Seed (9 page)

“Not at all,” she said. “Make me feel a little less like an assignment.”

Fiorivani hit a button on the stereo. Thick, Earth Mother thrash squalled from a dozen speakers. Dumont grabbed a gear and cranked hard on the wheel. They set off, heads bobbing. Out of the muddy core of West Chester and up onto the 202, rolling fast, making a hard target. For whom Doss had no idea.

“I know you from Dubai.” Fiorivani propped an elbow on one towering knee and twisted to face Doss. “I know of you, I mean. I was regular army.” He showed bright teeth. “My guys mopped up after your crew once or twice.” Doss smiled politely, said nothing. She watched old Philly roll past in the rain.

Migrants walked both edges of the freeway, streaming out of the south, bent in the rain. They gathered to the east, squatting among government seed warehouses that wouldn’t open until March. Waiting for a bare ration of climate-resistant Satori seed they’d take into the undulating hills of old Amish country or west into the plains. There, they’d plant, suffer the crippling summer heat, harvest and uproot southward before the first freeze. They peered through the rain at the Lobo. Doss saw a man’s lip curl as he turned and spit. Another migrant staggered, clearly gripped by the Tet, her arms jutting straight as rebar from her shoulders.

“How’s Emerson?” Dumont called over the strains of thrash. Doss shook her head.

“Still in the basement IC at Echelon B.” Mummied up in paper blankets on an army surplus cot. Hooked to a saline drip and tended, as far as Doss’d been able to tell on her daily visits, by nobody. He seemed paler each morning. Seemed to shrink, to be slowly disappearing under winking low-load fluorescents. A fecal odor pervaded the place, and something worse, something faint and rotten beneath the antiseptic. “Still unconscious.”

“Sorry to hear it. We were on assignment together a couple years back. Good man.”

“Yes he is.”

Dumont geared down, took an exit. The Lobo’s reactor whined as though slowing pained it. They descended from the freeway into the Gov district’s heart. Concrete and cinderblock cubes rising blank and windowless out of the old Philly burbs. They rolled past the capitol building, past the cabinet offices and Pentagon, each as square and implacable as the next, designed to hermetically entomb stable internal climates.

Dumont slowed as they came to a crowd of migrants pressing against a heavy steel gate, atop which ran a curl of razor wire. The entrance to Executive Park, around which stood the flat facades of the executive offices. From behind the gate, a phalanx of lower-echelon Sec Serv troops in full riot gear faced the migrants.

“Get tight,” Dumont said. An Ingram appeared in Fiorivani’s big hand. Dumont wove the Lobo slowly through the migrants, following a flatbed truck stacked with bricks of black algae. The migrants held signs overhead on sticks. FEED OR SEED! GOVERNMENT: BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, HELP THE PEOPLE! One simply read, STARVING. An old man who reminded Doss of her father put his face close to the Lobo’s blacked out windows—seemed to stare straight into her soul, his eyes wide with the urgency of whatever it was he needed to convey. He pointed skyward. At the rain or the fleet of ghostly leviathan zeps hovering overhead, or at some angry god. Who knew? Something moist struck the rear window. Mud or shit. The gate swung open. Fiorivani let out a breath.

“Fucking mudfish,” he said. Dumont kept quiet, just rolled the Lobo smoothly through the gate. Something rigid in his silence made Doss think the agent knew what it was to be hungry. Fiorivani cracked his window, extended a hand, gave the riot guards the shaka. They nodded.

Dumont steered them around the road circling Executive Park, pulled into the drive leading to the building at the park’s center. The Lobo halted abruptly, tires hissing on wet pavement.

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Doss said.

“Told you,” Dumont said. “Sharks.” Beside them rose the White House, grey and rectangular as a tombstone in the rain.

….

The room smelled of cigars and scotch. Shelves along the walls held real books. Doss had never seen so much leather and dark wood. It felt like a museum.

“Agent Doss.” The man stood tall beside a dark oak desk so massive it looked sea worthy. The sleek wool of his suit jacket flowed like mercury over his shoulders as he extended his hand. “For the people.”

“For the people,” Doss replied.

“Bill Rippert.” His greying flattop and rigid posture stank of old-school military. He gripped Doss’ hand far too hard and stared into her face with shocking green eyes. Three gold stars gleamed on a single epaulet on his left shoulder.

“General Rippert,” Doss said. “I heard of you in Saud. We were there at the same time. I think you were a colonel then.”

“A long time ago.” A hard glint shone in his eyes as he smiled. “I do my best to be a civilian now. An advisor.” He glanced into a far corner. Movement there caught Doss’ eye.

A white woman, ensconced in the plush folds of a leather sofa. Stocking-clad legs crossed in the pooled light of two wrought-iron lamps burning low-load fluorescents. Doss saw black ankle-strap heels, a smooth black dress ripped straight from an old flex vid. Lipstick. Skin stiffened by surgeries and plumping injections.

Doss nodded to the woman, who gave no response. Rippert did not introduce her. Instead he motioned Doss to a high-backed leather chair, then seated himself behind the acreage of oak desk.

Rippert stared at her for an unblinking moment, then picked a flexpad up off the dark acreage of his desktop and began wordlessly poking at it. Windows scrolled across the translucent screen.

“Too bad you ruined the Lobo.” He spoke without looking up, with the sort of crisp enunciation cultivated among military school spawn. The sort who excelled at getting good soldiers killed.

“Sir?”

“We don’t make those anymore. We can hardly maintain the ones we have.”

“Yes, sir.” Doss speared her fingers into the deep leather of her chair’s armrests, made conscious effort to keep her teeth from grinding. Rippert watched her coolly, and smiled.

“You did fine work, keeping our little warlord friend intact.”

Little warlord friend. Doss chewed on the phrase. Weighed it against the memory of Emerson laid out, bleeding, on cracked asphalt. He’d reminded her of a ruined bird, the fucked up way his limbs had moved. Frantic and weak as he’d struggled to cross the distance to where Doss had lain herself across Tsol.

“Just my job, sir.”

The woman on the sofa snickered. Doss turned. The woman withdrew a cigarette—an honest-to-God manufactured one, the likes of which Doss hadn’t seen in more than a decade—from a tiny leather purse. She tapped it delicately against a thumbnail, lit it with a tiny silver lighter. Her surgically stiffened face remained motionless, imperious, as her rictus lips pursed and she inhaled. She reminded Doss strangely of the ruins of Old D.C. Marble domes and columns, granite obelisks rising stately and useless out of the bloated Potomac. A totemic face, an idol of old elite. The woman exhaled perfumed smoke, winked at Doss.

“Hopefully your partner will pull through,” Rippert said.

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine, sir.”

“No injuries?”

Doss shook her head. “Nothing got through the Kev.” Rippert nodded slowly, as though after consideration he’d decided this was a good thing. He tapped a finger absently atop the desk.

“I crossed paths with your father in the first Saud war,” he said after a moment. “Twice. Did you know that?”

“No, sir.”

“We were both Spec Ops. I didn’t know him well, but his reputation was solid. Almost as solid as yours. How is he?”

Doss had visited her father during her mandatory psyche leave. Sat with him on the tiny cot in his apartment while he drank bitter algae ferment and listened to the weatherman on a handheld radio predict rain, rain, rain. He was thin now, spoke very little. Black fertilizer ran like wood grain in the cracks of his fingernails, which he chewed constantly, his eyes red-rimmed from fumes in the algae-diesel plant where he worked in New D.C.’s tunnels. Occasionally he’d rise and stand gazing out the slit of a window at the zeps nosing in from the east. From Paris, Manchester, Madrid. The flooded and frozen capitols of countries that still tried to exist in some meaningful way.

“He’s good, sir. He loves being retired.”

The corners of Rippert’s mouth turned up. “You’re a shitty liar, Agent Doss.” Doss kept her mouth shut. Behind her, the woman’s cigarette hissed. Rippert abruptly punched a button on his desk intercom. “Brian. Two whiskeys. You like it neat, don’t you, Doss? Neat, Brian.”

“Yes, sir,” came a voice through the intercom.

“It’s too bad,” Rippert said. “This country should have more to offer a man like that in his golden years.” Rippert leaned forward, placed his elbows on the desk, steepled his fingers. His eyes bore into Doss.

“I knew you in Saud as well. Iran and Dubai, too. I became special assistant to the regional coordinator of Spec Ops about a month before the Chinese decided to wander back into the desert for round two. I followed you and your crew real close. Every time we ordered you sent out, something got blown up.” He grinned. His eyes turned wild and predatory. “Sometimes not what we wanted blown up. Sometimes it was even better.” He leveled his conjoined fingers like a plow at Doss. “You knew how to take a mission by the balls and make it work.” Understanding wormed its way into Doss’ mind.

“This is a mission briefing,” she realized.

The door opened behind her and an enormous man moved noiselessly into the room. His nose had been smashed to one side and never reset. He carried two highballs, three fingers full on a silver tray—set one on the desk in front of Rippert, handed Doss the other. His white blazer remained Kevlar stiff as he moved.

“Thank you, Brian.”

“Sir.” The man exited. Rippert leaned back in his chair and raised his glass.

“Here’s to the old world, Doss.” His gaze stayed on her over the rim of his upturned glass. Doss sipped her whiskey. It shocked her, smoky and smooth, the best thing she’d tasted since…she didn’t remember. Rippert smiled. “Good, isn’t it?”

“Very.” Doss crossed her legs and settled into her chair, chill now that she knew the meeting’s purpose. She met Rippert’s eye for several beats, then said, “You don’t strike me as the coy type.” Rippert picked up the flexpad, scrolled through windows until he found the one he wanted and peered down his nose at it.

“Seems you’ve been keeping to a routine.” Green eyes flicked to her and waited, unblinking, heavy with implication. Twice a day she ran the stairs at Sec Serv housing until her legs felt wrapped in barbed wire. Twice a day she pumped iron in the basement gym. In between she did plyometrics and ate vat-grown chicken breast and weirdly perfect Satori vegetables. She had no visitors. She visited no one.

“Works for me,” Doss said. Exhaustion worked for her. It kept her mind inside her skull, heavy and free of thought, anchored by her crushed metabolism. Rippert arched an eyebrow.

“Ask me, I’d say you’re wound a little tight. Of course, I’m no expert.” Rippert tapped the flexpad. “I have two psyche evals here that state you’re fit as a fucking fiddle. The goddamn rock of Gibraltar.” The woman on the couch snickered again. Rippert waited.

“What’s the mission, sir?”

Rippert set the flexpad on the desk. He leaned back, lacing fingers over the smooth wool of his jacket, and looked to the woman on the couch. Doss turned, watched the woman give the slightest nod.

“If there were a mission, it would be classified,” Rippert explained. “Executive One.” Straight from the president. “It would be completely volunt—”

“I’ll take it.”

“Agent?”

“I love this country, sir.” Doss drained her whiskey in a gulp. Leaned forward, placed her empty glass on Rippert’s desk. “I’m good to go.” Rippert nodded, the ritual complete.

“What do you know about Satori Corp?” he asked.

“Bio-architecture,” she said after a moment’s thought. She’d seen sat feed of the flesh amoeba covering old town Denver, but she’d never seen it in person. “They shifted their focus to agriculture sometime around the first Hot Summer.” She shrugged. “They make the seed.”

“They make the seed,” Rippert affirmed. He pulled what looked like a folded piece of paper from a jacket pocket and tossed it to Doss. A flexpad. She unfolded it, found a window already tabbed up. A woman’s face stared out, dark-skinned and hairless, placid as a cat. A face so perfectly proportioned it made the rest of the world feel distorted. “Specifically,
she
makes the seed.”

“She doesn’t look real,” Doss observed.

“She is very real,” Rippert told her. “Her name is Pihadassa. A creation of Dr. Prekash Gupta, President of Satori Corp’s genetics division. One of his monkeys. She’s Satori’s number two geneticist. Designed specifically for that function.” He paused, letting his next words gather weight. “She makes the seed. And she’s defected.”

“Defected?” The term felt strange, outdated. “To where?”

“She was coming to us. Our man at Satori put her on a zep headed for Fort Riley eight days ago.” A muscle trembled in Rippert’s jaw. “She never showed. The zep went off Riley’s radar in eastern Kansas. We want you to find her.”

Doss tabbed up an info blob on the flexpad’s screen beside Pihadassa’s face, began skimming it. After a moment she looked up. Brown rain had begun to spatter against a small window high on the wall behind Rippert’s desk. Rippert waited for Doss to set the flexpad down before he spoke.

“We distribute seed, Agent Doss,” he said. “Anymore, that’s all we do. We no longer feel confident in our ability to bring Satori to heel. Soon enough they’ll figure that out, if they haven’t already. When they do…” An errant tendril of blue cigarette smoke drifted between them. Rippert’s eyes went briefly to the woman on the sofa. The heat kicked on, hot air pumped through floor vents from algae fires burning deep inside the building’s basement. The room grew instantly oppressive. “When they do, things will get very bad for us. For everyone. We need to be able to make seed, as efficiently as Satori does.” He leaned back in his chair, crossed a burnished leather shoe over one knee. “You met Agent Fiorivani. He’s my man. He’s going with you.”