“Sigh,” she said. “You’re no fun. What kind of job?”
“Remember the sewers of Paris?”
“How could I forget? We waded through the shit of an entire city and then watched the sunrise together. So romantic.”
“No, I meant do you remember why we were there? The research data we were after?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “We burned it. Why?”
“Someone else has it.”
I heard her sharp intake of breath, and then there was a short, heavy silence. I could almost hear her reliving that mission. A group of scientists had developed a performance-enhancing synthetic compound that combined select lean mass-building steroids with a synthetic nootropic compound that significantly increased and regulated hypothalamic histamine levels. In normal pharmacology, these drugs are wakefulness-promoting agents often prescribed to prevent shift-work sleepiness. This version was designed to build stamina and wakefulness to a point where the person being treated wouldn’t tire and wouldn’t lose mental sharpness. This wasn’t for a supersoldier program or for anything tied to the military. It was for factory workers. The drugs were intended for use in Third World countries to increase the efficiency and output of unregulated factory workers. Shift workers who could work twenty-four or even forty-eight hours at maximum efficient output. It was a new tweak on legal slave labor, because it’s for use in countries where there is no enforceable human-rights presence and where governments are easily bought. It could also be used for sex workers, and that is a special kind of living hell.
Violin said, “When do we leave?”
I told her that I was heading to the airport now. “Don’t bring your puppy,” I said.
She called me a bastard and hung up.
CHAPTER FIVE
Zephyr Bain was a monster, and she knew it.
Nothing less than a monster would be able to save the world. Nothing less than a monster would have the courage and the vision to do what was absolutely necessary to save the world from itself.
She wasn’t even certain that she deserved to live in the version of the world that would exist when all the killing was done.
Probably not.
The people who survived, those who would thrive and benefit from what she did, wouldn’t want to share that world with anyone like her. They wouldn’t be the kind to abide a monster. It was a sad thought but an understandable perspective. After all, she was trying to cleanse the world of unclean things, and by definition she would become unclean in the process. The consolation was that the right kind of people would survive, and they would have a genuine chance to flourish. Without the others. Without the parasites who fed like vampires on the system.
The survivors would be the world’s true élite, the ones who hadn’t been chosen by any god but had earned their place in paradise through good breeding, intellectual superiority, usefulness to the forward momentum, and clarity of vision.
As for the rest?
Well, as she saw it survival of the fittest was more than a theory. It was a law mandated by the harsh realities of the world as it truly was, not as viewed through wishful thinking, political agendas, greed, or aggressive stupidity.
Even so, Zephyr would have liked to see the world make the change. After the dogs of war had been let off the chain and allowed to run rampant in the streets. How nice that would be. She had dreamed of it every night since she was a little girl. If she would be dead before it came to pass, then she prayed that her dying mind would revisit one of those dreams as the darkness took her.
It was only fair.
It was only right.
If it weren’t for the cancer, it would be so much harder to accept. But the universe had been quite clever in the way it stage-managed all of this. Even the cancer. Giving Zephyr the knowledge, giving her access to the tools, and then giving her a shield against her own hesitation. It was all very tidy and efficient, and no one appreciated efficiency as much as she. The universe was messy, but the scaffolding of scientific truths on which it was hung was clean, pure, and without contradiction.
Her friend and employee, the little problem-solving Frenchman everyone called the Concierge, was one of the few who knew that she was dying. Her mentor and sometime lover, John the Revelator, knew, too. Few others. No one else who knew cared as much as the Concierge or John. The others with whom she conspired to bring about the change saw her as a means to an end, an agent of change, perhaps even a hero of the war, but she doubted that any of them would mourn her passing. They would be too busy framing the new world. Nor would they be a comfort to her as she died. There was no doubt about that.
The Concierge was different, because he was a philosophical man. He was the one who helped Zephyr cultivate an interesting perspective on dying. “The Egyptians and other cultures saw death as a passage,” he told her. “The highborn would go into the afterlife with great fanfare and pomp. But they would not go alone. They would have their household staff killed, too, so that there would be people to see to their comforts forever.”
She had been raised in a rich Wasp family but had spent some of her life drifting from one religious movement to another. Other churches, other faiths, even a few cults. Looking for answers that she believed existed. Finding some truths, catching glimpses of others, but never quite landing on solid spiritual ground. It was John the Revelator who had helped her ultimately find something to believe in. John helped her see the face of God as He moved through the shadows of a twilit sky. He whispered to her that there was an answer, that there was something to believe in. There was a mission.
Her mission.
It was through John that Zephyr found her purpose in life, and in doing so realized what would have to be done to keep the whole world from falling apart. It was such a profound insight that Zephyr wondered if this was what Noah felt when God told him to start building a boat.
Maybe her allies, those indifferent framers of the future, would paint her as the new Noah. It was true enough, though her ark would be made of silicone and printed circuits rather than wood. And, instead of a flood, the unworthy and the unclean would be cleansed from the earth by a swarm of mosquitoes. The groundwork was already laid, a quiet process that had taken years. Soon — very soon — everything would be set and the go order would be sent. Sick as she was, she would live to see the process start. It would be glorious. There might even be the sound of angelic trumpets. God loved a good massacre. Zephyr had read many sacred books. God, in His love for the world, had killed billions.
So, too, would she.
For that is the work of both gods and monsters.
CHAPTER SIX
I took my private jet, a gorgeous Gulfstream G650 that once belonged to a Colombian bioweapons broker who somehow managed to trip and fall out of the cabin door when we were three thousand feet over the Gulf of Mexico. Clumsy. I call the plane Shirley. Yes, it’s immature to give a pet name to an ostentatious piece of luxury aircraft, and, no, I don’t give a finely textured crap if it is.
Church finessed the clearances all the way. Violin was waiting for me at the airport, driving a two-door Porsche 918 Spyder. It’s a superelegant hybrid that will eat pretty much any gas-powered car on the road. Six hundred and eight horsepower, with a top speed of two-ten. The sticker price, before extras, is close to $900,000. I’m not into car porn, but that thing gave me a woody. I climbed in, and she peeled away as if she was leaving a crime scene.