Mariposa

by Greg Bear

  Costa Mesa

  The nursery was quiet this time of the afternoon. Rebecca took a straight-backed chair and set it aside from the sunlight, then settled into it with a sigh, arranging her left leg so that the foot did not hurt so much. Her lip quivered.

  She wiped her eyes quickly with a handkerchief from her small black purse.

  Sun cut a warm golden square on the blue and red flower carpet. The air held the faintest dodge of disinfectant and baby powder.

  Throughout the morning, prospective parents auditioned for the privilege of taking home little Latin babies orphaned by the ten-year southern drought: Mexicans, Central Americans, Peruvians. From noon to three, more couples came to see if Miss Wickham (she of the upswept blaze of curly brown hair) would approve them for a fine crop of Burmese infants, or Filipinos, or Ethiopians, orphaned by war and politics.

  At three, the nursery closed until after dinner, and then more couples, more interviews, more babies on parade; more babies almost than anyone could imagine, brought to the United States not because it was the richest nation on Earth, which it wasn't—not anymore, not after decades of economic waste and political stubbornness—but because it was the last major power that accepted orphans of any color, any heritage, and almost any health issue.

  The nursery walls were pasted with colorful posters and stickers of balloons and farm animals and giraffes, big silver airplanes, and along the north wall, a hand-painted mural of a fairy tale castle, done by a volunteer with some talent.

  The square of sun moved to a worn green couch.

  Miss Wickham had approved the adoption last week, despite the news of the Los Angeles bomb attack; Miss Wickham was tough as nails and hard to sway once her mind was settled, and she had settled on Rebecca as being a decent parent for little Mary, whatever the world delivered along the way.

  Rebecca had spent six months in interviews and record searches and corralling testimonials to get to this point, and yesterday, her request over the phone from the hospital had been met with several seconds of stony silence; Rebecca could easily imagine the extra width and extension of Wickham's pop eyes, the tap of her pencil on the steel top of the office desk.

  "You'll have to tell her in person, Ms. Rose," Miss Wickham had said. "She's got her own set of hopes. She already knows you. You'll have to explain this yourself."

  "She's two years old," Rebecca whispered to herself in the silent nursery. "She'll get over it."

  But Rebecca never would. This was her last chance.

  The door opened on the far side of the nursery and Miss Wickham's young assistant entered. Rebecca tried to remember her name; a faded slip of a girl in her late twenties, with large eyes, gentle hands, and a gently anemic smile. The sort of girl who took care of damaged animals and lost children and dreamed at night of de-balling the cruel bastards who caused all this loss and pain. Not that she would ever reveal that to anyone, certainly not to Miss Wickham.

  The girl sidestepped the square of sun and stood before Rebecca, carrying a wireless freepad in one hand. "Mary's just finished her nap. She'll be here in a moment."

  Rebecca nodded.

  "It's not good to wait this far into the process," the girl said.

  Rebecca nodded again, and for no good reason stared intently at her until the girl turned away with lips set in irritation, even anger; who could tell the difference?

  Sometimes the saints of the world . . .

  Miss Wickham entered, holding little Mary's hand. Mary saw Rebecca and her round face and beautiful black eyes all came together in the sweetest, shyest smile.

  I am not going to blubber. I'll cry in front of Miss Wickham if I have to, but not this bleached-out killer saint.

  "We'll leave you two to talk," Miss Wickham said, and let go of Mary's hand just in front of Rebecca.

  She and the killer saint left the nursery.

  Five minutes. That was all they had left. No lifetime of love and watching this tiny, silky creature grow into young womanhood. Just a few words and a few minutes, all because Rebecca's life had come to a brick wall she had to climb alone.

  Mary walked to Rebecca and Rebecca picked her up and hugged her. She was beginning to speak a few words of English. She came from Hong Kong, Miss Wickham said, or perhaps from Shanghai; there was no way of knowing. She had been found on a small island where the female infants of the daughters of wealthy, politically connected Chinese were often left to the care of patient, inured villagers.

  Fishermen a hungry civilization had left with nothing to catch but abandoned children.

  "I see you," Mary said.

  She stood on Rebecca's lap and wrapped her skinny arms around Rebecca's neck. Rebecca let her cling for a few minutes, then gently pulled her back and sat her down.

  Smoothed her hair, soft and fine.

  What could they say to each other?

  "I've been away in a hospital," Rebecca began her rehearsed speech.

  Mary looked up and interpreted her expression, then imitated it, eyes narrow, lips sad. "Why?"

  "I'm going to have to go away. I love you more than anything, but we can't live together like I planned. I still want to, it's nothing you've done . . ."

  Some people want me dead. I won't put you in danger. No way to explain.

  Mary could not understand.

  "You're the loveliest, sweetest little girl in the world, but we can't live together. I have to go away."

  Mary's face froze, but she was no longer looking directly at Rebecca.

  Her gaze wandered to the window.

  She played with Rebecca's sleeve. "No more," she said.

  "Someone wonderful will love you just as much as I do, I know that."

  "So sorry," Mary said.

  Rebecca touched Mary's arm and stroked the smooth skin.

  Miss Wickham returned.

  "Mary, we have to go back. Say goodbye to Ms. Rose."

  Mary just let go and slid off her lap. She did not look at Rebecca. Only at the window.

  "We'll sign your release in the office," Miss Wickham told Rebecca, and hoisted Mary to her shoulder.

  Rebecca watched Mary's little face withdraw down the long, bright hallway.

  In the office, Miss Wickham settled back in her desk chair with a sigh. "I think I'm a good enough judge of people to know you have your reasons. Care to share?"

  Rebecca shook her head. It would sound crazy.

  "But you have a very good reason."

  "I do."

  "You're ill, something like that. Something I can put down on the forms, other than . . ."

  "That'll work," Rebecca said.

  Miss Wickham wrote for a minute, then passed a photo across the desk to Rebecca.

  "We usually try to place our children with someone of their own heritage, but I believed this was a good match. I stuck my neck out and overruled procedure. Luckily, I've got another couple lined up. They're older, they're Asian—Chinese, in fact. Los Angeles couple, not wealthy, but solid family. No children. Their name is Choy. Her name will be Mary Choy—pretty, don't you think?"

  Rebecca did not believe it was policy to reveal the names of adoptive parents. This was either Miss Wickham's special gift, to allay her fears that Mary would never find a home—or a kind of revenge.

  She looked down at the man and woman in the photo. They looked bland and serious.

  "Lovely name," she said.

  "Sign here and we're done."

  Back in her rental car, Rebecca looked through her spex at a list of messages. There was one she needed to return right away. She double-blinked to connect.

  "Tom here," came the answer.

  "Rebecca. Anything interesting?"

  "Probably. It's a proprietary encryption, but I think I know where the PAR numbers are, and I think there's enough so I can reconstruct the rest of the memory."

  "Great," Rebecca said. "Get it to me quick. No other copy. And bill my personal account."

  "No cost," Tom said, his voice far away. "This one's for
Captain Periglas."

  PART TWO:

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  6 DAYS

  The White House

  "We're getting too old for this."

  President Eve Carol Larsen arranged pillows in the corners of a large leather chair, then sat with a groan and propped her leg up on a bolster. "News tells me you're going to stop in at Bethesda while you're here."

  "I have an appointment with the gimp squad," Rebecca said, arranging her crutches, then settling into the seat across from the Commander in Chief. Still gave her goose bumps. "It's good to see you up and about, Madam President."

  "My trauma surgeon said I was like the lunch special at KFC. Breast, wing, and thigh." Larsen leaned to one side and tapped her polished fingernail on the chair arm. "Funny, huh? Laughing makes my chest hurt. You're an ex-smoker, right?"

  "Yes," Rebecca said.

  "Me too. I need a cigarette just to talk about it. The projectiles came from four miles away. I saw ruby-red spots of light—lasers doing speckle interferometry. The laser goes out through the air, gets refracted by temperature, wind, the way the ground or the building shivers—whatever.

  "The sniper has a tiny scope-mounted computer that tracks the laser and also refines my image, then calculates the odds of a shot getting through. The shooter squeezes the trigger to begin the sequence—but the bullets don't fire right away. The imager and the interferometer work with the firing mechanism. The shots are let loose at the best, most opportune intervals—ten of them.

  "Four go through the window. Three hit me."

  Rebecca watched the woman's eyes soften with puzzled wonder, like a little girl looking at a dying pet.

  The president sat up and hardened her features. "They tell me the shooter was using the same algorithms and technology that astronomers use at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. That's what the Secret Service says. They couldn't stop me from getting shot, and they couldn't save Beth-Anne from that . . . bastard. Screw all the ingenious bastards and all their high-tech devices. But enough about that. Someone told me a good story about you."

  "Uh-oh," Rebecca said.

  "Eighteen months ago, just after you returned from Mecca, you were asked to help investigate a case involving a young woman kidnapped and transported across state lines, then murdered."

  "Fort Lewis," Rebecca said.

  "Tell me more."

  "Not much to tell."

  "Believe it or not, I've cleared two solid hours for this meeting." The president settled back with a sigh, as if getting comfortable at story time.

  Rebecca leaned forward, dubious. "It's an old case, Madam President. I'm not sure what it has to do with anything here."

  "Hiram Newsome says it highlights the way your mind works. He says you can be spooky. Spooky might be useful to us now."

  "News thinks of me as his daughter, ma'am. He's not objective."

  The president pushed her lips together in her trademark, sharp-eyed smile. "Please."

  Rebecca hated going down memory lane, but this had the air of an executive order. "She was found in the base apartment of a soldier just returned from Arabia Deserta. She had been traded to the soldier by her kidnapper. She was only fourteen."

  She looked through the ripple glass toward the south lawn. "Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis was handling a lot of troubled vets. Counselors, psychiatrists, researchers—the northwest center for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. More than 350,000 cases. But this sort of violence was rare. Family troubles—abuse by young soldiers hooking up with girlfriends who had babies by another father—that sort of thing is much more common, planned for by the commanders, almost expected. The criminal mistakes of marginal recruits forced through tough times, suffering back-to-back stop-losses. But true psychopathic behaviors catch everyone's attention, because some experts are worried our gen-z boys might react to PTSD differently than past generations. So the authorities, both military and civilian, wanted to nail this suspect and work up the chain to the kidnapper, find out how they had hooked up and why. They had a second suspect, but the girl was dead, and the soldier was pretty much out of it. So the Bureau came in to examine the evidence.

  "I asked to see the girl in the morgue at Fort Lewis."

  The president looked away. "Fourteen," she said.

  "Thin, just a wisp," Rebecca continued, "and young. Hair cut short, pert little nose—pretty before they got hold of her. The kidnapper used her for two or three weeks, until he got tired of her, then opened an anonymous Flickface account and offered to trade the girl for drugs. The Fort Lewis soldier took him up on his offer. I examined the body."

  "Tweezers," Larsen said, sitting up. "Sorry. Go on."

  "The kidnapper apparently wanted to keep her face intact. The rest was a mess. When the kidnapper delivered her to the soldier, outside Fort Lewis, in a van, he had cleaned her up and scrubbed out his DNA. The younger man objected to her condition. Still, they reached an agreement and smuggled her onto the base.

  "After a while, the soldier killed her with an overdose of morphine. Their only mercy. The kidnapper took his drugs and left while the soldier was busy. A roommate found the soldier in a stupor—along with the girl's body, a few hours later."

  "Unbelievably cruel and stupid," Larsen said.

  "The case against the soldier was solid. He raped her before he killed her. But even when he plea-bargained to avoid the death penalty, he couldn't provide enough of a description for us to ID the kidnapper."

  Rebecca had seen enough mutilated bodies in her career, but her response never changed. She hated being reminded that flesh was like pudding: soft and easily smashed.

  She swallowed. Other violent memories accompanied this one, having nothing to do with the dead girl. Not long ago, those memories would have made her break out in a cold sweat.

  "In the morgue, I pulled back the sheet. The girl had been autopsied, fumed for fingerprints, pretty much desecrated every which way you could think of. But she looked peaceful enough if you ignored the scars and sutures. I touched her cheek. Took off the glove and just smoothed her skin with a bare finger. Something like the tiniest splinter poked up—a bristle. I asked for a pair of fine tweezers, sterile.

  "Once I pinched a boyfriend's beard to get his attention. I found hair tips stuck in my finger pads. When men use electric shavers, the blades do a rough job. The ends look like porcupine quills, with a sharp pointy tip and little barbs.

  "This bristle wasn't from the soldier. He had hardly any beard and didn't shave. We bagged it and sent it off to Quantico for keratin extraction. They got enough DNA to locate the perp in CODIS. We got a warrant and apprehended him within two days.

  "He was forty-two, a white male transient with a long sheet, nearly all violent felonies. Washington state convicted him, life without parole in Walla Walla. Hard time.

  "That was all I had to do with it," Rebecca finished. "Nothing spectacular."

  Larsen murmured polite disagreement. "Now tell me what you know about Edward."

  "The vice president hit his wife on the neck and back of her skull with a lamp, crushed her windpipe with his hands, and left her to suffocate. When the Secret Service entered the house, Quinn was reading to his daughter in an upstairs bedroom. His infant son was asleep. No motive, no disputes, no history."

  "The last guy anyone would suspect," the president said. "War hero, family man, best damned governor Ohio has had in decades . . . A good campaigner and a shrewd but honest advisor. My husband thought of him as his best friend. Now he's locked up in a special compound at Fort McNair while everyone figures out what to do—where and how to indict and try him, whether to go for the death penalty . . . all that dreadful crap. I'll announce a new veep in the next few days. Then—we'll do our damnedest to act as if it never happened. We have to move on.

  "But the bottom line: we almost had a psychopath become president of the United States, Rebecca. I wonder how long before anyone would have noticed."

  Rebecca looked
down at her hands.

  "You've gone over our early briefing," Larsen said, shifting her hips to get more comfortable. "Thoughts?"

  Rebecca took a moment before answering. "He revealed a history of drug use during the campaign. Has he indulged in the last three years, to your knowledge?"

  "To anybody's knowledge, he has not."

  "There are drugs that can slip by even the best tox screens. Designer metaboloids like tart or syncrom." Rebecca looked squarely at the president.

  Larsen did not blink. "Believe me, if we could use that as an excuse, we would."

  "Nobody in your administration has been implicated in any sort of drug activity?"

  The president shook her head.

  "Because this does look like a doped horse."

  "It does," Larsen admitted. "A thoroughbred."

  "Food testing—here and abroad—all secure?"

  "The best."

  "No secret snacks, nipping out to the ice cream parlor at midnight in Istanbul with the kids or the mistress?"

  "Edward was lactose intolerant—strictly soy. No mistress. You know this already."

  Rebecca nodded. "I like to hear it from someone close. Better than a briefing from someone who's never met the man."

  The president took on a distant look, like trying to see a lighthouse through thick fog. "Something smeared on his skin, the bloggers say . . . could have delivered it from a couch or even the inner sleeve of his coat. A psychotropic contact drug, maybe in two or three parts—combine them and you set him off."

  "Possibly." Rebecca opened to that page in the printout. "No evidence, however. And I know a lot of these investigators and analysts—they're the best."

  Rebecca knew that a major reason some former agents were talking with the White House, and joining the investigation, was the whiff of payback. Vice president Quinn had stood just behind the head of the Senate task force that had recommended dismantling the FBI and moving it west.

  "So I keep being told," Larsen said. "But the bomb that almost got you—nobody ever heard of that before, either. I'd like to take all the pinhead bastards who spend their time thinking up this stuff and line them up . . ." She formed her hand into a gun, then caught herself and relaxed her finger with a tight wriggle. "What the hell is wrong with them?"