Part 20 (1/2)

”I'm not doing it.”

”Not doing what?”

”I'm not taking Lily to your brother.”

Caleb's eyes darted to Lily nervously. ”Why?”

”You know,” June began in a new breezy voice like an overrehea.r.s.ed anchorwoman, ”Shane's going to tell us about some chemical that he wants to put into her, how much of a miracle it is. But Buddhist monks live to be a hundred without ever taking any medicine.”

Caleb smiled calmly. He understood now. ”You talked to Mack about it.”

She pushed a strand of hair away from her mouth with her gloved hand and frowned. ”Even if Mack said he would buy us plane tickets today, I don't think it's right.”

”What did he say to you?”

”He's worried about you.”

”What else?”

Her voice got harsher. ”He told me how these drug companies shoot people up with drugs they know nothing about, just to learn if there are horrible side effects. How they give babies drugs for adults just to make them be quiet.”

He shook his head; she was even using Mack's inflections now.

”Mack's the one who can help her.” She pointed to him. ”He healed your knee. And Kevin's diabetes.”

”But he's not helping her, Bluebird. She's the same as when you came here. It's been ten months.”

”She's not getting worse. He's saving her every day.” Her voice wavered and tears began slipping silently from her eyes.

”Is that what he's saying?”

”I'm so lucky Mack took us in. How many people show up here, and he turns them all down? But he accepted us. Without him, we'd be living in some studio apartment in Taos, I'd be working in the bar all day, with some day care watching Lily. I love you, Caley, but I didn't come here for you.”

A sudden shortness of breath caused his chest to contract. Behind June, Lily's swing had slowed, and she sat still, waiting for them to notice. A sharp wind blew through the playground, rustling the ends of her reddish hair. All she had in this life was her mother, he understood that. All decisions were June's to make.

”If staying here is what you think's right for Lily, then that's what you do. It's simple. You're her mother.”

June was watching him closely.

He met her soft eyes. ”I love her.”

June took a long breath. The sun s.h.i.+fted behind the smoke-white sky, and June lifted Lily out of the plastic swing. They carried her across the playground to a snow-covered slide. Caleb brushed it clean of ice and crouched at its bottom, waiting for Lily's laughing face. He felt, in this cold morning, like he imagined a family would. This could be enough, perhaps, to sustain him for some time.

When Lily grew tired, June loaded her back into Mack's Jeep, and Caleb kissed them each on their foreheads. Something hard and ruinous was forming in his stomach.

He turned and began his four-hour run, ten miles along the wintry road, a backcountry climb up the side of the snow-packed mountain, and another twenty miles through the ice-covered trails, back home.

PART THREE.

Knockouts.

1.

”Good night, Doctor Acharn,” Yasmine El-Fayed waved to Prajuk.

Yasmine was his youngest microbiologist, an expert splicer who had come to him from Amgen. Usually, Prajuk made time to talk with her, wanting to keep tabs on the mood in the lab. Tonight he barely heard her.

When the door closed behind Yasmine, Prajuk glanced around the empty room. In stark contrast to the small room Shane had rented, Helixia's labs were immense and immaculate. Stainless steel benches, sparkling gla.s.s beakers and vials, temperature controlled, and videotaped with three cameras at all times. The leftover molecules of chemicals, media, and the people who had been standing together all day in the room, along with the occasional mouse, were dissipated by an eight-million-dollar air-filtration system. The work done here continued even after the human beings departed, as the bacterium, the spores, the virus cells, reproduced, multiplied, spread in their petri dishes.

It was ten at night. Down the long corridor doors opened and closed. Prajuk composed himself and produced a beige key card from his s.h.i.+rt pocket. At the far end of the corridor, he pressed it and his forefinger against a plastic rectangle, which read his fingerprint and card code, emitted a clicking sound, and popped the storage-room door open.

Swallowing nervously, Prajuk went inside. A small desk, normally occupied by a short Honduran kid with a perpetually runny nose, sat empty, and Prajuk walked into the stockroom unhindered. Petri dishes stood in circular towers like stacked coffee-cup lids. Cardboard boxes full of test tubes, microscope filters and lenses, latex gloves, 3M masks, lots of stuff from 3M actually, were shelved to overflow. Prajuk moved past them to the heavy equipment. On one side of the wall were two top-loading centrifuges.

They were squat boxes, like small was.h.i.+ng machines, the size of a desktop computer. Prajuk considered them for a few seconds, judging their weight. On Sunday he had done something to his lower back while jogging past the Marina Safeway. He exercised a deep squat, as they had taught him in the Khon Kaen gymnasium of his youth, placed his hands on the side of a centrifuge, slid them under, and lifted.

Carefully Prajuk carried the centrifuge to the door and glanced again at the desk. Should he leave a note? Sign for it somehow? He determined that his need for a centrifuge was impossible to justify; better to hope it would not be missed. He pushed the door open with his foot and started down the long, quiet hall, perspiring noticeably.

Prajuk decided to take the stairs; there was little chance that he would run into anybody there. He stumbled with the heavy instrument for a flight and set it down, promising himself a cigarette upon completion. Then he lifted it again and finally pushed through the heavy door into the lobby of the Research building. Here was where he might be required to provide some explanation. But he met only the evening security guard, who said nothing as Prajuk set the centrifuge down and scanned his card. The benefits, Prajuk swallowed, of long-term employment.

Outside, he had difficulty spotting his car. A deep chill blew off the ocean. Why had he not worn his coat? His fingers began to burn. Soon they would numb, he thought, and he would drop the d.a.m.n thing and break his foot. He was running out of bicep strength, and his lower back was protesting in a way it was now impossible to ignore. Sweat poured between his shoulder blades. In his pocket was his car key, with its red panic b.u.t.ton, and Prajuk would have stopped to depress it but for the attention it would turn on him. Finally he spotted the white Volvo he had driven for almost a year a few rows away. He had just about reached it when he heard a voice.

”Doctor Acharn?”

Prajuk turned around and did not see, as he had briefly visualized, three armed Thais in black turtlenecks aiming a.s.sault weapons.

It was Jon Benatti, the a.s.sistant Director of Science, and Anthony Leone's deputy.

Benatti approved budgets for equipment, raises, and new hires, though not the hires themselves, which was Anthony's province. Benatti's thin blond hair was combed over a balding patch, accentuating an elongated face and jaw. Prajuk set the big beige box down on the pavement, and to his horror its top popped open.

”Good to see you,” Benatti smiled affably. He glanced down at the centrifuge.

Prajuk nodded, sweating. ”Yes.”

”How's Emerion going?”

”Oh quite well,” Prajuk explained brightly. ”This thing, it always goes slowly but we hope to be in Phase One this quarter.”

”Taking your work home with you?”

It might be best, he felt, to act as if he did this every night. ”What do you hear about Roche?” he asked Benatti casually. Rumors were flying that a joint research project with the European giant might be extended. Some rumors went as far as an approaching takeover bid.

Benatti gave him a poker face. ”Over my head. Have you asked Anthony?”