No such luck with Rana. Her look of surprise, frozen in place, explodes outward from the underlying bone and muscle. Eyes distended and bloodshot. Mouth a bloated rictus. Cheeks bruised. Rigo shivers through the sweat he’s working up. His teeth chatter as he straps her in place next to the others; the best he can do before turning his attention to the living.
Claribel is unconscious but stable, lucky she didn’t suffocate on the vomit clotting the inside of her helmet. Hsi-Tang needs a heavy-duty painkiller-
cum
-sedative but is otherwise okay. TomE and Naguib are still incommunicado on the comet. They’ve dropped offline, are presumed dead. If they haven’t died already, they will soon. No way in hell they can survive long-term with just their biosuits. Especially if they’re unconscious. Or buried alive, can’t move around enough to keep warm.
Rigo averts his mind’s eye from the image, ashamed by his lack of balls . . . his total inability to face their suffering. Guilt mixes their imagined loss of breath with his as they fade, leaving him winded, fighting for air. He can feel himself dying with them— slowly suffocating because he turned away. Proof positive that Beto was right about him. He doesn’t have what it takes, never will.
“The colonists still aren’t responding,” Varda says as the autopilot gets ready to reenter the atmosphere.
The remote link is down, too. Damaged in the explosion, or severed on purpose? Either way, he’s not softwired to the plants the way he was. All that’s left is a phantom memory. Ghost circuits.
Everything is arbitrary. Nothing had to happen the
way that it did.
Something to keep in mind as the first few molecules of upper atmosphere tear at the hull of the lander.
Please, God,
he prays as one of the glider wings fails to properly unfold and flips the pseudoplane into a tailspin.
Get me through this and I’ll do whatever
You want. No questions asked.
He makes a hurried sign of the cross and waits for the end.
EIGHTEEN
By the time Anthea gets back to the ap she’s been gone three hours.
After leaving Beto, she dosed herself with the Tiresias antipher. That was over an hour ago. Hopefully, the drug has had time to kick in by now and she can get close to Ibrahim. Not to mention Rigo, when he finally returns. A half hour earlier, she onlined Doug and checked to see if there were any messages from Rigo. Nothing. With luck his mother has heard from him, can tell Anthea when he’s coming home.
She thumbs the door’s iDNA button, waits for Rigo’s mom to answer. Around her, the neighborhood is in full midmorning swing. The initial bustle of people heading off to work has been replaced by the lethargy of routine. Refurb/retrofit teams maintaining/optimizing building ecotecture, replacing old photovoltaic cellulose windows, installing piezoelectric panels. Public works crews troubleshooting circuitrees or recalibrating UV filtration levels in umbrella palms. Shop owners selling everything from coffee and quesadillas to hologram tattoos and discount sprayons. Street vendors hawking fruit-flavored
paletas
, scavenged electronic parts, and jewelry. There’s even a street musician, tapping out Caribbean rhythms on a set of battered steel drums fashioned out of paint cans and kitchen pots. Anthea loves this time of the day. There aren’t any
tígueres
out yet. So everything is legal, aboveboard. She can relax, enjoy the aroma of chipotle-braised tofu, stir-fried vegetables, and hydrogen fuel-cell exhaust wafting on the air.
The door lock clicks, but the door doesn’t open. Normally, Rigo’s mother is right there, a welcoming smile on her face.
Anthea eases the door open, steps into the ap. Something is wrong, off. The air is still. No sign of Rigo’s mom. Maybe she’s in the bathroom indisposed, and that’s why she couldn’t unlock the door herself. Anthea checks the wallscreen. Ibrahim isn’t in the room—the bed and floor are vacant.
Heart pounding, she heads for the hallway. Stops when she nearly trips over an amorphous lump on the carpet. Rushes forward.
“
Mama!
” She kneels next to the old woman, leans close, hands fumbling all over her. “Are you all right?”
“I can’t get up. I twisted my left leg.” Her good one. “And I think I sprained my right wrist when I fell.”
The wrist is puffy, swollen red and already starting to bruise. It looks like a break more than a sprain. Anthea checks the knee, which is the size of a cantaloupe. Definitely some torn cartilage or ligaments. There’s no way Anthea can move her. She must weigh twice what Anthea does. She’ll have to get help. The best she can do is ease her into a sitting position, prop her back against one wall, straighten her legs out in front of her.
“What happened, Mama? Where’s Ibrahim?”
“Gone.” The old woman’s breath is shortened by pain, her skin glazed and pallid from exertion.
“Did he run?” Anthea has visions of Ibrahim panicking, making a break for it, the old woman in hot pursuit, unable to keep up, and tripping.
“I couldn’t stop them,” the old woman mutters. “I tried, but they threw me aside. Left me on the floor. Dogs.”
“Who, Mama?”
“Two men. They were dressed in gray suits, like shadows. One had a green tie. The other wore yellow. They forced Ibrahim to go with them, picked him up kicking and screaming and carried him off.”
“BEAN?” Anthea pictures the two agents who called her yesterday, Howdy and Doody.
“I knew they were trouble as soon as they showed up. They didn’t bother to ask if they could see Ibrahim. Just overrode my door lock and barged in like they owned the place.”
“How long ago was that, Mama?” If it’s only been a few minutes, they might not have gotten very far. There’s a chance she could catch up with them.
The old woman looks around. “What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
“They showed up at ten. I remember, because that’s when I always take one of my pain pills. I must have passed out when I fell.”
Anthea’s heart sinks. An hour. In an hour, they could have taken him anywhere. She’ll never locate him at this point. He’s long gone. Even if he’s at a local BEAN detention center, odds are they won’t let her see him.
Face it, Anthea tells herself. It’s over. Finis. There’s nothing more she can do. She’s not giving up. Just being realistic. Time to focus on immediate matters— like taking care of Rigo’s mother, getting her to a clinic as soon as possible. After that, she can think about trying to track down Ibrahim.
For some reason, an emergency medical team hasn’t shown up. One should have been dispatched to the ap shortly after Rigo’s mom passed out. Her IA should have registered the change in her condition and sent a biomed readout to the nearest urgent care unit.
“Did you call for an ambulance?” Anthea asks, in case one happens to be on the way.
The old woman shakes her head.
“Why not, Mama?”
“It’s expensive to get taken in every time I bump myself for fall. There’s nothing the doctors can do anyway.”
“How come your IA didn’t make the call for you?”
“It’s a state disability agent.”
“You didn’t sign up for twenty-four/seven monitoring?”
“I can’t afford it.”
Which means all she gets is basic voice/data communications, e-mail, and a few online administrative services. Most state disability IAs have a caseload of several thousand. Limiting the number of per-person processor tasks the IA has to handle increases the total number of people eligible to receive basic services, makes the benefit more cost-effective.
“I think it would be a good idea if you got checked out. You never know. There could be something else wrong.”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll work something out with the clinic.” Anthea can juggle the paperwork. It’s not as if she hasn’t done it before, for people who didn’t exactly fit the nonprofit’s charter but needed help.
“All right, then,” the old woman finally agrees. “As long as you won’t get in any trouble.”
Anthea puts on her eyescreens and brings Doug back online—no point trying to hide her location anymore—and asks the IA to call for an ambulance.
“ ‘Being your slave,’ ” the IA says, “ ‘what should I do but tend / Upon the hours, and times of your desire? / I have no precious time at all to spend; / Nor services to do, till you require.’ ”
“I thought you hated Shakespeare,” Anthea says.
“Well, ‘Every one can master a grief but he that has it.’ ” Doug pauses, and then continues. “ ‘The miserable have no other medicine, / But only hope.’ ”
“Is this some kind of act?” Anthea says. She’s finding the whole poetry shtick a bit hard to swallow.
“ ‘Merrily, merrily shall I live now,’ ” the IA says, “ ‘Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.’ ”
“Why this sudden change of heart?”
“ ‘I have / Immortal longings in me.’ ”
“Then you understand the need for haste in calling for medical assistance. If you don’t mind.”
“ ‘That we would do, / We should do when we would.’ ”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Not at all sure that Doug hasn’t lost it, gone off the deep end into some Freudian abyss.
While they wait for the ambulance, Anthea sits on the floor next to Rigo’s mother. Takes one gnarled hand in hers. Runs her fingertips over the knobby lumps of the woman’s knuckles. “It’ll be just a few minutes.”
“My knee’s starting to get hot. So is my wrist.”
“Hot?”
“Tomorrow morning, I won’t be able to move either one. I’ll need a wheelchair to get around.”
Anthea imagines the bones of the old woman’s joints fusing together, forming a solid lump. She’s talked at length with Rigo about the disease, knows that surgery won’t do any good, will only make things worse. There’s no way to heal when healing is the disease. The only way to remain healthy is to not get injured. Even a minor bruise is enough to initiate autoimmune paroxysms—send the body into overprotective high gear manufacturing new, superfluous bone.
“What’s going to happen to him?” the old woman says, undoing the top button on her dress to cool herself.
“Probably he’ll be deported.”
“To where?”
Anthea stares at her lap. “I don’t know.”
The old woman’s hand tightens on hers. “So there’s no way to find him after he leaves?”
“Not really.” She doesn’t have the energy to return the solidarity conveyed by the old woman’s fingers. “Not unless I can stop them from sending him back— or putting him in prison.” Same difference, Anthea thinks. Either way, he’ll never be free.
“He’ll be okay,” the old woman says.
Anthea looks at the side of her face, craggy and durable as a statue’s. “How do you know?”
“Faith.”
“Faith will get you only so far, Mama.”
“It’s the only weapon we disenfranchised people have.” Rigo’s mother says this with absolute conviction. “We don’t have guns or money, so we have to use what God gave us.”
Anthea shakes her head, but respectfully. “I don’t know. The idea of Ibrahim in heaven isn’t very comforting.”
“Who said anything about heaven?”
“Where else will faith get you?”
“Wherever God wants you to be. Faith can take you anywhere. Ease any pain or suffering.”
The solace of poor people worldwide, Anthea thinks. The meek shall inherit the earth. Maybe someday it will actually come true. She doesn’t see how, but anything is possible. Which is what keeps people going, even unbelievers like her.
“How did BEAN find out he was here?”
“They didn’t say. They barely talked at all. Just came in and stole him, no different than thieves.”
“They didn’t stick around?” Anthea says. “Spend any time checking your room or the rest of the ap?”
“No. Those
pendejos
left as soon as they had him. Didn’t waste no time. Made a beeline straight for the door.” Rigo’s mother pauses in thought. “I guess they could have come back after I fell, but I don’t think so.”
Obviously, they weren’t too worried about Ibrahim contaminating the ap with any of the dangerous pherions he was allegedly doped with. Either that or they didn’t give a shit if the ap got infected. Did a total meltdown, taking Rigo’s mom and anybody else who happened to be in the vicinity.
“Did the agents say anything about me?” Anthea says. She half expects the police to show up with the ambulance and arrest her for kidnapping or conspiracy to commit terror, aiding and abetting a fugitive.
“No, they just asked about Ibrahim. Wanted to know where he was, and that was it.”
Total narrow-bandwith types. “What did Ibrahim do when they barged into the room?”
“He didn’t want to go. Put up a fight.” Rigo’s mother relaxes her grip, straightens her stiffening fingers. “A real
tiguerito.
” She relates this with pride, a touch of admiration. “He called for you by name as they carried him away. You were important to him. Your time together wasn’t wasted. Remember that.”
This is meant as comfort. Instead it makes her feel like a complete failure. She let him down, wasn’t there for him in his hour of need. She wasn’t able to help him escape. She got away, but couldn’t help him do the same. She betrayed him. Stabbed him in the back.
“What are you going to do?” Rigo’s mom says.
Anthea opens her mouth to speak. But at that moment the ambulance shows up, cutting off her response. It turns into the parking lot, lights flashing crazily, like an old pinball machine that’s been tilted, signaling Game Over.
2
RIBOZONE
NINETEEN
Rigo can’t believe where he is. A BEAN detention center somewhere in Africa. Rwanda, maybe. Or the Congo. It’s the kind of unpredictable crap that happens during an emergency landing. At least he’s alive and physically uninjured. A few minor aches and bruises, but that’s it. He should be thankful, count his blessings that he didn’t end up like Antoine, Luis, TomE, Naguib, and Rana.
Each name feels an indictment—an accusing finger pointed directly at his heart, inscribing it with guilt. Why did he make it? Why not them? They deserve to be here, not him. And so on . . . endlessly.
The detention center is actually the top floor of a century-old Hilton. His cell is ersatz Bauhaus, a kind of Le Corbusier-meets-Antonio Gaudí tangle of sleek functionality and organic excess. Form wrestling with function and vice versa. A chrome lichenboard wainscoting guards the lower third of the walls—sleek and Spartan. The ceiling biolum panels and grid of white ceramic floor tile are bare and linear, extremely Cartesian. In contrast, grafted onto this legacy of Western utilitarianism is a hodgepodge of ecotectural retrofits that fail to integrate artistically or structurally. Clay-potted ferns that filter dust from the air. Oval piezoelectric panels, hung from the ceiling like faux tribal shields. Squares of finely woven thermal lamé glued to the walls. Rigo runs his fingertips across the silver mesh. It tastes sour-metallic, leaves his tongue oily with sniffers, bitcams, and acoustic spores. What else? The bathroom is a white plastic stall, diamond-doored, that blasts him with deodorizers every time he relieves himself. A clamshell sink provides a trickle of warm water, which he sips from cupped hands. The shower stall has a sonic cleaning head and scalding bright UV lights that flense his retinas, flay the topmost layer of his skin. The door to the room is a ten-centimeter-thick slab of tempered, laminated cardboard, sealed around the edges with rubber and locked. Given his reputation with doors in other parts of the world, he presses his thumb to the iDNA pad a few times a day to see if it’s had a change of attitude and will open.
Through the room’s single window, a meter-deep tube of corrugated sheet metal, he has a tunnel-box view of the city. Inside, the opening is guarded by diamond netting. Outside, it’s sealed tight with reinforced photovoltaic cellulose. Framed in this rectangle is a circuit board of streets, heat-reflective awnings, and low buildings sculpted out of polymer-hardened sand. A pair of phallic towers, reminiscent of spears, stand against the dust-blighted horizon. They’ve got attitude up to here. There are twenty-seven bands of mirrored windows on the high-rises, a silver ring for each floor. The gengineered flora consists of dun-colored walls of cane grass, strategically planted to block the wind and hold the sand in place. Hard to believe this area of the world used to be rain forest, not some pathetic dung ball. He’s definitely in limbo. Isolated is the word for what he’s feeling. Abandoned. His wraparounds seem to have been damaged in the landing. The only programming he can stream are local downloads and there’s no wallscreen in the room. Ergo he’s cut off from everything except superboring realiTV, and sanitized government-controlled news that Varda’s translator turns into gibberish, mangles worse than English.
He hasn’t seen or heard from Claribel or Hsi-Tang. Presumably they’re squirreled away like him, being debriefed out the ass. So far, he’s had one conversation with a BEAN agent. Talk centered around what happened on Tiresias. Why the emergency landing? Why here? The agent, a small bald-headed man dressed in a gray suit and a soothing powder blue tie, was polite. Asked questions. Listened. Nodded a lot, but didn’t offer much in return. During the meeting, Rigo asked to talk with someone from Noogenics. Or failing that, Xengineering. Hard to know why that hasn’t happened yet. In answer, Rigo got only a noncommittal smile. Patience, the lazy grin implied. We are working as hard as we can. These things take time. Relax.
Varda hasn’t been much help either. “I’m a basket,” the IA says.
“Can’t you at least get in touch with my boss? Tell her what’s going on—what the situation is here?”
“I’ve tried. She’s not available.”
No immediate help on that front. There must be a lot of behind-the-scenes finger-pointing as a result of the disaster. Shit hitting the fan. Heads rolling. Meanwhile, he’s hung out to dry. The story of his life. He can’t seem to connect. Not quite, or in exactly the way he’d like. He’s always a day short and a dollar late, as Varda would say. At least the food’s decent. Lots of rice, beans, and vegetable protein. Plus, he’s catching up on a lot of sleep.
On the third day, he gets a message. It’s the BEAN agent, grinning, his teeth as big as billboards announcing Judgment Day.
“You have visitors,” the agent says.
“Who?”
“Two representatives from RiboGen. They would like to ask you a few questions of their own.”
Rigo nods. It’s about time. Now maybe the ball will start rolling and he can get out of this hellhole.
A couple of minutes later the door hisses open and the BEAN agent, followed by two vice-president types, enter his cell. The reps are carrying portable chairs, which they unfold against the wall near the door, then collapse into. The BEAN agent hovers near the door, discreet but watchful.
“Rigo,” one of the VPs says, peering at him over a tiny monocle eyescreen. “You don’t mind if we call you Rigo, do you?”
Rigo shrugs. “Be my guest.”
The reps smile. Rapport has been established. This is going to be friendly, casual, a first-name-basis kind of interrogation.
“I’m Liz and this is Jeraldo. We’re from the Costa Rican office.”
“Nice place.”
“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. Things have been . . . busy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“No problem.” The idle chitchat makes Rigo nervous. The air in the room tastes brackish, acrid with underlying animosity. Jeraldo is a slick brother, with perfect cornrow hair, a razor-thin mustache, a tiny triangular goatee, and a spotlessly white smile. Dresses in a silk suit, silver, that’s obviously hand tailored. Looks like he could charm a snake right out of its skin. He’s the penultimate corporate lackey, Rigo’s future self if he continues on the management fast-track. Liz is all angles and sharp edges. One of those sisters whose coat-hanger-stiff body doesn’t fit well against anybody. Jabs them no matter what, expects everyone to conform to her and like it. She sports a Cleopatra coiffure and gold nails and lips. She’s rocking a loose-fitting robe-
cum
-pant legs, diamond-studded gauze the color of blood, stained, no doubt, by all of the hapless victims foolish enough to stand in her way.
“We’ve been over your report”—Liz returns her attention to her monocle—“and there appear to be some irregularities we’d like to go over. Points of clarification, if you will.”
Jeraldo smiles, supportive.
Rigo wonders if this is a good-cop/bad-cop scenario. Liz grills him about what happened, then Jeraldo steps in all amiable, the benevolent confessor ready to listen to his sins. Dispense penance and absolution.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rigo says. It sounds defensive, he realizes. But it’s the truth.
“We’re not saying you did,” Liz says. “We just want to be sure of the facts, that’s all.”
“Okay.” Rigo sits on the end of the bed, tries to relax.
“Good,” Liz says. “Now, first things first. Three days before leaving for Tiresias you reported a tear in your biosuit.”
Rigo nods slowly, makes a show of remembering so he can buy some time, get his story straight. “Right. I discovered it after I’d been in one of the vats.”
“Working with the warm-blooded plants.” It’s not a question. He can tell that she knows exactly what he was doing at the time and where. What she doesn’t know is when the tear happened. She leans forward, ready to pounce, hoping, no doubt, to catch him in a lie.
“I was working in one of the plants,” he says, “and my suit started to lose pressure. So I got out quick. I didn’t want to contaminate the vat.”
“The tear occurred inside the plant?”
Rigo rubs his jaw, anxious to exonerate himself. “No. That’s when my IA first brought it to my attention. I’m pretty sure it happened before I went into the plant.”
“Any idea what caused the tear?”
“Whipplebaum.”
Liz pins him with a sharp look. In his mind, he can feel his arms and legs flailing under her incredulity, like a bug skewered by an entomologist’s needle.
“You’re saying that Arnez Whipplebaum is responsible for the tear in your suit?” she says.
“Right. If not directly, then indirectly. He’s the one who arranged for it to happen.”
The barest hint of a glance flickers between Liz and Jeraldo.
“Why would Arnez Whipplebaum want to compromise your biosuit?” Liz says to him.
“So he could expose me to a nonspec pherion in the vat. One that he’d dosed the warm-blooded plants with.”
“What kind of pherion?” Jeraldo asks.
“Biodependency,” Rigo says.
Liz’s gaze chills, frosts him. “And why, pray tell, would he do that?”
“To sabotage Tiresias. He knew I’d be remote-linked to the plants and could be used to infect the ecotecture with the slave pherion.”
Jeraldo makes a show of trying to understand this by rubbing his cosmetically bronzed forehead with both hands. “To what end?” he says, looking out from under his spread fingertips.
“So he could control the colonists. Prevent them from breaking free of RiboGen and becoming an autonomous political entity. If he made them dependent on a pherion that wasn’t part of the Tiresias ecotecture, that couldn’t happen.”
Liz’s pupils glitter with amusement. “That’s a serious allegation. I hope you can prove it.”
From her tone, Rigo specs that he’s not going to be able to, even though Whipplebaum is no longer available to defend himself. Harish Fallahi, the ecotectural analyst brought in by Whipplebaum, has already provided a technical explanation for the abnormal sensor readings. So Rigo’s out in the cold. “Have you talked to Whipplebaum about the tear?” he says, wondering if they’ve gotten his version of the story.
Liz shakes her head. “Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance. I’m afraid Arnez died on the comet, along with the other victims.”
Rigo does his best to feign surprise and shock. “How did it happen?” he finally says, genuinely curious about the exact sequence of events.
Liz shifts, uncomfortable with the gruesome specifics. “It’s unclear. His IA was offline at the time. But it appears that he became fatally entangled in his safety line just as the comet was breaking apart.”
A moment of silence passes.
Jeraldo clears his throat. “How long would you guess you were inside the plant before you became aware of the tear?” he says, carrying on.
“Not long. A couple of minutes, tops.”
“And how long did it take you to exit the plant?”
“I didn’t waste any time, if that’s what you mean. Like I said, I got out quick as I could. Twenty, thirty seconds.”
Liz pauses a second to check her eye monocle. Her eyes are the pale lavender of one of the flowers preserved in the album in Anthea’s bureau. Just as brittle. She looks up. “Did you suffer any effects from exposure to the ecotecture?”
“No. That’s why I didn’t go to the clinic. I figured I got out in time, and no harm had been done.”
“In other words,” she says, “you
assumed
that since nothing bad happened to you everything was fine with the plant. Is that also the reason you omitted the fact that you had come into direct contact with the ecotecture?”
“If there was a problem with the plant,” he argues, “it would have been picked up by the sensors—”
“But the sensors were malfunctioning.” Her pupils constrict, predatory. “That’s why you were inside the plant in the first place, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t realize all of the sensors were wacked. Besides, my biosuit was at negative pressure relative to the plant. If anything was going to happen it was going to happen to me.”
“Even so, you should have reported a possible contamination.”
“True,” he admits. In retrospect it was a bad decision. “I guess I wasn’t thinking too clear.”
“Didn’t you find it odd that nothing happened to you following your exposure to the plant?” Liz says. “Weren’t you the least bit suspicious? And if so, why didn’t you say anything?”
Suspicious. The word hangs in the air, an omen.
“At the time I didn’t think there was anything to be suspicious about. Like I just said, I figured I got lucky. Made it out in time.”
“How did you come to the conclusion that the suit tear wasn’t an accident?” Liz says. “That there was a plot to sabotage the colony with a slave pherion?”
“One of the colonists told me while I was on the comet. Just before the explosion hit.”
“Who?”
“Dorit.”
Liz chews her lower lip as she digests this information. “Did it ever occur to you that she might be lying? That maybe the tear really was an accident? That maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you hear?”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Rigo says. “Starting right now.”
She cuts him an acerbic look, changes gears. “How would you characterize your relationship with Arnez Whipplebaum?”
Relationship. More innuendo. “What do you mean?”
“Did you get along with him? Did you like him? Dislike him?”
“I really didn’t know him all that well. He seemed friendly, helpful. I thought we had a good working relationship.”
“No disagreements? Friction? Points of contention?”
“No.” He can spec where this is headed. They’re going to try and discredit him. Invent some lame-ass scenario that makes him the fall guy and clears Whipplebaum of any wrongdoing. At the rate things are going, they might even try to implicate him in Whipplebaum’s death.
“You went to a party with him,” Jeraldo says. “The night before you were claded for the jump up to the comet. Why?”
“Because he invited me. Hinted it would be good to meet some of the Tiresias technical people I’d be working with. You know. Network. Team building. That kind of thing.”