ViraVax Read Free Page B

“Triples,” “Trips” and, because he was a recovering gambler, “Blackjacks.” Genetic analysis identified the dominant type as having three sets of chromosome twenty-one instead of two.
    You would think they would get more of something.
    What they did get were more heart surgeries and abdominal surgeries, more openness, more need for reassurance and touch. The Children of Eden made up the world’s leading experts on Down syndrome, and funded hundreds of foster homes for them in Costa Brava alone. The Latinos called them deficientes.
    Their medical students get a lot of surgical practice, Marte thought.
    ViraVax housed a complete surgical suite, clinic and emergency room staffed by missionaries on their two-year rotation. This was one of the things that Joshua Casey’s preliminary briefing had not told her, but her briefing from the Agency had. Marte Chang turned back towards the black hulk of a plane, hoping for a reflection that would help her tidy up. The only glass in the top of the doorway sucked up light and threw back a distorted image, one that gave her a fat jaw and a pin head. She had instructions from Dr. Casey to wait atop the gangway until someone came for her. All of these deficientes hurried about their business, but none of their business seemed to have anything to do with her. She presumed that it was Joshua Casey’s way of putting her in her place.
    A couple of missionaries, identifiable by their white baseball caps, directed the lift pad crews and, in the fields below, brown-suited crews tended the agriculture. Every available surface yielded to the tillers. The tops of all of the ViraVax building— bunkers, really, she noted—teemed with fruits and squashes and blossoms. The fenced-in farmlands surrounding these bunkers made up more than 350 square kilometers of cultivated soil.
    They feed their entire facility, plus the foster homes and outlying missions.
    ViraVax could be wealthy from its fruit production alone.
    Artificial viral agents made the difference. Compressed and packed inside a retroviral shell, AVAs entered a target organism and carried out certain engineering tasks there—usually insertion or deletion of a single protein, a single amino acid, or a regrouping of chains within the nuclei of the cells. Crops flourished, diseases fell to the microsword.
    Even the microsword has two edges.
    If the Agency was right, ViraVax engineered a series of famines in Moslem nations and was experimenting on its Down syndrome charges, proving that any top has its bottom.
    “Doctor Chang!”
    Her name was a mouthful for the red-haired young man who waved to her from one of the carts. He carried all of the characteristic trisomy features behind a huge smile, and expertly swung the cart around to meet her at the bottom of the step.
    He flapped his stubby fingers at her in the Latin gesture that meant “hurry along.” Her two bags already lay in the back.
    “I’m David,” he said, and offered a hand as she stepped in.
    “Thanks,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”
    “Hold the bar,” David said, indicating a handhold on the dashboard.
    Her understanding of what he said was a beat or two behind his saying it. He waited until she had a grip, then wheeled her towards the flight-deck elevators. They rolled aboard, cart and all, and rolled off at ground level. Colored lines in the pavement guided crews between barracks and work.
    Marte noted that worker jumpsuits and overalls were color-coded to match the lines on the pavement.
    They passed about a dozen deficientes watching a bald-headed man run an obstacle course built entirely of rubber tires. The young people laughed, and clapped, and several mimicked his performance as best they could. Nothing here pointed towards the danger she felt, a distinct pressure between her shoulder blades like a warning finger or a gun muzzle.
    “We’ll see Dr. Casey now,” David said.
    He pointed towards a huge bunker overgrown with banana trees. A welcoming