The Children of the Company Part 28

"Coffee while I run your check? Little gla.s.s of gin?" she inquired, waving me to a comfortable chair. I declined. She patted my cheek and went off to her terminal to verify that I was healthy, sane, law-abiding, and could pay.

It was a Company-issued credit ID and of course p.r.o.nounced me a worthy client, whether or not I was in fact healthy, sane, or law-abiding. But I could certainly pay. She came back smiling, led me deeper into the house, waved me into a small lavatory.

"Pre-prophylaxis, eh? You're a big boy, you know what to do. When you come out, turn to the right. I'll be waiting in there." She indicated a beaded doorway, all darkness beyond it.

I went in. It was furnished as most chambers for that purpose are. Concealed within a smoke detector was a tiny closed-circuit camera lens. I scanned: no gentlemen accomplices lurking anywhere in the house. She herself watched me, from a curtained booth on the other side of the wall where she was preparing for the encounter.

Having mutually a.s.sured ourselves that no murder was intended, we proceeded to the business at hand.

"What a charming conceit," I remarked, stepping through the curtain. Each bead was a touch of ice on my skin. The contrast with the warm air was a shivering pleasure. "I haven't seen a beaded curtain in ages. Was it your idea?"

Her voice came out of the darkness, amused. "Yes, thank you. But no personal details, eh? Less effort for you and they'll only spoil your fun, dear. For the sake of your pleasant and guilt-free experience, I will be only your desire personified. Not a person."

"I'm not a person either," I replied, and walked forward into the mystery.

As I left, something small and bright blue caught my eye by the door; I bent to pick it up. It was a toy rabbit, a tiny figure from a block set. I turned to offer it to my hostess.

"You have a child?"

"I might," she replied, accepting it. "Another personal detail you don't want to think about, you see? Not s.e.xy at all. Thank you for your patronage, sir. Good night and happy New Year!"

I walked back past the crowd of mortals on the Dam. There were more of them now, still whooping and celebrating. Vendors sold hot drinks, sausages, parade horns, gnome hats, dance-lights. Wire screens, vast as city blocks, were mounted on the sides of buildings and displayed New Year's jollity from other cities as though they were occurring simultaneously, creating a sense of worldwide party.

I found an all-night coffeehouse some blocks away and edged into a booth at the back. It was dark and quiet there. I ordered coffee and pastry and watched from the darkness as the New Year came upon us, the bright child in his banner emblazoned HAPPY 2093!

Celebrate while you can.

Hendrick got his shots on January 2. On the fifth of January he started kindergarten.

I took him to school. Anna and Geert were dismayed by the crowd of kameramen in the street, didn't know what to do, what to say. But what were Doss and Waters paying me for, after all? I shrugged into my overcoat, took Hendrick by the hand, and escorted him down the steps.

He looked pale and frightened, but he went without question. Children endure so much, so steadfastly, once they learn to abandon hope. He stared unsmiling into the blank avid eyes of the kameramen and let them See him for a moment before following me as I pushed through the mortals.

And there the gunman was, as I'd known he'd be, the heavy-set young man in the green shirt, holding up the bag with the Amsterdam Wire logo, stepping suddenly too close. As I reached out to break his wrist, before the shouting started, I heard Hendrick saying quietly: "That one's not a kameraman. See his eyes? Here it comes. Good-bye-"

But the gun went off, in accordance with recorded history, pointed up and away from Hendrick. It broke a window in a villa across the street, and I knew without bothering to look up the unnerving pattern the shattered gla.s.s had formed, like a six-pointed star, for this too was in accordance with recorded history. I heard the scream, as much in frustration as pain, of the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin. I heard the whirring of the kameramen as they ran close to frame our struggle (no attempt to help me!) except for the one who turned his devouring face up to the broken window, catching that unforgettable image. And, at last, here were a few police.

And Labienus, to manage statements, so that I was permitted to walk on at last towing Hendrick after me, down the quiet street toward the waiting car. I bowed my head, striding along, feeling Hendrick's hand twist in mine as he looked back.

So I too entered recorded history, of course with my face well hidden: that dark overcoat flowing back from those striding legs, the stiff arm extended to the boy who turned to peer over his shoulder so somberly into the cameras. By that evening a billion mortals had seen the image.

They were waiting for us at the school with tremulous applause, for of course Labienus made certain that word of what had happened preceded our arrival. That was where the reaction set in. I was trembling, sweating, and really in no mood to shake all the tiny hands extended to me; but I had saved Hendrick's life, and the more enlightened citizens of Amsterdam wanted to thank me. I was given flowers. Toddlers were put into my arms and told to kiss me. The teachers kissed me. I disengaged as politely as I could and retreated to an empty office, to mop my perspiring face and endure, until it should be time to take Hendrick home, being the hero of the hour.

And what a brief hour it was.

Oh, we had waves of positive publicity from the murder attempt. The gunman had been acting alone, but was a.s.sociated with the Church of G.o.d-A, a cult calling for more than zero population growth. They resolutely denied they had any intention of bringing this about by violence, though they admitted they were opposed to Hendrick's existence on principle.

There was a great deal of self-congratulation within Amsterdam. Once again its good citizens had shown themselves tolerant, humane, and enlightened! Hendrick got on well with his playmates. Anne Frank was invoked again, wan smiling ghost to give her blessing on another little outsider.

On his third day at school Hendrick developed a slight fever, a mild headache. I escorted him home. Anna was furious, positive his illness was a reaction to the unnecessary vaccinations. Geert wrung his hands. Before nightfall, however, the boy's splendid superior engineered antibodies had clearly done their trick. His fever fell, his headache went away, he was fine.

Not so his cla.s.smates.

Three children showed up at the school on the fourth day. The rest were at home, violently ill. By nightfall most of them had died.

Most of the teachers were dead by the following morning, and all the children had died. The illness spread through their families. Their families died. Drastically enforced quarantine measures seemed to contain the outbreak, though it was also possible that the plague killed its hosts so quickly that it was unable to spread effectively after a certain point.

The Wire coverage was heartbreaking: images, from happier days, of the smiling little faces. There were around-the-clock broadcasts as people cowered in their homes. Ratings soared. Rumors spread quickly as only the electronic media could spread them, especially with a captive audience.

Once it had started, it didn't take long.

The Amsterdam Center for Disease Control a.s.saulted the question immediately. The obvious conclusion to be drawn was that the outbreak was somehow a.s.sociated with Hendrick, since he had survived it and none of the other children had. From the moment that theory was widely known, the public had decided.

Useless for Anna and Geert to protest via voicelink that Hendrick had come into contact with plenty of people from the day of his birth, without harming anyone; we couldn't get any of the other doctors who'd worked with them to come forward and make a statement in their support. Useless to point out that Hendrick had been ill, too, and that undoubtedly only his unique antibody system had enabled him to recover. Anna and Geert were not professional entertainers, they spoke poorly, without stage presence or vocal training. Though Labienus repeated their statements an hour later, the first stammering denials were the ones that had the most impact.

Moreover a biologist, who spoke well and who did have stage presence, was interviewed immediately afterward. He put forward his opinion that Hendrick's much-touted immune system might be responsible. Perhaps, somehow, it had perceived his little cla.s.smates with their ordinary coughs and colds as dangers to his survival, and manufactured a toxin to eliminate them.

This was immediately accepted as a glaringly obvious fact.

The truth came far too late, as we were being evacuated; and no one listened, I think, but Hendrick and I.

Labienus was hurrying Anna and Geert through their packing. Hendrick was already packed. I was b.u.t.toning him into his coat in the flickering light of the Wire images, for it had been deemed unsafe to turn on any of the other household lights, and in truth we only dared keep the Wire on because we needed the constant flow of information.

Abruptly a grim-faced commentator broke in over the latest "news" (endless recapitulation of everything that had already been shown) to announce that investigators had uncovered a possibly significant fact that might prove Hendrick wasn't responsible for the plague after all. The first instance of illness had occurred at the school before he had ever arrived. He had got there late the first morning, due to the attempt on his life. During the time we were making statements to the police, as his future cla.s.smates waited for Hendrick's appearance, one of the children had been taken ill and sent home, escorted by a teacher because her mother was too ill to come for her. She had never returned. The teacher who had escorted her home was the first to die.

I had never heard this. These details had never become part of recorded history. I stared, astonished, at the images, forgetting to hand Hendrick his mittens. He took them from me, patiently, and pulled them on.

Then I was Seeing, through the eyes of a kameraman, the Disease Control investigators in their protective suits, emerging from the house where they'd just found the mother and child dead.

I knew that house. I'd been inside it. It was in the red light district. The kameraman was running close to get a shot through the window, before being pushed back by police. The only image he was able to frame that was clearly recognizable was a travel poster on one wall, its subject a city in North Africa.

The commentator was unable to interview any of the investigators, but the suited figures rushing to and fro in the background lent weight to his expressed opinion that this might explain at last the origin of the plague: for the child's mother was a licensed prost.i.tute of African descent, and she may have contracted the disease from an African customer, likely enough in view of the plagues that had decimated so much of Africa's population in recent years ...

I had kissed her. Children, teachers, had kissed me.

It really is remarkable how our immortal senses take control at such times. I rose like the perfect machine I should have been and shut off the Wire. I took Hendrick's hand and led him through the dark house to wait by the back door. We could hear Labienus helping Anna and Geert carry their bags downstairs. They were stumbling, dropping things. There were already barricades at the end of the street and crowds a.s.sembling there, shouting at the police.

How sad, how sad, the poor girl had been exposed to a virus and unwittingly pa.s.sed it on to me, and I'd- But I'd have known if there had been anything wrong with her.

We heard the first shots fired in the front street, not what you'd expect at all, an insignificant-sounding popping.

"There it goes," said Hendrick, almost calmly. He was in shock, his dark eyes enormous. "All locked up now. I told you so."

I had scanned the mortal woman before our encounter. She hadn't been carrying any virus.

"Here, here!" whispered Labienus, shepherding Anna and Geert before him. "Out to the car. Now! Nils will drive you to a safe location." He looked into my eyes and transmitted: You've got the blood effects ready?

The woman hadn't been carrying any virus. I, however, had.

It didn't feel like rage. It felt like a white flare, so intense it was, so unlike a human emotion. I stared back at him.

Was it in the Theobromos you gave me? I transmitted.

His face told the truth, though he hastily transmitted back: What? Don't be ridiculous! Get them out of here, now, we can't waste time on this.

How true. We couldn't waste time, not when history was dictating that Anna and Geert and the child escaped from their house at nineteen hundred hours precisely, exiting through the back and making their departure in a rented car driven by Hendrick's bodyguard.

The perfect automaton went briskly down the back steps, opened the doors of the waiting Volta, took bags and loaded them into the boot while the Karremans family scrambled into their seats. He shut them in, and climbed behind the wheel to take them to their appointment with history.

As we drove away, a faint transmission came from the dark house: I'll explain when we rendezvous.

How pleasant to have an explanation offered.

How heavily I'd been perspiring in the school. And with the woman.

The last act played out quickly.

I drove the mortals to their previous home in the country, the loft apartment above the laboratory where they'd done their work. The apartment was closed up now, though the laboratory was still in use; it was within commuting distance and the Karremans had planned to go back to work after Hendrick was in school full-time.

We let ourselves in and they took shelter upstairs, in the rooms where Hendrick had played as a baby. The place can't have afforded him any comfort of familiarity now, dark and empty as it was. I remained below in the laboratory, ostensibly to stand guard but in reality following through on what I had been told was the point of this entire operation: locating and securing all the files, all the project notes for the Karremans' work with recombinant DNA. History would record it as lost in the course of the evening's events.

The Company knew otherwise, naturally. The Company knew that a man placed in the event shadow-for history did not record what happened in the laboratory during the hour the Karremans family cowered upstairs-might remove the data on Hendrick's creation to a safe location for later retrieval. Anna's and Geert's work would be saved, would pa.s.s into the possession of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, presumably to be of some benefit to mortal humanity at some unspecified time in the twenty-fourth century.

Though I had no real idea of what would be done with the knowledge. We're told so little, we operatives struggling through the past. Our masters a.s.sure us it's better that way. Easier on our nerves.

I seemed to have no nerves left in the forty-five minutes I searched through the laboratory. Eventually I found the files, or at least their backups, neatly labeled in-what else?-a file box. I carried it out into the night, ran with it to the nearest drainage ditch, dug a hole in the snow and buried it. Then I returned to the laboratory to keep my own appointment with history.

Not long to wait. Glancing at my chronometer, I saw that the mobs would by now have stormed the house and found it deserted, but set it afire anyway and gone looking for the monster and his wicked creators, pausing only to raid the Civil Guard a.r.s.enal. Thanks to the splendid media coverage Labienus had masterminded, a good many people knew exactly where the Karremans' laboratory was. Yes: here came the line of headlights through the night.

Car doors slamming. Shouted consultation. Upstairs, inaudible to mortal ears, Hendrick's whimpering, Anna's stifled sobs. Heartbeats pounding, both within and without, for the attackers were frightened, too.

So it was a brave man who climbed back into his utility vehicle, after pounding had failed to force the door, and simply drove it through the wall.

He died almost at once. Pointless to shoot him, I suppose, but I had no choice: history stated that he was shot by Hendrick's bodyguard before he had time to jump from the cab of his vehicle. It stated further that other members of the mob, pouring in through the breach he'd made in the wall, promptly gunned down the bodyguard.

So I took my pose there in the dark, as their shots went wide, and I thumbed the electronic device that set off the little detonations in my heavily padded clothing. The blood bags exploded. I toppled forward, as dead as I would ever be.

The mob advanced cautiously, fearful. There came an echoing clatter of feet down the stairs. Who was running down the stairs? This hadn't been mentioned in any of the accounts, and of course I couldn't turn over to see.

"Make it be over," I heard Hendrick crying in desperation. "Make it be over now!"

Geert and Anna were close behind him, frantic to pull him back out of danger.

Deafening barrage of shots. They died there, on the stairs.

I hope it was over quickly.

Certainly I could hear no failing heartbeats, no last gasps in the moment of profound silence that came when the shooting stopped. The mortals seemed stunned at what they'd done. At last somebody had presence of mind to say: "We'll have to burn this place. It's the only way to keep the plague from spreading!"

Yes! That was a plan all of them understood. It was done quickly, because some of them had thoughtfully brought along accelerant as well as guns. They dumped it around, ran back out through the breach, and somebody lit a firecracker-perhaps left over from New Year's Eve-and tossed it in. Very effective: a roar and a fireball at once.

I winked out to the lavatory at the back of the building. Forcing the window over the basin, I crawled out and dropped into the snow that had drifted behind the wall. No need to worry about the telltale print of my body in the drift. It would have melted away within the hour, as the laboratory became an inferno.

I fled, secure in the knowledge that my escape wouldn't be spotted. History recorded otherwise, after all. Pausing only long enough to retrieve the file box from the ditch where I'd hidden it, I ran away, back toward Amsterdam.

One oughtn't to think at such times. Undeniably a foolish thing to do.

I thought and thought as I ran, you see, with the result that by the time I reached the outskirts of the city all my questions had resolved into just two: Could I do it? How was I to do it?

Hard to find a fire hot enough, intense enough. Probably even the fire at the laboratory wouldn't have been of sufficient heat. No bonfires permitted nowadays, in safety-conscious 2093, and most homes were heated with electricity.

As I marched along, I came to a shop licensed to sell liquor. It was gated and locked against the night, but the lock could be forced; and the shop contained everything I'd need, which was to say rows of bottles of alcohol and little packets of hotpoints to start the fire. Yes. Would the fire cleanse away my filth?

Undoubtedly, if it burned away all but the indestructible skeleton within me and the augmented brain protected within my ferroceramic skull. I wouldn't die-I was immortal, after all-but I might be so badly damaged the Company would be unable to repair me. I might spend the rest of eternity in a bioregeneration vat, only marginally alive. Better than I deserved, to be sure, but I hadn't many alternatives. I wasn't even certain I could force myself to remain there in the fire. They made us such cowards, when they made us deathless.

I had set down the file box and was wrestling with the lock when Labienus stepped from the shadows behind me.

"Let it go, Victor. It was a wretched business, but it's over now."

I turned to stare at him. He scooped up the file box and tucked it securely under one arm. He met my stare.

"Why?" I demanded.

"Why were you used as the carrier or why weren't you told?" he inquired. No attempt to brazen out the lie. I hadn't expected that. He smiled slightly at my confusion.

"What's the first rule we learn, Victor? That history cannot be changed. History recorded that the Karremans plague would kill a certain number of people. History recorded that the Recombinant would be killed, along with his creators, and their research lost. How was the Company to alter any of those historical facts? We couldn't, of course.

"All we could do was work within the historical record, to place ourselves in the position of greatest advantage and thereby control the situation. You see? But it was decided to do more than simply take the research files. Wouldn't it be better to ensure that there was no Karremans plague after all? No unknown and uncontrollable virus evolving from a Recombinant's body? There'd be no way to change the historical facts as known, those little victims must die-but wouldn't it be much less dangerous for humanity if they actually died of something controllable? Something we could deactivate once the historical facts had been apparently matched? We were minimizing the potential for a greater disaster, Victor, you see?

"Terrible that the tragedy had to occur, certainly. Terrible that it will galvanize all the nations of the world to forbid any further research into work of this kind. Impossible to change these things. But at least this way we've been able to derive something positive from it! The research has been saved. And the 'plague' will never spread further, because we know it never existed in the first place."

So, once again, Dr. Zeus Incorporated had become the beneficiary of mortal suffering. I leaned on the grate, longing for those bottles of vodka and aquavit behind the gla.s.s. I wondered what Labienus would do if I grappled him close, if I forced his mouth open with my own and spat my misery down his throat.

He narrowed his eyes, perhaps picking up the image from my thoughts, and continued: "As to why you were chosen for the job-well, really, Victor, it must have occurred to you by now that you're unique among our operatives."

"I'm an ordinary Executive Facilitator," I stated.

"Oh, Victor, so much more than that! You have a talent none of the rest of them have. You were augmented to do in fact what that poor child was a.s.sumed to be doing: your body can produce customized toxins in response to specific stimulus. Surely that affair in San Francisco gave you a clue, beyond what we were permitted to tell you at the time? Budu attacked you, and you immediately manufactured a virus to disable him."

"And the woman, here?" I demanded. "The children? What threat did they present?"

He cleared his throat.

"Well-none, of course, but their deaths were a regrettable necessity. There was nothing in the Theobromos. You'd have detected any adulteration, you know that. Your ability is programmed to activate when certain signals are transmitted. Do you recall when I shook your hand, New Year's Eve? You felt, perhaps, a slight shock? No? But your body responded to the order I gave it by producing what history will call the Karremans Recombinant Defensive. As we had intended it to do, I might add. Nothing was ever out of our control."

"You're saying, then"-I fought to keep my voice steady-"that the Company is able to make my body generate poisons without my knowledge. At any time."

"Exactly so."