Beyond the long entrance to Port Canaveral, I could make out the towers of a launchpad. I spun my map around on the table. Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 39. Squeezed into a few square miles around the hotel were some of the greatest technological endeavors in human history. Why didn’t I feel a surge of pride?
We were on the fifth floor of the Westin Tropicale, under the guise of attending a Wade Cook investment seminar. There had been some talk of moving us into the Coast Guard station, but that had been nixed just before we arrived, hence our new cover. We had badges and bags full of pamphlets and everything we needed. As the highlight of our seminar, we were scheduled to take a tour of the Lemuria.
Breaker returned to the room accompanied by a man and woman unknown to me. Ben followed. I stayed by the window, a prepackaged ham sandwich in one hand, binoculars in the other.
Breaker formally waved his arms. “Hal Cousins, I’d like to introduce Nate Carson, from the National Institutes of Health.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Carson said. He was in his early thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair and a long, pale, patrician face. He held out his hand, but I shook my head, sorry. He withdrew the hand with a glance at Breaker, then a sheepish grin. “Right,” he said.
“And this is Dr. Val Candle. She’s from NSA, we dare not speak its name, a specialist in security bioinformatics.”
Candle appeared to be in her late thirties. She had strong Middle Eastern features—long, thick black hair curled into a loose bun, elegant sad eyebrows, large black eyes faintly underscored by marks of shadow, prominent but classic nose. Depending on my mood, I could have found her homely or strikingly beautiful, but it was clear she didn’t much care what anyone thought. She was professional and clipped in her speech, with a deep voice and a defiant Brooklyn accent. “You don’t look so good, Dr. Cousins,” Candle said.
“I don’t feel so good,” I said. “What was in that elixir besides Ex-Lax and ipecac?”
“Desperation and hope,” Candle said. “We’re learning a lot. I wish they’d put us on the case years earlier.”
“Let’s go over this thing now,” Breaker said. “You’ve been briefed about Washington. The President may be in remission, but he still refuses to sign the necessary papers. That limits us. The Vice President is in Israel, the Speaker is God knows where, so the Secretary of Defense is in charge of our operation for the time being. Everyone else in the White House is sicker than dogs. The director of the FBI committed suicide this afternoon at 3:00 p.m. The new director of the CIA has sanctioned our operation, but substantial portions of the Agency are still resistant and may be considered either turncoat or thoroughly tagged. Emergency review is under way at the Pentagon, but we’re going to take some initiative and make our move on Lemuria before it’s finished.” Breaker turned to me. “Here’s the serving suggestion. You’ll go with them into the Lemuria to provide expertise. Mr. Bridger will accompany you. You’ve both had lots of experience with Silk operations. Someone will be assigned to protect you.”
“How do you know whether or not they’ll be tagged?” I asked.
Ben clutched the single album from Mrs. Golokhova’s collection and approached the broad window.
“I appreciate your concern, Dr. Cousins,” Breaker said. “I am going to spend the next few hours smoothing the way with the reluctant folks in Washington. A few old-guard agents and politicos, not tagged or run by Silk, still hate to think we’re going to dredge up all this carefully buried toxic waste. I’ve argued that you should be part of the cleanup, because you know what to look for.”
“We hope he does,” Candle said.
“There’ll be two marine architects with ship plans here before midnight. That’s all we’re going to tell you about the operation until you’re under way,” Breaker said. “But be assured, there is more.”
“We could take her in port, now,” Ben said, looking wistfully through the plate glass.
“We’ll follow procedures,” Breaker said.
“Just like in Nam,” Ben said. “Your procedures could cost a lot of lives.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Breaker said. “But that’s the way it’s going to be. You can opt out now if you want.” He left the room. Ben went to the refrigerator to drag out a six-pack of Cokes, pulled one from its plastic circle, and fell back into a chair. He tapped the album with a row of fingers and lifted an eyebrow my way. Something to show me.
Candle and Carson folded their arms and stood staring at me as if I were some curious bug. “Why immortality?” Carson asked critically.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Candle said. “We need to know all the receptors you’ve blocked. We’ve searched your papers, but you never published all the details.”
We sat around a glass-top table in the middle of the suite’s living room. They opened their valises and pulled out stacks of paper, all stamped TOP SECRET HIGHEST, all edged with finger-zip incendiary strips.
“You’re going to learn some things here that go beyond top secret,” Candle said. “I’ll personally track you and claim your testicles if you ever reveal this, ever, to anyone, in any way.”
I held back a wisecrack. She was in no mood for flippancy, and I was tired. “All right,” I said.
She delivered her speech crisply, with no discernible emotion. “NSA has been studying the potential for biological encryption. Our division is tasked to learn whether genomically coded messages can be or are being sent into our country in birds, insects, plants, or bacteria. We analyzed bacterial genomes in samples sent from major metropolitan centers and detected non-aleatory genomic alteration, which we prefer not to call mutations, in three hundred different varieties of common gut bacteria. We determined these alterations involved intelligent intervention. In twenty-five of thirty alterations, an internal self-modification scheme was mathematically demonstrated. We eliminated outside intelligence as the cause and invoked the possibility of interior genomic intelligence.”
“You can do that, I mean, confirm that?” I asked.
“I can’t, personally,” she said with regret.
“But you know what it means?”
“It implies that bacteria can modify themselves worldwide in less than ten years. Call it evidence of coordinated genomic shift, call it microbial ‘thought,’ call it whatever you want, but people I trust, brilliant people, tell me it’s real.”
The Little Mothers of the World, I thought.
“The other alterations we reluctantly interpreted as human intervention, by potentially unfriendly forces, on a huge scale. In addition, we determined that the outside changes were not done to encrypt language-based signals, but to alter gene function in common human microbes, with the aim of having them produce novel substances, either to cause illness in targeted military or civilian populations, or to induce large-scale psychoses. A lot of grumpy biologists in our employ huffed and puffed and tried to blow our house down. We survived their assault, but just barely. When all of your shit hit the fan”—she gave me a cold grin—“our stock rose in the Agency.”
“Many thanks,” Carson said wryly.
“How long ago was the work done?” I asked.
“That’s not important,” Candle said.
“It is to me,” I said.
“Five months ago, we brought it to the attention of the director of NSA. She passed it on to appropriate agencies. It lingered in their in-baskets, too obscure and crazy to act on, until two months ago.” Candle kept her dark eyes on me, one eyelid twitching. “Three Marine helicopters blew up some houses in Los Angeles. Someone decided it was time to find out what in hell was going on and put a stop to it. Now it’s your turn. Tell us what you’ve done.”
I told them most of what I knew about the secrets of bacterial/gut interaction, how to immunize or reshape the major varieties, how to adjust one’s interior ecology to thwart or subvert seventy years of human mischief. I did not mention the insertion of altered genes into my intestinal cells. I doubted that would be useful to them; and I did not want to have them experimenting on those who might not be informed, who might not even be volunteers.
Candle made notes on special sheets of paper equipped with genome maps for several types of bacteria, and a highly condensed chart of the human genome. When we were done, she called a well-deserved break.
Ben sat in an overstuffed chair, slurping back his third Coke and listening, brows knit, as if he might be planning another book.
“Watch your testicles,” I warned him.
