The Unborn

by Brian Herbert

  It had been years since she’d had a lover. Almost three decades, since just before she started with the bureau. She’d never forgotten a young criminal justice student named Paul Saint Germaine. They’d talked of marriage, but it had only been talk. Eventually they’d drifted apart and no one had taken his place.

  Lovers, she thought bitterly. Her lover now was the particular case on which she was working. All of her emotions and energies were being directed toward it.

  In her time with the FBI, she had established a reputation as an investigator who followed instincts that didn’t always lead to success but which occasionally scored big, and earned her accolades. She had broken the Worldnet gold fraud case and the Midwest child slave operation, both of which resulted in international press coverage and acclamation for the FBI.

  Now she was about to sit down, when she saw a notification on her computer screen. It was marked with a special orange-flag symbol that she had set up, signifying a high level of importance. She caught her breath, leaned over her desk and opened the file.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted. “I can’t believe this! Good God, can it possibly be true?” Knowing how careful the evidence laboratories were, she was confident that there was no error. Jantz touched an icon on the screen to transmit the file to the Director of the FBI on this floor, with a brief note that she was on her way to see him. Then she turned and headed for the corridor. Director Gilmore should still be in his office. Almost everyone was this evening. Earlier, the office manager had arranged to have food sent in.

  Jantz’s fellow workers were hurrying toward her office when she emerged, asking her if she was all right. She ignored them, pushed through and made her way down the corridor, casting the orange glow around her lower body as she went. This was big, really big.

  As she continued on, passing silently by everyone who was curious about her, she heard an increased popping in the energy field around her lower body, crackling mini-bolts of power that kept her moving. It might be because she was walking faster than usual.

  “She’s really onto something,” one of the agents said. “I’ve seen her like this before.”

  Everyone cleared out of her way, but she heard them talking about her, wondering what was going on. Let them wonder. She didn’t have time to chat. Immediate action was needed, and for that she needed the highest authority.

  The Director’s secretarial pool was still at work, half a dozen men and women focused on their computer screens. They looked up in unison as the handicapped agent walked into the big office.

  Alone inside, Director Herman Gilmore was a large man, with a loose chin and sagging jowls. He enjoyed gourmet food and fine wines too much, and partook of them at every opportunity. Even his lunches featured the best fare, so much that he never billed any of his personal meals to the government and always paid for them himself. In this and all matters, he was a man of the highest ethics. But he had his prejudices, and Jantz knew she was about to slam into one of them. She sighed. It could not be avoided.

  “You’ve read the document?” she asked.

  “Just getting to it,” he said. He touched his screen, and as he read, a dark expression came over his face. His gaze hardened, and he began to shake his head. Not a good sign, but expected.

  Agent Jantz slipped into one of the two padded chairs fronting his oversized, burnished wood desk, and switched off her exosuit. She could hardly restrain herself, but tried. Finally, when she could tolerate the waiting no more, she burst out and said. “The Denver murder is the work of Dr. Kato Yordanius. No doubt about it.”

  “I was hoping that albino was dead.”

  “Doesn’t look like it, though I don’t know how he’d hide with the unique way he looks—the milky skin and hair, the eerie, almost-white eyes.” She thought for a moment, wondering as she often did where the insane scientist came from in the first place, and where he was now. “You know, if he was dead and I found his body I’d put handcuffs on it.”

  Gilmore chuckled, then scowled.

  “Whether he’s alive or not,” Agent Jantz said, “the man’s nasty work remains. There’s no mistake about the DNA from that crime scene. It matches the experimental fetuses he was working on in his laboratory. As you know, he had this perverted obsession, and removed fetuses from wombs three to six months into pregnancies, intending to keep them alive and perform bizarre experiments on them.”

  “He was a monster,” the Director said, nodding. “No matter the altruistic motive he claimed.”

  “And as you also know, he took all the living fetuses from his laboratory just before our raid and fled with them—more than five hundred living fetuses of varying ages, kept in synthetic amniotic fluids. Well, one of those male fetuses has just murdered a woman.”

  Gilmore smiled grimly. “Fetuses going around killing people? An army of berserk, killer fetuses?”

  She smiled stiffly. “With all due respect, sir, you know what I mean. At least one of his experimental fetuses survived our laboratory raid, grew into a man and killed the woman in Denver. It’s all there, in the linked chain of evidence. We obtained samples of all birth-DNA from the lab when we raided and shut it down; employees who were forced to testify gave the cellular documentation to us, showed us where to find it.”

  “I know, I know.” He sounded impatient.

  “Sir, our labs have analyzed the birth-DNA in every imaginable way, and while the samples were genetically distinct from one another, we could not determine what Yordanius was up to. We were told he was growing the fetuses and making customized changes to them—and the DNA we tested represented his raw material, before he made any lab alterations.”

  “Okay, so what? It’s an old case, more than twenty-five years old.”

  “Twenty-eight.” She paused, gathering courage to say what she had on her mind. “Sir, I want to follow up on this personally, but to do that you need to take me off my other cases. I have to fly to Denver on the next solarplane.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, sir, but to me it’s not ridiculous. In the laboratory raid I was nearly killed by gunfire from Dr. Yordanius’ private security guards. I’ve been living with my paralysis every day since, every hour and every minute. I’ve been waiting all this time for evidence to surface, and now I’m not going to let it pass.”

  Jantz had been the leader of the ill-fated raid. Somehow Yordanius had gotten a tip and escaped, taking some of the genetic material with him. An employee reported that he took more than 100 living fetuses with him. In addition to her own need for revenge, Jantz was concerned that the SOB was still out there, still operating. He would be in his late 70s now if he was still alive, and the agent intended to pursue him as if he were a war criminal.

  She watched more displeasure play across the Director’s face, waited for him to vocalize it. When the injury paralyzed Jantz’s lower extremities, the bureau had suggested that she retire. She’d refused, and had won the argument by convincing her superiors that she could still do good work, and obtained permission to keep her job.

  Finally he said, “You’re probably my top agent, Sariah, but I have to inform you that you’re not being rational now. Forget about revenge, stop obsessing over this. We’ll send a junior agent to check on the lead. I don’t want you to waste your valuable time on it.”

  “Director Gilmore, on my own time I organized every file on the Yordanius case, every document, every piece of evidence I could locate, and on my free time I followed up on the handful of leads that surfaced over the years. As you know, they all led to dead ends. I thought we could find that bastard and the two assistants who escaped with him, but it didn’t happen. Now something has surfaced, and it’s important.

  “We raided him because he was conducting the most dangerous genetic experiments in the solar system, using gene splicing, fertility drugs, genius sperm, human growth hormones, steroids, and a lot more. A witch’s brew of illegal experiments. He was trying to grow humans, but they were
not purely human! You saw the failed test cases in his lab, the horrible mutations he froze, keeping them alive at very low temperatures with cryogenic techniques.”

  “I know,” Gilmore said, “Our scientists have kept them alive, still frozen, in case they’re needed for approved research.”

  “But no one has been able to get authorization for that,” Jantz said.

  “That’s right, and probably never will. They should just be destroyed, but the cryogenic techniques he used were brilliant, and still have not been unraveled. Yordanius is a genius. No doubt about that.”

  “The failures look more alien than human, and include—horror of horrors!—a mixture of human and animal genetic materials.” Jantz paused to frame her words carefully. “Of course, humans are animals, but you know what I’m talking about, the sacrilege of his work!”

  The big man nodded somberly. “I’ve seen them and they are ghastly, but I can’t let you go to Denver right now. The President himself wants us to put our full efforts into the Miami Springs terrorism investigation.”

  He was talking about an incident in which a terrorist cell was preparing to set off a nuclear device in the city of Miami, but was discovered nearby and arrested, in Miami Springs. The President of the United States wanted to know where they obtained the nuclear materials, and who any other conspirators might be, but so far nothing had turned up, only a disturbing statement—a false claim, in Jantz’s view—that there were more nuclear devices around the country, ready to be detonated. Terrorism suspects were being rounded up in unprecedented numbers and questioned.

  “I know, sir, but the investigation is in good hands without me. I’m just doing support work on that case anyway, helping with the research into the backgrounds of the suspects. Someone else can step in while I go and check on the Denver lead. Who knows, maybe the murder is tied to the nationwide nuclear investigation.”

  “You’re stretching the facts, Agent Jantz. And stretching my patience.”

  Jantz rose to her feet and activated her exosuit. She felt shaky and afraid of what she was going to say, but was determined to do so anyway. “Sir, I must inform you with utmost regret, and with full respect to you, that I am going to Denver, with or without your permission.”

  The Director’s face reddened. “Agent Jantz, I’m going to give you a leave of absence, with pay. You’re having a nervous breakdown, and I advise you to remain in your home, and seek medical care for your anxious mental condition.”

  “I’ll see a doctor when I get back, sir.”

  He looked away.

  “Sir, you won’t notify the Denver police not to cooperate with me, will you?”

  “No.” He waved a hand angrily. “Now get out of here. Get out of my sight.”

  Jantz knew she had earned this consideration for her years of hard work, and to strengthen her hand she’d made complete backup copies of all files involving Yordanius, and kept them at home. She’d always felt certain that something would turn up, and now she was being proven right.

  In Denver she would inspect the murder scene, and review the local police files. She needed to be there in person.

  CHAPTER 5

  Riggio left the navigation system on, following its directions into Seattle. But the moment he crossed over a tubeway bridge and entered the city, the system reported that he had arrived at his destination. It was late morning, an overcast day. His hands were still red and painful, but he’d stopped at an apothecary and purchased an aloe vera skin cream that was helping quite a bit. He didn’t intend to see a doctor, didn’t want to fill out any medical history forms or answer any questions.

  Considering his gruesome memories, and the fact that he didn’t know who actually owned this car, he decided to abandon it. He parked the vehicle in a residential neighborhood, took the money, wallet and canvas bag with him (with the toiletries bag inside)—and left it there. He locked it with the keys hidden under a seat, and left the gun in the console compartment. He didn’t want anything to do with the weapon, not even to protect himself in an unknown city.

  I am not a violent person, he thought.

  It was shortly after noon, and an elevated monorail line ran nearby. At a transit structure for it, he studied a wall map. Then he asked directions from a man seated on the bench, showing him the street address on the card given to him by the attractive woman at the beehive.

  The man, who appeared to be Chinese, spoke excellent English with a slight accent. He said, “Piers Johansen Agency, I’ve heard of it. They are quite large and well-known. My sister owns a space shipping company, has done business with them.” He studied the address, thought for a moment. “The agency is in the Ballard district. Catch this line to Elliott Avenue, then switch to a northbound monorail and get off at the Market Street stop. The agency should be close, in the center of Ballard.”

  When the second elevated train reached Ballard, Riggio stepped out onto a high platform. He saw busy streets below, filled with vehicles and pedestrians, and heard traffic sounds. A click-chamber tower rose high above him, with glax-walled elevator cars going up and down on the outside. A city this size probably had two or three towers with chambers on top, so that people could journey to other planets and moons in the solar system.

  He didn’t think he’d ever traveled that way himself, or thought he would remember it. But then, he wasn’t recalling much of anything when it came to his own experiences, so perhaps he was wrong about that. He had the framework of a memory, linguistic and societal knowledge, but little else. And the personal fragments he did remember were quite unpleasant. He tried to put the horrific image of the dead woman out of his mind, and hurried down a long staircase to street level.

  He hoped it was just an especially vivid nightmare, no more than that, and memories of it would pass.

  On the sidewalk he saw a familiar face, the woman he had rescued. Meredith Lamour did a double-take, and smiled. “Mr. Tarizy!” she said. “Nice to see you.” She looked down. “How are your hands?”

  “Getting better already. I was just looking for your office, to apply for that job you mentioned.”

  “Of course. I was on my way to lunch, but I think Piers is still in his office. Let me introduce you to him. I can go to lunch anytime.” She smiled again, led the way down the street.

  As Riggio stood inside the owner’s office, waiting for him to get off the V-phone, he felt awkward, watching the virtual reality images of the other party dancing in the air in front of the old man’s desk. Meredith stood beside Riggio, while his mind spun. Questions would be asked, and he would not be able to provide answers. Desperately, he tried to come up with a plausible background story for himself, the university he’d graduated from, his prior work experience. He ran through some phony details, then took a deep breath and decided to tell the truth. At least part of it.

  A small man, Mr. Johansen appeared to be in his mid seventies. He wore a long-sleeve white shirt with a bow tie, had been looking inquisitively at Riggio before he finished his VR conversation.

  “Mr. Tarizy is here about a job,” Meredith said. “He’s the one I told you about, the one who—”

  “Ah yes, the hero,” Johansen said, with a broad smile. He reached out to shake hands, then said, “I almost forgot, your hands. Still painful?”

  “A little,” Riggio said. They avoided contact.

  He was asked to sit down. Then, following a few minutes of small talk, Johansen’s questions began, first about prior work experience, and then more.

  Taking a deep breath, Riggio looked him straight in the eye and answered each question truthfully, to an extent. He didn’t mention his nightmarish memory of a murder, nor did he say anything about not owning the Merkur that was registered to William and Latrice Baldwin, nor anything else about them.

  “I found myself driving from Colorado to Seattle, following the instructions of my navigation system. I must have made the entries myself, though I can’t remember doing so.”

  Riggio paused when he felt a sh
arp pain across his forehead. It almost prevented him from continuing to speak, but he tried to ignore it and not show any discomfort. “I just recall coming to awareness while I was in the car, and to be honest, sir, for a while I was speeding until I became aware of it and slowed down.”

  The pain continued, but so did he. After speaking uninterrupted for several minutes, saying as much as he could, trying to be as honest as possible without revealing too much, Riggio said, “I stopped outside of Seattle, curious about Sam Howe’s Beehive when—well, I think you know that part. It’s where I met Meredith.” He fell silent.

  “Yes, I know that part,” Johansen said. “And it’s the main reason you’re here. You have no idea what your work experience is?”

  Riggio stared at the floor. Thankfully, the pain began to subside. “No, sir. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  “We could take him on as a receptionist to handle incoming calls and walk-ins,” Meredith suggested. “Jill is overworked, as you know, and we’ve talked about getting her some help. If Riggio works out, maybe I could take him with me on some of my customer calls. Since you won’t be riding click chambers any longer, Piers, I could use some help when I call on cross-space clients.”

  Johansen’s eyes twinkled in amusement. Riggio didn’t know how to take this. Then the old man said to her, “So, I was no more than your assistant on those trips?”

  “You know what I mean, Piers.”

  He nodded.

  Meredith leaned forward. “And as far as Mister... as far as Riggio’s memory is concerned, we know something more important about him than his job experience, don’t we? We know his character, his courage, and his ability to act quickly in an emergency situation.”

  “All right,” Johansen said, with a reserved smile. “We’ll see how it works out. Good luck, Mr. Tarizy.”