Gene Mapper (7 page)

I got the joke, but it was hard to think of a response. I wondered how my avatar would’ve handled it in augmented reality.

Kurokawa chuckled at my dilemma and pressed his palms against his cheeks. “Don’t feel uncomfortable. There’s nothing I can do about it. In AR, I can put myself across as normal size, so it’s not that inconvenient.”

Maybe his tiny size was why he used RealVu. No, it would make even more sense for him to use an avatar. It’s easier to relax around people when Behavior Correction has your back.

“While we’re on this trip, I might have to ask you to help me reach things now and then. I hope you won’t mind. Oh, and also—”

Kurokawa pointed a finger toward Nguyen’s back and made the invitation gesture, lifting his glasses slightly off his nose.

I blinked twice to enter his stage. Kurokawa was suddenly “normal” size. Now the back seat really felt crowded. He put a finger to his lips to indicate Private Mode.

I accepted the invitation. Everything outside the back seat turned murky. Nguyen and the driver became gray avatars. This was about the best you could expect from a portable AR stage.

I felt the subtle pressure shift in my ears and throat signaling the switch to physio-feedback mode. Now our bodies would give no indication of our conversation and gestures to outsiders.

Kurokawa pointed to a sticker on the window. It said in Japanese,
let our beautiful interpreters assist you at no charge!

“I was going to mention this at the airport, but Chinese characters and Japanese signage are all over the place here. Why didn’t she know her sign was upside down? She must’ve known what she was doing.”

“Maybe she just goofed. Yagodo used calligraphy. You saw her jam her finger. She’s a bit of a space case.”

“I don’t know … Oh, I guess you’re right. Sorry. Please forget it.”

Kurokawa managed a bow in the cramped space and deactivated the stage. We had only been in Private Mode for a few moments, but I was hoping I would see slightly different scenery when we came back out. No luck. At this rate we wouldn’t get to the hotel until after dark. It was getting ridiculous.

I leaned toward Nguyen. “How long to drive?”

“I guess forty-five minutes since now.”

“Nosso long,” said Kurokawa. “Itsu bam to bump. Iz itsu yujual?” He pointed at the traffic. I liked his attempt at “bumper to bumper.”

“Not so usual. It’s second of three heavy traffic time in a day. It will finish soon.”

How did these two manage to communicate? Maybe they just had the timing down.

We chatted with Nguyen about her job, starting with her hiring a few months earlier and moving on to the purpose of our visit. I was hoping she’d have some information about what Yagodo had accomplished so far, but she had nothing to offer.

When we asked about Yagodo himself, she became very talkative. Yagodo was a “wizard” with technology. He knew just about everything, and when it came to computers he could do anything. He was based in Vietnam because of its easy access to the Internet, particularly to old Google cache servers.

When I ventured a bit of skepticism about the existence of such servers, Nguyen told me something “special” she’d heard from Yagodo. Just a rumor, of course, but just after the Lockout, a group of hackers had commandeered a container ship moored off Singapore that was serving as a backup server farm for Google. After a few years the ship showed up at Saigon Port. It sounded preposterous, but I had to admit that it was also a bit more plausible than some of the rumors I’d heard about the fate of the vast pools of data from the Internet era.

As we were chatting, the traffic finally started moving again. I spotted women walking along the road who were dressed in the same style as Nguyen. I asked her if it was some kind of fashion trend.

“No, we call it
ao dai,
” she said proudly. “National dress of Vietnam.”

As we continued chatting about nothing in particular, the taxi emerged from a district of shops and food stands and arrived at a huge traffic circle.

“Here we arrived. Thanks for your patient for long driving. We hope you to prefer this hotel, Ambassador.” She pointed to the colonial-style entrance of a hotel facing the circle.

*   *   *

I tossed my bags in the room, changed my T-shirt, and headed for the lobby. Kurokawa hadn’t even gone up. He was sitting on a sofa next to the luggage trolley with his briefcase on his lap. Nguyen was across from him. The beautiful girl in her ao dai and the tiny salaryman were a conspicuous pair.

We followed her out the revolving door into a sunlit furnace heavy with the scent of coriander. The heat and glare made me dizzy even in the shade of the awning. The sun seemed to hang just a few yards above the sidewalk. The light bounced off the concrete and hurt my eyes. Activating my stage would have cut the glare, but it was a waste of roaming fees. My contact lenses didn’t have UV filtering anyway. I needed sunglasses.

The traffic circle was ringed with scattered palms that gave scraps of shade to the food and drink stands. One stand had a shiny aluminum box filled with ice and canned soft drinks. Another mysterious stand seemed to be selling something in small, unmarked chrome cans. Another was piled with freshly baked baguettes and what looked like the makings for sandwiches. It was well past noon, but the benches were crowded with people lounging.

The coriander scent came from a noodle stall a few feet from the hotel entrance. Just seeing the clouds of steam rising from the huge pot made the sweat run down my back. A man on the bench slurping noodles stood up and said something to Nguyen. She waved a hand irritably, and the man sat down again. He lifted his chopsticks but didn’t give up on us. “Taxi cheap for you. Two dollars.”

“Không cân!” Nguyen snapped and looked quickly away, apparently embarrassed at the sharpness of her reply. Still looking cool and comfortable in her tunic, she pointed out the entrance to a street on the far side of the circle.

“So, let’s walk.”

She had to be kidding. In this heat? “Isn’t it too far?”

“Only ten minutes!”

Kurokawa followed her without hesitation. Nguyen was a local, but Kurokawa’s willingness to stroll around under these conditions in a long-sleeved shirt and blazer was baffling. He must have left his nervous system back at the hotel.

I trudged after them. After only a few steps the perspiration was pouring down my forehead. The shade from the sparse fringe of trees along the roundabout did nothing to cut the heat from the sidewalk.

We finally reached the opposite side and turned off onto a street guarded by the biggest palm tree so far. As we turned the corner, my chin dropped in astonishment.

The street was lined with tall concrete poles strung with a dozen or so bundled cables. The bundles must have been two feet in diameter, each with tens of thousands of cables a few millimeters thick. Here and there a bundle sagged into a huge loop under its own weight. A few were touching the ground.

The cables had been crudely bound together. Many were broken and protruding from the bundles like frayed hairs. The bundles had been patched all over with vinyl tape. They looked like cables in an old data communications center that I saw once in a video.

Kurokawa stopped and pointed at a frayed cable. “Mamoru, this is a telecommunications cable. Look, it’s
metal
.”

I could see copper color peeking from the broken cable ends. This was no optical fiber system. I’d never heard of using copper—which has only a fraction of the bandwidth of glass—to handle the huge amounts of data exchanged by TrueNet’s interactive services.

“You found very funny thing. It’s D … DSL cable. Vietnam is in developing term for next generation of network yet.” Nguyen seemed slightly embarrassed at our interest, but what was DSL? Some kind of communications protocol? I’d have to ask Yagodo later.

We followed the cables along several blocks of shacks and makeshift housing before reaching a district with small souvenir shops, boutiques, and hair salons. There were more people here. Many of them were tourists.

At each corner, smaller bundles branched off and disappeared among the clusters of buildings. With so many shops in the same area, a wireless network should have been much more user-friendly. There had to be a reason people were clinging to such an obsolete technology.

Nguyen turned right into a narrow street where the shopping district petered out. The next intersection had a stand on each corner. We stopped in front of one with an electric kettle and more of those mysterious chrome cylinders on a canvas tablecloth. A sweet milky aroma, like melted butter, wafted from the stand. Kurokawa nudged me.

“That’s Vietnamese coffee. Let’s have some later.”

“Sure, if there’s time.”

“We should make time to relax on this trip. We still don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here.” He adjusted his tie, though it already looked adjusted.

Nguyen waved cheerily to the woman running the stand and went behind it to a stairway that ran up one side of the building. I looked up and saw a broad terrace on the second floor, ablaze with red and purple flowers.

When we reached the terrace, Nguyen was pushing open the big sun-drenched door to the office. The door was a single heavy slab of timber with a complicated grain that might well have been real wood.

“Welcome to Yagodo-san’s office.”

There was a whisper of air and the scent of fresh-cut blossoms. The room with its cream stucco walls was pleasantly cool, though I couldn’t hear an air conditioner. The floor was dark and glossy. A pair of sofas with hill tribe motifs faced each other across a table that was a smaller version of the door. At the far end of the room were two plain desks with chairs. The afternoon sun from the terrace lit the spacious, airy office with a soft brightness.

A man was writing at one of the desks. He wore an open-neck short-sleeve shirt the color of the walls. He stood and came toward us, a large man with an intelligent face, strong nose, high forehead, and long white hair combed straight back. His eyes were light brown. I could see he was enjoying our fascination with his exotic office. He spread his arms in welcome and smiled.

“Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City. I am Isamu Yagodo.” No mistake, it was the voice of the dog.

“It’s good to meet you, Isamu. Thanks for inviting us.” I extended my hand. His grip was surprisingly strong. The bunched sinews of his forearm looked like the cables we’d seen outside.

“No, I should thank you. For taking the trouble to come here.”

“I never dreamed we’d be conferencing one day and meeting the next.” The warmth from his hand penetrated my palm.

“And your companion … ?”

“My name is Takashi Kurokawa. It gives me great pleasure to meet you.” With the same sleight of hand he used at the airport, Kurokawa produced a business card. Yagodo received it with a practiced gesture, using both hands. To my astonishment, he had a card of his own ready.

“I haven’t exchanged business cards with anyone for a long time,” he said.

“Well, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten one in return, to tell the truth. Ah, this is handwritten.”

I peered at the card in Kurokawa’s hand. “Isamu Yagodo” was written with a flourish, followed by his telephone number. And that was all.

“I didn’t know a salaryman would be visiting, otherwise I’d have had some printed up. Handmade will have to do this time. I’ll give you my full resume once we’re
there
.” Yagodo lifted invisible glasses with a fingertip. “You’ll want to know who you’re dealing with. But first, I’m sure you’re tired. With that flight from Narita you must’ve hit the afternoon traffic.” He pointed to the sofas. “Have a seat. Let’s enjoy some of that famous Vietnamese coffee.” Then he switched to English. “Nguyen, order coffee for our guests and for yourself.”

She called the order in Vietnamese to the coffee stand below. Yagodo settled onto the sofa with his back to the door. I sat facing him. Kurokawa half climbed onto the sofa next to me and fidgeted a bit, searching for the best position.

Yagodo waited until Kurokawa was comfortable. He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, supporting his chin with clasped hands.

“I saw the aerial shots of Mother Mekong. You’ve got a problem, don’t you? You can see it in the night photos. Is that GFP you’re using? It’s the new SR06 color, I think.”

How did he figure that out? I never mentioned Mother Mekong or SR06 during our meeting. Even if I had, my avatar’s NDA filter would have blocked it. Kurokawa looked slowly from Yagodo to me.

“Takashi, it wasn’t me. I never mentioned the site.”

“Yes, you’re right. My apologies. I checked when I watched the video.”

Yagodo nodded. “Sorry if I surprised you, but all I had to do was search for distilled genome credits with Mamoru’s name and then sift through the latest TerraVu images until I found the site. The satellite passes overhead every four days. Your logos are smudged on the north edge of the site. So that’s where the mutation is.”

For a few seconds I was speechless. If an outsider like Yagodo could find out so much so quickly, it was only a matter of time before the whole industry knew what was going on.

“Mother Mekong is a five-star project, so there’s a lot of information out there. It was easy. You must have some serious street cred to be on this project, Mamoru. SR06 is going to make history.”

“You’re overestimating me. All I did was the logos.”

“Don’t be modest. Your name has the place of honor as the style sheet designer. I’m surprised a big player like L&B would give an open credit to outside consultants. Usually the in-house designer and the PM hog all the credit.”

He turned to Kurokawa.

“And you were the producer, right? There were a lot of project partners. The site had to be specially constructed to get those certifications. I bet you had your hands full.”

“True. I handled all the third-party liaison work.” Kurokawa bowed slightly with his legs crossed. He had finally found the right position on the sofa, though his feet weren’t touching the floor. “I’ll also be coordinating this investigation. For public consumption, L&B is responsible, but the actual work will be done by three people: me, Mamoru, and you as our advisor, starting today. Of course, L&B is collecting information too, but their hands are full just covering the legal and sales issues. They need to prepare their explanation of the situation for Mother Mekong and the Cambodian government. They’ve also started bringing the FAO up to speed.”

Just the three of us? This was news to me. I wondered if we could do it alone, but if Yagodo could glean so much from published information, his skills would be a big asset.

“A tough challenge then. Ask me anything you want. You have my full support. If we don’t succeed, global agriculture could be set back a generation.”

“You’re absolutely right. Thanks for coming on board.”

“Set back a generation?” I looked from one to the other. “You mean back to natural plants?” Yagodo’s comment had an ominous ring.

“That’s how it looks to me. Isn’t it true, Takashi?”

“Mamoru, I’m sorry. L&B’s press releases for the investors use the same argument. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on you, but that’s what we’re up against.”

Kurokawa shook his head in resignation and launched into a summary of the mission and milestones of Mother Mekong’s five-star project. SR06 was going to prove that distilled agriculture could actually help the environment and give farmers a sustainable business model. That made the certifications important. Outsourcing style sheet design to a freelancer and assigning responsibility to Thep at Mother Mekong to make the final site construction decisions was part of L&B’s plan to assure the public and regulators that it was not going to monopolize control and keep all the profit.

This was not the first time I’d heard these talking points. They were included in the promotional material that came with the Mother Mekong contract for my files. Still, I had dismissed most of them as the kind of noble bullshit you find in every corporate mission statement.

“L&B is working on ISO certification for Mother Mekong–style sustainable farming. Many governments are still refusing to allow distilled farming within their borders, and ISO certification is the only way to break through that wall. Thailand and a dozen or so other countries have canceled bilateral agreements with the FDA to keep distilled crops out. L&B wants to get Thailand on board so it can break into the opposition camp.

“Then there’s the Middle East. Islam forbids the consumption of ‘unnatural’ GM food. If we can get ISO certification, we have a chance to bring Mother Mekong’s sustainable farming to the Middle East. I don’t think the lobbying to get distilled crops certified as halal is going to make much headway soon, but Thailand is starting to come around.”

“I see commercials all the time aimed at farmers here in Vietnam,” said Yagodo. “ ‘Isn’t it time you considered Mother Mekong sustainable farming?’ Not since yesterday though.”

“Advertising is on hold until we find the source of the problem.” Yagodo clasped his hands over the knee of his crossed leg. With his feet in the air, he didn’t look stable, but his movements were natural and relaxed. “The campaign was going well, at least before yesterday. Lintz Barnhard is the main mover and shaker. He gives the project a face that governments can relate to, which has been useful. Barnhard is synonymous with distilled crops.”

Yagodo sat back with a twinkle in his eye. “If he doesn’t fix the problem quickly, that face will be a liability. He’ll be synonymous with failure … Sorry, that was a bit harsh.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. I don’t think there would be an immediate ban on distilled cultivation, but distribution could be affected. If distilled crops can’t be exported, in the long run it’s not much different from a ban.”

Yagodo still had that twinkle in his eye. Kurokawa gave him a questioning look and continued.

“When this problem becomes public knowledge, will sanctions come down on SR06 only? Maybe they’ll apply to all L&B products. Or maybe to all distilled plants. Or maybe even to all genetically modified foods. We don’t know. The answer will depend on how the media react and how L&B responds.”

Yagodo stroked his chin. “In other words, how Barnhard responds to media attacks?”

Kurokawa laughed cynically. “Lintz Barnhard doesn’t take criticism very well.”

“Takashi, are you saying that the future of distilled crops—our future—is riding on how Barnhard deals with the media?”

The image of Barnhard struggling to deal sensitively with journalists baying for his blood was amusing, but from the stories I’d heard and the way he was supposedly treating Enrico, he wouldn’t be able to resist going ballistic, like the man in the hospital I’d seen the day before. The thought of losing my income because of someone else’s lack of self-control was depressing.

“No, Mamoru. Basically it all depends on our investigation. If we can’t pinpoint the cause so L&B can get something out to the media immediately, and if we don’t find a way to fix the problem soon, then all these negative prospects could become real very quickly.”

I realized that my mouth was completely parched and not just because of the sweating on the way here. Yagodo was about to add something when there was a knock on the door.

“Master, sau đây là cà phê.”

Nguyen stood up from her desk and walked quickly to the door, tunic flapping. The door didn’t seem to have a latch, but I heard a soft tone when she touched the handle.

“Cám
ơ
n.”

The woman from the coffee stand entered with a tray. The sweet aroma I noticed earlier filled the room. Nguyen pointed to the low table. The woman set the tray down and held out her mobile phone. Nguyen touched the screen of her own phone with an index finger before they touched phones. The woman’s phone made a sound like a coin falling into a piggybank.

“I bet you’ve never seen HMC for making payments,” said Yagodo, noticing our puzzled looks. He explained that Nguyen had transferred funds to the coffee stand from a prepaid account with her mobile carrier. Credit cards had never caught on in Vietnam. During the Great Recovery after the launch of TrueNet, prepaid accounts had become ubiquitous.

I knew that only the developed economies used postpayment systems, but seeing a prepaid deposit payment with my own eyes, fused with the aroma of sweet Vietnamese coffee, made it a vivid experience.

Kurokawa was fascinated. “Payment with HMC? I have a contract with a local carrier here. I’d like to try it. But doesn’t it interfere with feedback? I have quite a few implants. As you can see, I need to compensate. Most environments weren’t designed for me.”

“I don’t see why it would. I’ve got about twenty myself, but I’ve never had a problem.”

“Twenty implants? Well, I’ll give it a try. It looks useful.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot. The office door is HMC too. I’ll register you two so you can come and go. Is this your first encounter with Vietnamese iced coffee?” Yagodo pointed to the tray. “It’s drip filtered.”

Small chrome cylinders were perched on metal disks that covered the mouth of each cup. “After the water filters through the coffee, add some condensed milk and toss it in the glass with ice. If the filter gets clogged, wiggle the rod inside the filter.”

As the coffee kept flowing down into the cups, the aroma became even stronger.

“I think we’re ready. Drink up.”

I took a straight sip of the freshly filtered coffee. The combination of strong bitterness and sweet aroma put me off. Two spoonfuls of the sweetened condensed milk made all the difference. Now the taste matched the full-bodied aroma.

Yagodo poured a three-second slug of milk into his cup and busily stirred the cream-colored mixture. That had to be too sweet. The man might know his stuff technically, but I wouldn’t want to take his advice on taste.

“You should try our sandwiches too. It’s too bad the wheat they use these days tastes like plastic.”

Kurokawa had imitated Yagodo’s coffee preparation to the letter and was now sipping from his glass. The taste didn’t seem to bother him, but when he heard Yagodo’s comment he put his glass down. I stopped drinking too. Yagodo had just insulted distilled wheat.

“You don’t care for it?” said Kurokawa evenly.

“Well, if you’ve never had the real thing it’s hard to judge, but it’s not as good as it was. Food should have complex flavors. But they still bake bread the way the French have for centuries. It’s better than in Paris, in fact. Ho Chi Minh City is like a time capsule.”

If Yagodo thought coffee that was mostly condensed milk tasted good, I wasn’t sure I could trust his judgment. Maybe he just didn’t like the concept of distilled grains?

“Time capsule—that reminds me.” Yagodo moved his lips wordlessly, placed the tips of his thumb and little finger on his temples, and lifted the usual invisible eyeglasses. He was inviting us to enter his AR stage. The lip movements must have been his activation gesture. He was already there waiting for us. I blinked twice to activate augmented reality.

“Whoa!”

Kurokawa—rendered full size—gaped with surprise. “Isamu, I’d love to know where I can get a stage like this. It’s amazing.” He extended his full-sized hands and slowly lowered them to the table. The complicated reflections in the polished grain of the table were completely free of artifacts. The stage was as real as the one at Café Zucca. No, it was better.