papers.”

  “Two thousand feet long,” Marquez said. “Tax haven for rich bastards like me.” He froze the picture just as the tall clown was leaving the main stage.

  “That is Philippe,” Tammy said softly.

  “Fucker,” Marquez said. He fast-forwarded until the clown was off the stage, then froze the picture again.

  Tammy’s eyes were astonishing, irises like gold-flecked chestnuts. “On the ship, they did not sell all the units. They have money problems. Goncourt, director of Fantôme, our doctor, our father, suggested the circus rent space on Lemuria. We would provide entertainment and publicity. The Lemuria stockholders agreed, so that is where Dr. Goncourt moved his training and medical center, from Lee Stocking Island to Lemuria. I go aboard Lemuria last year to live with Philippe and take Dr. Goncourt’s treatments. He wants to make us the finest athletes, the most disciplined performers the world has ever known. We never get sick, we are always strong, always of the right temper. We are the best.”