“I doubt they had the full pop that we’ve been reading about or you wouldn’t be here. You’ve heard about the 110-pound woman who lifted a car off her kid? That’s what you’d be dealing with. There is one more thing I want to tell you, especially Anna.
“All of earth’s life, plant life, mammals, invertebrates, single-celled organisms, is ultimately made from a DNA blueprint. All life is controlled by its DNA. DNA, you may know, is just nucleic acid molecules strung together in pairs. There are only four nucleic acid molecules. Just four. And the order of them in strings is what controls life. We humans have three billion nucleic acid base pairs in our string of chemical beads. It’s the order of the base pairs that makes us human.
“Jason believes that Nannites live in the DNA and that all of life on earth is for the purpose of hosting DNA. That’s the Nannite strategy. Somebody monkeyed with his DNA and since he believes the Nannites have their abode in DNA, he ascribes his troubles to them.”
“I like my mother’s Christianity better,” Anna said.
“Well, I’d like to think I’m not a Nannite sanctuary. I hope Jason is wrong. Otherwise we’re nothing more than good hosts for DNA.”
“So that’s what you know that you can readily explain to the likes of us,” Sam said.
“That’s it.”
“You have discovered plenty, and we appreciate it. Somehow we’ll try to sleep.”
Sam felt close to her, perhaps closer than he had ever felt with a woman. And it happened so fast he didn’t know what to make of it. When they came down the hall from the conference call, she followed him into his bedroom. There was a love seat and some overstuffed chairs around a coffee table.
She sat on the love seat and patted the spot next to her.
He sat. “How are we doing?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “All that matters to me now is that we have Jason, and we understand the antidote.”
“We’re also leaving here soon,” said Sam. “But say nothing.”
“And I imagine you don’t want to tell me where?”
“It’s far from here. Knowing where is only a burden. What if you were captured and I got away with Jason and Grady?”
“I see what you mean.” She took his hand. “I don’t want to die never having made love to you.”
She untied the belt of her robe, and as the knot loosened, he began helping with the buttons. Her scent and the intimacy of her eyes and the fingers on her clothes aroused him.
Then he watched her as she stood and dropped the robe, and with his eyes he told her what he was starting to feel.
Her nightgown was a beautiful blue and left her form partially revealed. Across her chest it lay open to display a gentle cleavage at her breasts. And the swell of them and the dark of the nipples barely visible beneath the gown made a tightness in his groin. Slowly she lifted the nightgown until she slipped it over her head. She wore slim blue panties with white lacy trim. Her breasts were a dark red at the aureoles and petite. Firm. Something about the way they turned out and pointed enthralled him. There was faint coloring at her neck, where the sun had caught her and freckled her, that contrasted with the paleness around her breasts.
Sam stood and picked her up, slight and easy in his arms. As he walked to the bed he could feel himself start to harden and the flush spread over his own chest. When he put her on the bed she lay back to watch him undress. He did not hurry with his shirt and T-shirt, and she seemed to warm at the look of him. She came up to her knees to do his jeans and put her hand over the mound at his fly, watching his eyes as she gently rolled over him with her fingers. Then she slipped down his jeans. When he put his hands on her shoulders to come over her, she resisted with a whisper, “I want to play,” and peeled off his underpants. Using her hands and lips, she did things so exquisite that he wondered at the delicious agony.
Then he lifted her up and stripped off her panties, fascinated at the reddish tinge in her pubic hair and the perfect form of her thighs.
He buried his face in her; she was rich with scent, her sweet perfume mingled with the musk of her body. Gently he teased her with his tongue until he felt her swell. Then he kissed at her breasts, bringing the nipples full and engorged.
“Oh, dear God, Sam,” she whispered at the cooperation between his tongue and fingers.
They lay down and he moved inside her. She held him close, her arms tight on his ribs, and she fit herself to him and he let her find her rhythm until he could hear the tune in her soul and feel the beat of it. He pressed himself to her and kissed her, and in those moments he could feel a renewal of his hope and knew that for him the world could, after all, be reborn and his heart pulled from its slumber.
There was a brief respite in their movements while she let her body hold him and he felt her insides squeezing down on him. There was a feeling in her body through his fingertips that told him she was gathering herself. His eyes locked on hers and explored the life in them, and tried to discern the emanations and the unusual brightness that spoke to him of eagerness and hope.
He kissed her deeply—she tasted like the sweet spice of her cinnamon mints. The movement of her tongue stirred him and the feeling of her against him brought his hands low to cup her buttocks. He knew to lift her as she wrapped her legs around him.
She wanted him, but loved the slowness of his love-making and the patience that obliterated time. After her exuberance had nearly overtaken her, she rolled him over and sat astride him, feeling the sweet torture down to her thighs where his hand now became the genie of her imagination.
The want of him was almost painful, but she didn’t utter a sound; she was sure that he was hearing more from her than she knew to speak.
“I love you, I love you,” she finally whispered, feeling her breaths go nearly desperate, the sweat running down her sides and making the bedsheets wet.
Perspiration poured from her body, and he pulled her close to taste it with his tongue. At her throat as he mouthed her shivers, he could feel her clutch telling him things that she would not say. Once again he let her find her way until she gave herself to a waltz that he slowly began to hear. When he had found the rhythm of it, he learned her new dance and took her waist in both his hands. It was narrow and taut, the muscle of it firm, the movements of it growing strong. There was a clench in her thighs that told him she was nearly spent. He used their sweat to slide her like a car gone wild on a rain-slicked street.
When they had exhausted each other, she sat astride him with her head bowed and she looked and saw that she was naked, and she giggled and fell on him, leaving him to wonder if it would ever be that good again.
She lay with her face inches from him, her eyes not leaving his. The amber brown hues of them were at once soothing and exhilarating.
She leaned and put her lips to his ear. “Who are you?”
“I was born Samuel Browning. My name now is Kalok Wintripp. My father was of English descent. He was an Air Force parajumper. I grew up in Alaska. I received my Ph.D. from MIT when I was twenty-four and I took it as Kalok Wintripp. Grandfather picked my Indian name. It is the Tilok word for Eagle.”
“I have an idea,” Michelle said to Samir over breakfast. He was less shaky than usual, as she had used extra oil that morning.
“Hmm?”
“I think we should give you a huge dose of the oil so that you can think like you used to think. A window of sanity, so to speak. All or nothing—figure out what to do to end this torture.”
Samir rang a bell and a servant appeared.
“Get me Fawd,” Samir said.
The man appeared in two minutes.
“Tell him,” Samir said.
She explained her idea and elaborated, this time emphasizing that the old Samir would have found a way out of the current predicament.
“I agree,” Fawd said.
“Okay,” Samir said. “Get it and let’s start.”
Michelle could see a difference within fifteen minutes, and marveled at how simply some unknown chemical or drug transformed the man. Ironically, it was his vulnerability that in part had drawn her to him, and now it faded fast.
This time when Samir walked into the five-star hotel in downtown Kuching, he felt like the billion dollars he was worth. He and Fawd had spared no expense when it came to men, and Fawd had been smart enough to keep a large contingent parked around various cheap hotels in Kuching and some in tents camping in the jungle. This time they would not bother to approach the compound so cautiously.
Benoit spoke quietly to Chellis, who sat behind an ornate desk longer than he was tall. His head was bowed over his hands and a thumb rubbed each eye.
They were in an eight-bedroom country house that was nearly a mansion, with surrounding grounds that measured in all over forty hectares. It was a gentleman’s farm an hour’s drive from Paris and located on a hillside near Chevreuse in a pastoral setting chosen by Benoit more for its security than its notable tranquility. It was prime real estate, with privacy and a view at the end of a long, tree-lined drive. Clearly it would be hard for Chellis to leave undetected.
“Do you have to leave?” he said to her as she gathered her gloves.
“I do. I have to run the business. But I’ll be back. You’ll be safe here, I promise. You’ve picked the guards yourself.”
“But the Nannites.”
“Yes. We went over that. With the iron grids they can’t get in here. You’re safe anywhere inside this house.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“I feel as if I’ve gotten the vector somehow.”
“That’s silly, DuShane. You’ve been so edgy since we left my house.”
“But didn’t you say the Nannites were coming?”
“I did. And wasn’t I right? As tragic as it is, didn’t they come?”
“Yes.”
“So you see. We’ve fixed this place up especially.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’ll stop by this evening.”
“You promise?”
“Yes. And Greta will give you a massage.”
“Oh, good.”
She turned the television to the financial channel to distract him and left quickly, hoping he wouldn’t start to weep again. She had no idea how Jacques had supercharged the Nervous Flyer profile, but it certainly had worked, as had the large dose of drugs she’d hit him with right after the port wine. As Jacques had promised, DuShane had no clear memory of that day.
“He’s really bad today, just cracked like that,” she said to the supervisor of security just outside the door. “You mustn’t let him outside. If he wants to leave remind him about the Nannites. It’s a part of his fantasy, and the doctor says it’s okay to use it to keep him from hurting himself or others.”
“I know, mademoiselle. You have explained it very thoroughly.”
“I’m sorry. I’m repeating myself. It’s just that we want to keep him safe.”
It took an hour in light traffic to return to downtown. Soon she and Marie would move him back to the Paris apartment. She walked into her new office, originally Chellis’s, which she was fast making over, and looked expectantly through her messages. She was growing concerned that she had not heard from Gaudet. He was the one remaining person who worried her. Sometimes she imagined that he might read her thoughts, and if he did he would slit her throat—if he was feeling charitable. He would do worse if he was not.
The phone rang. She grabbed it. “Hello?”
“This is Jacques.”
“I haven’t heard from Gaudet.”
There was a strange sound. Then a new voice. “Neither has Jacques.”
She recognized the voice. It sounded like a reborn Samir Aziz.
“Mr. Aziz?” she asked, her mind whirling to understand what could have gone wrong.
“So you recognize me. And I you. Jacques here tells me that DuShane Chellis is indisposed. Permanently. Right, Jacques? Tell her where you are.”
“I am in the primate wing.” Jacques’s voice sounded distant.
“Oh, come on, Jacques. You’re in a monkey cage. Tell her you are in the monkey cage. And tell her who is with you.”
“I am in with Centaur.”
“And what is Centaur wearing?”
“He’s wearing his backpack.”
“Benoit, do you think an adult male macaque in a full fighting rage could kill a man?”
“Unarmed?”
“Good point. Fawd, let’s give him a club. What about if we give the man a club?”
“Centaur will kill him.”
“What will you give me not to push Centaur’s buttons?”
“Have you given Jacques the vector?”
“No. But I have it right here. But you’re getting ahead of me. I wanted to see Centaur do his thing.”
“Don’t do it. We can talk. We can make a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“You can have all the antidote you want.”
“I already have it. I told Jacques I would make him a nervous rabbit like he made Chellis and he promised me all the hormone I need forever.”
“So what is there to talk about? We both need Jacques and his research.”
“What about half of the private half of Grace, which would be twenty percent.”
“What about five percent of Grace Technologies?”
“Come on. I have half of the brainpower of the corporation right here in a monkey cage. The other half is up for grabs—depends on who gets Jason. If you take out Grady without them tracing it to you, then maybe a French court will let you hang on to Jason. Then again maybe not, and all you’ll have is Jacques. And since I have Jacques, it seems to me that five percent is ridiculous.”
“There is a lot more to Grace than weapons and Soldier profiles. Don’t be greedy or you’ll get nothing.”
“We should meet and talk, my dear.”
“Okay. In the meantime leave Jacques’s brain alone.”
“Actually, I think I’ll relate to him better if he’s paranoid.”
“Then for God’s sake give him Jason’s vector profile, not what he created for Chellis.”
“Which did you give me?”
“Essentially you have Jason’s profile. We want a whole brain here or we won’t have anything to bargain over.”
“Benoit, don’t let him do it,” Jacques shouted.
“Did you have the speakerphone on?”
“I thought it was only fair that he hear you giving his sanity away. Call me when you have a reasonable proposal.” And with that, Samir hung up.