by Dakota Banks
“No. We didn’t talk for long, and the conversation was about you, not about him.”
“Did he…look well?”
“He did, and he was very worried about your disappearance. He’d devoted everything to finding you.” She didn’t see any harm in embellishing a little. Doyle couldn’t dispute it, and there was nothing wrong with leaving Fynn with a good impression of his dead son. “‘Time to take care of the old man,’ he said. Hired an investigator and everything.”
“I’d always thought he’d follow in my footsteps and be a research scientist. He had the brains, you know.” Fynn stared off into space. “Perhaps if his mother had lived. She was a good influence on him. On both of us. Jamie might have…”
“You were saying about hormones,” Maliha said. She wanted to get the discussion back on track.
“Yes. Currently synthetic insulin for human use is created using recombinant DNA, a technique that uses bacteria to churn out the hormone. I had devised nanites that could manufacture insulin externally, in a dish. This is a valuable discovery in itself, but I wanted to take it one step further. I wanted those nanites inside the body, manufacturing insulin in a way indistinguishable in its results from the natural form. A cure, you might say, for diabetes.”
“You were successful then?”
Fynn had warmed to his topic. “There was a problem with the nanites in the body. They were attacked by the immune system. My research focused on coating the nanites with a biological substance to make the immune system ignore them, so they could stay in the body for a lifetime. I had hoped the Tellman Foundation’s grant would allow me to move the coated nanites, or c-nans, to market. The process from lab to patient use is brutally complicated and expensive.”
“Several years at least, right?”
“A decade or more, plus millions of dollars for testing and large-scale manufacturing. But both the material and the human rewards were so powerful on this project. Once perfected, why stop with diabetes? Other diseases could be cured with nanites living contentedly in the body. How about Alzheimer’s? It has complex causes, but at least the nanites could bust up the tangled neurons in the brain. On the phone the Ritter woman mentioned a hundred million dollars. There was no way I could resist going to the building with that sum dangled in front of me. It turns out they weren’t interested in curing diabetes.” His voice turned scornful. “They wanted my techniques, especially my biological coating, to insert nanites of a completely different sort in the body. Ones that tore apart cells instead of constructing hormones. A horrible prospect, and I had no choice but to go along. Remember, my family was at risk.”
They were both quiet for a time. Images of ruined bodies floated through Maliha’s mind.
“Have you ever heard of gray goo?” Fynn interrupted her visions. Without waiting for her to answer, he went on. “Nanites can take apart as well as put together substances. In this field there is a nightmare scenario where so-called rogue nanites become destructive and begin to take apart living or inert objects uncontrollably. People. Coal. Mountains. Marine life. The entire planet, turning everything we know into undifferentiated gray goo, including us. Can you imagine a more terrifying weapon, if it could be controlled? Targeted?”
Maliha shook her head.
“Now picture those gray-goo nanites in the human body, coated with my substance, undetectable, able to lurk for days or years until they are activated—in only the targeted people.”
“I don’t have to imagine it,” Maliha said. “There have been two field tests of this weapon so far with, as far as we know, one hundred percent fatalities.”
His eyes closed as he absorbed the idea, knowing his work had facilitated the real world tests.
“What? What are they planning to do, Fynn? Do you know?”
“I do. I found out, but they don’t know about it. I found out a lot of things. I tried to take my life after that, but they stopped me.”
“What’s the route of infection?”
“Water. They dump the nanites in the water supply and wait for it to spread into the population.”
“Hold on. I need to get the others in here. They have to hear this.” Maliha went out into the living room and told the guests she had to borrow her trio of helpers. Glass and Eliu didn’t mind—they were already deep into a discussion of Men and their Merits, or lack thereof.
After bringing the group up to speed, they peppered Fynn with questions.
“This TGEF is building these little rogue guys on purpose?” Amaro said.
“Yes. Not just any rogues. A very special kind that takes apart human cells. And they have been doing it for years, but they just got the final piece of the puzzle from me.”
“Who are they targeting and why?” Maliha wanted to know.
“They are motivated by economics. Targets are countries with emerging economies like Brazil, India, China, South Korea, and the second-tier ones, like Vietnam, Chile, and Turkey. As to why, I have only a guess.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“They consider those emerging countries to be parasites who built their success on technology, manufacturing, and other things the legacy countries poured their money and people into since the eighteen hundreds. Parasites that snatched the results of a hundred years of striving, then used the advantage of lax environmental standards, and are now beating the legacies at their own game. They cheated, in other words. At least that’s what I think they believe.”
“Jealousy is behind all this?”
“Jealousy, could be a factor, and anger. I believe they want to cripple those economies through population kills large enough to make them turn their full attention inward and stop competing in the global market. Major catastrophes in each country would let the legacies, like the U.S. and England and Germany, not only resume their world economic leadership but also keep it for a long, long time.”
“Holy smoke,” Hound said. “It sounds just crazy enough to work.”
“I don’t know if it would work or not,” Maliha said. “The important thing is that they believe it will. Imagine the deaths worldwide.”
“What sets these nanites off so they start chewing, or whatever they do?” Yanmeng said.
“I’m not certain about that,” Fynn said. “If I were doing it, I’d use some special frequency of either light or sound. Widespread, quick.”
“Who’s behind this? Who’s running this secret program of the foundation?”
Fynn smiled grimly. “I happen to have that information on a certain jump drive. She took it.” He pointed at Maliha.
Chapter Twenty
Maliha produced the jump drive she’d taken from Fynn back in the Tellman lab. Amaro snatched it from her fingers and went to their isolation laptop. The computer had minimal software and no Internet connection. It was the first place Amaro took any questionable data source because if it turned out to be infected, the effect was confined to the isolation computer and couldn’t damage anything else.
“What are we going to find on that drive?” Maliha said.
“Complete specifications for my formula, to start with,” Fynn said. “I worked in isolation from the other scientists, so I don’t have details on the nanites.”
“We call the nanites hitchhikers.”
“Good name. Once picked up, they can turn deadly.”
Maliha shrugged. She hadn’t been comparing the nanites to human hitchhikers, but more to something from nature, like burrs picked up walking through tall weeds. His allusion was apt, though, and definitely creepier than hers.
“Also on the drive is a lot of information I picked up at great risk. It took some doing, but I have some files from the TGEF computers.”
Amaro whooped from the desk where he sat. “Good stuff here. Most of it’s encrypted but not with killer ciphers. I can work with this.”
“The most valuable thing in there is a list of TGEF’s council members. They have two sets, a typical one for running the good work of the foundation in supporting the ec
onomies of developing countries. The secret council is running the nanite project. There are five members, but I only have names and photos for four. The other one is called the Leader. I had hoped to use these names and all the other information I collected in a bargain for my family’s lives. You can see how that worked out.”
“We’re very sorry about what happened to your family,” Maliha said. “But we’ll still use your information to do something good. To stop this.”
Once having spoken, Fynn retreated to mournful isolation and refused to be drawn into any more conversation. He had forced himself to enter the conversation long enough to pass on his story. Maliha knew it had taken courage to talk so factually in the face of his great losses.
When Eliu and Glass were gone and Fynn was again asleep—he claimed that he was not allowed much sleep while captive—Maliha held a meeting with her friends. Her group agreed that the best plan was a direct one.
They had to hunt down all the council members and kill them. They had four targets—from the United States, England, Germany, and France—plus an unknown fifth country, for the Leader. The information on the jump drive didn’t have the current locations, so she’d have to ferret those out.
In the morning, Fynn wanted to leave. All of them tried to explain to him that he was in danger, that he should stay with them, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
“I don’t want any of you following me, either. My life is my own. I’ve given you everything I know.”
He left her apartment with the clothes he was wearing and a few hundred dollars in cash that Maliha pressed into his hand.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I want to go see my son’s grave. And Jamie’s, and my daughter’s.”
Unspoken at the end of his words was before I die.
When he referred to Betty Sue as his daughter, Maliha felt a great tug at her heart. He considered the girl his daughter, but he’d never had a chance to get married and be her father. She had a daughter buried, too. She hugged him and he walked out.
They were all silent when he left.
Then Amaro said, “Shouldn’t we tie him up and make him stay here or something? You know we’re sending him out there right into Mogue’s hands.”
Emotion was bursting in Maliha’s chest. It wasn’t right to let Fynn walk away to his death. He was despondent now. He might feel differently when time faded his grief, when he was able to contribute with his science studies again.
“Damn. I just can’t let him do this, I don’t care what he says about his rights.”
Maliha left her apartment to the cheers of her friends. It didn’t take long to catch up to Fynn. She slowed her pace and fell into step with him. He was surprised at her sudden appearance.
“We’re going to go visit your family’s graves and do whatever you want to do to pay your respects,” she said, linking her arm firmly in his. “I’m going to do my best to keep you alive while you do that. Then you’re coming home with me. The university hired me to bring you back. You’re important to their alumni donor program. As a valuable commodity, you aren’t allowed to go off and get yourself killed.”
He tilted his head and looked at her. “I may be in mourning, but I still know bullshit when I hear it. Okay, come on, but you’ll have to keep up with me.”
“I won’t slow you down.”
Two days later, Fynn had accomplished what had been driving him. There had been no attempt on his life, but Mogue probably wasn’t in a hurry. Whatever knowledge Fynn had was already passed on. Maliha installed him in one of her bedrooms, moving Amaro out to the living-room couch, and Fynn began living there quietly. Yanmeng sat with him for hours whenever he could manage. Maliha would have liked to know what they talked about; whatever it was, it seemed to be good for Fynn.
Planning began for the remainder of the hitchhiker case. Over scrambled eggs and very flat biscuits, Yanmeng wondered if there wasn’t another way besides murdering the secret council members.
“Global exposure. Get the word out,” he said.
Hound shook his head. “Exposure does nothing. They’d still go ahead and set off the little fuckers and we’ll have a lot of gray goo. There isn’t time to develop an antidote.”
“We’re a cheery bunch,” Yanmeng said. “All right, exposure’s not the way to go. Back to practical stuff. What if there are secondary commanders in place? Kill the ring-leaders, the seconds-in-command pop up, we’re back in the same position.”
“Highly unlikely,” Maliha said. “A group like this doesn’t want to share knowledge with anyone. In fact, they barely want to share knowledge with each other. And if they’ve been using working commanders, then there are plans in place to kill those people right when the hitchhikers are triggered. In fact, they probably have various plans to do away with each other, too. Multiple backstabbing plots. I’ve seen it before.”
“Let’s talk about the council members,” Hound said. “Get into things we can actually do something about instead of this abstract crap.” He took a big slurp of coffee.
The way he was sitting, the sunshine from the window lit up the scars on the side of his face. She had a sudden urge to run her fingers over the ruined portion of his face, from eyebrow to jaw, where the jagged line of pink scar tissue met his black skin. Hound somehow picked up the fact that she was thinking about him. He turned to her and winked. She winked back.
Amaro raised his hand. “May I speak now?”
“Very funny,” Maliha said. “Hear ye, hear ye, Amaro has the floor.”
Amaro pretended not to notice. “The American woman on the council is named Laura Bertram. It turns out not to be her real name, but the real name has no special significance. She’s been using Laura most of her life after an adoption at an early age. Laura is a Boston defense attorney with a reputation for taking on high-profile cases and getting the accused off. She has strong political aspirations and the money and connections to act on them. Her public work as both an attorney and a political candidate for U.S. senator make her suspiciously easy to track down.”
Maliha shrugged. “Maybe the Leader considers her most expendable. Or they’re trying to get a political presence, someone in a position of power to step up when the country needs a new type of leadership. One willing to dump democracy in the targeted countries and establish indentured servitude as the new in thing.”
“She has the best prospects of any of them. It makes sense,” Yanmeng said.
“Something I don’t get. If she’s getting these high-profile guys off maybe on technicalities, in her attorney work, how come the public likes her so much? It seems like that would kill a political career, not boost it.”
Amaro said, “Good question. One of the first things I thought of. I dug into Laura’s casework and found that there’s just enough ambiguity in them that she can spin it like she’s making sure justice is served. She’s never lost one of those cases, which is either damn smart or collusion with the prosecutor or judge or all of the above. Remember that middle-school principal accused of fondling little Susie’s privates, the Lawrence Grove case? It got national attention just a couple of months ago.”
They nodded.
“She got him off. It turned out little Susie was supposedly mental, supposedly due to supposed abuse by a dead cousin who couldn’t be called back from the grave to defend himself. Gray areas are her specialty, and in the public’s eye, she’s a trusted truth seeker. Now how normal is a one-hundred-percent acquittal rate on cases like that?”
“Too many coincidences. That couldn’t happen in all of her cases, unless she’s one of those people who survive the plane crash and win the lottery the next day. The outliers on the natural distribution for luck—on the good side,” Hound said.
“Wow—distribution. Outliers,” Amaro said. “We’re going to have to call you Professor Hound.”
“Hey, I know stuff.”
Amaro snorted.
“We’re going after her first then,” Maliha said.
Laura B
ertram had a husband and two small children. Presumably those children loved their mother, even if the husband had his doubts about the woman he married. Or, love being blind, he might be devoted to her. Maliha decided it had to look like a political assassination, just so the father would have something definite, something the children could pin their understanding on when they got older.
Yanmeng had something to ask. “This is a grave situation we are in. Is it time to bring in government agencies, U.S. or otherwise? Interpol? How about the governments of the targeted countries?”
“Your reason?”
“Sheer manpower. You’re one person. Others could be working in parallel. We have to consider it.”
The audacity of her undertaking sank in on Maliha and her shoulders sagged under the weight of it. There was silence as the others considered it.
If I lose this I could end up a broken woman, just waiting to die and be punished by Rabishu.
There was a mirror across the room from her. She raised her head just enough to see her reflection. Before she’d broken her contract with Rabishu, she’d suffered through a period of seeing herself becoming a horrid old crone, more and more akin to him—but only in mirrors, as her private torment. She never knew whether he was showing her visions of herself rotting from the inside, growing claws, her skin splitting into fissures that dripped the same noisome liquid associated with him, the same nauseating smell…. Or whether the images sprang from within herself as a judgment of what she’d become, or even if her reality was altered by mental illness.
Her reflection in the mirror this time played out the guilt she would suffer, the physical decay, if she lost this challenge. In the scene people screamed and tore at themselves, trying to pull out the creatures tearing them apart from within. She saw her skin crawl with the exaggerated action of the nanites within her body, ripping this, dissolving that, as her healing ability struggled to keep her from dissolving as the others were. The Maliha in the mirror screamed soundlessly as portions of her body liquefied and sank to the ground.
