The Athena Factor by W. Michael Gear
April took the turn that led to the only way out. “All I can tell you is that she won’t be a problem in the future. She’s been transferred.”
“Transferred where? Gestapo charm school?”
“Tokyo. Among her several outstanding talents, she speaks both Japanese and Chinese. We project our Asian market to explode as Genesis Athena’s capabilities become known. That’s especially true of China and India, where population control implies limits on fecundity. The point is, if you can only have one child, why not have exactly what you want? And, I’m sure you know they’re generating a great deal of wealth in the Orient these days. Within twenty years we expect it to be our largest market.”
“Where are we going?” Christal asked as they approached the security door.
April entered a quick sequence on the keypad, leaned to look into a retinal scanner, then waved her wrist over it. She pressed her finger to the pad and waved at the camera, calling out, “It’s the woman I told you about, Hans. Please pass us.”
The door clicked, and Christal followed April into the small box. One wall was made up of thick glass, behind which sat a muscular blond man. Christal could see monitors off to either side displaying familiar images of the corridors, cafeteria, a laboratory, and the security door they’d just passed. He tapped instructions into a large control panel.
The outer door clicked, and April led the way into another of the companionways.
“Was that the women’s shower room I saw in one of his monitors?” Christal asked.
April nodded, indicating that Christal should precede her. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose the others are so used to it they never give it a second thought anymore.” She smiled ironically. “Hans, and Max, who works the night shift, could care less. They’re lovers when they can manage to find the time.”
Christal filed that away as she walked perhaps fifty yards and was directed to her right. “Take that first lift, if you will. Press the button for the B Deck.”
When the doors opened, Christal stepped inside. Another of the ubiquitous security cameras glared down with a bulbous glass lens. She gestured toward it. “Doesn’t that bother you? Being in the fisheye all the time?”
“We take security very seriously,” April said as she stepped in across from Christal. “And if you’re thinking of jumping me and making a break for it, we’re about thirty miles offshore. If you’re lucky the water temperature is fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of trying something that will end up making you look ridiculous, why don’t you just cooperate for a while longer, and let the lawyers make their pitch.”
Christal pressed the B button. “What’s the pitch?”
“The cost of your current inconvenience and future silence.”
“What if you can’t afford it?”
The look April gave Christal was anything but reassuring. “Ms. Anaya, you’re thirty miles out into the Atlantic. No one back on the mainland has the faintest idea of where you are. Hank says that you’re a very bright woman, and my experience up to this point bears that out. We will be reasonable if you will. It’s a simple equation.”
The door slid open. Christal sighed as she stepped out into a lavishly appointed corridor. The walls looked like they were done in hand-waxed teak. Golden sconces lit the rich carpeting and arched ceiling. The doors off to either side were wooden with gold handles. “Pretty chic,” Christal muttered. “Is this part of the deal?”
“That’s up to you. Just because circumstances put us on opposite sides doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.” April followed just behind her left shoulder. “Next door to the right.”
Christal grabbed a slim handle, turned it, and stepped into what might have passed for a small lobby at a top-end hotel. Marble columns supported a sculptured ceiling. Gold filigree was everywhere. The floor was a combination of marble and sections of thick Persian rug. The furniture was immaculate, worth a fortune, and looked immanently comfortable.
“To your right. That door in the corner,” April told her.
As Christal crossed the room, she looked out the tall windows that lined the far wall. She could see silver-blue ocean gleaming in the summer sunlight. Nothing marred the water’s surface. Not a ship, not even a bit of flotsam.
The doorway led her into, of all things, a small locker room with a tiled floor. On one wall a redwood bench was backed by a full-length mirror. Floor-to-ceiling stainless steel lockers covered the other. Vanities filled the spaces to either side of the doors on either end of the room. They were accompanied by mirrors, hair dryers, and small sinks, all looking fully equipped.
April closed the door behind them. “If you’ll remove your clothes and open that locker on the right, you’ll see that we’ve taken the liberty of supplying you with a wardrobe. I think the size is right.” She cocked her head. “Would you like to take a shower? One without a camera?”
Christal had taken up a position across from her. “What’s up? Why are you doing this?”
“Some of our people would like to talk to you. We thought you might like to clean up and dress appropriately. You’ve got about an hour until they’re scheduled to see you. If you want to go looking like you’ve just come off a two-week camping trip in the Guatemalan high country, who am I to complain? If not, there are clothes here and a shower room just beyond that door. You’re welcome to clean up, wash, dry, and fix your hair. Whatever.”
“And you?”
April pressed a key on the pad near the door they’d entered through. A solid-sounding click could be heard.
“I’m going for a swim.” April bent her leg, slipped a shoe off, and began undressing. She looked at Christal with amusement as she peeled out of her pantsuit. “Like I said, we’ve got an hour. Use it anyway you’d like. Me, I’m taking it in the pool.” She inclined her head toward the door at Christal’s right.
Christal frowned, then opened it to see the sort of shower a Roman emperor might have designed. The place was tiled in white marble with three sets of matching sculpted golden showerheads. When she looked back, April was naked, hanging her clothing in one of the lockers. The woman padded past on bare feet, walked calmly into the shower room, and turned on the water at one of the showers.
So what are you going to do now? Christal looked warily around the locker room, searching the corners for small cameras, microphones, or anything that might be suspicious. Back through the doorway, Christal could see April soaping her hair. If she was going to take her, now would be the time. Talk about vulnerability. Copperhead would never see her coming.
Her people want to talk to me? She reached up to finger her stringy black hair. It felt tacky from the film left by the hand soap she used when she washed in her tiny cubicle sink. Then she glanced around at the opulent surroundings. Was this really legit?
What the hell. Christal flipped out of her pumps and opened the locker April had indicated. Two white blouses, a gray wool skirt and jacket, and a neatly pressed pair of matching designer slacks hung there.
Maybe it wasn’t the right decision, but she peeled out of her still-damp shirt and pants, laid them neatly on the redwood bench, undid her bra, and dropped her panties.
Vulnerable. Right. That’s just how she felt as she walked through the door to the shower room. Damn! Talk about sybaritic! She hadn’t seen that one full wall was mirrored. She took the faucet farthest from April, cranked the handles, and fiddled with the water until the temperature was right. The soap, shampoo, and conditioner were contained in a gold-plated European-style dispenser with push buttons.
God, it felt heavenly. From under the spray she watched April’s reflection in the mirror as the muscular woman turned off the water, shook out her hair, and stepped to a far door. When April walked through, Christal could see the smooth turquoise surface of a pool under a glass-paned ceiling beyond.
Leaving the water running, Christal immediately slipped back into the locker room and tried the far door. Yep, locked all right. She returned to the shower room and turne
Christal glanced this way and that, seeing round life preservers here and there along the walls. Lounge chairs, small tables and benches, and several closed cabinets stood on the poolside patio. A diving board jutted out over the deep end closest to her.
“It’s okay,” April called where she trod water in the center of the pool. “We’re not going to be disturbed. At least, not by anybody who will live through it if they do.”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Suit yourself.” April flipped over, diving like a dolphin, her feet rising from the water as she slid down to kick otter-like across the pool floor.
Christal could hear the voices, whispering, warning, as she glanced around, searching again for any sign of cameras, of observation.
Oh, do it! she chided herself. After all, April was buck-assed naked, and as she had pointed out, she wasn’t the kind to take an infringement without serious consequences.
Christal stepped through the door, running to make a clean dive. As she speared into the water, a voice asked, But what do you really know about her? This is Copperhead! Maybe she was a lap dancer at a strip club before she became a felon?
Too late now. She was in the water. Her head broke the surface, and she flipped her wet hair aside.
April stroked past, floating on her back. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Whose place is this?” Christal found footing and braced herself, water modestly up to her neck.
“We have a lot of rich clients.” April pulled her feet under her and stood in the chest-deep water. “That’s why I brought you here. I thought you could use a break and some softening up before the lawyers get to you.”
“Is that what this is, softening up?”
“Well, it’s not a full-body massage, but it helps.” April slicked the water from her face and pulled her wet hair back. She could have passed for Ursula Andress in Doctor No. “You want the truth?”
“Sure. Not that I’m betting I’ll get it.”
“Genesis Athena is a huge, bulky, and often unwieldy corporation. Sometimes management makes decisions that people in the field don’t approve of. In your case, my bosses panicked. Hank didn’t help matters any. He gave them a full report on you. Gretchen made a mess of the Manny de Clerk collection—and right after that you walked into the answering service in Colorado. God knows how you put that together, but it blew everyone’s minds. They had convinced themselves that you were going to be motoring up to the ZoeGen in a Zodiac boat and doing some sort of GI Jane commando raid by the next morning.”
“Good idea. Anything explosive around here?”
“Just reality, Anaya. And sometimes that’s more volatile than any chemical. Management didn’t think that the public at large was ready for our reality to become common knowledge, and you might be the one to spill it. We want to introduce Genesis Athena in warm drips and drops, not scald the world with the whole giant corporate pot. We’ll let people get used to the idea, and then reveal a little more of our capability. By the time ten years have passed, people will be as comfortable with our abilities as they are with space flight.”
Christal pushed off, sidestroking. April matched her pace. The woman seemed half porpoise. Where Christal had grown up, the deepest water was the chocolate-colored stuff that ran during the summer in the waist-deep acequia.
“What about the guys McEwan has locked up downstairs? They part of the business plan?”
“They’ll be compensated.”
“Uh-huh, how? Just like Nancy Hartlee?”
April pulled up, treading water in the deep end. “How did you hear about her?”
“Read the paper. The New York Times placed her story just under the fold. You know, wondering how she’d gotten from California five years ago to a watery grave off Long Island.”
April jackknifed and dove; Christal splashed as she paddled around and started back for the shallow end.
April rose like Aphrodite in her path and sleeked her water-dark hair back with slim shining hands. “You check the followup?”
“What do you mean?”
“About her family? The insurance?”
“Never heard of it.”
“No, probably not. It didn’t make the news that Nancy Hartlee had an unknown insurance policy. Assuming you decide to take our settlement, check it out when you get back.” April pointed a hard finger, looking as dangerous as she ever had. “I know what you’re thinking. No! We didn’t drown her, throw her overboard, or anything else. It was her decision to go over the side. She was the one who tried to swim ashore. The miracle is that she made it as far as she did.”
Christal stood, water coursing down her sides. “So what? I’m supposed to think Genesis Athena is run by a bunch of angels? Bullshit!”
“Angels? Not on your life, Anaya.” April cocked her head, water running down her tanned skin and dripping from her breasts. “We’re a business. An international corporation worth billions that’s struggling to be worth trillions. It’s about global power and competition to be the world’s foremost in biotech.”
“And that justifies kidnapping? Stealing people’s lives the way you stole Nancy Hartlee, Brian Everly, and the others? That gives you the right to humiliate Sheela Marks and terrify Manny de Clerk?”
“Look, I don’t agree with everything they’re doing. Just like I’m sure you didn’t agree with everything the Bureau has done, is doing, or will do in the future. You’ve been around the block, Anaya. You’re not some simple Pollyanna hick from New Mexico.” She chuckled then, as if laughing at herself. “Look, we’re a lot alike, you and me.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Oh yeah? You were with the Bureau, one of their young hotshots. I was with LAPD. You got bounced by bad luck, coupled with a bit of bad timing.”
“You seem to know a lot about me. Hank tell you all that?”
“My case is somewhat similar. I didn’t get caught with my pants down. Instead it turned out that my superiors were more interested in my body than my brains. With Genesis Athena I can get as far as my wits and looks can take me.” Challenge filled her eyes. “What about you, Christal?”
“What about me?”
“Genesis Athena could make you a very rich woman.”
“As long as I didn’t mind overlooking some things like kidnapping, extortion, theft, conspiracy, and a few niggling little ethical concerns?”
A faint smile graced April’s perfect lips. “Nothing in life comes without compromise. But don’t make that decision now. Take your time, hear what our people have to say. Then you need to think seriously about it.”
“What, being bought off or dropped overboard?”
“We’re not going to kill you.” April leaned forward, stroking in a circle as Christal leaned back to float. “But you’d better know, if you force us into it, we’ll ruin you to protect ourselves. Paying you for your silence is the second option; but the first, the one we’d prefer, is that you consider a change in employment.”
“Go to work for you? After what I’ve seen.”
“Yeah. That’s just what I’m saying. You’re talented. You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. Stealing DNA just happens to appeal to me personally, but we’ve got to provide security for clients, do research, lots of things that would suit your skills. I’m not trying to whitewash some of the things Genesis Athena does, but on the other hand, you could retire in twenty years with stock options and a couple of million in the bank.”
“Just as long as I don’t mind bending a few principles along the way.”
April twisted sensuously in the water. “You’ll bend them no matter what you choose concerning us. Life does that to people—forces them to compromise between utopia and reality. I’m willing to bet your tax dollars go to fund programs and policies that you find ethically reprehensible, but I don’t
Christal slipped sideways in the water. “There’s nothing I can do about what the government does with my tax dollars.”
“Bullshit. You’ve just made that particular deal with the Devil, Christal. You’re comfortable with it. You get to live in familiar surroundings with certain services and protections, knowing at the same time that your government is buying off reptilian dictators, propping up sadistic governments, and hiding international murderers because they back us in the war on terrorism or turn over drug rivals or sell us cheap oil. Every day we make international criminals into millionaires and give them credibility—people that we’d arrest, convict, and lethally inject if they were on our streets. Or didn’t you discover that during your days at the Bureau?”
“You’re telling me it’s the same thing with Genesis Athena?”
“Right down to the charity gene treatments we do for poor kids.” April turned onto her back, spreading her arms, floating with her face and breasts out of the water. “Genesis Athena is like your beloved American government—down to the last moral compromise. We do some bad things, some neutral deeds, and a lot of good stuff as well.”
“Right.”
“By the end of the next decade no person on earth will have to be born with a genetic disease. That’s twenty million lives lived without mongolism, trisomy G, Huntington’s, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, PKU, sickle cell, or thalassemia. No more ALS or muscular dystrophy.”
“For a price.”
“You ever been to the emergency room? There’s always a price.”
“I still don’t think you’re angels.”
April kicked and regained her feet. “We’re not.” She waded close, where she could look into Christal’s eyes. “But keep something in mind while you think about it. You’re right. The cheapest thing would be for us to tie a chunk of metal around your ankle and drop you overboard, but you know what? We’re not going to do that. We’re offering to make amends, settle for the inconvenience.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve still got a surprise or two coming. Time’s about up. You’ve got a meeting.” April climbed out of the pool, striding for the shower room.