|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
|
|
|
Part 3
Rebecca
I was relieved when Catherine and her Beast-Savior Turnip left to return to school. Catherine I always wanted to see, but the Turnip was one of the most irritating personalities I had known, and I’d worked for some bizarre personalities.
Mason endured the visit with more restraint than I believed he possessed. The temptation to verbally smash the Turnip was so powerful I imagined Mason reducing Patrick to quivering, terrified protoplasm by 2 PM Sunday. Instead, he allowed Patrick to blather on about his imperiled toads, the evils of capitalism, animal rights (and yes, he did wear leather shoes), and so much more, making sly comments whose sarcasm and wit were completely lost on Patrick.
All of this had worn on Mason. The Turnip wasn’t an inept employee who would predictably and completely depart Mason’s world at 5 PM. No, the Turnip was involved with Catherine. Mason never said as much to me, but Catherine was his favorite. Their minds worked in the same way. Mason held high hopes for Catherine and did not want them derailed by Patrick.
Influencing Mason to do something was an art form. By Sunday afternoon, however, I had no difficulty getting him to take a nap. He looked exhausted. He still was unaccustomed to anyone else noticing his health, other than those who wished him dead.
To thoroughly understand his condition, I had sifted through the notes Mason’s doctors made in the early 1990s. Over the last dozen years all indications were of a slow but consistent improvement. Fortunately, these notes were thorough and complete. Breedlove had been fascinated with Mason’s condition, as his notes made clear. Extensive testing was documented over two decades.
The most recent data made me doubt how necessary the precautions in place were. Contrary to prediction, my presence had no measurable effect; he continued improvement. Perhaps the biopolymer skin and multiply filtered air could be left behind. One specialist was convinced that my presence had hastened Mason’s improvement, by constantly challenging his immune system.
Nevertheless, I was convinced he was losing weight. I feared a relapse more than anything else, but I knew any number of things could have gone awry.
“Maybe we’ll be lucky, and never have to see Patrick again,” I said to Mason.
“He’s a lost soul. I’m hoping he does Catherine a favor and gets bored with her. He has no sense at all of how worthless he is. Patrick may be the same person in twenty years as he is today.”
“How often is Dr Prodana weighing you?”
“Every Wednesday.”
“Make me a happy woman and have her weigh you tomorrow morning. Just humor me. I think you’re losing weight.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
I never deluded myself into believing Mason’s health was anything other than precariously balanced on a knife-edge. Nevertheless, I had become used to continuing improvement in barely perceptible increments.
The possibility of regression was frightening.
He was looking through our house plans again. We had spent hours with an architect, outlining our special requirements.
On the outside, the structure would look ordinary enough. Inside, all of the air would be filtered. Each entrance had a double set of doors. A portion of the interior completely duplicated our present quarters, but with more windows and space. Other portions of the house contained a ‘public’ area, which included the kitchen, bedrooms for guests (Mason’s progeny and future grand-get, Samihah and her sons) a family room, and a library for my books.
One could ‘walk’ through the house, see what it looked like from any point in any room. Mason and I tweaked the plan constantly, refining and enhancing it.
He talked only vaguely about building it. Sometimes, he placed construction near Grey and his wife Julie, sometimes in a place of our choosing, but the site I wanted no part of was on the grounds of Genomex itself. I had no desire of spending the rest of my days in the place where Breedlove and Adam had created mankind’s possible end. Mason needed prompt access to good medical care, but I did not want to live at the site where his afflictions were induced. I had bad memories of my own at Genomex, things Mason knew nothing about.
I stood behind him. “I think I would like a front porch. I imagine myself in a rocking chair watching the sun set. Or rise. Or both. There could be porches fore and aft.”
“I cannot picture you in a rocking chair.”
“My great-aunt Circe had a house with a huge front porch and several rocking chairs. I loved going there as a kid in the summers.”
“Circe?”
“Her father taught Greek mythology. She had a twin sister named Medea. When are we going to build this?”
“Good question. Certainly not with Adam running loose in the streets. I don’t want Adam turning up at my kitchen door some fine afternoon, asking to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“You have a point. But building this house might be simpler than we thought.”
“How so?”
He was walking though the virtual rooms again, imagining himself living there. It was a better dream than dwelling upon Adam. Adam would never leave us in peace. Now that he was no longer safely penned, sooner or later he would manage to make us miserable. Worse, he now appeared to have a powerful ally in Lilith.
“We don’t have to duplicate this steel cave. I found a file about how it was originally constructed. It wasn’t built here, but in five modules in Illinois, including the air and water filtration units. The modules could be disassembled and leave Genomex on flatbed trucks the same way they were delivered. They could be put back together, and we could live in the cave while the house was built around it.”
“When this suite was designed and assembled, I was mostly insane, a medical mess. I have no orderly memory of several months. Everything runs together. Not that I want to recall much of what happened.”
“There are some memories one is better off without.”
“True.”
Mason
To recruit the best physicians and researchers for St Katherine’s, I spread the recruitment net worldwide, yielding a unique and superlative staff. My scholarship program intended to produce medical doctors who were themselves Genomex mutants or their children had not been in existence long enough for anyone to yield results, but we had recruited some gifted individuals who later revealed themselves to be mutants. The support staff was no less elite and able.
I had reason for confidence in work coming from St Kats.
I dreaded the results of Jessica Anne’s genetic testing. The chances of her proving to be a plain vanilla human were slight, but I still hoped. I knew better, but I still hoped. The time between sampling and reporting of hard data would have been intolerable otherwise. I knew all along what was coming.
I had the report hand-carried to me by the MD/PhD who devised and refined the procedures to determine the presence of genotypes characteristic of the Genomex perversions. Dr Athellen Lee had worked for me since 2008. She knew my preference for brief, succinct reports, and knew that if I wanted more details, I would ask questions or request the full technical report.
Dr Lee entered my office without a ritual greeting, understanding, as I did, that such an exchange trivialized the seriousness of the report she delivered and placed on my desk before me without comment. She sat silently while I read her summary.
I looked up when I was done.
“I already know your answer, Dr Lee, but I must ask. Do you have any doubts about your conclusion?”
She shook her graying head. “No doubts. The data clearly, unambiguously indicate that this child will walk through walls and affect the emotions of others. The only uncertainty is the strength of these abilities, but that is unknowable before adulthood.”
I bent down, held my head in my hands, and revisited an old and painful memory, and was surprised to find my grief sharp and fresh.
“Years ago, I knew a baby girl, born of two mutants who had dual sets of powers. Along with those powers, the combined inheritance doomed Jean to an early death within months. Is there a possibility of this child suffering such a fate?”
This was my last chance of escaping the necessity of making a decision I knew carried the potential for destroying me.
“Aside from the typical mutant frailties, this girl will be healthy and normal.”
I sighed, and looked up.
Do you have any idea what you have just told me, Dr Athellen Lee?
“I hoped this child would beat the odds, and prove to be plain human. Thank you for attending to this determination quickly and thoroughly.”
“Carrying double talents will make this girl’s life complicated and difficult. I wish my news was better.”
“So do I.”
Dr Lee rose from her chair, and left me alone with horrors to contemplate.
Some time before I had worked through what would be done when the results were official. I summoned Dr Prodana to my office, and instructed her on the assembly of the team required for the next step. Dr Prodana, of course knew nothing about why I would want such a team. She did not ask.
Rebecca
I don’t like surprises.
I don’t like it when an instrument breaks down late Friday afternoon, when the manufacturer’s technical support staff has already started the weekend, and the samples the technician was good enough to come in early and begin prepping at 5.30 AM to insure the complete lot would be ready for an automated run over the week are beginning to look like a complete wash, unless you can puzzle out the arcana of the CD manual, with the important information scattered in at least eight places, no section overlapping or in any way related.
All too much like life.
I like order. I don’t care for surprises. I especially dislike people surprises.
I’ve experienced enough chaos. The memories I push out of the way so I can function. I create little rituals, daily routines that act to fool my mind into believing there are things of permanence, things that endure, things of lasting value, things I can influence and control. The only unchanging thing in the world is the general rottenness of other people.
I prefer a broken down, leaking Agilent HPLC drooling pH 2.5 buffer solution all over the bench top and floor to a broken person any day. The leak I can fix and the drool I can clean up, but after putting my heart into fixing them a little or a lot, the broken person may get the idea to maim or kill me as often as they are thankful. You never know.
I prefer animals for the same reason. Win the trust of a stray cat, take her in, feed her, clean the parasites inside and out, make sure she has vaccinations, talk to her, play with her, keep her warm and safe, and you have a buddy for life. Treat a supposedly sentient human being with the same loyalty, kindness, and yes, love, and who knows what you will receive in return?
Theft? Defamation of character? Maiming? Maybe all three. Maybe murder, too.
People don’t want to believe this, even though the evidence is all around.
Some time ago I stopped telling the stories I knew from women who survived murder attempts by spouses and significant others. Most people dismissed my stories as not credible despite local media reporting events exactly as I did. Mason was one of the few exceptions who listened and believed. He knew I did not lie or exaggerate, and he also knew how rotten people were.
“You must be seeking out nutso women,” most men would say, at once declaring there was something wrong with me for knowing these women, who were coworkers, not people I had selected as friends, and that there must be something wrong with such women. Nothing like blaming the victim. Then there is the explanation that men in general do not like women as people and would much prefer a world free of women, who would not then take “their” jobs, or annoyingly own more than two pairs of shoes. Paradise defined, for many of them.
Upon reflection, what I found oddest of all was the lack of comments akin to “What kind of nutcase tries to burn down his girlfriend’s house, believing she’s sleeping inside (alone)” or “What kind of whack job repeatedly stabs his wife without any solid evidence she has done anything wrong?” Fortunately, the stabbed woman was an RN and she managed to make it to a neighbor’s house to summon help. I would have liked to know what happened afterward, but she was admitted to a hospital under a false name for her own protection, and afterwards I could not track her.
The implication was that these women had brought violence upon themselves, that they deserved burning and stabbing.
We’re nowhere near as civilized as we choose to believe. Committing violent acts against another adult was only part of it. Atrocities committed against children beggared belief.
O, I knew history was full of stories about infanticide, especially in societies that considered female children “useless eaters”. European societies commonly had formal institutions allowing babies to be abandoned and readily adopted. Astonishingly, this practice was not limited to the poor.
I knew all of that. I also still mourned –privately-- my three lost babies. Mason suggested adoption, but I wanted babies carrying my own DNA, every cell infused with my own mother-line mitochondria.
People did things I did not understand. As disturbing as my conclusions about the general attitudes of men were, evidence did not make me think well of women, either.
How could a woman carry a child, give birth in a toilet, wrap up the evidence, stuff it into a trash barrel and then return to a high school dance?
How could a mother leave five children alone in a house while she went to a nightclub, the house burning down in her absence?
How could a woman entrust a young child to the care of a boyfriend, not the child’s father, with the boyfriend literally cooking the toddler to death in scalding water?
How could a mother buckle her two sons securely into the back seat of her car, and then send that car rolling off into a lake, drowning her babies, in the hope of gaining the attention and companionship of a man who made clear he wanted her but not her boys?
The commonality is one of violence against weaker people. I spent most of my adult life keeping people at a safe distance, making few exceptions. I wanted my days orderly, and reasonably safe.
Usually I have enough presence of mind to scan my phone’s caller ID function to determine if I should ignore it. My labs were already packed floor to ceiling –well, as close to the ceiling as the fire codes allowed—with instrumentation computers, printers, none of it outdated, fully supporting the needs of Genomex, St Kats and satellite locations. I didn’t want to talk to sales people because the labs weren’t in need of anything and I had no idea where we would put anything else. I didn’t want to waste their time or my own.
I did not recognize the phone number, which was local. I answered the phone, prepared to sort through mail delivered Saturday while making quick work of the call.
“Rebecca, it’s Rob Abelmann.”
I really do not like surprises.
“Rob? Where are you?” The far side of the moon, I hope.
“I’m in town. I never left.”
Dr Robert Abelmann was one of the brightest people ever to don a Genomex lab coat. He very well could have been Adam’s equal, or even better than Adam. Unfortunately, he had a conscience.
Rob found out exactly what Breedlove and Adam were doing. For a time, he accepted the lies they told in explanation. His insights advanced the creation of the genetic blasphemies hidden away down in the deepest recesses of Genomex. No one is irreplaceable; these things could have been done without Rob, but it would have taken Breedlove and Adam several more years than it did.
The conflict between the kind of man Rob was and the horrors he created proved too great. Predictably, his marriage fell apart. But that was just the beginning.
How do I know so much? Because, when it came to Rob Abelmann, I had not behaved as well as I should have.
When I came to Genomex in 1992, I was in a state of emotional chaos. Divorcing my gelding Jeff was expensive and crazy-making. I should have had the marriage annulled immediately, but I was embarrassed by the absurdity of marrying a neuter, and not knowing it going in.
No one wants to believe such a thing is possible, but their minds are too marinated in pop culture. Anything is possible. I personally knew two women whose marriages had never been consummated.
I wanted to forget Jeff and put some emotional distance between my past errors and the present. I wanted to shut myself away from everything, and just not be bothered any longer. People are too much trouble.
By the middle of 1993, the professional competition between Adam and Rob was peaking. Rob had little else left; his divorce was a few years in the past and his ex-wife had taken their two little girls across country to Santa Barbara where her parents lived. Rob adored those girls. His contact with them became limited to phone calls monitored by their mother.
My antipathy towards Adam was becoming Genomex Lore. Opportunity can present itself anywhere, and so it was that one morning I found myself waiting for Adam to finish at a copier.
My presence made Adam uncomfortable and nervous. I knew that. I made a point of standing much closer to him that I naturally would have chosen to do with anyone else, enjoying the sight of Adam fumbling with the reduction functions, and throwing useless copies into the trash.
There were other copying machines I could have used with no waiting, but why use them when there was fun to be had at Adam’s expense?
Adam continued killing trees and began talking to himself, swearing as the copier ran out of paper and the Great Adam Kane faced the challenge of re-stocking the tray.
If packages of paper had not been stacked next to the copier, Adam would have been completely thwarted. As it was, he was merely mystified, puzzled by the arcane process of unlocking the tray.
There were instructions clearly written on the front of the copier, but Adam was too good for instructions. He mutter some more, then wandered off as if abandoning the effort.
I took a step or two forward, undid the tray release, and began unwrapped the copier paper.
Adam stopped and turned at the sound of the tray releasing, and in short order he returned, hovering over me.
“Thanks for doing that for me.”
With that, he returned to copying his own materials!
I hope every sheet jams.
Alas, no sheets jammed.
Adam finally finished his copying, and stalked off rapidly. He had left the reduction functions in place, and an original on the platen. The original turned out to be typed notes for his next presentation. The work looked familiar, probably more ‘original’ work of Adam’s reported years before in the literature. I was never really sure if Adam was re-doing old work, or actually committing intellectual theft. Perhaps, he was doing a bit of both.
I could put this in Adam’s mailbox, and let him know someone knows his game. No. That is too subtle for Adam.
I glanced around. No one else was in sight. I grabbed the great Dr Kane’s discards from the trash. He mistakenly reduced them to near-unreadability, but not quite. I was able to put the trash gleanings to use, and came to the next Projects meeting well prepared, leaving copies of a particular paper in the mailboxes of everyone who would be at the meeting…except Adam.
Adam had reduced most attendees to near-slumber. Even Mason Eckhart’s discipline was failing him; I saw him nodding. I was wide-awake however, anticipating the perfect moment when I would ambush Adam before this group, and if I wasn’t careful, probably destroy my career at Genomex.
Adam droned on, confident he was awing his technical audience.
Not today, Adam.
The proper moment was close for the ambush. Timing was everything.
Adam had very nearly maneuvered himself exactly where I wanted him. “Are there any questions?” He was smiling that arrogant, I know more than you do smile, but not for much longer.
As it turned out, someone else led the charge.
Joe Mayakovsky was a brilliant molecular biologist. Everyone respected his work and his opinions, and after Joe asked the fateful question, no one thought of Adam again in quite the same way.
“Adam, how is this any different than the work of Kraler et alia in the paper you put in our boxes?”
Kraler, Fujitsu, and Canfield’s paper had appeared in the April-May-June 1989 issue of Communications of the Society of Experimental Genetics of Economically Valuable Livestock. While this journal was not exactly found gracing coffee tables and waiting rooms everywhere, it was a perfectly legitimate scientific journal.
Whether Adam was aware of this paper or not I do not know, but he should have known of it. A casual reading of the abstract revealed the haunting parallels to Adam’s presentation.
Adam should have performed a literature search and found KFC’s paper with the same ease I had. The subject was far afield from my specialty, but the Genomex library had outstanding search capabilities.
Adam was both furious and confused. He leaned over Mason Eckhart to quickly scan the abstract. Mason hated having anyone in such proximity, but I did not know that then.
“Take my copy, Adam. Please.”
Adam took the stapled papers and read the abstract quickly. Adam had a lot of personal control, but anyone watching him could tell he was stunned by the existence of the paper.
“Well, this shores up my work.”
Mayakovsky wasn’t buying. “Adam, this had a publication date of 1989. I think you just shored up their work.”
Joe was being cool and controlled, but he could read Adam’s face as well as anyone, and it was obvious that Adam had been shown to be less than honest, something we all knew but rarely could confirm.
“Well, I guess I have, haven’t I?” Adam declared abruptly, gathering up his notes and transparencies. “The meeting’s over.”
Adam had to have a good idea who had set up this debacle, but he could not be certain. Two weeks ago, another of his technicians had quit suddenly, and the month before, another had transferred to another group. They had friends in the building who could have done it. His former and current technicians would know what he had been working on—they had been doing the work! Any employee had access to the mailboxes.
If he asked Mason to review the security videotape to reveal who placed papers in boxes, he’d be admitting ignorance of the paper, which he could never do. Also, I had taken care to slip the copies I one at a time, at different hours of the day over three days. I wasn’t going to show up doing a mass distribution.
I had taken a stupid chance, but I felt good about the way things had turned out.
Samihah walked with me from the meeting. “Just when Adam had sunk nearly all of us into comas, someone sinks Adam into ridicule. Most amusing.”
“Do you think Adam knew anything about that work?”
“I do not think so. I have watched Adam for many years, and while I believe he is capable of serious borrowing form someone else’s work, his arrogance is such that he would not go looking for a paper and then slavishly duplicate the work. Adam’s weakness is his conviction that no one else in the universe will have the same masterstroke insights as the incomparable Adam. But as we both know, people have the same ideas. Some ideas appear to have a proper time to be ‘born’, and pop out all over independently.”
“Adam’s in his own world.”
“Oh, absolutely. It’s a wonder someone has not embarrassed Adam in this fashion before. I wonder if we will ever know who did it?”
“I did it.”
“Oh, Rebecca!”
I related the story of the adventure at the copier. Samihah giggled.
“I hope I don’t lose my job over this.”
“Adam has been going to Paul Breedlove complaining about dozens of people as long as I have worked here. What I hear is that Breedlove hardly listens to what he says, because it’s all personal and petty. But do be careful with Adam; you are on his list now.”
“I’ve been on Adam’s list. Within the first six months I was here, I had to call security to drag Adam away from my desk, where he was going through my desk and purse.”
“I heard that story but I did not believe it could be true.” Samihah laughed. “What was he looking for?”
“Personal information, but I cannot be certain of that. Maybe he was looking for quarters for a vending machine.”
Samihah giggled. “Perhaps you should ask Mr Eckhart to have security check your car for explosive devices the next few days.”
“You don’t really think…”
“Oh, no, Adam’s pretentious but not crazy. That was merely a joke. But I’d wager a case of petri dishes that if you asked him, Mr Eckhart would cheerfully inspect your car, probably personally.”
Samihah was a perceptive people watcher. She took in my puzzled look, smiled, and said nothing more.
Later that morning, Dr Rob Abelmann strolled into my lab, and asked me to lunch.
In my mind, we dated casually, but not in Rob’s. How was I to know? After the nightmare of Jeff, I wanted male attention, but only on my terms and at my convenience.
One day when time came for lunch, I decided I wasn’t hungry and that I really wanted to stay at my desk and work up notes for the next chapter I was writing. Then the next day, I did much the same.
Rob was upset. At the time, I did not understand why. My general observation even then was that men generally found none of us very special, if they could tell us apart at all. A good many of them harbored a deep dislike of women, camouflaged unconvincingly behind ‘jokes’ about women and tales of the stupidity of their wives and girlfriends.
I told Rob I was sorry, but there were things I needed to do, and I didn’t have time for anyone. Fortunately, when I told him this, we were standing in the Genomex parking lot and when Rob started yelling at me there wasn’t much of an audience. Rob had made some assumptions about the nature and direction of the relationship because of his need for stability. I was still paying off the small fortune in legal bills involved in getting rid of Jeff and dreaded another legal quagmire. Emotionally I was on autopilot, not concerned with much save protecting myself from further, deeper damage.
Rob was a deeply wounded creature himself. He craved a lot of attention. At that point in my life I did not have that to give to anyone.
I told him I wasn’t going to stand there in the hot sun and listen to him berate me for not being who he needed. I got in my car and left.
That evening was wonderful. In the quiet and solitude I worked through several difficult passages.
That’s when I began my serious retreat from the world. I was comfortable. I could control my world and everything that happened in it.
Rob continued to spiral down. Eventually, his guilt became too great of a burden and he walked out of Genomex one day.
Could I possibly have helped? Probably. Did I contribute to his descent? Probably. Pragmatically, I don’t know what I could have done. With the perfect view afforded by hindsight, I believe it is even possible that had I been fully aware of the created horrors, I would have cursed Rob and told him the guilt he suffered was as nothing compared to the sufferings of his creations. Perhaps I might not have been such a great help after all. In any case, I could not live for someone else.
Once I bolted my own front door and locked out everyone else, my real life began. The days at Genomex became unreal and dreamlike.
I was polite to Rob, which seemed to surprise him. He did not become a hermit; his life became increasingly chaotic. The Children of Genomex were entering puberty, many of them becoming strange, frightening people. I had heard only rumors at that time, but Rob knew almost everything Adam knew, and Rob was haunted.
He had a conscience, and he knew he had been a major part of the creation of a future nightmare for humanity. As the Genomex mutants matured, the full dreadfulness of the work Rob had done became clear. He could barely function at work.
I forced myself back to the here and now, and shifted into my corporate neutral voice. “And how might I help you, Rob?”
“What happened to everyone, Rebecca? You and Dr Varady are the only ones the receptionist could find listed in the corporate directory from the old technical staff.”
I thought carefully about my reply before saying anything. “There was a major purge of personnel in the autumn of 2007. There are only three of us remaining who were on staff in spring of 2007.”
He was silent for a moment. “What brought that on?”
“Security concerns.” That was certainly true enough.
“Eckhart’s doing?”
“Yes.”
“He was always prone to excess.”
I chuckled softly. “He was completely justified in doing what he did.”
“What happened?”
“I’m afraid I cannot say anything about it, but I witnessed the events precipitating the purge.”
“Rebecca, I know Genomex is hiring. I am desperate enough to beg for a job there.”
O, relief! We’ve gotten down to business.
I must have felt guilty about past events. I agreed to meet him for lunch and discuss job possibilities. I met him at the bagel/sandwich shop sharing the same strip mall occupied by Ed’s Buy and Fly, a shipping store with a collection of post office boxes, and a handful of other small stores, close enough to be considered walking distance in good weather or if one was not in a hurry.
I arrived early, before the typical lunch crowd. Rob was there ahead of me, already seated at a table, deeply enmeshed in reading. He did not notice my arrival.
“Rob.”
Robert Abelmann visibly startled at the sound of my voice.
“Rebecca. I wasn’t sure you would come. I’m glad you’re here.”
“What was that about? You must remember that I keep my promises.”
“So many of my ‘friends’ from Genomex didn’t want to talk to me after I left. It was an odd experience, as if I had suddenly become unclean. A lot of people suddenly weren’t my friends any longer.”
“I’ve never been like ‘everyone else’. Now, tell me about your wanting to come back to Genomex.”
“I cannot stand where I am working now. It’s a horrible place. I’m desperate enough to want to come back. I’ve heard they’re hiring.”
“It’s not the company you knew. Genomex is as clandestine as ever, but the overall direction is benign.” I didn’t think he would believe my claim.
“That’s hard to believe.” Rob laughed, predictably.
“With my sources, I’m sure.” I had absolutely no doubts. After all, I not only knew what Mason was doing, I had an unofficial role in planning what Genomex did.
“I quit because the place was anything but benign. Waking up and going to work was like a full-time nightmare. Adam and Breedlove created monstrosities, one after the other, by the hundreds, probably thousands.”
“Thousands. They made thousands. More of them are found every year. Adam and Breedlove had satellite operations no one here knew much about and which were hardly documented. The genes of the unborn were manipulated and tampered with at those outposts as well. No one bothered keeping accurate records. The total number of Genomex mutants may be staggering.”
“You know?” Rob was shocked to find me well informed concerning matters he thought secret and well hidden.
“I do now. I didn’t know in the 1990s, although there were always stories. But everything has changed. Laura Varady will tell you the same thing. Rob, I cannot get you hired, but I can get you an interview. Genomex has changed. A lot.”
“Adam must be running things by now. I cannot imagine him changing anything. Adam liked things the way they were.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Adam’s been gone since 1998. To be honest, he hasn’t been much missed. His technical contributions had fallen way off and clearly, his interest in Genomex projects decreased to the point of Paul Breedlove chewing him out in front of people for excessive time spent away from the job.”
“I can’t believe Adam’s gone. Where’d he go?”
“That is a long story. The simplified version is that he set up an independent operation after dipping freely into Genomex funds. A few years back he was convicted of embezzlement.”
“The Prince of Genomex a criminal!”
“It’s true.”
“Who’s running things with Breedlove dead? Stockmeyer? Khaled? Mayakovsky?”
All good candidates, Rob, but all wrong.
“Eckhart.”
“He isn’t a technical person.”
“That doesn’t matter. He’s been cleaning up after Breedlove and Adam since 2007, not furthering their agendas. At Genomex, those old agendas are dead. Very dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Sure as I am about very few things.”
“I never knew what to think of Eckhart after the accident. He changed so much. Very spooky.”
I paused for a moment, deciding whether or not to tell Rob the truth. It wasn’t a secret any longer; why not tell him?
“‘Incident X’ was not an accident, but an attempted murder. Adam acted deliberately, and Paul Breedlove covered up for him.”
Rob didn’t look surprised. “I always thought so. I am surprised Adam never tried anything with me. I never made any secret of my doubts about the direction and nature of our research. I saw a lot of dreadful things done at Genomex, things even Breedlove did not like to remember, and took care to keep hidden. You cannot imagine.”
“Yes, I can. I’ve seen many of them. Probably most of them.”
Rob looked surprised. I could not imagine why.
“Rob, the sins of the past tend not to stay buried. They tend to fester, and eventually erupt like an overripe boil. For years, Mason Eckhart explored the paper records left by Adam, Breedlove—and you—and read them all, in the middle of the night. The security people owed their loyalty to him, after all; his snooping was never reported to Breedlove or Adam.”
“I heard those records were conveniently destroyed.”
“The originals are mostly gone, destroyed in the Archive fire in 2007. The microfilmed records of the laboratory notebooks remain safe and whole in a salt mine under Lake Erie.”
Again, he looked surprised. There was nothing shocking or clandestine about such record duplication. Most corporations did protect their critical files in similar ways, records of far less sensational natures than genetic tampering.
“That’s right. That’s why we used black ink only.”
I nodded. “After Adam left, Eckhart explored the sublevels beneath the surface. Late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d go exploring, and open up the sealed labs, the ones no one was meant to see again.”
“You know this as fact?” Rob just couldn’t believe I was so well informed.
“I know this as fact. The more horrible secrets of Genomex, the ones a hundred feet down behind steel doors covered with concrete, have been dug up and cremated. A committee including several religious people were shown some of the horrors and asked to develop respectful services. The remains were not sent to a landfill like trash. They were given a decent burial with clergy.”
“How did these people know they were not being used to cover up Eckhart’s work?”
You talk like someone who listened to Adam’s stories and believed them.
“I serve on that committee. Breedlove dated his work carefully. The committee was shown documentation clearly proving Eckhart was not an employee when the worst of the work was performed. Had he been responsible, it would have made far more sense to shovel out the evidence and incinerate it clandestinely. That is not what happened. Rob, you must have known about some of that work in the sublevels.”
Time to make you squirm, Rob.
“Of course I did. That’s why I had to leave.” Rob turned darkly serious. “Working at Genomex became a kind of waking nightmare. I lost my family. I almost lost myself. After you knew what went on there, how could you stay?”
“I was never, ever part of any group involved in actively creating Genomex mutants. Some of the work I did no doubt supported such activity, especially prior to 1998 when Adam departed, or as Adam described it, “escaped”. But I never knowingly made mutants, Rob, and it took me years to even learn they existed.”
“How did you find out?”
“I watched. I listened. There was a meeting with Adam during which he said a lot more than he should have, talking about ‘adolescent mutants’ and ‘subdermal governors’. That was in 1995. In 2000, I saw my first mutant, a boy who could levitate.”
“How widely did the existence of mutants become known at Genomex?”
“Not widely at all. I did not learn the details of the program until 2007. I met another mutant, an adult woman…with wings. She could fly, Rob. I saw her fly around the cafeteria, late at night. She did ‘laps’ up near the ceiling, strengthening her wings in a warm, secure place.”
“Angela.”
“Yes, Angela.”
“What happened to her?”
“After taking a few circuits of the cafeteria, she told me she felt strong enough to leave, so, I took her to the rooftop. Well, she was human; I did not ‘free’ her, I only showed her a place from which she could conveniently depart.”
“Did anyone know you did this?”
”Mason Eckhart.”
“And you didn’t get into trouble?”
“No. Angela wasn’t a prisoner. She was a kind of guest. It’s complicated, but I did not get into trouble for showing her the way to the roof.”
Rob isn’t ready for the whole of Angela’s story.
“And you don’t know what happened to her after that?”
“Well, yes, I do. A few years after, she started work at St Kats. She’s still there.”
“St Kats?”
“St Katherine’s. The hospital Genomex funds for the treatment of medical problems of Genomex mutants.”
Rob rolled his eyes at me in disbelief.
“No, Rob, it’s not what you think. The horror show was not moved to another address. St Kats is a hospital, maybe the only one in the world where these people can openly go and freely discuss their symptoms. Angela is one of several MDs on staff who are mutants as well.”
“Breedlove didn’t set up this place, did he?”
“No. Paul Breedlove felt great guilt for what he had done, but he didn’t do much to undo his work.”
“Eckhart?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not as surprised as a lot of people might be. The program disgusted him. He used to talk a lot about leaving Genomex before his injuries tied him to the place and to Breedlove.”
“Rebecca, the jobs I’ve had to take…for a number of them I did not even admit to my doctorate. They never would have hired me. Lacking references made things difficult.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’ve worked in places so dangerous I thought operations like that had been regulated out of existence decades ago. I’ve seen things I thought impossible. I saw a ‘waterfall’ of cyclohexane once in the plant where I am working now.”
“Sounds hellish. One spark, and you would have had Flixborough.”
“Management doesn’t care if anyone leaves the property in a body bag. Since they sell only to other corporations, public relations aren’t a concern. They contract to make materials for other corporations, things other companies decide are too dangerous for exposure.”
“What about the possibility of lawsuits from the victim’s families? Wouldn’t that inspire some common sense based caution?”
“Common sense is uncommon at this operation. One of the production workers burned his cornea when a line broke carrying 48% hydrobromic acid. The plant manager called him at home and asked him to come into work the next day so the plant would not have a reportable accident.”
“The regulatory people must have been paid off. Nothing else makes sense.”
“That’s what everyone believes. There isn’t any other explanation for the way things keep going wrong and nothing changes.”
“I thought places like that didn’t exist anymore.”
“So did I, until I started working there. The plant emits a toxic blend of gasses from one of the reactors. The means of testing whether legal limits have been exceeded is to send a man up on the roof to stand 30 feet downwind of the exhaust. If he becomes nauseated, emissions are judged too high and production makes an adjustment.”
“Scary.”
“All of this goes on close to an elementary school and a housing development. Someday, with the right accident and wind direction…”
“Bhopal waiting to happen.”
‘Every time I leave the plant I think it will be my last, that the next time I drive to the plant there won’t be anything left except a 500 meter crater.”
“With good reason.”
“Everyone who works production is in a state of sleep deprivation because of the shift changes. One guy fell asleep sitting on a forklift while wearing a full face respirator.”
“He must have been exhausted.”
“I have to get out of there. I’m doing rotating 12-hour shifts, 7 to 7. I never feel rested. I cannot get to sleep anymore without taking something. The only topic people want to talk about is how much sleep they’re going to get on their days off. Everyone is sick all the time. I have to get away before my health is ruined, or I see one of the chemical operators leave the plant in a bag.”
Rob looked desperate. I didn’t doubt the truth of anything he told me. I didn’t want to give him false hope.
“I’ll do what I can to get you out of there, Rob, but I cannot promise anything because hiring decisions outside my area are beyond my influence. The people working in whatever group interviews you will make the decision.”
“Rebecca, could we do dinner sometime?”
I wasn’t expecting that. I felt as if I’d been ambushed and was angry with Rob for making me uncomfortable after I had gone out of my way to help him. I contained my anger, but just barely.
“Rob, I’m very married these days.”
“Oh?”
And his tone made me angry, too. His assumption that I would be conveniently free was vexing.
“Anyone I might know?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” I paused, just to let him wonder for a moment. My turn to ambush Rob. “Mason.”
“Mason Eckhart?”
I had seen this reaction before, but it had been awhile since I had had the pleasure of shocking someone I wanted to shock. I enjoyed watching Rob’s face. Like a lot of people, he just did not believe it at first.
“The one, the only.” I smiled. The less said sometimes, the better, and the greater the effect.
“I’m stunned. This is a joke, yes?”
“It’s very real. As real as Flixborough.”
People who knew me from the 1990s and early to mid 2000s at Genomex typically reacted as Rob did. After Incident X, no one thought of Mason as human, except Dr Varady. He worked hard to create that impression, which he maintained in large degree to this day. I did not aggressively defend him with “no, he isn’t like that, not really,” but stayed silent and let people wonder. Mason chose to present himself as he did in the workplace. What he was to his children, to me, and a handful of others, was personal and not the business of anyone else. I did not owe Rob or anyone an explanation of my relationship with Mason. I did not owe anyone an explanation.
“Where are you living?” he asked awkwardly.
“At Genomex. Mason doesn’t have much choice, given his condition.” I had forgotten how many people never gave any thought to where Mason slept, or if he slept. But once upon a time, I had never considered such pragmatic matters, either.
“But where?”
I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. “There is an apartment onsite that accommodates Mason’s health requirements. It’s been there since early 1993.”
1993. I had not done the arithmetic before, but for twenty years now, Mason had lived in that steel cavern when he wasn’t working.
Calling it an “apartment” made it sound more normal than it was. I wasn’t going to detail the UV lights that blasted the place when no one was there, the smooth stainless steel walls, floors, and ceilings that were easy to keep clean and would not support microbial growth, the laminated window, or the airlock entrance. I had never told my brother about these things. Steve would not understand. I didn’t even want to explain how I lived, by my own choosing. Only Samihah knew.
“I never understood how Eckhart kept going…so the Prince of Genomex attempted murder, and nothing was done.”
“Breedlove protected Adam. That’s why he was never prosecuted. Mason was dependent upon Breedlove to stay alive. He had to accept that Adam would not be charged and tried. Breedlove tweaked and fine-tuned treatment from day to day. Nearly two years passed before Mason’s condition stabilized and responded predictably.”
“Adam always was a slippery character. He could justify doing anything in the lab. He would create one monstrosity, and instead of stopping there, he’d make eleven more just to try to prove he had not been wrong in the first place. If just one of the eleven was measurably better than the initial attempt, Adam would convince himself his work was progressing in the right direction. We argued a lot about the ethics of the work we were doing.”
“Adam has been presenting himself as the savior of Genomex mutants. Fortunately, most of them now know Adam is to blame for the pain they’ve endured. Adam even formed a kind of cult he called ‘Mutant X’ that wasn’t about helping mutants, but about Adam’s guilt and need to be loved by his mistakes. Worst of all, it served his curiosity, since he continued his experiments. He created a dashing image of himself in mutant circles. Turning impressions around has not been easy. It’s taken years.”
“Adam believes his stories. That’s what makes him such a good liar. His stories change to suit the circumstances.”
“Did you have any contact with Adam after you quit Genomex?”
“He called me twice the first week I was gone, and asked me to come back. He promised he would make everything right with Breedlove, and that all traces of my resignation would be removed from my personnel records.”
“That’s quite an offer.”
“That was just the first call. When he called again, he offered a large pay increase, 35 %. Whatever our personal and ethical differences, he did want me to work there.”
“And still you turned him down?”
“I had participated in making enough monsters. Where is Adam now? No ordinary prison, I’m sure.”
I paused, unsure of how much to tell Rob.
“Adam lived bizarrely after leaving Genomex. He built a fortress-like stronghold under a mountain, and lived there with his mutant cult. He even had his own plane. None of this came cheaply. We’re still not sure where all of the money came from.”
“I was going to ask.”
“Adam told people he made a lot of money in the crazy stock markets of the 1990s, and he did. Much of the money he originally invested was not his, however, but was siphoned out of Genomex.”
“Adam was a dirty boy.”
“And Mason knew it. Adam was serving time up until a few weeks ago when someone broke him out of prison.”
“Broke him out?”
“Yes, and there hasn’t been a hint or trace of him since. Several federal agencies are actively searching for him.”
“Could he be with his mutant friends? His cult?”
“The Mutant X cult is gone. Two work for Mason, one has her own business, and another is in another prison for multiple robberies. Adam could be anywhere. He could even be dead.”
“Adam’s too flamboyant to stay hidden for long. If he’s alive, Adam needs an audience.”
All too true. Adam did not understand the concept of subtlety.
“I’d be wary of any vague, wildly well-paying job offers that come your way. Adam might be out there recruiting.” I smiled, but I was only half-joking. Adam was capable of anything. Mason’s people were in fact monitoring agencies and headhunters specializing in the recruitment of technical specialties Adam required to staff a small, elite research group.
After lunch, I gave Mason my impressions of Rob Abelmann.
“I did not see anything in his manner that would discourage me from hiring him.”
“Rob was a brilliant man. Also, long ago and far away, my neighbor. So, you would recommend departments interview him?”
“With reservations. He’s been through a lot. He should be given a background check as complete and invasive as one given a new hire, including an examination by Emma.”
“Coming from you, that is a little harsh.”
“Rob’s been through some hard times. He’s brilliant, but we have no way of knowing just how far down he descended. At some point he lost everything and had to start over again. From what he said, he’s never been able to approach being what he was at Genomex. He’s not quite the same man.”
“None of us are the same people we were in those days.”
“No. I won’t say he’s a broken man but the past weighs heavily on him. We should sort through his past carefully, and be wary of possibilities such as substance abuse. Oh, I didn’t see any signs of anything, but he’s been through a lot.”
“Fair enough. We’ll be thorough. Perhaps working here would be good for him. Serious work has serious curative properties.”
“Perhaps. We have to be careful who comes through the front doors. Mason, Rob brings to mind some bad memories of mine.”
“What? He discovered you inadvertently rinsed a pipette jar fewer times than you prefer?” Mason smiled.
I wished I could smile back, but I could not bring myself to do it. I couldn’t hide my discomfort from Mason, nor was I trying to hide anything from him.
“Did Rob Abelmann do something to you?”
People who know only Mason’s Genomex persona find it difficult to believe just how protective he could be. Deeply wounded himself, he hated to see anyone he cared about hurt in any way.
“No, the truth is, I could have behaved better towards him.”
“No one here has to look at him. Getting him an interview isn’t about taking care of your own guilt, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. Eliminating him from consideration because of my wishes is unfair, and he could be valuable here. He worked cheek by jowl with Adam and Breedlove. His insights could be useful to the effort of undoing some of the damage.”
“I cannot imagine you behaving badly towards anyone.”
“Well, these was not my most shining moments, Mason. I’ve learned a lot since then.”
“So have I.”
Mason
I have done terrible things.
I try to block the memories from becoming too active. Adam can absolve himself of the genetic obscenities committed at Genomex by claiming he knew nothing of the application of his work. That is a lie, of course; Adam and Breedlove headed the program. For the twenty years Adam was at Genomex, he knew everything.
Unlike Adam, I cannot tell myself a lie and transform myself into a victim. I did not create the monsters, but for years I protected them, unknowingly at first, but with growing knowledge for many years until Adam’s botched attempt at murder made my leaving Genomex impossible. Hellish memories were all there, just below the surface. If I reflected too much upon my acts, I would be of no use to anyone, not to my children, not to Rebecca, not to myself, and not to all the genetic anomalies I was trying to keep from eventually destroying humanity.
Some of the people to whom I did dreadful things deserved what happened to them. Emma did not deserve what happened to her.
Never in all the years I ran the GSA had I done anything to someone I considered a friend. Yes, I had once considered Paul Breedlove a friend, but that changed when he blocked prosecution of Adam for the attempt on my life. Adam should have been charged and convicted, but Paul wouldn’t have that.
Paul’s fixation upon Adam as the only way any of the programs could go forward was purely emotional, I decided some years after. Rob Abelmann and Breedlove could have carried on without Adam. But Adam was Breedlove’s ‘son’, and Paul was slow to admit to his child’s weaknesses and failings.
I cooled towards Paul Breedlove. I needed Breedlove’s expertise and dedication to keep me alive, but his failure to deal with Adam’s attempt on my life destroyed the personal respect I had for the man. After discovering what and who Paul had been decades before in Germany, all of my self-control was required merely to be civil to him. My respect for Paul as a person and a professional vanished.
He had willingly served under some of the most infamous men of the twentieth century, participating in what they had the effrontery to call ‘medical experiments’. Paul’s hands were soaked in the blood of uncounted innocents, including children. If he wanted to atone for his crimes, he should have taken his skills and practiced medicine in places lacking doctors.
Instead, he made mutants, thousands of them, who cumulatively spelled the doom of humanity. Finally realizing what a mess he had made, he prepared to confess his sins to the world. He had to be silenced before his guilt added public chaos to his catalogue of crimes.
I did not know what to do about Emma. Emma and Jesse I both considered good friends. My affection for them was deep and genuine. I would have done almost anything for them, including a number of illegal acts. I kept Jesse in mind as someday becoming my successor. Who better than a Genomex mutant to understand the GSA mission and the necessity for it?
When the test results came back from St Kats and confirmed my fears that Emma was carrying a daughter with all the abilities of both parents, I knew there was one thing I could not do for Emma and Jesse, and that was allow their daughter to be born. I could not have that bloodline go on.
I almost talked to Rebecca about this. As rational as she was, I doubted she would be able to step back from her emotions, not on this matter. I had trouble sorting this out because of my emotions. I could talk to Rebecca about anything…except this. So, I formed a plan in my mind without consulting anyone.
Maybe I should have talked to Rebecca, anyway. Acting without discussion was not a good idea.
I hated my plan. I loathed myself for being able to think in such terms. My self-loathing brought on by past sins would deepen if I carried out my plan. Further, I knew the personal costs to me were going to be heavy, if not devastating. Rebecca might abandon me. Certainly many other people would.
I weighed the factors over and over, talking myself into the need for personal sacrifice to keep Jessica Anne Kilmartin from existing. Raised by those parents, Jessica very likely would be an exceptional individual, exceptionally intelligent, and exceptionally principled and responsible. But she’d carry her Genomex Taint, possibly bequeath that taint to others, and in just a few generations, to many others.
I could fool other people, but not Rebecca. She knew I was preoccupied with something but she thought it was Adam dominating my thoughts. There was little about Adam to consider. I had no information about him following his escape. The helicopter had been tracked from the prison and found—in forty feet of water.
Adam craved attention. That he had not surfaced in his usual unsubtle fashion was odd and disturbing. Something had changed. Had the man at long last gotten past the need for approval and learnt caution and restraint? Adam? Not a chance.
“Adam is out there somewhere. Eventually, he will surface.”
“Maybe you got lucky and Adam now sleeps with the fishes.”
Rebecca was using her Credibility Voice, but that only worked in technical presentations, not with me. She did not really believe Adam went down with the helicopter. She was only trying to keep me from worrying over Adam until he surfaced. Rebecca knew well as I that Adam was like a toothache. The pain might come and go for a time, but the pain would always come back, eventually requiring action.
“Maybe he does. I’m due for some luck.” Did she know I was humoring her? I don’t know. She probably did. Rebecca’s concern for my well-being was genuine and of long-standing. I wasn’t about do say or do anything to slight or diminish that concern. “Realistically, whoever blasted Adam out of prison probably planned the exit flight with consummate care, and would like the searchers to believe the trail ends ten meters down.”
“That’s an expensive piece of hardware to toss away into the water.”
I nodded. “Adam never spares any expense. He’s the one who built the Zen hideaway with a meditation pool and garden in the middle of a mountain.” How typically ‘Adam’ Sanctuary had been: grandiose, impractical, poorly sited, all while he gave his followers an allowance, as if they were no more than children. Well, Brennan was a case of failure to mature—but evidence indicated he supplemented his allowance with petty thievery. Adam never wondered where Brennan got the money for his fleet of rusty old cars?
“Just thinking about living and sleeping with millions of tons of rock over my head makes me claustrophobic. I don’t like driving through tunnels.”
“Adam hid like a rat in the sewers. I don’t know how convinced anyone to stay down there with him. Sanctuary was dank, musty, and chilly. Water seeped in constantly.”
“Which made it so easy to destroy. Turn off the dehumidifiers and the pumps, and the place filled with water. How could Adam have been so foolish in site selection?”
Briefly, I relished the memory of the destruction of Sanctuary. After removing the electronics and scientific hardware, much of which belonged to Genomex and still had Genomex property tags attached, restoring any personal items and taking every record we could find, Jesse and I went through the entire facility, turning off the dehumidifiers and pumps that kept Sanctuary livable. Then we left in no great hurry. Sanctuary required about nine days for the underground river to put everything under water.
With Adam locked away in prison, I wanted to be certain he would not have his Zen rathole to hide in should he ever be paroled.
I’m not inclined towards destructive acts, but in this case, putting Sanctuary under water made a good deal of sense. Lacking his Zen nest, where was Adam hiding?
Rebecca’s voice brought me back to the discussion.
“Adam wasn’t perfect. Breedlove did a good job constructing him, but Adam was not perfect. He was never pragmatic. Consider the way he handled ground transportation: for a time he used cars without plates. Police notice those. All he had to do was create some corporate fiction and register his cars in the company name. But Adam didn’t do that. Then, when he did begin driving cars with plates, he drove expensive cars, cars a good many people would notice. Adam just did not think through possibilities in a practical way.”
Emma, I owe you my life. How can I even consider the plans I am making for you?
“Lilith is probably an improvement on the original design. She did her work and very little else, unlike Adam who required constant adulation from someone, anyone.”
And Jesse, this will destroy Jesse.
“Breedlove would not have built a second android if he didn’t believe the next would be better than the first. Paul did not waste effort.”
“Lili was always quiet and unobtrusive, but she did not appear unusually close to Breedlove. Now I know why.”
“So much going on beneath the surface,” I said, absently.
So much going on now, just out of sight. When I have done this thing, will Rebecca ever speak to me again? Will I have anyone left to me?
“All corporations are like this. The only differences are the stories and the darkness of the secrets. My brother Steve has a lot of corporate war stories.” She paused. “Mason? Are you okay?”
“Yes…I need to be slightly more careful in my choice of whole foods. I’ll be fine.”
Rebecca was too astute to be put off by this. I wasn’t given to whining, and she wasn’t given to nagging, so she’d observe me carefully, and then decide whether my stoicism was overruling my generally good sense.
After tomorrow, will Rebecca give a damn whether I am alive or dead?
I could not be sure. But I was certain that if I waited any longer, I would lose my nerve to act.
I delayed acting as long as I dared, shipping Jesse across country to a conference, conveniently getting him out of the way for a few days. I assembled all the people I required, all the skills and expertise. For bodyguards that morning, I selected a pair of psionics from a Gulf coast office. They were not as gifted as Emma; no one was as gifted as Emma. This pair would be able to detect her attacks, if things came to that. I prayed they would not.
|
|
|
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
