Greg Bear - Mariposa

The new programmable protein drugs were remarkable. The doctors had told her she should walk only a hundred feet or so per day, nothing more strenuous; so she jogged a few dozen yards, then dropped back with a slight limp and a wry expression.

The sky over the Capitol dome was a shade of pure enameled blue. The sun dropped with steadfast serenity behind a gray wall, a hovering front stalled to the west. The air had turned crisp and cool. Body heat puffed rhythmically from the collar of her sweatshirt.

Stages were being set up at the north end for a concert. Joggers and pedestrians and tourists had worn the grass down to dirt; gardeners tried to stake out territories for new grass, but hardly anyone paid the ribbons much attention, and soon, fifty or sixty thousand people would gather and stamp their feet in time with the latest bluegrass sensation. Rebecca didn't mind; she liked bluegrass. Her momma had liked bluegrass. Her daddy had liked bluegrass, and their mommies and daddies before them. Bluegrass never went away. It might even outlast the sun. Billions of years in the future, there might be concerts playing bluegrass to people made of beautiful walls of light, jiggling with the rhythm as it was broadcast out to new stars in a thin black sky.

She shook her head as she tried not to limp. Jogging didn't help her think. It helped her get away from thinking. She had been thinking too much the last few days and sleeping too little. Tomorrow she would talk with Edward Quinn. That meeting had taken two difficult days to arrange. Her ankle suddenly shot a bolt up her leg and she lurched toward a bench. Nothing big; the pain was already trailing off to a dull throb.

She grimaced and sat, waiting.

Tom Cantor appeared a few minutes later, also jogging. He wore jeans and a black sweatshirt with a transparent hoodie-D.C. regulations forbade opaque hoodies-that barely veiled his balding head and fringe of long straggly hair. Thin as a rail, he carried a slim backpack and nothing else. With a whuff, he sat beside her and leaned back, slung his arms over the bench, and regarded her with large brown eyes.

He flashed a generously kooky grin. "Come here often?"

"I'd like to," she said. "Ankle gives me grief."

"Better soon, I pray. Well, this one's pretty interesting. More so every hour."

"Interesting, how?"

"I recovered a spreadsheet file-mostly a list of names. Put it on zip paper for you. Fingerprint the upper corner and all will be revealed. Pull back the plastic tab and bend the corner-all gone."

"I know how to use zip paper. Thanks, Tom."

"The biggest parcel looks like a digital sound file. It's desperately fragmented. I'll need another day. Any reason it's important?"

"Fate of the planet," Rebecca said.

Tom shook his head and pushed up with another whuff. "Hate to do all this work just to nail some boring old white slavery ring. So-one more day?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Nope. Sorry." And he jogged off, waving his hand without looking back.

Tom Cantor had never failed her-or anyone else who relied on his services. And many very important people did.

Until now, no problem she had passed along to his expert hands had taken him for than a few hours to solve.

4 DAYS

Cumberland Federal Prison

"We're breaking new ground here, no doubt about it."

Lionel Blake walked beside Rebecca down the long corridor, lined with white tile and precisely laid ochre brick. Quinn's attorney nodded to three secret service agents, arrayed in a blocking triangle across the hall; the agents squinted and parted to let them pass. One tracked Rebecca's rear. The other two, more professional, studied her face, her briefcase, and her purse-before glancing at her rear.

Lionel Blake's representation of the former vice president of the United States could have cost at least a thousand dollars an hour. Quinn's family was not wealthy and the White House legal defense fund was not paying; perhaps Blake was doing it pro bono, for the considerable publicity. None of these motives endeared Blake to Rebecca, who as a rule was not fond of lawyers, less fond still of defense attorneys.

"Your visit is the first real sign of attention from the White House since my client's arrest," Blake said. "I don't know whether to be encouraged or just accept it as another layer of ass armor."

Two correctional officers sat outside the heavy, inset steel doorway. They rose and folded their arms like genies. Their faces-one black, one white, both beaded with sweat in the corridor's steam heat-were perfect blanks.

Blake paused. "Nobody goes in without four guards present. He's no Hannibal Lecter but he's no fun, either. Strong and unpredictable. Make up your own mind. He's more dangerous to himself… well, I won't go so far as to say that. But he hasn't hurt anybody since he killed Beth-Anne."

Rebecca glanced at the door-semi-gloss black enamel, featureless except for a small viewport at eye level and a pass-through near the base-and looked back down the corridor, then up at the steel plate ceiling. She hated prisons. Coming back here was no treat-the last time, she had been lightly worked over by a couple of beefy matrons, overseen by a super-zealous Diplomatic Security agent. They thought she might have information about a terrorist incident.

She sincerely hoped they were all out on their asses now, slopped away in the departing flood of medieval thinkers.

"I insisted you be allowed to interview him," Blake said. "Anything you learn can only support our case."

"How much has he said?" Rebecca asked.

Blake shrugged. "I can't stop him from saying whatever he wants. He's his own man, no doubt about it." Blake seemed cheerful, considering the atmosphere.

Easy case, she thought. Open and shut. Edward Quinn is innocent by reason of stark, raving, hoo-ha insanity.

Four more Cumberland officers came through the opposite door, one at a time to avoid knocking elbows-huge guys in padded suits with thick arms and thicker gloves, more suited to training guard dogs. The two officers at the desk had Blake and Rebecca sign in and finish the last round of waivers. One used a walkie-talkie to have the cell door remotely disarmed, like an airplane hatch. Small electric whirring and three clunks followed. Nothing was done hastily in this wing. The other guard peered through the viewport, then plugged a small mike into the door.

"Mr. Quinn, stand back to receive visitors-your attorney and a guest."

Quinn's voice sounded from a speaker in the wall to the right of the door, clear and pleasant. "Happy to have visitors. I'm feeling safe today."

Blake cast a doubtful look at Rebecca. "Here we come, Edward," he said into the microphone.

The correctional officers stood by for another ten seconds. Two of the guys in padded suits moved in like mirror images to flank the door. The door clicked again and opened a few inches with an oily piston sound. The third padded officer-the senior lead-pushed between Rebecca and Blake, as a shield, and pulled the door open the rest of the way.

It was a very heavy door. The cells had been built to hold former Gitmo detainees. Quinn stood at the back. He had a cast on his left arm, covered with tough-looking black mesh. The mesh extended over his hand.

"That arm's broken," the senior lead said in an undertone. "He's ripped the cast off twice. It's a bitch to replace. Takes five of us plus the doc. Anyway, he says he doesn't need it."

"How did he break his arm?" Rebecca asked.

"Exercising," the senior lead said, and entered the cell with a slight waddle, facing Quinn all the while. "McNair couldn't handle him. We're sort of used to tough guys-terror detainees were hard cases, you know. The shit they went through…" He shook his head.