Mariposa (9 page)

"What's that got to do with cancer?" Lee asked.

"Cells too are educated and trained. If they are continually stressed or traumatized—bathed in toxic chemicals, for example—they reach a crisis and a point of decision. Life isn't good. The bargain they made long ago to be part of a larger body isn't working out. So they may try to become independent, paying no attention to the body's needs. Usually the stubbornly independent cells are killed by the immune system. In some cases, they evade destruction, and tumors grow."

"You're saying we're tumors?" Camp seemed perversely amused.

"No. Perhaps. I don't know . . . These matters are complicated."

"What's Mariposa doing to us now?" Bork asked.

Lee laid his hand on Plover's arm—not in reassurance.

Plover looked down at the tightening fingers. His brow furrowed. "Stress," he said. "Long-term pressure and pain wear deep, dysfunctional ruts, which become fixed by epigenetic tags in our brains—perhaps in astrocytic cells themselves. We respond with heightened sensitivity to less and less stimulus. Brain and body, working in unison, acquire hair triggers. Our behaviors become inappropriate, erratic. Deep down, we think we are still in whatever situation caused our pain to begin with.

"Our tune changes for the worse, sometimes drastically. Sour notes, screeches—anxiety, fear. Panic."

"We weren't in combat for more than a few hours," Nathaniel said.

"A single major traumatic event—pain, destruction, friends killed, imminent threat to life—mere minutes can cause tremendous stress. The persistent drips and trickles of stress that ordinarily shape our lives and thoughts become a sudden flood. Old patterns are swept away. New channels form, deep and devious. Mariposa works by removing the stops we acquire during traumatic events. The genes are set free from the bad habits they acquired under duress. The world seems less threatening. A kind of balance is restored."

Plover's face took on that messianic light Nathaniel remembered from his two weeks in Baltimore, in the clinic—when Plover had been the one who had made them feel human again.

"Balance?" Camp said. "Shit. I'm not in any sort of balance."

"Your pain went away," Plover asserted, defiant. "You all agreed . . . back then."

"Not now," Bork said. "I feel like Proteus in his cave—scary. Maybe we can be
anything
."

"I have no idea what I want to be," Lee said.

"The drug is removing too many controls," Plover said. "We did not see that in animal trials."

"And that means . . .?" Camp asked.

"Our talents and abilities are patterned to fit the needs of a larger group. Best for human society . . . But perhaps more control is now being returned to you as individuals. You have become like newborns, in a way. If too many controls are removed—then you either won't feel the need to serve society at all, or you will do so purely on your own terms."

The table fell quiet. Only Bork and Lee had touched their food. Camp stopped tapping his fork and set it down on his rumpled napkin.

"That's the definition of a sociopath," Bork said thoughtfully.

Lee let go of Plover's arm. "I've started torturing animals," he said. "I'm seriously thinking about hurting people."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hyde," Camp said, tossing Lee a salute.

"Anyone else?" Nathaniel asked, fascinated.

Bork took a bite of rare prime rib and lifted his fork. "Only for a day," he said, chewing. "Then it stopped being fun."

"Did you actually
butcher
someone, you son of a bitch?" Camp asked with a manic grin.

Bork looked back at Camp as if the question were rude—or meaningless.

"Price loves butterflies," Lee said. "Did he suggest you name your program Mariposa? All the soldiers, all his employees, psychologically damaged by combat . . . You said you could restore them, make them bright and shiny again. And we became your test subjects . . . You gave him your guarantee. Didn't you?"

Plover nodded like a bobble-head doll with a stick shoved up one side of its neck. "In a nutshell," he said.

"It's hell to be a baby again, Doc," Camp said.

Plover looked down at his plate.

"The vice president," Nathaniel said. "Was he one of your patients?"

Plover jerked as if stung. "That's privileged," he said, and tried reasserting some last shred of authority. "It's
privileged
—and dangerous!"

"Bingo," Bork said, marking a scored point with his finger in the air. "You're already smarter than you used to be, Nathaniel."

Plover's cell phone buzzed. He fumbled it out of his pocket, dropped it on the table, then retrieved it and answered, "Hello?"

Nathaniel noted this was not an EPR unit; hence, the caller was not the Quiet Man.

"Doc, you shouldn't be talking on those things," Camp said. "Microwaves can ruin your brain."

As Plover listened, his face lost the rest of its color. "Are you sure?"

He shut the phone, closed his eyes. "I have to leave now," he said, struggling to regain whatever was left of his composure. "Mr. Trace, we need to speak in private, as agreed."

"You and the doctor run along," Bork said. "The rest of us will sit here and chitchat."

In the crowded lobby, Nathaniel took Plover's trembling arm and aimed him to the mall restroom. Through the big fire doors, the hall beyond was empty.

Plover handed his package to Nathaniel.

"The Quiet Man mentioned someone named Jones, some sort of expert—you seem to know him. Jones suggested I give this material to you, and that you find a woman named Rebecca Rose. She is in law enforcement, I presume."

Nathaniel listened with interest, enjoying the patterns of blood flow in Plover's face and hands. He could almost feel the heat. Plover was definitely a candidate for a heart attack.

Bee vision.

"Jones might know something," Nathaniel admitted as he opened the package. The doctor watched him closely while he pulled out a reddish-purple dragon about two inches long, printed on a sheet of pliable plastic. The package also contained a badge on a black braided lanyard and a photo of a woman with medium-long hair.

"These are my credentials for the COPES conference, across the street," Plover said. "They'll get you past most of the outer security. The dragon is a skin computer. A dattoo. People put it on their arms and exchange personal data. I've preloaded this one with crucial information. She'll be wearing a dattoo as well. Cross arms, like this." He demonstrated by hooking his arm around Nathaniel's. "It works through clothing."

Nathaniel was amused. He rolled up his sleeve and peeled the dattoo from its plastic sheet. It laid down easily on his inner forearm and conformed to the skin, stretching a little.

"Remember this about Axel Price," Plover said. "He rarely does anything without having two excellent reasons. That's the secret of his success. The seven of you were in a bad way—and there was my research. He needed you healthy, and he saw a way to make huge profits from treating PTSD. Relieving human misery never much concerned him. It's not part of his worldview."

Plover took back the box, threw it into a trash receptacle, and looked around for an exit. "The convention is closed for the day. Try tomorrow morning. Be careful. I've set the dattoo to download only once, and then it will wipe its contents.

"We won't meet again. Good luck, Mr. Trace."

He shuffled toward the exit, clutching one shoulder.

Nathaniel pulled down his sleeve and buttoned it. He wondered who Rebecca Rose was, that she would attract the attention of the Quiet Man—or Plover, or Jones.

And why they chose him as a vector.

All the more interesting.

Chapter Seventeen

Rebecca shoved the pillow up under her cheek, slowly rising like a swimmer from a dream of birds on a wave-washed beach.

Her body felt relaxed, loose, catlike. She stretched one leg but did not want to open her eyes and come fully awake, the sensation of light and warmth and relaxation was so wonderful—so rare.

Coffee.

She opened one eye.

A black hotel mug floated back and forth in front of her face. Not alone. Her body tensed, then relaxed again.

Captain Peter Periglas took shape beyond the mug.

"Good morning," he said.

The relaxed feeling came from having someone beside her all night. She pushed her mouth off the pillow, then wiped the corner of her lips to make sure it was dry.

"Morning. Late."

"No, we have indulged wonderfully, but we are not teenagers. We got a good night's sleep and it is now seven-thirty."

"I feel too good," Rebecca said, sitting up and taking the mug.

"Blame me," Periglas said. He was wearing a hotel bathrobe, open to reveal his slender chest, not quite Apollonian—a thin patch of graying hair.

"I will," Rebecca promised.

"Fake cream, sugar?"

"No thanks." She looked at him accusingly over the mug. "You got up first to make sure I wasn't drooling."

"I did not, but you certainly were. We are both droolers."

"Oh my."

The first couple of sips of hot black liquid were equally wonderful. She couldn't remember feeling so happy in years—maybe ten years. Since . . .

But no need to let the past cloud things.

Two room service trays still rested on the dresser, stacked steel covers, napkins, water glasses, tilting wine glasses.

Two empty bottles of red wine and she didn't feel even a touch hung over.

"Are you sure we're not teenagers?" she asked, lowering the mug to her naked breasts. She rolled the smooth heat on her skin, holding his gaze as a challenge,
don't look down
.

Periglas failed and let out a long sigh.

"Damn," he said, and untied his robe.

Chapter Eighteen

Los Angeles, California

The winter sky over downtown Los Angeles had a blued-steel sheen like the glint off an old revolver.

Inside the stark white western atrium of the convention center, under high panes of bathwater green glass, all was clearly illuminated as if by a cool, distant star. Nothing and no one cast shadows.

Rebecca ascended a wide flight of steps, counting ten, eleven, twelve. Her thoughts jostled in a caffeinated queue. She was enjoying lovely aches: aches from the night's activities, plus half an hour of exercise at the hotel gym, plus the soft, professional embrace of new pumps.

Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.

Day two of impressing the troops, promoting her new prospective employer, and hanging with people who understood the life, yet knew nothing of why she was here and not back in Quantico or Washington. That was one story she would not be sharing at the ninth annual Consumer Protection and Education Symposium: COPES.

Four thousand salesmen, entrepreneurs, and professional security and law enforcement types, educated, entertained, fed, and watered each evening while hovered over by honchos from Homeland Security, the Bureau, the FDA, ATF, and a dozen other three-letter acronyms from a government that somehow managed to grow great bushy branches despite a crushing load of debt and the worst recession in over eighty years.

Which was the same as not calling it a depression.

She glanced up at the snowy horizontal pipes and beams that transported the building's stresses. They made sure the heaviest lifting was handed over to parts that could stand the pressure, a lot like people passing the buck.

At least you've got the prospect of real work, six months out from the rocky coast of the FBI.

Under her breath, forty-one, forty-two . . .

Two years after Mecca.
A year after almost going under. Count your blessings. You're alive, you've just met a nice man; maybe you'll even have a daughter.

People to live with and actually love.

As she approached the level of the main exhibition hall, a vague sense of bulk shifted her attention left and she saw a brush of ginger hair, a gray overcoat, a convention badge, and hovering vaguely above them a shy, almost boyish smile in a broad face otherwise made for radio.

Instinct.

Her attention focused. The man stepped forward. She felt her neck muscles tense into cords.

"Ms. Rose. Looking forward to your presentation."

Rebecca paused, refusing to give ground despite the man's odd penetration of her space. Her spex outlined his face with a red circle. In the lower right corner, a cursor blinked: the spex data monkey said he was in her personal facial database. No name came up. She had been getting so many of these notices at the convention she had switched off automatic identification.

She lifted one ankle to adjust her shoe. The face was memorable—small scars around his mouth and under his eyes, a broader beardless pink patch on the left temple from hairline to cheekbone; one eye slightly skewed. Still pleasant enough—but more rugged than she liked. Not actually threatening but not dressed very well—not one of the federal honchos or minions and probably not a cop, with that unkempt hair.

His badge had flipped on its lanyard. She couldn't read his name.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

The man's smile flashed to ten. "Nathaniel Trace. Old FBI, ma'am, seconded to Food and Drug. A great admirer. We were on a panel together in Orlando—International Association of Food Protectors."

Rebecca had indeed served on such a panel, just before her furlough went through. Odd she did not remember. "Good to see you, Agent Trace."

"I've retired," he said. "Actually, they booted me."

"Ah."

"I cooperated. Like you, I assume. The Rout."

She hated that word. "No, Mr. Trace, I did not cooperate and I was not
booted
."

"Well, it's all history. Pardon my intrusion, Ms. Rose, but we should talk, sooner rather than later." He had a look she could not define: not crazy, but not all in one place, like a man divided and then punched back together again. "Sorry to impede the flow. Let's trade."

He pulled back his sleeve and revealed a dattoo.

"You can get back to me if you we need to talk."

"Fine," Rebecca said, eager to move on.

Does the word buzz kill mean anything to you, Agent Trace?

She held her arm down but splayed her fingers like knives. No harm—dattoos couldn't mess with each other, simply exchange data. They crossed arms, not actually touching. She felt her skin briefly warm—as if he had just downloaded a lot more than his name and associations.

Trace broke the touch.

Now she was sure he was lying about where they had met, but he did not exhibit the tells of a liar. In that odd mental realm where instinct was indistinguishable from fantasy, where her expertise trapped passing impressions and examined them over and over, before they became actual theories, she wondered if he could convince himself to believe anything he said.

"I've got to be in the hall in twenty seconds," she told him by way of warning. "Four thousand stalwarts to feed and entertain, and we still get to rub elbows with heroes."

The ginger-haired man had the gall to keep pace with her as she moved along. Rebecca felt her neck hairs rise. She did not like this one bit.

"You should be listening closely," he said and put on an intense look, accompanied by a rictus of effort. "You should come away from here . . . with me. I mean it. I don't think it's safe. I've got lots of money stashed away. You're important . . . to somebody who knows. You could be safe—away from here. Let's go outside and get some lunch or dinner and talk about things."

After the night with her captain, and with a busy day coming up, this was the one thing she did not need, would not put up with, here of all places: a crazy former cop or some sadsack salesman, playing the dattoo card and then hitting on her.

Rebecca got up into his face—he was about an inch taller—and tapped his chest firmly with her finger, emphasizing, "Stay . . .the fuck . . .away from me."

"Right," Trace said, and rewarded her with a delighted grin. He backed up and did a swashbuckling sweep with one arm, bowing, clearing her path.

"Thanks." Rebecca stepped away before he could say more and walked swiftly on. Her face was red; she could feel it.
She wanted to scratch the dattoo, scrub it off. Creepy.

Screw this. Now I'm down—almost.

She pushed by the signs with arrows that read,
Exhibit Hall. All bags subject to inspection
. One pump already squeaked; the new shoes were a bust.

Damn.

She made sure her badge was face out and veered left by the sparsely populated food court. Lifting her wrist, she brushed the dattoo along an ID post, faced the camera to have her picture taken—

Trace never made it this far. No picture, no record.

—then raced past the bored-looking security guards.

The exhibit hall filled an acre under a broad high roof. On the far side of the hall, windows to the next-level conference rooms looked out over the crowded expanse. Most of the windows were covered by vertical blinds: sessions in progress. But in one, a photographer, tiny at this distance, poked his camera through and was attempting to capture the whole scene from on high.

The scene was worth it. Hundreds of booths lined double-sided aisles, showcasing the latest in professional, business, and home protection. The aisles gradually funneled attendees to open spaces with larger displays.

A family-size bomb shelter offered level 4 filters, whatever that implied. In another open circle, an autonomous DHS/ICE Whisper Bird took center stage, broad wide rotors folded, guns and rocket pods red-capped and tagged, empty.

Nearby, LAPD Gross Threat Response had brought in two super-sophisticated bomb trucks, brutes big and shiny as city fire trucks but black all over. Each carried, in rear deck and side garages, three midsize tractor bots and twenty cat-size insect-carriage bots, all black with yellow stripes. Small boxes mounted within the garages were filled with roller bots, like little wheeled dumbbells with video cameras and other sensors, that could be tossed or rolled into almost any situation.

A large group of admiring men and a few women took in a demonstration of small bot prowess.

A public defense tech talking like a circus barker had the city's machines performing Fred Astaire dance routines to music. The midsize bots were light on their feet, but their real talent lay in chemical sensors that could detect any kind of explosive from ten feet away. Pulse-mike sonic arrays could read the internals of a suspect device with a single high-frequency chirp.

Smarter and lighter than ever, the new bots could approach a bomb quiet as a weasel and shut it down with old-fashioned lead shot, a high-powered slug of water, or quick-set polycarbonate.

Techs in bomb suits would soon be ancient history, along with their sniffer dogs.

Rebecca moved on to the crowded aisles.

The Total Team Safety booth boasted a 50K six-by-three meter flex display, bright and crisp—though the fabric rippled under a downdraft. The display revealed the schematic of a skyscraper, filled with glowing stars, showing how a tactical security show-runner could monitor up to three thousand personnel in any situation from inside, or from any point on the globe via dedicated satlink.

Much better than the old FBI Lynx system, though that was still in wide use.

Peacock Net Communications offered a whole new lifestyle for both cops and civilians. A skinny young man with a shiny face was extolling the company virtues: "A complete record of your life. Fifteen button cameras, front and rear—full circle, fish-eye if you switch on the shoulder cams. The CPU stitches it all together and stores up to twelve hours of 4K-def video. Best tool law enforcement ever had—but it's also available to citizens, so police departments need to keep their cops cool, well-trained, and polite. No more ticking time bombs on the street. And of course our prowler unit records all the basics, plus video and sound—GPS, speed, nearby vehicles, officer RFID, weather, even vitals if the individual department so desires—heart rate, cortisol, body temp, emotional state. Soon we'll be able to tie in and corroborate our video with brain-scan analysis. No secrets. Foolproof in court—it's all ten-twelve secure-coded to an inviolate chip. Congress is about to set FISA standards for Homeland Security taps into personal networks. It's a new age for law enforcement. Peacock Net. Open society, complete records, total protection."

Rebecca had been linked and recorded many times before, but never so thoroughly.

The Homeland Security Science and Technology booth featured a single-box, universal DNA/RNA identification system, tied in to international criminal and citizen database files. A moist swab of almost any surface within a scene of interest, indoors or outdoors, could yield a comprehensive list of the names and records of individuals who had walked through in the last few years, dropping sweat, skin flakes, fingerprints, whatever—as well as plants, animals, and potential pathogens. The system was known as eDNA, or Edna.

Practically in the shadow of DHS and Edna's bright lights, a tiny startup calling itself DYNA-Forensics was drawing an impressive crowd. Their little gray box promised to provide courtroom-quality certification that DNA evidence was not manufactured, forged, or planted—or, conversely, that it was. With polymerase chain reaction technology capable of creating huge volumes of DNA from even the tiniest source, and several high-profile cases of law enforcement databases being misused to manufacture counterfeit DNA evidence from scratch, this had become a big issue in recent years.

Soon, nobody would be getting away with anything, anywhere. She had to sniff in wonder. Brave new world—lousy old cliché.

Just two booths down, scanners from a company called Rainbow Life Forensics guaranteed to analyze and predict the intent of strangers through their Kirlian Auras.

Something old, something new, something weird.

"Rebecca!"

At the end of the leftmost aisle, Rebecca swiveled and saw Karl Oster leaning from a booth. "How's our favorite Rolodex expert?" he called. A big banner behind him proclaimed NCAP: National Council of Protection Agencies—an NGO trade group.

She swung left and shook his hand.

"Hey, Karl. Most of these youngsters don't even know what a Rolodex is." She pulled back her cuff to reveal the dattoo. "Want to mate?"

Oster smirked, pulled up his sleeve, unbuttoned his cuff, and showed his own dattoo. They crossed arms.

"Don't scratch it," he warned.

"They do itch," Rebecca said. "Congrats."

"Screw that," he said with a grin.

Oster had been portrayed by Johnny Depp in a movie about Waylon Parks, the Karaoke Butcher. Parks had kidnapped twenty-one children in two states, burying them with a backhoe in old shipping containers. Each container had a battery backup unit that powered a small Karaoke machine that ran videos of Parks singing David Bowie songs. Gary Oldman, of course, had portrayed Parks.

"It's bullshit," Oster said. "They should have made a movie about you."

"Fat chance," Rebecca said.

"What irritates the hell out of me is the way these bastards are portrayed by smart, charming actors. We know different. They're broken toys. When you finally catch 'em, they look dead inside."

Karl and Rebecca had gone out for dinner a few times in Washington and stayed friends thereafter, exchanging calls now and then. Karl, a perennial bachelor, had never pushed. She almost wished he had.

But now of course there was her captain. Odd that she was the one feeling fast and possessive.

"Agents love their movies, Karl. Yours wasn't too bad. How's San Francisco?"

"Office is
trés chic
," Oster said, the standing joke.

Rebecca had appointments to keep. She waved and moved on.