ViraVax (31 page)

Chapter 45

Sonja stood with Major Scholz at the double doors to a hangar adjacent to the warehouse. They waited for the surprise that Solaris promised, while Harry visited with his father. She would have to talk with her mother, too, about what she had learned this morning. She hoped it would not have to be today.

The sun felt hotter than ever, and the brilliance of it hurt her eyes, but Sonja refused both hat and sunglasses. She wanted to feel her freedom through its twin messengers of sun and wind. The steady stream of planes taking off and landing nearby reminded her of the good times she’d had in
Mariposa
and of the little biplane’s sad end. The plane had been a big part of her life, but she felt guilty about grieving for a
thing
when she had seen so many innocent people die.

“I’m so sad about all those
deficientes,”
she said. “They were. . . funny. You know, curious, and all they wanted was to please. Who could kill them all like that after living among them?”

She couldn’t go on.

“Yes,” the major agreed, “I understand. The best thing that could happen to him happened, and you don’t have to feel bad about that. You helped stop him, and I thank you personally. The research team says we would be dead now. . .
I
would be dead now. . . if you hadn’t.”

Sonja sighed, and watched Harry exit the side door of the neighboring warehouse. He held his hand over his eyes for a moment. When he saw her, his face became one huge grin and he hurried over.

“There’s the embassy limo,” the major said. “It’s your mother and Grace Toledo.”

The major stepped aside as the four of them helped themselves to a tearful reunion. When Sonja hugged her mother and touched her face, her skin, it was as though she touched her for the first time.

We are the same,
she thought.
The very same.

Just then, two airmen rolled back the hangar doors and a small military band stumbled into her favorite Knuckleheads tune, “Skyborne.” The glare outside made it impossible for her to see inside the hangar, but she glimpsed something red. Sergeant Trethewey stepped out of the shadows and waved her forward.

“Come on,” Major Scholz said, her hand between Sonja’s shoulder blades, urging her on. “Take a look.”

A red-lacquered Gypsy Moth, a little bigger and more powerful than her Student Prince glowed in the shadow. Solaris stood beside the plane, out of the reach of the sunlight, and he was applauding. The others in the hangar—SEAL team, guerrilla squad, Marte Chang and a few airmen—joined him in his applause.

“What is this?” Sonja asked.

The major pressed her onward, and she sought out Harry’s hand for support. He gave it a squeeze and escorted her into the hangar.

“This is a small token of our appreciation for your actions on our behalf,” Solaris announced. “Your Student Prince was unsalvageable after the flood. This aircraft is a replica, but I trust you will find some of the auxiliary equipment to your liking.”

He handed her a set of keys.

“An electric start,” he said. “And a full tank. Why don’t you fly it home?”

“All the great women flew Gypsy Moths,” she mumbled.

“No reason to break tradition,” the major said. “Go ahead, take it up.”

“Harry?”

“Chill, eh?” Harry said, running his hand over the fabric. “Sure is pretty.”

“Shall we take her up?” she asked.

“We?
Shall
we
take her up? After what you did to me last time?”

“When you fall off a horse, you’ve got to get back on and ride,” Sonja said. She knew it was a favorite saying of Harry’s father’s.

“If you won’t, I will,” Sergeant Trethewey called out, and several of the other men yelled, “Take me!” “I’ll go!” “She can fly me
anywhere.”
“Anytime.” “In
anything.”

“I’m not as dumb as I look,” Harry said, and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Good thing!” somebody yelled, and everyone laughed.

“See you back home!” Nancy called. “Be careful!”

“Oh, Mom!”

Sonja ran through her checklist, called for “Clear,” and as she hit the starter she knew that her mother would always be her mother, no matter what their genetic details, and that was just fine with her.

In a matter of minutes, Casa Canada spread out dead ahead. The Gypsy Moth, though bigger and more powerful, handled much more smoothly than
Mariposa.
Sonja flew a few laps around the city, getting the feel of the machine. She sensed Harry’s discomfort—he had never like flying, much—so she tried to be conservative. She fought to hold herself back when she had command of such a magnificent plane.

On their flight back to Casa Canada she took one pass over the devastation that used to be ViraVax Valley. She spotted a flash of yellow sticking out of the muck at the bottom of the valley, and banked in to see what it was.

“It’s
Mariposa”
she told Harry, “a piece of elevator.”

He didn’t answer.

Sonja waggled her wings in a farewell salute and set her heading home. At Casa Canada, charcoal cooking fires braided their plumes and unreeled their smoke west. Several of the coffee workers squinted up at them, pointing, then ran about rounding up others.

“Perfect wind sock,” Sonja said, pointing out the smoke. She quartered, then quartered again to set their nose into it. The embassy limo turned into the drive just as she set the plane down, and she smiled at Harry’s sigh of relief in her headphones.

“Glad to be down?” she asked.

“Glad to be home,” he said.

She taxied over to the hangar and shut down. Dozens of people had gathered along the airstrip and now they ran up to her, cheering.

“Viva Sonja!”
they cried.
“Viva ‘arry! Gracias a Dios!”

Already tarps were spread, food laid out, and as they climbed down from the plane a makeshift band struck up “Siempre la Tierra,” a forbidden song of the revolutionaries. Garcia was gone. Everything was possible, even music and joy.

Chapter 46

It was just an island breaking the flow of a small river now. A scattering of green broke up the monotony of concrete, but Rico Toledo could see that not even jungle would completely cover up ViraVax again. The people would not permit it. Already local rituals included personal vigils and pilgrimages, small offerings of incense and blood. Some gloated at the tomb of a mysterious enemy, others simply assured themselves that the cap still held the beast firmly in the bottle. Costa Brava was earthquake country, after all, and Rico knew as well as anyone that that seal would crack, sooner or later.

“If he killed them all immediately, this Mishwe, killed anyone who might compete for anything. If he bred his own food out of his lab animals or his humans. If he killed any competition immediately upon recognizing it.” The major pondered for a moment and shuddered. “He’d be the one to do it. By our own design, oxygen generation remains unimpaired. Amusing as it seems, fresh water is available though not from the more obvious source. A series of wells and filters supplies the facility. If he’s smart, and lucky, and if he wasn’t killed outright. . . well, he could live to be a very old man.”

“Fifty years?”

The major smiled. “Maybe more. He was in excellent shape.”

“And an earthquake big enough to spring him?”

“Or
drown
him, Colonel,” she reminded him.

“Drowning him doesn’t worry me,” he said. “Springing him, or any of his pets, worries me a great deal.”

“An earthquake strong enough to open this thing hits this area every six to ten years. Every year ViraVax took enough damage to keep a repair crew busy full-time. Repairs have been a black hole in the cash flow all along, that’s why the Agency backed out. The Children of Eden got the profits and the Agency got the expenses—a good deal if you can swing it. With all the distractions back home, no problem. The Agency got lobbied into it by the Children of Eden and signed on the line, anyway, knowing that this was unstable ground.”

“The last one was four years ago,” the Colonel said.

“Five,” she countered. “That gives us about a year to wait, given the average.”

“And him all the better chance for survival.”

“I’d much rather be me, Colonel,” she said. “I wouldn’t give you a córdoba for anybody’s chances down there.”

“But he has a chance.”

She answered with a shrug.

The interim government, headed by the economics whiz Philip Rubia, and his reconciled wife, Yolanda, quickly dumped a few thousand tons of cement onto the site while it was flooded. Anything inside ViraVax was going to stay inside for a good, long time.

“What about the Chang woman?” Rico asked.

He was restless and wanted to walk, but his legs were not healed yet and the two canes were clumsy. He did not want to admit to the vanity that kept him from appearing unsteady in front of his staff.

“So young and brilliant,” the major said. “Mariposa called her to our attention, as you know. Brilliant. . . well, no need for that now. She was the perfect detective for genocide. Those Sunspots that she cultivated and patented were her own design. The world owes her a debt for that as well as for stopping Mishwe’s bugs.

“Casey was eager to make any deal to replace the dam, and the grace of God brought Marte Chang, ready with her Sunspots. As you know, the dam was seriously damaged in the quakes of ‘98, ‘02, ‘08, and nearly failed completely in the big one in ‘10. Casey had always hoped to perfect a cheap method of extracting hydrogen from water for his power source, but it never happened. Besides, the dam was three kilometers away and his most vulnerable point. At least, with the Sunspots, an attack on his power source wouldn’t flood the valley.

“So, there was never a question that he would accept Chang’s project. He had tried to hire her before she developed the Sunspots. This project merely whetted his appetite. What was unknown to us was how she would operate for us once inside a hostile environment. She was untrained in any of the survival skills that many of us take for granted. She thought fast on her feet, and she abhorred the release of any unsanctioned genetics.”

Rico already knew most of this, but he also knew that the major needed to talk about it. She had been in the thick of it all along, doing the dirty work for Rico and Solaris, taking no credit, voicing no complaint. The least he could do was hear her out.

“Chang worked with our Virginia people round the clock to analyze the data that Harry and Sonja brought back,” she said. “She discovered new horrors about Mishwe and ViraVax by the minute. There were notes about her, files on everyone, including you. They included quick-look genealogies, religious connections and assets.”

“How did the product get into that data block in the first place?” he asked.

Rico already knew the answer, but he was beginning to enjoy hearing the major talk. He had not had a drink since the ViraVax experience, and she had found subtle ways of supporting him in that. He knew that she had quit drinking years ago, and had quit socializing with Rico and the others at the same time. Now, perhaps, she had a trick or two to teach him. He hoped so.

“Red Bartlett was not a computer genius,” she said. “But he was persistent, and his persistence paid off. He set up a series of programs to monitor researchers’ logs and interior memos and apparently succeeded just shortly before his death. These programs continued to monitor ViraVax after his death, dumping the product into the block that Sonja and Harry recovered. It’s clear that he indicated to Mishwe his discovery of the Meltdown agent, and that’s when Mishwe killed him. He knew it would be covered up by ViraVax, and that the Agency would support that cover-up. He couldn’t lose.”

“But he did lose, Major.”

“I hope so, sir.”

Rico watched Harry helping a squad from the Corps of Engineers pull a tarp tight over a fresh pour of concrete. The afternoon sun threatened to crack the three-meter cap that sealed in the entire Double-Vee, and no one wanted to chance any cracks. The last dozen truckloads lined up at the remains of the dam, filling in the conduit and maintenance shafts that Rico had identified for them. Harry secured his line to a stake and stood, surveying the project.

“Boys will be boys. Always playing in the mud.”

Sonja’s voice behind him was huskier than usual.

The squad members around him snapped to attention, and when Harry turned he saw Sonja and his father, flanked by Major Scholz and Trenton Solaris. Solaris was wrapped like a mummy and hefted his umbrella shield against the enemy sunlight.

“As you were,” the major said, and the squad returned to their duty.

Sonja squinted at Harry in that way that meant, “Who is this person, really?”

Hundreds had died on this spot, many before their very eyes. Only two other people knew how that felt—his father and Marte Chang.

“How is this going to change us?” he asked.

“Subtlety is not your strong suit,” Sonja said.

Her gaze held his, searched him. . . .

For what?

“No one else could understand what happened here,” he said. “I get really nervous when you’re gone. I. . . you’re
part
of me.

“Yes,” she said, “we’ve changed for the closer. At the last, when you were still in school, you frightened me.” She hesitated, a blush coming to her cheeks. “What was happening to you at home frightened me, so I stayed away. So did my mother and father. We would have grown further apart. I can’t imagine that now.”

He would have cried if she hadn’t hugged him in time.

“I have some news that we need to discuss,” the major said to Rico. “Let’s have a seat in the mess tent. Marte Chang and Yolanda Rubia are waiting for us there. They propose a pooling of resources.”

“A private information service?” Rico asked.

“Call it a consulting service,” the major said, “or a government corporation. What do you think?”

“I’ll hear it out,” Rico said. “I have a lot of old business to talk over with Yolanda.”

A shadow crossed the major’s face, but she quickly recovered. Rico caught her arm.

“Then,” he said, “I’d like to talk over some new business with you, Major, if that’s all right.”

“New business would be fine, Colonel,” she said with a smile. “That would be just fine.”

Harry turned to go but Trenton Solaris stopped him. The albino removed his right glove, then reached out into the sunlight to shake Harry’s hand.

“Congratulations again, Harry,” he said. “Your performance was first-class. Your country is very proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “My father taught me a lot more than I realized. We have our differences, but I’m glad he’s alive. I’m glad it worked.”

Solaris’s gaze shifted away from his own, then back. He shook Harry’s hand again. The albino congratulated Sonja, too.

“Give some thought to what you want with your lives,” he said. “You both have skills that your country—and your adopted country—can use. I urge you to consider making a career out of what you do best—learning, and helping others.”

“If you mean working for the Agency, I’m not sure I’d care to be in my father’s command,” Harry said. “I mean, I’ve learned a lot, and one thing I’ve learned is not to press my luck.”

Solaris laughed.

“I think you would make a better statesman than an agent, Harry,” he said. “But I, personally, and the Agency will support you in anything you choose. And we have many, many resources.”

Sonja cleared her throat and said, “I’d like to be part of the Mars colony shot, but with all the trouble in the U.S. it looks like it’ll never get off the ground.”

“I promise you all of the flight time you want in anything you want,” Solaris said, his smile-wrinkles deployed. “That’s the first step. The rest is up to the politicians. Good politicians.”

Solaris winked at Sonja and nodded at Harry.

“You need somebody like him to get their attention. If you do that, the sky’s the limit.”

Harry’s stomach flipped at the thought of Sonja going anywhere without him, but
Mars
. . . ?

She must have read his mind, or at least his expression.

Sonja laughed, and took his hand.

“Hey, baby,” she said, “wanna be Mayor of Mars?”

“Chill,” he said, and laughed. “With you? Anytime.”

The End