Ramez Naam - Crux

Travers’ wife and their autistic son were nowhere to be seen, of course.

Holtzmann looked into one of the wives’ eyes and saw the pain that the months hadn’t healed and it was all just too much. He excused himself to the bathroom, stepped into the stall, and closed the door behind him.

Deep breaths. Deep deep breaths.

His hand was still shaking. His skin felt clammy. His tie was constricting. His heart beat fast, and his hip ached where it had been shattered. He knew what he needed.

Here, of all places? Holtzmann thought. Now, of all times?

Yes. Yes.

Holtzmann called up the interface in his mind, found the control.

Just for pain, he’d told himself when the prescriptions had run out and he’d installed this app. Just until the growth factors finish the healing. Just for the pain. Just so I can sleep. Just another month or two.

A special occasion, then. Just this once. For the stress. A little one. Yes, a little one.

Holtzmann pressed the button, and Nexus forced his own neurons to pump sweet opiates into the rest of his brain.

He emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, calm, smiling, a little dreamy, but awake enough. A little bump of norepinephrine kept him moving even as the opiates made the pain and stress go away.

“You doing OK?” Barnes asked him.

Holtzmann smiled. “Better.”

They filed out to the Rose Garden and lined up for the ceremony. Holtzmann smiled at the TV cameras and waved at a staffer he knew. Then they waited. And waited.

The opiate calm faded. He felt a chill seep into his bones, even in the sweltering October sun. His breath was coming fast again. The hip ached. His hand started to tremble.

God, he could use another hit.

His head was pounding now. When would this start? He felt weak in the knees.

Another? he wondered. Even smaller?

No. Absolutely not.

Just a tiny, tiny little dose?

And then the door opened, and President Stockton walked out into the garden.

Holtzmann straightened himself. His throat was dry. The President gave a speech on courage and self-sacrifice and the need to stand up against those who would use violence to win their way. It was easy for him now. The assassination attempt had changed the race completely. Stockton was ten points up with just weeks to go.

I should have let him die, Holtzmann thought.

Stockton walked down the line, thanking the wives and children of the Secret Service men killed. Saying kind words and shaking hands and patting heads of the children for the cameras.

Holtzmann’s anxiety grew as the President came nearer. His heart was a jackhammer, beating faster and faster. He wiped a hand against his brow and it came away wet with his sweat. He felt so very cold and his muscles were cramping and all he wanted was another small surge of the opiates that would take this pain away.

No .

Then the President was in front of him. And Holtzmann stared at the man, his heart in his throat.

He’s going to know, Holtzmann realized. How could he not know? How did I spot the assassin? They’re going to figure it out.

“Dr Holtzmann, your keen eye and quick wits saved my life three months ago. The nation owes you a huge debt. I owe you a huge debt. In recognition of your service, I now award you this Distinguished Civilian Service Award. You’re a hero, Doctor. Thank you.”

The President put the ribbon around his neck and Holtzmann almost choked around his thank you and nearly flinched when they shook hands. He smiled a rictus smile for the cameras and he thought it was over, but the President kept a firm grip on his hand, and then pulled him close, so close Holtzmann could smell his aftershave and feel the football hero size of the man. Then the President spoke, his voice pitched for Holtzmann’s ears alone.

“I’d like you to brief me on the Nexus situation, Doctor. And especially those Nexus children you’re investigating. Two weeks. You, me, and Director Barnes. My chief of staff will set it up.”

Holtzmann swallowed, and then the President was past, and it was over.

He nearly collapsed into the men’s room stall, after, and pumped a tiny bit more into himself. He felt the sweet relief of tension leaving his body, of the anxiety he’d felt before the President evaporating.

Just this once, Holtzmann told himself. A special exception.

He let the fear fade, then chased the endogenous opiates with another boost of norepinephrine to get himself moving again.

Barnes was waiting for him when he emerged.

“Everything OK, Martin?”

Holtzmann smiled, and waved vaguely at his head, the skull fracture he’d received that day. “Just… still some aftereffects. Almost gone.”

Barnes nodded.

“Any luck tracking down the source of the Nexus yet?” he asked.

Holtzmann shook his head. “I have a team on it full time. We’ll find an impurity. Something will tip us off as to where it came from.”

Barnes nodded. “Keep looking.” Then they were off to the Capitol to make the case for the bills the President wanted.

Holtzmann told a dozen legislators that they needed tighter controls on chemreactors and precursors that might lead to Nexus. In between he passed through half-a-dozen more Nexus detectors, all of his team’s design, all with the holes he’d put there for himself. He swore to another senator that giving an autistic child Nexus was clear child abuse, as bad as giving a child heroin. The senator shook their hands and said she’d consider her vote. By that time all Holtzmann wanted was to find a bathroom and give himself another jolt of his own opiates to drown his sick self-loathing.

“Why bring me?” he asked Barnes.

“You’re a respected scientist, Martin,” Barnes replied, smiling that unnerving smile of his. “You have far more credibility than anyone I could bring from enforcement division. And, of course, you’re a national hero.”

Holtzmann grunted and got on with the day’s hypocrisy.

Holtzmann’s part was done at 4 o’clock, while Barnes went on to another meeting. He was tired and achy and clammy and jonesing, but he’d gotten through it, and now it was done, and he was absolutely not going to use the opiates again except for pain or sleep.

He’d exited the Capitol, was limping down the outside stairs on his cane, on his way to the passenger load point, when he saw her approaching. Red hair. Fair, freckled skin. Lisa Brandt. It had been years. Her green eyes met his, and she rushed towards him. Her face showed not delight, not hatred, but urgency.

“Martin!”

“Lisa… It’s so good to see you.” He reached out with his free hand to touch her arm. “What are you doing here?”

“Lobbying with CogLiberty. Martin, we’ve been hearing these rumors.” Her eyes burrowed into his and he remembered the intensity he’d always felt at that gaze, the passion, when their eyes had met, when... “Autistic children with Nexus, taken…”

Holtzmann searched those eyes. Did she still feel anything for him?

“…to ERD facilities, Martin. For research purposes. Not child protective services! ERD!”

He stared at her, and all he wanted was to kiss her again or to curl up in a ball or flee.

“Are you listening to me, Martin? Kidnapping children! Do you know anything about this? You have to help.”

The words she was saying caught up to him, and he blinked.

“I… Lisa… I…”

“You do know.” She took a breath and he could see her pulse moving in her lovely throat. She was as beautiful as she’d been fifteen years ago, when he’d been a young professor of forty and she his much younger grad student of twenty-five.