Part 41 (1/2)

I'd been living with this syndrome for six days, but it felt like six months. Or six years. Time had sped up and slowed down, compressed and expanded. I was prepared to leave this world, conditioned to give up the ghost through either the death of my body or the loss of function in my central nervous system.

No matter what happened, my view of life on this planet would never be the same. I would take nothing for granted. Not after burying Harold Newcastle and Stan Beebe. Not after seeing Joel McCain, Jackie Feldbaum, and Holly Riggs turn into nerveless lumps. Not after escaping Caputo's trailer explosion, watching my house burn down around my ears, not after thinking my children were dead. After hammering a writing utensil into a man's brain. Nothing would be the same.

Life was a matter of time. If I'd learned anything this week, I'd learned time was what you made of it.

When I looked away from my image in the window, I caught DiMaggio staring at my hands. ”That's right. They're waxy. I hear it's big this season.”

”When did that start?” She joined the others behind the desk.

”My hands? I told you about it. Six days ago. Which makes tomorrow my last day, doesn't it? I may drop at any second.”

The room grew silent. I knew if I did drop, one of them would pick up the gun and shoot me. No need for the world to try to figure out why I was brain-dead. Better to shoot a maniacal ecdysiast in the middle of the night than to have people listening to my theories about Canyon View Systems. I waved the gun in the air. The man seemed most frightened, possibly because he thought I was going to shoot him first.

He was wrong.

DiMaggio would be first.

”I was in your shoes,” I said, ”I'd stand around and wait me out. That's what you've been doing all week, isn't it?”

”I have no idea what you're talking about,” DiMaggio said.

63. A HISTORY RIFE WITH UNUSABLE BRAINS.

It occurred to me that the man and woman with DiMaggio thought Donovan was on the floor with a pen hammered into his eye socket because I'd run amok, not because I'd been defending myself. That they thought I was naked and holding a gun because I was stark raving mad, not because my clothes had been shredded off during our struggle.

That I had arrived this way.

That I'd been running around Redmond bare-a.s.sed all night. For all they knew, the last stage of the syndrome was insanity. Or nudity. Or both. h.e.l.l, for all I I knew, the last stage of the syndrome knew, the last stage of the syndrome was was insanity. Or nudity. Or both. insanity. Or nudity. Or both.

In fact, for all I knew, I was as crazy as a s.h.i.+thouse rat. I wondered if anything I'd been saying made sense. I wondered if Stephanie had actually found an antidote and stuck me with a hypodermic or I'd imagined it.

DiMaggio wasn't afraid of me, perhaps because she had a built-in arrogance that staved off self-doubt, just as it staved off second thoughts. We didn't have a woman here who second-guessed decisions. No. This was the sort of person who could leave a litter of kittens in the woods, justify it in her own mind, and never think twice about it.

”I don't know how much money you guys are going to get when you sell the company, but I'll be rooting for you from the nursing home. New cars. Fine houses. Hire your own architect. Do it up right. Get yourself a Ferrari. What's it like to know you're responsible for so many broken lives? You murdered Chief Newcastle in North Bend and two others in Tennessee. Probably six more, actually. My friend Stan committed suicide when he found out what was happening to him.”

”That's not how it is,” said the woman to DiMaggio's right. ”That is not how it is at all. We were not responsible.”

”That's right. You're not responsible. But you are are to blame.” to blame.”

”Shut your trap, Clarice,” DiMaggio said.

But Clarice wouldn't keep quiet. ”We never meant for any of this to happen. None of us even knew it was happening until a day ago.”

”Who told you that? Marge knew last February. Her niece called her and told her.”

Clarice turned to DiMaggio. ”You told us-”

”Shut up!” Smoothing the front of her blouse with her palms, DiMaggio maintained perfect posture, unflappable. ”Hush now, Clarice. I'll handle this.”

But Clarice hadn't resolved herself for any moral ambiguity, didn't want to be in the wrong ethically, even if she might be legally. Her thin eyebrows bobbing to her words like broken winds.h.i.+eld wipers, she appealed to me. ”This is no different than when an airline carrier has a plane go down. People in business do their best, but despite their best, they have accidents. People die. It's not because somebody wants them to die. It's just the way the world is.”

”Shut up, Clarice,” DiMaggio said, not unkindly.

”No. Go ahead,” I said. ”Talk to me. I'm on day seven. It's Sunday by now. I get arrested, the earliest I'd get bail would be Monday morning when the courts open. By that time I'll be in a big white diaper. In fact, I think I can feel my mind slipping even as we speak.” I rather liked the effect this last sentiment had on them, particularly on Clarice, who hunched her shoulders and tried to make herself smaller.

Even though I'd warned them to keep away from it, the man turned his back on me and looked out the window. Maybe he was too embarra.s.sed to face me. Or maybe he was trying to signal the cops outside. Then, like a strutting bird of prey, DiMaggio stepped forward, defiant and, even at her age, still striking.

”You don't understand what's going on. This is groundbreaking. For some time now we've been working on a way to encode DNA into liquid metal. I don't expect a layman to understand why we're doing this or what it will accomplish, but I'll tell you anyway. We've been working with positively charged metal complexes that are known to liquefy substances. Because DNA has an innate capacity for recognizing complementary sequences of itself, it's the perfect tool for making electronic circuits. I won't bore you with the details. I will tell you we're not the only ones working on it, although we were the first. As you might suppose, one of the problems in a new field is that you end up handling chemical compounds n.o.body's used before. You take precautions, you do everything you can to ensure the safety of your workers and of the general public, but accidents happen. To say that we meant for them to happen, that we provoked them, is just plain myopic. If there was anything we could do, we would have done it.”

I wanted to tell her I knew about the antidote, that I had a dose of it in my a.s.s. But I needed to give Stephanie time to get away. ”My brain turns to mush, and all you do is turn up the volume on your doublespeak.”

”Mr. Swope, we've been running on a shoestring since the day my husband died.”

”I can see that,” I said, glancing around the redecorated office.

”Philip was the one we counted on to bring in funding, and after he was gone it began to dry up. Any lawsuit against Canyon View would have bankrupted the company-probably before we even got to court-stopped the project cold, forever ended any hope of those people recovering. You see, we're not only working on practical DNA applications for microelectronic circuitry and genetic engineering, but even though there was no profit in it, we've been working on an antidote for D number fifty-six.”

”You admit it was your company caused those brain deaths?”

”I'm a.s.suming Achara told you about D number fifty-six.”

”I found it in your vault over there.”

”You do persist, don't you?”

”A character flaw.”

DiMaggio said, ”Tananger Bryers is all set to buy our company. They will be in a position to make sure this never occurs again. They have the funding to-”

”Bribe and corrupt all over the world. They were the ones responsible for that chemical spill in Pakistan where twenty-eight hundred people died. Tanager Bryers won't make sure this never happens again. You You should have done that.” should have done that.”

”Freak accidents,” DiMaggio said. ”One in a billion.”

”Go tell that to your niece in Tacoma General.”

I stared hard at DiMaggio.

DiMaggio stared back, basking in the confidence that science and law were on her side. I kicked the Bible that had gone unnoticed. It cartwheeled across the floor until it hit Donovan's leg. He groaned. ”You were s.h.i.+pping this stuff across the country in Bibles,” I said. ”You had accidents in Chattanooga and North Bend and G.o.d knows where else. You lost people right here in this plant. Right under your nose.”

”Books make good insulators,” Donovan said, from the floor. We all looked down at him in astonishment. ”Phil found a warehouse full of 'em. Got 'em for a song.”

”Why don't you tell us how your husband really died?” I asked.

The room grew silent. Clarice froze. The bald man's pate was beginning to s.h.i.+ne with perspiration. I had the feeling they'd all bought into the heart attack story, that Marge's hesitation in the face of my accusation was giving them pause.

DiMaggio sat down in her padded swivel chair and began tidying her desktop, as if keeping busy would fend off my interrogation. ”My husband worked himself to death trying to make Canyon View a success. William Armitage was a thief and a liar.”

”Who you had killed.”