We flew home. For the next two weeks Mikala and I waited for an egg to implant and start growing into our girl. We were so nervous. We’d traveled so far, and sacrificed so much, that we could not admit that we’d made a terrible mistake.
I don’t know now whether Mikala even wanted children. She told me she did, but it was clear to both of us that my desire for a child far outstripped hers. I was older, and my longing bordered on a biological imperative. For a long time I thought that she went through the process with me—shot by shot, appointment by appointment, over the course of a year—to make me happy. But that wasn’t it, exactly. She wanted to prove she could make me happy. Mikala did not permit herself to fail at anything.
As for me, I powered forward on the plan with the certainty that a child would be the final catalyst to bind us together permanently, the last link in the benzene ring. Those two weeks after the implantation were the happiest I’d experienced in a long time, and the most nerve-racking. On several nights, Mikala and I fell asleep holding hands.
Then, nothing happened.
All but one of the eggs failed to implant, and that sole survivor clung to the placental wall for days before, inexplicably, letting go. They’d warned us that pregnancy was unlikely. We were scientists, and understood statistics. But the loss struck me like a judgment, like its own proof.
I went into mourning, but I didn’t recognize it as that. I took a job as a fixed-term instructor at Loyola and stopped coming to Little Sprout. The lab didn’t need me, and neither did Mikala. She’d become consumed by NME 110.
This latest iteration was performing amazingly well in animal tests. The rats refused to die or develop tumors, and in fact were prospering. They were happy, energetic, and smart. Memory tasks, especially visual memory, became trivial for them. They navigated mazes as if someone were whispering in their ear.
Months after, when it was too late, I realized that Mikala had been in mourning too. I understood why, when she saw those happy rats, she tried the drug, and why, after she had tasted it, she decided to use it again. Just a little touch of the God. A glow that told you that you weren’t alone, that you were connected with all living things. And once that door to Heaven opened a crack, who could blame her for pushing it wide?
It was in February that I went out to dinner with Edo—without Mikala or Gil. Edo was excited about the progress with NME and wanted to sell; he’d already entered talks with Landon-Rousse and Kensington, Inc. Gil was ready to cash out, but Mikala and I had always said that we would remain in control of the intellectual property. We’d lease development and manufacturing rights, but the IP remained with us—even if it cost us millions in lost revenue. When we first enlisted Edo he’d said he was fine with this, but that was when our chance of success had been minuscule. I think he always assumed that if Little Sprout produced something viable, he could talk us into selling.
And he was right.
“The marriage is over,” I told him.
Edo expressed shock, then sympathy. He was always good at social niceties. But he was a businessman first, and immediately understood what this meant for him. He tried hard to tamp down his excitement. “Of course you must take care of yourself,” he said. “Do you think this would change Mikala’s mind—make her vote with us?”
“Never.”
Edo nodded. He had expected this answer. It did not change his plans, however; with my vote we did not need Mikala’s.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“Of course,” Edo said. He knew I’d demand something for my agreement, because that’s what he would have done. I told him the amount I needed to borrow from him, and that I needed it now.
“May I ask what for?” he said.
“Ransom money,” I said. He laughed, thinking I was joking.
Edo sent me the paperwork the next day. He was too much of a shark to trust our deal to a handshake. In return for the loan, I gave him the right to vote as my proxy, without relinquishing any IP rights. The money immediately transferred to my account. Two days after that I paid for the release of seventeen frozen eggs.
* * *
I woke to a hand shaking me. “Trouble,” a voice said.
“Gloria?” The room was dark, but the angel glowed with artificial light. “You came back.” It was embarrassing how happy I was to see her.
“It’s Ollie,” she said, and pointed toward the bathroom. A sliver of light shone at the bottom of the door.
I sat up, pawed for the clock, finally lifted it in both hands: 2:45 a.m.
“Ollie?” I called. I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to the bathroom door. “You all right?”
Ollie said something I couldn’t catch. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and squinted against the light.
She sat on the edge of the tub, arms on her bare legs, staring hard at the floor. She’d laid out scraps of toilet paper. No, not scraps, shapes: stars, squares, triangles, cigar rolls. She’d arranged them on the tile in the small space according to a scheme I didn’t understand.
“Whatcha doing, sweetie?” I asked gently. It was the voice you’d use on a growling dog as you reached for the door.
“I’m your gun,” she said without looking up.
“What?”
“You brought me here to kill Edo.”
“What? No!”
She looked me in the eye. “Of course you did. You got me out of the hospital and brought me here and loaded me up with clues—and now you’re going to aim me at him. Bang. You get the girl, and I go to jail. But no one can put this on you, because I chose to shoot.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Then what’s the plan?” Ollie asked. “What are you going to do when you meet him? What are you going to do with the girl?”
“I don’t know! There is no plan.”
“You’re lying. You know what I used to do. You brought me here to do it again.”
“I don’t know what you used to do—you never told me.”
She squinted at me. She opened her backpack and brought out a silver pistol with a black grip.
“Jesus, what are you—?”
“This is a Sig Sauer P226 with an E-squared grip. It’s my favorite sidearm. I’ve had it since Toronto.”
I didn’t know what was more alarming, that she had a gun, or a favorite.
“It’s that she’s got a gun,” Dr. Gloria said.
“I don’t blame you for bringing me,” Ollie said. “You were probably afraid that you wouldn’t have the strength to do it when the time came.” She smiled tightly. “I can be your strength.”
“Look, sweetie … no.” I leaned toward her. “That’s not what I—”
Ollie put her hand on the gun. I sat back on my heels.
“You’re scaring me,” I said.
“I don’t mean to.”
“Have you taken your meds?”
“Don’t condescend to me.”
“I think it’s time to take those pills.”
“That’s not an option right now,” Ollie said. “It’s too dangerous. The cowboy is still out there. Edo has your daughter. Rovil could be working with Edo, or with Gil. The text message could be a trap. They could be trying to get you out there in the desert and—”
“Hon, please…” I held out my hands, palms up. Nothing to fear from me. “I need you to stay here tomorrow.”
She looked shocked. “I’m not leaving you.”
You’re already gone, I thought.
I couldn’t call the police or we all went home. I couldn’t call 9-1-1 to have her committed, because they would call the police. But if she got in that car tomorrow, someone would die. I just wasn’t sure who.
I covered my face with my hands. I might have been praying.
“Give me the words,” I said to Dr. Gloria.
“There’s got to be another way,” the angel said. “If you do this to her—”
“I’ll make it up to her later.”
“There may not be a later. If she los
es trust in you, then she’s got no one.”
“Give me the words.”
Dr. Gloria removed her glasses. I’d never seen her tear up before. She cleared her throat and said, “I don’t love you.”
“What else?” I asked the doctor.
“I will never love you.”
I began to speak. I laid out the words the doctor had given me like scalpels. I convinced Ollie that she’d been lying to herself, that I found it kind of sad that she thought just because we had sex and shared a few late-night conversations, that I’d told her things I’d never told anyone else—that somehow that meant something. Her damaged brain had taken a few bits of data and strung them into the story she wanted to hear—a fairy tale.
It was not as hard to convince her as I would have thought. Ollie already suspected that I did not love her. She’d invented a dozen conspiracies to explain why I came for her, why I stayed with her. After only thirty minutes of tears and yelling and icy insults, she threw on her clothes and slammed the motel door behind her.
I’d won.
I’d won.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The two men kneeling in the cornfield weren’t scared, despite the hoods and the plasticuffs and the near certainty that they were about to die. The Vincent had gotten used to this stoicism by now. He’d been on the trail for two weeks and had interrogated so many of these pastors and deacons of the Church of the Hologrammatic God, each one calmer and more pain-resistant than the last, that he was getting bored. It was a necessary job, like branding cattle, but it wasn’t exactly rocket science.
The original assignment had been to follow Lyda Rose and engage in heavy conversation with whomever gave her the drug. That had led him to the first church and that Mexican pastor, then into the woods of Cornwall Island for the most confusing dead end of his career: fake cops, fake smugglers, and two teenage Afghan gangsters. A circus.
He’d been worried about Lyda’s ex-Special Forces, ex-SIGINT sidekick. He’d known a lot of those folks back when he worked with the government, and some of them were Goddamn nuts. He didn’t recognize the name or face of the woman—Olivia Skarsten was probably as fake as his own new name—but they’d probably known some of the same people. Those social circles weren’t all that damn big.
If he’d had his druthers he would have shot Rose and Skarsten both, just because they’d seen his face, but the employer had given him clear orders on how to handle them. He was forced to let them escape.
He had his own trail to follow. He found the second church in Toronto just by asking around. It wasn’t that hard; the thing about evangelicals is that they really wanted you to come to church. He also changed his interrogation method. He didn’t have to spend all night coercing some martyr who believed Jesus was perched on his shoulder. He just had to spend one hour coercing two guys.
That led him, eventually, to Detroit, the kookiest damn city he’d ever visited. It was the first time he’d seen abandoned homes and decrepit skyscrapers alongside acres of fresh farmland, all part of some inner-city rejuvenation project to turn the industrial revolution inside out. Hell, maybe even white people would come back to the city. That would take some doing, but it would happen. The government was broke, and there was plenty more cheap land to buy. A man could raise cattle out here. Of course that man would have to get over his agoraphobia and panic attacks, and maybe buy the upgraded bison that were as big as Saint Bernards, but it was doable. Perhaps even Vinnie and the Vincent could work together. Rancher and Gunslinger, working side by side.
The pair of true believers he was currently in dialog with were cut from the same cloth as the others he’d talked to. The senior pastor was another hardcore gangbanger with a long record. The Vincent bet that if he looked into it, the pastors had probably served time together. This one had gotten out of the federal prison only last year and moved to the Motor City. The sidekick was a local with tracks on his arm. That pattern held up, church to church. Ex-gangleaders in charge, with a congregation of junkies, prostitutes, bums, and lowlifes. It made a certain kind of sense; religion was most needed by the most desperate, and these folks were on the lowest rung of society, what his grandmother used to call “the least of these.”
Except that’s not what the Vincent’s employer expected. Someone, somewhere, was supposed to have a connection to a pharmaceutical company.
“You’re the one, aren’t you?” the senior pastor said. No trace of anger or fear. His name was Arun, and according to his prison records his religion was Nation of Islam. That file, obviously, was out of date. “You’re behind the disappearances.”
Rumors are spreading, the Vincent thought. He said, “Aw, you don’t want to know me, Arun. I take off them hoods then you know what I got to do.”
Both of them assured him that they would tell him nothing, regardless. Then the Vincent looped a cord around the young one’s neck and let the pastor listen to him gargle for a while. He released his grip before the boy expired.
This was his new method. These Holo-Jesus freaks were tough as nails alone, but they had an overreactive sense of empathy. Just crumbled when someone else was in pain. So you nabbed two of them and started slapping around the least knowledgeable one.
Right on cue, the pastor said, “Please, he doesn’t know anything.”
“But you do,” the Vincent said.
In a matter of minutes—and a few more strangulations—Arun was spilling details. That empathy is a bitch, the Vincent thought. Like a puppet show—put your hand on one, and the other one talks. The Vincent made him answer all the questions in his employer’s questionnaire, then they moved on to the important topics, like who was providing them with precursor packs and hardware.
The Vincent’s pen buzzed. He flicked it open. “Hey there, boss.”
His employer was not happy. The Vincent was taking too long, and he still hadn’t found out where the chemjets were being made, and what pharmaceutical company was supplying them.
“I’ve got some good news and bad news on that front,” the Vincent said. “I’m staring at a couple of guys who were building a printer.” In the basement of the church the Vincent had found not one printer, but three of them, and the second two only partly assembled. There were stacks of new machine parts still in their packing, and tools and soldering irons on the workbench. “They had enough to build four, maybe five of them.
“The bad news is that there’s no way they could be building all of ’em, not even all the ones I’ve found. Strictly a small-scale operation. So that means other people are making them, too.”
His employer wanted to know whether he’d found the assembly instructions, and the Vincent said they were on the pastor’s phone. “I’m working on tracking down where that came from, too. But like I told you, these guys are organized like terrorists cells—they don’t know much but the one or two fellas they talk to in the other churches. I think we got to consider the possibility that there ain’t no factory, and there ain’t no central leadership. I just don’t think there’s a Big Pharm company pulling the strings.”
The employer started yelling then, and the Vincent pulled the pen away from his ear. When his tone finally changed the Vincent said, “Sorry, what were you saying?”
More yelling. The Vincent didn’t let it bother him. Finally the employer settled down and gave him an address. The Vincent thought, New Mexico?
The rest of the instructions were explicit. “Just to be clear,” the Vincent said. “No restrictions on Rose and Skarsten?” He was surprised at the change, but relieved. He wouldn’t have to go behind his employer’s back to get rid of witnesses.
“One more thing,” the Vincent said. “I’m running a mite low.” He did not have to say its name aloud; the employer understood that when the Vincent brought up amounts he was talking about not cash but Evanimex. There were several knockoff street drugs—Brick, Darwin, HooDoo—that purported to provide the same effect and that he could have purchased himself. But he’d tried all those, and th
ere was no comparison; Evanimex, the pure pharmaceutical product, was the only guaranteed solution. He’d first tried it several years ago when the government treated him for PTSD. It had worked well—so well that he never wanted to go back to his old self.
The problem, of course, was tolerance. Take the drug too often and it wouldn’t have any effect at all. So, he rationed. He used it for work first and daily phobia-management second. The rest of the time he tried to distract himself with his hobby.
His employer told him that he’d already shipped the latest package of pills.
“That doesn’t do me much good out here on the road,” the Vincent said. “I’ve got enough for about a week, then—”
The employer told him he’d be done in a week, and hung up.
The Vincent stared at the pen for a moment, imagining a few things he would like to do to his employer.
“I’d like you to consider something,” Arun said. Again, calm as a houseplant. He was a smart guy; he knew that now that he’d heard the Vincent’s conversation, and heard those names, there was no way he was living through the next fifteen minutes. Still he didn’t lose his composure.
“And what would that be?” the Vincent asked. He reached into his pocket for another set of plasticuffs.
“You have our printers; you have our paper,” the pastor said. “After you’re done here, find a quiet place, and just try one of the Logos pages.”
“I will give it to you boys,” the Vincent said. “Every one of ya’s tried to witness to me.”
“Just consider it,” the pastor said. “You’ll thank me for it.”
“I sure do appreciate your concern, Arun,” the Vincent said. He looped the cuff around the man’s neck and cinched it tight. Arun fell onto his stomach and began to flop around. The sidekick heard all this and started crying. “Arun? Arun?” The Vincent lassoed him too and put him down.
No restrictions, the Vincent thought. Maybe he really would be home in a week. It sure would be good to get out of all these shitty hotel rooms. And Vinnie would be happy to get another turn at the wheel. Jesus, he loved those stinking little buffalos.
Afterparty Page 24
