On the other side of the sanitary barrier, his Chief of Staff stood up straighter. “Then we have to capitalize,” he said excitedly. He was practically bouncing up and down. “We have to take this opportunity to deliver a knockout punch!”
Keeping his face carefully expressionless, Daxus reached behind him and retrieved a cup of coffee from the tray waiting on his credenza. He took his time pulling off the sterilized wrapper, enjoying the impatience of the two men, relishing the fact that neither dared say anything to voice it. When he finally spoke, he did so slowly and very clearly, as if he’d waited for this moment for a long, long time and wanted to savor every second. “For the last ten years, in partnership with the Laboratories for Latter Day Defense, I’ve overseen the development of a weapon that can locate and kill every Hemophage on the planet.” Daxus paused and watched their expressions as this information sank in, then he smiled vaguely. “In a matter of days.”
The two men staring at him through the glass exchanged surprised glances, then the Chief managed to say, “That’s . . . extraordinary. What’s the ETA?”
Daxus took a slow sip of his sanitized coffee, and he had to work hard at not allowing his face to grimace as the blatantly burned taste of the liquid dribbled down his throat. It was awful stuff, but at least he knew it was safe. So much of the world had been ruined by the Hemophages, but soon, very soon . . .
This time when he smiled at the Chief of Staff and the aide, Daxus’s smile was bold and wide, as close to genuine happiness as either of the two men had ever seen. “Now. A courier has been dispatched to bring it here to the ArchMinistry as we speak.”
FIVE
From the air, the L.L.D.D.—Laboratories for Latter Day Defense—looked like a miniature city. In reality that’s exactly what it was, with all the modern conveniences in one place and residences for all tiers of the personnel who worked inside. It wasn’t difficult to find similarities between the L.L.D.D. and the Army posts and Air Force bases of the previous centuries, with everything from shopping exchanges, grocery stores, minimalls, and movie theaters to the more pertinent medical and testing facilities and proving grounds set apart from the rest of the carefully monitored populace. The majority of employees never left the premises, and most of them had families. That meant schools, stores, parks, gymnasiums, all maintained by crews that included everything from landscapers to waterless latrine service persons . . . all of whom had at least a Top Secret Security Clearance. It wouldn’t be far off to estimate the daily headcount at five thousand plus.
It wasn’t until a person arrived at the main gate that it became apparent just how difficult it could be to get in there if you weren’t an actual L.L.D.D. employee. But the girl on the sleek light green Ninja motorcycle (Hondasaki’s latest model and the fastest one to date) had been expecting a hard road of it, and she had all her papers in order and, so to speak, her ducks in a row. Her high confidence showed—she was wearing a shimmering LCD overcoat capable of reflecting any color or image. In keeping with the latest fashion trends in Hollywood and Paris, this one was set to reflect her mood; right now, it was a bright, optimistic yellow.
The guard at the gate didn’t even notice, or if he did, he certainly didn’t care. He was heavily armored around his sidearms, and his eyes were small and dark, difficult to see behind the vision guards of the military breather mask covering most of his face. What she could see of his gaze was narrow and suspicious. He didn’t bother to speak when she pulled up and cut off the engine. He didn’t have to—the rider knew what was coming next.
“XPD-154,” she said calmly, then passed him a laminated identification card with a gloved hand. “Clearance classified courier. I’m expected.” There were at least a dozen other people milling around the entrance, civilians and guards coming and going, and none of them paid any attention to her.
He wasn’t impressed by her identification and she didn’t expect him to be—he probably saw a dozen couriers like her every day. He plucked her ID from her fingers and she saw that he was also wearing gloves—of course—but his were much heavier and more industrial. It looked like they made it hard for him to work, but he still managed. She watched as he slid the card into a computer scanner and the virtual centrifuge registered the drop of blood sealed inside the ID. A moment later a line of light went left to right across the surface of the computer monitor, leaving a clear image behind.
“Remove your head covering,” the guard ordered.
She unsnapped her chin strap without comment, then reached up with both hands and lifted her helmet off her head. Before it fell against the shoulders of her plasticene coat, the young woman’s hair, purple neon and fine, sprang free and waved in the breeze, moving back and forth like a minifield of bright lavender-colored wheat. Protecting the soft skin of her face from the helmet’s inner fabric was a softer, almost sheer lamé veil; when she unclasped that, she revealed finely honed features and bright, clear brown eyes, full lips barely brushed with a touch of cherry-colored lip gloss. To match her coat, each strand of her hair was coated in a microsheen of optical polyurethane so she could change her hair color at will to any one of more than seven million colors.
Score one for the guard’s professionalism: if he noticed she was beautiful, he gave absolutely no sign. He simply took her card and held it up next to the screen, very carefully comparing the digital photograph on the card to the computer image. Finally he handed it back to her and stepped to the side at the same time he pressed a button on the inside of the guard shack. In front of her, the heavy gate slid open without a sound. “Stage one clearance,” he said in an utterly emotionless voice. “Proceed for verification and sterilization.”
Sterilization, she thought wryly. That word had meant something entirely different in centuries past, and even now it made her pause. Could the government—or whatever the ArchMinistry of Medical Policy called itself—ever really be trusted? In the nineteen hundreds, the government had enacted laws enabling involuntary sterilization of women who were, at the best of times, victims of their own social limitations. While “sterilization” supposedly meant something different here, who really knew what was being done to their bodies on a molecular level in these chambers? A beam of light, a change in the atmosphere, and that could be that. Just by stepping into them, a woman—or for that matter a man—might be bringing their entire future family lineage to a grinding halt.
But even so . . .
She pulled on her helmet, fired up the motorcycle’s engine, and headed to the L.L.D.D. Medical Certification Checkpoint. This was a smaller building made of gray metal—probably some kind of super-strong alloy—which guarded the entrance to the main facility. It was a little disconcerting that its style, a kind of corrugated tin-looking facade, bore a strong resemblance to many of the buildings she’d seen in the old history photographs, the ones that went along with those sterilization procedures she’d been thinking of only a few minutes before.
Nevertheless, she steered the motorcycle into an open slot along a parking line marked VISITORS ONLY, then climbed off and pulled off her helmet for the second time with a sigh of relief. She absolutely hated wearing head gear, and why bother?
It was usually pretty crappy protection anyway.
Being inside the checkpoint building only intensified the bad feelings. It was so much like a prison, with guards posted evenly along some security grid known only to them and raw fluorescent lighting overhead that amplified the generic coloring on the walls. Some people might have found being the only splash of color enticing, but now she felt that her purple hair and zingy-looking yellow overcoat made her little beyond a target, someone on whom all these bored and killer-trained guards could focus. Even so, she steadfastly took the route the entry guard had indicated—no doubt monitored at every turn by video cameras—until she ended up at an elevator door at the end of a short, harshly lit hallway. A glance around told her that there was nowhere else to go, so when the elevator doors opened, she stepped inside without hesitation.
Inside the elevator, there were also no buttons to press—the luxury of choice had been eliminated the instant she’d pulled up to the main gate. She went dutifully into the elevator, it moved, and she stepped out of it when the door opened. End of options.
The room revealed before her was white, large, and mostly featureless. Lab technicians moved like ants among the equipment and along the walls; like the walls and floor—and pretty much everything she’d seen so far—they were also dressed in white. None of them paid her a bit of attention, and the only thing jarring were the sidearms everyone carried, dark splotches of metal against the starkness of their work garb. One of the techs was waiting for her and he gestured toward a lone chair—also white—directly in her line of passage. She really hadn’t needed any help in deducing that’s where she was expected to go. She settled herself on it without comment, watching dispassionately as several more technicians hurried up to help fasten the white Kevlar bindings around her forearms, hands, and ankles.
Finally, she couldn’t resist trying to open a little dialogue. He was an average-looking guy with dark hair and eyes, average build. He probably had average thoughts, and those were the easiest ones of all to play. She gave him her sweetest smile and blinked a couple of times, letting her gaze hold his just slightly longer than necessary. “Mind if I ask what’s on the menu?”
Predictably—weren’t they always?—he smiled back. Just a small one, because he wouldn’t want the videotapes to show his boss that he was responding to a test subject, but it was there nonetheless. “Just have to make sure you’re human,” he said quietly. While she thought briefly about that statement, he glanced at the guards around them, then reached up and grabbed hold of a piece of equipment that looked more like a mechanical spider than anything else. When he brought it down, she could see an impressive array of stainless-steel arms; she didn’t have much time to study it because within seconds each arm had pinned her back against the chair, prying open her mouth and eyes, stretching her lips and eyelids wide until her face was grotesquely out of proportion. So much for using her beauty to score points.
She couldn’t say anything—with her mouth held open like this, she couldn’t even swallow—but the lab technician clearly knew what she would ask if she could. “Retinal testing,” he said. His voice was calm and soothing, as though he’d done this a thousand times and honed his explanatory and bedside manner to perfection. He sounded like a dentist—This won’t hurt a bit. Just relax, and the tooth’ll be out before you realize it. Next to lawyers and politicians, she considered dentists to be the biggest liars in the universe. “To detect the presence of contacts or dyes.”
The eye scan was no big deal, but as she had suspected, his practiced words weren’t nearly enough to prepare her for the needles that suddenly thrust into precise spots of the exposed whites of her eyes. For a moment she felt like there was liquid fire across both eyes, or maybe a lightning bolt that would meet in the middle and permanently fry her brain; her fists balled up but she refused to cry out. Struggling against the bindings was unthinkable and even though her back wanted to arch and every muscle in her body tried to spasm, she was absolutely, rigidly still.
The tech raised one eyebrow to show how impressed he was, but he didn’t dare vocalize a compliment. “Metabolic sensing,” he continued blandly. “To make certain your metabolism is within human range.” A new set of needles suddenly appeared, this time plunging into the sensitive expanse of exposed gums above her eyeteeth. Again, she refused to move, to show how much it stung. Instead, she just kept hearing that imaginary dentist’s voice—Just relax and it’ll be over before you know it. Again, the tech nodded appreciatively. “Pulse, respiration,” he said. He stood back and watched, counting off on his fingers as the machine did its work. Then his voice softened—even he couldn’t mask his pity—and she sucked in her breath. She’d heard about this next part but never endured it until now. “Regenerative capability.”
A double set of previously hidden arms twisted around in front of her face, the blades at the ends of each whining as they spun down and out of her range of vision. She ground her back teeth as the razored edges bit into the flesh of each wrist, parting the skin like a knife cutting into rare steak. Two more techs rushed up, one on each side, and inspected the wounds with microsonic scans; they were finished and nodding their approvals almost before the cuts had begun to ooze blood.
The head lab technician waved them away, then watched the blood slide down her wrists and collect into small glass reservoirs positioned at the end of each arm of the chair. “If you were a Hemophage,” he said, “we would already be detecting the immediate tissue repair at a microcellular level.” She had to strain to see it, but as he talked she could see her blood being spray-misted into a second glass chamber off to her left, where it was exposed to several wavelengths of spectral light. Abruptly the needles retracted from her eyes and gums, leaving a vaguely nasty throbbing in each previous spot of penetration; just as quickly, double laser beams from another set of metal arms spit sudden fire onto both wrists and sealed the gashes, leaving only a thin red line that would disappear in a couple of days.
She blinked to moisten her eyes at the same time her lips, stretched dry by the metal extenders, snapped back into shape. Finally she could breathe and swallow normally again. She cleared her throat and squashed the resentment and anger that wanted to boil through her voice; when she spoke, she sounded calm and nonchalant, as if she’d gone through this a thousand times and it was just another day in the life of her work. “What would happen if one were to fail any of these tests?”
This time the medical technician’s smile was blatantly smug as his eyebrows arched high enough to show his arrogance. He watched as the semimetal bindings around her arms and ankles snapped apart, then retracted into slots on the chair; from the faraway look in his eyes, she had to wonder if he regretted being able to let her go. Sometimes the smallest of expressions could tell volumes about someone without them even realizing it. The minute amounts of her blood in the two containers drained away, filtering through tubes toward unseen sanitized drains while the containers themselves were instantly steamed and sterilized. “Nothing good,” was all he said, but she could tell he wished he could go into the lurid details of it all. The young guy made a few notations on an oversized medical PDA, then glanced at her. “Please remove all articles of clothing and proceed into the scanner.”
So typical. So degrading.
And she did exactly as she was told.
Why? Because there was no such thing as modesty anymore—with the explosion of the HemoPhagic Virus into the public realm, the medical profession (which hadn’t cared a bit about bodily privacy in centuries, anyway) had lost its last bit of patience with such mundane concerns. The federal government had been too pressed and overrun with problems concerning the virus to care whether a woman had to undress in front of a soldier or a man had to try to urinate into a jar overseen by a female nurse while standing in line with four dozen others who’d been ordered to do the same. And protesting on the grounds of religious beliefs? That only made the politicians wave away the complaints in impatience, the medical personnel roll their eyes, and the military men and women sneer.
Paying no attention to the appreciative glances of the men around her, she left her clothes folded neatly on a chair next to the entrance to the U.V. chamber, then stepped inside. The tunnel itself stretched in front of her like one of the sewer tunnels of a previous century—it was long and dark, and there was no way she could judge its length. The technician had told her to walk, but he hadn’t actually said she’d be moving while she did. The darkness gave her a feeling of vertigo and her balance was odd; for all she knew, she might be stepping along on the surface of a treadmill, one of the moving walkways that are so common in the airports. That was doubtful, but there was no way to be sure.
After a few moments a light appeared on either side of her, tracking her as though she were a piece of paper on a flatbed scanner. It
did nothing to illuminate her feet, but that didn’t matter anyway. She thought she felt the thin beam of light as heat against her skin, but again, there was no way to be sure. It was vaguely purple and it bounced off her naked body, outlining it in an attractive glow. She could see her legs and arms as she walked, head automatically looking down at the darkness where her feet were—yes, now that her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness she could finally glimpse them, stepping along in perfect time to the slow and steady beat of her heart. The bright lines of purple light emanated from translucent walls that went completely over her head; she could just make out vague circuitry and the dull gleam of metal parts beyond, see an occasional blink of red electrical indicator lights following the wiring. She kept her eyes downcast and her concentration focused, and it became almost a game to ensure that her stride was perfectly spaced and she never made the scanning light hitch or pause. This was just one more step in getting the job done.
Without warning the light beams shut down, leaving her in utter blackness. For a long moment everything was still, lightless, and heavy, and she felt like she shouldn’t even try to breathe. Then the area in front of her was washed in muted gray light and she realized she was standing only inches away from the front of a heavy steel security door. She knew to identify herself without waiting to be told—after all, this was the way the world was now.
“XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier,” she said flatly, directing her voice into a mini-speaker at mouth height. Maybe there was a person on the other side of the door, and maybe not; that she might be addressing no one bothered her not a bit. “Here on retrieval for transfer to the C.P.M.”
Data displays suddenly lit up on either side of the door as her voice was analyzed for stress, the graph lines etching irregular patterns across the LCD screens. She had no way of knowing whether or not she was passing these tests, but she’d certainly know soon enough. Her nerves screamed for a second as all the displays paused, the lines suddenly freezing, then the screens blacked out and the door slid open, making a sound that was a strange cross between the old hydraulic message tubes and a sucking vacuum cleaner. The chamber beyond was another study in darkness, but there was enough illumination for her to see that it was shaped like an octagon. What there was of light came from the glass cages lining the walls, where she could see the softly lit shapes of strangely sedate monkeys. She could feel them watching her but all their eyes were black and flat, like stones barely seen through a layer of dark river water.
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