Xeno Sapiens Read Free Page B

stories were becoming as plentiful
and tawdry as junk jewelry at a five and dime.
    One story -a story with all the
earmarks of an urban legend, but one which rang true to Merrifield-
weighed on him. Allegedly, a ten year old girl had had contracted
gangrene after being scratched by a rusty nail. The girl’s parents,
acolytes of Josh Hall, had refused to allow their daughter to be
saved by a quarter’s worth of penicillin. Instead, they stayed by
their daughter’s bedside and prayed as the gangrene escalated to
septicemia and their daughter became more feverish and pain wracked
before finally perishing. Penicillin might be a poor substitute for
God, but it would have been a damn sight more effective.
    “ So,” Merrifield said, coming back to
the present. “What do you think?”
    “ I think that once the shock dies
down, the things we’ll have learned along they way will shut up the
hue and cry from John Q. Public. It will be a fait accompli.”
    “ We have no guarantees,” Merrifield
said. He swiveled around in his chair and tapped a pencil on his
desk. His unbuttoned jacket allowed a generous portion of white
shirted belly to roll over his belt.
    “ If it can be done, she’s the one to
make it happen. I think we’ve got a better chance with this than
with some of the other white elephants we could lay at the
government’s door.”
    “ How do you want to go on?”
    “ I’ve set up a meeting a week from
today. She has to know we’re all willing to have our heads on the
chopping block.”
    “ Easy enough,” Merrifield said. “How
did she take not being told everything outright?”
    “ She knows how big money projects
work. She knows we don’t want to tip our hand too soon. She’ll
respect that.”
    “ You think so?”
    “ I’ve done pretty well following my
instincts. They’re good ones.”
    “ Better leave the thinking to me,
Cliffy,” Merrifield admonished.
    Merrifield slowly turned his chair
around. Out the large picture window in his office, he looked down
on the city of Tampa. “You can go now, Alex,” he said absently.
“Please brief me again before our meeting.”
    “ Fine.”
    Clifton stood. He wished he could call
Merrifield a hot blooded, bucket-headed imperious fool, all apt
qualifiers. Still, despite their ostensible amicability, Clifton
always remembered who was boss.
    Outside the window, life went on its
routine in the city, its streets and buildings and alleys unaware
of the schemes and plots hatched within its borders
everyday.
3
    Ingrid walked across the brick
courtyard laid out in front of the Courier bio lab. Brisk September
had planted its chill kiss on the rest of the nation, but had no
power to pucker in northern Florida. Stiff Palmetto trees ground
away mechanically in the salty sea breeze while a rainbow of
Azaleas bloomed in the controlled, glass environment of the Speith
greenhouse.
    Her heels clacked like tabla drums
against the bricks. She had slept uneasily the previous night, less
from her apprehension at what her decision might be than from the
blackly exciting information in the manila folder.
    Her initial reaction had been one of
dismay that anyone would have the moral effrontery to even attempt
such a thing. But as she had read, her reaction had morphed into
morbid curiosity and finally, a dark fascination. Could such a
thing be done? She now understood why the project had been
entrusted to a complex that was as powerful and faceless as the
government itself. Such things as were proposed could only be done
under the auspices of power so great that it could crush
opposition, economies, or entire nations with a phone call or a
directive as simple as ordering a cheeseburger and
fries.
    “ Mornin’, Ingrid.”
    Ingrid looked up. Hubert Ashe pushed
his cart of cleaning supplies before him like a burden. He was the
stereotypical janitor and handyman with a feather duster in his
back pocket and an engineer’s cap on his head. He could have been
anywhere between forty