[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Ochs is gone, said Abbot. But he will return. Count on it.
Here?
Salt Lake City was the next deck sweep. Five hundred miles as the bird flies.
But that was too far away for my purposes. So I had a discussion with Dr.
Ochs. He seemed perfectly happy to leave Los Alamos on his own.
Nathan Lee heard the edges of deeper cunning. Abbot had spared not one life,
but two, both for some larger, hidden design. By sharing this further secret,
Abbot was preparing Nathan Lee. A service was going to be required of him.
Tell me, said Abbot, was Ochs always such a lunatic?
What do you mean?
This messianic fever. It s like a disease. Or was he like that before?
I don t know what you re talking about.
The miracle.
What miracle?
Never mind, said Abbot. It s all in motion now.
Nathan Lee could practically feel invisible wheels turning around him. He had
already been inserted into the clockwork. Whatever his part was, it would be
revealed in due time.
Your role is simple, Abbot said. For the time being, do whatever it is you
do up here. Talk to God.
Smell the roses. Sleep with my daughter. Make her happy. Keep her in love. No
Page 192
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
matter what, keep close to her.
Abbot handed him one of his cellphones.
The day is coming, he said. E-Day. And I know Miranda. She ll argue to stay
up here. You ve heard her. But you will bring her to me. She ll fight you. She
may hate you until the end of time. But you will bring her down into the
sanctuary.
Abbot looked over Nathan Lee s shoulder into the rising sun. His eyes cut to a
thin slit. He brought them back to Nathan Lee. If anyone can understand, it
is you, he finished. I must not lose my daughter.
31
The Siege
O
CTOBER NDS
E
Her father departed, leaving Miranda to guide them back into the sunlight.
With a stroke of her pen, she destroyed Cavendish s culture of secrecy,
declassifying all of their research, and scheduling seminars and conferences.
From now on the labs were to cooperate, not compete. Like some antique torture
device, Cavendish s notorious deportation order became a thing of the past.
Reason, not fear, would rule.
The change that stirred the most controversy was her moratorium on human
testing. Miranda suspended the deck sweeps, and announced that no more clones
would be grown for medical experimentation. The moratorium upended researchers
who had grown used to human guinea pigs. They railed that without human
testing, the cure would surely elude them.
Miranda held her ground. The cure has eluded uswith human testing, she told
them. The end no longer justifies the means. Keep searching. Everything will
be fine. They adapted to her edicts. Human ash no longer sprinkled down when
the wind blew the wrong way.
Los Alamos settled into its traditions of hard work, hard play, dinner
conversations that could be brilliant or mundane, high school Bach concerts,
jazz sessions in garages, and petty office politics. Kids got up in the
morning, went to class, played video games. The world seemed further away than
ever. No storm clouds brewed. The sky stayed relentlessly blue. During lunch
hour, beautiful homemade kites of every shape and color climbed up from the
labs, drifting back and forth above the forest and the tan and white canyons.
Every morning, Miranda seemed slightly different to Nathan Lee from yesterday.
Her green eyes no longer burned from dark recesses in her face. The
stubbornness in her jawline softened. Nathan Lee watched her sleeping, or
moving about in the kitchen, and tried to put words to it. She was more and
more beautiful to him. But the change was something larger than that. He
watched her touching the young widow s shoulder, listening to the impassioned
bench worker, or bulling her way with stubborn Council members. They looked up
to her. He had seen it in Alpha Lab. Now it was the whole city, giving
allegiance to a woman barely out of her teens.
For a time, their peace was disturbed only by Cavendish. Not a day went by
that he didn t condemn
Miranda s softness or pepper them with doomsday predictions. His gnomelike
face infiltrated their cable
TV and computer screens. He ranted about conspirators in their midst, about
the approach of a great army of plague victims, about research being
suppressed. He unsettled them, or tried to.
But the shadowy conspirators never materialized. Marine snipers kept watch off
the prow of the Mesa, and there was no army of plague victims, only a few
hundred wretched pilgrims who returned to camp on the bright orange valley
floor. As for suppressed research, the scientists had never known such
freedom.
People began to remark that their former tyrant had never been so alive as
Page 193
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
when he was, effectively, dead. They also remarked that Cavendish had never
looked so dead. His illness had thinned him to a twig. His lip curled back on
his teeth. He came and went like a poltergeist, never staying for longer than
a sound bite. He would speak his poison, then fifteen seconds later be gone,
and they would be watchingJeopardy orFrasier reruns again.
N
ATHAN EE WENT BACK
L
to the only job he could think of. He returned to the year zero, or tried to.
The city s fascination with the clones was ended. The appearance of desperate
pilgrims in the valley had robbed the Year Zero Hour of its charm and
entertainment value. Antiquity seemed dangerous once again. And so the clones
lost the celebrity status they d never known they had. After a three-week
absence, Nathan Lee wasn t sure the tribe would have him back. Izzy made it
perfectly clear: no way.
The yard had become much too dangerous for him and Nathan Lee. Might as well
jump off a cliff, he said. I ve been tuning in to our friend Eesho over the
yard microphones. He s told the others what
Miranda showed him, the clone in glass, and what she said, that she created
him. He made it sound like the bottom of hell. They know we re somehow part of
it. They think we re demons.
Not a chance then? Nathan Lee said. His regret had less to do with having a
job than having a place.
He d grown used to the high walls and the company of misfits, and now he
shared their sense of dislocation. He felt confused and, ever since Denver,
had fastened on the peace of their little fishbowl in the sun. He wanted their
ignorance of the world. He was tired of hope.
Forget it, said Izzy. Ochs poisoned the well.
Ochs? Was there no end to the man?
Freaking folly. Him and Eesho.
What did he do?
Got himself reborn. You were in decon. It s all on tape.
Izzy guided him through the tapes of Ochs s interview with Eesho. It had taken
place in a room with only a bare table and chairs. The date of the interview
was October 11, one day after Nathan Lee s descent into Denver. The camera
showed Izzy sitting to one side of the clone and Ochs, who kept wiping his
palms. He looked anguished, but excited, even feverish. Izzy hit fast forward
and the three characters began twitching in their seats.
Skip the first few hours, said Izzy. Broken record. Ochs asked the same
questions you and I did. Got the same rap. Straight from the Book.
So is Ochs the one who scripted him? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
Ochs is gone, said Abbot. But he will return. Count on it.
Here?
Salt Lake City was the next deck sweep. Five hundred miles as the bird flies.
But that was too far away for my purposes. So I had a discussion with Dr.
Ochs. He seemed perfectly happy to leave Los Alamos on his own.
Nathan Lee heard the edges of deeper cunning. Abbot had spared not one life,
but two, both for some larger, hidden design. By sharing this further secret,
Abbot was preparing Nathan Lee. A service was going to be required of him.
Tell me, said Abbot, was Ochs always such a lunatic?
What do you mean?
This messianic fever. It s like a disease. Or was he like that before?
I don t know what you re talking about.
The miracle.
What miracle?
Never mind, said Abbot. It s all in motion now.
Nathan Lee could practically feel invisible wheels turning around him. He had
already been inserted into the clockwork. Whatever his part was, it would be
revealed in due time.
Your role is simple, Abbot said. For the time being, do whatever it is you
do up here. Talk to God.
Smell the roses. Sleep with my daughter. Make her happy. Keep her in love. No
Page 192
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
matter what, keep close to her.
Abbot handed him one of his cellphones.
The day is coming, he said. E-Day. And I know Miranda. She ll argue to stay
up here. You ve heard her. But you will bring her to me. She ll fight you. She
may hate you until the end of time. But you will bring her down into the
sanctuary.
Abbot looked over Nathan Lee s shoulder into the rising sun. His eyes cut to a
thin slit. He brought them back to Nathan Lee. If anyone can understand, it
is you, he finished. I must not lose my daughter.
31
The Siege
O
CTOBER NDS
E
Her father departed, leaving Miranda to guide them back into the sunlight.
With a stroke of her pen, she destroyed Cavendish s culture of secrecy,
declassifying all of their research, and scheduling seminars and conferences.
From now on the labs were to cooperate, not compete. Like some antique torture
device, Cavendish s notorious deportation order became a thing of the past.
Reason, not fear, would rule.
The change that stirred the most controversy was her moratorium on human
testing. Miranda suspended the deck sweeps, and announced that no more clones
would be grown for medical experimentation. The moratorium upended researchers
who had grown used to human guinea pigs. They railed that without human
testing, the cure would surely elude them.
Miranda held her ground. The cure has eluded uswith human testing, she told
them. The end no longer justifies the means. Keep searching. Everything will
be fine. They adapted to her edicts. Human ash no longer sprinkled down when
the wind blew the wrong way.
Los Alamos settled into its traditions of hard work, hard play, dinner
conversations that could be brilliant or mundane, high school Bach concerts,
jazz sessions in garages, and petty office politics. Kids got up in the
morning, went to class, played video games. The world seemed further away than
ever. No storm clouds brewed. The sky stayed relentlessly blue. During lunch
hour, beautiful homemade kites of every shape and color climbed up from the
labs, drifting back and forth above the forest and the tan and white canyons.
Every morning, Miranda seemed slightly different to Nathan Lee from yesterday.
Her green eyes no longer burned from dark recesses in her face. The
stubbornness in her jawline softened. Nathan Lee watched her sleeping, or
moving about in the kitchen, and tried to put words to it. She was more and
more beautiful to him. But the change was something larger than that. He
watched her touching the young widow s shoulder, listening to the impassioned
bench worker, or bulling her way with stubborn Council members. They looked up
to her. He had seen it in Alpha Lab. Now it was the whole city, giving
allegiance to a woman barely out of her teens.
For a time, their peace was disturbed only by Cavendish. Not a day went by
that he didn t condemn
Miranda s softness or pepper them with doomsday predictions. His gnomelike
face infiltrated their cable
TV and computer screens. He ranted about conspirators in their midst, about
the approach of a great army of plague victims, about research being
suppressed. He unsettled them, or tried to.
But the shadowy conspirators never materialized. Marine snipers kept watch off
the prow of the Mesa, and there was no army of plague victims, only a few
hundred wretched pilgrims who returned to camp on the bright orange valley
floor. As for suppressed research, the scientists had never known such
freedom.
People began to remark that their former tyrant had never been so alive as
Page 193
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
when he was, effectively, dead. They also remarked that Cavendish had never
looked so dead. His illness had thinned him to a twig. His lip curled back on
his teeth. He came and went like a poltergeist, never staying for longer than
a sound bite. He would speak his poison, then fifteen seconds later be gone,
and they would be watchingJeopardy orFrasier reruns again.
N
ATHAN EE WENT BACK
L
to the only job he could think of. He returned to the year zero, or tried to.
The city s fascination with the clones was ended. The appearance of desperate
pilgrims in the valley had robbed the Year Zero Hour of its charm and
entertainment value. Antiquity seemed dangerous once again. And so the clones
lost the celebrity status they d never known they had. After a three-week
absence, Nathan Lee wasn t sure the tribe would have him back. Izzy made it
perfectly clear: no way.
The yard had become much too dangerous for him and Nathan Lee. Might as well
jump off a cliff, he said. I ve been tuning in to our friend Eesho over the
yard microphones. He s told the others what
Miranda showed him, the clone in glass, and what she said, that she created
him. He made it sound like the bottom of hell. They know we re somehow part of
it. They think we re demons.
Not a chance then? Nathan Lee said. His regret had less to do with having a
job than having a place.
He d grown used to the high walls and the company of misfits, and now he
shared their sense of dislocation. He felt confused and, ever since Denver,
had fastened on the peace of their little fishbowl in the sun. He wanted their
ignorance of the world. He was tired of hope.
Forget it, said Izzy. Ochs poisoned the well.
Ochs? Was there no end to the man?
Freaking folly. Him and Eesho.
What did he do?
Got himself reborn. You were in decon. It s all on tape.
Izzy guided him through the tapes of Ochs s interview with Eesho. It had taken
place in a room with only a bare table and chairs. The date of the interview
was October 11, one day after Nathan Lee s descent into Denver. The camera
showed Izzy sitting to one side of the clone and Ochs, who kept wiping his
palms. He looked anguished, but excited, even feverish. Izzy hit fast forward
and the three characters began twitching in their seats.
Skip the first few hours, said Izzy. Broken record. Ochs asked the same
questions you and I did. Got the same rap. Straight from the Book.
So is Ochs the one who scripted him? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]