Darwin's Paradox (17 page)

Something snapped inside her—a kind of rage she hadn’t felt since...“NO!” Julie threw herself at him, arms lashing out and hands hooking like raptor’s talons to gouge his face—and came to an abrupt halt as the two Pols slammed against her and lashed their arms across her chest and neck. She struggled fiercely against their strong hold and screamed, “Leave my daughter alone!”

Wide-eyed, Frank recoiled from her sudden fury, then grimaced as if in pain—he’d been at the receiving end of her rage once before and knew he was lucky to be alive.

She let her anger drain beneath a surging anguish. She felt it strangling her as tears pushed out and she buckled under the Pols stronghold, arms falling to their sides. Her voice shook, “Please, leave her out of this. Please, Frank, for all that’s good in this world. Please “

She kept her eyes fixed on him as the Pols dragged her away. He stood still, face stiff and squinting, as if watching her hurt his eyes.

“Please
put it on,” Carl pleaded, urging Angel to accept the vee-set in his outstretched hand. Seated in Carl’s lab chair, Angel glowered silently. “Just this one more test, Angel,” he persisted. She’d spent several hours stewing over Gaia’s lies as she’d recovered from her vomiting bout in her room, only to eventually be summoned here.

The door to the lab slid open and Gaia swept into the room, resplendent in a luminous red and gold robe. Her impeccable dress, immaculately coifed hair and porcelain face now repulsed Angel—especially the perfect face. Angel yearned for the comfort of her mother’s beautifully flawed face.

“I trust she’s feeling better.” It was not a question so much as an edict. Carl stepped aside to let Gaia get closer. “Well, my little kitten. How are you feeling?” Gaia leaned toward Angel in a syrupy show of concern, but remained just out of vomit-range.

“I’m not your kitten. And you’re not my mother!” Angel shrieked and shrank back. “I already have a mother. You lied to me! You had her the whole time and I want to see her now!”

“Your mother?” Gaia said, her tone suddenly jeering. She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “You don’t know what you want.”

“Well, I sure as Earth know it isn’t you!” Angel spat out.

Gaia whipped her head around, hair flying out madly. She advanced on Angel, her face tight with suppressed anger. “And your mother’s better? Is that what you’re saying?”

Angel instinctively recoiled in her chair and stiffened as she recalled what her mother had supposedly agreed to do. Then she straightened and pushed out her jaw. “My mother isn’t like you. You don’t care about anyone except yourself. My mother’s noble, gentle and kind and—”

“A cold-hearted murderer,” Gaia said coolly.

Angel stared, her anger suddenly draining beneath a rising anxiety. But she hadn’t killed Sam yet, had she?

A leer settled on her face. “Why do you think everyone knows Julie Crane?”

Alarm spiked in her tightening chest. Angel swallowed hard and glanced at Carl who stood with a pained expression on his gentle face. She’d looked to him for support but found none there. She forced her wavering voice to speak with a confidence she was far from feeling, “My father told me. My mother discovered a cure for a disease that was destroying Icaria.”

Gaia barked a sharp laugh. “After she caused it herself.”

“You’re lying!”

“Ask Carl, here.” Gaia flicked a hand in his direction. “He doesn’t lie.”

Angel swung her gaze to Carl. He looked in pain but his eyes did not disagree with what Gaia was saying.

“Your mother was infected with the disease when she was five years old,” Gaia went on. “When she realized that she had the disease, instead of turning herself in to the CDC, she ran around and proceeded to infect so many people with Darwin that it turned into an epidemic.”

Angel turned to Carl, her eyes pleading for him to tell her this wasn’t so. He frowned but avoided her eyes. “No. That’s not true,” she said in a shrill voice. “She’d never do that. My mother’s not like that.”

Gaia laughed darkly. “Check the databases on the vee-com in your room. They called her
Prometheus
. Look up the file. It’s all there.” She leaned in to Angel, taunting her, letting the anxiety in Angel’s belly eat away at her. “When you do,” Gaia continued, “I’m afraid you’ll find that there’s much more to her awful history in Icaria, Angel. She owns quite a dark past.” She folded her arms across her chest and challenged Angel with a long searching look. “Did she ever tell you why she had to leave Icaria?”

Angel pushed out her lips in an unconscious pout then shook her head. Her parent’s trek out of Icaria into the heath was shrouded in mystery. Even Aard had hinted that it was not something to speak lightly of and left it at that. Her mother had refused to tell her anything about Icaria or why they’d left and her father had remained silent, too, Out of respect, Angel had assumed. Had it been out of shame, instead? Angel’s resolve about her mother began sliding into an abyss, with terror creeping in to take its place.

“I didn’t think so.” Gaia nodded. “She had good reason to keep it from you, Angel.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “Did you ever wonder why your mother was so good at self-defense and general sleuthing with a dead-accurate shot?”

Angel swallowed several times, but her mouth had gone dry. “Aard trained her,” she whispered in a faltering voice.

“She was already trained.” Gaia paused for effect. “And speaking of Aard, whatever happened to him?” Gaia arched a brow. Angel blinked and saw spots in front of her eyes. She fiercely fought to keep from fainting. Gaia watched her intently, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Angel, you already know. Search your heart and you’ll find the evidence: your mother killed him—”

“No!” Angel sobbed her retort. “You’re lying!” She wanted Gaia to stop this nightmare.

“Oh? Am I?” Gaia challenged. “Watch.” She pointed to a large screen on the far wall and flicked a button on a small remote she pulled out of her tunic pocket. “We were fortunate that one of my other operatives had just arrived to witness and record this.”

Angel saw her mother in her tattered leather shorts and faded blue blouse sprinting down a gully at break-neck speed.

“She’s chasing Aard,” Gaia explained. The scene advanced to Aard running frantically, aiming his gun over his shoulder to take a pot shot at his pursuer. The scene reverted to Julie, now standing behind a bush with a gun, her face tight with cold determination. She shot. Aard fell. Then she was bending over Aard’s body.

Gaia’s voice snapped in as the screen blanked, “Your mother worked as an operative for one of the deadliest and most treacherous subversive groups in Icaria, the Dystopians. When she found out that Aard was actually keeping her under surveillance for my assistant, Victor Burke, she threatened him to force him to leave then she chased him down and murdered him. That’s when my assistant picked her up, though he was too late to save your friend.”

Angel opened her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. She finally croaked in a hollow voice, “This can’t be true...” Then she remembered her mother’s lack of concern when Aard disappeared.

“Your eyes never lie, Angel. You saw it for yourself,” Gaia said almost gently. “As for leaving Icaria, that’s because your mother had the whole Pol force out chasing her for treason and murder.” Gaia bent and leaned her face so close that Angel was forced to stare into those glacial-cold eyes. She felt Gaia’s warm breath. “Don’t you get it?” Gaia said, her voice suddenly gruff, eyes gleaming. “Your mother was a criminal of the worst kind. First she killed half of Icaria with her disease, then she became an assassin for a terrorist group, and murdered the Head Pol. If your father hadn’t helped her escape, she’d have been caught, tried and executed for treason and murder.”

Gaia squatted down beside Angel and seized Angel’s jaw, forcing her around to face the screen again.

“Watch,” Gaia commanded. “See for yourself.” She flicked the button again. The screen came to life and Angel saw her mother looking in her direction. Her mother aimed a look of anguish or was it hatred at a uniformed man, his back to the screen. She looked much younger, dressed in a bright red tunic, her skin ruddy and smooth. She was glaring at the Pol with fierce determination.

“Time’s up for your decadent government and you lackey lap dogs!” she said in a strangely detached voice of hatred even as her face betrayed anguish. “We’ll destroy Icarian law and order and build a new world from your ruins.” Then she grabbed the gun and screamed, “And you’re the first!”

Angel tried to look away but Gaia gripped her face tightly with her hand, forcing her to watch her mother shoot the Pol. It didn’t end there. The scene cut to Julie shooting another Pol, too. Angel gasped and mimicked her mother’s own face of horror as the Pol flew backward, guts streaming behind him like a comet’s tail.

Suddenly, Angel felt sick to her stomach. As she watched her mother drop the gun and flee, Angel gulped in the rising bile that threatened to strangle her. Its vile fluid burned her throat, but she closed her eyes, squeezing out hot tears that took with them all her hope and strength. Her world had just been ripped apart. Not at the hands of this evil woman or her Pols or the Vee-radicators, but by her own mother.

“In light of this evidence, you might want to reconsider your impression of me and what we’re doing here,” Gaia said in a tone of vindication and mild reproach. Then Gaia stood up and she resumed in a cold detached voice, “Take her back to her quarters, Carl. I think we’ve had enough for today. We’ll proceed tomorrow after she’s had some time to think and is feeling a little more cooperative.”

***

An oppressive silence hung in the air as Carl led Angel down the hallway to her new quarters in the Med-Center. When they got to her room and he opened her door for her, he hesitated, not yet ready to leave. “You going to be okay?”

“I’ll be all right,” she said in a thin voice she hardly recognized.

His face twisted and his jaw worked as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. He finally burst out with, “Angel, I think you should know that there’s a good chance they’d tampered with the vid-clip. I personally don’t think your mother said those things. Many people, Gaia particularly, had a lot to gain by putting words into your mother’s mouth and implicating her as a terrorist. Manipulating vid-clips is very common and hard to spot if done well.”

“But that’s just her words,” Angel countered. “What about what she did?”

His eyes slid away from hers for a moment and he frowned. When his eyes returned they looked sad. “I’m afraid there was no tampering there. She did shoot those two Pols. There were too many witnesses. But the first man she shot was her old boyfriend. Rumor had it that it was a lover’s quarrel. As for the second Pol, the story was there was a struggle. Apparently, she’d used his gun...” he trailed, seeing that it didn’t really matter. Angel wasn’t interested in extenuating circumstances. Her mother had shot two Pols, one certainly with intention. And there was the matter of Aard, and this other friend Sam who Gaia expected her to shoot.

“And what about the disease? Did she really spread it?” she asked.

He blinked and pursed his lips. “She was
Prometheus
. But I don’t think she caused the epidemic, Angel. Darwin’s transmitted sexually, through...well—” he cut himself off, looking uncomfortable for a moment.

“Sexual intercourse?”

“Yes,” Carl said, looking relieved. “Anyway, she was only five years old when Darwin first appeared, so, unless she had her own unique way of transmitting the disease, it’s more likely that some accident in the Med-Center clinic introduced Darwin to the public.”

“But she didn’t stop carrying Darwin.”

“That’s right. Because she was a veemeld, Darwin didn’t kill her, but it might have made her a passive carrier, or so some CDC reports suggest. When she became sexually active later in life, she might have been able to pass it on then, but we’re not sure of that either, considering the unique form of the virus she was carrying.”

“She must have known she had Darwin and might pass it on...”

He shook his head and looked down, saddened. “I don’t know, Angel. I never met your mother, but from what I do know of her, it doesn’t make sense. She just wasn’t that kind of person. You’d know better, though. I don’t think she would have consciously spread the disease, which suggests that she didn’t know she had Darwin. In fact, she saved people—”

“Thanks, Carl,” Angel cut him off. Then she forced a smile. “I’ll be all right now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“I’m sorry, Angel. Sorry you had to find out this way.” Then he closed the door behind him and she heard him lock it. Alone with the murmuring machine voices in her head, she stood like a stone, eyes unfocused, in the middle of the room. Reliving the awful scenes she’d witnessed. She’d seen it with her own eyes. How could it not be true? Her mother was a terrorist and a cold-hearted assassin. No wonder Gaia had convinced her to kill her friend, Sam. She’d already killed Aard, Angel’s best friend. How could she have done it? Angel remembered her mother’s glacial reaction to Aard’s disappearance and felt a shiver run up her back—

Abruptly, the machine murmurs in her head stopped, wrenching her out of her reverie. She shook her head in the ear-ringing silence. Something must have just happened to the A.I.s. Oh, good Earth! The A.I.-core! Her mother had done it. She’d shut down the A.I.s. She’d probably killed her friend, too.

With the opportunity suddenly thrust upon her, Angel bolted to the vee-com on the desk beside her cot and wondered if it would work, given what her mother had just done. Carl had given her a basic lesson on vee-coms and Angel was a quick-learner. She sat down and stabbed madly at the grid pad, observing with relief that the rudimentary vee-com system remained in tact. Her relief ended there, though. When she did a quick search for “Julie Crane” she found
Prometheus
...and Darwin disease:

JULIE CRANE: Code-named
Prometheus
and credited with the mass murder of over a hundred million Icarians through Darwin disease from 2080 to 2096 (when the disease was finally eradicated), this Dystopian was ultimately responsible for what has become known as the most pernicious terrorist act in the history of humankind. Crane was injected with Darwin by Dr. Damien Vogel when she was five years old and released to infect Icaria at will. It was only discovered in 2095, fifteen years later, by Zane Nakita at CDC, that Dr. Vogel manufactured the disease and that
Prometheus
was Julie Crane. By then Crane had already murdered Icaria-5’s Head Pol and eluded her pursuers—SHE REMAINS AT LARGE—Vogel’s assistant, Janet Hardy, conveniently committed suicide shortly after the onset of the disease and both Vogel and his colleague, Dr. Euan Tsutsumi, were murdered by Leonard Crane, the father of Prometheus—