[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Her mouth opened, but no language came out, only a sound like the beginning of
a song. Her innocence stilled them. They listened to her single note of sound.
It went on and on.
She raised her arms out to the sides. Something wondrous happened. Wings of
color flashed and disappeared as her hands lifted up. Her flesh had become a
prism. She faced the sun, and her entire body threw a penumbra of rainbow.
What kind of creature is this? someone asked.
Someone might have recognized her, even in her condition, if she were a
daughter of this island. As it was, no one in this town had ever met Medea,
the fifth wife of Nikos Engatromenos. She was a stranger
to them regardless of her flesh.
An old woman in black dared to go forward. Clutching her rosary, she reached
out and touched the angel. The strange creature lifted her head and turned
blindly in the direction of the old woman. A
murmur rifled through the crowd.
The old woman brought her face closer and made her judgement. She
knelt. Evloyite, she said.
Normally it was a greeting reserved only for monks. She said it again.Bless
me. Rainbows danced upon the old woman s black dress.
Devotion overtook the crowd. It was spontaneous. In their collective minds,
the woman was nothing less than an angel fallen to earth.
Word spread. Hundreds of people came close to genuflect and reach out to touch
her. Those close enough crossed themselves with beads of her sweat. Others
tore off bits of their clothing to press to her miraculous flesh.
In the distance, a horn sounded from the sea. The 12:10 ferry from Brinidisi
was approaching. Dock workers and merchants and taxi drivers and cafe owners
detached from the crowd and hurried to greet the boatload of tourists.
Medea sang to them. She glistened. On foot, with wings of light, the plague
had come to meet its messengers.
5
Crossing the Line
N
EW
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
M
EXICO
S
EPTEMBER
, F
OUR
M
ONTHS ATER
L
Their yellow schoolbus burst from the mob. Splattered with eggs and blood and
neon paintballs, it looked psychedelic, like a time machine from the Age of
Aquarius. Abbot glanced around him. Peeking from the windows, some of his
fellow passengers could have been flower children with their stringy hair and
old jeans. In fact they were international scientists on their way to the
Mesa, better known as Los
Alamos National Laboratory.
Every seat was filled. There were young and old, rich and poor, weird and
plain, each one of them on the cutting edge of their research. From the rear,
he saw bleached blond buzz cuts and pierced ears, long hair, bald monk pates,
pencil necks, wrestler shoulders, mad scientist frizz, and expensive
blow-dried perms, male and female. Some were high-bred cosmopolitans able to
navigate the most convoluted dinner conversation. Others were near dumb with
introspection and shyness. Some lived by Bach, others by Puff Daddy. Many were
university academics or ran labs for the government or private industry.
Several had branched out and beached tens of millions with their own biotech
start-ups. The majority were biologists, who tended to be more social and
grounded than, say, mathematicians or particle theorists. Abbot thought that
had to do with their proximity to living beings, regardless of how minuscule.
In one form or another, they handled the mortal coil. It kept them from
spinning off into surreality.
Abbot was the chief of the National Academy of Sciences. The riot reflected on
him. He had orchestrated for them a quiet taste of the Southwest. Rancho
Encantado was a resort north of Santa Fe.
The Dalai Lama had stayed there once. There was a picture in the lobby of him
with a cowboy hat. For the first two days, the scientists had presented
papers, showed pictures, and ridden horses. This morning
they had risen early and eaten a pancake-and-eggs breakfast, and boarded the
bus. And driven straight into that howling gauntlet awaiting them on Highway
40.
There was no questioning the mob s hatred for the scientists. The
demonstrators had let the eggs rot in the sun for days. You could smell the
sulfur dioxide on the riot cops hunkered in the aisles and in the well of the
bus door. Their ninja-turtle armor dripped with gouts of neon paint and
spoiled food, and the scientists leaned away from them. The paint and rotten
food were mischief, thought Abbot. But the blood was pure malice. It was
human, donated by the pint from radical anarchists. In these times of AIDS and
Hep-C, throwing blood was not a statement, it was an act of terrorism.
The newspapers would treat it as one more demonstration against the G.E.s, or
genetic engineers. Token peaceniks would decry the random violence, but
denounce the evil scientists. The sheriff would stress his restraint, the
governor would extend apologies. It was all theatrics. Abbot knew how these
things worked. Someone very high up had authorized putting some fear of God
into the distinguished members of Genome XXI, the twenty-first symposium of
the Human Genome Project.
Abbot mulled over his enemies. There was a vicious Senate battle in progress
over budget cuts. The sciences were being treated like parasites. In the name
of his creationist constituents, Senator Jimmy
Rollins of Kansas was once again frothing at the mouth, a feeble mind, a cheap
Page 44
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
plagiarist. It could have been the European Union lobby, of course, still
trying to block genetically modified frankenfoods from their shores. Or the
farm unions, working for leverage.
Stop fretting, Abbot s seatmate said. Her name tag readElise Golding/UC. The
UC was too humble.
In fact the University of California was almost an empire unto itself,
including even Los Alamos.
Fossilized bubblegum stuck to the wall beside her plaid skirt. She patted his
arm. It s the times, Paul.
Her salt-and-pepper hair was bound in a thick ponytail. The low sunlight
glinted off the planes of her face. The radiance stripped her face of its
crow s-feet and laugh lines. For a moment she appeared thirty years younger,
that same young woman he d first met, ironically, at a wild stormy protest
against the
Vietnam War. She had been on the faculty at Cornell, he at MIT. Everyone had
been full of daring that day. And night.
Those weren t just fundamentalists and anti-abortionists, he growled. You
saw their signs. All the
Luddites were there in force. Greenpeace, Earth First, WAAKE-UP, the animal
rights people, the
AFLCIO goons. It was a lynch mob.
And you provoked it, she said.
Good grief, Elise, they just attacked a childrens schoolbus.
They attacked an idea.
Driven by demagogues and talk radio and tabloid nonsense.
Admit it, Paul, she said more quietly. You re mad because your plan
backfired.
What plan, he said.
You used us. Her eyes flashed like grey steel. She had a low tolerance for
falseness of any kind.
Shenanigans, she called it. It was why he d placed Miranda under her guidance.
Elise was an ethics lesson in motion. You drew a line in the sand. They
crossed it. It s that simple. Politics. You re just as guilty as they are. You
wanted to make a statement, and it bit you on the ass. It got ugly. Thank
goodness no one got hurt. These windows aren t bulletproof, you know. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl freetocraft.keep.pl
Her mouth opened, but no language came out, only a sound like the beginning of
a song. Her innocence stilled them. They listened to her single note of sound.
It went on and on.
She raised her arms out to the sides. Something wondrous happened. Wings of
color flashed and disappeared as her hands lifted up. Her flesh had become a
prism. She faced the sun, and her entire body threw a penumbra of rainbow.
What kind of creature is this? someone asked.
Someone might have recognized her, even in her condition, if she were a
daughter of this island. As it was, no one in this town had ever met Medea,
the fifth wife of Nikos Engatromenos. She was a stranger
to them regardless of her flesh.
An old woman in black dared to go forward. Clutching her rosary, she reached
out and touched the angel. The strange creature lifted her head and turned
blindly in the direction of the old woman. A
murmur rifled through the crowd.
The old woman brought her face closer and made her judgement. She
knelt. Evloyite, she said.
Normally it was a greeting reserved only for monks. She said it again.Bless
me. Rainbows danced upon the old woman s black dress.
Devotion overtook the crowd. It was spontaneous. In their collective minds,
the woman was nothing less than an angel fallen to earth.
Word spread. Hundreds of people came close to genuflect and reach out to touch
her. Those close enough crossed themselves with beads of her sweat. Others
tore off bits of their clothing to press to her miraculous flesh.
In the distance, a horn sounded from the sea. The 12:10 ferry from Brinidisi
was approaching. Dock workers and merchants and taxi drivers and cafe owners
detached from the crowd and hurried to greet the boatload of tourists.
Medea sang to them. She glistened. On foot, with wings of light, the plague
had come to meet its messengers.
5
Crossing the Line
N
EW
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
M
EXICO
S
EPTEMBER
, F
OUR
M
ONTHS ATER
L
Their yellow schoolbus burst from the mob. Splattered with eggs and blood and
neon paintballs, it looked psychedelic, like a time machine from the Age of
Aquarius. Abbot glanced around him. Peeking from the windows, some of his
fellow passengers could have been flower children with their stringy hair and
old jeans. In fact they were international scientists on their way to the
Mesa, better known as Los
Alamos National Laboratory.
Every seat was filled. There were young and old, rich and poor, weird and
plain, each one of them on the cutting edge of their research. From the rear,
he saw bleached blond buzz cuts and pierced ears, long hair, bald monk pates,
pencil necks, wrestler shoulders, mad scientist frizz, and expensive
blow-dried perms, male and female. Some were high-bred cosmopolitans able to
navigate the most convoluted dinner conversation. Others were near dumb with
introspection and shyness. Some lived by Bach, others by Puff Daddy. Many were
university academics or ran labs for the government or private industry.
Several had branched out and beached tens of millions with their own biotech
start-ups. The majority were biologists, who tended to be more social and
grounded than, say, mathematicians or particle theorists. Abbot thought that
had to do with their proximity to living beings, regardless of how minuscule.
In one form or another, they handled the mortal coil. It kept them from
spinning off into surreality.
Abbot was the chief of the National Academy of Sciences. The riot reflected on
him. He had orchestrated for them a quiet taste of the Southwest. Rancho
Encantado was a resort north of Santa Fe.
The Dalai Lama had stayed there once. There was a picture in the lobby of him
with a cowboy hat. For the first two days, the scientists had presented
papers, showed pictures, and ridden horses. This morning
they had risen early and eaten a pancake-and-eggs breakfast, and boarded the
bus. And driven straight into that howling gauntlet awaiting them on Highway
40.
There was no questioning the mob s hatred for the scientists. The
demonstrators had let the eggs rot in the sun for days. You could smell the
sulfur dioxide on the riot cops hunkered in the aisles and in the well of the
bus door. Their ninja-turtle armor dripped with gouts of neon paint and
spoiled food, and the scientists leaned away from them. The paint and rotten
food were mischief, thought Abbot. But the blood was pure malice. It was
human, donated by the pint from radical anarchists. In these times of AIDS and
Hep-C, throwing blood was not a statement, it was an act of terrorism.
The newspapers would treat it as one more demonstration against the G.E.s, or
genetic engineers. Token peaceniks would decry the random violence, but
denounce the evil scientists. The sheriff would stress his restraint, the
governor would extend apologies. It was all theatrics. Abbot knew how these
things worked. Someone very high up had authorized putting some fear of God
into the distinguished members of Genome XXI, the twenty-first symposium of
the Human Genome Project.
Abbot mulled over his enemies. There was a vicious Senate battle in progress
over budget cuts. The sciences were being treated like parasites. In the name
of his creationist constituents, Senator Jimmy
Rollins of Kansas was once again frothing at the mouth, a feeble mind, a cheap
Page 44
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
plagiarist. It could have been the European Union lobby, of course, still
trying to block genetically modified frankenfoods from their shores. Or the
farm unions, working for leverage.
Stop fretting, Abbot s seatmate said. Her name tag readElise Golding/UC. The
UC was too humble.
In fact the University of California was almost an empire unto itself,
including even Los Alamos.
Fossilized bubblegum stuck to the wall beside her plaid skirt. She patted his
arm. It s the times, Paul.
Her salt-and-pepper hair was bound in a thick ponytail. The low sunlight
glinted off the planes of her face. The radiance stripped her face of its
crow s-feet and laugh lines. For a moment she appeared thirty years younger,
that same young woman he d first met, ironically, at a wild stormy protest
against the
Vietnam War. She had been on the faculty at Cornell, he at MIT. Everyone had
been full of daring that day. And night.
Those weren t just fundamentalists and anti-abortionists, he growled. You
saw their signs. All the
Luddites were there in force. Greenpeace, Earth First, WAAKE-UP, the animal
rights people, the
AFLCIO goons. It was a lynch mob.
And you provoked it, she said.
Good grief, Elise, they just attacked a childrens schoolbus.
They attacked an idea.
Driven by demagogues and talk radio and tabloid nonsense.
Admit it, Paul, she said more quietly. You re mad because your plan
backfired.
What plan, he said.
You used us. Her eyes flashed like grey steel. She had a low tolerance for
falseness of any kind.
Shenanigans, she called it. It was why he d placed Miranda under her guidance.
Elise was an ethics lesson in motion. You drew a line in the sand. They
crossed it. It s that simple. Politics. You re just as guilty as they are. You
wanted to make a statement, and it bit you on the ass. It got ugly. Thank
goodness no one got hurt. These windows aren t bulletproof, you know. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]