Annie jumped off the side of the ramp and came around the back of the men urging the cattle into the truck. She weaseled between two men who smelled even worse than she did. The heifer’s rear end came into view.
“Balls.”
Another heifer scooted up the ramp into the truck. David must have seen a worried expression on Annie’s face. “What?”
She shook her head and moved in closer. “It’s her water bag. She’s calving. Now.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The two trucks crossed the desert and wound far into desolate hills and ragged ravines before coming to stop at the familiar compound. She’d read about the wilderness that the Jews wandered in and where Jesus prayed for forty days, and this must be the place. Bleak and isolated, nothing but rocks and scant vegetation.
The compound looked just as it had when they’d left it a few days ago. The padlock on her shed was open and she saw with relief the one on Hassan’s shed was locked. There was an addition of a cattle pen protected from the brutal sun and air surveillance by a rough wood-plank awning.
Annie hadn’t been blindfolded on the long trip through the desert; she didn’t need to be. They’d left the road and made so many twists and turns it was very possible they drove in circles. She’d tried to keep track of landmarks, but the hills held nothing of note, save a few strangled trees that all looked similar. The sun was directly overhead, so she couldn’t even determine the direction they traveled. How would she ever find her way out? Annie didn’t know which direction the last settlement lay or how far away it was.
Adi stood in the middle of the compound waiting for them. He spoke to Moshe and sent him to one of the tents. Annie intercepted a nod between him and David and looked away quickly before they noticed her watching.
With Annie directing, the men from the two trucks unloaded the cattle into the small pen. One heifer’s water bag hung from her rear, which Annie expected.
Annie had no watch, but she suspected it had been at least two hours since they’d disembarked from the plane. Two hours since the heifer started labor meant trouble for the calf, even in a normal birth on a stress-free ranch.
Adi walked by and Annie caught him by the sleeve. “I’ve got to pull this calf. Right now.”
Adi’s eyes darkened in concern. She pointed out the calving heifer. “Bring her into the lab. David can help you. I’ll get set up.”
Alanberg appeared from the mess tent. He waddled over to them, his eyes wide and nervous. “What’s happening? Is there a problem?”
Annie gave him a disgusted look and walked toward the lab. Let David explain the situation and give orders. She’d had enough of all of them. Before she opened the lab door she pointed to Alanberg and shouted at Adi. “Keep him out of here.”
It didn’t take long to get the heifer into the headgate. Her order must have done some good because Alanberg didn’t come into the lab. Adi stood by the door with his ever-present gun. David helped her with the heifer.
Annie slid on an obstetrical glove and inserted her hand into the vagina. She felt a calf, full term, seemingly in one piece. But she felt no signs of life. Still, she couldn’t be sure.
With David’s help, she pulled the calf. His nose crested, dry. His eyes were already filmy. The lifeless body came from the heifer’s womb one small tug at a time until it fell to the floor.
Nothing was more bleak than a stillbirth; it always caused some form of grief for Annie. But this death mixed fear and failure. What would The Corporation do if they didn’t get their Red Heifer?
David unhooked the chains. “What caused the death?”
Annie reached down to grab the spindly red leg. “It could be the trauma of the flight. It could be the vaccine was too strong and caused the miscarriage. I don’t know.”
David helped her and they pulled the calf to the back of the lab. “At least it was a bull calf.”
Annie stared at him a moment, fighting to keep from cursing.
Defeat and exhaustion made Annie fight tears. She had three more chances. In the meantime she had to figure out how to escape, rescue a bunch of little boys and their mothers and keep Hassan alive.
Without stopping to rest or eat, Annie drew blood from the other heifers. She analyzed and figured and ran numbers until her brain wouldn’t work. Sometime during the next hours David brought her tasteless food she shoveled in between reading results.
The guard changed but Annie didn’t know when. She looked up once to see Adi and his gun were replaced by Moshe and his gun. Moshe’s arm was wrapped and bandaged but he didn’t wear a sling. The clock showed well past midnight.
She only slept a couple of hours and then went back to the lab.
Annie’s order wasn’t enough to banish Alanberg permanently. He hovered over Annie’s shoulder the next morning. He read her printouts though Annie doubted he had any idea what they meant or how well her research progressed.
Annie originally thought the heifer miscarried because of trauma during the relocation. But the more she studied the more she leaned toward the notion the vaccine hadn’t been strong enough. She had to come up with a booster and hoped the others wouldn’t start calving before she figured it out. She wanted the vaccine to give immunity to the heifers and transfer to the calves.
Annie stared in the microscope at the blood sample she’d drawn earlier. What she saw didn’t please her and she sat back in a rickety office chair. If the vaccine was too strong, it would cause abortions; too weak and immunity might not pass to the calves and they’d die at birth, weaker still, and the virus would cause the heifers to abort.
Alanberg stood over her. “You look disturbed. What’s the matter?”
David sat at the other end of the counter making up slides from blood samples. He stopped and looked at her.
She rubbed her eyes and swiveled her chair toward the door. “The periplasmic protein antigens reorganized by the immune system during infection are showing signs that the initial vaccination may not have been effective for the fetuses.”
Confusion spread across Alanberg’s face. “Specifically, what does that mean?”
She should have guessed he couldn’t follow basic lab talk. Annie pictured the problem in mathematical formulas and spoke absently to Alanberg. “It means I don’t think the others are going to give us live calves.”
“We’ve already lost too many. We can’t lose any more.”
Her brain sifted through protein levels and the shape of LPS epitomes. “I can try to give them a booster.”
Alanberg wiped sweat from above his lips. “I thought you said your vaccine could cure BA 23.”
She wanted to holler at him to leave her alone to work. Instead, she pulled out a printout from yesterday’s results. “What I said was that I was very close to a cure.”
Alanberg paced. “We only have three more chances. One of those has to be female and it has to have no more than two hairs of any other color.”
“I could work a lot better if you weren’t breathing down my neck.”
Whining desperation tinged his voice. “One of them has to be the Red Heifer.”
She narrowed her eyes and allowed her voice to harden. “There’s a lot more at stake in finding the cure than providing another object of worship. The gender and color doesn’t matter to me or to the people that might die if we don’t cure this disease.”
He found new strength. His eyes blazed. “It matters to Jews. We’re not here to bring economic stabilization to the agricultural sector. This is about redeeming Israel for the Lord.”
“Maybe you can’t see past your Torah, but finding the cure to BA 23 has bigger implications than fulfilling a cult’s religious fortune telling.”
He sounded like a ten-year old. “You said you had the cure.”
“I can’t do anything to improve your chances for that perfect calf. You’ve got the best breeding stock there is, but genetics isn’t a one hundred percent game.”
Alanberg clenched his fists. “We need that heifer.”
“Yeah? Well, wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which fills first.”
In an instant he slammed an open palm beside her on the desk, making her jump. “Why do you insist on making fun of this? The Lord is bringing about the Temple and it’s our duty to sacrifice all to follow his directives.”
“He’s not doing anything. You’re trying to twist his arm.”
Alanberg bristled. “We aren’t forcing the prophecy of the Red Heifer any more than Moses forced his will on God. God has brought us here together at the right time and led us to discover this. If we have to use our heads and put out effort, is it any more than he asked of Moses and Aaron?”
If he wanted Biblical sparring, she’d give it to him. “What about Abraham trying to help God out. God promised him heirs as plentiful as stars in the heavens. But poor Abraham kept getting older and Sarah was no spring chicken. So Abraham figured God must want him to do something. He took Hagar and they had Ishmael. If I’m not mistaken, the battle of Isaac and Ishmael has translated into the Muslim/Jewish rift of today.”
Alanberg barked at her like a terrier. “If God didn’t want the Red Heifer to come now and from your hand, he wouldn’t have brought together everything as he did.”
“If God were behind this, don’t you suppose he’d provide the heifer himself?”
Alanberg paced in the narrow lab, picking up papers or equipment and setting it down. “You don’t understand the way God rules the world. Life isn’t a random set of experiences. It’s planned by God from the beginning of time until the end.”
He opened the case she’d used to tote the vaccine to Nebraska. He didn’t close it.
Annie looked up at his silence. He stood with the envelope of money. “What is this?”
She bent over her work. “Dad didn’t want your money.”
David stood up, his eyebrows drawn down. “What did he say?”
She shrugged.
Allanberg tugged on the back of her t-shirt. “What did he say? Exactly?”
His touch felt creepy. “Something strange about Israel turning back to God.”
David spoke slowly. “‘Do not try to take advantage of Israel as they seek to turn back to God.’ Is that it?”
They looked downright spooked. “I guess. Sounds like it.”
Alanberg clasped his hands in front of him and mumbled a prayer.
“What?” Annie asked David.
He swallowed, his face pale. “Those are the same words Dama ben Natina spoke when he delivered the last heifer.”
Her head hurt. “I need to check on the heifers.” She pushed past Alanberg and went to the front door.
Moshe scrambled to his feet. Someone behind her, either David or Alanberg, gave Moshe permission to open the door. Annie strode to the cattle pen, glad to escape Alanberg and his whiny religious mumbo-jumbo. What she saw made her scramble over the pen fence and slowly make her way to one of the heifers. “Here we go.”
Alanberg stomped out of the lab heading toward the mess hall. Good. The last thing she needed was Alanberg flitting around while she worked.
The heifer’s water bag had broken so Annie had Moshe help and they prodded the heifer into the lab and the headstall.
David jumped up when he saw them bringing in the heifer. “Is she calving? Does it look okay?”
Annie patted Moshe’s back. “We’ll make a ranch hand out of you, yet.”
He gave her a shy grin. “John Wayne.”
She laughed but it was like trying to wash away the ocean with her arm. Worry and pain rushed in like the next wave before the sound of her laugh died out.
David studied the heifer. “This might be the one.”
Her heart beat in her throat. Three down, three to go. The numbers weren’t in her favor.
It appeared that labor had quit proceeding so Annie snapped on gloves. The initial exam revealed a fully formed calf. Annie struggled through the birth, hoping with all her strength that the calf lived. As she looped the chains on the hooves and cranked the jack she pleaded, “Please live, please live.” The head crested and she cranked faster. “Please.”
But it was dead. Dead! Her stomach twisted and she felt sick when she saw the little heifer looked perfectly red.
David knelt beside the calf. His voice sounded strained. “It’s a heifer.”
She pulled off her gloves. “Yes.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t see anything but red on it.”
She washed her hands. “It’s not as if I took a gun to them.”
He stood up, hands clenched. “The Corporation won’t like this. What do you think they’ll do to Hassan when they find out?”
She closed her eyes and swallowed the stream of accusations she wanted to fling at David. She hated him for using Hassan’s life as motivation in his sick passion play.
Two more dead calves. She’d done everything she could think to keep them alive. What if the other two calves didn’t make it? The whole Corporation might be praying, but it wasn’t doing any good.
The door to the lab opened and Alanberg ran in. “What have you done?”
Annie kept her eyes on David, challenging him to hold his temper. She answered Alanberg. “Stillborn.”
Alanberg grabbed the edge of her desk. “Dead?”
She nodded, then pointed to a dark space behind the headgate. “It’s back there.”
He hurried over to the dead calf.
Annie and David stared at each other. She couldn’t read his face. Was he about to tell her who he really was? If he did, what would that mean?
Alanberg ran back to her. His voice was high-pitched with strain. “It was red. Perfect. A heifer.”
“We’ve got two more chances.” She tried to calm him before he had a stroke.
“Not good enough! We need the Red Heifer. Time is running out!” His face turned a mottled red.
“What do you mean?” David barked at Alanberg.
“They say the Silim is getting close. They are looking for us. There is no time.”
David took a deep breath. “Listen to me, old man. We will get the Red Heifer. The Silim won’t find us.”
Annie shook her head. “I’m not so sure you’ll get your Red Heifer, not with these two anyway.”
David turned to her. “Give them a booster. That’s all they need.”
She couldn’t help her sarcasm. “Booster. That’s easy. What level of proteins do I use? What’s your best guess?”