Demons (26 page)

Now that laughing, forgiving boy was traveling with his mother through a desolate wasteland.

Ira had been trying not to think about it. Again and again doing the inner exercises Yanan had taught him, to stay centered, present, nonidentified. They worked for a while, but then he noticed the digital wall clock. She was supposed to have called through the satellite uplink. Both she and Nyerza had the equipment with them. He had checked with the international cell phone company. No problems there.

When he accidentally brushed his markers off the table, and they clattered on the floor, he didn’t bend to pick them up. The sleek black cat stirred in his lap and looked into his face.

“Settle down, Daumal,” Ira told the cat.

He couldn’t find a meaningful match for his online search. He noticed the clock again and typed in a new search subject. TURKMENISTAN AND HUMAN RIGHTS. He selected a website from the list found by the search engine. He skimmed and scrolled down the page.

U.S. Department of Foreign Services Security and Human Rights Report: Turkmenistan

The government’s human rights record remains extremely poor. The government continues to commit serious human rights abuses, and Turkmen authorities severely restrict political and civil liberties. A number of political prisoners have died in custody under suspicious circumstances. Security forces continue to beat and otherwise mistreat suspects and prisoners, and prison conditions remain poor and unsafe. Both the police and the KNB operate with relative impunity and abuse the rights of individuals, as well as enforce the government’s policy of repressing political opposition. Arbitrary arrest and detention, prolonged pretrial detention, unfair trials, and interference with citizens’ privacy remain problems.

The government completely controls the media, censoring all newspapers and rarely permitting independent criticism of government policy or officials.

Ira stopped when he came to one comment in particular. He reread it:

The government imposes restrictions on nonregistered religious groups. The law allows the government to tighten control of religious groups. It is required that all religious organizations include at least 500 Turkmen citizens as members in a given locality in order to be registered legally. This has prevented all but Sunni Muslims and Russian Orthodox Christians from legally establishing themselves.

Ira found himself squeezing the cat against his belly so hard that it clawed at him to get away. He let Daumal jump to the floor and tried to marshal his thoughts.

Melissa and Nyerza were going to the Fallen Shrine. Surely what remained of the ancient school at the Fallen Shrine would be regarded as a nonapproved religious group—though they were not actually religious at all, in the usual sense. But a government wouldn’t distinguish between a metaphysical science and a religion.

He leaned over the laptop, scrolled farther down the page.

The government imposes some restrictions on freedom to travel abroad. Domestic violence against women is a problem, and women experience societal discrimination. The government generally gives favored treatment to men over women and to ethnic Turkmen over minorities.

In January, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) opened an office in Ashgabat. In September, Georgei Garayev, a political prisoner and Russian citizen, was found hanged in his cell in the maximum security prison in Turkmenbashy. The government has rejected requests from the Russian government and international human rights organizations for an investigation into the suspicious nature of Garayev’s death (see Sections 1.c. and 1.e.). The 1992 constitution makes torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment illegal. However, there have been widespread credible reports that security officials frequently beat criminal suspects and prisoners and often use force to obtain confessions.

There have been credible reports that political prisoners are singled out for cruel treatment. Security forces also use denial of medical treatment and food, verbal intimidation, and unsanitary conditions to coerce confessions. Jehovah’s Witnesses reportedly were beaten while in police custody in September (see Section 2.c.). Prisons are unsanitary, overcrowded, and unsafe. Food is poor, and infectious diseases are rampant. Facilities for prisoner rehabilitation and recreation are extremely limited. Some prisoners have died due to overcrowding, untreated illnesses, and lack of adequate protection from the severe summer heat. Women political prisoners are routinely prevented from seeing their children, who are often placed in state custody.

“Oh, shit,” Ira said.

Bald Mountain Observatory, Northern California

It was chilly in the echoing, curved area of the telescope room, as Harold Dickinham gave Stephen and Glyneth the tour. “There’s the telescope, still operational. Mr. Winderson comes and uses it once in a while. But most of us regard this room as wasted space. We could use a lot more lab room, and we’re hoping Mr. Winderson will turn it over to us eventually.”

Dickinham was a broad-shouldered, balding man with newly transplanted hair cropping out. Below squinting, almost colorless blue eyes, his nose showed broken red veins like those of an alcoholic, but which Stephen also associated with people who worked a great deal around pesticides. You saw them on the faces of exterminators. He associated cancer with that condition also—but more often than not cancer could be cured, nowadays. If you had the insurance coverage.

Looking around the big, shadowy, windowless dome, Stephen reflected that a converted observatory seemed an odd base of operations for a chemicals company carrying out a field experiment.

West Wind ostensibly fit the usual corporate paradigm. Like most corporations, they used temps whenever possible so as not to have to pay into retirement funds or insurance plans. They downsized personnel whenever they felt it would help their stocks; they arranged the usual tax loopholes; they maintained the usual corps of lobbyists and campaign-financed politicos; they pushed to be “self-regulating” so they could pollute without constraint.

But every so often, something peculiar cropped up at West Wind, like that one-patient hospice high in the pyramid building—and like psychonomics. And now this: a refitted observatory. Above Stephen, aimed at the closed hatch, the telescope looked like a giant insect, stymied as it sought to spring into the sky. Stephen wondered briefly what miniature stars and galaxies it could see in the paint-flaking, rusty metal hatches.

They left the observatory, going into a long curving room that followed the arc of the observatory’s base. It had been retrofitted for use as a chemicals- and animal-testing lab, with long tables of beakers and sealed containers, each sporting its warning label, and cages and microscopes and PC monitors.

Dickinham rattled on proudly. “We’ve pulled all the old computers out of the digital-scan room and donated them to UC Davis. We use the site for agents-testing now, though we do have other plans for this section.”

Stephen swallowed, looking neither to the right nor the left as he walked through the room—seeing only peripherally the cages of rabbits, rats, and chickens. Some of them were dead, some weren’t.

What is this weakness I have for animals?
he asked himself angrily.
It’s stupid.

It wasn’t as if he were a vegetarian. But he didn’t—couldn’t—think about chicken or beef as coming from living things, things that walked around and breathed and suffered as they were slaughtered, before he ate them. His uncle had laughed in his face when he’d taken him on a hunting trip as a boy, and he’d burst into tears, watching the deer writhing from a bullet wound.

“Why don’t you finish ‘im for me, Stevie boy? Here—just put the muzzle right behind his ear. Come on, shoot ‘im—your dad’d be ashamed if you don’t do it.”

That’d made the boyish Stephen take the rifle, shove the muzzle against the back of the deer’s head, and pull the trigger. But he’d gotten sick when he’d blown its eyes out the front of its skull. And his uncle had laughed again.

Now, he felt Glyneth watching him, and he was relieved when they left the testing room and passed into other labs that were mostly storage—some of it refrigerated—for sundry volatile chemicals. There were complex devices for safely decanting them; and in room-sized glass boxes men in antitoxin suits, complete with helmets, worked with beakers of a rather pretty blue fluid.

Without thinking, Stephen commented, “Those suits—it’s as if they’re handling nerve gas. Is the stuff really that dangerous?”

Stephen regretted his outburst when Dickinham glanced sharply at him. “No. It isn’t. It’s just . . . before it’s combined with other chemicals, it’s pretty toxic. By the time it gets into the field, it’s not bad at all. You know—diluted and muted. And we overcompensate here, for the safety of our employees.”

“Sure, of course. I forgot. My specialty was always general business and marketing. I’m a little weak on the science side.”

Dickinham grunted and led the way into a one-story rectangular building attached to the dome, into the smell of hot food and coffee. “Well now, Steve . . . Glyneth . . . what would you say to some lunch?” He gestured with humorous grandeur at a steaming buffet table laid out at one end of the little cafeteria.

Glyneth responded instantly, not quite deadpan, “What would I say? I’d say ‘Lunch, I’m ready for you, so I hope you’re ready for me.’ ”

Dickinham smiled apologetically at Stephen. “Those little jokes are a staple of Glyneth’s.”

“Makes the workday go faster, I’m sure,” Stephen said, wincing inwardly at the forced sound of the remark.

“Is that our young Mr. Isquerat?” came Winderson’s voice.

Stephen turned and jumped when he found Dale Winderson standing between him and the buffet table, beaming, thrusting out his hand. Winderson seemed eerily backlit by a wall light, his face half hidden in its glare.

“Well, Stephen, you going to shake my hand or just leave it there for a bird to build a nest on?”

“Sorry!” Stephen crossed to him and stuck out his own hand—which went right through Winderson’s. He stared, then experimentally ran his hand through Winderson’s middle. “A hologram!” The light behind Winderson’s head was actually a little mobile projector that hovered like a flying penlight in midair.

Winderson laughed. “A damn good hologram, though! Most of ‘em fall for it, and you did, too!” In the background, Dickinham was chuckling politely as the boss went on. “I’ve had projectors and surveillance put in most of the important West Wind research centers. I like to maintain an on-site presence of one kind or another.” Winderson turned to Glyneth. “Who’s the charmin’ young miz?” Though he was in a transmission booth back at West Wind headquarters, his hologram mimicked his every movement.

“Ms. Glyneth Solomon,” Dickinham said.

“Mr. Winderson,” Glyneth said, pretending to curtsey, smiling just the right amount.

“A curtsey! I like that. Dickinham, why don’t you curtsey? Call me Dale, Glyneth. I was just touring the facilities and thought I’d see if I could pull a fast one on young Stephen here. But you guys look hungry. You’ll find West Wind does well by its employees in these outlying research centers. It’s all catered in hot.”

“It’s damn good, too,” Dickinham said redundantly.

“Well, I’m out of here. Just remember, Harry, Stephen’s important to us. But see to it that he does plenty of bottom-floor work to get his feet wet, so to speak . . . all right?”

“Yes, sir, that was the memo. I’m on it.”

“All righty.” The hologram wiggled its fingers good-bye at them. “Check you later!” And he blinked out . . . gone.

Stephen shook his head, laughing softly. “Am I a chump or what?”

Glyneth said, “Or what. You hungry?”

They heaped their sectioned trays with boeuf bourguignon, surprisingly fresh vegetables, rice, and apple crisp, then sat at tables near the long strip of windows looking out over the valley. Out there, a rainbow shimmered in and out of view through leaden gossamers teased from the clouds. Inside, cutlery clicked, and for a while no one looked up from their food except to make an occasional casual remark.

Other workers came to the buffet and sat at tables in twos and threes, men and women in white coats and hairnets, with rueful smiles or an air of quiet brooding. Some of them had reddish noses with broken veins.

A white-haired man with long sideburns, purplish lips, and doughy features slapped his tray down across from Stephen. Dickinham introduced him with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “This is Fritz Crocker, our head of D17 research.”

Crocker grinned at them. Some of his teeth were a little too white, a little too straight, in contrast to the others, artificial perfection side by side with natural snaggles. “How’re you likin’ that French beef dish, there, Steve?”