“You’ll run me to earth anyway,” Jackson finished for her.
“—I’ll run you to earth anyway, darling. This is too big to let go.”
Jackson left the apartment. In the east, the sun was just beginning to stain the sky pink. The real, actual sun—at the moment the Manhattan East dome was clear. He strode through the roof garden, with its theatrically unfurling morning glories and trumpet lilies, toward his car. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry in his life.
Vicki waited for him outside the tribe building, a solitary figure in the pearly April cold.
“The charming Cazie called here first,” she said as she got into his car. “I figured something was happening, and I knew you’d remember your promise to take me with you to Kelvin-Castner.”
“How did you know that?” Jackson said grimly.
“Because I knew that somewhere deep down you were capable of looking like you do now. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Kelvin-Castner is trying to create a patentable drug-delivery system out of what they’ve learned from Shockey’s and Dirk’s brain scans and tissue samples. They’re less interested in finding an antidote for the inhibition anxiety than in the commercial possibilities for the pleasure market of something that bypasses the Cell Cleaner. They’ve asked TenTech for massive investment.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Vicki said, almost admiringly. “Your ex-wife sure picks up the scent fast, doesn’t she? Is she part bloodhound?”
“Do you think we should take Lizzie with us?” Jackson asked. “If they deny us entrance, I can’t datadip, and neither can you.”
“And neither can Lizzie in the half second before the security ’bots hit her. Be realistic, Jackson. She’s not a SuperSleepless.”
Jackson lifted the car. Vicki said, “Don’t you even want to know what I told Cazie when she called here?”
“No.”
“I told her that as far as I knew, you were off fucking Jennifer Sharifi now that she’s out of jail and since she just happens to have the same coloring as Cazie herself.”
Despite himself, Jackson smiled.
Nothing prevented the car from landing on the roof of Kelvin-Castner. To Jackson’s surprise, nothing even prevented him and Vicki from descending the elevator to Kelvin-Castner’s top-floor lobby. The lobby was endless baroque variations of a double-helix motif, a precise centimeter over the line into vulgar. Jackson remembered Ellie Lester.
A hostess holo flickered into place a yard in front of him. She was a middle-aged blonde with coffee-colored skin, attractive but serious enough to be reassuring. “Welcome to Kelvin-Castner. How can I help you?”
Jackson said, “Jackson Aranow to see Thurmond Rogers.”
“I’m afraid Dr. Rogers is off-site today. Would you like to record a message?”
“Then let me talk to Alexander Castner.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Castner’s schedule doesn’t permit him time for unscheduled appointments. Would you like to record a message?”
Jackson said to Vicki, “We should have brought Lizzie after all.”
“Wouldn’t have helped. The second she accessed anything the security system would gas us all. I mean, it’s a neuropharm company, isn’t it?”
Of course it was. Jackson wasn’t thinking clearly. Anger did that. He’d have to be more careful.
Vicki said pleasantly to the hostess holo, “I would like to record a message for Mr. Castner. Or perhaps he’d prefer to have this one real-time. Please tell Mr. Castner that this is Dr. Jackson Aranow of TenTech, Cazie Sanders’s firm. That’s ‘Aranow,’ ‘TenTech.’ ‘Sanders’—I’m sure one of those names is in your priority flagging programs as of yesterday. Tell Mr. Castner that Dr. Aranow has retained legal counsel to sue for the tissue samples, plus all resulting patents, taken from citizens Shockey Toor and Dirk Francy while they were unadvised by attorneys. Counsel has already received sworn depositions of all events, plus full knowledge of our current visit. A cease-work injunction from a federal judge against K-C is possible, as is considerable industry attention, which Mr. Castner might find premature. Also tell Mr. Castner that Dr. Aranow and his sister control the voting stock of TenTech, and that no investment commitment can possibly be forthcoming without both their cooperation. Have I engaged your priority flagging programs?”
The holo beamed at Vicki. “Yes, my priority flagging is engaged and transmitting. Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you. We’ll just wait here for Mr. Castner’s reply. Or possibly Dr. Rogers’s.”
“Dr. Rogers is off-site today.” the hostess said. She was still beaming.
“Of course he is,” Vicki said. She sank onto a sofa covered in a double-helix paisley print and patted the seat beside her. “Sit down, Jackson. We have to allow a little time for them to hold a council of war to determine who fucked up by contacting Cazie when Rogers was ripping you off.”
Jackson said, “We’re probably being overheard.”
“I certainly hope so.”
He sat down and said in a low voice, “Where did you learn to do that?”
Vicki’s face grew suddenly weary. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Another time. Ah, such a prompt response. Five points for efficiency.”
A wall screen glowed and the image of Thurmond Rogers appeared, smiling stiffly. “Jackson. How are you? I just got in and the building system informed me you were here, and there was some sort of mix-up about not talking to you. Sorry.”
Vicki murmured, “Oh, those computer glitches.”
“I was going to call you this morning,” Rogers continued. A lump of flesh at the collar of his lab coat worked up and down. “We have a preliminary report on the changes in your subjects’ brains.”
Jackson said, “Then come out and give it to me. In person. I’m not going to assault you, Thurmond.”
The image laughed uncomfortably. “Of course not. But I strained my back getting out of my car, and until the Cell Cleaner takes care of it. I’d just as soon not move.”
Jackson said evenly, “Then we’ll come to you.”
“Let me start by telling you what tests we ran on your subjects, and the results. We found… is that necessary?”
Vicki had taken a recorder out of the pocket of her jacks and aimed it at Rogers’s image. She said, “Absolutely. Let the record read that Dr. Rogers has sealed himself in to the K-C biohazard labs because he’s found out something truly alarming about this new neuropharm, and he’s taking not the teeniest risk that it might somehow reach his own highly expensive and educated brain. Am I right, Dr. Rogers?”
Rogers looked at her with loathing. “As I started to say, we’ve run exhaustive analyses on the subjects’ medical scans and tissue samples. What we found, Jackson, is only preliminary, but extraordinary. The subjects breathed in a genemod airborne molecule, probably an engineered virus. The molecule itself is unavailable for analysis, having broken down sometime after it reached the brain. We’ve been able to trace its path, and make very rough guesses at a partial composition from its pharmacodynamic effects.”
Rogers took a deep breath. It seemed to calm him, although the lump of flesh still worked up and down at his collar. Jackson wondered what he’d mixed into the air of his office. “The molecule, whatever it was, apparently was designed to affect multiple neural sites as both agonist and antagonist, targeted—”
Vicki interrupted, “And in English comprehensible to lawyers, those terms would mean…”
“Jackson, is this necessary?”
“Apparently so,” Jackson said.
Rogers stared stonily at Vicki. “An ‘agonist’ activates specific neural receptors, causing them to change biochemistry. An ‘antagonist’ blocks other receptor subtypes.”