Next

CHapter 043

Things were notgoing well, Rick Diehl thought, as he wiped pureed green peas off his face and paused to clean his glasses. It was five in the afternoon. The kitchen was hot. His three kids were sitting at the kitchen table screaming and hitting one another. They were throwing hot dog relish and mustard. The mustard stained everything.

The baby, in the high chair, refused to eat and spat her food right back out. Conchita should have been feeding her, but Conchita had vanished that afternoon. She had become increasingly unreliable ever since Rick's wife left. Broads stick together. Probably he would have to replace Conchita, which was a big pain in the neck, to hire somebody new, and of course she would sue him. Maybe he could negotiate a settlement with her before she went to court.

"You want it? Take it!" Jason, his oldest, mashed the hot dog with the bun into Sam's face. Sam howled and acted like he was choking. Now they were rolling on the floor.

"Dad! Dad! Stop him! He's choking me."

"Jason, don't choke your brother."

Jason paid no attention. Rick grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off Sam. "I said, don't choke him."

"I wasn't. He asked for it."

"You want to lose TV tonight? No? Then eat your own hot dog and let your brother eat his."

Rick picked up the spoon to feed the baby, but she closed her mouth stubbornly, staring at him with beady little hostile eyes. He sighed. What was it that made kids in high chairs refuse to eat, and throw all their toys on the floor? Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for his wife to have gone away, he thought.

As for the office, the situation was even worse. His ex�Csecurity guy had been humping Lisa, and now that he was out of jail, he was undoubtedly humping her again. That girl had zero taste. If Brad was convicted of pedophilia, that would be bad publicity for the company, but even so, Rick hoped for it. Josh Winkler's wonder drug was apparently killing people. Josh had gone way out on a limb, doing his own unauthorized human testing, but if he were sent to jail, that would reflect badly on the company, too.

He was poking at his daughter with the spoon when the phone rang. And things became much, much worse.

"Son of a bitch!"

Rick Diehl turned away from the banks of security screens. "I can't believe it," he said. On the screens, the hated Brad Gordon was swiping open doors to the labs, touching Petri dishes everywhere, and moving on. Brad had been recorded as he went methodically through all the labs in the building. Rick bunched his fists.

"He came into the building at one in the morning," the security temp said. "He must have had an admin card we didn't know about, because his was disabled. He went to all the storage points, and he contaminated every single culture in the Burnet cell line."

Rick Diehl said, "He's an asshole, but there's no problem. We have off-site bio-storage in San Jose, London, and Singapore."

"Actually, those samples were removed yesterday," the security temp said. "Someone picked up the cell lines and left. They had proper authorization. Secure e-transmission of codes."

"Who authorized it?"

"You did. It came from your secure account."

"Oh Christ." He spun. "How didthat happen?"

"We're working on it."

"But the cell line," Rick said, "we have other sites - "

"Unfortunately, it seems..."

"Well, then we have customers who have leased - "

"I'm afraid we don't."

"What are you saying?" Rick said. He was starting to scream. "Are you saying every fucking Burnet culture is gone? In the entire fucking world? Gone?"

"As far as we know. Yes."

"This is a goddamndisaster. "

"Evidently."

"This could be the end of my company! That was our safety net, those cells. We paid a fortune to UCLA for them. You're saying they're gone?" Rick frowned angrily, as the reality hit him. "This is an organized, coordinated attack on my company. They had people in London and Singapore; they had everything arranged."

"Yes. We believe so."

"To destroy my company."

"Possibly."

"I need to get those cell lines back. Now."

"No one has them. Except, of course, Frank Burnet."

"Then let's get Burnet."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Burnet seems to have vanished, too. We can't seem to locate him."

"Great," Rick said. "Just great." He turned and yelled to his assistant, "Get the fucking lawyers, get fucking UCLA here, and get everybody here by eight o'clock tonight!"

"I don't know if - "

"Do it!"

CHapter 044

Gail Bondfell into a routine. She would spend the night with Yoshi, then come home at six in the morning to wake up Evan, give him breakfast, and see him off to school. One morning, as soon as she unlocked the door, she saw that Gerard was gone. His cage stood uncovered in the hallway, his perch unoccupied. Gail swore. She went into the bedroom, where Richard was still sleeping. She shook him awake.

"Richard. Where's Gerard?"

He yawned. "What?"

"Gerard. Where's Gerard?"

"I'm afraid there's been an accident."

"What accident? What have you done?"

"The cage was being cleaned in the kitchen, and the window was open. He flew out."

"He did not. His wings were clipped."

"I know that," Richard said, yawning again.

"He did not fly out."

"All I can tell you is that I heard Nadezhda shriek, and when I came to the kitchen, she was pointing out the window, and when I looked, the bird was fluttering awkwardly to the ground. Of course I ran downstairs to the street at once, but he was gone."

The bastard was trying not to smile.

"Richard, this is very serious. That is a transgenic animal. If he escapes he may transmit his genes to other parrots."

"I am telling you, it was an accident."

"Where is Nadezhda?"

"She comes in at noon now. I thought I would cut back."

"Does she have a cell?"

"You hired her, pet."

"Don't call me pet. I don't know what you have done with that grey, but this is extremely serious, Richard."

He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

Of course it ruinedall her plans. They had intended to publish online the following month, and inevitably there would be cries from around the world that their claim was untrue. Scientists would call it the Clever Hans effect, mere mimicry, God knows what else. Everyone would demand to see the bird. And now the bird was gone.

"I could kill Richard," she said to Maurice, the head of the lab.

"And I will hire the bestavocat for your defense," he said, not smiling. "Do you think he knows where the bird is?"

"Probably. But he'll never tell me. He hated Gerard."

"You're having a custody fight over a bird."

"I'll talk to Nadezhda. But he has probably paid her off."

"Did the bird know your name? The name of the lab? Phone numbers?"

"No, but he memorized the tones for my cellular phone. He used to make them as a sequence of sounds."

"Then perhaps he will call us, one day."

Gail sighed. "Perhaps."

CHapter 045

Alex Burnetwas in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. He hired notorious D.C. attorney Abe ("It Ain't There") Ganzler to defend him.

It turned out that Crowley's taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but Ganzler - as was his custom - tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child's mother as "fantasizing feminist fundamentalists" who had made up the whole thing from "their sick, twisted imaginations." This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley's penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler's rectum.)

It was in the midst of frantic preparation for the third day of the trial that Amy, Alex's assistant, buzzed her to say that her father was on the phone. Alex picked up. "Pretty busy, Dad."

"I won't take long. I'm going away for a couple of weeks."

"Okay, fine." One of the other lawyers came in and dropped the latest newspapers on her desk. TheStar was running photographs of the raped child, the hospital in Malibu, and unflattering pictures of Alex and the kid's mother, squinting in hard sunlight. "Where are you going, Dad?"

"Don't know yet," her father said, "but I need some time alone. Cell phone probably won't work. I'll send you a note when I get there. And a box of some stuff. In case you need it."

"Okay, Dad, have fun." She thumbed through theL.A. Times as she talked to him. For years theTimes had fought for the right to access and print all court documents, however preliminary, private, or speculative. California judges were extremely reluctant to seal even those documents that involved the home addresses of women being stalked or the anatomical details of children who had been raped. TheTimes' policy of publishing everything also meant that attorneys could put gross and unfounded allegations in their pretrial filings, knowing theTimes would print them. And it invariably did. The public's right to know. Yes, the public really needed to know exactly how long the tear was in the poor little boy's -

"You holding up all right?" her father said.

"Yeah, Dad, I'm okay."

"They're not getting to you?"

"No. I'm waiting for help from the child welfare organizations, but they're not issuing any statements. Strangely silent."

"I'm sure you're shocked by that," he said. "The weasel is politically connected, right? Little dickhead. Gotta go, Lexie."

"Bye, Dad."

She turned away. The DNA matches were due today, but they hadn't arrived yet. The samples obtained had been small, and she was worried about what they would show.

CHapter 046

The lightsdimmed smoothly in the plush presentation room at Selat, Anney, Koss Ltd., the preeminent London advertising agency. On the screen, an image of an American strip mall, blurred traffic rushing past a wretched cluster of signs. Gavin Koss knew from experience this image was an immediate rapport-builder. Anything critical of America was surefire.

"American businesses spend more on advertising than any other country in the world," Koss said. "Of course, they must do, given the quality of American products..."

Snickers floated through the darkness.

"And the intelligence of the American audience..."

Mild, muted laughter.

"As one of our columnists recently noted, the great majority of Americans couldn't find their own behinds with both hands."

Open laughter. They were warming to him.

"A crude, cultureless people, slapping each other on the back as they drift ever deeper into debt." That should suffice, he thought. He changed his tone: "But what I wish to draw to your attention is the sheer volume of commercial messages, as you see them here, arranged in space along the motorway. And every vehicle driving past has its radio on, sending out even more commercial messages. In point of fact, it's estimated that Americans listen to three thousand messages every day - or what is more probable, they don't listen to them. Psychologists have determined that the sheer volume of messages creates a kind of anesthesia, which becomes ingrained over time. In a saturated media environment, all messages lose impact."

The image changed to Times Square at night, then Shinjuku, in Tokyo, then Piccadilly, in London. "The saturation today is global. Huge messages, including large-screen video, appear in public squares, along motorways, in tube stations, train depots. We place videos at point-of-sale in retail stores. In toilets. In waiting rooms, pubs, and restaurants. In airport lounges and aboard aircraft.

"Furthermore, we have conquered personal space. Logos, brands, and slogans appear on ordinary objects from knives to tableware to computers. They appear on all our possessions. Consumers wear logos on their clothing, handbags, shoes, jewelry. Indeed, it is rare for a person to appear in public without them. Thirty years ago, if anyone predicted that the entire global public would turn themselves into sandwich boards, walking about advertising products, the idea would have seemed fantastical. Yet it has happened.

"The result is an imagistic glut, sensory exhaustion, and a diminution of impact. What can we do now? How can we move forward in the new era of technology? The answer may be heretical, but it isthis. "

The screen changed dramatically, to a forest image. Huge trees rising toward the sky, shade beneath. Then a snowy mountain peak. A tropical island, an arc of sand, crystalline water, palm trees. And, finally, an underwater reef, with fish swimming among coral heads and sponges.

"The natural world," Koss intoned, "is entirely without advertising. The natural world has yet to be tamed. Colonized by commerce. It remains virgin."

From the darkness: "Isn't that rather the point?"

"Conventional wisdom would put it so. Yes. But conventional wisdom is invariably out of date. Because in the time it has taken to become conventional - to become what everyone believes - the world has moved on. Conventional wisdom is a remnant of the past. And so it is in this case."

On the screen, the reef scene was suddenly branded. Coral branches had lettering that readBP CLEAN . A school of small fish wriggled by, each winkingVODAFONE, VODAFONE . A slithering shark withCADBURY curving across the snout. A puffer fish withLLOYDS TSB GROUP in black lettering swam over convoluted heads of brain coral, withSCOTTISH POWER printed along the ridges in orange. And, finally, a moray eel poked its head out of a hole. Its greenish skin pattern saidMARKS & SPENCER .

"Think of the possibilities," Koss said.

The audience was stunned - as he had expected it would be. He pressed on with the argument.

The slide now showed a desert scene, with spires of red rock rising against a blue sky laced with clouds. After a moment, the clouds coalesced into a larger, misty cloud that hung above the landscape and said:

BP MEANSCLEANPOWER.

"Those letters," Koss said, "are nine hundred feet high. They stand a quarter of a mile above the landscape. They are clear to the naked eye, and they photograph well. At sunset, they become quite beautiful." The image changed. "Here, you see their appearance as the sun goes down - the lettering changes from white to pink, to red, and finally deep indigo. So it has the quality, the feeling, of being a natural element within the natural landscape."

He returned to the original cloud image in daylight. "These letters are generated by a marriage of nanoparticles and genetically modified clostridium perfringens bacteria. The image is, in effect, a nanoswarm, and it will remain visible in the air for a variable period of time, depending on conditions - just as any cloud would. It may appear for only a few minutes. At other times, it may appear for an hour. It may appear in multiples..."

On the screen, the fluffy clouds became the BP slogan, repeated infinitely in cloud after cloud, stretching away to the horizon. "I think everyone will recognize the impact of this new medium. Thenatural medium."

He had expected spontaneous applause for this dramatic visual, but there was still only silence in the darkness. Yet surely they would be experiencing some sort of reaction by now. An infinitely repeated advert hanging in the sky? Surely it must arouse them.

"But these clouds are a special case," he said.

He returned tothe underwater image, fishes moving over the coral reef. "In this case," he said, "signage and adverts are borne by the living creatures themselves, through direct genetic modification of each species. We call this genomic advertising. To capture this new medium, speed is of the utmost importance. There are only a limited number of reef fishes common to tourist waters. Some fish are more incandescent than others. Many are a bit drab. So we want to choose the best. And the genetic modifications will require patenting the marine animal in each case. Thus we will patent the Cadbury clown fish, the British Petroleum stag coral, the Marks and Spencer moray eel, the Royal Bank of Scotland angelfish, and gliding silently overhead, the British Airways manta ray."

Koss cleared his throat. "Speed matters because we are entering a competitive situation. We want our Cadbury clown fish out there, before the clown fish is patented by Hershey's or McDonald's. And we want a strong creature, since in the natural environment the Cadbury clown fish will compete against ordinary clown fish, and hopefully triumph over them. The more successful our patented fish, the more frequently our message shall be seen, and the more completely the original, messageless fish will be driven to extinction. We are entering the era of Darwinian advertising! May the best advert win!"

A coughfrom the audience. "Gavin, forgive me," came a voice, "but this appears to be an environmental nightmare. Brand names on fish? Slogans in clouds? And what else? Rhinos in Africa that carry the Land Rover logo? If you go about branding animal species, every environmentalist in the world will oppose you."

"Actually, they will not," Koss said, "because we're not suggesting that corporationsbrand species. We ask corporations tosponsor species. As a public service." He paused. "Think how many museum exhibitions, theater companies, and symphony orchestras are entirely dependent on corporate sponsorship. Even sections of roadway are sponsored, today. Why shouldn't the same philanthropic spirit be directed toward the natural world - which surely would benefit far more than our roads? Endangered species could be attractively sponsored. Corporations can stake their reputations on the survival of animal species, as they once staked their reputations on the quality of dull television programs. And it is the same for other animals that are not yet endangered. For all the fish in the sea. We are talking about an era of magnificent corporate philanthropy - on a global scale."

"So, this is the black rhino, brought to you by Land Rover? The jaguar, brought to you by Jaguar?"

"I shouldn't put it so crudely, but, yes, that's what we are proposing. The point," he continued, "is that this is a win-win situation. A win for the environment. For corporations. And for advertising."

Gavin Kosshad done hundreds of presentations in his career, and his feeling for the audience had never failed him. He could feel now that this group was not buying it. It was time to bring the lights up and take questions.

He stared at the rows of frowning faces. "I admit my notion is radical," he said. "But the world is changing rapidly. Someone is going to do this. This colonization of naturewill happen - the only question is, by whom. I urge you to consider this opportunity with the greatest care, and then decide if you want to be a part of it."

From the back, Garth Baker, the head of Midlands Media Associates Ltd., stood. "It's quite a novel idea, Gavin," he said. "But I must tell you with some assurance that it will not work."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Because someone has already done it."

CHapter 047

There wasno moon and no sound, except the booming of the surf in the darkness and the whine of the damp wind. Tortuguero beach extended for more than a mile along the rough Atlantic coast of Costa Rica, but tonight it was no more than a dark strip that merged with a black, starry sky. Julio Manarez paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. A man can see by starlight, if he takes the time.

Soon he could make out the palm trunks and debris scattered over the dark sand, and the low, scrubby plants whipped by the wind off the ocean. He could just see whitecaps in the churning seas. The ocean, he knew, was filled with sharks. This stretch of the Atlantic coast was bleak and inhospitable.

A quarter mile down the beach he saw Manuel, a dark shape hunched beneath the mangroves. He was keeping out of the wind. There was no one else on the beach.

Julio started toward him, passing the deep pits dug by the turtles in previous days. This beach was one of the breeding grounds for leatherback turtles, which came up from the ocean in darkness to lay their eggs. The process took most of the night, and the turtles were vulnerable - in the old days, to poachers, and now mostly to the jaguars that roamed the beach, black as the night itself. As the newly appointed conservation chief of the region, Julio was well aware that turtles were killed every week along this coast.

Tourists helped prevent this; if tourists were walking the beach, the jaguars stayed away. But often the cats came after midnight, when the tourists had gone home to their hotels.

It was possible to imagine an evolutionary selection pressure producing some defense against the jaguar. When he was in graduate school, in San Juan, he and the other students used to joke about it. Were tourists agents of evolution? Tourists changed everything else about a country, why not its wildlife? Because if a turtle happened to possess some quality - perhaps a tolerance for flashlights, or the ability to make a plaintive, pained mothering sound - if they had something that drew tourists and kept them hanging around into the night, then those turtles would be more likely to survive, and their eggs more likely to survive, and their offspring more likely to survive.

Differential survival that resulted from being a tourist attraction. That had been the joke, in school. But, of course, it was theoretically possible. And if what Manuel was telling him was true...

Manuel saw him and waved. He stood as Julio approached. "This way," he said, and started down the beach.

"You find more than one tonight, Julio?"

"Just one. Of that kind I was speaking of."

"Muy bien."

They walked down the beach in silence. But they had not gone far - perhaps a hundred yards or so - when Julio saw the faint purple glow, low to the sand, and pulsing slightly.

"That's it?"

"That's it," Manuel said.

She was a femaleof perhaps one hundred kilos, a meter and a quarter long. She had characteristic shell plates, about the size of his palm. Brownish, streaked with black. She was half buried in the sand, digging a pit at the rear with her flippers.

Julio stood over her and watched.

"It starts and stops," Manuel said.

And then it began again. A purple glow that seemed to emanate from within the individual plates of the shell. Some plates did not have the glow and were dark. Some glowed only occasionally. Others glowed each time. Each pulse seemed to last about a second, rising quickly, fading slowly.

"So how many turtles like this have you seen?" Julio said.

"This is the third."

"And this light keeps the jaguars away?" He continued to watch the soft pulsing. He felt that the quality of the glow was oddly familiar. Almost like a firefly. Or a glowing bacterium in the surf. Something he had seen before.

"Yes, the jaguars keep their distance."

"Wait a minute," Julio said. "What is this?" He pointed to the shell, where a pattern of light and dark plates emerged.

"It only happens sometimes."

"But you see it?"

"Yes, I see it."

"It looks like a hexagon."

"I don't know..."

"But it is like a symbol, wouldn't you say? Of a corporation?"

"Perhaps, yes. It is possible."

"What about the other turtles? They show this pattern?"

"No, each one is different."

"So this might be a random pattern that just happens to look like a hexagon?"

"Yes. Julio, I believe it is. Because you see the image on the shell is not so good, it is not symmetrical..." Even as he spoke, the image faded. The turtle was dark again.

"Can you photograph this pattern?"

"I already have. It is a time exposure, without the flash, so there is some blurring. But, yes, I have it."

"Good," Julio said. "Because this is a genetic change. Let's review the visitor log, and see who might have done this."

CHapter 048

Josh."It was his mother, on the phone.

"Yes, Mom."

"I thought you should know. You remember Lois Graham's son, Eric, who was on heroin? There's been a terrible tragedy. He died."

Josh gave a long sigh. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "How?"

"In a car crash. But then they did the autopsy or whatever. Eric had a fatal heart attack. He was twenty-one, Josh."

"Was it in the family? Some congenital thing?"

"No. Eric's father lives in Switzerland; he's sixty-four. He climbs mountains. And Lois is fine. Of course she's crushed. We're all crushed."

Josh said nothing.

"Things were going so well for Eric. He was off drugs, he had a new job, he'd applied to go back to school in the fall...he was getting bald, was the only thing. People thought he'd had chemo. He'd lost so much hair. And he walked stooped over. Josh? Are you there?"

"I'm here."

"I saw him last week. He looked like an old man."

Josh said nothing.

"The family's sitting. You ought to go."

"I'll try."

"Josh. Your brother looks old, too."

"I know."

"I tried to tell him it was like his father. To cheer him up. But Adam just looksso old. "

"I know."

"What's going on?" she said. "What have you done to him?"

"What haveI done?"

"Yes, Josh. You gave these people some gene. Or whatever that spray was. And they're getting old."

"Mom. Adam did it to himself. He sucked down the spray himself because he thought it'd get him high. I wasn't even with him at the time. And you asked me to give the spray to Lois Graham's son."

"I don't know how you could think such a thing."

"You called me up."

"Josh, you're being ridiculous. Why would I call? I don't know anything about your work.You calledme , and asked where Eric lived. And you asked me not to tell his mother. That's what I remember."

Josh said nothing. He pressed the tips of his fingers against his closed eyes until he saw bright patterns. He wanted to escape. He wanted to leave this office, this company. He wanted none of this to be true.

"Mom," he said finally. "This could be very serious." He was thinking that he could go to jail.

"Of course it's serious. I'm very frightened now, Josh. What's going to happen? Am I going to lose my son?"

"I don't know, Mom. I hope not."

"I think there's a chance," she said. "Because I called up the Levines in Scarsdale. They're already old, the two of them. Past sixty. And they sounded just fine. Helen said she was never better. George is playing a lot of golf."

"That's good," he said.

"So maybe they're okay."

"I think so."

"Then maybe Adam will be okay, too."

"I really hope so, Mom. I really do."

He got off the phone. Of course the Levines were fine. He had sent sterile saline in the spray tubes. They hadn't gotten the gene. He wasn't about to send his experimental genes to some people in New York he didn't know.

And if this gave his mother hope, then fine. Keep it that way.

Because right now, Josh didn't hold out much hope. Not for his brother. And ultimately not for himself.

He was going to have to tell Rick Diehl. But not now. Not right now.