Clade (14 page)

“But, Mama. This isn’t a good time.”

“No buts.” She pushes herself forward. “This can’t wait.”

He phrases the next question delicately—“Is there a problem with your medication?”—allowing for a wide latitude of responses that includes legal issues as well as medical ones.

“Not anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“I stopped taking it.”

“You did? Why?”

She sniffs. “It was giving me diarrhea.”

“Mama,” he says, “that’s no reason—”

She raises one arm, ratcheting it up. “Don’t tell me what’s good for me and what isn’t. You haven’t been on the toilet all day.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what’s going on?”

She scolds him with a look. “All you need to know,
mijo
, is that if you don’t get over here pronto, you’re going to regret it. Maybe for the rest of your life.”

“All right, Mama.”
Some
thing is up. “I’ll be right there.”

FOURTEEN

When Rigo gets to his mother’s ap he has to stand around outside, waiting as usual for her to open the door.

“Okay,” he says, exasperated, when she finally lets him. “I’m here. What’s so important?”

She locks the door behind him. Wordlessly points to her bedroom down the hall. Maybe in the half hour it’s taken him to pod over here her jaws have seized up, turning her into a mute. Either that, or she’s giving him the silent treatment. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He creeps down the hall, wary of what he’ll find. She’s got incense sticks burning. The smoke fills his mouth with the taste of salted honey. Votive candles rumba on her sad excuse for an altar. Maybe she’s got a lover and the dude died in the act, had a heart attack or a stroke at the climactic moment.
Coitus
terminus
, or whatever the Latin is.

The door is open a crack. Rigo gives it a little nudge, widening the gap to reveal the dresser beyond the foot of the bed, the mattress, then a person standing next to the headboard.

“Anthea?”

She straightens, turns to him. Behind her, Rigo sees the pale, sickly face of a kid nestled in the pillow.

Ibrahim.

“Sacred shit,” Varda says.

Rigo takes a step forward.

Anthea presses a finger to her lips, pulls Rigo from the room into the hallway, and throws her arms around him in relief or desperation, maybe both. One of those rib-crushing hugs that leaves him gasping for air. Another few seconds and he’ll suffocate. His mother sneezes, retreats to the living room, giving them some privacy.

“I’m glad you’re here,
papi
,” Anthea says, relaxing her tourniquet-tight embrace.

“Me too, baby.” It’s hard to be pissed when she sweet-talks him like that. “I got here as quick as I could.” He cups her chin, strokes the small of her back below her midriff blouse. Her bare skin leaves a bitter quinine taste in his mouth and Rigo cuts things short. It’s not as if they can do anything with Ibrahim in the bedroom and his mother in the living room. He wants to ask her about the shit he found in her drawers, but that will have to wait, too.

“What’re you doing here?” he says.

“I couldn’t go to my sister’s. That’s the first place BEAN would look. Same with your ap. So I hopped back online and called your mom, hoping maybe she’d know of a safehouse through the church. Instead, she offered to take us in.”

“Just like that?” It doesn’t sound like his moms. The mother he knows is supercautious. Plays it safe all the time, doesn’t take risks. Never bends the rules, not even a little.

Anthea brushes a strand of hair from her cheek, red nails flashing under the tired glow of the biolum panels. “I spec this is as good a place as any. Me being here won’t look suspicious. I’m just visiting my future mother-in-law.”

This is the first time either of them has brought up the subject of marriage, hauled it out into the open. All he can think is that she picked a hell of a time.

Rigo shakes his head. “I wish you’d left me a message, you know? When I got back, your boss called and asked if I knew where you were. That’s the first I heard you were in trouble.”

Anthea blinks. “Got back from where?”

“Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Xengineering has a reclade facility down there. I leave for Tiresias first thing in the morning.”

“You were recladed?”

“Temporarily, for the project. It’s not permanent.”

She gnaws on her ragged lips, as moth-eaten as peach blossoms. “How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. Two, three days. As long as it takes to set up the new ecotecture and make sure everything’s working okay.”

She pouts. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“Me too,
mami
.” The thing is, he means it. “What about Ibrahim? I can’t believe you took off with him the way you did.”

Anthea sniffs, takes a step back. Cuts a worried glance to the room. “He’s really sick. I don’t know how much longer he can . . .” Her voice, brittle as thin ice, cracks. She swallows.

“Why don’t you just turn him in?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t. If I do, BEAN will deport him.”

“From what Tissa said, that might be the best thing.”

Anthea wipes her nose, blinks eyes as bloodshot and puffy as exit wounds from a drive-by. “He’s not a terrorist.”

“How do you know? I mean, for sure?”

“Because there’s evidence he’s part of a politicorp biodependency project. The terrorist spiel is just a bullshit cover story cooked up by BEAN to make people afraid of him. The only people he’s dangerous to are the people he escaped from.”

“Even it that’s true, you can’t just leave him here. You have to do something. If you don’t . . .”

She bites a thumbnail. “I talked to Beto, gave him a blood sample. He’s going to get back to me as soon as he cooks up an antipher.”

“How? You haven’t exactly been available.”

“I’m back online now. Ibrahim’s dosed with a broad-spectrum antisense. So it’ll take a while for BEAN to locate him. I figure we have a day. Two at the most before we have to move.”

“What if Beto can’t cook up an antipher for Ibrahim? What are you going to do then?”

She folds the thumb into her palm, squeezes it. “Running with him is better than letting BEAN get hold of him. If that happens he doesn’t stand a chance. This way, at least he’ll be cared for.”

“Except you’re putting yourself at risk. Your job, everything. Not to mention my moms.”

“It was her decision to take us in, not mine. She insisted. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“The only reason she agreed to help is because she’s lonely. Wants somebody around she can rap with. Keep her company.” It’s the only thing that makes sense. Either that or she doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.

Anthea’s eyes flash, wet with anger. She’s on the verge of tears. “You can be such a
pendejo
sometimes. You’re just worried I might get
you
in trouble.”

“Getting asked to work on the Tiresias project is a great opportunity for me,” he says. “Chances like this don’t come along every day for somebody who started out at the bottom. I don’t want to blow it.”

“You mean you don’t want
me
to blow it.”

“Whatever.” He’s not going to deny it, even if he doesn’t come right out and say it to her face. “The thing is, this could be the break I’ve been waiting for. Not only for me but for us. I’ve been busting my ass. Fuck this up and I won’t get a second chance. You know that. One strike and I’m out. I’ll be a goddamn vat rat the rest of my life.”

“So what I’m hearing from you is that your career is more important than a child’s life.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She always takes things wrong, twists the words that come out of his mouth.

“Well, that’s what it sounds like me.”

He runs a hand over his head. “All I’m saying is that we need to be careful. We can’t afford any missteps, or we could lose everything. Including Ibrahim.”

“So what do you suggest? That I take Ibrahim someplace where BEAN can find him and sentence him to death?”

Things are getting out of hand. Histrionic.

“You know that’s not what I want,
mami
.” Rigo softens his voice, hopes to tone down the bad vibes, coax her out of her sour mood.

The puffiness around her eyes is worse. She balls her hands. “What exactly do you want?”

Rigo looks down the hall to the living room. His mother is sure to be listening in. Takes to gossip like a fish to water. This is not what he wanted. He wanted to come home, have a nice dinner, cuddle some, scratch each other’s backs. Now, not only is he going to be frustrated but he could be carrying some heavy emotional luggage with him on the trip, shit that will weigh him down, no matter how far into the back of his mind he shoves it. He can’t recall the last time they had a full-on knock-down drag-out. Things have been smooth as silk between them for months. Now this.

“Anthea. Listen.” Rigo reaches for her. But she jerks away, out of reach. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t know what got into me. What I was thinking.”

This doesn’t mollify her entirely—her face remains swollen, inflamed—but it’s a beginning. Her fists unclench.

“Can I see him?” Rigo asks.

That stops her, catches her off guard.

“I’m serious,” he says. “If it’s okay, I mean. I don’t want to put him at risk, or anything.” For what, Rigo’s not sure. But he’s treading lightly, doesn’t want to take any chances with either of them.

“All right.” She seems uncertain, but willing to cut him some slack.

She leads him into the room. The kid is a mess. Skinny. Deathly pale. Reminds Rigo of an enlarged version of the skeleton hiding in the drawer. He stares at the outline of emaciated limbs under the sheets, the curled shoulders, collapsed chest, and hollow cheeks. The kid has as much negative space as positive. Shadow is gradually replacing the blood in his veins. His breathing is rapid, shallow palpitations. The air in the bedroom is sickly sweet. Rotten.

“What’s with his breath?” Rigo asks. Bending close to the kid’s parted lips, he sniffs.

Anthea cuts him an odd look. “What are you talking about?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

She shakes her head. “All I can smell is candles and incense.”

Rigo places a hand on the kid’s forehead. He’s hot, feverish. The taste of sugared milk fills Rigo’s mouth. The touch has a calming effect on him. The kid, too. His breathing slows and deepens; he turns his face toward Rigo the way a flower turns to light. His eyes stir under the dried husks of his lids. He slides a bird-claw thin hand from under the rumpled sheets, raises it to Rigo’s hand, and grasps his fingers.

“Thank God.” Anthea breathes a tepid sigh of relief. “He’s been deteriorating most of the day, and passed out a few minutes after he got here. I was afraid he’d never wake up.”

Ibrahim gives Rigo’s fingers a painful squeeze. Pulls his hand from his forehead to his groping mouth. The taste of milk intensifies. Perspiration breaks out on Rigo’s palm and the undersides of his fingers. The kid presses chapped lips to Rigo’s damp skin and begins to lick. Rigo jerks his hand away—reflex action. But the kid tugs back with amazing strength, maintains the lamprey-tight suction.

“It’s okay.” Anthea turns her head, sneezes. “Take it easy.”

It takes a second for Rigo to realize she’s talking to him, not the kid. “The reclading,” he says. “There must be something in the Tiresias ecotecture—an antipher or pherion—he needs.”

“One that I’m allergic to,” Anthea says. She scratches the puffy red inflammation around her eyes, and a new blemish on her chin where Rigo touched her a few minutes earlier. “How come I haven’t had a reaction to Ibrahim? We were together yesterday and most of today.”

“Maybe he didn’t have a high enough concentration in his system to affect you. That could be what’s making him sick. He needs a certain pherion to survive, and if he doesn’t get it he crashes.”

She rubs her jaw, takes a step back from the bed, distancing herself. Her reaction to whatever they’re doped with is getting worse. A Godzilla-sized hickey blossoms on the side of her neck. “At least we know what experimental project he was associated with. How to keep him alive.”

Rigo can see what she’s thinking. “I can’t stay with him,” he says. “If I don’t go to Tiresias they’ll know something’s wrong. Send out sniffers that’ll lead BEAN right to him.” He starts to stand—stops. He can’t comfort her. Will only end up hurting her more than he already has. “He’ll be all right,” Rigo says as the kid continues to suckle his palm. “I’ll hang with him tonight. Buy him as much time as I can. I should be back in a couple of days. By then, Beto’ll have cooked up something to make him better.”

Anthea nods, unconvinced. The rash, raked by white welts where she scratched it with her nails, has spread to her shoulder.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he says.

“Neither do I.” She steps out into the hall.

“I didn’t know,” Rigo says, feeling like he’s agreed to a pact with the devil. “If I did, I would never have signed up for the project.”

“I’m glad you did. This way, at least he has a chance.”

Ibrahim rolls over onto his side, exposing a white nanimatronic rat molded out of programmable smartgel. Rigo picks up the toy, feels the gel come alive in the palm of his hand.

“What’s this?” he says.

“He stole it from the playroom,” Anthea says. “Had it with him in the clinic. It’s obviously important, so I told him he could borrow it for a while. I thought it might help him calm down, open up.”

The kid could have picked any animal, even one that was extinct. Elephant, tiger, bear, horse. “Why a rat?” Rigo wonders.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” she says. Frustrated. “He wouldn’t tell me. Just kept stroking it, and saying—” Her voice chokes, strangling the words.

Rigo looks up from the rat. “What?”

She pulls herself together. “He kept saying, ‘Please sing for me.’ Over and over again until he lost consciousness.”

“Sing what?”

She jams a knuckle into the corner of one eye. “An old Beatles song, ‘Let It Be.’ I’ve been singing words of wisdom all afternoon.”