She murdered me with sci.., p.20
She Murdered Me with Science, page 20
“Horatio? I need you to look at this.”
Horatio joined Fred at his station. After switching slides and microscopes a few times, they huddled, whispering excitedly. They didn’t keep me out of the loop for long.
They approached me, Horatio moving in front of me, Fred to the back. I wondered if they had something else to give me. Fred was hiding something behind his leg. Horatio’s bright white teeth offset his dark olive skin as he gave me a broad smile, as though waiting for something.
I hadn’t even gotten to “What?” when I felt the scissors clamp down on my hair and a lock fall away.
I spun around but Fred was already moving back to the microscope.
I wheeled on Horatio. “And what were you? The distraction?”
“No, I said I just wanted to see the expression on your face.”
“I was right!” cried Fred.
He moved the second microscope closer to the first and called us over.
“Glass, you’ve heard about James Watson’s discovery, right?”
“Yes, DNA. I know all about it.”
Why do people keep asking me about that?
“But have you heard of selective chemistry yet?”
Apparently, I had been out of school too long. The students got all excited and began chattering. I hushed them, only to have to do the same to the army’s scientific observers who also seemed excited by the term. I cast them a look and they quieted down, as well.
“No, I haven’t. What are you going on like schoolgirls about?”
“You would know it to be true that every person has a specific DNA, no two are alike. What if you could design a chemical that would respond to only your genetic makeup?”
“You could repair hereditary damage, like mental retardation,” A senior suggested.
“Or poison an entire dinner and kill only one person.”
“Or wipe out a race with chemical warfare, better yet, call it selective genocide,” Fred added. “It’s an offshoot of the DNA research called eugenics.”
“And this chemical has that ability?”
“Watch.”
Fred dragged me over to the scopes. “In the first scope, we have a sample of Horatio’s hair since, of course, I have none to cut.”
I was glad my hair wasn’t the only one being donated to science.
“Now watch it as I run the wave generator.”
Apparently Fred and Horatio had stayed up most of the night building a device to act as the MASER, or at least how they figured it worked. They used the description I had placed in the report, plus what pieces of the destroyed device that had been recovered by the FBI in Chance City.
I put my eye to the lens and heard the click of the switch on the wave box. Slowly, the hair began to twitch and eventually curl. At about a minute thirty, the hair sizzled and charred.
“Okay, now come over here to the other station. This one has Shirley’s hair laced with the exciter drug.”
I looked over to the senior. “You volunteer or get conscripted, too?”
She made no false allusions with her answer. “I have no problem donating my body to science.”
I swallowed hard and turned back to the microscope.
This time it took less than a minute to char. Shorter time than Horatio’s, but that was to be expected.
“Finally, here, we have your hair.”
I barely had time to focus the lens before the hair curled, smoked, and charred.
“The drug reacts stronger to your DNA than it did Shirley’s. I’ve concluded that this fluid was designed with you in mind.”
The ramifications were astounding. “So with a sample of DNA, they could target a single person out in a crowd of hundreds.”
“Yes, they wouldn’t need to inject the person. Just get him or her to eat or drink the same thing everyone was. When the MASER was activated, only that person would explode, leaving the others feeling only slightly warm.”
One of the students asked, “Couldn’t they do just the opposite, as well? Kill everyone in a room that didn’t have the right DNA sequence?”
“Yes, yes. What you say is most definitely true. A dictator could wipe out all his opponents at once and keep only a specific strain of DNA.”
“This is what Mendelssohn was afraid of!” I slammed my fist on the table. “Not just the idea of war, but what he had invented. Something that was worse than the atomic bomb. The Technocrats had a weapon to specifically wipe out any group of people they wanted.”
“Yes, but who would they target? They’ve never shown a racial basis previously, have they?” asked Fred.
I sat down. One of the problems the Technocrats had the first go-round was the question of what to do with the imperfect people—those with birth defects, those without the intelligence to handle technology. They would be a drain on the energy system because they couldn’t give back what they took. It made sense to think they’d want to wipe out the gimps and the idiots. The possibility was too horrible to imagine.
I leaned forward, put my elbows on my knees, and held my head in my hands. I could see towers all over the world, broadcasting the MASER wave, and everyone whose DNA didn’t contain the right sequence would die. One gigantic scream heard around the world, and then nothing but a deafening silence.
This wasn’t the dream of Taylor. Not even Veblen, Gantt, Scott, or Rautenstrauch. Someone had bastardized it, mutated it. It was like looking at pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima. You could almost find the real person under the burns, but so much of the flesh had been melted away, you couldn’t look at it long enough to see.
“You’ve been at this a while,” Fred said, trying to comfort. “Why don’t you go down to the PX for dinner? I’ll report what we have to Archdeacon. He’ll need to pass this on to all involved. This is too big for just us.”
Horatio offered to get a hold of Watson and Frick and see if they had any insights.
I jotted down some notes for Fred to take to Archdeacon. Before getting in the elevator, I looked out the window.
The sun slowly descended between the worn-down peaks of the Rockies. It was best if you didn’t miss sunsets in Colorado. All the science in the universe couldn’t sum up why the sky burned so magnificently. Earth orbiting the sun. The sun orbiting Earth. It didn’t matter. What mattered—people were alive to see it.
I got off on the first floor.
“Glass? Glass! Just man I look for!”
I turned and watched the squat form of Wan Lee walking toward me, escorted by two armed guards, a six-pack of Ancient Stout in each hand.
* * *
“You ditch me. The Ruskie I understand, but me? How many time I got to save your ass before I get a little respect?”
If Wan weren’t grinning like the Cheshire Cat through the whole tirade, I might have taken him seriously.
“I had things to do that I couldn’t do with two or more people hanging around.”
“What? Like get arrested? Oh, that great plan!”
“It was and it worked. I’ve made more progress in three days than the four previous.”
“I would have come with you, watch your back.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know, Wan. I just needed time to think.”
I arranged security clearance for Wan. They took him to a room and asked him a whole bunch of questions. They handed him a temporary pass on the condition he not leave the base. Lee seemed sure the background check would come back clean … too sure.
In the lab, the team had departed for dinner. Lee appraised the place with a whistle.
“You not do so bad, I guess. In four days you do what you could not in twelve years.”
I nodded. “I know why Tangie died, Lee. I know who and why.”
“Good. They go arrest him now?”
“Can’t. Not yet. And I don’t think it’s a him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “A dame? What? Bam we met in Chance City?”
I cast Merlot in the role but couldn’t make it stick. She was in many of the right places and had the right connections, but she didn’t have the background to pull off something this big. Plus, the Hero sister I met was the wrong shape, too tall and thin.
“Nah, she’s clean.” Lee smiled and I decided not to tell him about me making my own chop suey with Merlot. He still acted as if he had the hots for her. “Wan? Your wife?”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell it to my priest.” He waved me off and took another draw from the beer. He set it down and gazed across to the downtown area. The city lights looked like stars reflected on black water with Liberty Tower a lighthouse beacon.
“What?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Wan, what? Are you really upset that I bailed on you?”
“Nah, not really. I take care of myself pretty good for old man. It’s just …”
He trailed off. I wanted to prod, but I’ve learned people will tell you what they want to when they want to. It was almost a full minute before he spoke again.
“Those men, the Russians, they say some things when they think I asleep. Things not good over there. They really planning for a war. This not good, not good at all.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, Wan, but we’ve done war before. I think we’ll be okay.”
He shook his head. “No, this not going to be like other wars. They will come here. They will destroy our homes. Kill our families. And if they use bombs, there will be places you can never go again.”
It struck me then that Wan, being Japanese, knew intimately the horrors of an atomic bomb.
“Did you have family in Hiroshima?”
He shook his head. “Nagasaki. A whole bunch of relatives. Great aunts, uncles, cousins. Cannot even go lay flowers for them; area still off limits. I build shrine at safe house so family can burn incense. I still remember traveling up to the mountains as a child to my uncle’s place.”
Then Lee did the incredible. In almost perfect English he recited the following:
The maids were singing in kitchen, and I heard the shampooers in street.
Then I turned over on my mat, and say, “I think it is time I arose.”
I was flabbergasted. “Wan, that’s beautiful. What is it?”
“Was my uncle’s favorite poem. He born tired, that one. He never do any work when we come visit. He say it because we there. His wife say he like that all time.”
We briefly laughed at his recollection, but Lee grew somber again. “Do not want to lose another town, another family here.”
“I won’t let that happen, Wan. If there is any chance to stop it, I will.”
“You promise? With your life?”
“I do. With my life. But I had made that same sort of promise to Tangie.”
* * *
We stayed up late catching up. He clued me in on the events after I had hit the bricks.
Comrade Ilya was so mad that Vincent had to smack him. They went out to track my path, despite Vincent’s wounded condition. That made me feel guilty.
Once they found the snowmobile, they came back, gathered up their belongings, and headed north, toward Colorado. They stuck mostly to back roads, avoiding the roadblocks. Once they made Colorado Springs, Lee split from them and found his way home. He awoke this morning to papers stating I had been arrested. The police called off the search for Wan, but kept an APB for Vincent. Wan reasoned where I was being kept and decided to pop in.
I told him I was glad. We said our “good nights” and headed off to our assigned rooms.
But I didn’t sleep; too many thoughts circled my head. For all the progress, we still knew so little. I rolled over, flipped on the light, and started writing again.
Under the orders of Mr. X, now Miss X the current Great Engineer of the new Technocracy Inc., Jorge had rigged my experiment to test how deadly the enhanced microwaves could be. At some point, he saw the long-term potential for the technology and had second thoughts, thus the note he tried to leave me. Only, I didn’t get it. Tangie did.
What would she have tried to do with that knowledge? Tried to fix what Jorge had done? Yes, that made sense. She would take it upon herself to undo Mendelssohn’s work, only she failed. Why didn’t she stop the experiment all together? Especially if she wasn’t sure?
Unless she went to someone else. Like Jorge. Maybe she convinced him to fix things and he convinced her he had. Tangie trusted him. We all did. She would forgive him his brief wavering from the cause and instead give him a chance to make things right.
That meant she knew what was going on just before she’d died. Tangie died knowing Jorge had betrayed us all.
So Jorge left NMIT with the data he’d gotten and built the MASER to kill Hitler. And then WWII ended, so his Technocrat sponsors sat on it. Maybe Jorge developed other things for them. Maybe they kept him to advise them on only scientific things, things that would be needed when they were in charge of the country.
Somehow, word got back to them about Stalin’s domination plans, probably from their Worker’s Truth contacts, and TI set the goal to stop him. It was too soon. They weren’t ready for WWIII. Yet in their storehouse, they had the unused assassination weapon. The MASER got dusted off and put to use. Only, it failed. Stalin’s death didn’t look to be from natural causes as they hoped. Beria became the sacrificial lamb. The USSR sent Ilya and Sacha to activate the sleeper agent Vincent. Together, they were supposed to uncover who was involved on our side in the assassination.
Meanwhile, Mendelssohn split from his keepers with Merlot’s help. He had a crisis of conscience and came to me, only he didn’t make it. What did I know that would make him think I could help? And how did C.J. Reece figure into all this?
I doodled on my paper. I drew names and lines, trying to connect Reece to someone. All I had at the end was a lot of circles and lines with no one connecting Reece and Mendelssohn. How’d Reece know so much about what Mendelssohn had done? Where had his data come from?
I had access to your designs, as you deduced.
I remembered his words. He had access. Someone let him in. Reece had told me it, but I was too full of myself to hear it. He led me in a certain direction. Why? Why spin the tale about Archdeacon? He deliberately misled me, all the while giving me clues.
I stood up and walked around. We weren’t the only two in the room. Vincent. He didn’t want Vincent to understand. Reece must have known Vincent was a Russian spy. He knew or guessed it. Reece told me information was his tool. He had to know. Stalin. He had to know about the Technocrats. He told me he had seen in my designs what others had seen.
Reece was a Technocrat. His love of technology, how perfect he thought it was. The black army was working out of the basement of his building. Reece was not just any Technocrat, mind you, but one high up the ladder, but not the leader. Not the Great Engineer, though. But someone high enough to be trusted with some, not all, of the plans.
It hit me. With his money, he must’ve been a bankroller. He financed TI’s plans! When the war was over and society needed rebuilding, who would be around to rebuild technology? The person who was already controlling it—Little Technologies, the largest holder of patents. Reece held back advanced technology for his own use until he was ready to put it on the market. Reece had to have been a major player in their plan, but he turned on them.
If my enemies find me.
He must have split off from them, had a falling out, as Jorge had. Did Mendelssohn take what he knew to Reece? Did my former assistant trust the weird eccentric? Two peas in a pod.
Reece may have started to have doubts even back in ’39.
I don’t back losers.
My head spun. Thoughts coalesced. How did TI know Reece was a threat?
Mendelssohn again.
Finding that I was out of town, Jorge goes to Reece, but he’s followed by the Hero Twins who were sent to kill him. After doing in the traitor, they report to Miss X that Jorge visited Reece, which now makes her not trust him. Reece, knowing what the MASER can do, sets up guards, but they still get enough juice into him to give him cancer. Knowing the writing was on the wall, he comes to me, costing him his life. I was the last person TI wanted on the scene. I would recognize the MASER’s effect instantly and though I’d been asleep for fourteen years, I could be a wrench in their plans.
Little Technologies held an interesting place in their organization, though. The place where they kept an army. Where? How did it go unnoticed? How would they stay unnoticed and have access to all that high tech goodies they’d need when they rebuilt the world?
They must have another insider, one who could be trusted. They’d put someone loyal in charge, someone who would support the world plan, someone nobody knew anything about, another enigma like Reece.
“Cecelia LaMent!”
As much a recluse as her infamous predecessor, Miss LaMent has never been photographed at large and no pictures were made available by the company.
She had to be the Hero sister, the one who has been manipulating two different branches of the Technocrats, the Russians and Americans, for fourteen years.
Right after the experiment!
I got up and ran to Archdeacon’s room. I pounded on his door until the general said to come in. He was still dressed in his blues but had fallen asleep at a card table piled high with paperwork.
“Sorry, Glass. I must have dozed off. So many reports.”
“Damn the reports, General. I have someone for you to aim at!”
Chapter Fifteen
In the hours after my escape from Liberty Tower, the CIA combed the offices of Little Technologies and found nothing to link them to the T.I. army. They went floor by floor with an armed escort and searched every room, every closet, save for one.
The area below Reece’s vault office had been cordoned off by the fire marshal.
Fred, Archdeacon, and I looked over the marshal’s report. Lee looked out the window; reports meant nothing to him. When I’d visited Little Technologies, I’d assumed that the area under the safe was reinforced, and by the rough drawings laid out before us, I’d been correct. The vault’s supports separated the west side of the floor into three areas. Area one had been labeled Storeroom C. Within the largest one, labeled Main Floor, there sat another area Electrical Room. Comparing it to the drawing of the floor above, it appeared that the fire started in the electrical room, directly under the vault.
