Christine’s knees buckled. The Conglomerate interrogator took Christine by the arm and looked up at the security camera and shrugged. This was not the reaction he had expected. The investigator put his fingers to Christine’s wrist; her pulse was racing and her skin was cold, a condition one could not easily fake. After the questioning, the investigator didn’t think Christine knew about Cruz’s role in the rebellion, and he thought this reaction proved that. And if Salter had been honestly ignorant of Cruz’s activities, then what would the chairman make of this response?
The light was intense. Christine couldn’t see anything. But she felt the investigator’s eyes on her and she could feel his fingertips on her wrist. She would process the information about Gabriel later; now it was time to try to regain her composure.
“Excuse me; it has been a long day. Would you repeat that, please?” Christine asked.
“We were hoping that you might be able to help us determine what happened to Gabriel Cruz,” a different voice asked, more nasal than the first.
“I thought you just said he was dead,” Christine said.
“Missing, for now. But when you see the crime scene…,” the Conglomerate investigator added.
Christine didn’t want to, but she was able to straighten herself up and pull her arm away. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and they stepped out into the Pool. Christine flipped open her phone and called her boss at home. She couldn’t contain this any longer, and she wanted to speak with her boss before she saw what had gone on in her department. Christine wasn’t sure she would be able to manage that. Besides, her boss would agree that Christine should not have called until she was on the premises. And after all, it was New Year’s Day.
CHRISTINE SAT IN her apartment now, in front of her open window. The red dress danced on the hanger. She looked out at the city, trying to summon the confidence to walk out into the day and go back to work. And then it hit her; what if her boss had acted as if she were unaware of the break-in at the Pool because she’d been in on it all along? She had to have been. Nothing happened at the New York Medical Center without her boss knowing it, even on New Year’s Day. Of course the management committee would be cooperating with the Conglomerates, they’d have to be.
“First my colleague,” Christine said, “and now my boss.”
It was time for her to go to work.
The Chairman
The chairman of the Conglomerate party descended from his Brooklyn office atop the Clock Tower Building; a converted factory in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn that faced the water and the New York City skyline. He stepped out onto Main Street and entered the waiting black town car; the chairman’s driver closed the door behind him.
The red message light was blinking. A ding announced a new e-mail. Live feeds from international markets streamed across the screen; chatter in different languages came through the back speaker. The chairman ignored it all. He reached up and tapped his driver, who nodded and raised his hand in reply. He knew how to proceed as planned, without the chairman saying anything or being compromised, at least by the driver. He had done nothing but prove himself loyal to the chairman.
The precaution was to avoid providing any more detail than was already available to anyone who might be listening. It wasn’t as if the driver were going to talk. He had never developed the ability to speak. The chairman had selected him from the service pool, when he himself had been a young political adviser. He knew fresh talent when he saw it, and the driver had been with the chairman ever since.
The driver navigated the town car along Adams Street to Tillary around Flatbush Avenue and onto the Manhattan Bridge. The black town car belonging to the chairman of the Conglomerate party was authorized to go wherever necessary, but such access did not presume freedom.
The chairman of the Conglomerate party had rotated a number of figureheads through the White House. He had more than planned their campaigns and written their speeches; he had manipulated them and their administrations. Every congressional committee head was in his employ, he had the majority vote of the Supreme Court at his disposal, he controlled the funding to every major program and pork barrel in both houses, and he had the media that covered it all in his pocket as well. But now the calendar had caught up with the chairman, as it did with everyone. He had reached his mid-fifties, the end of his terms as the party chair. It was time to pass the torch. He had introduced these requirements himself some fifteen years ago, to dispose of his predecessor. But he would not be removed if he could help it. The chairman had an idea, and it involved a positive outcome from the Cruz debacle.
He avoided the nagging message light, the streaming numbers, and turned toward the window. He could still see the flashing in the reflection of the tinted glass.
The chairman said, “The party needs me.” There were many problems to be resolved before he left office, the Coots and the Dyscards among them. They’re like vermin, the chairman thought, but he wasn’t about to say that, as his driver had been a Dyscard himself, until fate had brought him into the chairman’s life.
The driver’s hand went up and then he turned his palm toward the chairman and looked in the rearview mirror, awaiting direction.
“I am sorry,” the chairman said, knowing the driver was reading his lips. “Nothing for you. I was only talking to myself.” The chairman looked up and saw the driver’s eyes linger before returning to the road ahead. He didn’t need to speak for the chairman to know what was on his mind.
The town car turned north on the Bowery and headed for the East Side. The chairman stared down at the flashing light, the streaming numbers, and the e-mails, one on top of the other. He watched the news images of the day as he listened to the shouting from the market floor. He was sure that his staff as well as his enemies would find out where he was, but if he could get there before they really knew, he might just stay one step ahead of this.
THERE WAS NO way that Gabriel Cruz could have known what had happened to Christine on New Year’s Eve, because Gabriel wasn’t sure what had happened to himself. The last thing he remembered was putting up a fight. He had been drugged, that much he knew, because it had taken him a while before he’d known how bad a beating he had taken. Even with the drugs, he had ached all over. He was beginning to feel more like himself now, and, with his eyelids closed, he listened to his surroundings. He tried not to guess at a sound’s identification but waited for the source to come to him. It was difficult to listen to his instincts, because his pulse was pounding in his ears. He guessed he was in a medical facility, from the antiseptic smell and the tension in the air. He was bandaged and his wrists and ankles were restrained. He was in custody, clearly, but by whom, he did not know. He decided his best option was to wait.
There was a girl, X they called her, who shared the ER with him. That’s when Gabriel realized he must be among the Dyscards. The girl was a new arrival too, admitted for medical attention, although she wasn’t being treated as Gabriel had been. While the staff all wore masks around her—he could tell this from the muffled speech, and they wore masks around Gabriel too—they weren’t as tense as they were around him. She had been brought in while he was unconscious. She said she was eighteen years old—at least she had been that morning. She said she felt a lot older now.
THE MUFFLED VOICES told X that through coincidence she and this Conglomerate Gabriel Cruz had been brought to the ICU simultaneously, and as a result it had been decided that it was best for everyone, including X, that she be quarantined for forty-eight hours to determine any effects from the interaction. Once Gabriel had been identified as other than a Dyscard, the Dyscard leaders had quickly moved to isolate the Conglomerate and decide what exactly they were going to do with him.
They did a complete physical on Gabriel. Other than being pretty beaten-up and drugged, he appeared to be healthy. If he were a bomb sent down from above, set to explode infection in the underground, he didn’t appear sick. What testing the Dyscard medics could do found him sound. As a Co
nglomerate, he might be useful.
The girl had made her way to the cot next to Gabriel’s gurney and gone to sleep. At first she had used the blanket as a pillow, but somewhere along the way she had pulled it out from beneath her head and covered herself with it.
He watched her sleep, and there was something about her face that reminded him of Christine. He guessed he missed Christine more then he knew, he was seeing her face in the face of others. He wondered what she would make of this place.
Gabriel listened to the sounds around him, tone, memory, memory, tone, sounds that hummed like a chord. He half expected to hear the groan as patients turned over on metal bed frames that moaned no matter what institution Gabriel had slept in, no matter where they had schlepped him to, or from, as a kid. Gabriel saw again the endless hallways all painted the same industrial green. He heard the muffled sound of shuffling shifts and remembered the “wah-wah” of the court-appointed therapists who always talked but never listened. It seemed to Gabriel that a lot of people trained in the skill of listening were taught to ignore what they heard.
Adoption had not been an option when Gabriel was a child. In a consumer society where parental choice came complete with purchase of an offspring, a product of designer genes with cut-and-paste behavioral applications specified to individual taste, one wasn’t expected to take in the castoffs of others, the kids who had been left behind. Gabriel had been a Dyscard, maybe even the first one.
Proxy-Care, the Conglomerates had called it, and it was a forerunner of the Family Relief Act, a state home system created to assume control of minors who were not being cared for through reasons of death, disability, divorce, or dollars—or more specifically, lack of dollars.
Gabriel was among the first group. His parents were dead. At least that’s what he’d been told growing up. This made Gabriel learn to have a goal, and that was to make it to be old enough to leave his state-run home and come out from under the Proxy-Care system.
Now Gabriel listened to the sounds around him, and when he sensed it was safe, he opened his eyes and raised his head.
He had to admit that the equipment in this Dyscard medical unit was first-rate. The cabinets were stocked, and the doctor was a few years younger than Gabriel but more than capable. From what Gabriel heard, there was a social organization and a hierarchy within the system. It seemed to be a societal structure that resembled the order that had just kicked these kids out. It only made sense, when Gabriel thought about it. For what social order could there be other than one that mirrored what had preceded it?
“Excuse me, please,” Gabriel called out to the girl. “Can I ask you a question?” X slowly rolled over and looked at him. Was he calling her?
Conglomerate Manipulation
Christine was walking toward the med center, having avoided being hit by a car, then a bus. She pulled her collar up and put her head down, and so she didn’t see the man step in front of her, until she walked right into him. She stepped back. Was he a cop? A mugger? Worse? He put his hand out, and Christine took out her I.D., realizing in the age of the Conglomerates that anywhere was an opportunity for a checkpoint.
He entered a short text message into his cell phone before he stepped aside and ushered Christine toward a black town car parked outside the entrance of the New York Medical Center. The motor was running and a cloud of steam puffed up from the exhaust. She realized it looked like the car that had just almost run her over. The driver opened the door and handed Christine in.
“I thought you got to work by eight,” a man’s voice said.
With a start, Christine realized she had seen this man’s face maybe a million times, but only on a screen. He had probably been handsome once, but now she could see that despite surgery his skin was veined, and there were dark lines beneath his puffy eyes that the makeup couldn’t hide. His pupils were dilated behind contact lenses. His hair was colored, a good job, but nevertheless Christine could see it was more than a style choice.
What would the chairman of the Conglomerate party want with me, Christine thought, and almost flinched when she realized what.
In the dark of the backseat of the black town car, behind the tinted windows, the lights blinked on the phone console, the monitor installed in the rear streamed numbers and images, and the chairman ignored it all. He looked at Christine; she tried to smile back at him.
“Please sit back,” the chairman said, and he motioned to the driver, who had been watching in the rearview mirror. The town car began to move, headed along Thirty-fourth Street.
“While you can’t always believe everything you hear,” the chairman said, “I have heard that you have had your difficulties lately, professionally and personally.” The town car made a quick right and entered the Queens-Midtown Tunnel as Christine sank lower in the seat.
How do I answer this man? Christine thought. It was clear that he was waiting to see what she would do and how she would react. Her gut was telling her to keep her mouth shut, while her brain was sending other impulses. She decided to say nothing.
“I can help you out of this…problem,” the chairman said. “But I’ll expect something in return.”
Of course, Christine thought, but kept her silence.
The party leader went on. “At this moment, as far as I know, you and my driver are the only people who know we are here together. My driver and I have gone to great lengths to keep this vehicle secure, and we are in the tunnel, so I believe our conversation here is just between us. There is an element of risk in what I am about to ask. I did not inform your supervisors of this interview as it does not directly concern them.” The party leader took a breath. “However, I understand that you may have to answer to them. If they do contact you, you are to call me directly.”
Then the party leader handed Christine an envelope.
“What is this?” Christine asked.
“You can open it now if you like, but I’d preferred we speak while we are in the tunnel.”
Christine ran her hands along the envelope. It felt like it was filled with cash.
Black market, she thought. The chairman of the Conglomerate party is providing me with the means to deal with the black market? This couldn’t be about anything good. It also added to the evidence mounting against her. She looked at the interior of the car for the camera as a bead of sweat began to run along the ridge of her lip.
“Are you all right?” the chairman asked.
“I guess I get a little nervous whenever I’m given money by a man I’ve never met,” Christine said.
The chairman of the Conglomerate laughed. Christine could see in the mirror that even the driver was smiling.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” she said, and held up the envelope.
“That is a little something for your trouble that can’t be traced to me,” he said.
“This isn’t necessary,” Christine said, handing the envelope back to the party leader. “I am at your service.” He probably doesn’t see this very often, Christine thought, and she wondered why the car didn’t ram into the tunnel wall, the driver was so intent on watching everything in the rearview mirror.
“I insist,” the chairman said, dropping the envelope into her lap as they burst from the dark of the tunnel into the daylight of Queens. The chairman of the Conglomerate party put one finger over his lips and his other hand on Christine’s leg. The sudden light disoriented Christine, and so did the chairman’s hand on her thigh.
Is this what he wants? Christine thought. Is this what the money is for? Why me? Cash could buy anything. The car swung into a sharp U-turn, causing Christine to lean into the chairman’s side as the town car went through a toll plaza and back into the dark of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
“I need a surgical procedure,” the chairman finally said, removing his hand from her leg. Christine let out a breath in relief. “Of course,” she said. “How can I help you?” Then she thought, He has the greatest minds in medicine at his disposal. Why me?
“I�
��d rather this be between you and me,” he said.
“I am an administrator of genetic research and development,” Christine said, “as I am sure you know. I am not a surgeon per se. I can refer you to a physician.”
“We don’t have much time,” he said. “I am interested in you for your expertise in genetics. Like many, it seems I was born with a faulty gene. I would like it repaired,” he said. “For the good of the state.”
“You want a gene graft?” Christine asked.
“Precisely,” the chairman said.
“What would we be genetically reprogramming?” Christine knew he was asking about the experimental genetic cleansing in which a graft of enhanced genes was put into the person’s original DNA and then the DNA was reintroduced back into the patient’s biology as it replicated itself, creating a real new you.
“What I need is to be my former self, but better,” the chairman said. “And that’s where I need your service. I’ve done extensive research. What I would like for you to do is swipe a strand of my DNA, wipe the sample clean of all genetic defects, and set back the body’s aging process. Then implant it back to override and reproduce itself throughout my system.”
While they had had success with overriding behavioral problems linked to heredity, reversing aging with a genetic graft was difficult. But was she in a position to disagree?
“In addition to my small gift,” the chairman said, gesturing to the envelope in her lap, “maybe there’s something else I can give you.”
“And what might that be?” Christine asked.
“Information on your friend Gabriel Cruz,” he said.
THERE IS AN edge along the borders of nations, a point where one’s territory begins and another one’s ends. But sometimes the boundary is unclear. There are times when there is no line along the latitude or longitude, and so the borders of one world blend into the borders of the next. That interrelated region can be a land of conflict. To the Dyscards belonged the night, or so it was believed and so it was justified. For it was the Conglomerates who had left their children to the dark, and thus what the dark bore belonged to the Dyscards. The night was their natural resource. Necessity had forced the citizenry to claim shadows, shade, cracks, crevices, and the underground as their own. If a Conglomerate was to trespass into the neighborhood of the night, such an individual would have wandered from their rights.
The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future Page 7
