Aftermath

32

Art and Dana were heading for Washington, after a night where a hot meal and a soft bed had been wonderful luxuries. Yasmin Silvers had tried for an aircraft from Indian Head, but all the planes were assigned to other missions. She had settled for a topless converted Jeep, with an engine so loud that Yasmin as driver had to turn and shout if Art and Dana were to hear a word.

It didn’t matter to Art. He had always preferred driving to flying. The morning continued yesterday’s heat wave, the snow was gone, and a breeze felt good on his face. The sun warmed the top of his head and threw golden highlights off Dana’s hair. He had never seen it so light in color. His only problem was a terrible thirst.

They were approaching the city from the south, cruising along the elevated freeway. The AVC system that controlled vehicle speeds and separations was out of action, but the road held an amazing amount of traffic. Most of it was cars less than ten years old, presumably with fix-ups that bypassed fuel injectors, catalytic converters, and anything else that depended on chips. Tinkerers must be in huge demand. But Art also saw square-built Japanese imports from the eighties, a diesel Rabbit like the first car that he had ever owned, vintage Harleys, a finned American monstrosity older than he was, a dune buggy, a Knighton DB-4 in perfect condition, and dozens of VW bugs — the originals, not the late nineties reissue.

Happy days, when a car still made you a king. Art closed his eyes, snuggled down in the seat, and lost himself in memories.

That was when Dana reached out, touched his hand, and said, “Don’t worry. Your friends will be fine.”

She had noticed his silence, but misunderstood. At breakfast Art had confided his worry that Seth Parsigian and Oliver Guest were heading for his home in Catoctin Mountain Park, while he was forced to go to Washington. He had friends there.

But in the Jeep he had not been thinking about them at all. The sight of the cars from other generations had pushed him far into his own past. He had been reliving the September evening when a multivehicle pileup totaled their van and came so close to killing Mary.

Art had no intention of telling any of that to Dana, even though she would probably be sympathetic. And he didn’t need to, because she assumed that his mind was on the situation up at Catoctin Mountain.

So what was he doing, head close to Dana’s to overcome the engine noise, staring up into a smoky blue sky and explaining what had happened thirty years ago? He blurted out everything, all the details; more than he had ever told anyone before. That was before an AVC system existed, he explained, and the cause of the pileup was a doctor who had changed lanes sharply to avoid a truck entering the freeway. The domino effect went all the way to the fastest lane. Mary had been overtaking there when her van was sideswiped and pushed farther over. Another two feet and she would have hit a concrete overpass support, head-on, at sixty miles an hour.

She had been untouched. Later they had laughed about it together, agreeing that it was the close call of a lifetime. Who could have guessed, then, that she had only six years left?

As Art fell silent, Dana reached out and patted his arm. “I’m sorry. Sad memories. But I’m glad you told me.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Of course you should,” Dana said. “You needed to.” She turned, presenting Art with a view of the back of her blond head.

He looked beyond her. As they came closer to the center of Washington, traffic slowed to a crawl. The roar of the Jeep’s engine reduced to a threatening grumble and normal conversation became possible. Every traffic light was out, and the police at major intersections lacked experience. The Jeep had halted with a dozen cars in front of it, waiting for the hand signal to proceed. A boy about ten and a girl not much older were pushing a baby carriage along the median beside the line of stopped cars. A hand-lettered sign on the front of the carriage said fresh frutes and vegatibles.

“One more casualty of Supernova Alpha,” Dana said. “Without spell checkers, maybe we’ll learn to spell again.”

“We never did before we had them.” Art leaned out of the Jeep as the carriage reached them. “What fruit do you have there?”

The grubby-faced boy held up a little basket. “Strawberries. That’s all. Nothing else ripe yet.”

“How much?”

The boy conferred with the girl, then asked, “How would you pay?”

“Dollar bills.”

“All right. Twenty dollars.”

Art exchanged looks with Dana — good news; currency was back in use again, at least in Washington — and said, “I bet there’s not more than a pound in that basket. Talk about robbery!”

The girl scowled at him. “It’s not. You’re lucky to get these. It’s supposed to be too early for strawberries, but most are already rotted. Take ’em or leave ’em.”

Art handed over the money and gave the basket of strawberries to Dana. He peered into the baby carriage as it went by.

“Now that’s interesting.”

“What is?” Dana was turning over the fruit, looking for the ripest. She handed one forward to Yasmin, gave another to Art, put one in her own mouth, and said indistinctly around it, “These haven’t been washed. They’re not very big, either. What’s interesting? They seemed like ordinary vegetables to me.”

“They are. Radishes and lettuce and onions, early peas and beans. It’s what’s missing that’s interesting.”

“All right, Sherlock. I’ll take the bait. What’s missing?”

“No signs of the bigger-better-tastier-faster recoms. You’d expect the carriage to be full of gene-spliced forms. Not a one.”

“So?”

“So we and our science created superior specialized food plants, precisely tuned to a particular ecological niche. Then the niche disappeared. The older, more primitive forms survived.” Art accepted another unwashed strawberry and ate it cheerfully. “A man could become philosophical about that.”

“A man better not, unless he wants a woman to ignore him.” Dana sat up straighter and stared ahead. “Now what’s going on?”

The Jeep had been on Maine Avenue, ready to follow the traffic north onto Fifteenth Street. There were signs of major clear-up efforts, but the streets still held scattered heaps of trash and rubble. Instead of steering a way around them, Yasmin made an unexpected right turn at a narrow ramp and rolled down below street level.

“Avoiding bottlenecks in the middle of town,” she shouted back to them. She sounded pleased with herself over the engine’s rattle. “We’ll go the rest of the way underground. Save half an hour.”

Art thought again how tough she must be, under the sexy and decorative exterior. She had to be thinking about and grieving for her brother, but she held it under tight control. He was admiring Yasmin for that when Dana glanced at him in the sudden gloom and said, “An underground road system in Washington? That’s a new one on me.”

“Me, too. And I thought I knew the city pretty well. If it’s going to be like this all the way, I don’t think we’ll save much time.”

The Jeep had stopped at the bottom of the ramp. The automatic gate designed to accept an ID card was not working. It stood wide open, but a man in Army uniform stood by the gate. He took the pass that Yasmin held out and examined it closely before he waved them on. A couple of hundred yards farther along, the whole process was repeated.

“The Pentagon?” Dana asked, after the third halt and inspection.

“But then we’d have to cross the river. Maybe Capitol Hill?”

Yasmin must have heard their questions, but she pointedly did not answer them. All she said was, “It’s a lot quicker when the automatic ID checks are working.”

She made a final left turn and the Jeep emerged into a vast parking garage. The floor was blacktop, the whitewashed ceiling lit by fluorescent bulbs and no more than seven feet high. Yasmin drove all the way to the far end. The spaces there were tiny, designed for electric urban runabouts. Each had a sign: RESERVED, SPECIAL STAFF. PARK IN DESIGNATED SPOTS ONLY. AS A COURTESY TO THE NEXT USER, MAKE SURE THAT YOUR VEHICLE IS PLUGGED IN FOR RECHARGE. DO NOT OCCUPY MORE THAN ONE SPACE.

Yasmin parked the Jeep neatly, but it was so wide it sprawled across two spaces. She shrugged. “So they’ll probably sue me. Come on.”

They climbed down. Art took three steps and paused, puzzled. After a moment he realized what the problem was. It was like the gene-spliced fruit and vegetables, something noticeable by its absence. His right knee was guaranteed to stiffen up after hours in one position. This morning he felt not a twinge. It must be the telomod treatment, it could be nothing else. The urgency hit him again. He and Dana needed to get out of here and learn what was happening with Seth and Oliver Guest. Without the genome scanners, everything going on inside their cells was guesswork.

He hurried after Yasmin and Dana, in through yet another checkpoint complete with armed guard. Then it was an elevator, rising steadily for four floors. And, at last, they were inside a structure designed for people rather than vehicles.

Yasmin picked up a telcom by the elevator door, made a connection, and said, “Yasmin. I’m back.”

Art sensed an odd tension in her voice, but she went on, “How’s his schedule? Yes, ten minutes should be enough.”

She led them along a short corridor, saying good morning to the handful of people they passed. Clearly, she was a regular. And clearly, this was the house of someone very rich. Everything — pictures, carpets, drapes — was either an antique or a superb fake.

At the end of the corridor Yasmin paused. “I hope this goes all right, but it may not. A couple of days ago I had a horrible screaming fight with the man inside this room. We said some pretty awful things to each other. I want to patch things up, but if I can’t, please remember that it’s nothing to do with you.”

They entered a smallish room, whose only occupant sat at a cluttered desk before a thick-paneled door of dark wood. He stood up as they came in, an unusually handsome young man whose face was a picture of uncertainty. He and Yasmin stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Want to go on working here?” she said at last.

He grimaced. “Is that what he said to you? It’s exactly what he said to me.”

“Me, too. What did you tell him?”

“I said, yes, I want to work here. More than anything I can think of.”

Yasmin nodded. “That’s pretty much what I said, too. He made me feel about two inches tall.”

“I know. The worst thing is, he was absolutely right. Can we have lunch today?”

“I’d like that. We’ll compare wounds.” Yasmin turned to Art and Dana. “This is Auden Travis. Auden, this is Art Ferrand and Dana Berlitz. They were at the syncope facility, too.”

Travis nodded, but he hardly glanced at the two visitors. He was looking appalled at Yasmin. “I heard,” he said. “I should have mentioned it before, instead of talking about our jobs. I’m really sorry about Raymond. It must have been awful.”

“It was. Worse than I thought. But it’s over.” Yasmin swallowed and looked toward the paneled door. “Anyone with him?”

“Not at the moment. They found another big store of RAM chips, way underground at Cheyenne Mountain. Giga capacity, not tera, so they’re all pretty much out-of-date. But we had a few million flown in yesterday. A technician slapped a bunch of them together in parallel, and was in here earlier trying to get the holo projection unit up and running. He left about fifteen minutes ago. He said he’d be back soon. So it’s a good time.” He glanced back to Art and Dana. “They were checked?”

“Back at Indian Head. All we could with the deep scanners out of action. They’re clean.”

That meant little to Art, but Auden Travis nodded and said, “It’s what we have to settle for at the moment. Go ahead.”

Yasmin moved to the door, knocked, and opened it. She ushered Art and Dana in ahead of her.

Art found himself in a big, airy office with a high ceiling. That’s all he had time for, because once his eyes reached the man standing by the window he could look at nothing else.

Saul Steinmetz. Not quite as tall as he seemed on media releases, thinner, and with the stoop of a scholar. As he turned, penetrating eyes of pale gray skipped rapidly from one person to the next.

“Very sorry to hear about your brother,” he said to Yasmin. And, to Art and Dana, “And you lost a relative, too. Terrible business. I wish I could think of something better to say.”

He did not go through the charade of pretending that they might not know who he was. And he obviously knew who they were and where they had been. Art immediately wondered what else Steinmetz might find out. That they were not related in any way to the dead Desmond Lota? That they had no valid personal reason for a visit to the Q-5 Syncope Facility? He glanced at Dana, and saw that she was having the same worries. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Saul Steinmetz.

Very deliberately, Art forced himself to turn his head and look over to the corner of the office. Something odd was there, something he had caught from the corner of his eye as they entered. It was a ghostly projection, an insubstantial hologram of a man with the wall showing through his head and body. The head and mouth and eyes moved in stop-action jerks, like an old-fashioned clockwork figure.

The tick-tock man, Art thought.

“That monstrosity is supposed to be Benjamin Disraeli,” Steinmetz said. He had caught and followed Art’s look, and he spoke in the friendly and informal tone that came across so well at public meetings and press conferences. “Not quite what he was before Supernova Alpha. But maybe none of us is. I’m promised something better before the day’s out.”

He gestured to an oval coffee table surrounded by chairs at the other side of the office. “The more I hear about Pearl Lazenby and the Eye of God and the Legion of Argos, the less I like the sound of them. Look at this.”

He held out a black-and-white photograph. “Taken with a long focus camera from a high-flying military aircraft over North Carolina. See the lines of dots, like columns of ants? Those are people, coming out of one of the Legion of Argos strongholds. So far as we can tell, they’re moving north. Did you know that her followers have been saying for years that she prophesied her own return from judicial sleep? She was sentenced to six hundred and fifty years. All logic said that she would die of natural causes, centuries before her time was served. But she was right, and logic was wrong.”

He turned to Art and Dana as they all sat down. “Yasmin tells me that you were the first people to come across Pearl Lazenby’s empty body drawer. I’d like you to tell me exactly what you saw in and around the syncope facility. What direction you approached from, what condition the ground was in, tell everything. Take as much time as you want, and try to forget that you are in the White House. Yasmin asked for only a few minutes, but you have as long as you want.”

Steinmetz had noticed Art’s and Dana’s discomfort, and read it as nervousness in the presence of the President. But that idea wouldn’t last. Art knew Steinmetz’s reputation, as someone with an uncanny gift for reading people far below the level of words. Now he and Dana were proposing to lie to the man — and hope to get away with it. It would never work, not in this world. Those pale gray eyes were frighteningly luminous and knowing.

Dana was staring at him, expecting him to take the lead. Well, he would — in a direction she might not like at all.

“I’m going to do what you ask,” Art said slowly. “Even though at first you may not think I am. And this will take a little while.” He looked again at Dana, and was encouraged by her nod. She understood, and she approved. “My name really is Art Ferrand, and this is Dana Berlitz. But we are not related to each other. And we didn’t have a relative at the Q-5 facility. We went there for a quite different reason.”

Tell everything.

Art began to describe telomod therapy, and was surprised by Saul Steinmetz’s quick, “I know about that. Experimental, right? Go on.”

Art started over, this time with his call to Dana from Joe’s house in Catoctin Mountain Park. Then it was the journey to the Treasure Inn, the ruined Institute, the decision to look for Oliver Guest ("Guest and telomeres? I thought he was the clone man.” “Telomeres, too, Mr. President."), the trip through the echoing storm drains, and the scow and tobacco runners’ boat down the Potomac, all the way to Maryland Point. The story sounded unreal, as much as the events themselves now felt unreal.

Steinmetz said hardly a word. A couple of times he nodded, and once when a buzzer sounded he told Yasmin, “Tell ’em not now, no matter who it is.”

Art described the river landing at Maryland Point, the discovery of the trails from that side of the fenced facility around to the front, the broken gate. He told how they had found at first only corpses, but at the higher level at least some of the sleepers were alive.

He looked Saul Steinmetz straight in the eye. “We didn’t try to save them. We kept moving.”

The President nodded. “We’re on to that. Don’t worry. What next?”

It was the finding of Pearl Lazenby’s body drawer, empty. Then the resuscitation of Oliver Guest, interrupted by noises from below.

“We didn’t want to be discovered, doing what we were doing.”

“Of course not.” Steinmetz spoke as though that were obvious. “For one thing, it might have been Pearl Lazenby’s followers again. Then you’d have been in real trouble.”

“So we left Seth with Oliver Guest, back in the body drawer.”

“You weren’t worried about him? Left behind with Grisly, Guest?”

“You don’t know Seth. Anyway, that’s the last that Dana and I saw of them. We came down, and we met Yasmin. And she brought us here.”

“She did, indeed.” Steinmetz stood up and walked across to the window. “You’re telling me the truth. Why?”

Why? Art and Dana stared at each other. “We’d never have convinced you with a lie,” she said at last.

“You might have, if you kept it simple and agreed to your story ahead of time. I’m pretty good, but I’m not infallible. Ask my mother, she’ll tell you. But you told the truth. I’d like to know the reason.”

“I didn’t decide to tell the truth,” Dana said. “But I’ll tell you why I agreed with Art when I realized where he was going.”

“That will do fine.” Steinmetz came back, sat down, and speared her with that luminous gaze that made her feel pinned in her chair. “Why?”

“You said that telomod therapy is experimental, and you are quite right. Nobody knows the possible side effects, or what will happen to the patients in the long term. But the hell with the long term. Who cares about that if you’re dead?”

“ ’In the long run, we are all dead.’ Not the words of our quantized friend over there” — Steinmetz glanced across at the spectral shade of Disraeli — “but of the economist, John Maynard Keynes. I agree with him completely. We have to worry about now, today, and worry about later if and when we have time.”

“Well, without telomod therapy I would be dead today. So would Art, and so would Seth Parsigian. Every doctor I went to before I found the Institute for Probatory Therapies said the same thing: try to put your mind at ease and prepare for death. I wouldn’t do it, and I won’t do it. We may not seem to be dying to you, but we have no idea what might happen next. The Institute is gone, the genome-scanning equipment is useless, and our doctors are dead. The only person we know who has a prayer of telling us anything is Oliver Guest. But suppose we can’t find him? Suppose he gets away from Seth, or kills him, and disappears?”

“Given his past history, that’s not at all improbable. People have said many things about Dr. Oliver Guest, but no one ever said he was less than brilliant. Now I think I see it, but let me make sure. You are telling me all this, so that if you are unable to find Guest, the government might help you?”

“Yes.” Dana glanced to Art for confirmation. “That’s exactly it. We agreed to try to rendezvous with Seth north of here, and at the moment we don’t even know a way to get there.”

“We could certainly help with that.” Steinmetz’s voice was gentle and understanding. “But don’t you see that what you are asking is both illegal and impossible? You want me to sanction the continued liberty of a convicted criminal. Not just a minor felon, one who did not deserve his sentence” — Steinmetz bound Yasmin to silence with a strange glance — “but one of the most demented and horrifying murderers in history. How am I supposed to justify that? What will my political enemies say when they find out?”

A gargling sound came from the corner. The hologram brightened, and the figure within it became opaque and three-dimensional. After a few seconds the image vanished with a loud sizzling noise.

Steinmetz scowled at the empty corner. “I take that as an appropriate opinion on the opposition. But now do you understand?”

Dana nodded slowly. She seemed crushed. It was because of the look on her face that Art blurted out, “If you help us to find Guest and you let us talk to him, we’ll try to make sure he’s captured.”

He knew it was stupid as soon as he spoke. Steinmetz raised his eyebrows. “Let’s see if I have this right. If we help you, you’ll help us catch him; but you were the ones who let Guest out in the first place. If it weren’t for you, there would be no problem. I assume you’re familiar with the man who kills his parents and asks for special consideration from the court because he’s an orphan?”

His words were harsh, but the humorous gleam in his eye took the edge off. Art decided that Saul Steinmetz was a very hard man to dislike — and more dangerous because of that.

“Put yourself in our position.” Art had nothing to lose. He opened his shirt, raised his undershirt, and pulled the front of his pants lower. The clean-edged scar ran from the right side of his ribs down his bare belly to well past his navel. “I have half a dozen more like this, from operations before I found the telomod therapy. The treatment saved my life, but I don’t know for how long. Without doctors who know what they’re doing, I’m under a death sentence. Not just me — Dana, and Seth, and all the others in the program. We three just happened to be near Washington after the supernova zapped the microchips. Wouldn’t you be ready to try just about anything if you were one of us?”

His shirt was still open. He began to move it across to the left. Steinmetz held up his hand.

“No need. One picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t think two would be more persuasive.” He turned to Yasmin, who was staring at him steadily. “I have to, don’t I? I know it’s different, but it’s not different enough. And politics is the art of the impossible.” He turned back to Art. “How long before your friends — no names now, even though we’re not being recorded — how long before they’re supposed to meet you up north?”

“It depends how long it takes them. They could be there now.”

“They could. But you’re not. Here’s what I can do for you. Government vehicles come and go from Washington all the time. You work out with Auden what’s going tomorrow morning, to where you need to be. I don’t want to know the place. You then have four days. After that we are going to discover that Oliver Guest is missing from the Q-5 Syncope Facility, and I’m going to mount a full-scale manhunt for the famous murderer. If you turn him in before that, fine. But don’t mention me or the White House, because nothing like this meeting ever happened.”

He stood up. “One other thing. However this turns out, I want you back here to give me a personal report. Whatever you say won’t go beyond this office. And now I must get on to other things. Do you realize that you’ve been here for over an hour?”

“We’re sorry,” Dana said.

“No, you’re not.” Steinmetz held out his hand. “Nor am I. Good luck.”

She took it, but gripped it in both of hers. “Why are you doing this for us, sir?”

“I am the President of all the people. And if I were in your position, I suspect that I’d have done exactly what you did.” Then he winked at Art and Dana, and the urge to smile back was irresistible. “And sometimes when you’re President, you have to do something that nobody else in the whole damn country could get away with, just to prove you can.” He shook Art’s hand. “You go ahead, I need a private word with Yasmin on another matter.”

When they were outside the door, Dana asked softly, “Did you vote for him?”

“No. I liked him, but he was running against the first woman candidate ever. Did you?”

“No.” She laughed. “I thought he was too rich. You’d vote for him next time, though?”

“You better believe it. After today, if he asked me nice I’d marry him.” Art realized, too late, that the man who had greeted them — Travis? — was still in the room. He had a puzzled expression on his handsome young face.