COSMOS magazine

Friday, July 18

He woke in the depths of the night. A dim green light buzzed his eyes. He reached out sleepily, tried to swat it away. It swung around behind him, dimmed further, hovered at his left ear. For a moment it spooked the hell out of him, until he recalled the toys Alex had been playing with in the back of the Humvee. Some fancy Mattel gadget probably. A tiny insect voice spoke.

"Hey, partner."

"Alex!" His joy and relief were overwhelming. "Where are you, little buddy?"

"A long ways off, Wayne."

Wayne came wider awake. No toy, then. Some product of the kid's genius.

"I want you to do something really carefully," the kid's voice told him. "I'm going to pop open this transporter, and you'll find a micro-syringe inside. It's loaded with the final regulator protein. You know how to make a tourniquet?"

Yusuf poked his head out the rusty old car, stared at Wayne and his ghostly djinn visitor, shuddered, withdrew.

"Yeah, I know how to do that." Wayne closed his eyes, felt the flood of relief washing through his muscles, imagined that he felt the tightness inside his skull easing already. "I can do that."

Tuesday, July 23

James gathered together on screen the package of intelligence he'd compiled on the movements of Dr. Roberta Treadwell and her staff. They had vanished from the face of the earth for several days, and it had taken a considerable amount of legwork to trace them. Greyhound to the Mexican border, private jet to Jalisco State. That much confirmed the anonymous report from Blick's local asset. Conference with "Peters", Gibson to a high probability according to the Bayesian filters, then back to San Antonio by the reverse route. Pointless spy vs. spy shenanigans, he thought, curling his lip. Do they take us for amateurs? He emailed the package and his crisp top summary report to Bruce Blick, faintly amused by the thought that his employer, in the fastnesses of Mexico's Hidalgo state, was physically nearer to "Peters" than James Branigan was himself.

Tuesday, July 23

Branigan was wrong about that. Blick was already in central Texas, flown in by BlickPharm chopper, beside himself with frustration. If you want something done right, he told himself savagely, you God-damned do it yourself.

"Get me a rental car," he told a flunky before settling down for an afternoon nap. "Some piece of crap nobody will notice. Not such a piece of crap that it will crap out on me on the highway. And a tranquilliser handgun. Something that will take down an elephant."

I'm not leaving anything to chance, he thought. Nobody will see me until I have the bitch laid out like a side of beef, and then those who do will be restricted to my own staff and nobody else.

He once more opened the emailed package of covertly gathered information and confirmed his itinerary.

He rang for his butler. "Bring me my tailor, Franz."

Wednesday, July 24

Sonora was quiet most of the year. During dove and deer seasons the place came to life as hunters and their tourist dollars showed up from all over the country. This was one of the quiet months, the time she loved to come to her late father's ranch for a day or two.

By the time Roberta Treadwell got to the western boundary of her ranch, she was certain the green Chevy was following her. She turned down the gravel road that went to the bat cave; the green car turned in after her. Football sized rocks in the road must be tearing up the underside of the city car; he must want something awfully bad to keep on coming like that. Somebody from Blick's organization, she told herself. He is just never going to give up.

When she got to the old Comanche camp site Roberta slowed to a stop, got out slowly. She was bent down, reaching in to take her rifle from the gun rack, when the green Chevy pulled up just behind. She left the rifle where it was and straightened. "Hey there, I think you must have lost your way."

A man got out, a decade older than Roberta, wearing a ten gallon hat. "I just want to talk to you," he called respectfully, in a hoarse voice that was trying to disguise its origins. "I apologize for coming onto your land without asking permission first."

"Who are you?" Roberta felt no pressing need to introduce herself.

"My name's... Bruce Gage. I'm in television, nature documentaries, you know."

"Yeah, and?" Good Christ, could it really be Blick in person? She had never managed to find a photograph of the billionaire more current than twenty years ago. Like the fabled Howard Hughes, he was a notable recluse and eccentric. If this were really Blick in the flesh, could he be so contemptuous of her that he'd use his own given name? He must have a concealed weapon. Her hand went again to the rifle, and the man's gaze followed it.

"Hunting, eh?" he said. "Good! I'm interested in coming out here for some hunting next fall, maybe make a show out of it. Unusual landscape, you see."

"Hunting, right." Blick or not, this man was neither a hunter nor a television executive. "You one of those PETA pests," she asked, "aiming to stir up trouble against law-abiding hunters?"

"Hell no, Roberta," he said, in his odd accent. "My father used to take me hunting when I was a kid. Attractive land you have here." The man looked out across the pasture toward the creek, and Roberta could tell by his eyes, disconcertingly, that he really meant it. "Would you mind if I walk around a little? Just to get a feel for it?"

"I'll walk with you. How did you know my name?"

The man paused a fraction of a second, recovered instantly. "Sorry, I guessed you must be George Milton's daughter. My program researchers tell me he owned this land before he passed away recently."

"Yeah, well, Daddy loved this place. It's pretty out here, all right. He spent almost forty years in the Alaskan bush, and he loved it there, too. Told me land up north has its own kind of beauty. But he never did completely get over being homesick for Texas. Guess that's why he came back after they took his land."

A sudden gust of wind whooshed around them, and Bruce clutched his absurd hat with both hands. Roberta frowned. Anxiety began to curdle in her.

"They took his land?" Bruce shook his head.

"Yeah. City of Fairbanks just kept growing, and after a while it swallowed up my daddy's place. Then they raised the taxes so there was no way he could pay them."

"Swine." That sounded sincere. "What happened to his property after they ran him off? Sorry, hope you don't mind my prying, but this is—"

"George didn't like to talk about that." Roberta took out the rifle, shut the door to her pickup, and turned away from the road. Every time she thought too hard about what had happened with her father's land up in Alaska, and what it had done to his soul, she ran the risk of crying, and she couldn't stand for people to see her cry. Doubly so, if this were Blick

"Look here, Bruce." She stooped, picked up what looked like a loose flat stone from the ground. "See this? It's a flint spear head. Used to be Indians all over this land. Comanches mostly towards the end, but before that they say there were other people." She handed the flint to Bruce. His hands were soft, the pale fingers of a recluse who had others do everything for him. They didn't go with his being out here alone with her. But then people are complex, she thought. Nobody is just one simple thing.

"I'd like to have lived back then." Bruce rubbed the spear head between his fingers and thumb.

"Me too. Most women prefer civilization, I know, and most men. Watch your step there, sir. Don't get in that cactus." Roberta took Bruce's arm. The man pulled away from her, then relaxed, allowed her to steer him around a large prickly pear.

Wednesday, July 24

Bruce sat himself down carefully at the top of a low hill, still holding the flint scraping tool someone had abandoned hundreds of years earlier. It fit comfortably in his hand, as though made for him. Perhaps it had been. Looking out at the creek winding past the foot of the hill, Bruce imagined the smell of cooking fires and the sounds of tribal life. So the nomadic Comanche people used to return year after year to set up their tent village on this site. This exposed country could hardly be more different from the lushness of Mexico, but it conveyed a curious sense of freedom. Sometimes he resented his self-imposed isolation and exile, resented it bitterly. It was his obligation.

"I wish we could go back to the way things were then," he said to Roberta. "Wipe out all the years of civilization, like erasing a mistake."

"Well now, my daddy was happy in Alaska where he could step outside his front door and bag a moose for his yearly supply of meat, but it's not for me. Bruce, I'd be dead now if it were not for antibiotics and tetanus shots. And I guess you would be too. We couldn't survive without pharmaceuticals, not any longer."

Was she baiting him? Had she realized his identity? He had over-reached in mockingly using his own given name. Roberta Treadwell was no fool. And now, in his pleasure at these untainted surroundings, Bruce had almost forgotten his motive for being here. "Well, you're right, Roberta. I'm glad there are people like you working on new ways to fight disease."

"You're an astute man, Mr.... What was the surname again?"

Yes, certainly baiting him. Blick's nerves thrilled. Her body, her tissues, surely swarmed with whatever Gibson had introduced in his extreme treatment. Rutherford's rogue asset had vanished from the morgue in Houston after being shot dead by police, the damned scientist and the lawyer woman and her kid had eluded his UAV and police alike, and now MTJ labs were locked down as tight as a goddamn nun's twat. This woman in retreat on her own land was his last best hope, and this the last available opportunity to reach her. Fell her, out here away from prying eyes, and haul her carcass in for the most thorough biological investigation of all time. He bared his teeth unconsciously. He saw that she held the rifle loosely in her right hand, crouched nearby gazing down the small rise.

"Just Bruce," he said. "No call to be formal on a day like this. It sounds like you're doing some really important research down there in San Antonio, Dr. Treadwell."

"You bet, Mr. Blick." She rose, stood over him, all pretence at an end. "Why, just the other month my researchers came up with a drug that makes animals smarter. Maybe people, eventually. Isn't that something? That was before the bomb destroyed a quarter of our lab, of course."

"I saw that on our news program, Roberta. Terrible. A tragedy." Bruce shook his head.

"Yep, but that's not going to stop us mad Frankenscientists, is it? We have a new project on the boil now, Bruce, we're going to end up with a whole world full of deathless Einsteins. Or smart mice at least." Roberta Treadwell laughed, started back along the track. "Enough of this nonsense, Mr. Blick. You're going to climb in your car and drive the hell away now and leave me in peace. If I ever see you on my land again, I'll have no hesitation in shooting you. That goes for your damned flunkies as well." She turned on him, face blotchy with sudden fury. "They killed my father's dog, you God-cursed bastard!"

Bruce's spirits soared. He would put a stop to this abomination. Kill the bitch before she could do anything worse to pervert the human race. He leaped at her without warning, slammed the rifle aside, thrust his big stupid western hat in her face. It confused her, put her off-balance. She was a big woman, though, and ten years his junior, and she slammed him back painfully. No time for the tranquilliser. With the ancient flint scraper stone, its edge still sharp after centuries, he slashed Treadwell's throat along the heavy carotid artery and saw her blood spray, then pulse and dribble, over the dry soil and stony ground. Bright red splattered the sparse desert flowers and his own hands and face. He let the warm blood drip down his fingers. Blick was in a furious, exultant rage. When the woman stopped jerking, he shoved her fallen body aside and took out the phone. Its GPS locator told them precisely where he stood in the stark open ground.

"I need to be picked up, James," he said. "Get a transfer vehicle here right now. And ready the San Marcos pathology unit to prep a body for autopsy and immediate lab work. Moderate containment."