Jackson was silent. Theresa. Pretending to be Cazie. And capable of inducing, at least temporarily, the kind of brain-activity pattern that belonged to another, entirely different temperament. Plus the activity of intense imaginative creativity bordering on the delusional. She must start with controlling her thoughts in the cortex, which changed the information feeding back into her autonomic nervous system… All experience of emotion, after all, was essentially a story that the brain created to make sense of the body’s physical reactions. Tess had found a way to reverse the process. She was telling herself some sort of story, telling it in her conscious brain, that was altering her more primitive physical reactions. Right down to the neurochemical level. She was controlling her physical world by sheer imagination and will.
Jackson hadn’t known his sister at all.
He said haltingly, “I’ll want to replicate this…”
“Of course. But not now.” Vicki rebuttoned her shirt, but she didn’t move away from him. Nestled on his lap, her breath warm against his neck, she said in a different voice, “I’m a little afraid of you, you know.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You don’t believe me. You think you’re the only one afraid of feeling very much. Well, fuck you.”
Abruptly she stood. From her words, Jackson had expected her to look angry, but instead her face showed hurt and uncertainty. And at that moment, Jackson realized that this was the woman who could replace Cazie in his life.
Immediately the realization filled him with terror. Another bitchy, bossy woman? Mocking him at every turn, struggling to control him, knowing what he was going to say before he said it… Vicki’s scent, somehow stronger now that she no longer sat so close to him, filled his nose and throat. She had left the bottom three buttons of her shirt unfastened. Deliberately? Of course. Resentment filled him at the manipulation.
Vicki’s vulnerability lasted only a moment. Then she looked again like Victoria Turner, controlled and competent.
Victoria Turner. Not Cazie. That was his confusion, not hers.
It was Theresa who was Cazie.
Jackson laughed aloud. He couldn’t help it; the whole critical, ludicrous situation suddenly struck him as unbearably funny. Or maybe just unbearable. Theresa. Brookhaven. The renegade neuropharm. Kelvin-Castner. Sanctuary. The world was blowing up, on both micro and macro levels, and he, Jackson, had chosen as his object of fear a woman who said she was just as afraid of him, except that he was too afraid to believe her, and she was too afraid to believe that he was too afraid… “Vicki—” he said tenderly.
Their eyes met across the drab room, the newsgrids blaring. The moment pulled itself out like taffy, stretched and sweet.
“Vicki…”
“You have guests on their way in,” the system announced brightly. “Ms. Francy and Mr. Addison will arrive in ninety seconds. Shall I show them in?”
“Yes,” Jackson said. He welcomed the reprieve, at the same time that he was disappointed by it.
“Certainly. And if there’s anything else Kelvin-Castner can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Addison was a tech, clearly chosen not only to be threatening but to look it. His head brushed the ceiling; his arms bulked twice Jackson’s in diameter. And probably augmented as welclass="underline" muscles, vision, reaction time. He surveyed the room professionally. Beside him Lizzie looked like a very small, very scrubbed, very fearful doll dressed in Kelvin-Castner green disposables. She threw herself at Vicki and clung. Jackson expected to hear Vicki making maternal cluckings, but this was not happening.
“Come on, Lizzie,” Vicki said, “reassemble yourself. You can’t tell me that the all-conquering datadipper gets tearful over a little deep lavage. You’ve gone deeper into government holes than Decon scrubbers just went into yours.”
Lizzie laughed. Shaky, but still a laugh. Vicki’s bawdy tartness had braced Lizzie. Jackson would never understand women.
“Now,” Vicki said, “sit down right there and tell us what you found. No, ignore the monitors. It’s fine if K-C knows that we know what we know. Do you want some coffee?”
“Yes,” Lizzie said. She looked calmer. Her hair, with no time to pull at it since Decon, lay flat and clean against her scalp. Addison finished his survey of the room and took up a position between Lizzie and the open door of the alcove.
Vicki said, “So what do we know?”
Lizzie sipped her coffee and made a face. Jackson realized she wasn’t used to the real thing. He sat down across from her, watching quietly.
“We know that Kelvin-Castner made a probability model for research on the fear neuropharm that… that Dirk has.” Lizzie’s voice faltered for only a moment. “I can’t understand most of it. But it looks like a program would furnish data to Dr. Aranow along a pre-set path. Some points on the flag had bolstered Lehman-Wagner equations for reliability… depending on what Dr. Aranow asked, the decision tree furnished consistent data. I think. What I could tell was that every branch of the tree ended in inconclusive equations.”
Jackson said calmly, “How do you know the data wasn’t actual?”
“The dates on most of the stuff was in the future.”
“Projected experiments…”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said flatly. “How would I know?” Jackson saw that he mustn’t argue with her; her confidence might deflate again as suddenly as it had ballooned.
Vicki said smoothly, “None of us will know until the terminal is unsealed and you can examine the data directly, Jackson. But it certainly sounds like a tool for contract smashing, doesn’t it?”
Jackson said, “It does.” A large cold rage was rising in him, quietly, like black, still water. Had Cazie known?
Lizzie said, “The probability model was cross-referenced with a bunch of stuff about you, Dr. Aranow. A customized psych program.” Lizzie blushed.
So Cazie had known.
Jackson rose, but after he was on his feet, there was no place to go. Lizzie clearly wasn’t done. His cold black anger seeped higher.
Vicki said, “Good work, Lizzie. But that’s not all, is it? Why did you want so badly to join us in the biosafe area?”
Lizzie’s hand shook. The rest of her coffee spilled. “Vicki—”
“No, say it. Here. Now. So everybody knows what K-C knows.”
Lizzie’s head still shook, but her voice was steady. “There were other probability models in the deep data. Simpler ones, so I could understand them, me. They showed various probabilities of mutation of the original neuropharm. Or maybe not the original, it, maybe something it makes. That part was hard. But the models for different paths… the models…”
“Give me the Tollers average,” Jackson said coldly. “The average probability was for direct transmission of the infection, wasn’t it? From person to person, through Nielson cells in bodily fluids. What was the Tollers probability?”
Vicki said, her voice scaling upward in surprise, “You knew?”
“I guessed. I hoped I guessed wrong. But this kind of delivery vector is notoriously unstable, mutates all the time… Lizzie. What’s the Tollers probability for mutation to an airborne form that could survive independently, outside either laboratory cultures or the human body?”
“Point oh three percent.”
Low. The designer—whichever the hell Sleepless it was—of the original vector—whatever the hell it was—had at least done everything he could to prevent uncontrollable, worldwide airborne infection. At least he had done that. “And for mutation to an independent form capable of direct human-to-human transmission?”