Greg Bear - Vitals

‘Right,’ Jason said. He got up and stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘We found Max. He’s dead, too. Nadia’s severely shook.’

I just stared at him. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, as if it were all my fault.

‘Yeah.’

Jason left, and a tall man in a blue parka came in. He was forty or forty-five, dressed, beneath the unzipped parka, in a wool sweater and khaki cargo pants, damp with sea spray. He was an FBI agent out of the Seattle Bureau, he said. His name was Bakker and he asked a lot of questions, some of which did not make sense until I realized he didn’t know I had been on Mary’s Triumph when Mauritz flipped. As well, Agent Bakker had not been informed Dave Press was missing and presumed drowned.

The news seemed to confuse him, so he turned back his pages of notes and started over.

‘What in hell is a DSV?’ he asked.

By the end of the interview, I was ready to collapse. Bakker folded his notebook. None of the pieces fit for him, either. In his experience, scientists didn’t just go around killing each other.

After he left, I stretched out on the long, padded bench behind the main dining table and blacked out. I should have dreamed of falling through ink, this time without the bubble, drowning in endless, stinking night. Instead, I dreamed of being out in the desert, walking beside a guy with bushy white hair, wearing a long gray shirt.

The ship returned to the Port of Seattle the next morning and agents and Coast Guard investigators swarmed over her. Diligent men and women marched aboard and began stringing yellow tape and ribbon. A dozen agents with digital cameras and crime-lab kits took samples. We were instructed not to move anything, certainly not to remove anything.

Jason intervened with the agent in charge and he allowed Nadia and me to go down to the lab and check the specimens taken during the dive. We were accompanied by a young female agent, built a lot like Dave, I thought, her pant suit a size too small and stretched tight. She watched suspiciously from beneath a knit cap perched jauntily forward on neat cornrows, and asked a lot of questions.

She would not miss a trick, I judged.

Nadia did most of the talking. She had more color today, but her manner was cold and efficient, as if her emotions were running on a very low charge.

I was trying to figure out how to get my prizes off the Sea Messenger. The ship was likely to be impounded for days, and I had no idea what would happen to them over so much time. I just wanted to haul the containers off the Sea Messenger and get them over to the lab I was renting on southeast Lake Union. I was eager to get my critters stabilized in the proper inoculants, supplied with fresh seawater, and under reliable pressure.

Maybe it was a personal disconnect, like an emotional circuit breaker blowing, maybe it was shock. All I needed on this Earth, right now, was to document and describe the Vendobionts, if that’s what they were. Perform a few tests. Count their little fingers and toes.

It was not that I didn’t care about the rest. I just did not have a clue how I could help Nadia feel better, or do anything for Jason. I certainly did not feel responsible for what had happened, however strange the circumstances.

Maybe it was the Sea Messenger that was hexed.

I peered into my cabin. The plump agent in the too-tight suit stood there with two men in plain clothes – and I do mean plain, black suits and London Fogs.

My clothes, books, and computer were spread out on the bed, being violated.

‘Hello,’ I said.

The young agent had removed her cap and her cornrows were indeed perfect. She had the most intense and unreadable eyes, and the skin of her round face was an unblemished work of art.

‘We’re through with these,’ she said, and indicated the clothes on the bed. ‘But we’d like to keep these.’ She swung her hand – her whole upper body, as well – to indicate my computer and three textbooks.

‘The books are available on Amazon dot com,’ I said. ‘The computer contains private information. Unless you have a specific warrant, I’d like to take it with me. I’m not under suspicion, am I?’ I gathered up my few clothes and pointedly thrust them back into the travel bag, flopping over and pressing down sleeves and legs.

‘We need to establish relationships and circumstances,’ she said.

‘Am I a suspect?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Do you have a warrant that lets you…’ I looked for the right legal words, then gave up. ‘Fumble through private documents?’

‘No,’ she said, eyes lidded with sublime nonchalance.

‘I’ll keep it neat and tidy, and I’m sure you’ll let me know if things change,’ I said, shaking a little at my presumption, and at hers. I tossed the computer and the books into the bag and zipped it shut.

I passed Nadia in the corridor as I rolled the bag on its wheels to the gangway. She was smoking a cigarette and looked dead on her feet. She glanced my way, then sharply looked aside and stubbed out her cigarette in a little can.

I had not seen her smoke before.

‘I won’t say it was a pleasure,’ she said.

I stopped and regarded her sadly, still buzzing from my anger in the cabin. I switched the bag handle to my right hand. ‘I feel like a goddamned Jonah,’ I said, and realized my eyes were watering. ‘Christ, what did I do?’

‘Nothing,’ Nadia said.

‘I have no idea why Dave went crazy in the sub, or why Mauritz wanted to kill me. I really don’t.’

She kept her face pointed toward the shadows and bleak gray concrete planes of the dock. I flashed on all the women who had ever stubbornly tried to put me aside or pigeonhole me, or blame me, with or without cause.

‘This is nuts,’ I said, and tugged my ridiculous little bag toward the gangway.

‘Betty Shun wants to talk with you,’ Nadia said, biting off the information like an insult. You’re being called to the principal’s office.

I looked back, eyes wide. She was lighting up another cigarette.

Our generation had taken up Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, reading cheap paperbacks, wearing black suits, and smoking cigarettes, like all the war-weary lemmings of the nineteen fifties, but without their excuses.

I felt sick.

After a bad night’s sleep on the fourth floor of the Homeaway, just blocks from the Genetron Building and my rented lab, I opened the curtains. Across Lake Union, morning fog slid over the rusty tanks and pipes and broad lawn of Gasworks Park. I stood there for five minutes, feeling fortunate.

I was no Jonah. It wasn’t me that was hexed. I had survived, and that meant I was lucky, maybe even on the right track in this great scheme of things. Only the FBI and a couple of murders were in my way, and that pissed me off.

Rob would have recognized my mood instantly. Prince Hal was not getting his way.

A cell-phone rang on the nightstand. Data phones in the U.S. had been screwed up for weeks with viruses. I carried four with me, on four different systems, just to make sure: a PalmSec, an InfoBuddy, and two standard Nokias.

It was the PalmSec that was beeping. The pert little a.m. triple-tone told me two things, that I had a call, and that it was before noon. I flipped open the jacket, keyed in my unlock, and answered. ‘Cousins.’

‘Dr Cousins, Betty Shun. How are you?’

‘Dandy,’ I said, and regretted the flippancy.

‘We’re very sad here,’ she said. ‘We’ve lost a lot of friends.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘We need to get together. I’ll bring along a man who also works for Owen. He wants to talk with you.’